I took up the tarot about a year ago. I’ve always been drawn to these cards, the evocative, colorful pictures, each imbued with a sense of both history and mystery. Redolent of Italian parlors and gypsy caravans, the cards embody romance, adventure and the promise of revelation. Pure magic.
When I was six years old, I lived in a commune in Michigan while my parents were going through a separation. It was a massive turn-of-the-century affair with peeling clapboard siding beside an even older graveyard, and it had once served as an agricultural boarding house. In truth, it was still more boarding house than commune; there was no abiding ideology that bound the house’s residents. It was 1975 and in the spirit of the times for people to come together and ravel away. We were refugees, it seemed, even to my six-year-old mind, survivors in the aftermath of things beyond our ken. And I remember Mary, a gifted, haunted tarot card reader with a sheath of black hair, trembling hands, and a homemade mobile that clanged dully outside her second-story window in the breeze, made of forks and knives, all painted red. One felt Mary had a foot in two worlds, this one that could be seen and touched, and one dimly sensed behind and above and inside the other, defying spatial definitions, more archetypal than literal, yet perhaps realer for all it mystery and potentiality.
On the eve of Vasilisa‘s publication, it struck me that here was an opportunity to have some fun. What was the mood, the flavor, the nature of this book, and how might it enter the world? I don’t read cards to predict events, although it is uncanny how they seem to capture things, sometimes in startlingly specific ways. I read cards the same way I write, parent and live — intuitively, and with a great sense of joy, exploration and fun.
I hold the cards lightly.
The Empress card was chosen as the signifier card to represent Vasilisa, and to ground the reading. A card of fertility, earth and nurturing, it seemed to suit the book and symbolized its “birth” into the world.
The first card drawn literally covers the signifier and is known as the — you guessed it — cover card. It expresses the spirit and the basic nature of your subject or query. I drew The Star.
This is an otherworldly card, expressing the beauty and wonder of pure inspiration, unfettered by practical concerns. One foot in the waters of creation, one on land, the maiden pours water from two chalices, yet unlike the figure in Temperance, there is no conservation here, such is the abundance of her bounty. She is mesmerized by the process itself, drawing from the well only to pour it out and draw again, and unlike other cards that take place beyond the veil, there is no road leading back to civilization.
The crossing card, contradicting or lending nuance to the cover card, came up as The Tower. Catastrophe! Calamity! Edifices crumbling and the terror of destruction! Yet, how can creation exist in our temporal reality without destruction, its necessary antecedent and fate? And sometimes, the edifice that must fall is one’s own ego, one’s arrogance, or false perceptions. Vasilisa was incubated within The Tower, back when I had an agent and dreamed of accolades, yet it was born amid the rubble of that dream under an abiding star, naked, like the star-struck maiden, with only its own worth to recommend it.
Perfect.
The next two cards, the basis card below, and the recent past card to the left, plunge us into the karma of our subject’s journey, a map of where it’s been in both broad and specific terms. In the Seven of Swords, the figure is making off with his prize alone, a daring, perhaps ill-advised, coup given the two swords he leaves behind. In the Five of Wands, young men joust for the thrill of competition, entering the fray. Taken together, these two cards well capture my experience of embarking on my new path, leaving the ruins of the crumbled tower, feeling my isolation and ignorance yet taking action, no matter how imperfect, and striving against my equals and my betters on the field on competition.
Above, the Two of Pentacles occupies the speculative position, representing the energy at play as uncertain outcomes percolate like quarks. A juggler, this figure dances while he experiments, handling his burdens lightly but deftly. As a departure from the past, this card seems to counsel play, competence, experimentation. And its approach is endorsed by the near future card, to the right of the cross — a card that needs little introduction beyond its title and image: The World. Representing attainment in both practical and spiritual terms, this card occupies the last position in the Major Arcana and bodes well for Vasilisa‘s journey, though with the fallen Tower still smoking behind, one is advised to interpret success in abiding, not fleeting, terms.
Coming up the line of cards to the right of my cross, we have the Nine of Wands at the bottom, representing my self, followed by the Page of Swords, representing my interior or exterior environment. Vasilisa‘s path is inextricable from my own; the reading is a snapshot of my creation and myself. The vigilant figure glares behind his poorly wrought palisade, aware of the inadequacy of his defenses. And yet, here the card is reversed. I am abandoning my false defenses, but in favor of what? This in answered by the following card, the Page of Swords, holding his weapon aloft from high ground above the clouds. He does not threaten with it but seeks clarity, incisiveness, new insight. Once again, this journey is defined by the failure of false assurances, of the ego, and the abandonment of superficial objectives in favor of exploration, into the self, into the unknown.
The last two cards, going up the line, are the Eight of Pentacles, signifying my hopes and fears, and the Eight of Cups, expressing the final outcome. From his reversed position, the gardener watches his crop obsessively, and one is reminded of the apocryphal farmer who was so eager for his harvest that he pulled up all the shoots before they could take root. The vestiges of the The Tower linger, like thunder in the distance, and one hungers for success. Yet, what does success mean? What growth do I tend? And if I can appreciate the flowering of each shoot, is that not a greater harvest than a feast consumed without awareness? Each step of this journey seems to warn me off the old path, and never more so than in the final card when we see the figure embarking into the twilight of an eclipse, leaving behind eight chalices, perfectly upright, yet no longer capable of sustenance. What beckons is the journey into the unknown, even as it did at the reading’s beginning under the shining Star.
Thanks for taking this journey with me! I think this will have to be a semi-annual tradition. I hope you’ll join me again next September when I do the birthday reading for Elena the Brave. What adventures will she have? My take-away from Vasilisa‘s journey, expressed perfectly in this reading, is that the one is equal, if not superior, to the many, and in truth, we cannot appreciate the many unless we appreciate the one: each reader, each relationship, each moment. As I embark off into the watery reaches of exploration, I’m delighted to take you with me, so stay tuned, reach out, and happy reading.
