Tarot Reading tell me all about this new man who will have lasting relationship with
Reading Performed 09/10/2012 at 2:35 PM
Click or scroll down for the meaning of each position and the interpretation of its card.
Visual Layout
Card One
King of Pentacles from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
The figure calls for no special description the face is rather dark, suggesting also courage, but somewhat lethargic in tendency. The bull'Valour, realizing intelligence, business and normal intellectual aptitude, sometimes mathematical gifts and attainments of this kind; success in these paths.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
A rather dark man, a merchant, master, professor.
Card Description
The figure calls for no special description the face is rather dark, suggesting also courage, but somewhat lethargic in tendency. The bull's head should be noted as a recurrent symbol on the throne. The sign of this suit is represented throughout as engraved or blazoned with the pentagram, typifying the correspondence of the four elements in human nature and that by which they may be governed. In many old Tarot packs this suit stood for current coin, money, deniers. I have not invented the substitution of pentacles and I have no special cause to sustain in respect of the alternative. But the consensus of divinatory meanings is on the side of some change, because the cards do not happen to deal especially with questions of money.
Card Two
Nine of Pentacles from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Prudence, safety, success, accomplishment, certitude, discernment.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Prompt fulfillment of what is presaged by neighbouring cards. Reversed:Vain hopes.
Card Description
A woman, with a bird upon her wrist, stands amidst a great abundance of grapevines in the garden of a manorial house. It is a wide domain, suggesting plenty in all things. Possibly it is her own possession and testifies to material well-being.
Card Three
Ten of Cups from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Contentment, repose of the entire heart; the perfection of that state; also perfection of human love and friendship; if with several picture-cards, a person who is taking charge of the Querent's interests; also the town, village or country inhabited by the Querent.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
For a male Querent, a good marriage and one beyond his expectations.
Card Description
Appearance of Cups in a rainbow; it is contemplated in wonder and ecstacy by a man and woman below, evidently husband and wife. His right arm is about her; his left is raised upward; she raises her right arm. The two children dancing near them have not observed the prodigy but are happy after their own manner. There is a home-scene beyond.
Card Four
Knight of Pentacles from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Utility, serviceableness, interest, responsibility, rectitude-all on the normal and external plane.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
An useful man; useful discoveries.
Card Description
He rides a slow, enduring, heavy horse, to which his own aspect corresponds. He exhibits his symbol, but does not look therein.
Card Five
Six of Cups from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
A card of the past and of memories, looking back, as--for example--on childhood; happiness, enjoyment, but coming rather from the past; things that have vanished. Another reading reverses this, giving new relations, new knowledge, new environment, and then the children are disporting in an unfamiliar precinct.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Pleasant memories.
Card Description
Children in an old garden, their cups filled with flowers.
Card Six
King of Cups from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Fair man, man of business, law, or divinity; responsible, disposed to oblige the Querent; also equity, art and science, including those who profess science, law and art; creative intelligence.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Beware of ill-will on the part of a man of position, and of hypocrisy pretending to help.
Card Description
He holds a short sceptre in his left hand and a great cup in his right; his throne is set upon the sea; on one side a ship is riding and on the other a dolphin is leaping. The implicit is that the Sign of the Cup naturally refers to water, which appears in all the court cards.
Card Seven
King of Wands from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Dark man, friendly, countryman, generally married, honest and conscientious. The card always signifies honesty, and may mean news concerning an unexpected heritage to fall in before very long.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Generally favourable may signify a good marriage.
Card Description
The physical and emotional nature to which this card is attributed is dark, ardent, lithe, animated, impassioned, noble. The King uplifts a flowering wand, and wears, like his three correspondences in the remaining suits, what is called a cap of maintenance beneath his crown. He connects with the symbol of the lion, which is emblazoned on the back of his throne.
Card Eight
Queen of Swords from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Widowhood, female sadness and embarrassment, absence, sterility, mourning, privation, separation.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
A widow.
Card Description
Her right hand raises the weapon vertically and the hilt rests on an arm of her royal chair the left hand is extended, the arm raised her countenance is severe but chastened; it suggests familiarity with sorrow. It does not represent mercy, and, her sword notwithstanding, she is scarcely a symbol of power.
Card Nine
Ace of Wands from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Creation, invention, enterprise, the powers which result in these; principle, beginning, source; birth, family, origin, and in a sense the virility which is behind them; the starting point of enterprises; according to another account, money, fortune, inheritance.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Calamities of all kinds.
Card Description
A hand issuing from a cloud grasps a stout wand or club.
Card Ten
Five of Pentacles from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
The card foretells material trouble above all, whether in the form illustrated--that is, destitution--or otherwise. For some cartomancists, it is a card of love and lovers-wife, husband, friend, mistress; also concordance, affinities. These alternatives cannot be harmonized.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Conquest of fortune by reason.
Card Description
Two mendicants in a snow-storm pass a lighted casement.
Card Eleven
Queen of Pentacles from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Opulence, generosity, magnificence, security, liberty.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Dark woman; presents from a rich relative; rich and happy marriage for a young man.
Card Description
The face suggests that of a dark woman, whose qualities might be summed up in the idea of greatness of soul; she has also the serious cast of intelligence; she contemplates her symbol and may see worlds therein.
Card Twelve
Death from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
End, mortality, destruction, corruption also, for a man, the loss of a benefactor for a woman, many contrarieties; for a maid, failure of marriage projects.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Death. The method of presentation is almost invariable, and embodies a bourgeois form of symbolism. The scene is the field of life, and amidst ordinary rank vegetation there are living arms and heads protruding from the ground. One of the heads is crowned, and a skeleton with a great scythe is in the act of mowing it. The transparent and unescapable meaning is death, but the alternatives allocated to the symbol are change and transformation. Other heads have been swept from their place previously, but it is, in its current and patent meaning, more especially a card of the death of Kings. In the exotic sense it has been said to signify the ascent of the spirit in the divine spheres, creation and destruction, perpetual movement, and so forth.
Card Description
The veil or mask of life is perpetuated in change, transformation and passage from lower to higher, and this is more fitly represented in the rectified Tarot by one of the apocalyptic visions than by the crude notion of the reaping skeleton. Behind it lies the whole world of ascent in the spirit. The mysterious horseman moves slowly, bearing a black banner emblazoned with the Mystic Rose, which signifies life. Between two pillars on the verge of the horizon there shines the sun of immortality. The horseman carries no visible weapon, but king and child and maiden fall before him, while a prelate with clasped hands awaits his end. There should be no need to point out that the suggestion of death which I have made in connection with the previous card is, of course, to be understood mystically, but this is not the case in the present instance. The natural transit of man to the next stage of his being either is or may be one form of his progress, but the exotic and almost unknown entrance, while still in this life, into the state of mystical death is a change in the form of consciousness and the passage into a state to which ordinary death is neither the path nor gate. The existing occult explanations of the 13th card are, on the whole, better than usual, rebirth, creation, destination, renewal, and the rest.
Card Thirteen
Three of Wands from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
A calm, stately personage, with his back turned, looking from a cliff'He symbolizes established strength, enterprise, effort, trade, commerce, discovery; those are his ships, bearing his merchandise, which are sailing over the sea. The card also signifies able co-operation in business, as if the successful merchant prince were looking from his side towards yours with a view to help you.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
A very good card; collaboration will favour enterprise.
Card Description
A calm, stately personage, with his back turned, looking from a cliff\'s edge at ships passing over the sea. Three staves are planted in the ground, and he leans slightly on one of them.
Card Fourteen
Six of Wands from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
The card has been so designed that it can cover several significations; on the surface, it is a victor triumphing, but it is also great news, such as might be carried in state by the King's courier; it is expectation crowned with its own desire, the crown of hope, and so forth.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Servants may lose the confidence of their masters; a young lady may be betrayed by a friend.
Card Description
A laurelled horseman bears one staff adorned with a laurel crown; footmen with staves are at his side.
Card Fifteen
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.
Card Sixteen
Knight of Cups from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Arrival, approach--sometimes that of a messenger; advances, proposition, demeanour, invitation, incitement.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
A visit from a friend, who will bring unexpected money to the Querent.
Card Description
Graceful, but not warlike; riding quietly, wearing a winged helmet, referring to those higher graces of the imagination which sometimes characterize this card. He too is a dreamer, but the images of the side of sense haunt him in his vision.
Card Seventeen
The Empress from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Fruitfulness, action, initiative, length of days; the unknown, clandestine; also difficulty, doubt, ignorance.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
The Empress, who is sometimes represented with full face, while her correspondence, the Emperor, is in profile. As there has been some tendency to ascribe a symbolical significance to this distinction, it seems desirable to say that it carries no inner meaning. The Empress has been connected with the ideas of universal fecundity and in a general sense with activity.
Card Description
A stately figure, seated, having rich vestments and royal aspect, as of a daughter of heaven and earth. Her diadem is of twelve stars, gathered in a cluster. The symbol of Venus is on the shield which rests near her. A field of corn is ripening in front of her, and beyond there is a fall of water. The sceptre which she bears is surmounted by the globe of this world. She is the inferior Garden of Eden, the Earthly Paradise, all that is symbolized by the visible house of man. She is not Regina coeli, but she is still refugium peccatorum, the fruitful mother of thousands. There are also certain aspects in which she has been correctly described as desire and the wings thereof, as the woman clothed with the sun, as Gloria Mundi and the veil of the Sanctum Sanctorum; but she is not, I may add, the soul that has attained wings, unless all the symbolism is counted up another and unusual way. She is above all things universal fecundity and the outer sense of the Word. This is obvious, because there is no direct message which has been given to man like that which is borne by woman; but she does not herself carry its interpretation. In another order of ideas, the card of the Empress signifies the door or gate by which an entrance is obtained into this life, as into the Garden of Venus; and then the way which leads out therefrom, into that which is beyond, is the secret known to the High Priestess: it is communicated by her to the elect. Most old attributions of this card are completely wrong on the symbolism--as, for example, its identification with the Word, Divine Nature, the Triad, and so forth.
Related Posts
Card Eighteen
Three of Pentacles from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Metier, trade, skilled labour; usually, however, regarded as a card of nobility, aristocracy, renown, glory.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
If for a man, celebrity for his eldest son.
Card Description
A sculptor at his work in a monastery. Compare the design which illustrates the Eight of Pentacles. The apprentice or amateur therein has received his reward and is now at work in earnest.
Card Nineteen
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.
Card Twenty
Eight of Cups from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
The card speaks for itself on the surface, but other readings are entirely antithetical--giving joy, mildness, timidity, honour, modesty. In practice, it is usually found that the card shews the decline of a matter, or that a matter which has been thought to be important is really of slight consequence--either for good or evil.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Marriage with a fair woman.
Card Description
A man of dejected aspect is deserting the cups of his felicity, enterprise, undertaking or previous concern.
The Meanings of these Tarot Cards
Card One
King of Pentacles from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
The figure calls for no special description the face is rather dark, suggesting also courage, but somewhat lethargic in tendency. The bull'Valour, realizing intelligence, business and normal intellectual aptitude, sometimes mathematical gifts and attainments of this kind; success in these paths.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
A rather dark man, a merchant, master, professor.
Card Description
The figure calls for no special description the face is rather dark, suggesting also courage, but somewhat lethargic in tendency. The bull's head should be noted as a recurrent symbol on the throne. The sign of this suit is represented throughout as engraved or blazoned with the pentagram, typifying the correspondence of the four elements in human nature and that by which they may be governed. In many old Tarot packs this suit stood for current coin, money, deniers. I have not invented the substitution of pentacles and I have no special cause to sustain in respect of the alternative. But the consensus of divinatory meanings is on the side of some change, because the cards do not happen to deal especially with questions of money.
Card Two
Nine of Pentacles from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Prudence, safety, success, accomplishment, certitude, discernment.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Prompt fulfillment of what is presaged by neighbouring cards. Reversed:Vain hopes.
Card Description
A woman, with a bird upon her wrist, stands amidst a great abundance of grapevines in the garden of a manorial house. It is a wide domain, suggesting plenty in all things. Possibly it is her own possession and testifies to material well-being.
Card Three
Ten of Cups from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Contentment, repose of the entire heart; the perfection of that state; also perfection of human love and friendship; if with several picture-cards, a person who is taking charge of the Querent's interests; also the town, village or country inhabited by the Querent.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
For a male Querent, a good marriage and one beyond his expectations.
Card Description
Appearance of Cups in a rainbow; it is contemplated in wonder and ecstacy by a man and woman below, evidently husband and wife. His right arm is about her; his left is raised upward; she raises her right arm. The two children dancing near them have not observed the prodigy but are happy after their own manner. There is a home-scene beyond.
Card Four
Knight of Pentacles from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Utility, serviceableness, interest, responsibility, rectitude-all on the normal and external plane.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
An useful man; useful discoveries.
Card Description
He rides a slow, enduring, heavy horse, to which his own aspect corresponds. He exhibits his symbol, but does not look therein.
Card Five
Six of Cups from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
A card of the past and of memories, looking back, as--for example--on childhood; happiness, enjoyment, but coming rather from the past; things that have vanished. Another reading reverses this, giving new relations, new knowledge, new environment, and then the children are disporting in an unfamiliar precinct.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Pleasant memories.
Card Description
Children in an old garden, their cups filled with flowers.
Card Six
King of Cups from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Fair man, man of business, law, or divinity; responsible, disposed to oblige the Querent; also equity, art and science, including those who profess science, law and art; creative intelligence.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Beware of ill-will on the part of a man of position, and of hypocrisy pretending to help.
Card Description
He holds a short sceptre in his left hand and a great cup in his right; his throne is set upon the sea; on one side a ship is riding and on the other a dolphin is leaping. The implicit is that the Sign of the Cup naturally refers to water, which appears in all the court cards.
Card Seven
King of Wands from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Dark man, friendly, countryman, generally married, honest and conscientious. The card always signifies honesty, and may mean news concerning an unexpected heritage to fall in before very long.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Generally favourable may signify a good marriage.
Card Description
The physical and emotional nature to which this card is attributed is dark, ardent, lithe, animated, impassioned, noble. The King uplifts a flowering wand, and wears, like his three correspondences in the remaining suits, what is called a cap of maintenance beneath his crown. He connects with the symbol of the lion, which is emblazoned on the back of his throne.
Card Eight
Queen of Swords from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Widowhood, female sadness and embarrassment, absence, sterility, mourning, privation, separation.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
A widow.
Card Description
Her right hand raises the weapon vertically and the hilt rests on an arm of her royal chair the left hand is extended, the arm raised her countenance is severe but chastened; it suggests familiarity with sorrow. It does not represent mercy, and, her sword notwithstanding, she is scarcely a symbol of power.
Card Nine
Ace of Wands from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Creation, invention, enterprise, the powers which result in these; principle, beginning, source; birth, family, origin, and in a sense the virility which is behind them; the starting point of enterprises; according to another account, money, fortune, inheritance.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Calamities of all kinds.
Card Description
A hand issuing from a cloud grasps a stout wand or club.
Card Ten
Five of Pentacles from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
The card foretells material trouble above all, whether in the form illustrated--that is, destitution--or otherwise. For some cartomancists, it is a card of love and lovers-wife, husband, friend, mistress; also concordance, affinities. These alternatives cannot be harmonized.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Conquest of fortune by reason.
Card Description
Two mendicants in a snow-storm pass a lighted casement.
Card Eleven
Queen of Pentacles from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Opulence, generosity, magnificence, security, liberty.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Dark woman; presents from a rich relative; rich and happy marriage for a young man.
Card Description
The face suggests that of a dark woman, whose qualities might be summed up in the idea of greatness of soul; she has also the serious cast of intelligence; she contemplates her symbol and may see worlds therein.
Card Twelve
Death from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
End, mortality, destruction, corruption also, for a man, the loss of a benefactor for a woman, many contrarieties; for a maid, failure of marriage projects.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Death. The method of presentation is almost invariable, and embodies a bourgeois form of symbolism. The scene is the field of life, and amidst ordinary rank vegetation there are living arms and heads protruding from the ground. One of the heads is crowned, and a skeleton with a great scythe is in the act of mowing it. The transparent and unescapable meaning is death, but the alternatives allocated to the symbol are change and transformation. Other heads have been swept from their place previously, but it is, in its current and patent meaning, more especially a card of the death of Kings. In the exotic sense it has been said to signify the ascent of the spirit in the divine spheres, creation and destruction, perpetual movement, and so forth.
Card Description
The veil or mask of life is perpetuated in change, transformation and passage from lower to higher, and this is more fitly represented in the rectified Tarot by one of the apocalyptic visions than by the crude notion of the reaping skeleton. Behind it lies the whole world of ascent in the spirit. The mysterious horseman moves slowly, bearing a black banner emblazoned with the Mystic Rose, which signifies life. Between two pillars on the verge of the horizon there shines the sun of immortality. The horseman carries no visible weapon, but king and child and maiden fall before him, while a prelate with clasped hands awaits his end. There should be no need to point out that the suggestion of death which I have made in connection with the previous card is, of course, to be understood mystically, but this is not the case in the present instance. The natural transit of man to the next stage of his being either is or may be one form of his progress, but the exotic and almost unknown entrance, while still in this life, into the state of mystical death is a change in the form of consciousness and the passage into a state to which ordinary death is neither the path nor gate. The existing occult explanations of the 13th card are, on the whole, better than usual, rebirth, creation, destination, renewal, and the rest.
Card Thirteen
Three of Wands from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
A calm, stately personage, with his back turned, looking from a cliff'He symbolizes established strength, enterprise, effort, trade, commerce, discovery; those are his ships, bearing his merchandise, which are sailing over the sea. The card also signifies able co-operation in business, as if the successful merchant prince were looking from his side towards yours with a view to help you.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
A very good card; collaboration will favour enterprise.
Card Description
A calm, stately personage, with his back turned, looking from a cliff\'s edge at ships passing over the sea. Three staves are planted in the ground, and he leans slightly on one of them.
Card Fourteen
Six of Wands from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
The card has been so designed that it can cover several significations; on the surface, it is a victor triumphing, but it is also great news, such as might be carried in state by the King's courier; it is expectation crowned with its own desire, the crown of hope, and so forth.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Servants may lose the confidence of their masters; a young lady may be betrayed by a friend.
Card Description
A laurelled horseman bears one staff adorned with a laurel crown; footmen with staves are at his side.
Card Fifteen
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.
Card Sixteen
Knight of Cups from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Arrival, approach--sometimes that of a messenger; advances, proposition, demeanour, invitation, incitement.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
A visit from a friend, who will bring unexpected money to the Querent.
Card Description
Graceful, but not warlike; riding quietly, wearing a winged helmet, referring to those higher graces of the imagination which sometimes characterize this card. He too is a dreamer, but the images of the side of sense haunt him in his vision.
Card Seventeen
The Empress from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Fruitfulness, action, initiative, length of days; the unknown, clandestine; also difficulty, doubt, ignorance.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
The Empress, who is sometimes represented with full face, while her correspondence, the Emperor, is in profile. As there has been some tendency to ascribe a symbolical significance to this distinction, it seems desirable to say that it carries no inner meaning. The Empress has been connected with the ideas of universal fecundity and in a general sense with activity.
Card Description
A stately figure, seated, having rich vestments and royal aspect, as of a daughter of heaven and earth. Her diadem is of twelve stars, gathered in a cluster. The symbol of Venus is on the shield which rests near her. A field of corn is ripening in front of her, and beyond there is a fall of water. The sceptre which she bears is surmounted by the globe of this world. She is the inferior Garden of Eden, the Earthly Paradise, all that is symbolized by the visible house of man. She is not Regina coeli, but she is still refugium peccatorum, the fruitful mother of thousands. There are also certain aspects in which she has been correctly described as desire and the wings thereof, as the woman clothed with the sun, as Gloria Mundi and the veil of the Sanctum Sanctorum; but she is not, I may add, the soul that has attained wings, unless all the symbolism is counted up another and unusual way. She is above all things universal fecundity and the outer sense of the Word. This is obvious, because there is no direct message which has been given to man like that which is borne by woman; but she does not herself carry its interpretation. In another order of ideas, the card of the Empress signifies the door or gate by which an entrance is obtained into this life, as into the Garden of Venus; and then the way which leads out therefrom, into that which is beyond, is the secret known to the High Priestess: it is communicated by her to the elect. Most old attributions of this card are completely wrong on the symbolism--as, for example, its identification with the Word, Divine Nature, the Triad, and so forth.
Related Posts
Card Eighteen
Three of Pentacles from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
Metier, trade, skilled labour; usually, however, regarded as a card of nobility, aristocracy, renown, glory.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
If for a man, celebrity for his eldest son.
Card Description
A sculptor at his work in a monastery. Compare the design which illustrates the Eight of Pentacles. The apprentice or amateur therein has received his reward and is now at work in earnest.
Card Nineteen
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.
Card Twenty
Eight of Cups from the Waite Smith Tarot Deck
Card Meaning When Upright
The card speaks for itself on the surface, but other readings are entirely antithetical--giving joy, mildness, timidity, honour, modesty. In practice, it is usually found that the card shews the decline of a matter, or that a matter which has been thought to be important is really of slight consequence--either for good or evil.
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
Marriage with a fair woman.
Card Description
A man of dejected aspect is deserting the cups of his felicity, enterprise, undertaking or previous concern.
