The Barbara Walker Tarot

MAJOR ARCANA 0. The Fool 1. The Magician 2. The Papess 3. The Empress 4. The Emperor 5. The Pope 6. The Lovers 7. The Chariot 8. Justice 9. The Hermit 10. The Wheel Of Fortune 11. Strength 12. The Hanged Man 13. Death 14. Temperance 15. The Devil 16. The House of God 17. The Star 18. The Moon 19. The Sun 20. Judgment 21. The World MINOR ARCANA WANDS Ace of Wands: Power Two of Wands: Alliance Three of Wands: Fate Four of Wands: Success Five of Wands: Impasse Six of Wands: Glory …

King of Pentacles: Baal The mountain god holds the star of knowledge in his head, on a bleak, rocky summit, difficult of ascent. Only men willing to struggle to the mountaintops could learn secrets of the Baals (Middle Eastern gods). Mount Sinai, allegedly ascended by Moses, belonged to the Baal named Sin, Moon-god of the Sinai peninsula. He also ruled volcanoes, appearing (in biblical language) as a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day, and as “the Rock that begat thee.” Baal means “the Lord.” His card means rocklike stability, tenacity, reliability, heaviness, sternness, authority.

Five of Swords: Defeat Hanging on his sacrificial tree, the god gives blood from the wound in his side to the Fatal Women, who spin it into the red thread of life. The three Marys at the foot of Jesus’s cross were paralleled in Norse myth by the three Norns at the foot of the World Tree where Odin hung, wounded in his side, waiting to attain his godhood. The three were also the Greeks’ Moerae or Fates: Spinner, Measurer, and Cutter of life’s thread. They ruled even gods, who won divinity by submitting to defeat and death. Odin takes the part of the card’s traditional Lord of Defeat, representing self-abasement, passive endurance, swallowing of pride, submission to fa…

Queen of Wands: Hel The Queen of the Dead, with her serpent, reveals her underground fire pit that used to be likened to the boiling Cauldron of Regeneration. The Viking’s fiery Mother Hel, or Holle, wears a sprig of her sacred holly, which was displayed each year at the Yule midwinter solstice to signify the rebirth of the sun from her deep infernus. As Queen of Wands she stands for fiery qualities: warmth, ardor, illumination, benevolence, comfort, accompanied by danger of destructiveness if she is not treated respectfully.

Princess of Wands: Atargatis Floating between sun and moon, the Sea-goddess represents both giving and taking, her traditional breast-offering pose countered by the dangerous, devouring vagina dentata. Like other forms of the middle-eastern Goddess, Atargatis/Astarte/Ishtar stood for both nurture and destruction. At Der in Babylon, she devoured the phallic god Oannes and gave him rebirth, a myth later repeated as the biblical story of Jonah. Her card means irresistible power, a perilous compulsion, symbolized by another of her totems, the spider. Though risky, her path might bring great rewards.

Prince of Pentacles: Merlin Protected by a pentacle and by the princess’s ankh, the wizard calls up the spirit of the Red Dragon, a symbol of Wales. Merlin was said to have been fathered by the Welsh god on a human virgin, though Christian interpreters of the myth claimed his father was a devil. As a pagan savior figure, he was buried by Nimue in a crystal cave, or perhaps a hollow oak, to await his Second Coming. His card represents patience and determination in solving mysteries, fearless following of clues, investigation of original beginnings.

Queen of Swords: Kali The Destroying Goddess is in classic pose, squatting over the corpse of her consort, devouring his entrails. India’s Kali Ma was one of the most terrifying versions of the Mother’s death-bringing aspect, though she also appeared as a beautiful virgin, tender lover, and mother. Identifying themselves with her consort, her male worshipers said no man could comprehend her totality until he knew her as his “tearer and devourer.” Like the queen of spades, she seems cruel, but only as cruelty inherent in the natural world. Her card means fatal decision, philosophical subtlety, swift action, separation, privation, or widowhood—the eternal condition of …

Queen of Pentacles: Erda Mother Earth, as a Paleolithic Goddess figure, stands above a sacred cave in moonlight. Primitive worshipers dance around a fire at her feet. The world’s earliest artworks show the Goddess in this guise. Some of her earliest European names were Eartha, Erda, Edda, Hretha, Hertha, Eorth, Urth, Urd, Wurd, Wyrd, and Weird. Like her exaggerated maternal characteristics, her card represents overwhelmingly “earthy” or material blessings; fecundity, abundance, generosity, support, comfort, creative inspiration, nurturing warmth.

14: Temperance With one foot in water and one foot on earth (the two “female” elements), a winged female angel pours water from one vessel to another. She suggests the transforming power of perfect love, which Asian sages likened to “the pouring of water into water.” She was the “mixer” (Latin temperare) of elements, yielding each person’s “temperament.” The card also refers to tempor, a time period, or due season. Temperance may have been the winged spirit of tempus, Time, who, like Death, waits for no man. Her card means mingling of elements, joining, togetherness, group activity, creative effort.

Three of Wands: Fate Virgin, Mother, and Crone are linked together in their traditional colors, white, red, and black. India called the colors of the female Trinity gunas, “strands.” White was for the Virgin/Creatress, new moon, birth, springtime, flowers, the past. Red was for the Mother/Preserver, full moon, passion, summer, fruit, the present. Black was for the Crone/Destroyer, old moon, winter, seed, prophecy, and the future. The same three Fates were known elsewhere as Moerae, Fortunae, Norns, Morrigan, or Weird Sisters (from Wyrd, the Saxon Fate-goddess). Three wands represent creation, invention, fortune, commercial activity, reward or punishment, the power of…

Nine of Swords: Cruelty Threatened by a circle of Inquisitors, a young dryad/druidess desperately seeks the protection of her tree, which may prove unable to save her. Though the medieval scholar Psellus called the druidesses eternal minds in earthly bodies, able to know men’s thoughts and foretell the future, they seemed powerless to invoke their tree spirits against the Inquisition’s cruelty. The Inquisitions’ nine swords stand for hatred, scandal, unreasoning violence, brutal neglect or abandonment, misery.

Princess of Pentacles: Nimue The princess of magic invokes the earth spirit in an ancient henge. Nimue, Nemhain, Nemesis, or Diana Nemetona were some of the druidic/dryadic names of the incarnate Moon-goddess. Her Crone form brought an end to each chosen king in his turn, as Nimue brought death to her wizard-consort Merlin in the Grail legends. The princess means the wisdom of the ages: deep learning in esoteric matters, scholarly concentrations, the pursuit of knowledge, particularly knowledge of the past.

Princess of Cups: Elaine In her temple, the red-cloaked Lily Maid (Moon Virgin) reveals the secret identity of the Grail and the Cauldron of Regeneration. Elaine’s cauldron, modeled on the famous Gundestrup Cauldron, depicts the mystery of sacrifice and apotheosis (resurrection to a godlike condition). Her cup is precisely positioned against her own body to suggest a womb symbol. She signifies mystical insight, hidden knowledge, revelation, a person having the gift of wisdom, or one needing to acquire it.

King of Wands: Valraven Under his trefoil crown of shamrocks or “clubs,” the king listens to his messenger, the black bird of magic speech. Valraven was a Danish version of the totemic raven-king reborn in fire. He understood the mysteries of the Triple Goddess, one of whose emblems was the trefoil. This king is credited with a hot, energetic, active nature, powerful, hard to control, attractive but possibly dangerous.

Prince of Wands: Dagon On his sun-and-moon altar, the god displays both animal and human characteristics. Dagon’s wand and cauldron symbolize fire and water, as his goat head and fish tail symbolize earth and sea; these appeared later in the zodiacal sign of Capricorn. Also called Yamm, Phoenix or Molech, he was a dual-natured consort of the cyclic Goddess Atargatis. His card suggests the unconventional, unexpected, unpredictable, or startling; seeming irrational but having underlying consistency.

15: The Devil In traditional pose, the Devil occupies a dais between two humans. Standard symbols include his goat feet and horns, pointed ears, black candles, flaming torch, downward-pointing pentacle, and the finger-pose representing the horned head. As Lucifer, the Devil was revered by Gnostics who adopted the Persian idea that God and the Devil were twin brothers, the latter unjustly exiled from heaven by his tyrannical twin. Even the orthodox admitted that both were needed in their dualistic religion. If the bright deity was not to be held responsible for evil, then the dark deity had to be there to take the blame. The tarot Devil recalls the early mystery cults…

King of Swords: Yama Encircled by the infinity sign of renewal, the bull-masked underworld death god dances on his totem, the sacrificial bull. Yama’s name was an antonym of Kali’s Virgin/Creatress aspect, Maya. Incarnate in the bull, he entered the underworld to make a place for the souls of dead men. His blue skin was a conventional Asian sign of godhood, due to “blue blood,” which was also attributed even to Jehovah as the Gnostic Demiurge of “a dark blue complexion.” Yama’s male-and-female emblems of sword and lotus suggest regeneration, like the infinity sign. He stands for godlike authority, a powerful judge, discipline, order, obedience to the law of nature, a…

I remember that the first time I laid my eyes on the Barbara Walker, I vowed to myself that I would one day have it. That was way before USG decided to release it in a tin, when all the remaining copies were heartbreakingly-priced. I recall promising myself just that in a post in AT lol. I just knew that I would, because its images stirred a slumbering locus in my core that reacted to its brazen, unrelenting vignettes. I felt that when we do begin a pas de deux, it would be one for the ages. And oh, how right I was. By all means, the deck should have turned me off. It had a 70's indie movie aesthetic that I don't find particularly interesting elsewhere. It was printed …

16: The House of God Also known as the Lightning-Struck Tower, this card shows a lightning bolt breaking the tower’s crown, while two figures fall from the wreck. It may have referred to medieval Europe’s ecclesiastical establishment, sometimes called the Proud Tower, as well as the House of God. A popular prophecy of the fourteenth century predicted destruction of the totalitarian Holy Roman Empire, church and state, by the enlightening lightning god Lucifer; thus, the two falling figures could be pope and emperor. The card refers to the overthrow of old, outworn habits by a new, perhaps painful readjustment, the destruction of pride, the sweeping away of too-rigid …

Two of Wands: Alliance The Sun-god gazed into the mirror of the Abyss; and sees his reflection as his female lunar twin, the Moon-goddess. Apollo the Sun once needed the power of his sister-consort Artemis the Moon before he could act, as Asian gods needed their Shaktis as their “souls.” That a reflection shows the soul is a very old belief, giving rise to superstitions about breaking mirrors or stirring reflective waters. The card shows a meeting of powers at the interface: synergy, association, responsiveness, partnership.

6: The Lovers A man between two women, an elder and a younger, and the love god aiming his arrow, form this card’s traditional group. The Lovers has been interpreted as a young man’s choice between mother and wife, body and spirit, virtue and vice, and so on. Because the elder figure is female, patriarchal interpreters preferred not to view her as the officiating authority at a wedding. However, elder priestesses did conduct weddings among gypsies and other non-Christian groups, and the winged Eros or Cupid indicates a marriage service, Decorative flower garlands also hint at the Asian doctrine of “husbandship” (bhavanan) considered necessary to the progressive enlig…

Queen of Cups: Virginal The Ice Queen stands in the Cave of the Heart. Her crystalline cup rests on an inaccessible mountaintop. In Virginal’s glacial realm the water element is frozen. Like her eastern counterpart, Durga the Inaccessible, she once represented the Mountain Mother nourishing her world-suckling and remaining entirely indifferent to the adult male. Beautiful but nonsexual, she contributed some of her character to the medieval Holy Virgin. She stands for cold purity, dedication to high ideals, and apparent heartlessness, but may bring great spiritual nourishment.

10: The Wheel of Fortune In mid-space between earth and starry heaven, three figures ride the wheel. At the top sits a female Justice in Egyptian dress, with an ankh and sword. A naked man climbs, wearing the hawk head of Horus, the ascendant sun. Another naked man falls, wearing the ass head of Set, the declining season. The card’s corners bear symbols of the four elements and the four seasonal turning points of the zodiacal wheel: lion, bull, eagle, angel. The sky shows part of the galactic star-wheel (Milky Way) once thought to have poured from the Goddess’s breasts (Greek gala means “mother’s milk”). The Wheel represents a turning point in time, the change of eve…

5: The Pope With tiara, gloves, and a papal staff, the Pope sits between two pillars that support air, a tiny devil peeking around one of them. Two acolytes kneel at his feet, corresponding to two devotees on the matching Devil card. As a holy man, the tarot’s Pope is identified as much with a pagan high priest, a hierophant, the Mithraic Pater Patri, or even the phallic father-god of Rome, as with the Christian pontiff. His card means spiritual authority, moral law, or political power plays; perhaps excessive rigidity or intolerance verging on fanaticism.

Prince of Cups: Galahad Kneeling at a secret, private altar presided over by an ancestral spirit, the young knight aspires to the Grail mystery. Galahad was the son-lover of Elaine, and a self-begotten deity. His father-aspect was Lancelot or Lanceor, the Golden Lance, a personification of lightning. Grail myths said Galahad reigned as a sacred king for a year and a day, and died at the altar as he saw the vision of the Grail. He was apotheosized, like the heroes shown on Elaine’s cauldron. He represents the best feminine qualities in man: gentleness, gallantry, sensitivity, courtesy, aspiration, capacity for self-sacrifice. He may be a messenger of new ideas.