The Barbara Walker Tarot

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.

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.

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 Swords: Skuld The Valkyrie rides her black horse over storm clouds, seeking the souls of warrior-heroes who died bravely. Skuld was the leader of Norse death angels, whose earthly embodiments were funerary priestesses, like Asian dakinis: the Slavic Wilis, Vilas, Valas, or Saxon Valkyries. Skuld’s magic was eventually condemned as “skulduggery” or witchcraft. Her card means a stringent test or formidable challenge, a vigilant, active, shrewd, sharp-witted person capable of probing hidden weakness, keen judgment, unconquerable spirit, stern expectations.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

Seven of Pentacles: Failure Stripped of armor, his sword and shield broken, a knight grieves beside a single drooping flower in the Waste Land for the failure of his quest. Seven stars in the dark sky recall the Seven Mothers of the World, or Pleiades, who used to announce the period of infertility associated with sacred kings’ dying. Seven pentacles mean a death-period of inertia, frustration, lost opportunities, abandonment of vision, demotivation, deceived or fading hope.

Seven of Swords: Opposition Seated before a wall of magical symbols, a black-robed Crone and her cat stare menacingly. Black cats were sacred totems of the Black Goddess, third of the trinity, whose function was to cast the curse of death in due season. She was variously called Hag, or “Holy woman,” Hecate, Caillech, Valkyrie, or fairy. Her card indicates quarrels, curses, interference, secret enemies, “being at swords’ points,” being crossed and closed, deliberate hampering of movement.

Seven of Wands: Challenge A princely juggler of seven flaming wands struggles to keep them under control, while he is menaced from above by a sharp moonsickle hanging from a single hair. Such is the precarious nature of public eminence, which must be maintained by constant vigilance and effort, and is always vulnerable to challenge. In the legend of Damocles, doom was suspended over the king’s head. The seven indicates powers and responsibilities similarly threatened; dynamic equilibrium preserved with effort, skill and risk. High ambition may take on too much.

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,…

Six of Pentacles: Charity A prosperous, jeweled courtesan gives money to a humble hunchback, who pleased her with the music of his lyre. She may be one of Aphrodite’s charites, or a Magdalene-priestess. It used to be said that a prime characteristic of the sacred harlot was compassion or venia: kindness, the Grace of Venus, whose number was six. Her card means gifts, patronage, philanthropy, help from one of Fortune’s favorites; also, a warning against misplaced generosity.

Six of Swords: Passage Six ghostly swordsmen cross the black river Styx to enter the underworld gate, guarded by its silent Goddess, the giant Sphinx. Some said the Styx was a river of blood leading to the Goddess’s underground womb, where life was regenerated. It was also called Alpha, the river of birth; an expression of the small figure on the riverbank holding up a small light of hope. Interpretations include an anxious time, a journey over water, a passage toward a dark, unknowable future, difficulties to be faced before eventual success.

Six of Wands: Glory The solar hero rides triumphant with a wand of power. As resurrection follows sacrifice, the six’s triumph follows the five’s impotence. Mounting a horse often signified godlike status in ancient iconography. Like the sun, the hero “rose again.” His card means a period of victory, fame, adulation, possibly a perilously short season in the sun.

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.

Ten of Pentacles: Protection Spinning a web of ten pentacles by candlelight, the priestess creates a protective spell. Like Homer’s Penelope, whose name meant the Eye Behind the Web, she preserves life by leaving her thread uncut. In ancient cults of the Fate-goddess, red threads symbolized the lifespan. “Measuring the pentacle” with red thread remained a popular gypsy healing charm throughout the centuries. Ten pentacles mean the protection of material advantages; financial security, stability, inheritance, firm foundations, ancestral property.

Ten of Swords: Ruin The divine hero-martyr dies bound to his pillar on a bleak seacoast, attended by the black-clad priestess and her bird of doom. This version is Cu Chulainn, another god-begotten, virgin-born, apotheosized hero, sentenced to his ceremonial death by the Celtic Crone-goddess Macha, Queen of the Dead, also known as Morgan, Morrigan, Mab, or the Banshee. Like the corresponding ten of spades, the card represents a nadir of fortune: evil, desolation, affliction, martyrdom, pain.

Ten of Wands: Oppression A victor complacently watches his defeated rival fall into a dark, dangerous pit. Like Gnostic Christians who revered the defeated Lucifer, “Light-bringer,” and regarded the triumphant deity as a tyrant, interpreters of the culminating card of the power suit recall that absolute power corrupts and leads to injustice. The ten might mean misuse of power, selfish authority, and too much pressure generating resentment and possible mutiny.

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.

Three of Pentacles: Work A man and woman decorate their temple wall. He carves symbolic figures. She writes runes; knowledge of such writing was first attributed to women. Among pictured figures are: Cernunnos the Horned God, the lunar wolf, a siren, dragon ship, lemniscate, Greek cross, Cross of Wotan, triangle, triceps, moon, swastika, and sigils of deities. The three of pentacles means joint effort, teamwork, productive functioning in cooperation with others.

Three of Swords: Sorrow A grieving figure huddles in the corner of a narrow cell, trying to shut out the sight of three bloody swords in a triangle. As a card of lamentation and also “singing,” the three suggests a formal mourning ritual, such as temple women used to observe. Other interpretations include isolations, loneliness, imprisonment, bereavement, disappointment, and self-pity.

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…