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Because the Fool does not follow their rules or share their weaknesses, he appears to them in this ugly distorted way. Haich describes the Fool's face as a mask, put there not by himself but by the outside world.

In some early Tarot decks the Fool appeared as a giant court jester, towering over the people around him. His title was 'the Fool of God'. The term has also been used for idiots, harmless madmen, and severe epileptics, all of whom were thought to be in touch with a greater wisdom precisely because they were out of touch with the rest of us.

The archetype persists in modern popular mythology as well. The joker is not descended from the Fool as I, and other Tarotists, have assumed. It was invented by a New York poker club as a 'wild card' to make the game more interesting. It does, however, call forth the same archetype as the Fool, being based on the court jester.

The rivalry of Batman and the Joker sends a clear message to their readers: do not rebel against social values. Support law and order. In recent years the magazine has described the Joker as insane rather than criminal. To society the way of the Fool, instinct rather than rules, is a dangerous insanity. So far we have looked at the Fool as the 'other', prodding us from complacency with his jokes and disguises.

Curiously the image of the Fool as self occurs more in fairy tales than myths. Like 'Boots' or 'Gluck' in the fairy tale, always accompanied by various animal helpers, the Fool in almost every deck walks with a companion. In Waite the figure is a leaping dog, in others a cat or even a crocodile. The animal symbolizes the forces of nature and the animal self of man, all in harmony with the spirit who acts from instinct.

Mythological dogs are often terrifying, for example, the Hound of Hell chasing lost souls. But it is really the same beast; only our attitude changes.

Deny your inner self and it becomes ferocious. Obey it and it becomes benign. Waite's Fool holds a white rose. Roses symbolize passion, while white, the traditional colour of purity, together with the delicate way the flower is held, indicate the passions raised to a higher level.

The Greeks saw Eros, the god of love, as a trickster, making the most proper people act ridiculous. But those who already express their folly will not be thrown by love. The Greeks also spoke of Eros, in other forms, as the animating force of the universe. The bag behind him carries his experiences. The bag bears the head of an eagle, symbol of the soaring spirit.

His high instinct fills and transforms all experience. The eagle is also the symbol of Scorpio raised to a higher level, that is, sexuality raised to spirit. This idea of the connection between sex and spirit will come up again with the card of the Devil. Over his shoulder the Fool carries a stick, like a tramp. But this stick is actually a wand, symbol of power. What could be more foolish than to take a magic wand and use it to carry your bags?

The Fool's wand is black; the others are white. Rather, black means all things being possible, infinite energy of life before consciousness has constructed any boundaries. When we fear blackness or darkness we fear the deep unconscious source of life itself.

Like the joker, the Fool really belongs anywhere in the deck, in combination with and between any of the other cards. He is the animating force giving life to the static images. In the Major Arcana he belongs wherever there is a difficult transition. The Fool also helps us jump the gap from one line to the next, that is, from the Chariot to Strength, from Temperance to the Devil.

To reach the Chariot or Temperance requires great effort and courage, and without the Fool's readiness to leap into new territory we would likely stop with what we have already achieved. The Fool belongs as well with those cards of difficult passage, such as the Moon and Death observe the winding road on each of these two , where he urges us on despite our fears.

In the Minor Arcana the Fool relates first of all to Wands action, eagerness, movement without thought. But it connects as well to Cups, with their emphasis on imagination and instinct. The Fool, in fact, combines these two suits. Later we will see that this combination, fire and water, represents the way of transformation. I have already mentioned the importance of readings for a fuller understanding of the cards.

Even more, they help us apply the wisdom of the cards to our daily lives. In readings the Fool speaks to us of courage and optimism, urging faith in ourselves and in life. At difficult times, when we come under pressure from people around us to be practical, the Fool reminds us that our own inner selves can best tell us what to do. These belong to the Fool in its normal position. We must also consider the 'reversed' meanings, that is, when the way we have mixed the cards makes the Fool come out with the feet on the top.

Reversed meanings are controversial among Tarot commentators. But we can also look at reversals as deepening the meaning of the card as a whole.

In general, a reversed card indicates that the qualities of that card have become blocked, distorted or channelled in another direction. For the Fool a reversal means first of all a failure to follow your instincts. It can mean not taking a chance at some crucial time, because of fear or depending too much on plans and the practical advice of others.

Recklessness, wildness, crazy schemes all seem the opposite of over-caution. And yet, they originate from the same weak ness, a failure to act from inside. The reckless person superimposes a conscious or artificial foolishness on his life both because he does not trust the unconscious to act as a guide and because is also afraid of doing nothing.

This second reversed meaning suggests another dimension to the Fool - the awareness that great chances must be taken only at the proper time. T he basic thing any oracle teaches us is that no action or attitude is r ight or wrong, except in its proper context.

As we go further into the Tarot we will see that this concept of the proper time permeates the cards and is, in fact, the true key to their correct use. T he card in the Rider pack that falls exactly in the middle of the three lines, that is, Justice, means a proper response. As mentioned above, Merlin fulfils both these roles as well as that of teacher and wise man , and many other myths make the same connection.

Earlier Tarot decks pictured trump number one as a conjurer rather than a magus, or even a juggler tossing coloured balls in the air. Charles Williams described him as a juggler tossing the stars and planets. Most modern images of the trump follow Waite's wizard, raising a magic wand to bring into reality the spirit force - the energy of life in its most creative form.

He holds the wand carefully, aware of that psychic power the Fool carried so lightly on his shoulder. T hus, the Magician, as the beginning of the Major Arcana proper, represents consciousness, action and creation.

He symbolizes the idea of manifestation, that is, making something real out of the possibilities in life. T herefore, we see the four emblems of the Minor Arcana - lying on a table in front of him. He not only uses the physical world for his magical operations the four emblems are all objects used by wizards in their rituals , but he also creates the world, in the sense of giving life a meaning and direction.

Unless we make something of our potentials they do not really exist. For us, in the physical world, we can talk of nothing before this moment. In the linking of the Tarot with the Hebrew alphabet the Fool often receives the first letter Aleph. Aleph bears no sound ; it is a silent carrier of vowels, and therefore symbolizes nothingness. It is the first letter of the Ten Commandments. T his would assign the second Hebrew letter, Beth, the first letter with an actual sound, to the Magician.

Beth is the first letter of Genesis. Look at Waite's picture of the Magician. He is not casting spells, or conjuring up demons. He simply stands with one hand raised to heaven and the other pointed to the green earth. He is a lightning rod. By opening himself up to the spir it he draws it down into himself, and then that downward hand, like a lightning rod buried in the ground, runs the energy into the earth. Into reality. We see many accounts of the 'descent of the spirit' in the Bible, in other religious texts and in contemporary religious experience.

People 'speak in tongues' in Pentecostal churches, they scream and shout and roll on the floor at Gospel meetings. The priest giving communion sees himself as a 'vessel' or channel for the Holy Ghost. People tremble with excitement at sporting events. You can sometimes see people at the opening of some important phase of their lives, tapping their legs up and down, half bouncing in their seats, filled with some energy they cannot seem to discharge.

And writers and artists, when their work is going well, will experience themselves as almost passive channels for a spirit-like force. The word 'inspiration' originally meant 'filled with a holy breath' , and derives from the same root as 'spirit'.

Notice that of all these examples all but the priest and the artist are seized with a frenzy. The person in religious fervour shouts and leaps about in order to release an unbearable energy. The life force that fills the universe is not gentle or benign. Thus, the artist does not join in the physical frenzy because she or he is discharging that power into the painting.

Similarly the priest passes the power into the bread and wine. We function best as a channel for energy. Unless we follow the path of the High Priestess in withdrawing from the world, we live our lives most fully when we create or are active.

By doing nothing they hope to preserve their magic moments. But we can really hold on to power in our lives only by constantly discharging it. By releasing creative power we open ourselves up to receive a further flow. However, by trying to hold on to it, we block the channels and the sense of power, which is really life itself, withers within us. The spectator at the football game, even the possessed church-goer, will find their excitement gone after the event that triggered it has ended.

But the craftsman or scientist or teacher - or, for that matter, the Tarot reader - will find the power increase over the years the more they discharge it into physical reality. But the real magic rests in that finger pointing to the earth. That ability to create gives him his title.

His image stems not only from the trickster-conjurer, but also from the archetypal hero. In our culture this would be Prometheus, who brought the heavenly fire down to weak and cold humanity. In the West we tend to see wizards as manipulators. The Tarot and all occult sciences are in a sense revolutionary, because they teach direct salvation, in this life, through your own efforts. We can get a different concept of the Magician through the image of the shaman, or medicine man. Because no hierarchical Church has arisen to banish the shamans they have not become isolated from the community.

They serve as healers, teachers, and directors of the soul after death. Like the wizards, the shamans study and learn complicated techniques.

T heir magical vocabulary is often much larger than the everyday vocabulary of the people around them. None of this training, however, is used to manipulate the spirit or for personal gain. He knows the great power that will enter him at moments of ecstasy and he wants to make sure it does not destroy him and make him of no use to the people around him. Like the wizard the shaman has developed his will to the point where he can direct the fire that fills him.

At the same time he remains open, allowing his ego to dissolve under the direct onslaught of the spirit. It says something about our culture that our wizards stand inside magic circles to make sure the demons cannot touch them.

We can apply the shaman attitude to our use of the whole Tarot deck. But we must not forget that the true magic lies in the images themselves and not the explanations. The divinatory meanings of the Magician derive from both hands, the one which receives the power and the one which directs.

The card means first of all an awareness of power in your life, of spirit or simple excitement possessing you. It can also mean, depending on its position and your reaction to it, someone else's power affecting you. Like the Fool, the card refers to beginnings, but here the first actual steps. It can mean both the inspiration to begin some new project or phase of life, and the excitement that sustains you through the hard work to reach your goal.

Secondly, the Magician means will-power ; the will unified and directed towards goals. It means having great strength because all your energy is channelled in a specific direction.

People who seem always to get what they want in life are often people who simply know what they want and can direct their energy.

Most people rarely act; instead they react, being knocked from one experience to the next. To act is to direct your strength, through the will, to the places where you want it to go. The Magician reversed signifies that in some way the proper flow of energy has become disrupted or blocked. It can mean a weakness, a lack of will or a confusion of purpose that leads to doing nothing. The power is there, but we cannot touch it. The card reversed can mean the lethargic apathy that characterizes depression.

The reversed trump can also mean power abused, a person who uses his or her very strong character to exert a destructive influence on others. The most direct example of this would of course be the psychic aggression of 'black magic'. This problem arises when the energy or spirit fire enters a person who does not know how to direct it into an outer reality. The word 'panic' means 'possessed by the god Pan', himself a symbol of magical forces. T hink again of the lightning rod.

It not only attracts the bolt but runs it into the dirt. Several writers have commented on the relationship between shamanism and what the West calls 'schizophrenia'. Shamans are often not so much chosen as found. But in other cultures, such people receive training. This is not to say that madness does not exist or is not recognized in archaic cultures. Rather, the training is meant to prevent madness by channelling the experiences into a productive direction. The initiates learn, through study with an established shaman, and through physical techniques such as fasting, how to understand, structure and finally direct these visionary experiences towards the service of the community.

The Magician reversed should not be banished or confined; instead, we must find the way to turn it right side up. Throughout the Middle Ages the story persisted that a woman was once elected Pope. Disguised for years as a man, this supposed 'Pope Joan' made her way through the Church hierarchy to the top position, only to die in childbirth during an Easter celebration.

In the late thirteenth century an Italian group called the Guglielrnites believed that their founder, Guglielma of Bohemia, who died in 1 , would rise again in 1 and begin a new age in which women would be popes. Jumping ahead they elected a woman named Manfreda Visconti as the first papess.

Some one hundred and fifty years later the same Visconti family commissioned the first set of Tarot cards as we know them. Among these unnumbered and unnamed trumps appeared a picture of a woman later decks titled 'The Papess'. The name persisted until the eighteenth century when Court de Gebelin, believing the Tarot to originate in the Isis religion of ancient Egypt, changed the name to the High Priestess. The images and the concepts associated with the masculine role had dominated both the Church and Jewish religion for centuries.

They wanted qualities of mercy and love. Like a mother shelters her child from the somewhat distant strictness of the father, a female diety supposedly would intrude for the pathetic sinners against the unremitting j udgement of the Father.

Yet, the people demanded a female. Even the idea of the Church as 'Mother Church' did not go far enough. Finally, the Church capitulated by raising the Virgin Mary almost to the level of Christ himself. If this is true it would indicate not so much a cultural conservatism as the power of the female archetype to maintain a hold and partially triumph against suppression.

In Judaism the official religion of the rabbis managed to resist any insurgent feminism. The people's need, however, took hold in another area: the long tradition of the Kabbalah.

The Kabbalists took a term from the Talmud, 'Shekinah' , which meant God's glory manifest in the physical world, and revised it to make it God's anima, or female side. The Kabbalists also revised the idea of Adam, making him originally hermaphroditic. The separation of Eve from Adam, even the separation of the Shekinah from God, became images of isolation and exile, sometimes connected to Adam and the sin of disobedience.

So far we have looked at the benign motherly qualities of female mythological figures. Historically, however, female deities have always shown a dark, hidden side as well. To introduce the female at all is to introduce the whole archetype. The Tarot splits up the feminine archetype into two trumps and actually assigns the benign qualities to the second one trump 3 , the Empress.

The High Priestess herself represents a deeper, more subtle aspect of the female; that of the dark, the mysterious and the hidden. We should realize that this assigning of qualities to women comes mostly from men and male ideas. The Kabbalists, the occultists, and the Tarot designers, all deplored the separation of men and women into categories and taught unification as a final goal.

This is shown by the World dancer of the Tarot. They were ahead of the established religion which even debated whether women had souls at all.

Nevertheless, men still made the categories. To men, women have always appeared mysterious, strange, and, when safely in their mother role, loving and merciful.

Women seem alien to men, more subtle in their thinking and non-rational. Menstruation itself, a copious bleeding from the genitals, with no loss of life, has simply terrified men through the centuries. Even today superstitious Jews believe that one drop of menstrual blood will kill a plant. The foetus grows and the soul enters it in the warm moist darkness of the womb.

Motherhood linked women to the earth, and there too darkness dominates. Seeds lie in the ground through the dark dead winter, to emerge as food under the warm reassuring rays of the sun which, in many cultures, is considered as male. We can easily see how men came to view themselves as active and women as both passive and mysterious. But passivity contains its own power. It gives the mind a chance to work. People who only know action never get a chance to reflect on what that action has taught them.

In a deeper sense, passivity allows the unconscious to emerge. Only through withdrawal from outer involvement can we allow the inner voice of vision and psychic forces to speak to us. Our society, based completely on outer achievement, fosters a terror of the unconscious, yet without its wisdom we can never fully know ourselves or the world. Most people at some time have felt they understood something in such a deep way that they could never manage to explain it.

The High Priestess signifies inner wisdom at its deepest level. She sits before two pillars, representing both the temple of Isis and the ancient Hebrew temple in Jerusalem, the dwelling place of God on earth, in other words, the home of the Shekinah. The image of the veiled temple or sanctuary appears in many religions.

The Shekinah was indeed said to dwell within the veiled ark of the temple. Now, most people assume we are somehow forbidden to pass the pillars of the High Priestess. In reality, we simply do not know how to. That is the goal of the entire Major Arcana. Look carefully at Smith's picture. You can see what lies behind the veil by looking between the veil and the pillars. And what lies behind is water.

No great temple or complex symbols, simply a pool of water, a line of hills, and the sky. The water is motionless, the secrets in its darkest depths, hidden under a smooth surface. For most of us, at most times, the turbulent unconscious remains hidden under a placid layer of consciousness. The temple introduces the image of the two pillars, and the theme of duality and opposites.

The image occurs again and again through the trumps, in such obvious places as the Hierophant's church pillars or the two towers of the Moon the pillars of the High Priestess seen from the other side , but also in more subtle ways, such as the two sphinxes of the Chariot, or the man and woman of the Lovers. Finally, Judgement, with the child rising between a man and a woman, and the World, holding two wands, resolves the duality by uniting the inner mysteries with the outer awareness.

The letters 'B' and ']' stand for Boaz and Jakin, the names given to the two main pillars of the temple in Jerusalem. Obviously, the dark Boaz stands for passivity and mystery while Jakin symbolizes action and consciousness.

Notice, though, that the letters carry the reverse indications, a white B and a black J. Like the dots in the Tao symbol the letters signify that duality is an illusion, and each extreme carries the other imbedded inside it. In her lap she holds a scroll marked 'Tora'.

This particular spelling allows the word to serve as an anagram for 'Taro'. As the ultimate subject of all Kabbalistic meditations like Christ's crucifixion for Christian mystics the Torah carries a great deal of esoteric significance. We can describe it also as the psychic truths available to us only in the distorted form of myths and dreams. Earlier we spoke of the Fool coming in at crucial moments of change to push us along.

The gap between the High Priestess and the Empress is one such moment. The person beginning in spiritual discipline often prefers to stay at the visionary level rather than go through the slow hard work needed to advance. We can best use the High Priestess's passivity as a balance to the outward-looking attitude of the Magician, but many people find the passive side extremely attractive. It represents an answer to struggle, a quiet retreat instead of the harsh glare of self-exposure when we involve ourselves openly with other people.

But the human mind does not work like that. It requires passion and it needs to connect itself to the world. The person who tries to live a completely passive life becomes depressed, more and more trapped in a cycle of apathy and fear. Ovid tells the story of Actaeon, a hunter, and therefore a figure who properly belonged to the world of action.

He happened one day to see a stream and decided to follow it to its source again, water as a symbol of the unconscious. Thus he became separated from his dogs and the other hunters, and when he had reached the source, away from the active world, he saw a group of maidens.

Now, if Actaeon had returned immediately to the outer world he would have found his life enriched. When he ran away, terrified, his own dogs tore him to pieces. Here the Fool comes in and remember the Fool's dog, leaping at his side , reminding us to dance lightly away from both these visions, the Magician as well as the High Priestess, until we are truly ready to assimilate them.

The divinatory meanings of the High Priestess deal first with a sense of mystery in life, both things we do not know, and things we cannot know. It indicates a sense of darkness, sometimes as an area of fear in our lives, but also one of beauty. A period of passive withdrawal can enrich our lives by allowing things inside to awaken. More specifically, the card can refer to visions and to occult and psychic powers, such as clairvoyance.

Action must follow or the potential will never be realized. Despite its deep wisdom the card can sometimes carry a negative meaning. Like most of the trumps, the High Priestess's value depends on the context of the other cards. Negatively the trump indicates passiveness at the wrong time or for too long, leading to weakness, fear of life and other people. It shows a person with strong intuition who cannot translate feelings into action, or a person afraid to open up to other people.

Whether the good or bad aspect of the card comes up in a particular reading depends on the surrounding cards and of course the reader's intuition we partake of the High Priestess every time we read the cards. Very often both meanings will apply. Human beings have more than one side. The card reversed signifies a turn towards passion, towards a deep involvement with life and other people, in all ways, emotionally, sexually and competitively.

However, the pendulum can swing too far, and then the card reversed can symbolize a loss of that most precious knowledge: the sense of our inner selves. At the same time these cards deal with a much wider development, of which the individual development is a microcosm.

While they set the principles for the whole deck, the Magician and the High Priestess apply very specifically to the first line. The movement between opposites is the basic rhythm of the material world. Nothing exists absolutely in nature. In the words of Ursula Le Guin, 'Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness the right hand of light.

The middle three cards of the line are a set. They show us a triad of nature, society, and. They also signifY mother, father, and education. In ancient Egypt the godhead was often viewed as a trinity. The persons changed from place to place and through the years, but they were usually a female and two males, with the female viewed as supreme.

At some point each one of us must learn to distinguish ourselves from the outer world. Before this time personality remains a vague and formless creation of parents and society.

Those who never make the break become cut off from a full life. For most people the medium by which they break from their parents is the emergence Freudians and perhaps occultists would say 're-emergence' of the sexual drive at puberty. It is no accident that children rebel from their parents in ideas, habits, and dress at the same time that their bodies grow towards maturity. The development of individuality is only a part of growth.

Each person must find his or her personal goals and achievements. At the same time he or she will sooner or later face sorrow, sickness, and the general weakness of a life governed by old age and death. Only when we reach a full understanding of the outer life of humanity can we hope to reach inwards for a deeper reality.

She is motherhood, love, gentleness. Both motherhood and sex derive from feelings that are non-intellectual and basic to life. Passions rather than ideas. The Empress is pure emotion. But the social images are crippling in another way as well. They are trivial. The Empress, along with such mythological counterparts as Aphrodite or Ishtar or Erzulie, represent something very grand.

They signify the passionate approach to life. They give and take experience with uncontrolled feeling. Until we learn to experience the outer world completely we cannot hope to transcend it. Only through passion, can we sense, from deep inside rather than through intellectual argument, the spirit that fills all existence.

Many people see religion as an alternative to the natural world, w hich they view as somehow impure or dirty. The body, and the natural world, are realities that must be integrated rather than denied. Mter renouncing the world Gautama joined the ascetics, the other pole. But he reached enlightenment only when he had rejected both extremes for the Middle Way. Thus, we can see the Buddha in the World dancer who holds both the Magician and the High Priestess lighdy in her hands.

As a combination of 1 and 2 the number 3 signifies synthesis and harmony. The natural world combines the Magician and the High Priestess in an indivisible unity of life and death, darkness and light. The idea of emotion also brings together the Magician archetype of activeness with the High Priestess archetype of instinct. Consider as well the process of creation. Recendy Carl Sagan demonstrated that life on earth might have begun when a lightning bolt struck the primordial sea.

Thus again, from the lightning of the Magician striking the waters of the High Priestess, comes the natural world. The symbolism of the Waite-Smith Empress reflects the idea of nature, with all its force and glory. The Empress herself, voluptuous and sensual, suggests passion. Her shield is a heart with the sign of Venus, the Roman version of the Great Goddess. Throughout the ancient world the goddess ruled, as Demeter, Astarte, Nut, until the patriarchal invaders demoted her to wife and finally banished her altogether with an all-male godhead.

At the Empress's feet grows a field of grain; the goddess ruled agriculture, and in North-Western Europe was called the 'Corn Goddess'. She wears a necklace of nine pearls, for the nine planets, while her crown contains twelve stars for the signs of the zodiac.

In short, she wears the universe as her j ewellery. The Great Mother is not the forms of nature, but the underlying principle of life. The stars are six-pointed, a symbol much older than its current use as a social emblem for Judaism. Again, the Empress combines trumps 1 and 2 in a new reality. A river flows from the trees behind her to disappear beneath her seat. Deep in our selves we can sense the rhythm of a river, carrying us forward through experience u ntil, with death, our individual lives retur n to the sea of existence.

The river symbolizes also the unity of change and stability. The water in it is never the same, yet it always remains a particular river, with its ow n special qualities. Human beings change from day to day, the cells of our bodies die and new ones take their place, yet we always remain ourselves. The number 3 produced by the combination of 1 and 2 brings out yet another idea. Just as the numbers 1 and 2 stood specifically for male and female, so the number 3 signifies the child produced by their joining together.

The child is bor n as a creature of nature, unburdened with ego and personality, experiencing the universe directly, without controls or labels. It is only as we grow older that we lear n to put barriers between ourselves and life.

But if the Empress signifies the child she also stands for the mother. Motherhood is the basic means by which life continues throughout nature. And because the physical bond of the mother and child is so direct, mother love, in its strongest form, is pure feeling, given without intellectual or moral considerations.

This is, of course, an ideal, and in reality such love may come more from the male parent than the female, or sadly, not at all. Throughout history people have identified motherhood with nature, so that the term 'Great Mother' for the earth itself appears all over the world, and even today we speak vaguely of Mother Nature. In readings the Empress represents a time of passion, a period when we approach life through feelings and pleasure rather than thought.

The passion is sexual or motherly; either way it is deeply experienced, and in the right context can give great satisfaction. In the wrong context, when analysis is needed, the Empress can m ean a stubbor n emotional approach , a refusal to consider the facts. She can indicate another problem as well: self-indulgent pleasure when restraint is needed.

Usually, however, she indicates satisfaction and even understanding gained through the emotions. On the one hand it can signify a retreat from feeling, either rejecting your emotions or attempting to suppress your desires, particularly sexual. In their right side up and reversed meanings trumps 2 and 3 are mirrors of each other. It sometimes happens that in a reading both will appear, upside down. This means that the person expresses both emotional and intuitive mental aspects, but in a negative way.

Rationality comes as a reaction to excessive emotional involvement, while a feeling of isolation or coldness leads to passion. If the two aspects of the goddess can be experienced right side up the person will achieve a more stable and rewarding balance.

Not just mother and father, but Mother and Father. Because our mothers give us life and feed us and shelter us we tend to see them as figures of love and mercy and get very upset when they act harshly or coldly. But the Father, especially in traditional times when the sex roles were stricter, remained more remote, and therefore a figure of severity. To the child the father is in many ways indistinguishable from society as a whole, just as the mother is nature itself.

One of the painful moments of maturity for many people comes when they discover the limited humanity of their parents.

In Freud's scheme of mental development the father and the rules of society become directly linked. The infant psyche demands constant satisfaction, particularly in its desires for food and physical pleasure from the mother. Freudians may claim the child desires actual intercourse with its mother, but the situation holds even if the child seeks only the pleasure of being held against the mother's body.

But what form does this super-ego take? Precisely that of the rules of society, traditionally learned under the father's guidance. He symbolizes the laws of society, both good and bad, and the power that enforces them.

Later, when the male dominated religions took over, the king came to symbolize the rule of law which had clamped a lid of repression on what seemed to the patriarchs as the monstrous and chaotic darkness of the old order. We see this drama much like Freud's substitution of super-ego for id in many myths; such as Marduk, national hero of Babylon, killing Tiamat, the original mother of creation, because she is giving birth to monsters.

Whether or not we see the old ways as monstrous or the new as civilized, the Emperor symbolizes the abstraction of society replacing the direct experience of nature. In Rome, the concept of law versus chaos was carried to the point where stability, or 'law and order' to use the modern term, became virtues in themselves, apart from the inherent morality of those laws.

No progress can be made in conditions of anarchy runs the argument ; bad laws need to be changed, but first the law must be obeyed at all costs. Any other approach can only destroy society.

Today, we see this viewpoint embodied in an abstraction we call the 'system'. The Romans saw it more concretely in the personal figure of the Emperor, whom they described as the father of all his people. In the Emperor's best aspect he indicates the stability of a just society that allows its members to pursue their personal needs and development. The natural world is chaotic; without some kind of social structure we could each spend all our lives fighting to survive.

Society allows us both to work together and to benefit from the experience of those who! Stability allows spiritual development as well. In many countries society supports the churches though whether this arrangement furthers spirituality is arguable ; in some Eastern countries monks are free to pursue their studies because laymen fill their beggar bowls. Without this social custom they would have to spend their time working to get bread. Once we establish law and order as supreme then a corrupt ruler becomes a disaster.

But if the entire system is corrupt, producing only bad rulers, then stability becomes the enemy of morality. In an unjust society the Emperor's power hinders, rather than helps, personal development. A great many people have gone to gaol for attacking unjust laws. Even at its best, however, the Emperor remains limited.

Over the spontaneity of the Empress he has laid a network of repression. If we lose touch w ith our passions then life becomes cold and barren. T he Rider pack Emperor see Fig. Sa is drawn as old and stiff, dressed in iron, representing the ster ility of a life r ig idly governed by rules. T he r iver which flowed so powerfully through the Empress's garden has here become a thin stream, barely able to penetrate a lifeless desert.

The card's other symbolism reflects its dual aspects. He holds an ankh, Egyptian symbol of life, to indicate that under the law he bears the power of life and death, and will hopefully use it well. Now, Ar ies symbolizes force, aggression and war, but as the first sign of the zodiac it also signifies the new life of spring, which can emerge from the stability of a just society. As the middle card of the first line of the Major Arcana the Emperor represents a crucial test. In the process of growing up it is indeed the rules of society that many people find most difficult to surmount.

We must absorb these rules, as well as our society's traditions and beliefs, then go beyond them to find a personal code of conduct. This does not mean the attitude 'rules are made to be broken'. People who feel compelled to flaunt all laws remain as bound to those laws as the person who follows them blindly.

They may recognize it rationally but it disturbs and haunts them. Similar problems plague those people for whom the Empress remains their mother's, rather than their own, passions and sensuality. The idea of the Emperor as that of the limited values of social structure ar ises mainly from Waite and his followers.

Here the Emperor symbolizes the sum total of spiritual knowledge. He is drawn in profile this is much more common than the Rider pack full-face image , linking him to the Kabbalist image for God as the 'Ancient of Days' , a seated king in profile.

The Ancient's face was never visible, oruy his crown with a radiance beneath. The Emperor's arms and legs form an equilateral triangle over a cross, the alchemical sign for fire.

This figure is later reversed in Waite as well as Case in the Hanged Man. Also an esoteric symbol, the cube symbolizes both the world and the Tarot itself, as well as the Hebrew alphabet and the paths of the Tree of Life. The symbolism arises from the fact that a cube contains twelve edges, six faces, three axes, and of course a centre, adding up to twenty-two, the number of trumps, Hebrew letters, and paths.

And because the Tree of Life is held to represent all creation the cube symbolizes the urnverse. In readings the Emperor indicates following the Rider pack image the power of society, its laws and especially its authority to enforce those laws. The appearance of the trump indicates an encounter with the law. Again, the good or bad qualities depend on the context. More personally the Emperor can signify a time of stability and order in a person's life, hopefully opening up creative energy.

He also can indicate a specific person who holds great power, either objective or emotional, over the subject. I have seen readings so dominated by the Emperor that all of life's possibilities become stunted and unfulfilled. As a card of personal qualities, the Emperor can indicate the ability to defend one's territory, to create firm boundaries and vigorously maintain them. He symbolizes a rationalist approach to issues, one that values analysis and measurement over emotion and intuition.

But the pendulum can swing too far. The reversed Emperor can signify immaturity, and the inability to make harsh decisions and carry them through. Waite wrote that he rej ected 'Pope' because the title suggested a very specific example of the trump's general idea. The name 'Hierophant' belonged to the high priest of the Greek Eleusinian mysteries.

Now, Waite describes his card as symbolizing the 'outer way' of churches and dogma. This interpretation is dramatically portrayed in the picture of the Hierophant from Aleister Crowley's Book of Thoth, drawn by Frieda Harris. The Order of the Golden Dawn, to which Waite and Crowley at one time both belonged, possibly originated the term 'Hierophant' for trump 5.

These two meanings, 'outer way' and 'secret doctrine', appear contradictory on the most elementary level. In reality they are very similar. Whether the two acolytes are being admitted to the Church or to an occult society, they are still entering a doctrine, with a set of beliefs which they must learn and accept before they can gain entrance.

There is of course a fundamental difference between say, the catechism and the rituals of the Golden Dawn. Following Waite's interpretation and thinking specifically of the Western pope we can see the Hierophant as a companion to the Emperor. The word 'pope' means 'father', and like the Roman Emperor the Pope is seen as a wise father guiding his children. Together, they share responsibility for humanity, the one providing physical needs, the other guiding spiritual growth.

In one of the earliest treatises urging separation of Church and State, Dante argued that the two functions must not be combined for fear of corruption. However, he never questioned the idea that the Church is responsible for our souls. Our democratic age rej ects the notions of an intermediary between an individual and God. Originally the special function of the priests was evident; they spoke to the gods through the oracles, an often terrifying practice, and most people quite happily let someone else do it for them.

Basically it depends on the notion that most people do not really care much about God. There are, however, certain people who, by temperament, feel very directly the spirit that runs through all our lives. Called to the priesthood by their own inner awareness, these people can speak to God for us. More important, they can speak to us , interpreting God's law so we may live proper lives, and eventually, after death, receive our reward of returning to God. Mter the resurrection we ourselves will dwell in sight of God.

In life, however, we need the priests to guide us. So runs the argument. Even if we agree with the principle, in practice it tends to break down.

People become priests for all sorts of reasons - ambition, family pressure, etc. Moreover, like the social institutions of the Emperor, the religious institutions of the Hierophant can easily become corrupted by the authority given them, so that the priests see their power as an end in itself, prizing obedience above enlightenment.

Perhaps, however, we reject the idea of a guiding priesthood for a more subtle reason. This may very well be true. To really discover God inside yourself you must undergo some uncomfortable confrontations with your own psyche. Similarly, to decide for yourself what is the moral thing to do in all situations might require a constant agony of choice. Perhaps the interpretation of the Hierophant a s representing secret doctrines suits our age better. For then the doctrine does not tell us what to do, but instead gives us direction to begin working on ourselves.

And the Tarot, as we saw with the Magician, sets itself against all Churches by leading us to personal salvation in this life. For Crowley the Hierophant represents initiation as the means through which the individual becomes united with the universe. Crowley comments that only the future can tell us what the new 'current of initiation' will be.

But the basic quality of initiation as a merging with the cosmos always remains the same. In the Rider pack card both keys are gold, indicating that the dark side is hidden from those who follow the outer doctrine. In the Waite-Smith imagery no veil blocks the entrance to the Church, as in the temple of the High Priestess. But the pill ars are a dull grey. The unconscious remains closed. And the keys of the Hierophant do not fit that tantalizing lock. Still, we must not think that the outer doctrine of religion serves no purpose to the seeker.

Like the general education, of which it is a particular example, it gives the individual a firm tradition in which to root his or her personal development. This is based, possibly, on global awareness plus the view of religion as a psychological state divorced from science and history. While this idea opens great possibilities, many people have noted its potential shallowness.

The fact is, throughout the centuries, the great mystics have always spoken from deep within a tradition.

In its best aspect the Hierophant as outer doctrine can give us a place to start in creating a personal awareness of God. The very next two cards after trump 5 repeat the motif, with the angel over the Lovers, and the charioteer of the Chariot over the black and white sphinxes. To understand the meaning of the image we must return to the High Priestess. She sits between two pillars symbolizing the dualities of life.

The Hierophant initiates two acolytes into his church. We see, therefore, that the Hierophant and the Lovers and the Chariot all represent attempts to mediate between the opposing poles of life and find some way, not to resolve them, but simply to hold them in balance. If we surrender ourselves to a Church the contradictions of life all become answered; but not resolved.

In reading the card signifies Churches, doctrines, and education in general. Reversed, the card means unorthodoxy, especially mental - forming original ideas. It can also, however, mean gullibility and this idea suggests another virtue of the card when it is the right way up. Those who reject it must find their own ways and can easily get lost in superficial ideas.

Where the Tarot de Marseilles on the right, above shows a young man struck by Cupid's arrow and forced to choose between two women, the Rider pack shows a mature man and a single woman presided over by an angel. Further, while most decks indicate only a social situation, the Rider pack image clearly suggests the Garden of Eden, or rather, a new Garden of Eden, with the trees bringing enlightenment rather than the Fall.

The earlier version of trump 6 sometimes bears the title 'The Choice', and in divinatory readings means an important choice between two desires. Because one woman is fair and the other dark, a symbolism traditional in Europe where darkness always indicates evil and women in general indicate temptation, the choice was seen as between something respectable but perhaps dull, and something greatly desired but morally improper.

The choice can, in fact, extend to a person's whole life. Even those people who never question the boundaries of their middle class respectability have made a choice as much as the life-long criminal.

And there are many people who outwardly live socially acceptable lives yet inwardly fight constant torments of desire, fighting urges to adultery, or violence, or simply a desire to leave home and become a wandering tramp. The Church labelled magicians as devil worshippers, and in Christian allegories the dark woman usually stood for Satan.

These meanings all see the choice between light and dark in the widest possible terms. In the context of the first line of trumps we can see it in a much more specific way, that of the first real choice a person makes independently of his or her parents.

Until the sexual urge rouses itself most people are content to act out their parents' expectations for them. The sexual urge, however, points us where it wants to go. As a result we begin to break away in other areas as well.

It is very rare that the partners our parents would choose for us are the ones we would choose for ourselves. If the difference is too extreme, or the parents too controlling, then the person can face a painful choice. Paul Douglas has commented that the darkhaired woman, who appears much older, is the boy's mother, and the choice is whether to stay under her protection or strike out on his own.

Those who believe, with Freud, that a boy's first desire is directed towards his mother will see here a classic Oedipal dilemma. One part of the personality wishes to maintain the hidden fantasy life of a union with the mother, while another wishes to find a true love in the reality of the boy's own generation.

But we do not have to accept the Freudian doctrine to see the wider implications of this choice. But he or she, for girls basically face the same questions, though sometimes in different forms can never become a true individual without making a break.

And nothing indicates this more strongly than sexuality. Cards 3, 4 and 5 represented us as shaped by the great forces of nature, society, and parents. In card 6 the individual emerges, a true personality with its own ideas and purposes, able to make important choices based, not on parental orders, but on its own assessment of desires and responsibilities.

These meanings belong to the card's traditional structure. In designing his own version of the Lovers Waite addressed a different question.

And what deep meanings can we find in the powerful drama of two people joining their hearts and bodies? Waite called his picture, 'the card of human love, here exhibited as part of the way, the truth, and the life'. The sexual drive leads us away from isolation. It pushes us to form vital relationships with other people, and finally opens the way to love. Therefore the angel appears above the man's and woman's heads, a vision unobtainable to each person individually, but glimpsed by both of them together.

We have already seen this idea reflected in the Magician and the High Priestess, as well as the Empress and the Emperor. The symbolism here is reinforced by the fact that the Tree of Life, with its Magician like flames, stands behind the man, while the Tree of Knowledge, entwined with the serpent symbol not of evil but of unconscious wisdom stands behind the woman.

The angel unites these two principles. Occultists, however, have always recognized both these elements within the self. When male and female were seen as opposite in their deepest natures the occultist view was much more radical. Uploaded by szare on January 14, Search icon An illustration of a magnifying glass. User icon An illustration of a person's head and chest.

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