AUTHOR’S NOTE: Although I haven’t considered it for quite some time because the opportunity for self-improvement is a foregone conclusion among experienced diviners, I was recently reminded by Benebell Wen in Holistic Tarot that tarot cards can serve as catalysts or motivators for seekers to act on their own behalf in ways suggested by the cards’ guidance. Under this paradigm, the querent is expected to “do something” proactive and not simply wait to be “done to” by an indifferent Universe. (As Monty Python might have said: “Tonight on ‘Who Cares?’ we examine the frontiers of prognostication” [for reference, see the amusing “Elephantoplasty” sketch, although I think tarot is unlikely to tell us that, to better ourselves, we “can only eat buns and must wash ourselves in a rather special way . . .” Sounds to me like alternative therapy for burnt-out tarot readers].)

This consideration is a small piece of the larger question that contemplates “how tarot works.” It underlies the modern insistence that tarot advice should be used mainly for empowerment of the “forewarned is forearmed” kind and not simply accepted as inevitable (unless, of course, the seeker has been actively striving to make it so, even if only subconsciously). The cards can help to illuminate both the path the querent has been walking up to the moment of the reading, and the road ahead assuming that past behaviors either continue unabated or are suitably altered to adopt the cards’ wisdom and the diviner’s insights. Ideally, the seeker will receive inspiration for making the necessary changes to “catch the wave” of a projected upturn or, alternatively, to “get off the treadmill” of an unfavorable trend. It becomes a matter of positioning for best results.

Moving on, I’ve long recognized that the human mind is a pattern-making machine. It attempts to unite the disparate features of unrelated but coexisting events and circumstances in an organized whole, thereby making them more comprehensible in combination. Within a tarot spread (and to an even greater extent in the Lenormand Grand Tableau) there are often many internal patterns that can be linked to form a meaningful web of information (I find this most evident in the Celtic Cross), and therein lies the diviner’s art of synthesis. Unless they stand out above all the others, single cards don’t mean much until they are aligned with the overarching theme of the reading. Once again, this synchronization of narrative elements is the reader’s ultimate objective, and any worthwhile yarn will benefit from a competent edit.

Years ago I realized that there are a number of sensitive junctures between the various hierarchies within the tarot cards. Perhaps most fundamental are the transitions between the trumps and the court cards, and between the court cards and the pips. When they are jumbled together in a spread, the reader frequently has to “shift gears” to accommodate different levels of significance, making for what I think of as a “roller-coaster ride.” In his book, The Tarot of the Bohemians, Papus talked a good deal about these interfaces, particularly between the end of the court-card subset (the Knaves or Pages) and the beginning of the pip-card subset (the Aces) of each suit, which exhibit similar characteristics. (Note that this progression doesn’t follow Waite’s model, which yokes the Page to the Ten.)

The one that fascinates me most is the turnover between the Tens and the Aces of the suit cards. Conventional wisdom is that even if we have learned the lessons of the associated element after working through to the Ten, the series will reboot back at the Ace of the same suit. In short, it’s “deja-vu all over again.” I’ve never been satisfied with this circular assumption since it implies that no wisdom has been gained while navigating the previous arc. I’ve always viewed the cards of the Minor Arcana as a rising spiral that evolves from the Wands through the Cups and Swords to the Pentacles (although in Qabalistic terms something can be said for the opposite track), so the Ten of one suit yields to the Ace of the next suit in the sequence. Only if the element hasn’t been mastered will we wind up back at the start of the present suit. Although I’ve been thinking along these lines since the late ’70s, I recently discovered that Alejandro Jodorowsky has proposed the same spiral trajectory in his 2004 book, The Way of Tarot.

The court cards also embody sensitive junctures since each one represents a step-change in maturity. Fail at King and you’re banished to the throne of the Queen (which may not be a bad place to fetch up since Kings catch all the crap); fail at Queen and you’re given a horse and sent back into the field as a Knight; fail at Knight and they take away your spurs and hand you a grooming brush: you’re now a Page or squire; fail at Page and there’s no recourse but demotion to a Ten, from which you must return full-circle in order to rebound since you obviously didn’t learn your lesson. I don’t recall for sure, but I think it was either Jodorowsky or Papus who characterized the Pages as standing outside the closed gates of the castle, having been denied admittance until they “grow up.”

Among the pip cards, the other key transition occurs between the Fives and the Sixes, since Five represents extreme disruption and Six shows the state of “harmony restored;” of course, successfully navigating the Seven and Eight is no cake-walk either, but the Nine returns to center as the fulfillment of the element before the appended postscript that is the Ten, the “last gasp” of the elemental energy before it hands the baton to the Ace of the following suit. These transitional dynamics are endlessly intriguing and form a large part of the lifetime study that is the tarot. I can recommend The Tarot of the Bohemians for an exhaustive analysis of what I’ve been talking about.