The Wheel of Change Tarot

love.

PREFACE

This Tarot deck is a labor of love. Many years of study and reflection gave me the will and vision to begin a project of this magnitude. The actual painting took place over ten years, during which time the images came to me sometimes slowly and at other times more quickly, with many images at once waiting to be put to paper. The written material has been over three years in process, and I hope it expresses my intentions and reverence for the Tarot. The Wheel of Change cards express the passion I feel for life, for the earth and her amazing living diversity. They are an expression of the hope I feel that we will one day be able to live immersed in the balance of the natural world. I contribute these cards with love to the positive future of our species.

You will find in this book detailed explanations for the 78 cards of The Wheel of Change Tarot, along with a new understanding of the archetypal arrangement of the 22 cards of the Major Arcana. In the written explanations you will find my own ideas and impetus behind the images. However, I want to be clear that I intend these explanations as a guide. I do not want to limit the reader’s own intuition or ideas in any way. These images are dense; they contain many symbols, and the language of symbol is undeniably complex and elusive. Let the pictures themselves be your first teacher.

The Wheel of Change Tarot is a gateway to the Temple of Wisdom. Please use the cards and the book in the spirit they were intended: to move you to action, to fire your creativity, to open your heart, to stimulate new ideas, and to free your spirit.

gnothi seauton

know thyself

INTRODUCTION

The Origins, Objective, and Structure of The Wheel of Change Tarot

The traditional Tarot is a set of 78 cards consisting of four common suits (now called the Minor Arcana), and one picture suit of 22 trump cards (now called the Major Arcana). The definitive history of the Tarot appears to be lost in the beginnings of the Italian Renaissance. The earliest surviving Tarot decks appeared during this period with the beautiful hand-painted cards of Benifacio Bembo, who painted them at the bidding of members of the ruling families of northern Italy. The cards were used during this period to play a game called tarocchi, a game that is still played in parts of Europe.

Throughout the history of Tarot cards, many people have proposed an ancient origin for their symbols and form. In France in the late 1700s, a Protestant clergyman and Freemason named Antoine Court de Gebelin saw a deck of Tarot cards and proclaimed that they were the surviving symbols of an ancient Egyptian mystery tradition. Egypt was big business then; many people traveled to its ancient sands to glimpse the ruins of a mysterious but advanced culture full of enigmatic art and symbols. In 1783 another Frenchman, Alliette (who called himself Etteilla)—a cartomancer—recognized the significance of Court de Gebelin’s work on the Tarot in an economic sense and began the fortune-telling use of these cards. He renumbered and redesigned the cards of the Major Arcana to suit his needs and popularized the use of Tarot in fortune-telling, enhancing interest in the esoteric meaning of these symbolic images. Our modern interest and use of the Tarot stems from this period, in which their true history was obscured in the mists of time, allowing a suitable story to be created in order to enhance their antiquity and thereby their claim to ancient truth and mystery.

Even though it is now recognized that the ancient origin of the Tarot is a fabrication, many have continued to promote the story and to believe it. It should be pointed out that an origin in the Renaissance creates an unusual situation in itself. This was a time in which classical mythology was heavily studied, allegory had deep relevance, astrology was a bona fide science, and numerology was current. These diverse threads were incorporated into the symbolic cards of the Tarot deck. It is no surprise to find in these cards images of ancient gods and goddesses and celestial bodies, incorporating the astrological sciences along with the ancient elemental divisions into four suits and four directions.

The two most popular decks of this century (1900s) both deserve attention, even in the briefest history of the Tarot. Both decks arose out of the context of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a mystical group that began in 1888 in England. The first of these was the Rider-Waite deck, designed by artist Pamela Coleman Smith and commissioned by Arthur E. Waite. First published in 1909, this is the most popular Tarot deck today, with good reason. The traditional symbols of the Major Arcana cards are handled in such a way as to make the symbol distinct, and in the cards of the Minors are scenes from life rendered in a way that makes interpretation easier for the Tarot beginner. The artist’s ability to convey complex emotions for which there are many subtle readings enhances the usefulness of this classic Tarot deck.

The other major contribution to the field of Tarot is the amazing and beautiful Thoth deck, created under the direction of Aleister Crowley and painted by Lady Frieda Harris. Though the paintings were made between 1938 and 1943, and a limited edition of 200 copies made in 1944, the deck was not generally available until 1969. This is an extraordinary piece of work and it remains strikingly different, even in the face of scores of other decks that have since been published. The cards are moody and fluid, and though many would call them dark, I find them inspired. The symbols of the Major Arcana cards are—for the most part—traditional, though the images are by no means straightforward and simple. The Minor Arcana cards in this deck follow closely the ancient tradition that there should be no human figures in the simple number cards.

Since the publication of the Thoth deck. Tarot has flourished and diversified; there are now unbelievable numbers of available Tarot decks, some keeping closely to the original form, and many that have expanded on it and moved away from it in various ways. There are many modern decks that place the Tarot into one specific culture or another: the Egyptian Tarot, the Celtic Tarots—even a Chinese and a Japanese Tarot. It is the amazing universality of the images and basic symbols of the ancient Tarot that makes this translation possible. There are Tarot decks that reinterpret the wonderful Rider-Waite deck, and there are newer decks that take off from the ancient system, renaming suits and cards of the Major Arcana and creating new suits and new trump cards. In all of this diversity, however, I did not find a deck that fully suited my own needs.

The Wheel of Change Tarot is the result of ten years of steady work and study. My interest in mythology and symbolism goes back to my childhood as the daughter of two classics professors. My fascination with the Tarot specifically began in my college years, where I studied many esoteric systems and their symbolism. I wanted to create a new Tarot that was intellectually rigorous, yet consistent and straightforward. I wanted this new Tarot to express elements of the modern world of science and of our contemporary life, but also to relate our history and evolution. I also knew that it should be traditional; it should keep to the ancient form as much as possible without renaming cards or suits and also without the overuse of the human figure, so prevalent in today’s decks. I wanted the cards of the Major Arcana to be immediately distinguishable from the pip cards of the common deck, so I knew that there would be no human figures in the numbered cards. Overall, however, the most important thing I wanted to express in these cards was a deep reverence for nature and, in addition, the condition of humanity embedded within it. By this I mean that we are not just a simple part of the natural world as a cog in a wheel, but that we are fully one with nature, as it is within us and we are within it.

This concept is difficult for the Western mind to fully grasp. We have so long lived in a society that promotes a dualistic conception of the world that though we may know it is true that all creation is one great fabric, we still see ourselves and our actions as disconnected from the whole. This is why we continue to eat foods that are plainly not nourishing and to fill the natural world with our waste. The Wheel of Change Tarot illustrates the deep connections we are once again beginning to awaken to at the opening of the new millennium.

In this book you will find references to both the ancient creative Goddess, who birthed the world, and the ancient God of the monotheistic religions. In order for the reader to more fully understand my perspective on religion and myth, I would like to make it clear that I believe that at the very heart of the world we are all part of the fabric of nature, which forever links us together. A mythology or faith that separates a person from others (or from the natural world) for reasons of belief or deep misunderstandings of differences will only serve to create hatred and destruction. Our belief in gods and goddesses must serve our need to understand diversity and to promote creative solutions to difficult human problems. For myself, belief in an ancient creative Goddess brings a deep respect for the life-giving power of the female body and promotes a deep spiritual ecology, which we will all need to find a more natural balance in our beautiful earth. However, the ancient mythologies of the Father God are a part of our history and culture, and the influence of these ideas runs deep in our consciousness and cannot be overlooked in the context of the Tarot.

It is the interplay of the complementary forces of masculine and feminine that holds the creative power of time, and in our deepening awareness of this interplay we find both forces at play, even within one individual. In this way we recognize that outward evidence of sex as male or female is not a deterministic feature of our humanity, but that our respect for the individual as a human being, a part of the life force, is the measure of our faith and trust. In trusting each other we open to our own responsibility to the community around us and to the world. In this new Tarot I have endeavored to teach a process that allows a new vision of personal responsibility to open. Through this responsibility perhaps we will see our way to a beautiful and fully creative future.

The Structure of the Tarot

The Tarot is a set of 78 cards that incorporates an esoteric system mirroring the patterns of consciousness. These patterns can be seen in most esoteric systems, in the philosophy of Aristotle, and in the work of many modern non-dualistic Western philosophers, such as John Dewey and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

In the esoteric system of Tarot there are two basic kinds of cards: the 22 trump cards of the Major Arcana and the 56 cards of the Minor Arcana. The trump cards are seen as a series and have been numbered accordingly, though the exact logic of the traditional numbering system remains obscure to me, and I have chosen not to use it. P. D. Ouspensky, in his little book called The Symbolism of the Tarot, saw the whole system of cards arranged so that the Major Arcana cards formed a triangle in the center of a square formed by the four suits of the Minor Arcana. In this arrangement the symbolism of triangle and square make clear the following: the Minor Arcana are the symbol of the manifest and ordered world, symbolized by the construct of the four-sided square, while the trump cards are the symbol of the active forces of creation, represented in the dynamism of the triangle and the active number three. This symbol of the triangle of Major Arcana cards seemed very potent to me, and as I worked with it I discovered the formal expansion that will be discussed thoroughly in the introduction to the Major Arcana.

It may also be seen that the Major Arcana cards are the symbolic fabric of the world that binds all of us together. They represent the ethereal spirit of creation and can be therefore linked with the numinous element ether. Ether was the unseen fifth element that was existent in the world as the spirit and the realm and bodies of the gods; it was the rarefied element that was the spiritual link between the four manifest elements, which in the Tarot are represented by the Minor Arcana cards.

The 56 cards of the Minor Arcana are divided into four suits of 14 cards, each corresponding with the four ancient elements: earth, air, fire, and water. Each element represents a realm of life moving from simple matter (earth) to creativity and energy (fire) and emotions (water), and finally thought (air). In The Wheel of Change Tarot the four suits are named Disks (representing the element earth), Wands (fire), Cups (water), and Swords (air). In each suit there are four face cards: Prince, Princess, Knight, and Queen; they also represent the four ancient elements: air, earth, fire, and water, respectively. The Minor Arcana cards form a mandalic pattern in which the analogies between the suits mirror the pattern of the whole.

These four face card designations are the same as in the Thoth Tarot. The court cards represent the roles in the human family of mother, father, son, and daughter. The cards could have easily taken these very clear and simple names but for one thing: this produces a static system in which the development of the changing roles is fixed and deterministic. The father and mother become the inflexible origin of the son and daughter, and the system is then linear rather than circular. In the court card system of the Thoth Tarot, the active Knight usurps the role of the Father King, and his addition makes the system a cycle of changes, moving like a wheel. The Knight embodies energy from outside the family pattern and represents, as Lancelot did, a new influence of the Queen, made manifest in the outer world as the knight carries her off. In this way the Tarot Prince and Princess—who are the issue of the old King and desire the new authority of rulership—are able to fill the place of the old King and Queen endlessly in the circle of creation.

In the chapter on the Minor Arcana you will find an expansion of the symbolism of the Minor Arcana suits, including the court cards and the numerological meanings of the pips (numbered cards). Also explained is the complex symbolism of their evolution from earth to air and back again, which makes clear their application to the complexities of human life. The chapter on the Major Arcana explores the new triangular pattern of the cards that I call the Tarot Tree. The interpretations and explanations of the trump cards are also quite detailed and extensive and are meant to convey the rich symbolism of the esoteric system of the Tarot. In the last part of the book you will find original layouts for reading the cards and some important principles for learning to use them creatively. In the appendix you will find useful information regarding astrology and symbolism pertaining directly to the Wheel of Change cards.

The 22 trump cards of the Tarot, called the Major Arcana, are a fascinating collection of images, generally placed in a traditional numerical arrangement. Although the characters on these cards seem to appear in no particular order, it is easy to evolve a mythological narrative that follows the given sequence because the images are clear and specific. Many books on the Tarot focus entirely on these 22 cards, evolving stories for them and correlating them with other systems, such as the Kaballah and the astrological model.

No one knows the real origin of the Tarot, although it does seem clear that they were developed in the late Middle Ages or early Renaissance. The cards of the Major Arcana are consistent with the contemporary understanding of Classical myth, Christian stories, and allegory. Today, there is a great fascination with the intriguing names of the cards, and their names alone have led people to theorize about a truly ancient origin for the cards. Although we will probably never know the real origin of the Tarot, we can certainly see that there is a connection to mythological characters; names such as the Fool and the Tower suggest familiar stories of gods and heroes. Even though there is no documentation for an older origin for the Tarot than the Middle Ages, we should remember that the stories from myth and religion live on through the ages.

In the early Renaissance, when the cards were in common use, some of the most prevalent motifs in artwork were scenes from ancient mythology; the famous painting by Botticelli, Birth of Venus, is an example. This painting contains elements that are seen in the Tarot—a combination of the World and Star cards, perhaps. These characters from the Major Arcana are brought to life through an understanding of the ancient stories in which they were born. What are the elements of myth that make the characters so compelling and relevant even in our time?

It was the role of mythology to explain the world that people saw around them, both the natural world and the civilized world of human beings. These worlds were in closer relation then; people still grew their own food and watched the night stars through the year as they traversed the sky. All this was part of a whole and indivisible world, where the lives of the people were but one interdependent part, and the changing seasons held within them the mystery of life and death. The analogy between the life of the individual and the seasonal progression of spring to winter appears in all ancient mythologies. Goddesses and gods are forever repeating some aspect of their story with the regularly advancing seasons. Innana marries the shepherd king Dumuzi at the autumn equinox, and Persephone must return to the underworld for six months of the year to be Hades’ queen. These ancient myths hide the stories of our history and our growth. They codify tribal and religious practices that honor agrarian cycles and human relationships. They explain historical changes as more and more divine power is given to the priest(ess)hood and ruling class. The stories we read today of goddesses and gods reflect the practices of the religious and political elite.

The authority of the Great Mother Goddess throughout Europe is a clue that the original rulers were women. Women led the tribes and probably also directed the priesthood. The power of the female was difficult to dispute; it was an obvious fact that all life emanated from the physical body of woman. When paternity came to be recognized, the sacred importance of the role of men increased. The fertility of the male was his greatest power; the people believed that just as woman needed his seed to bring forth new life, the earth also benefited from his potent seed and would bear more fruitfully. Certainly, the human need to influence nature contributed to the need for rituals enacting the analogy between nature’s cycle and the cycles of the new technologies of agriculture and animal husbandry.

As the influence of women faded with the arrival of the northern nomadic peoples, the mythologies of the scattered tribes were merged. The religion of the northern peoples—whose lives were very much determined by the harsh weather of the steppes and their constant movement to follow the needs of the herds—was much more fatalistic. Powerful gods ruled these people whose lives were played out beneath the vast dome of the sky that brought forth the conditions that determined the difficulty of their lives. As these invaders imposed their will on the people in the southern valleys of Europe the great mother goddesses were married off to the sky gods, so that the people would become one. Over many hundreds, and indeed thousands, of years these changes found their way into the ancient myths of Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Myth shows us the slow transition to male rulership that took place all over this ancient world. It seems that for many thousands of years in most cultures a queen ruled through the creative authority of the ancient goddess. The man, her consort, could rule in her name only by the power she magically transferred to him. Even in ancient Egypt’s historical records, property was passed through the female line, and the son of the pharaoh ruled only by marrying his own sister—for it was she who inherited the land of Egypt. The divine right of kings descends from this ancient history, and the political institution of kingship was born.

The narrative mythologies that survive from these ancient civilizations follow a basic outline, which stems from interwoven paths of the sun and moon. Solar and lunar cycles determined the yearly activities of the people, and it was the task of the religious elite to understand these cycles and to create a calendar of religious festivals that honored the seasonal changes and the gods who ruled over them. In these ancient stories and festivals we can see the attributes that later will appear in the trump suit of the Tarot.

In the most ancient times the sun and moon were both expressions of the universal creatrix, but in later myths the sun became the male aspect and the moon female.¹The moon’s connection to the feminine is obvious, as its cycle matches the menstrual cycle of women. The moon inspired suspicious fear; its power to change and to travel both through the night sky and through the blue sky of day gave it the greater power in the minds of ancient peoples. The moon could spy on the face of the earth in the dark of night and knew all the secrets of the people; she saw them in bed and she saw their dreams and fears. The sun’s daily and yearly journey was less complex and was connected with the story of the simple waxing and waning growth of the crops, which were made fruitful through the potent seed of man. Thus, the sun came to symbolize masculine virility and strength and the power of kingship.

The story of the Great Goddess—who appears separately as virgin-mother-crone and represents the moon in its phases of new, full, and old—is an essential part of the cards in the Major Arcana. Her story of creation and destruction, her marriage to the yearly Sun God, and the birth of the twin gods of the solar cycle is the underlying story told in the cards. The story of the sun’s cycle begins with his birth as the Sun at the winter solstice, crowned as the Emperor on the spring equinox, and sacrificed as the Hanged Man on the summer solstice as he turns toward the dark of the year when the Devil, his twin, will rule in his stead. The solar kings—one light and one dark—symbolize the division of the year into two parts at the solstices and also represent, by analogy, the sun’s journey through the daytime sky and its dark underworld journey after sunset. All through ancient European and Middle Eastern myth the two solar gods are forced to share the year. In the Egyptian myth, Osiris is sacrificed and his brother Set rules for a time. The story of Cain and Abel is a corrupted form of the myth, as is the murder of Cronus by Zeus in the Greek story.

In each of the Major Arcana cards we see the combined tribal history of a large part of the world. The history of the more ancient matristic² peoples, as well as the patriarchal stories imposed on the older order, are both included in the images. The Tarot does not deny the ruling patriarchy, nor does it put the woman-centered culture above the other. It simply shows us, without judgment, the story of the history of myth and the combined work of men and women in the world. I believe that in order to learn peaceful coexistence we must fully integrate the entirety of our history. We can never regain the innocence of our tribal past, but we must come through our present troubles to a new solution that honors the roles of both women and men as partners in the growth and progress of humanity. We must honor both Goddess and God.

It is quite clear that at the time the Tarot was developed the ancient stories were still alive in the hearts and minds of the people, just as they are today, and that because they are a part of our ancient history they live within all of us. Like the occurrences of our childhood that still seem significant to us, these ancient myths are from our childhood as a civilization. Carl Jung calls these compelling characters archetypes and defines them as primordial types ... universal images that have existed since the remotest times.³ They exist in all of us and are a part of the collective unconscious (also a term from Jung)—the deepest and shared part of all of us; a universal, inborn substrate that is beyond the personal. Perhaps in this way the characters and concepts that make up the Major Arcana were reborn out of the shadows of the Dark Ages.

Many different people have analyzed and studied the Tarot, particularly the Major Arcana, and found concealed in these images ancient stories of heroes and gods. Each writer sees a different pattern, and many believe that the pattern was internally devised by some unknown great genius who created out of whole cloth the very first Tarot deck. Many people see the Majors as a symbol of the journey of life through its various stages. Sallie Nichols in her book Jung and Tarot applies the 22 Major Arcana cards to the Jungian journey and shows how the particular cards fall into a Jungian analysis. She takes the traditional numerical order of the cards as a road into the psyche and develops the journey as the unfolding of a story. Other people see a solar and lunar path, which form the symbol of infinity (the lemniscate) when laid out together.⁴ Others have arranged the cards in groups of seven or three, grouping them together by their various qualities.

We endeavor to find and study these complex patterns because it increases our understanding of the meanings of the Major Arcana cards. In searching for the underlying structure we also discover the patterns in our own lives as well as the cycles of the living earth. The stories and patterns we create through the Tarot help us to develop deeper meanings for the cards by expanding the story of which they are a part. While the creators of the cards may have never seen or intended these internal patterns, the Tarot we see today is made richer and more meaningful by our use of these natural layouts.

In my own studies of the Major Arcana cards, while creating The Wheel of Change Tarot, I discovered clues to a profound new pattern that elucidates the ancient mythological and seasonal patterns of the cards. This new and wholly original pattern helps the reader understand the archetypes of the trump cards in a way that uses their traditional meanings to arrange them in unambiguous groups. It will be helpful to lay the cards out in the following pattern so that you can see and understand the Tarot Tree model while reading this.

The Tarot Tree

P. D. Ouspensky, in his book The Symbolism of the Tarot, describes the trump cards as a triangle that expresses the trinitary nature of God and the world of ideas and of the spirit, as opposed to the four-part physical world illustrated by the suits of the Minor Arcana. In his triangle, seven cards make up each of its three sides.⁵ It has also been noticed that 21— the number of the trump cards minus the unnumbered Fool—is a triangular number—that is, 6 (on the base) + 5 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 1= 21.⁶ It seemed to me that there was a natural hidden arrangement of the trump cards that would order them in this way. This arrangement would not be arbitrary or forced, and it would follow an internal logic and express simple patterns of natural and human life. I didn’t puzzle with it long before the Tarot Tree arrangement made itself obvious.

The Tarot Tree organizes the cards into seven natural groups. These groups are based on natural seasonal patterns and human models, which have evolved into our psyches. Human beings have emerged on a most beautiful and distinctive planet that gave us life and provided for us. In our journey from the gateway of birth through a woman’s body, to our deaths and journey back to the cosmic mother, we have been a part of all we see and do, and the essence of the planet earth is within us. The cards of the Major Arcana elucidate this journey in an articulate and unique way. Both the symbolic spirit of the visible world of nature, and the relationship between the masculine and feminine energies, are evident in this particular pattern of the Major Arcana cards.

The Tarot Tree pattern is based on the image of a growing tree. The tree is a symbol of the energy of fire and air translated to the earth through leaves and branches, while the energy of the earth and water travels skyward through roots and trunk. Thus, the tree is a symbol of the dependent bond of the two realms of earth and heaven, and as such it has been called the Tree of Life. The overall pattern takes its shape from the simplest geometric figure: the triangle. The triangle is an ancient symbol representing the Mother Goddess; it represents both the threefold nature of the Goddess and her genital triangle, where life was born anew.⁷ The outward form of the Tarot Tree is important because it is a symbol that the first creation emanated from the creative and active feminine.

As you can see in the diagram, the cards of the Major Arcana are arranged in a triangle with one card on the first level and two on the second, three on the third, four on the fourth, five on the fifth, and six on the sixth level. The Fool falls outside this pattern and forms the trunk of the tree, serving as its support and beginning, and as the shadow to the Magician, which is the single card of the first level.

Group 0: The Fool

The first group (called 0) of one card is the Fool. The traditional number of the Fool card is zero. He is the expression of possibilities that cannot be fixed and are open-ended. His potential is everything that is in the world—and yet, at present, it is nothing. This is the nature of the Fool: like a child at birth, he steps into the world unaware and unafraid. Even the outward form of the number 0 is symbolic of latent potential, for the circle is endless and yet contains nothing except possibilities. So the first group can be said, in a way, to be empty, with only the Fool to represent it; it is a group of zero.

Group 1: The Magician

The group of one consists of the Magician at the apex of the triangle. He is the singular symbol of the original emanation from the womb of the ancient Goddess at the point of the genital triangle and represents her son. In the traditional numbering system of the Major Arcana cards the Magician is given the number one. He symbolizes the power of the will and the power of the individual. In the Tarot Tree, the Magician—as the card of the first level—symbolizes the power of the creative will or the power of God as the potent, active force. He is the initiate with the singular powers of decision and action; he represents the power of invention and of individual will-force in the world. This is the power human beings have to act independently from the power of the body and of the natural world. The Magician personifies the power of the mind and the mental will. In the song Green Grow the Rushes O the Magician sings I’ll sing you one-ho! … One is one and all alone and ever more shall be so. The Magician is the symbol of the will of an ancient god who formed and created the world, not out of the infinite generative power of the fruitful body—as the ancient Goddess did—but from the determinate power of the mind. His is the power of the Idea.

The Magician has grown from the Fool and represents his shadow. He has stepped onto the path of life with the four tools of the Tarot at his command. He is in each of us as we make decisions and actively engage in life.

Group 2: The Lovers and Temperance

Two is the number of duality, and the two cards of the second level illustrate two stages in the understanding of opposing and complementary factors. We awaken with a consciousness of our separateness, and this begins to divide us from the original unity we felt with the earth. This recognition of our separateness helps us to begin the discovery of self that eventually will lead to integration and a new understanding of our ultimate unity with the planet and universe of our birth.

The intimate relationship of the two cards of this level—the Lovers and Temperance—has been written about before, notably by Aleister Crowley in his Book of Thoth, where he calls the two cards twins and says that because they express the relationship between two divergent things, they are among the most complex and therefore obscure cards of the Major Arcana.⁸

The first and simpler of these is the Lovers, obviously a card of duality. The Lovers, which has been correlated with the Zodiacal sign of Gemini, the twins, embodies all the division and polarization of the world into self and other, dark and light, woman and man, me and you, or the rivalry of siblings. The Lovers displays for us the intimate relationship between opposites and shows the familiar bonding between them. Its symbol is the simple polarization of opposites that binds the world together.

The second card in this group is Temperance (called Art by Crowley). It is a more developed card dealing with the relationship of duality. In this card the opposing forces are bridged through the power of will, and the opposites are drawn together to begin the formation of something new. The deep meaning of the Temperance card is that through action we combine opposing things and, transforming them through our creativity, thereby change the world. Temperance is the card of the all-important Magical Triangle (see the appendix).

The two cards reveal different aspects of the same thing. The Lovers presents