WTF Is Tarot

by Bakara Wintner

  Even when I am alone, I still gravitate to some form of connection. I have an audio book playing, or the TV on, or my phone glued to my hand like a bionic limb. I don’t sit well in quiet. The Hermit exhibits a discipline that many of us avoid or deem unnecessary or say we’ll get to later. However, this is a Major Arcana card, an unavoidable lesson that we cannot move forward without. If we do not willingly enter this quiet space, we will still find ourselves in it one way or another.

  While resistance is a natural response to The Hermit, he also speaks to our innate desire to know ourselves well and deeply. One of the holiest energies of the tarot, he has turned away from society and the material world in search of a more meaningful kinship with the divine. At this point, other people cannot help us. We’ve gathered advice, acquired teachers and formed an identity we can show to the world. In The Hermit we examine the authenticity of that identity and shed the false self.

  What a revelation it would be to enter into the cave of self-study and discover that you actually like what you find. Self-love and self-acceptance is not possible without this process. So many of us believe that we are bad, or wrong, or fundamentally broken in some way. No one can be talked out of this by another. The only tonic is seeing ourselves for ourselves. There is so much that another person cannot give us, even if they try. There is an emptiness we navigate, an imbalance that we cannot reconcile if we refuse the self-commitment of The Hermit. What is more, he also holds the key to a greater spiritual connection, where we cultivate a personal relationship with the divine that is all our own.

  For those who are prone to isolation, The Hermit can be a sign that it is time to come out of your shell, especially if surrounded by cards of community or partnership.

  In addition to solitary self-discovery, The Hermit can signify an experience that teaches us about ourselves or represent a spiritual mentor or guide. Unlike The Hierophant, The Hermit will not put himself in a public or visible position, but may be sought out or otherwise present himself to you.

  The Hermit is almost always seen holding a lantern or light of some sort. In the aloneness, he discovered his divinity, his wholeness and his authentic self. It cannot be taken by someone else, because it was not given by someone else. When we access this, we are never lost again.

  Anecdote

  This last year I moved to North Carolina with a boyfriend. We bought a house, filled it with things and broke up shortly thereafter. After a few months of couch surfing I moved into an apartment, marking the first time I ever lived alone.

  It was hell. I was so used to having someone there, it felt like there was a perpetual emptiness that I could not negotiate. I already had a couple good friends whom I spent a lot of time with, but eventually they left, and whenever I was alone, the scary void of aloneness crept in again. The impulse to reach for contact was so unconscious I was often surprised by it. Why was I on my phone, re-checking the same thing I’d just looked at a couple minutes before? Why is the TV on? Why did I just agree to hang out with someone when I’m exhausted and just want to sleep?

  The shift was subtle and happened over such an extended period of time that I have a hard time pinpointing its genesis, but I started to love coming home to my own space and spending a night in. I wouldn’t feel anxiety staying at home on the weekends. I cherished the rituals I created: lighting my candles and burning sage before settling onto the couch, taking long baths on Sunday night, building altars, making a pot of tea and mixing an oil blend before sitting down at my desk to work. I started to feel protective of my space and charged by the time I spent alone in it. Seeing who I was, by myself, night after night, I learned that I enjoyed that company.

  In a Reading

  Finding light within yourself. Spend more time alone. Finding comfort in solitude. May be an indication to remove yourself from your usual environment and go somewhere alone—a retreat, or a quiet vacation. Withdrawing from the external world. Not the time to enter into new relationships. Reaching for the divine. A teacher you may need to seek out or be invited into.

  10—THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE

  What if a demon were to creep after you one night, in your loneliest loneliness, and say, “This life which you live must be lived by you once again and innumerable times more; and every pain and joy and thought and sigh must come again to you, all in the same sequence. The eternal hourglass will again and again be turned and you with it, dust of the dust!” Would you throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse that demon?

  Or would you answer, “Never have I heard anything more divine”?

  —Nietzsche

  repetition / inception / opportunity / destiny / rebirth / impermanence / cycle / reincarnation / patterns / impartial / inevitable / interconnected / return / growth / continuous / patterns / karma / time / luck

  Card Meaning

  There are a lot of cards in the tarot that represent the capacity for change, but none so fundamental as The Wheel of Fortune. When we invoke this energy in our lives, we become fully awake to patterns we repeat and are given an opportunity to break them. Even if we are to some extent aware of the patterns, this archetype brings it to the surface in a way that is perhaps exaggerated or painfully acute. A little game-showy, a little creepy, it delivers our life back to us at a cinematic fever pitch that makes us cringe and say, “Wow, am I really still doing this shit?”

  It can be traumatic to feel like we are back in the same place, but that is never the truth. If time is a spiral, we will find ourselves again and again at parallel points inside it; but each time we do we are closer to the center. When you arrive at one of these lateral coordinates, you can see the ways you have grown or refused growth. How are you different, and what are you capable of now that you weren’t the last time? Can you, will you do better by yourself and others than before?

  The Wheel of Fortune is one of the few cards that represents an energy and not a person, though a person may invite this energy into your life. Imbued with revolutionary potential, the choice presented to us in The Wheel of Fortune is rarely an easy one. Old habits die hard, and it is difficult to break one even if we know it will serve us. It should be both daunting and reassuring to know that, as far as the tarot is concerned, there are no missed opportunities. We can willfully ignore the cycle brought to our attention through this card and choose to repeat it—The Wheel will land on it again. But when it does it will be more glaring, with more accumulated consequences and higher stakes.

  This sounds pretty doomsday-esque, but in truth we do this all the time. Chronic lateness, unhealthy sleeping patterns, unhealthy eating, partying too much. When we fail to rectify these patterns The Wheel of Fortune may appear in the form of missing an important meeting, or outgrowing a favorite pair of jeans. More seriously, it may show up as illness, self-sabotage or destroying something we hold dear.

  In addition to our personal shitty behaviors, The Wheel of Fortune can also speak to karma, past lives, shadow inheritances and ancestral ties. It is not unusual for this card to show up in a reading as a chance to break a pattern that has followed their bloodline through generations.

  Both Buddhism and Hinduism acknowledge the concept of reincarnation, and we could look at each spin of the wheel as a new lifetime. The ultimate goal is to not have to incarnate again, which means getting off the wheel in every way. Let’s start small though, shall we? Every time we truly break a cycle, we dismantle that particular wheel. It will no longer leave us dizzy and nauseated because we are no longer reeling inside of it.

  An alternate interpretation could be this card appearing during a time of uncertainty, where we took a gamble and are waiting on the result. If so, there is nothing to do but let the wheel stop spinning and see where it lands. Table your efforts and let the universe do its thing.

  The Hermit unearthed the patterns presented to us in The Wheel of Fortune. We know ourselves, what lurks in our depths and what we are better off letting go of. While it can be humiliating and demoralizing to stay woke to our ug
liest behaviors, The Wheel of Fortune is always a prayer answered. It facilitates an awareness called in by the higher self, the part of us that cares more about our betterment than temporary discomfort or embarrassment, and we are better for it.

  Anecdote

  I’ve cheated in almost every romantic relationship I’ve entered into. Yikes. That’s not a cute sentence to write. I have a deep-seated destructive impulse that manifests as boredom, apathy, feeling trapped and basically wanting to burn down everything good in my life.

  My last serious relationship was with a wonderful man whom I was absolutely in love with. About a year and a half into our relationship (typically the time I start to search for some gasoline and a match), I found myself alone in a room with a person who I was very much attracted to and would have loved to sleep with, and if there was ever an opportunity to do it, this was it. In the midst of the shadow demon-zilla in my mind that was screaming “do it” over and over again, there was another competing thought alongside it. If I cheat right now—on this man, with this person, in the relationship that I’m currently in—I will cheat in every relationship I have for the rest of my life. In past situations, I justified it for various reasons: I was unhappy, they were unhappy, the relationship wasn’t working anyway. But there was no excuse here. I loved my boyfriend, everything was amazing between us, and I’d never been so happy or felt so seen by another person. I immediately left the room and took a long walk, waiting for demon-zilla to calm down. I felt the cycle break then and there, and honestly walking away from that immediate gratification was difficult. But it also allowed me to experience a love and connection with my partner stronger and more profound than anything that came before it because I had always gotten stuck in that wheel. Saying no in that moment, when so much of me wanted to say yes, showed me how to find a source of energy that wasn’t the flames of something I love burning to the ground.

  In a Reading

  Karmic cycles. Reincarnation. Opportunity for major change. Invitation to break a pattern. Heightened awareness of your behaviors. Being tested. Waking up for a moment to the inner workings of the universe. The energy of luck. Taking a chance. Experiencing movement, though you may not be the one controlling the movement, you are in control of how you handle it.

  11—JUSTICE

  Measure twice, cut once.

  —Proverb

  integrity / consequence / balance / equality / perfection / centered / fairness / law / self-examination / leveling / stern / precise / unwavering / scales / conscience / values / unbiased / deliberation

  Card Meaning

  With Justice, we arrive at the exact halfway point of the Major Arcana. We’ve been through some shit. In the words of Kylie Jenner we’ve, like, realized a lot of things, and at this middle place we stop and take stock.

  Rarely does the Major Arcana borrow the suits of the Minor, but Justice is almost never seen without her sword. Representing cognition, analytical thought and all workings of the mind, Justice reflects a full-formed conception of self. The sword is ours to wield, we have done the work required to be entrusted with it. We have access to the full force of our mental body.

  The representation of the mind as a sword offers a potent clue about its limitations. A sword is a weapon. In Justice, we have reached the highest possible potential of how we may wield it, but it is still only a sword. It does not transmute its nature as a cutting device.

  So what does it look like when we can have faith in the efficacy of our minds and the soundness of our judgment? We arrive at Justice. We are able to cut things out of our life responsibly, make decisions ethically and rely on our personal system of checks and balances. We gathered our stamina in The Chariot, refined it in Strength, let it gestate in The Hermit and had it tested and tested through The Wheel of Fortune. At Justice we are standing in a place of balance and certainty of self. We earned that. In this moment, the ego exists in a state of perfect balance.

  Justice is the embodiment of integrity and perfection. But she is also harsh, unyielding and critical. While she is an essential archetype and an indispensible tool, she is forever intertwined with the sharpness of the Swords. One of the most masculine females represented in the Major Arcana, she is not devoid of sentiment. Rather, she has integrated all of it—her passions, ethics, logic, experience—into a system by which she gauges a situation. Rarely does Justice reflect external institutions, though it can. It is a personal code that allows us to assess what we can and cannot live with.

  There are times when societal justice does not align with personal justice. Abolitionists, civil rights workers and social justice activists are guided by this archetype. Here we can see the importance of cultivating this within ourselves, because society will, time and time again, collectively fail to achieve true justice. Inversely, we can also rely on her to take accountability when we’ve been wrong.

  The harmonious meeting place of emotional intelligence and critical thought, Justice could be a second, more evolved incarnation of The Lovers. The feminine and masculine unify again with a purpose that serves more than themselves.

  We utilize Justice to get back to balance. When we need to rid ourselves of something holding us back. We feel her in our innate yearning for equilibrium. We call upon her to help us fight for something we believe in. We return to her when we have betrayed ourselves, rely on her when we have strayed from our center and keep her counsel when faced with impossible choices.

  And yet, reliance on intelligence alone will get us only so far. You see this in the constraints of Justice’s capabilities and again when we pass through the journey of the Swords. From here, we move onto matters more broad and spiritual. The mind has taken us as far as it can. We must hone our other faculties—faith, fluidity, emotionality, intuition—to prepare for the mysterious and deeper second half of the tarot’s Major Arcana.

  Anecdote

  When I decided to open Everyday Magic, I poured all of my heart and soul and energy and blood and sweat and tears and time into it. I’d been reading tarot for a couple of years and wanted to create a physical space to share the accouterments of magic that changed my life and the lives of my clients. I also grew up in a chaotic home, so the cultivation of a safe, sacred space has always been important to me, and I wanted to help others do the same. I was what some people would call “crazy” in how thoroughly I researched the integrity of our products. I sent vendors long lists of questions about how their materials were sourced, where they came from, how they were put together and the intention behind their wares. We turned away objects that were beautiful but made with unethically sourced leather, or adorned with exploitatively mined crystals. It was an exhausting and frustrating process, but it resulted in a space full of items we love, made by beautiful people with strong integrity and ethics. There is not an item that we sell at Everyday Magic that I cannot wholeheartedly get behind.

  Shortly before we opened, we came under fire by a group of activists for cultural appropriation and contributing to the gentrification of the city I live in. Horrible things were said about me, my shop and my vendors—many of whom come from the cultural backgrounds these people claimed to protect. I specifically remember a comment along the lines of, “Who do they think they are to sell Zapotec textiles?” and thinking about the Zapotec women I bought them from, whose wares I paid fair wages for and who I spoke to for an hour about the process of making the weavings and what native plants, roots and produce they use to render each dye color. It ended with her putting me on my knees and blessing me, the textiles and the shop before we hugged and parted ways. I was devastated, upset and angry, but never once had to question if the accusations made held any weight. My integrity was my guide every step of the way in Everyday Magic’s creation, and while we held space for the community to voice their concerns, I knew there was no apology owed. It was an overall horrible experience, but it was also eye-opening to find how much I trusted my ethics, my process and the decisions I made when they came under fire.

 
In a Reading

  You can trust yourself. Using your mental faculties responsibly and constructively. Strong intellect. Fairness. Exercising your own moral code. Self-examination and analysis using rational thought. Not a time to give in to impulse—do what you know to be right. Interaction with legal systems. Bringing things into balance. Settling debts. Letting go of things if they do not align with your ethics. Carefully considering all sides of a situation before making a decision. The natural equilibrium of all things. Being accountable and taking responsibility if you fucked up.

  12—THE HANGED MAN

  The dead can hide beneath the ground and the birds can always fly

  But the rest of us do what we must

  in constant compromise.

  Bright Eyes, Middleman

  non-action / suspension / fear / wisdom / release/ non-attachment / surrender / initiation / shift / transformation / stuck / inversion / illumination / incubation / serene / acceptance / suffering / sacrifice / renunciation

  Card Meaning

  One of the more iconic cards of the tarot, The Hanged Man is always depicted as being suspended upside down. This inverted viewpoint is central to his wisdom, but the experience of The Hanged Man varies depending on our perspective.

  It is impossible to understand The Hanged Man without knowing it is the card that precludes Death. It therefore raises the question: How do we come to terms with death? How do we prepare for it? Reconcile its inevitability? The Hanged Man is the act of giving something permission to die, and this can be a time of profound acceptance and detachment. However, it can just as easily be mired with suffering, resistance and fear. Often, it is both.