TAROT FOR THE NEW YEAR 2021: A WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN

Last night, which was New Year’s Eve of 2021, I did a reading to learn the general quality of the year ahead for society at large, and the central, focal card was “The World” reversed.

Actually, the card was “The Worlds” with an “s” on the end, because I was using The Victorian Fairy Deck, and this deck uses Worlds plural, indicating the interpenetrating realms of the human and fairies, the wild and the domestic, the material and the imaginative, etc.

I used the Victorian Fairy deck because I had received it as a Christmas present, so it seemed appropriate to use my newest acquisition.  Through different eras, our cultural imagination has perceived the fairy folk differently, and so portrayed them differently in art and literature.  As it has been jokingly said that the Victorians liked to imagine fairies as ordinary Victorians with wings on them, the creators of this deck, (Lunaea Weatherstone, with illustrator Gary A. Lippincott), have taken up this idea for the images.  In the case of “The Worlds” card, we see a ring of fairies in Victorian costume, dancing in a clearing in the woods.  However, the towers of a city are shown off in the distance, conveying the idea of connected world systems.

I interpret this reversed Worlds card as a caution that things won’t get back to normal all too quickly, due to COVID and other social upheavals, including the transition to a new presidency.  Among other things, it might take longer for vaccines to turn the situation around, and/or for the transfer of political power to be effective.

This New Year’s Eve reading was done as a three-card spread, where the flanking cards were The Queen of Autumn and The Herald of Spring.  (In this deck, Autumn corresponds to Pentacles, and Spring to Wands.)  Both were upright, so in their full expression.  One can put different lenses on a three-card spread, so if viewed as something of a timeline, the old lady Autumn comes before the young fellow Spring, which also suggests a certain reversal of the natural order.  In practical terms, however, the Queen of Autumn might indicate that society at large has the resources and experience to manage the world situation, and the Herald of Spring might denote the breath of fresh air we’ll be feeling when we get some good news and the world opens up again, so we can go out and enjoy ourselves.

By the way, in reference to my previous post on The Dollhouse Oracle and the House of 2020, I did a reading for myself this morning, to see what the House of 2021 will look like for me.  I again used The Victorian Fairy Deck, and I also used the Victorian House pop-up book, and found the color scheme of the cards worked very well with the color scheme of the house.  Color scheme is not a big deal, but I do appreciate harmonious graphic relationships.  (Note—Last year I used the Edwardian House by Brian & Lizzie Sanders as authors, and designed by Suzanne Ferguson; the Victorian House was designed by Willabel L. Tong and illustrated by Phil Wilson.)  Two cards came up that do suggest the ongoing COVID situation:  for the entryway, I got the reversed Chariot, which suggests staying inside, and in the upstairs hallway, denoting one’s ability to get around, I got The Hermit—again indicating the need to self-isolate.  I don't know whether these cards foretell a worsening COVID situation and therefore a greater need to stay at home, or just the fact that I have the privilege of being able to work from home.

More about THE LOVERS and THE MAGIC OF DOUBLING

In the previous post, we looked at a love spell involving The Steampunk Tarot, which uses an image of doubling in The Sun card, (echoing some of the more antique renditions of this card).  When different creative teams come up with new tarot deck variations, it expands our understanding of the individual cards, and offers new opportunities for magic working.  Another deck which portrays a happy couple in its rendition of The Sun card is the “Tarot of Jane Austen,” (a Lo Scarabeo deck by Diane Wilkes; illustrated by Lola Airaghi).  This deck also portrays a happy couple in The World card, as in the world of Jane Austen, relationship is key to completion and wholeness.  These cards, then, are ideal for a spell where love leads to marriage, as shown below.

As stated in the previous post, you don’t perform love spells with an intent to bind a reluctant partner to your will, but to send an invitation out into the Universe, to attract the attention of individuals who will resonate to a shared vision of pleasure in relationship.  When performing this spell, as you lay out the cards, you could visualize different ways that you and your potential partner might come together, (while also allowing for unexpected ways of meeting), having fun discovering some things you have in common, and the eventual trip to the altar.

You’ll notice that The Lovers card is not included in this particular spell.  That’s because the Tarot of Jane Austen also uses an older conceptual rendition of The Lovers, that features another woman in the scene.  Older cards which depict the man having to decide between two women make a philosophical statement about choices, and touch on Jungian notions of lunar and solar forces, and the Dark Woman and Bright Lady archetypes.  However, for purposes of a love spell, we normally don’t want to distract attention from the desired one-on-one relationship, because we want the Lovers to be solely and intimately focused on each other.

More on Tarot Spells with The Hanged Man

One of the fun things about working with new artists’ tarot decks is seeing how the artwork can reveal new graphic relationships between different cards, and how this can be meaningful to divination and also to the construction of tarot spells.

So, my last post described a tarot spell for reversing Hanged Man-type situations, where you feel that your life is in a state of suspension.  One variation of this spell suggests laying out The Hanged Man, The Wheel, and The World while visualizing the cycle of change that can bring you to the idealized position of the dancing woman in The World, (of which The Hanged Man is something of a reversed mirror image).  Comparing how this combination of cards looks in different decks, this particular spell layout makes some striking graphic connections when you use Ciro Marchetti’s “Legacy of the Divine” tarot.  It happens that the man featured in The Hanged Man is the same figure as in The Wheel, as well as in the World; (as an Everyman figure, he is also The Fool and is featured as a prisoner of The Devil).  In the arrangement of cards which I will attempt to upload, (I hope I can insert this in the right place), you can see how nicely he can tumble from the Hanged Man position, onto the turning Wheel, until he flips back to The World position.

By the way, I like how the Cirque de Soleil-type artistry adds to the moving energy of this card combination.  In Marchetti’s other deck, “The Guilded Tarot,” there is also some graphic resonance between The Hanged Man and The Wheel, because The Wheel features a zodiac and the hanging man is suspended from a sun wheel.

Tarot Spell for Hanged Man Situations

At the prior week’s magical chat session, where we were doing Dollhouse readings and Tarot Round Robins, The Hanged Man card came up several times, as did The World card.  Unfortunately, I can’t remember the contexts, but we got to talking about how The Hanged Man is often a reversed image of The World.  That has led me to think about tarot spells for reversing Hanged Man type frustrations.

In old, Marseilles-type tarot decks, as well as in the Rider-Waite-Smith, both the figures of the dancing woman in The World and the hanging man have a leg crossed behind their backs, and then the torso/head areas make something of a triangle, so that in The World you have the triangle of ascending spirituality surmounting the cross of materiality, whereas in The Hanged Man, the cross is on top and the triangle points downward.  In “The Book of Tarot,” Fred Gettings makes additional observations about the graphic similarities and mirroring between these two cards.  As The World can be seen as an ideal state of being, Gettings explains The Hanged Man as depicting how, “man as an invisible life force is upside-down, that human life as it is now being lived is somehow unnatural” [p. 147].  Gettings would apply this not just to the readings of individuals, but to the human condition itself.  However, he sees this as a phase in human life and development, for “we must presume that the condition of being a hanging man must be necessary for the evolution of the anima mundi, for the spiritual development of the world” [71].

In terms of how we experience this in everyday life, I’ve noticed The Hanged Man often comes up in life situations where an individual feels he or she is making no progress, or in more dramatic situations, where it feels like life has been turned upside-down.  So, for a tarot spell to remedy these kinds of situations:

1)  Lay down The Hanged Man and think about your current situation, and why it has you feeling tied up, or disoriented, or with your life in suspension.

2)  Think about what sort of steps you could take, or attitudinal changes you could make, to get you into a better place and bring about a more ideal life situation.  Then, select whichever tarot card best seems to you to denote the changes you need to bring about, and lay it to the right of The Hanged Man.  If you can’t think of a specific card, you could set down Major Arcana #10, The Wheel of Fortune, to denote the general process of change, including changes for the better to be brought about by your Higher Powers, when you are not well able to envision or articulate the changes you need.  Think about how the turning wheel brings that which has been reversed back to an upright position.

3)  Next, lay down The World card, and envision yourself in an all-around improved situation and better state of being as a result of having uprighted yourself and rejoined the dance of life on better footing.  Recall this idealized image of yourself throughout your days and weeks, as the new you to strive for.