AUTHOR’S NOTE: An assumption that goes all the way back to my first exposure to tarot literature in Eden Gray’s 1960 book, The Tarot Revealed, is that the Major Arcana normally identify significant external events that are beyond the querent’s control.

At one time my own definition was that they describe consequential influences that the seeker can neither avoid nor fully deflect, so he or she must adapt to the situation (or “grin and bear it”). However, over my five decades of tarot reading I’ve found this to be untrue most of the time; instead, trump cards can create the environment for something important to occur but on their own they seldom “pull the trigger” that sets it in motion. That’s up to the cooperative interaction of the rest of the cards in the reading when examined within the context of the question or matter at hand. In other words, because there are so many more of them, the lesser cards in combination can have more to say about the onset of a predicted drama than the occasional trump card, which serves more as an enveloping theme or environmental backdrop (i.e. a “stage-setter”).

I recently came across a tarot spread by Benebell Wen (in Holistic Tarot) that had as one of its position meanings the concept of force majeure (“a superior or irresistible force that cannot be reasonably anticipated or controlled.”) This includes natural and human-caused disasters, and in contract law these destructive instances are often called “Acts of God.” While I don’t typically interpret the tarot’s Major Arcana in such dire terms, I began thinking that maybe the numerical essence card* that I sometimes calculate to show the “big picture” or long-range consequences of a near-term outcome could conceivably carry the weight of a force majeure episode.

This card is always a trump, but to meet the above expectation it would have to be one of the “nasties” like Death, the Devil, or the Tower, or to a lesser degree of severity, one of the unpredictable cards like the Fool, the High Priestess, Justice, the Wheel of Fortune, the Hanged Man, the Moon or Judgement that can be more cautionary than immediately threatening. In addition, reversal of some of the more favorable cards could produce similar effects, such as a serious drought for the reversed Sun, a catastrophic setback of some kind for the reversed Chariot, or a devastating war for the reversed Emperor. On the other hand, the upright Sun as numerical essence after a series of stormy cards in the main reading can suggest an unbroken stretch of fair weather, a kinder, gentler type of superior force.

I doubt that I would turn to this paradigm to expand the scope of an average reading, but if the outlook is dismal it might be worthwhile to introduce the possibility as a “forewarned is forearmed” advisory like a hazardous-weather warning. The numerical essence provides a symbolic roll-up of the various forces at work in the querent’s circumstances, and as an aggregate of the entire spread it should be accorded more heft as a candidate for force majeure status.

*”Numerical essence” is equivalent to the “quintessence” of French cartomancy and refers to the practice of calculating a single trump from the series of cards pulled for a reading by summing the face values of those cards and then – if the result is 22 or greater – reducing it to a number that falls within the range of the 22 trump cards. (Certain accommodations must be made to include the Fool as either zero or twenty-two.) This produces an additional “roll-up” card (always a Major Arcanum) that offers a summary outlook.

I’ve made a couple of changes to the traditional technique: I include the unnumbered court cards as 11 through 14 so I capture all of the cards on the table, and I subtract the value of any reversed cards so I can arrives at the Fool or obtain a reversed “essence” card. Also, rather than using the method of Theosophical addition described above, I will sometimes apply casting out nines (subtracting increments of nine to come within the 22-card window), which doesn’t require reducing to a single digit.