by Marcus Katz
The 7 of Pentacles corresponds to the 7 of Diamonds according to the system we most commonly use of making such correspondences, what we would call a cartomantic map. The seven of one system corresponds directly to the seven in the other. We have four suits in each, so we make a one-to-one correspondence between them. In this case, we chose to correspond the diamonds of playing cards to the pentacles of the tarot.
When we now look at the original meaning given to the 7 of Diamonds (see earlier section on Flamstead & Partridge), we see that it was a negative card for men, bringing “crosses” one would have “cause to fear.” In Flamstead & Partridge it goes on to say that for women, it is the opposite, that they have no need to fear “crosses, of a straw” perhaps an allusion to the straw cross of Brigid. Later, this card as a Master Card in the Square of Sevens, is a “card of good omen,” particularly in commercial ventures, which is the same in several other authors, alluding to the card as one of “money” even if just a small amount—or a pet or child.
This card is used as the insert of the Birds card (card 12) in Lenormand, which traditionally refers to “happiness” and messages (or later, chatter and gossip), of “joyful tidings.” So, it is not a like-for-like correspondence; generally, the cartomantic core of the card is “good.”
If we further correspond this to the Tarot, we have the Golden Dawn version of the 7 of Pentacles, which is “success, unfulfilled” and illustrated later by Pamela Colman Smith as an Irish farmer leaning on his hoe gazing disconsolately at his ruined potato crop. It is not such a completely “good” card; it does remind us of an earlier meaning in coffee cards for the Birds, which was that there would be love, but it might come to nothing if it was just ruled by passion, and not common sense, we would guess.
In conclusion, we can see that the 7 of Diamonds, the 7 of Pentacles, and the Birds card all hold unique positions within their own systems, and only casually correspond between each other—leading us to question whether any card has any single and true meaning across all systems.
What Does a Card Mean?
In all our travels through time, one question has returned again and again: what does it mean that a card has a meaning? What does a playing card, tarot card, or Lenormand card mean? How can it mean more than one thing? Which meaning is right, or better than the others?
We have seen how a meaning gravitates to a consensus over time, and then settles as a stable meaning for a period before being shifted again slightly in its orbit. We saw earlier in this book how the 2 of Pentacles had a very clear meaning of “miscommunication” prior to Pamela Colman Smith’s depiction of it as “false mercury.” As people were then not provided the key to this metaphor, they took a visual cue from the overwhelming symbol in the illustration; that of “juggling” and then applied it to money and work, the correspondence of the pentacles being “juggled.” Over time, the card has been shifted away from its earlier cartomantic core.
Other cards have had different journeys of their meaning; their family tree can be traced to a major branching-off point from Eden Gray’s books, for example, which were a major influence on the authors and teachers arising in the following decade. These meanings then became canon until they were re-interpreted in contemporary language which was more attuned to the increasingly technological-generation.
Finally, some cards have only recently become more associated with specific meanings that have slightly changed from earlier meanings because of a popular website called Learn Tarot that appears to have been abandoned but left up for many years. As such, it has been (and remains) prey on “passive income entrepreneurs” and others who have largely built their own tarot sites from the “inspiration” of that original site. In turn, those meanings and in some cases exact phrases have been copied and pasted regularly across social media, memes, viral images, and attained popular consciousness.
So, what does any card actually mean?
The answer is that the card means nothing; what it points to is what matters, and what each card points us towards is a specific point in the fabric of the universe from which all patterns and predictions arise.
Imagine that the universe, or at least, our relationship to it through our senses, has a structure as notable as gravity or inertia, as present and certain in our every day that we know not to drop an object because it will fall. Let your imagination stretch to contemplate that this structure is atemporal, somehow not just arranged in space but across time. It is a structure that connects past, present, and future together in a way that we have not yet discovered.
Imagine that in the same way we have classified colors or numbers, shapes and animals, this deep time-structure can be best modelled by seventy-eight interrelated points of core meanings, in four different layers with ten points in each layer, and two sets of sixteen and twenty-two shells of meaning.
Imagine that it is the equivalent of quantum scientists discovering patterns of ten, twenty-two, and six plus four in their models, as did the Kabbalists when they looked at the Universe—because we are all looking at the same single thing.
We can then suggest that from these seventy-eight points arise all experience, all events, and all patterns and connections across time. The points can be given labels, each slightly different from another such as “the point from which all sudden change emerges, no matter when and where, or at what level”; “the point from which things start to work together but are not yet fully organised, whether that be countries or brain cells, a chemical reaction or a project team”; and so on.
Every meaning we assign to those points is because that meaning is more suited to one point than another, and yet just in seventy-eight points we can categorise everything.
Let us remember Eliphas Lévi:
So arranged, the Tarot is a veritable oracle, and replies to all possible questions with more precision and infallibility than the Android of Albertus Magnus. An imprisoned person with no other book than the Tarot, if he knew how to use it, could in a few years acquire universal knowledge, and would be able to speak on all subjects with unequalled learning and inexhaustible eloquence. 176
So, the Tower arises as an illustration of the point referring to all sudden change but is never the only or singular illustration, symbol, or example of such change. Neither does it mean only sudden change but everything else closer to sudden-change-type of patterns in all time than closer to “the point at which things start to work together … ” which would be closer to the 5 of Wands. The seventy-eight cards of Tarot are each a “strange attractor” to which meaning approaches but never finally reaches. 177
At last we come to the great secret of this book, and of the tarot.
It is the tarot who is the real time traveller, not us. We are part of its journey more than it is part of ours, and we all arise from the same seventy-eight points of the time-matrix.
What is Interpretation?
Having advanced a notion of tarot as a time traveller, how do we then speak with it? It is identical in this regard to our unconscious which does not recognise linear time, nor conscious filters, and is deeper than language, so both speak in symbolism and metaphor.
We speak to it by interpreting its language as we would do any other language. The word “interpretation” comes from the Latin interpretari, to explain or translate. In conducting a card-reading, we are thus acting as an agent to explain the cards’ symbols and translate these into the context of the sitter’s life.
It is the translation which is the important trick; again, the word comes from Latin and means “to move across.” In a reading, we are moving the fields of meaning attracted to each card (or to which each card is attracted or an attractor) across time and space into the context of other arising situations—the question being asked of the cards. There is no more magic than the fact that everything is connected at a deep level, and our lives and the tarot reading itself are all emerging simultaneously across time from that s
ingular nature.
The Role of Intuition
Tarot readers are often aware of the importance of intuition in their readings, but the idea can be confused with guesswork or any immediate and simple response to images. It is the case that we can only intuit something about which we have knowledge. A car mechanic can intuitively know what is wrong with a car but not about a heart in the middle of surgery; we would hope the surgeon can also be intuitive in that case, as well as having knowledge and experience.
Intuition arises from knowledge and experience (often, lots of experience), but unless it commences with sound knowledge, it is little more than casual guessing. It is therefore important for the traveller in time to learn at least one system or another as a touchstone, as we have suggested, within which intuition may be developed.
There are many methods of exercising, recognising, and building intuition, tarot reading, journaling, dream working. Several of the methods we have provided in this current guide are designed to strengthen intuition. 178
The Importance of the Question
We have seen over time how language has changed for questions and yet the basic questions remain the same. Here are several situations and questions placed before the ancient oracle of Dodona:
Geris asks Zeus concerning a wife, whether it is better for him to take one.
Heracleidas asks Zeus and Dione … whether there will be any offspring from his wife Aigle.
Cleotas asks Zeus and Dione whether it is better and profitable for him to keep sheep.
Thrasyboulos asks by sacrificing to and appeasing which god will he become healthier in his eyes? 179
Further along the timeline we see that in 1934, the reader of Woman’s Own magazine loves to consider the lives of others. She (almost certainly a she) has an interest in the problems of others as no doubt they are problems shared by many, including herself. Before settling down to read about fortune-telling, she reads the regular problem page in the magazine, aptly called “Life and You.” This column has the tagline “Don’t let troubles and worries get you down.” There is a suggestion to “talk them over with Mrs. Eyles instead and get her advice and help.”
The problem page was not a modern invention; it was invented in 1691 by a troubled adulterer, John Dunton. Our Agony Aunt Mrs. Eyles (“bestselling novelist, socialist, journalist”) is then mentioned as the first agony aunt of Woman’s Own magazine and sold as “a woman who understands.” 180
We have seen that people’s problems and how they dealt with them have changed due to cultural shifts. There was a notable class division in England in 1934; some people lived in big houses and others just worked in them. So “Mrs. Eyles” is asked questions about working in service. However, the questions asked of an Agony Aunt or across a tarot table at the time are basically no different than those asked of readers today. People have always been concerned about their relationships, confidence, and work.
The Role and Responsibility of
the Reader & the Querent
When people ask questions of a tarot reader, there is a responsibility of sorts upon the reader to read the cards—it is their contract. Whether the client expects anything seriously or otherwise, the reader must read the cards and communicate an interpretation as best as they are able—which is our profession. The transaction between the reader and client is one of different responsibilities; the reader is responsible for reading the cards. The client is responsible for their actions resulting from the reading. This is much the same for readers of Agony Aunt advice:
Readers, they point out, aren’t mindless automata. “You can expound and lay down the law to your heart’s content,” says Raeburn. “Nobody will take on board what doesn’t serve them—except a fool or a masochist—and I haven’t met many of either.” Ironside agrees. “No one takes advice to the letter—they mix it up with their own feelings, a bit of advice from friends, a bit from family. They are not a gang of dummies waiting to be dictated to. 181
The skills needed for a tarot reader are much the same as an Agony Aunt, and perhaps share much in common with other professions that care for the human condition. 182 Here are several of the skills and resources required of the contemporary reader, if we were to advertise it as any other job or career:
Excellent communication skills.
Good people person.
Wide range of real-world experience.
Aware of the range of issues facing real people from relationship situations to psychological concerns.
Very adaptable.
Knowledge and access of professional agencies and support organizations to which to potentially refer clients.
Trained in a range of decks, methods, and spreads suitable for most questions.
Very flexible in terms of working conditions, hours, and recompense.
Comfortable working with initially skeptical, concerned, or negative clients.
Able to draw boundaries.
Having briefly summarised what might be called our mechanics, operating conditions, and conduct out in the wild, we will now conclude with a selection of advanced methods for the ardent tarot time traveller. These methods are for personal orientation in life or the life of those whom accompany us in the journey.
Time Travel Spreads
The tarot time traveller is encouraged to learn these several advanced spreads to navigate their journey. It is possible to get lost or slip out of time altogether, and our tarot provides a tool to locate our exact location and orient ourselves to the present moment. We can also use tarot to provide a compass for the past and future.
Let us first consider how we see time itself. We do not have actual clocks in our head although we are aware of the passing of time. We do not really know what time is other than a concept. The British astronomer Arthur Eddington (1882–1944) described time as a process that only goes one way, “time’s arrow.” 183
Our first spread considers time as an asymmetric (one-way) channel where cause leads to effect through correlation. That is, when we drop a glass of wine, the glass shatters and the wine spreads across the floor—it never goes back the other way. The effect of the wine stain was caused by our dropping the glass, not the other way around. In our habitual perceptual state, this is the way the world works.
The Arrow of Time Spread
In this method, we look at the causes and consequences (effects) of an event that has led to a present situation. We then continue looking at how the arrow of time is likely to continue … with a twist that at any point we can change its direction by making different decisions.
This method is ideal for situations that feel out-of-control or very uncertain and can bring much-needed clarity and a sense of control or connectedness.
Prepare a table or floor space for your cards, as this spread develops into a large space.
Shuffle the deck and when ready, take the top card out and place it in the centre of the space.
This is your temporal significator—a card that denotes the present moment in time.
Now take the bottom card from the deck and place it to the far left of the space available.
This is your time root—a card that illustrates the main moment when the present situation was set in motion, twisted from its course, or took a direction other than you would wish in the present.
Now take the next top card from the deck and place it to the far right of the space.
This is the Time Target or card which signifies the future point of your ambition or desire. If this target is undesirable, i.e., a negative card for your situation, we will navigate elsewhere in this method, otherwise it is your target.
Stand near to the temporal significator and look back to the time root card. Then turn to look at your target.
If your target is desirable, select one card and place it down in front of you in the direction of the target. This indicates your
next action. Decide on the action required.
If your target was undesirable, select one card and place it down towards your time root card and read it as indicating what you should learn from the past before continuing. Then, if you heed this lesson, turn towards the initial target card and place a new card in your future path slightly at an angle away from the initial target. This will indicate the action to take on a slightly new path.
Once you have taken the action required, return to your layout and stand beyond the action card and look again at your target card.
Repeat the process of selecting out a past and/or future card, deciding an action, and then returning to the layout over time.
If you need the space between times, simply make a note of the cards and their positions (a photo on a smartphone suffices) and return them to their places each time you perform the reading.
At any point if the actions appear to move you away from your target card, create a new direction from that action card at a new angle, using the action card as a “past” card from which to learn.
In this way, you will follow an ever-changing arrow through time towards your destiny.
The next method uses a fixed spatial representation of time to offer another means of orientating our course in life through time and the tarot.
The Hall of the Moon
In ancient China, farming was often carried out in a 3 x 3 grid, forming a pattern of nine squares. This pattern or template became a common layout for architecture, particularly in sacred temples and was known as the “Hall of the Moon.” 184
The pattern was also called ming tang, “bright hall,” and it became a template for living arrangements whereby a space was divided into nine squares. As the year progressed, one could spend one month in a room where the light was better, then two months in each of the corner room (which has two sides), and so on around the house.
We have taken this universal pattern for the time travellers equivalent of a “year spread.” As ever, our time traveller has a charged-up version of the usual spread.
