The Barbara Walker Tarot

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.

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.

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.

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.

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…

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.

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.

9: The Hermit Bearing a lantern and a Hermetic caduceus-staff, an old man begins a journey into the dark, in the opposite direction from that of the Fool. He suggests the lone pilgrimage into the mystical realm of the unconscious, recommended by Asian religions. This journey takes place in one’s later life, after the duties of marriage, parenthood, and secular achievement. The Hermit’s staff invokes the Psychopomp, or “Conductor of Souls.” His lantern symbolizes the quest for enlightenment. His card means isolation, meditation, rejection of secular concerns, delving into the unconscious, self-imposed exile or solitude, a process of rehabilitation.

Ace of Cups: Love Beside her water wheel, the fish-tailed Love Goddess drinks her element, pure water, once called the feminine Arche or Mother of Elements. Minne, the medieval Love Goddess worshipped by minnesingers, often appeared as a mermaid or merreminne. As fish-tailed Aphrodite, she represented the marine womb of all life. Fish were eaten in her honor on her sacred day, Friday. Even now, fish are called the food of love. The Ace of Cups invokes her qualities: pleasure, happiness, fruitfulness, birth, home, nourishment, satisfaction, caring. As the power of love has always done, it enhances other good influences and mitigates bad ones.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

1: The Magician Wearing the lemniscate (infinity sign) hat, the Magician introduces the first decade of trumps, and manipulates the four tarot suit signs, which represent the elements. He is usually identified with “thrice-great” Hermes (Egyptian Thoth), god of magic, guide to the mysteries of the afterlife. His card may indicate a trickster’s illusion, a pretense of power, or else a path to genuine enlightenment.

Ace of Pentacles: Reward The Earth Goddess, or Mother Eve, appears with her ubiquitous serpent on the pentacle that represents the inner spirit of her magic apple, the “core” of enlightenment. Older Goddess figures gave the gods themselves eternal life with their magic apples. Thus every apple carries an inner pentacle, revealed when the fruit is crosscut. This was called the Kore, the Maiden within the Mother (Demeter), who gave just rewards to all. The ace of pentacles means wealth, possessions, money matters, security, property, material rewards, that is, from the Mother (mater), or “earth,” the gypsy synonym for money. The suit became “diamonds,” another earth si…

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.

Two of Swords: Balance A blindfolded female Justice with two balanced swords is set against the sea and the moon. This traditional design indicates equilibrium between two opposing hostile forces, which cancel each other out. Woman is the trucekeeper or peacemaker, controlling the balance of weapons. The card means stalemate, karmic retribution, vengeful righting of a wrong with another wrong.

Two of Pentacles: Change The lemniscate infinity sign appears with two pentacles, two mutually swallowing serpents, and two yang-and-yin symbols. Light and darkness, life and death, cyclic transformations appear in all these signs. The two of pentacles was important in the medieval tarot, carrying the maker’s name as well as a diagram for a layout. In alchemy, it meant “the Sun and Moon linked by the Dragon.” The two of pentacles stands for alteration, growth, new directions, existence folding back in itself, impermanent circumstances.

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.

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.