X - Wheel of Fortune

     This mysterious card the Wheel of Fortune is one of the more enigmatic cards in the Major Arcana. It is usually simplified into "luck" and seen as a benevolent card to arrive in a reading. It is regarded as heralding a change of fortune, usually for the better. How this can be conferred from the symbolism is hard to grasp.
      The card itself is bursting with images, symbols and occult looking glyphs. These can be decoded with some understanding and I will elucidate their meanings for you shortly.
     I really wanted to get to the bottom of this card as it has been sat on my desk and at my bedside table while I have pondered it's meaning. My own life has been under going some changes recently and I would hope that the changes are for the better. It has felt as though the wheel that has been stuck for so long has begun it's inexorable movement forward out of inertia.
   The disk in the centre of the card is what first draws most people's attention. It is a bright fiery red orange contrasting against the blue of the sky, the image being representative of the workings of heaven. Upon the wheel are various glyphs. We have on the outer disk the letters "T" "A" "R" "O" which follow around one full cycle to form Tarot...also Tora(h) and Rota can be gained as well as a few more esoteric forms. Interspersed with these letter are the hebrew letters which form the Tetragrammaton for the name of the God of Israel (YHWH).
      The inner circle has delineations representing the eight seasons depicted in various pagan and oriental calendars. These lines are also shown covering the four basic alchemical substances (Water, Mercury, Sulphur and Salt) which sit in the cardinal directions.
       This all adds up to a lot of symbolism pointed at calenders and complete systems with multiple components or facets making up the whole. The whole card it seems is based on complete cycles, whether it is the elements, seasons, humours, astrology or numerology (10 is the beginning of a new cycle and entrance into double digits).
        When I became ten years old, it felt like I had entered an entirely new realm. There was nothing particularly tangible about it, but I knew that I would never have a single digit age again. It was a rite of passage that once passed could not be rescinded. We all go through certain cycles and there is little we can do to change these things, they are part of the fabric of our universe. The seasons come and go, people are born, grow old and then they die. We are powerless before the wheel of time.
        We see on the card Anubis the Jackal headed God of the afterlife on the underside of the wheel, occupying a position beneath common consciousness. His role was as a guardian and protector of the dead in Egyptian mythology.  He was also given the role of judge over the souls of the dead, before it was passed on to Osiris. He also appears as a bright red, linking him with the wheel and the process of karma, judgement and the cycling of the souls onto their rightful destinations. This implies that the wheel itself is somewhat driven by karma and it will bring into being what you have sown, the judge being that of the unconscious.
         Atop the wheel sits a sphinx, she is a bright blue and is an amalgamation of the four fixed astrological signs who sit in the corners of the card (Leo, Aquarius, Scorpio and Taurus). Curiously she doesn't possess wings and the elemental beings do. The sphinx holds a sword and sits in balance atop the wheel, linking her to the attribute of mind and thought. In her I see a link to the balanced forces of heaven, a conjunction of all the elements in balance sat above the wheel. She is a master of all the elements and even of karma itself. She points to the great secret that frees you from the wheel of karmic fortune, of being aligned with heavenly forces and not being ruled by astrological influences and yet being ultimately a part of them. The lack of wings is a symbol of her choice to remain upon the wheel and the blue is her connection to the throat chakra and living in alignment.
        On the descending side we see a golden coloured snake. Snakes are a symbol of wisdom and the gold is representative of wealth. The snake brings the wisdom of the workings of the universe gathered by the four astrological signs down into the material world. This is where the good luck and wealth aspects of the card really come in. The snake has already passed the apex and is descending to earth bringing with it good fortune and great wisdom. By this we can see that the wheel has already been set in motion, that the good karma, wisdom in past actions and alignment with cosmic forces has created a beneficial aspect.
         So as to be complete the four astrological signs all sit in their corners studying books of wisdom. They are being filled with knowledge about their respective positions in the universe and they will eventually reach enlightenment (The World card).
         The Wheel of Fortune has a very heavy esoteric bias, but most people are happy to see this card as good luck without understanding the mechanisms for its creation, which are all written here upon this key. In the end there will be no need for luck as one will be free to align with whichever stars happen to be favoured, rather than being tied to one's own.
        I am not there yet, so I am simply happy to receive this card, to know that the wheel is turning and all the good I have put into play will return to me. Coincidentally (or not), it is interesting to note that I drew this card one calender year from the end of the current cycle in the Mayan calender in 2012...spooky!
     
 

XI-Justice

This is the first Major Arcana card that I have drawn so far. The Major Arcana are some of the most powerful cards in the deck and pulling one usually suggests something going on beyond just the mundane. If a reading has plenty of these cards then the issue may be especially relevant.
    This card has alot of rich colours and the central figure similar to the typical figure of justice is a woman (although it is kind of difficult to tell with this card!). The royal purple suggests a heavenly appointment and the crown signifies the authority to dispense justice. The reds and greens create a striking contrast, as does the purple against the yellow crown. These complementary colours show the power inherent in the card. The scales in her hand connect the card to Libra and also to Venus..its planetary ruler. The upraised sword is perfectly straight and poised to dispense whatever measure may be necesary. Everything in this card suggests balance, equanimity and fairness..even her scarf is symmetrical.  The only imbalance is her foot poking out and pointing to the right, which I feel doesn't need to be explained further.
    One very important consideration with this card is that she, unlike our statues of justice has no blindfold. While human justice is blind, it appears that divine judgement suffers no errors or bias. One of the major aspects of this card is the understanding of the workings of karma. In a way she very directly portrays karma in action, impartial, but all seeing.
     Now, the general idea of karma can be very limiting. What you sow is what you reap. While this is true, it can lead to some very basic errors about how it functions. It can give the impression that it is like an inexorable wheel turning and crushing all those beneath it that have done "Wrong" and handing out sweets and feathery wings to those who have done "Good" deeds. That at some point in the future you will pay for your crimes or those acts of kindness. This can create tremendous fear and worry in those that have done wrong and a kind of smugness in those that commit charitable acts as they squirrel away good karma points.
    While this is the basic premise and it does function in such a way, there are far more elements to consider. If we imagine that every action we commit to is colour, so red is passionate actions, green is compassionate and caring, black is hate and so on. Each of these actions colours us, so the more we hate, the blacker our soul becomes and so forth, so that eventually we appear to be a record of every action we have ever taken. Now if we image that these clouds of colour hang around us and tint the world we live in, so a loving person sees the world in hues of rosey pink and and hateful being sees everything in shades of black.
    Now of course it is easy to see that the hateful person is already living his own punishment. Each action is rarely a pure colour and many times these actions become muddied (such as by smugness). But it is possible to clear away these colours through truly forgiving and reparations, which is effectively neutralising the colour with its opposite. So love cancels and reduces hatred in a very real sense.
    This model has the advantage of showing us that if you do something bad, it is not out of your hands to prevent that by neutralising it before it arrives. Of course, one must actually neutralise the right action, a murderer could not make things right by devoting money to charity..all he is doing is adding a different hue..not canceling the other out.
    So karma as I understand it is happening now..in the moment, we decide what kind of world we will see and how the future will turn out by the actions we commit in the moment..and if you don't like it..change it.
    On a personal level this card is showing me something..a choice I believe I have to make. In my last post I mentioned how with my clairvoyant sight, I find it somewhat clouded as if I was wearing a gauze over my eyes. Of course in this card, Justice has no such blindfold, even though her human counterpart does and it is ironic that it is a point to be discussed now. It has become apparent to me that playing so many video games is impairing the further growth of my abilities, as well as being a considerable time sink when I could be doing something a great deal more constructive. This has left me feeling like I have to make a choice which route I can follow. I do love playing video games, but I lose track of the time and basically fall into a trance in which the outside world becomes less relevant. Coming out of that fugue makes me feel like I have lost or wasted time..now this could be a throwback to my childhood where playing games was seen as something negative and I was often restricted as a form of punishment for bad behaviour. I don't wish for it to become some form of self flagellation or abnegation.
   But I feel I could be a great deal more productive if I didn't get stuck in it so often. I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with games and gaming, in fact I think they are a great deal healthier than TV and good for developing imagination and remaining connected to child-like states of wonder.
   In the end the choice is up to me, I can attempt to reach my full potential without the games and live more in the world and in the moment.
   Or I can continue to play games and live at a lower level than I know I am capable of.
    The card is saying I can choose my path or my poison, neither is wrong, but I will get exactly what will come from each choice and must not close my eyes to the repercussions. For me there is no middle ground in this, I barely have enough will power to resist it, so I must make a clean cut either way. There is no one else to blame for my actions in this but myself.