Queen of Tarot

The ancient wisdom of the cards

Tarot Reading What lies in my future?

Reading Performed 09/08/2013 at 10:45 AM

Click or scroll down for the meaning of each position and the interpretation of its card.

Visual Layout

The Meanings of these Tarot Cards

This Covers You

This card gives the influence which is affecting the person or matter of inquiry generally, the atmosphere of it in which the other currents work.

Queen of Wands from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck

Card Meaning When Reversed

Good, economical, obliging, serviceable. Signifies also--but in certain positions and in the neighbourhood of other cards tending in such directions--opposition, jealousy, even deceit and infidelity.

A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings

Goodwill towards the Querent, but without the opportunity to exercise it.

Card Description

The Wands throughout this suit are always in leaf, as it is a suit of life and animation. Emotionally and otherwise, the Queen's personality corresponds to that of the King, but is more magnetic.

This Crosses You

It shows the nature of the obstacles in the matter. If it is a favourable card, the opposing forces will not be serious, or it may indicate that something good in itself will not be productive of good in the particular connexion.

The Lovers from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck

Card Meaning When Reversed

Failure, foolish designs. Another account speaks of marriage frustrated and contrarieties of all kinds.

A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings (When Upright)

The Lovers or Marriage. This symbol has undergone many variations, as might be expected from its subject. In the eighteenth century form, by which it first became known to the world of archaeological research, it is really a card of married life, shewing father and mother, with their child placed between them; and the pagan Cupid above, in the act of flying his shaft, is, of course, a misapplied emblem. The Cupid is of love beginning rather than of love in its fulness, guarding the fruit thereof. The card is said to have been entitled Simulacyum fidei, the symbol of conjugal faith, for which the rainbow as a sign of the covenant would have been a more appropriate concomitant. The figures are also held to have signified Truth, Honour and Love, but I suspect that this was, so to speak, the gloss of a commentator moralizing. It has these, but it has other and higher aspects.

Card Description

The sun shines in the zenith, and beneath is a great winged figure with arms extended, pouring down influences. In the foreground are two human figures, male and female, unveiled before each other, as if Adam and Eve when they first occupied the paradise of the earthly body. Behind the man is the Tree of Life, bearing twelve fruits, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is behind the woman; the serpent is twining round it. The figures suggest youth, virginity, innocence and love before it is contaminated by gross material desire. This is in all simplicity the card of human love, here exhibited as part of the way, the truth and the life. It replaces, by recourse to first principles, the old card of marriage, which I have described previously, and the later follies which depicted man between vice and virtue. In a very high sense, the card is a mystery of the Covenant and Sabbath. The suggestion in respect of the woman is that she signifies that attraction towards the sensitive life which carries within it the idea of the Fall of Man, but she is rather the working of a Secret Law of Providence than a willing and conscious temptress. It is through her imputed lapse that man shall arise ultimately, and only by her can he complete himself. The card is therefore in its way another intimation concerning the great mystery of womanhood. The old meanings fall to pieces of necessity with the old pictures, but even as interpretations of the latter, some of them were of the order of commonplace and others were false in symbolism.

This Crowns You

It represents (a) the Querent's aim or ideal in the matter; (b) the best that can be achieved under the circumstances, but that which has not yet been made actual.

Ten of Swords from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck

Card Meaning When Upright

Whatsoever is intimated by the design; also pain, affliction, tears, sadness, desolation. It is not especially a card of violent death.

A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings

Followed by Ace and King, imprisonment; for girl or wife, treason on the part of friends.

Card Description

A prostrate figure, pierced by all the swords belonging to the card.

This is Beneath You

It shows the foundation or basis of the matter, that which has already passed into actuality and which the Significator has made his own.

The Emperor from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck

Card Meaning When Reversed

Benevolence, compassion, credit; also confusion to enemies, obstruction, immaturity.

A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings (When Upright)

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 for his sceptre and a globe in his left hand. He is a crowned monarch--commanding, stately, seated on a throne, the arms of which axe fronted by rams\' heads. He is executive and realization, the power of this world, here clothed with the highest of its natural attributes. He is occasionally represented as seated on a cubic stone, which, however, confuses some of the issues. He is the virile power, to which the Empress responds, and in this sense is he who seeks to remove the Veil of Isis; yet she remains virgo intacta. It should be understood that this card and that of the Empress do not precisely represent the condition of married life, though this state is implied. On the surface, as I have indicated, they stand for mundane royalty, uplifted on the seats of the mighty; but above this there is the suggestion of another presence. They signify also--and the male figure especially--the higher kingship, occupying the intellectual throne. Hereof is the lordship of thought rather than of the animal world. Both personalities, after their own manner, are "full of strange experience," but theirs is not consciously the wisdom which draws from a higher world. The Emperor has been described as (a) will in its embodied form, but this is only one of its applications, and (b) as an expression of virtualities contained in the Absolute Being--but this is fantasy.

This is Behind You

It gives the influence that is just passed, or is now passing away.

Justice from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck

Card Meaning When Upright

Equity, rightness, probity, executive; 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

As this card follows the traditional symbolism and carries above all its obvious meanings, there is little to say regarding it outside the few considerations collected in the first part, to which the reader is referred. It will be seen, however, that the figure is seated between pillars, like the High Priestess, and on this account it seems desirable to indicate that the moral principle which deals unto every man according to his works--while, of course, it is in strict analogy with higher things;--differs in its essence from the spiritual justice which is involved in the idea of election. The latter belongs to a mysterious order of Providence, in virtue of which it is possible for certain men to conceive the idea of dedication to the highest things. The operation of this is like the breathing of the Spirit where it wills, and we have no canon of criticism or ground of explanation concerning it. It is analogous to the possession of the fairy gifts and the high gifts and the gracious gifts of the poet: we have them or have not, and their presence is as much a mystery as their absence. The law of Justice is not however involved by either alternative. In conclusion, the pillars of Justice open into one world and the pillars of the High Priestess into another.

This is Before You

It shows the influence that is coming into action and will operate in the near future.

Four of Wands from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck

Card Meaning When Upright

They are for once almost on the surface--country life, haven of refuge, a species of domestic harvest-home, repose, concord, harmony, prosperity, peace, and the perfected work of these.

A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings

Unexpected good fortune.

Card Description

From the four great staves planted in the foreground there is a great garland suspended; two female figures uplift nosegays; at their side is a bridge over a moat, leading to an old manorial house.

Your Self

Signifies the person or thing about which the question has been asked, and shows its position or attitude in the circumstances.

Ace of Swords from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck

Card Meaning When Upright

Triumph, the excessive degree in everything, conquest, triumph of force. It is a card of great force, in love as well as in hatred. The crown may carry a much higher significance than comes usually within the sphere of fortune-telling.

A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings

Great prosperity or great misery.

Card Description

A hand issues from a cloud, grasping as word, the point of which is encircled by a crown.

Your House

Your environment and the tendencies at work therein which have an effect on the matter €”for instance, your position in life, the influence of immediate friends, and so forth.

Two of Swords from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck

Card Meaning When Reversed

Imposture, falsehood, duplicity, disloyalty.

A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings

Dealings with rogues.

Card Description

A hoodwinked female figure balances two swords upon her shoulders.

Your Hopes and Fears

Eight of Wands from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck

Card Meaning When Reversed

Arrows of jealousy, internal dispute, stingings of conscience, quarrels; and domestic disputes for persons who are married.

A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings (When Upright)

Domestic disputes for a married person.

Card Description

The card represents motion through the immovable-a flight of wands through an open country; but they draw to the term of their course. That which they signify is at hand; it may be even on the threshold.

The Final Result

The culmination which is brought about by the influences shewn by the other cards that have been turned up in the divination.

Three of Swords from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck

Card Meaning When Reversed

Mental alienation, error, loss, distraction, disorder, confusion.

A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings

A meeting with one whom the Querent has compromised; also a nun.

Card Description

Three swords piercing a heart; cloud and rain behind.

Details of this Tarot Reading

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