AUTHOR’S NOTE: In manufacturing jargon, effective process control begins with the engineering of a work-station performance envelope that ensures steady-state functionality by permitting only minor, easily-adjusted shifts in operating parameters for the duration of the activity. (As a former quality-control technician, later an engineer and ultimately a manager, I know a little about the subject.) An unplanned step-change is a significant acceleration or deceleration in the progression of events that is seldom desirable because it indicates that production has gotten – or will soon get – out of hand.

Most of us try to run our lives according to the steady-state model of the process-control engineer. However, the Universe has an unnerving way of messing with the “best-laid plans” by introducing unexpected “step-changes.” While we prefer to conduct our affairs at the routine, day-to-day level of the Minor Arcana most of the time, with an occasional – and sometime unavoidable – encounter with “the Other” as symbolized by the appearance of court cards in a reading, the Major Arcana can be a different matter. Unless we intentionally set them in motion by planning “something big,” their arrival on the scene can be uncomfortable even when they are overwhelmingly positive in disposition since they can either generate too much of a good thing in the “be-careful-what-you-wish-for” sense or deliver a jarring “kick in the teeth.” In any event they can seem larger-than-life.

As I’ve made abundantly clear in past essays, I no longer envision them as always indicating important occurrences in one’s life, but they can certainly represent a crossroads. Most often they provide an archetypal theme or environmental backdrop for developing circumstances as shown by the Minor Arcana, but they can rise in prominence when sensitively placed in a spread. In such cases they can symbolize an opportunity for – or conversely, a vulnerability to – a dramatic change in the agenda, one that we can either exploit to the fullest if we’re ready for it, or block to the extent we’re able if it seems about to unload on us with an unpleasant surprise. Their advice is usually to keep our eyes open and periodically “check-and-adjust” our situation to make sure we keep our feet under us as it unfolds. Even if we only acknowledge their potential, we will be ahead of the game if they make good on it.

This topic makes me wonder how European readers who use only the 22 Major Arcana reconcile themselves to what looks like a “swatting-a-gnat-with-a-sledgehammer” scenario. The obvious answer (or so they tell me) is that they don’t assign the trump cards any such exalted pedigree, preferring to relegate them to the mundane status of the pip and court cards as employed in post-Occult-Revival practice. I’ve worked some with that premise but find that it is too limiting in scope; I like a broader palette with which to paint my word-pictures. I will grant that it is perfectly adequate when applied to the French Cross (aka tirage-en-croix) spread with its narrowly-defined position meanings, but it still requires a “step-change” in thinking for the modern practitioner to escape the overly-profound mindset with which we often approach the trumps. In that regard, I’m not sure Jung did the tarot world any favors by pioneering the marriage of psychological archetypes to tarot cards, even if he didn’t do it directly and just planted the seed.