The Barbara Walker Tarot

Ace of Swords: Doom The Death-goddess displays her emblems: the destroying sword, the crowned skull, the magic mirror that entraps souls. Her purple gown and horns are ritual equipment. As Morgan le Fay, or Morgana, third of the Fate trinity, she is the quintessential Crone. As Death, she is said to be stronger than any man. Her suit stands for the air element, home of bodiless souls who are sometimes supposed to ride the wind. Through dire in many predictions, the ace stands for release, new freedom, lifting of earthly restraints, lightness, a kind of salvation.

Ace of Wands: Power The Goddess raises the fire serpent, who bears the wand of power. The original consort of Eurynome/Eve was her fiery serpent, seraph, or dragon, variously called Leviathan, Nehushtan, Ophion, Vasuki, Sata, or the Gnostics’ Ouroboros. His wand stands for the masculine fire element with power to create or to burn: vigor, heat, aspiration, rivalry, competition, avidity; on the darker side, oppression or violence, needing the Goddess’s control.

Eight of Cups: Loss The Goat God weeps for his lost rites. The Willow-maid yearns to comfort him. Helice the Willow, virgin form of Hecate, once joined the Horned God Pan on Mount Helicon, home of the Muses. Their cult was declared devilish and was suppressed, but nineteenth-century romantic poets continued to regret the passing of their Arcadian nature worship. Pan’s eight spilling cups speak of loss, sadness, melancholy, rejection of Nature’s gifts, desertion of old loyalties, regret at parting from something that was beautiful.

Eight of Pentacles: Learning A mother-priestess (Rose Red) imparts wisdom to a daughter-novice (Snow White) under the female-symbolic Western Rose Window. A hooded Crone holds the light. After the failure of the seven, the eight offers help through a different kind of learning embodied in female symbolism. Among its meanings are new knowledge, extension of understanding, secret doctrines, new hope, and serenity through enlightenment.

Eighy of Swords: Disillusion Weary of war, a crusader reaches the land’s end and slumps on his horse, unable to face the sunset. A circling vulture watches him. His way back is barred by swords of past battles. The gray horse was once a death symbol, supposed to carry Norse warriors to the sunset land. The warrior of the eighth sword seems blocked. He stands for disillusion with a formerly revered cause, fruitless conflict, censure, embarrassment, false beliefs, spiritual pollution, bad news, retribution for unkindness.

Eight of Wands: Fall The hero slips from his heaven-climbing moon-horse, dropping his wands in a barren landscape. “Riding for a fall” frequently expresses the eight of wands. Upward progress or an important journey, like that of apotheosis on the Muse’s flying horse Pegasus, might be spoiled by over-aspiration. The eight means haste, excessive speed, overconfidence, hubris; also motion, travel, changes of scene.

Five of Cups: Regret A man and woman sit isolated from one another by strife or resentment. She gazes at her own element, the sea, while he sulks. As fives stand for low points in tarot cycles, the five of the love suit means lack of sympathy between those whose feelings should be shared. The hollow five-pointed star within a circle once symbolized the nadir of the underworld. There the Goddess abandoned her love god and stilled his heart. Thus the five means alienation, frustration, loss of pleasure, poverty of feeling, indifference, disturbance of relationships.

Five of Pentacles: Hardship Five wretched beggars—one a woman with a starving baby, one a child apparently dying—huddle on a wintry night outside a warmly lighted church, unable to enter. The dire five of the money suit suggests the nadir of poverty, which the medieval church did little to relieve, as this tarot picture recalls. Interpretations include hard times, worry, loss, adversity, insecurity, lack of help from established institutions.

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…

Five of Wands: Impasse In a mysterious night ceremony, five faceless, hooded figures surround a victim. After the sacred marriage, ancient kings often ruled only for a predetermined time, then served as ceremonial victims for the sake of fertility, or to absolve the sins of others. Shiva became the bridegroom first, then the Condemned One. A rite like his svayamara or love-death survived in the British Isles as a mummer’s dance called the Rose: five men with swords or rods danced around a symbolically slain “Fool.” Five wands imply powerlessness in the suit of power. Security fails. The impasse seems hopeless, though this may be an illusion.

Four of Cups: Decline On the night of the seventh veil, a king sits apprehensively watching the sacred dancer. In ancient cyclic philosophies, each period of fulfillment was followed by a period of decline. The Goddess decreed the death of her lover the king, following him into the dark seclusion of the underworld. She removed one of her magic veils at each of the underworld’s seven gates. This was the real meaning of the Dance of the Seven Veils performed by the high priestess Salome (Salom, Peace) in Jerusalem (“the House of Salom”). “Peace” was the sacred king’s word of farewell. The fourth cup, overturned, is the cup of oncoming darkness, wintry stagnation, disil…

Four of Pentacles: Avarice In a dead landscape, the grim, windowless treasury-fortress gathers in more and more treasure. None ever goes out again. This is the card of hoarding, covetousness, selfishness, mistrust, greed, inability to let go, blockages of thought or action resulting from too much acquisitiveness.

Four of Swords: Seclusion The sybil in her cave communes with the earth spirit in a ceremonial square of four swords. Sitting cross-legged like a yogi was once regarded as a way of invoking Mother Earth, as in the Roman rites of Terra Mater, Cybele, or Ops. Therefore, Christian authorities ruled that sitting cross-legged was a form of witchcraft. Signs of spiritual insight in women were usually so defined and the sybil’s four swords may mean protection against attack. The card means inner powers secretly invoked through isolation, as in enforced rest or convalescence, exile, renunciation, introspection.

Four of Wands: Success Under the marriage canopy, the bride crowns her bridegroom as he kneels before her, receiving her ritual apple, symbol of fruition. Sacred marriage signified success for a king or god. Crowned with the bridal wreath, he entered into his kingdom, embodied in the Goddess and her earthly representative the priestess-queen. The ceremony was essential to kings’ coronations in ancient Egypt, India, Babylon, Akkad, and early Palestine. Four world corner-posts are wands upholding the sky-canopy over home, the center of the earth, marriage, security, reward, the fruits of effort.

King of Cups: Dewi Holding his cup, the Sea King sits on his rocky throne and gazes over the waters to the horizon, where all heavenly gods entered the Abyss. The Welsh sea god Dewi (“God”) had two Christianized forms. He was canonized as Saint David, and vulgarized as Davy Jones. He was called Waterman, Fisher King, and Bran the Blessed, keeper of the Cauldron of Regeneration. He represents ageless power and strength like that of the cold sea, irresistible forces underlying a calm surface, protection for those exposed to danger.

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.

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…

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.

Nine of Cups: Happiness True lovers are perfectly united in the sacred grove over its central Rose of Love. As Diana/Dianus, the Goddess and her God led the way to the paradise garden, symbolically likened to the body of Mother Earth. Their union was a sacrament said to bring about all fulfillment, fruition, and blessings. Their card refers to a pinnacle of emotional stability, goodwill, sympathy, wholesome living, kindness, and sexual compatibility.

Nine of Pentacles: Accomplishment In the garden of her magic fruit tree, the pregnant virgin mother contemplates an image of her consort, the divine white elephant. Buddha’s virgin mother, Maya-Shakti was fecundated by the “Lord of Hosts,” the elephant god Ganesha. Maya was another name for the unmated Creatress aspect of Kali. Nine pentacles signify the nine months of gestation, the flowering tree is a promise of future fruit. The card means careful cultivation, productivity, love of nature, development of beauty through learning, increase of material well-being.

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.

Nine of Wands: Defense Behind nine bars, a naked savage crouches mistrustfully and clutches his knife. The barred cave signifies either defense or imprisonment, in either case a need for protection from something dangerous. The naked savage of the inner mind might be confined for the sake of those outside, or he may seek confinement in a fortress of his own making. This means a hidden position, insecurity, suspicion, inner doubts, barriers, expectation of trouble.

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.

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.

Prince of Swords: Tyr Backed by a yellow flag of pestilence, the war god in black armor poses arrogantly above a pile of corpses. Counterpart of the battle-maid of Norse myth was the war god Tyr, or Tiw, whom the Romans called Mars. His day of the week was Tiw’s Day (Tuesday). He personified the violent, vengeful aspect of the heavenly father (Wotan or Woden, of Wednesday). His card means a hateful, domineering personality, warlike spirit, disregard for others’ feelings, or harmful impersonal forces such as accident, sickness, natural disasters, oppressive circumstances.