Tarot Reading How?
Reading Performed 05/27/2026 at 1:54 AM
Click or scroll down for the meaning of each position and the interpretation of its card.
Visual Layout
Card One
Page of Pentacles from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Application, study, scholarship, reflection; also command, management.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
A dark youth; a young officer or soldier; a child.
Card Description
A youthful figure looks intently at the pentacle that hovers over his raised hands. He moves slowly, ignoring what is around him.
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Card Two
Justice from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Fairness, rightness, integrity, accomplishment; triumph of the deserving side in law.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Justice. That the Tarot, though it is of all reasonable antiquity, is not of time immemorial, is shewn by this card, which could have been presented in a much more archaic manner. Those, however, who have gifts of discernment in matters of this kind will not need to be told that age is in no sense of the essence of the consideration; the Rite of Closing the Lodge in the Third Craft Grade of Masonry may belong to the late eighteenth century, but the fact signifies nothing; it is still the summary of all the instituted and official Mysteries. The female figure of the eleventh card is said to be Astraea, who personified the same virtue and is represented by the same symbols. This goddess notwithstanding, and notwithstanding the vulgarian Cupid, the Tarot is not of Roman mythology, or of Greek either. Its presentation of justice is supposed to be one of the four cardinal virtues included in the sequence of Greater Arcana; but, as it so happens, the fourth emblem is wanting, and it became necessary for the commentators to discover it at all costs. They did what it was possible to do, and yet the laws of research have never succeeded in extricating the missing Persephone under the form of Prudence. Court de Gebelin attempted to solve the difficulty by a tour de force, and believed that he had extracted what he wanted from the symbol of the Hanged Man--wherein he deceived himself. The Tarot has, therefore, its justice, its Temperance also and its Fortitude, but--owing to a curious omission--it does not offer us any type of Prudence, though it may be admitted that, in some respects, the isolation of the Hermit, pursuing a solitary path by the light of his own lamp, gives, to those who can receive it, a certain high counsel in respect of the via prudentiae.
Card Description
This figure sits between pillars, like the High Priestess. The pillars of Justice open into one world and the pillars of the High Priestess into another. The operation of spiritual justice is like the breathing of the Spirit where it wills, and we have no way to explain it. It is like the possession of the fairy gifts, high gifts, and the gracious gifts of the poet—we either have them or we don't, and their presence is as much a mystery as their absence.
Card Three
Eight of Wands from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Activity in undertakings, the path of such activity; swiftness, as that of an express messenger; great haste, great hope, speed toward an end that promises certain happiness; generally, things on the move; also the arrows of love.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Domestic disputes for a married person.
Card Description
This card represents motion through the unmoving—a flight of wands through an open countryside. They approach the end of their path. The future they signify is at hand; it may be even on the threshold.
Card Four
Knight of Swords from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Skill, bravery, capacity, defense; hostility, wrath, war, destruction, opposition, resistance, ruin. This may sometimes signify death, but it carries this meaning only when near other cards of fatality.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
A soldier, man of arms, satellite, stipendiary; heroic action predicted for soldier.
Card Description
A knight rides at full speed, as if scattering his enemies. He is the prototypical hero of romantic chivalry. He might almost be Galahad, whose sword is swift and sure because he is clean of heart.
Card Five
Nine of Swords from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Death, failure, malfunction, delay, deception, disappointment, despair.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
An ecclesiastic, a priest; generally, a card of bad omen.
Card Description
A woman sits on her bed, sobbing, with swords on the wall above her. She grieves as if she knows of no sorrow like hers. It is a card of utter desolation.
Card Six
Three of Wands from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Established strength, enterprise, effort, trade, commerce, discovery: those are his ships, bearing his merchandise, at sail.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
A very good card; collaboration will favour enterprise.
Card Description
A calm, stately figure looks from a cliff's edge at ships passing over the sea. His back is turned. Three staves are planted in the ground, and he leans slightly on one of them.
Card Seven
Five of Swords from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Deterioration, destruction, revocation, disgrace, dishonor, loss.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
An attack on the fortune of the Querent.
Card Description
A scornful man watches two retreating and dejected figures, whose swords lie on the ground. He carries two others on his left shoulder. A third sword in his right hand points to earth. He is the master in possession of the field.
Card Eight
Ace of Cups from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Immaculate love, joy, contentment, home, nourishment, abundance, fertility.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Inflexible will, unalterable law.
Card Description
A hand extending from a cloud bears a cup pouring out four streams. Calm water lies beneath, and on it are waterlilies. A dove bearing in its beak a communion wafer marked with a cross descends to place the wafer in the cup. Dew falls around the cup on all sides.
Card Nine
The Emperor from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Stability, power, protection, realization; a great person; aid, reason, conviction; also authority and will.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
The Emperor, by imputation the spouse of the former. He is occasionally represented as wearing, in addition to his personal insignia, the stars or ribbons of some order of chivalry. I mention this to shew that the cards are a medley of old and new emblems. Those who insist upon the evidence of the one may deal, if they can, with the other. No effectual argument for the antiquity of a particular design can be drawn from the fact that it incorporates old material; but there is also none which can be based on sporadic novelties, the intervention of which may signify only the unintelligent hand of an editor or of a late draughtsman.
Card Description
He has a form of the Crux ansata (like an Ankh) for his scepter and a globe in his left hand. He is a crowned monarch—commanding, stately, seated on a throne. The arms of his throne have rams' heads on the front. He is execution and realization, the power of this world, clothed with the highest of its natural attributes. He is the virile power to which the Empress responds, and in this sense, he is the one who seeks to remove the Veil of Isis; yet she remains a virgin.
Card Ten
The Moon from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Hidden enemies, danger, slander, darkness, terror, deception, occult forces, error.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
The Moon. Some eighteenth-century cards shew the luminary on its waning side; in the debased edition of Etteilla, it is the moon at night in her plenitude, set in a heaven of stars; of recent years the moon is shewn on the side of her increase. In nearly all presentations she is shining brightly and shedding the moisture of fertilizing dew in great drops. Beneath there are two towers, between which a path winds to the verge of the horizon. Two dogs, or alternatively a wolf and dog, are baying at the moon, and in the foreground there is water, through which a crayfish moves towards the land.
Card Description
In this card the moon is waxing on what is called the side of mercy, to the right of the observer. It has sixteen chief and sixteen secondary rays. Drops of dew descend from above. Beneath are two towers, between which a path winds up to the horizon. A wolf and dog are baying at the moon, and in the foreground there is water, through which a crayfish moves toward the land. The card represents life of the imagination, apart from life of the spirit. The path between the towers is our path into the unknown. The dog and wolf are the fears of the natural mind in the presence of that mystery, when there is only reflected light to guide it.
Card Eleven
The Fool from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Folly, mania, extravagance, intoxication, delirium, frenzy, betrayal.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
The Fool, Mate, or Unwise Man. Court de Gebelin places it at the head of the whole series as the zero or negative which is presupposed by numeration, and as this is a simpler so also it is a better arrangement. It has been abandoned because in later times the cards have been attributed to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and there has been apparently some difficulty about allocating the zero symbol satisfactorily in a sequence of letters all of which signify numbers. In the present reference of the card to the letter Shin, which corresponds to 200, the difficulty or the unreason remains. The truth is that the real arrangement of the cards has never transpired. The Fool carries a wallet; he is looking over his shoulder and does not know that he is on the brink of a precipice; but a dog or other animal--some call it a tiger--is attacking him from behind, and he is hurried to his destruction unawares. Etteilla has given a justifiable variation of this card--as generally understood--in the form of a court jester, with cap, bells and motley garb. The other descriptions say that the wallet contains the bearer's follies and vices, which seems bourgeois and arbitrary.
Card Description
With light step, as if earth and its obstacles had little power to restrain him, a young man in gorgeous clothing pauses at the brink of a precipice among the great heights of the world; he surveys the blue distance before him—its expanse of sky rather than the landscape below. He seems to still be walking, though he is stationary at the given moment; his dog is still bounding. The edge that opens on the depth holds no terror for him, as if angels were waiting to uphold him, should he leap from that height. His face is full of intelligence and expectant wonder. He has a rose in one hand and in the other an expensive cane, which hangs over his right shoulder, dangling a curiously embroidered pouch. He is a prince of the other world, traveling through this one—all in the glory of the crisp morning air. The sun, which shines behind him, knows where he came from, where he is going, and how he will return: by another path, after many days. He is the Spirit in search of experience.
Card Twelve
Seven of Swords from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Plan, attempt, wish, hope, confidence; also arguments, a plan that may fail, annoyance.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Dark girl; a good card; it promises a country life after a competence has been secured.
Card Description
A man quickly carries away five swords. Two others remain stuck in the ground. A camp is close at hand.
Card Thirteen
Two of Cups from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Love, passion, friendship, affinity, union, consensus, sympathy, the relationship between men and women.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Favourable in things of pleasure and business, as well as love; also wealth and honour.
Card Description
A young man and woman pledge themselves to one another. Above their cups rises the Caduceus of Hermes, with a lion's head between its spread wings. It represents our desire to find a soul mate, by which desire Nature is sanctified.
Card Fourteen
The Hanged Man from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Wisdom, prudence, discernment, trials, sacrifice, intuition, divination, prophecy.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
The Hanged Man. This is the symbol which is supposed to represent Prudence, and Eliphas Levi says, in his most shallow and plausible manner, that it is the adept bound by his engagements. The figure of a man is suspended head-downwards from a gibbet, to which he is attached by a rope about one of his ankles. The arms are bound behind him, and one leg is crossed over the other. According to another, and indeed the prevailing interpretation, he signifies sacrifice, but all current meanings attributed to this card are cartomancists' intuitions, apart from any real value on the symbolical side. The fortune-tellers of the eighteenth century who circulated Tarots, depict a semi-feminine youth in jerkin, poised erect on one foot and loosely attached to a short stake driven into the ground.
Card Description
The figure of a man hangs head down from a gallows, to which he is attached by a rope around one of his ankles. His arms are bound behind him, and one leg is crossed over the other. The gallows from which he hangs forms a Tau cross, while the figure—from the position of the legs--forms a cross. There is a halo around the head of the apparent martyr. It should be noted (1) that the tree of sacrifice is living wood, with leaves on it; (2) that the face expresses deep entrancement, not suffering; (3) that the figure, as a whole, suggests life in suspension, not death.
Card Fifteen
Five of Wands from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Imitation, as in a pretend fight, but also the battle of life—strenuous competition and the struggle of the search for riches and fortune. Thus, possibly a card of gold, gain, luxury.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Success in financial speculation.
Card Description
A group of youths brandish staves, as if in sport. They play at mock warfare, and the divinatory meanings match this.
Card Sixteen
Six of Swords from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Journey by water, route, travel, messenger, assistance.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
The voyage will be pleasant.
Card Description
A ferryman carries passengers in his raft to the far shore. The course is smooth, and the freight is light; the work is not beyond his strength.
Card Seventeen
Three of Pentacles from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Occupation, trade, skilled labor; also nobility, aristocracy, renown, glory.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
If for a man, celebrity for his eldest son.
Card Description
This card shows a sculptor working in a monastery. Compare with the Eight of Pentacles: the apprentice or amateur in that card has received his reward and is now at work in earnest.
Card Eighteen
The Heirophant from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Marriage, alliance, captivity, servitude; also mercy and goodness; inspiration; the man to whom the Querent has recourse.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
The High Priest or Hierophant, called also Spiritual Father, and more commonly and obviously the Pope. It seems even to have been named the Abbot, and then its correspondence, the High Priestess, was the Abbess or Mother of the Convent. Both are arbitrary names. The insignia of the figures are papal, and in such case the High Priestess is and can be only the Church, to whom Pope and priests are married by the spiritual rite of ordination. I think, however, that in its primitive form this card did not represent the Roman Pontiff.
Card Description
He wears the triple crown and is seated between two pillars, but not those of the Temple guarded by the High Priestess. In his left hand he holds a scepter ending with the triple cross. With his right hand he gives the well-known ecclesiastical sign of esotericism, distinguishing between the surface and concealed parts of doctrine. At his feet are the crossed keys, and two priestly ministers in albs (priestly robes) kneel before him. He is the ruling power of external religion, as the High Priestess is the prevailing force of the esoteric power.
Card Nineteen
Four of Cups from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Weariness, disgust, aversion, imaginary annoyances; also mixed pleasure.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Contrarieties.
Card Description
A young man sits under a tree, contemplating three cups on the grass before him. An arm extends from a cloud to offer him another cup. His appears discontent, as if the wine of this world had barely satisfied him. Another wine—a fairy gift—is now offered to the vagabond, but he sees no consolation in it, either.
Card Twenty
Two of Wands from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
This card has contradictory meanings: on the one hand, riches, fortune, magnificence; on the other, physical suffering, disease, chagrin, sadness, mortification. The design gives a suggestion to resolve the contradiction; here is a lord overlooking his dominion while contemplating a globe. He resembles the sadness and mortification of Alexander, amid the grandeur of this world's wealth.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
A young lady may expect trivial disappointments.
Card Description
A tall man looks from a roof with battlements, overlooking sea and shore. He holds a globe in his right hand, and a staff in his left hand rests on the battlement. Another staff is fixed in a ring. The Rose and Cross and Lily appears on the left side.
The Meanings of these Tarot Cards
Card One
Page of Pentacles from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Application, study, scholarship, reflection; also command, management.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
A dark youth; a young officer or soldier; a child.
Card Description
A youthful figure looks intently at the pentacle that hovers over his raised hands. He moves slowly, ignoring what is around him.
Related Posts
Card Two
Justice from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Fairness, rightness, integrity, accomplishment; triumph of the deserving side in law.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Justice. That the Tarot, though it is of all reasonable antiquity, is not of time immemorial, is shewn by this card, which could have been presented in a much more archaic manner. Those, however, who have gifts of discernment in matters of this kind will not need to be told that age is in no sense of the essence of the consideration; the Rite of Closing the Lodge in the Third Craft Grade of Masonry may belong to the late eighteenth century, but the fact signifies nothing; it is still the summary of all the instituted and official Mysteries. The female figure of the eleventh card is said to be Astraea, who personified the same virtue and is represented by the same symbols. This goddess notwithstanding, and notwithstanding the vulgarian Cupid, the Tarot is not of Roman mythology, or of Greek either. Its presentation of justice is supposed to be one of the four cardinal virtues included in the sequence of Greater Arcana; but, as it so happens, the fourth emblem is wanting, and it became necessary for the commentators to discover it at all costs. They did what it was possible to do, and yet the laws of research have never succeeded in extricating the missing Persephone under the form of Prudence. Court de Gebelin attempted to solve the difficulty by a tour de force, and believed that he had extracted what he wanted from the symbol of the Hanged Man--wherein he deceived himself. The Tarot has, therefore, its justice, its Temperance also and its Fortitude, but--owing to a curious omission--it does not offer us any type of Prudence, though it may be admitted that, in some respects, the isolation of the Hermit, pursuing a solitary path by the light of his own lamp, gives, to those who can receive it, a certain high counsel in respect of the via prudentiae.
Card Description
This figure sits between pillars, like the High Priestess. The pillars of Justice open into one world and the pillars of the High Priestess into another. The operation of spiritual justice is like the breathing of the Spirit where it wills, and we have no way to explain it. It is like the possession of the fairy gifts, high gifts, and the gracious gifts of the poet—we either have them or we don't, and their presence is as much a mystery as their absence.
Card Three
Eight of Wands from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Activity in undertakings, the path of such activity; swiftness, as that of an express messenger; great haste, great hope, speed toward an end that promises certain happiness; generally, things on the move; also the arrows of love.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Domestic disputes for a married person.
Card Description
This card represents motion through the unmoving—a flight of wands through an open countryside. They approach the end of their path. The future they signify is at hand; it may be even on the threshold.
Card Four
Knight of Swords from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Skill, bravery, capacity, defense; hostility, wrath, war, destruction, opposition, resistance, ruin. This may sometimes signify death, but it carries this meaning only when near other cards of fatality.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
A soldier, man of arms, satellite, stipendiary; heroic action predicted for soldier.
Card Description
A knight rides at full speed, as if scattering his enemies. He is the prototypical hero of romantic chivalry. He might almost be Galahad, whose sword is swift and sure because he is clean of heart.
Card Five
Nine of Swords from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Death, failure, malfunction, delay, deception, disappointment, despair.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
An ecclesiastic, a priest; generally, a card of bad omen.
Card Description
A woman sits on her bed, sobbing, with swords on the wall above her. She grieves as if she knows of no sorrow like hers. It is a card of utter desolation.
Card Six
Three of Wands from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Established strength, enterprise, effort, trade, commerce, discovery: those are his ships, bearing his merchandise, at sail.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
A very good card; collaboration will favour enterprise.
Card Description
A calm, stately figure looks from a cliff's edge at ships passing over the sea. His back is turned. Three staves are planted in the ground, and he leans slightly on one of them.
Card Seven
Five of Swords from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Deterioration, destruction, revocation, disgrace, dishonor, loss.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
An attack on the fortune of the Querent.
Card Description
A scornful man watches two retreating and dejected figures, whose swords lie on the ground. He carries two others on his left shoulder. A third sword in his right hand points to earth. He is the master in possession of the field.
Card Eight
Ace of Cups from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Immaculate love, joy, contentment, home, nourishment, abundance, fertility.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Inflexible will, unalterable law.
Card Description
A hand extending from a cloud bears a cup pouring out four streams. Calm water lies beneath, and on it are waterlilies. A dove bearing in its beak a communion wafer marked with a cross descends to place the wafer in the cup. Dew falls around the cup on all sides.
Card Nine
The Emperor from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Stability, power, protection, realization; a great person; aid, reason, conviction; also authority and will.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
The Emperor, by imputation the spouse of the former. He is occasionally represented as wearing, in addition to his personal insignia, the stars or ribbons of some order of chivalry. I mention this to shew that the cards are a medley of old and new emblems. Those who insist upon the evidence of the one may deal, if they can, with the other. No effectual argument for the antiquity of a particular design can be drawn from the fact that it incorporates old material; but there is also none which can be based on sporadic novelties, the intervention of which may signify only the unintelligent hand of an editor or of a late draughtsman.
Card Description
He has a form of the Crux ansata (like an Ankh) for his scepter and a globe in his left hand. He is a crowned monarch—commanding, stately, seated on a throne. The arms of his throne have rams' heads on the front. He is execution and realization, the power of this world, clothed with the highest of its natural attributes. He is the virile power to which the Empress responds, and in this sense, he is the one who seeks to remove the Veil of Isis; yet she remains a virgin.
Card Ten
The Moon from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Hidden enemies, danger, slander, darkness, terror, deception, occult forces, error.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
The Moon. Some eighteenth-century cards shew the luminary on its waning side; in the debased edition of Etteilla, it is the moon at night in her plenitude, set in a heaven of stars; of recent years the moon is shewn on the side of her increase. In nearly all presentations she is shining brightly and shedding the moisture of fertilizing dew in great drops. Beneath there are two towers, between which a path winds to the verge of the horizon. Two dogs, or alternatively a wolf and dog, are baying at the moon, and in the foreground there is water, through which a crayfish moves towards the land.
Card Description
In this card the moon is waxing on what is called the side of mercy, to the right of the observer. It has sixteen chief and sixteen secondary rays. Drops of dew descend from above. Beneath are two towers, between which a path winds up to the horizon. A wolf and dog are baying at the moon, and in the foreground there is water, through which a crayfish moves toward the land. The card represents life of the imagination, apart from life of the spirit. The path between the towers is our path into the unknown. The dog and wolf are the fears of the natural mind in the presence of that mystery, when there is only reflected light to guide it.
Card Eleven
The Fool from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Folly, mania, extravagance, intoxication, delirium, frenzy, betrayal.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
The Fool, Mate, or Unwise Man. Court de Gebelin places it at the head of the whole series as the zero or negative which is presupposed by numeration, and as this is a simpler so also it is a better arrangement. It has been abandoned because in later times the cards have been attributed to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and there has been apparently some difficulty about allocating the zero symbol satisfactorily in a sequence of letters all of which signify numbers. In the present reference of the card to the letter Shin, which corresponds to 200, the difficulty or the unreason remains. The truth is that the real arrangement of the cards has never transpired. The Fool carries a wallet; he is looking over his shoulder and does not know that he is on the brink of a precipice; but a dog or other animal--some call it a tiger--is attacking him from behind, and he is hurried to his destruction unawares. Etteilla has given a justifiable variation of this card--as generally understood--in the form of a court jester, with cap, bells and motley garb. The other descriptions say that the wallet contains the bearer's follies and vices, which seems bourgeois and arbitrary.
Card Description
With light step, as if earth and its obstacles had little power to restrain him, a young man in gorgeous clothing pauses at the brink of a precipice among the great heights of the world; he surveys the blue distance before him—its expanse of sky rather than the landscape below. He seems to still be walking, though he is stationary at the given moment; his dog is still bounding. The edge that opens on the depth holds no terror for him, as if angels were waiting to uphold him, should he leap from that height. His face is full of intelligence and expectant wonder. He has a rose in one hand and in the other an expensive cane, which hangs over his right shoulder, dangling a curiously embroidered pouch. He is a prince of the other world, traveling through this one—all in the glory of the crisp morning air. The sun, which shines behind him, knows where he came from, where he is going, and how he will return: by another path, after many days. He is the Spirit in search of experience.
Card Twelve
Seven of Swords from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Plan, attempt, wish, hope, confidence; also arguments, a plan that may fail, annoyance.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Dark girl; a good card; it promises a country life after a competence has been secured.
Card Description
A man quickly carries away five swords. Two others remain stuck in the ground. A camp is close at hand.
Card Thirteen
Two of Cups from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Love, passion, friendship, affinity, union, consensus, sympathy, the relationship between men and women.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Favourable in things of pleasure and business, as well as love; also wealth and honour.
Card Description
A young man and woman pledge themselves to one another. Above their cups rises the Caduceus of Hermes, with a lion's head between its spread wings. It represents our desire to find a soul mate, by which desire Nature is sanctified.
Card Fourteen
The Hanged Man from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Wisdom, prudence, discernment, trials, sacrifice, intuition, divination, prophecy.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
The Hanged Man. This is the symbol which is supposed to represent Prudence, and Eliphas Levi says, in his most shallow and plausible manner, that it is the adept bound by his engagements. The figure of a man is suspended head-downwards from a gibbet, to which he is attached by a rope about one of his ankles. The arms are bound behind him, and one leg is crossed over the other. According to another, and indeed the prevailing interpretation, he signifies sacrifice, but all current meanings attributed to this card are cartomancists' intuitions, apart from any real value on the symbolical side. The fortune-tellers of the eighteenth century who circulated Tarots, depict a semi-feminine youth in jerkin, poised erect on one foot and loosely attached to a short stake driven into the ground.
Card Description
The figure of a man hangs head down from a gallows, to which he is attached by a rope around one of his ankles. His arms are bound behind him, and one leg is crossed over the other. The gallows from which he hangs forms a Tau cross, while the figure—from the position of the legs--forms a cross. There is a halo around the head of the apparent martyr. It should be noted (1) that the tree of sacrifice is living wood, with leaves on it; (2) that the face expresses deep entrancement, not suffering; (3) that the figure, as a whole, suggests life in suspension, not death.
Card Fifteen
Five of Wands from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Imitation, as in a pretend fight, but also the battle of life—strenuous competition and the struggle of the search for riches and fortune. Thus, possibly a card of gold, gain, luxury.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Success in financial speculation.
Card Description
A group of youths brandish staves, as if in sport. They play at mock warfare, and the divinatory meanings match this.
Card Sixteen
Six of Swords from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Journey by water, route, travel, messenger, assistance.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
The voyage will be pleasant.
Card Description
A ferryman carries passengers in his raft to the far shore. The course is smooth, and the freight is light; the work is not beyond his strength.
Card Seventeen
Three of Pentacles from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Occupation, trade, skilled labor; also nobility, aristocracy, renown, glory.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
If for a man, celebrity for his eldest son.
Card Description
This card shows a sculptor working in a monastery. Compare with the Eight of Pentacles: the apprentice or amateur in that card has received his reward and is now at work in earnest.
Card Eighteen
The Heirophant from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Marriage, alliance, captivity, servitude; also mercy and goodness; inspiration; the man to whom the Querent has recourse.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
The High Priest or Hierophant, called also Spiritual Father, and more commonly and obviously the Pope. It seems even to have been named the Abbot, and then its correspondence, the High Priestess, was the Abbess or Mother of the Convent. Both are arbitrary names. The insignia of the figures are papal, and in such case the High Priestess is and can be only the Church, to whom Pope and priests are married by the spiritual rite of ordination. I think, however, that in its primitive form this card did not represent the Roman Pontiff.
Card Description
He wears the triple crown and is seated between two pillars, but not those of the Temple guarded by the High Priestess. In his left hand he holds a scepter ending with the triple cross. With his right hand he gives the well-known ecclesiastical sign of esotericism, distinguishing between the surface and concealed parts of doctrine. At his feet are the crossed keys, and two priestly ministers in albs (priestly robes) kneel before him. He is the ruling power of external religion, as the High Priestess is the prevailing force of the esoteric power.
Card Nineteen
Four of Cups from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Weariness, disgust, aversion, imaginary annoyances; also mixed pleasure.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Contrarieties.
Card Description
A young man sits under a tree, contemplating three cups on the grass before him. An arm extends from a cloud to offer him another cup. His appears discontent, as if the wine of this world had barely satisfied him. Another wine—a fairy gift—is now offered to the vagabond, but he sees no consolation in it, either.
Card Twenty
Two of Wands from the Vivid Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
This card has contradictory meanings: on the one hand, riches, fortune, magnificence; on the other, physical suffering, disease, chagrin, sadness, mortification. The design gives a suggestion to resolve the contradiction; here is a lord overlooking his dominion while contemplating a globe. He resembles the sadness and mortification of Alexander, amid the grandeur of this world's wealth.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
A young lady may expect trivial disappointments.
Card Description
A tall man looks from a roof with battlements, overlooking sea and shore. He holds a globe in his right hand, and a staff in his left hand rests on the battlement. Another staff is fixed in a ring. The Rose and Cross and Lily appears on the left side.
