The Barbara Walker Tarot

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…

Two of Cups: Romance On the shore of a deserted lake under the moon, two lovers pledge their devotion in cups. Minnesingers wrote of secret places dedicated to their Love Goddess, where lovers could safely practice the ancient way of communing with the divine through the physical. By way of their romans or love poems, the term romance came to be applied to any affair of the heart, especially those blessed by the lovers’ own deity, the Moon Mother. Two cups indicate intimacy, sympathy, trust, engagement or marriage, fulfillment of desires.

11: Strength Wearing the same lemniscate hat as the Magician, a woman forces open a lion’s mouth while a vulture looks on. The Goddess of Strength opens the second decade of trumps, the “feminine,” spiritual realm, as the Magician opens the first, “masculine,” secular grouping. The lion’s mouth is an ancient symbol of the underworld gate, attended by the vulture. Strength is needed for trials to come. She gives inner fortitude, the courage to endure, the determination to reach the goal.

Three of Cups: Grace The Three Graces dance in joyous celebration on a woodland altar. Charisma, the Grace of the Mother, was viewed as the gift of the Triple Goddess in her guise of the Three Graces, or Charities. Her three female figures dance together in sacred art from Greece to India. Even early Christian Gnostics called the Triple Goddess an incomprehensible and indescribable Grace, “She Who is before all things.” Her card represents charis or grace in the old sense, that is, all forms of love: joy, pleasure, fruition, abundance, goodwill, mother-love, giving, and contentment.

12: The Hanged Man A man dressed like the Fool hangs from a beam between two trees by one leg, the other leg bent in the Hermetic figure-4 position. His hands are bound behind his back, but his facial expression is peaceful. Bunches of grapes hang with him, suggesting sacraments of Dionysus. Two towers appear in a landscape like that of the Moon card. Hanging by one leg was the medieval custom of “baffling,” a nonlethal punishment bringing disgrace, like a sojourn in the stocks. Like the ritual humiliation in many types of initiation, this may have been a symbolic death-and-rebirth, designed to make the novice hear his own heartbeat, which Asian mystics called “the s…

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…

13: Death The classic Grim Reaper, a skeleton with a scythe, mows a field of human heads. “Grim” used to mean a mask. The masked and costumed Death figure, also called Macabre, performed the danse macabre as a stock character in medieval mystery plays. His tarot card was often unlabeled, due to a superstitious belief that to speak or write Death’s name was to invoke him. His “unlucky” number 13 refers to the last lunar month, which leads to a new cycle of rebirth. His card means an end leading to another beginning, transformation, change, or destruction.

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.

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.

Six of Cups: Childhood Naked and vulnerable, a child returns to the awesome Great Mother. To overcome an impasse such as the five suggests, the six invokes a usable psychological technique: the inner return to childhood. Hidden memories of childhood impelled the ancients to visualize their divine ancestors as giants, which is how every child sees adults. Therefore the primal Great Mother was a giantess, a mountain, or a pyramidal tomb-womb, in humanity’s legendary Golden Age (the period of dependency), when law was based on maternal blood bonds. Such a psychic return means deep memory, old fears, loves, and longings, living in the past or searching the past for help,…

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…

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.

Seven of Cups: Dream Along the Left-Hand Path, the poet invites his Muse, Female Soul, or Anima in her opaline veils of magical glamour. There are complex attitudes towards the Left-Hand Path of mystical insight. The inspired poet welcomes the vision of the Muse, but sometimes her gifts seem to melt away like fairy favors or dream treasures. Like the hidden path into the unconscious, the Way to her fairyland is alluring but perilous. Seven drops in her seventh cup signifies a communion of poetic vision, insight or revelation possibly veiled in fantasy, wishful thinking, or false hopes.

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 …

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.

17: The Star A naked woman pours water from two vessels simultaneously into a stream and onto the earth. Overhead a large star shines, attended by seven smaller stars. The two “feminine” elements of earth and water unite in an icon of the Goddess called Star (Astarte, Esther, Ostara, Astraea, Eostre, Stella Maris). Her personal priestesses were star-souls, the Seven Sisters (Pleiades), or Pillars of the Temple, or Seven Pillars of Wisdom, or (in India) the Seven Mothers of the Word. The Star means renewal of fertility, release of the waters of regeneration, blessings poured out on the world or within the soul.

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.

18: The Moon Two dogs howl at a full moon ringed by nine blood drops. A path leads between two pylons into darkness. A crab perches in the middle of a dark pool. Called the dogs of Hecate in Greece, Anubis-jackals in Egypt, lunar wolves or Moon-dogs in the north, two canines traditionally guard the gates of death, which leads to the moon. It was once thought all souls went to the Moon-mother to be regenerated. Hence the blood drops: one for each “hidden” menstrual period, as moon-blood forms new life in the womb. The crab is a more universal death symbol. The ancient world everywhere believed doomsday would come when the planets lined up in the constellation of Cance…

Ten of Cups: Salvation Guided by his fairy Anima, the seeker finds the Holy of Holies at the end of a golden road through the dark forest. Cups’ culminating pip cards shows a culminating experience: the apparently inaccessible Grail Castle, to which the divine maiden brings her charge after crossing the River of Blood. In Grail legends it was Montsalvatch, the Mount of Salvation; she was Repanse de Joie, the Dispenser of Joy. Ten cups mean salvation through love: a caring relationship, honor, concord, devotion, the achievement of the quest.

19: The Sun A naked little girl and boy dance together by a garden wall, under a golden sun: they are the innocent Eve and Adam of a new creation, after the end of the present universe. They are like the female called Life and the male called Desirer-of-Life in Aryan/Scandinavian mythology. Their hortus conclusus (enclosed garden) is the new Eden under a new daughter of the old sun, Glory-of-Elves, who was eaten by the doomsday wolf. The Sun stands for a rejuvenated self, a word seen with fresh vision, another chance, joyous innocence, spiritual rebirth.

20: Judgment On the next-to-last trump card, an angel blows the Last Trump to summon the dead from their graves. He might be Michael, Gabriel, or the pagan doomsday god Rig-Heimdall with his Gjellarhorn, announcing the end of the world as Ragnarok (Götterdämmerung), when the Goddess would pronounce her death curse on the violent gods of this universe and reabsorb them into her dark shadow-self. Folks that she saved would be the seeds of the next life. Thus, this conventional Judgment scene could be pagan, Christian, or even Hindu—the origin of all. It means final decisions, choices, resurrected hopes, help from higher-ups.

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.

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.

21: The World A naked woman dances in an encircling wreath, surrounded by female versions of the Wheel of Fortune totems: a lioness, a cow, a she-eagle, and a female fairy. As the tarot’s true Last Trump, this is the vision of a sage’s final moments, when he hopes to enter the being of the Great Shakti (Goddess). The tarot’s true message seems to be salvation through the female principle, “the Generative Womb of All, the Beginning and End of Beings.” The Goddess’s legs form the same figure as the Hanged Man’s, since she is the dancer in the heart known as the Female Soul. Her card is also called Shekina, Sophia, Eve, Truth, Mother Nature, the Bride, and the Universe.…

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.