The Major Trumps
There are many different systems of interpreting the cards - Christian, gypsy, Jungian, Theosophical, Hermetic or Cabalist. Their richness of symbolism and suggestion is such that no two observers are likely to gain exactly the same impressions from them, and most students of the cards might agree that 'it may be that the deepest occult wisdom of the Tarot cannot be put into words at all ... in the end, the seeker is told only what he cannot find for himself. Certainly the cards have a powerful fascination, a sense of some hidden and ultimately unfathomable mystery, an ability to open 'magic casements' in the mind.
The fact that there are twenty two trumps has been a major factor in riveting attention on them, for in cabalistic numerology twenty two is the number of 'all things', the entire universe, and the trumps are assigned to the twenty two letters of the Hebrew alphabet and to the Twenty Two Paths, which are lines drawn on the Tree of Life of the Cabalah, connecting the sefiroth together. In this form the trumps, paths and letters provide a plan of the construction of the universe and display both the emanation of the universe from God and, in reverse order, climbing, the Tree, the mystical road to union with the divine or the magical route to supreme power, the ascent by which man makes himself God.
Complicated systems of Correspondences have been worked out, which link the trumps and paths with planets and zodiac signs, pagan deities, animals, plants, colours, precious stones, magical weapons, perfumes, geometric figures, and images, all of which are intended to express and illuminate the meanings of the cards. Modern cabalistic interpretations also bristle with erotic symbolism. What follows is necessarily a very brief and rough indication of some of the principal ideas connected with the Tarot trumps in various systems of interpretation.
0 The Fool. The placing of this card is one of the chief problems of the Tarot, but if put at the head of the trumps it can be related to the hidden godhead of the Cabala, the ultimate source of all existence, the nothing from which everything proceeds: it is also man carried to the highest power, and the Fool's folly is a divine madness.
1 The Juggler (or Magician, Magus). The creative will of both God and man, the First Cause, the erect phallus: the infinite: unity and activity, the union of opposites: the Logos or divine Word, the life-giving Spirit of God hovering above the waters of chaos at the outset of creation.
2 The Female Pope (or Pope Joan, High Priestess). Woman, duality, the balance of opposites, the gateway of the Temple, the thresh-hold of the Mysteries: the divine Thought. the spiritual Mother and Bride, the goddess Isis, the Virgin Mary: the gnosis or 'knowledge' of the divine: the unconscious mind: the soul; the Jungian archetype of the anima.
3 The Empress. The divine evolving from infinite to finite in the creation of the universe: the fecundity and teeming life of nature, the Mother Goddess, the fruitful Earth impregnated by the Spirit: Venus, beauty, desire, pleasure, the earthly paradise.
4 The Emperor. The male principle corresponding to the Empress: God or man imposing form and order upon chaos: virile energy, intelligence and authority: the guardian of the Grail: reason, intellect: temporal power, leadership, government.
5 The Pope (or High Priest, Hierophant). Spiritual authority and power: traditional teaching, orthodox religion on its 'outer' side, the Church: the channel of divine grace, the bridge between God and man, the revealer of sacred things: the keys of heaven and hell, the knowledge of good and evil: inspiration.
6 The Lovers (or Marriage). Adam and Eve, the gulf between God and man crossed through the creation of humanity in God's image, and conversely the crossing of the abyss between man and God: the union of opposites, love bringing unity, the two sexes transcended: innocence, free will, temptation: the choice between good and evil.
7 The Chariot. Triumph, mastery: 'he is conquest on all planes - in the mind, in science, in progress, in certain trials of initiation . . . He is above all things triumph in the mind', the vision of the Chariot in Ezekiel, Chapter 1 : the dominance of animal passions, or dominance through the animal passions: the union of the sexes, the balance of opposites: God or man as master of the lower world: Plato in the Phaedrus pictured the soul as a charioteer (reason), driving two horses (the bodily passions and higher emotions).
8 Strength. Both Waite and Crowley transpose this card with Justice: force, occult power: ecstasy: self-confidence, the confidence of those whose strength is in God: the higher nature taming the passions: Crowley's formula of 'the Beast conjoined with the Woman'.
9 The Hermit. Wisdom, prudence, the Sage, the Adept: the attainment of the truth within oneself: isolation, self-reliance, uninvolvement with the world outside: the man who finds his way by the divine light in his own soul, and who is also a beacon to others: austerity, silence, conservation of spiritual energy.
10 The Wheel of Fortune. The cosmic rhythms of life and death, growth and decay, in their ceaseless ebb and flow: time, fate, Karma, actions have consequences, 'as a man sows, so shall he reap': movement and stability: reincarnation, and liberation from it.
11 Justice. Balance, equilibrium, the cancelling out of warring opposites: purgatory: a new beginning, a state of passivity in which the true self is conceived: divine justice, the weighing of the heart in the ancient Egyptian judgement of the dead.
12 The Hanged Man (or Judas). The most famous and enticingly mysterious of the trumps: sacrifice, martyrdom: in terms of erotic symbolism, the 'death' of orgasm, through which new life is created: the death of the outer self preceding the emergence of the true self: 'after the sacred Mystery of Death there is a glorious Mystery of Resurrection' : the Messiah: the dying and rising god: the 'vivification of nature by an exterior, spiritual agency': water, the depths of the mind: the Norse god Odin hanging in agony on the World Tree.
13 Death. Change, transformation, passage from one spiritual condition to another: death and new life: connected with 'raising the dead to life' in terms of phallic symbolism: the death of the old self, the 'old Adam', leading to rebirth in the Spirit: destruction and creation as part of one process: the manifestation of the divine on the physical plane: renewal of life, reincarnation: the dark night of the soul.
14 Temperance. Inspiration flowing from above: the descent of the Spirit into matter and conversely the soul mounting from a lower plane to a higher: the combination of active and passive forces, the union of positive and negative, male and female, spiritual and material: spiritual healing, the flow of vital force from the healer: 'if attention is directed to the unconscious the unconscious will yield up its contents, and these in turn will fructify the conscious like a fountain of living water'..
15 The Devil. Lust: pride, ambition: unbridled passions: mastery in this world: power misused, nature red in tooth and claw, the god Pan: the animal nature of man: evil, black magic, the choice of the wrong path: the goat of the witches' sabbath, the Baphomet of the Templars: Lucifer as both fallen angel and light-bringer: temptation: the 'dweller on the threshold', a personification of the evil in oneself.
16 The Falling Tower (or Tower Struck by-Lightning, Tower of Babel, House of God). Confusion, ruin, the fall of man, the expulsion from paradise: the destruction of false doctrines and mistaken attitudes: discipline, cruelty, pain: sexually, a symbol of ejaculation.
17 The Star (or Sirius, Dog-Star, Star of the Magi). Hope: the water of life, new life: expectation, the shining possibilities of the future, what is potential rather than actual: intuition: the gifts of the Spirit: youth and beauty: truth in the soul.
18 The Moon. Danger: terrors, illusions and abominations in the fluid depths of the mind: dreams, fantasies, the imagination: light penetrating darkness in the mind, the dissolution of accepted ideas and accustomed habits of thought: initiation, the forming of the solid from the nebulous, the child in the womb: fear of the path into the unknown.
19 The Sun. Enlightenment, freeing the mind from conventional wisdom, orthodox ideas, petty concerns and worries: the magician begins to soar towards the sun: identification with the One Life of the universe: man as a little child, in the sense of innocence and simplicity - 'a little child shall lead them'.
20 The Day of Judgment. Renewal: desire, spiritual or sexual, and the 'lower' nature rising in response to it: yearning, aspiration, longing for betterment: death and resurrection, life gained through the transformation of man's earthly nature: 'we can rise from the grave of our old dead self even now . . . if our ears are not deaf to the trumpet call from on high'.
21 The World. Joy: release, the entry into the world of the spirit: the Astral Plane: conversely, as the last of the trumps, the world as it is, earthly existence, the flesh and the senses.