Returning, With More Tarot

The holidays consumed me. Now there is a ginormous blizzard outside, and I’m in here with food and tea containing another of Dr. McGillicudy’s fine products, this one butterscotch liqueur. So let’s Tarot.

Appropriately for both the post-holiday withdrawal and my current Fortress-of-Solitude-but-without-Kryptonian-holograms surroundings, the first card we deal with tonight is The Hermit. This is just about always an old guy with a lamp and some mountains (unless you’re in weird genre-specific decks, where YMMV and will probably include anime dudes or giant orcas), and is one of a subset of the Major Arcana that I like to call The Fucking Obvious Tarot Cards. Like, there are some cards that seem to mean one thing and don’t (blah blah Death as transformation, we’ll get into it later), and there are some, especially later, that are abstract or weird, but The Hermit, The Lovers, Justice, and Temperance all at least to some degree are exactly what they say on the tin.

Of these, the Hermit is the most obvious. It means…being a hermit. Withdrawal. Solitude. Spiritual contemplation. A search for cosmic truth, or inner truth. Hanging out in a cave, letting your hair grow, probably developing some body odor issues, the whole fucking Jedi pension plan. (Go ahead, name a senior Jedi who wasn’t all about living in the kind of backwater isolation where you have to hike a mile and fight a giant centipede to get a damn Manhattan. Can’t do it, can you?) (I do not accept Extended Universe references.) (Also I know Star Wars Universe wouldn’t have a Manhattan, because no point of reference. Spacehattan. Whatever. Shut up.) The Lovers and Justice both have complications, but this dude is pretty straightforward; the complications in any given reading basically boil down to whether this is a good idea, and whether it means you or someone in your life.

It also makes a lot of sense for this card to fall where it does in the pattern, whether you think Justice or Strength comes before it. I’ve mentioned in previous posts how the cards go from specific types of people to the interaction between people, people and forces, whatever. Now we’re back to a lone person–but one who’s reacting to interaction, in that choosing-to-avoid-a-thing-is-still-engaging-with-the-thing pop psych sense. After the willing harmony of the Lovers, and the forced harmony of the Chariot, you get either Strength or Justice, which are some pretty strenuous cards even if they’re positive: important decisions about right and wrong, subduing another person or force to your will, and/or coming to terms with wilder aspects of yourself. (If you’re using the deck where Strength is Lust, well, orgies are tiring as well, or so I hear.)

The Hermit, then, is someone who’s been through all that–the “guy” aspect is probably down to patriarchy, but the “old” bit is crucial–and said, you know what, fuck that noise.  Get off my lawn. Not my circus, not my monkeys. This can be a card about spiritual insight and wisdom, as I said above, or it can be about the more mundane side of things: learning to mind your own business, to manage your own affairs, and to entertain yourself quietly so that you’re not the person everyone wants to kill on public transportation NOT THAT I HAVE FEELINGS ABOUT THAT.

…anyhow.

The Wheel of Fortune

As far as I know, Vanna White has never appeared on any version of this card, which is really a pity in a way: if there’s one thing Tarot decks need, it’s more women in sequined dresses with eighties hair.

The card shows a wheel, of course. Sometimes it involves elements, sometimes Evangelists or astrological creatures, sometimes a person in various stages of being happy or unhappy. Often there’s a Sphinx at the top, or a person turning it.

“Shit happens,” is the essence of this card. The world is going to do what the world does, and there’s only so much anyone can do about that. The sphinx or person symbolizes the ability to cope with that through reason and wisdom–but part of reason and wisdom is knowing that luck doesn’t last, one way or another, and that you can’t count on it as a solution. Things can get better, but they don’t have to, so waiting for that shouldn’t be your plan. (Best Russian proverb I encountered doing research this week: “Hunger is not your aunt; it won’t bring you a pie.”)

In a reading, this card may mean that the querent’s luck is about to change. It also may just be a reminder that shit happens, ordinary life is full of ups and downs, and you do not have either a Great or Tragic Destiny.

Sequentially, this is the Tarot turning away from people again, and away from interaction or not, toward abstract concepts and weirdness. It might be one of the first bits of wisdom the Hermit learns.

Justice

Lady with scales and a sword, sometimes blindfolded. You can see some version of her outside most courthouses; if John Ashcroft and his legion of moral decency haven’t gotten involved, she often has her tits out.

If you’ve been paying attention since the top of the page, you’ll remember that this is one of the Fucking Obvious Tarot Cards. It’s…justice. Fairness, moral decisions, responsibility, balancing right and wrong, putting on a bat costume and lurking broodingly on top of tall buildings, et cetera. Even the complications aren’t so much complications as they are the dark side (look I know with the Star Wars references here, haven’t even seen TLJ yet, it’s just where my mind is at) of the archetype.

“Justice” doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone. We like to think of it as this ideal concept, unbiased and uncorrupted and balanced by mercy (and there’s a whole other magical sephiroth-y thing going on there) but that’s not how things always work. Fictionally, there’s Judge Frollo and Judge Doom and that bunch of evil undead judges Judge Dredd fought (and Dredd himself wasn’t a great guy, in the way of weirdo British comic “heroes” of the seventies and eighties), the Sheriff of Nottingham, and so on. In real life…well, McCarthy, the Inquisition, the Salem trials, and so on, plus I think we all know by now that white people see a *very* different face of the “justice system” than people of color do. On a personal scale, “justice” can sometimes mean “vengeance,” or just petty little Harper-Valley-PTA-style prying and judging.

There’s a reason–other than absinthe-fueled Victorian astrological wackiness–that this card and Strength get switched a lot. They’re both theoretically about abstract concepts, but they’re also very much about the way those ideas work around our interactions with other people. And, in part because of that, they’re notions that can cause a lot of harm when applied carelessly or inappropriately: the digitalis of principles, if you will. As I said above, even when they’re at their best, both Strength and Justice take a toll on everyone involved. Sometimes the aftermath leads to the Hermit. Sometimes it leads to the first card I’ll talk about next time, and one that’s in some ways the Hermit’s Extra-Strength counterpart: The Hanged Man.

Look at me, using a segue and everything.