Major Acana Flashcards
The Fool stands for the innocence of the child. So he means openness and playful approach to life as well as the not-realising of danger and naivity. The openness and innocence of a child can be refreshing, making new experiences and mental suppleness possible. But these characteristics can become dangerous if they turn into starry-eyed credulity. Furthermore, the Fool`s playful approach to everything he meets can incline to irresponsibility and the disability to keep to engagements. On a more abstract level the Fool means the beginning, the starting point. He is the begin of life, the begin of the development of a human being. The card 0 The Fool is the starting point of a long journey of which the card XXI The World is the final point
The Magician symbolises the ability to influence the course of life, the world. He symbolises the power that is gained by knowledge and competency. Thus, he stands for constructiveness and initiative. The Magician means that mastership is there, that the own fate can be mastered actively.
Dangerous the Magician can be if he misuses his power, his knowledge and his charisma to manipulate others.
The High Priestess stands for intuition and (intuitive) wisdom, for empathy, forebodings, patience and understanding. She does not need to intervene at once when things don’t go according to her will or not well at the moment - she knows that everything happens in cycles and that bad things will pass and good things will come again and the other way around. The High Priestess can sit still and watch changes with compassion and serenity. She can devote herself - to others, to her feelings, to her inner voice. She strives to touch the world with her soul and become one with it.
In her exaggerated, perverted form the High Priestess can be a manipulating sourceress or fall into deep depression.
The Empress is the archetype “Mother”. To her meaning all that belongs which is associated with “Mother. She means growth, vibrance, furtility, physicalness, nature, the forces and cycles of nature, creative and spontaneous constructiveness, the “lioness-mother” who defends what and who she loves with superhuman strength and with her live, the unconditional love of the mother which does not have to be earned, and many positive aspects more. The Empress can be a warm-hearted, strong-willed, empathic and protective ruler. But she has negative aspects also. She can destroy as suddenly as she creates - nature does not only mean warm sunshine and soft rain but also destroying forces. Just as she sometimes loves unconditionally and without cause she sometimes does hate without cause. Her love cannot be gained by good deeds. The Empress can be possessive, suffocating, a sitting hen, a cruel tyrant with no sense for rationality.
It is important that she represents the “female” form of rulership - she is the female counterpart of the Emperor.
The Emperor is the archetype “Father”. To his meaning all that belongs which is associated with “Father”. He means law and order, duty, responsibility, rationality, self-confidence and rules. Rewards and punishments are dealt out according to assignable criteria. The good will of the Emperor can be earned with achievments. He represents stability, structure, discipline, organising ability and many positive aspects more. The Emperor can be a strong-willed, just, rational and assertive ruler. But there are some negative aspects also: rigidity, strictness, disability to show emotions, coldness of feeling, missing connection between mind and soul and/or mind and body, despotism and disability to be creative or spontaneous. The Emperor can be a cold, indifferent, merciless tyrant.
It is important that he represents the “male” form of rulership - he is the male counterpart of the Empress.
The High Priest represents the Holy, the Saint. He stands for the search of and the finding of meaning and truth, he stands for religiousness, believe and comprehension. Furthermore, he means deep trust, protection and good advice. He asks us to follow our calling and to trust in life/the Good/our Buddha Nature/God… He warns us against hypocrisy and a smug holier-than-thou attitude.
One of the many meanings of the Lovers is indeed the state of being in love of a new couple. But the main aspect of the card’s meaning is best described as the love of a couple who live with each other from the time of their comming together until their death, full of respect and loving care for each other. This is the love of two people who have decided to choose each other, and who have the will and the strength to keep to this choice even in difficult times. So this cards essentially stands for the full-hearted decision, for the unconditional “Yes”. In many cases this will indeed be the Yes to a romantic relationship, but it could also be the Yes to a child, to more responsibility in your job, to a spiritual path, to a house you want to buy… But always it is a Yes that implies the willingness to take responsibility for that which you have said “yes” to, the willingness to treat it with care and mindfulness, to protect it - to treat it with love. And all this means (at least where a relationship is concerned) that you fullheartedly agree to do this forever.
The Chariot symbolises the energetic, hopeful departure of the hero into the unknown, into adventure, into life. He sets off, all ready to assume a risk, to find the pot of honey at the end of the rainbow, to dig up the treasure, to kill the dragon, to rescue the princess. This is the attitude you need to get out of a gridlocked situation, out of a confining relationship. This is the attitude you need to make a true new beginning, to truly broaden your horizon.
The danger is, of course, to out of high spirits take risks which end fatally - like Phaeton who let the chariot of the Sun get out of control and crashed down to earth. Adventuresomeness and courage is not the same as improvidence and overestimating one’s capabilities.
The card Justice means, well: justice. Thereto belong besides fairness also objectivity, dispassion, the ability to keep a clear, cool head, discernment and reason. For me it is escpecially important that Justice means the ability to discriminate between good and evil, right and wrong, and not to be shy of making these discriminations. Only those who can make them are truly responsible for themselves and for others. Justice also means to have a feeling for appropriateness, for balanced distribution. To be just means to want and actively boost a balanced distribution even if this means the loss of privileges for yourself.
The card is problematic where it stands for exaggerated black-and-white thinking, the non-tolerance of ambiguity, premature sentences and the missing of clemency.
The Hermit is the archetype of the Old Wise Man. He retreats into quietness and silence, he practises abstinence, self-restraint and asceticism and looks for guidance in himself rather than others. He strives to be authentic, to know and live his will, to not be influenced by others. The Hermit lives with himself, in himself, and out of himself.
The Hermit can be problematic when his habit of retreating drives him into insulation, makes him afraid of people or bitter and hard, or when he begins to over-estimate his wisdom and becomes smug.
The Wheel of Fortune stands for an experience which every human being makes sooner or later: There are so many things we cannot influence. Blows of fate happen to us “just like that”, imperatives force us onto certain paths, lovingly and carefully prepared plans are baffled. We are happy, our needs are met, we feel safe - and suddenly the Wheel turns and we fall very deep.
The Wheel of fortune tells us to learn to deal with the insecurities and necessities, the ups and downs of life in an acitve, positive way. If we can see and treat defeats, blows of fate, and suffering, as a source of learning, of understanding, and of wisdom, we won’t feel at fate’s mercy anymore. If we are conscious that good times are a gift and that bad times might come soon, we will enjoy and cherish the good times much more. If we don’t learn to productively deal with the fateful, the coincidental, we will soon resign, develop fatalistic ideas and live in constant fear.
This card stands for the balance between the Virgin and the Lioness in us, the balance between body and mind, between intellect and passion, rationality and instinct. If our Virgin part, the mind, becomes too strong, we become passionless, cold and top-heavy. If the Lioness part takes prevalence, we fall into addictions and incline more and more towards self-destructive and aggressive behaviour. We must learn to let the Virgin keep the Lioness under gentle control, not letting her have her way all the time but nevertheless not suppressing her. The lioness must be cherished, and the Virgin must know when to let her bare her teeth. If we manage this, we have inexhaustible energy and strength for everything, we are passionate, both with body and mind present at what we are doing, and we have charisma and assertiveness.
The Hanged Man is the archetype of the Prisoner or of the Prison or of the Victim. He stands for stagnation, for being gridlocked, for being passive and in the mercy of an oppressive situation; he can mean illness and abandonment. The positive side of the Hanged Man is that forced deadlocks, illnesses and abandonment can lead to completely new views - even new world outlooks. Many people tell that just before their change of life to the good they experienced an extremely painful phase of deadlock, of stagnation. So the Hanged Man can mean that it is necessary to “turn round”, to “turn upside down” - to radically change one’s views and ways of living. Else we will remain hanging, being caught and suffering.
I know it probably sounds strange, but: Death is one of my favourite cards. For if you have learned to let go, to not try to hold on to that which is already passing, then you will realise that the painful process of something’s ending can be a great relief and also the begin of something new and beautiful. The card does not mean that you or a loved one will die. Of course: if your question was about the mortal illness of someone you know, the card can indicate that you should look into the subject of death and dying. But the main meaning of Death is the natural end of something. This can be the end of a life; but mostly it will be the end of a long-cherished but wrong conviction, the end of a way of life or of a phase of life, the end of a friendship or a relationship, or even the end of an addiction. The important thing is that this end is a natural end - there is no way to avoid it. You could probably try to avoid it, but then you’d soon begin to feel not-alive and numbed. If you want to be reborn you have to die first. This is of course a painful and frightening process. But only those who go through it all the way will be able to begin something which is truly new.
The most important meaning of Temperance for me is balance. Balance in your way of life, in your emotions, in the way you treat your body, in dealing with others, in your job, in love - balance in all the spheres of your life. The card also stands for serenity, peace of mind and humility. Temperance does not know excess, exaggeration, bragging or aggression. She has no need for them: she is filled with peace and with contentedness with what the moment has to offer.
The Devil stands for everything that is concerned with excess and falsehood. He means lie and betrayal, (self)delusion and deceitfulness. He stands for crapulence, uncontrolled passions and lewdness, for aggression, ignorance, wastage, laziness and bragging. He basically means that something is out of balance. He can mean addiction and bondage, seduction, blackmailing and misuse of power, and he stands for treason and for not sticking to one’s principles.
In very few cases I do read the Devil in a positive way. I do this if the person I read the cards for is passionless, is hostile against their body and its needs, or is morally overly correct to the point of harming themselves. In these rare cases I read the Devil as an invitation to enjoy (physical) life for a change, to feast, not to feel guilty for the tiniest moral transgression. Such positive readings of the Devil should stay an exception, though.
The Tower stands for upheavals, sudden and violent changes and revolutions, breakdowns. Old securities collapse, the whole world outlook is destroyed. Nothing can be the same afterwards. Such experiences are always extremely frightening, they are percieved to be a threat to existence. Still: there is so much potential in them also. Many mystics of all faiths tell that before their experience of oneness or before the experience of meeting God they went through a total breakdown. Only this breakdown of everything they had though true and secure opened the door to reality as it really is. Often, the Tower stands for a wall of defence which does not safeguard us as we intended when building it but which cuts us off from life. Only if this defending wall breaks down completely can we be truly alive again. And sometimes we build our world outlook on false and rotten fundaments. It is not enough then to just remove a few bricks from the pinnacles and build a new roof. The only chance to start something truly new on safe, strong fundaments is a total collapse right to the fundaments itself.
The Star symbolises both hope and wisdom. To the levels of her meaning also belong confidence and the prospect of healing, of peace, of becomeing whole, of processes with a steady, happy course. The wisdom of the Star is the wisdom you gain through an open, broad view and a habitus of gentleness and compassion.
The Moon stands for the unconscious, the dark, the shadow sides of life. It symbolises the journey to the deepest abysm of the soul, to the irrational source of life. The Moon stands for times in which you meet your primal fears, times of mourning and sadness. It stands for everything which is dark and hidden, which is not accessible with reason, which cannot be described with words. A beautiful and also positive card the Moon is for me because only the acceptance of the dark sides of life can give depth to the experience of the light sides of life. Still, it can be dangerous, because those who look at the Moon only and not at the Sun also will soon become caught in depression or even psychosis.
The Sun stands for happiness, light and warmth - for vitality and joy of life. It symbolises the light sides of life and means everything that is positive, fulfilled and joyful. It means pure optimism. This card is only problematic if the joy stays purely on the surface and/or is used to repress and shut out the dark sides of life.
Judgement symbolises redemption; it symbolises the rising from the dark of the grave into a light new world, into a new life. Experiences related to Judgement can be all-inclusive, major redemptions like for example the salvation from a mental illness or the sudden recovery from a mortal physical illness, it can be the rescue from unbearable dependencies and so on. But such experiences are of course rare. So in most cases Judgement will stand for more daily experiences such as the solving of a problem, the feeling of relief and relaxation after an exam…
The World is the card with the maybe most beautiful meaning in the whole deck. It symbolises Becoming One - both in the sense of the integration of all aspects of the personality and in the sense of oneness with the cosmos. It means the experience of enlightenment, of Nirvana, of God. Another level of the meaning of the World is the feeling to have finally found your place in the world, to have found your spiritual home. A more positive card you cannot draw. The World symbolises the kind of having arrived where you are not soon bored and are driven to leave again - this arrival is eternal. The World symbolises the recovered paradise.
