Surprisingly Sober Tarot

Mostly because work is slow, yet inexplicably frowns on me doing shots at my desk. I did eat half a cup of “Pub Mix” from the breakroom, though, so there’s at least the symbolism of being alcohol-adjacent.

The first card today is Death. This is the card that’s always coming up in movies and either portending horrible things or having the medium explain patiently that actually it just means change. Rider, often skeletal, often on pale horse, corpses, sickle, etc.  The Robin Wood deck has a Ghost of Christmas Future-looking guy in a red robe in front of a blossoming white rose; the Lisa Frank deck has a bunny in a tutu riding a rainbow-maned unicorn and laying waste to all multi-colored teddybears in her path, because of course it does.

In one sense, Explanatory Movie Medium is right. Death very rarely means actual death or catastrophe (if there’s a card that unambiguously means things are about to go pear-shaped, it’s generally the Ten of Swords, and in some contexts the Devil or Tower); it does mean comprehensive, profound change; and it specifically means change that you don’t have a lot of say in. You know that platitude about how when God closes a door, he opens a window (or a dress, if you’re Roger Sterling in Mad Men)? This is that. And however you might feel about the window, the door is still closed. Thus, as one variant fortune-cookie ending in college used to go, ending the age of wonders.

Like the Hanged Man was kind of a bigger and more cosmic Hermit, Death is kind of a bigger and more cosmic Wheel of Fortune. Not only does shit happen, shit happens, on occasion, in a really decisive way that you can’t work around. There are forces in the universe greater than you are, and sometimes the answer is “No.” You can maybe prepare for it a little, if only by not getting too focused on any one particular path; you can’t fight it; and it’s probably better to roll with the punches than rage against the heavens.

Going with the parallel theme, Temperance, like Justice, is about balancing two sides. Where Justice involves making a decision about human issues of morality or law, though, Temperance is about keeping all aspects of life balanced: everything in moderation, including moderation, and so on.

The card shows an angel pouring liquid from one goblet into another. Usually they’re standing with one foot in a river and the other on its banks; with that and the wings, you get three of the four cardinal elements. In a card that means not getting carried away, it may be fitting that fire, and thus passion, doesn’t appear so much.

In the Thoth deck, this is Art, and while I still maintain my “Crowley was pretentious as fuck” stance, there’s a certain way in which this makes sense. If you take it as read that the two goblets contain different liquids (water and wine, traditionally), the angel is getting up to some quasi-alchemical, or at least alchemy-suggestive, business here. Art (magical or creative) is about combining different substances to produce something new, thus connecting with alchemy on the other end.

And, of course, this could all apply to making cocktails.

Yes, this can be the tiresome grownup card of tiresome adulthood, and mean balancing your budget and skipping the extra drink at the party–but the traditional depiction suggests more, and justifies its place toward the Cosmic Forces end of the deck. The one-foot-on-land, one-foot-on-water pose gets us back to the Scarborough Fair stuff I mentioned last time, and the wings add to it. This is, or can be, a card about living in more than one world simultaneously, whether that’s balancing normal life with cosmic awareness, working an office job but partying on the weekends, or, I don’t know, business in the front and party in the back.