How does a Tarot draw of six reverse cards interpret life? That’s what I asked my soul this morning. Her answer was intertwined with the terrible dream I had last night. I expected her to tell me that “Six reverse + nightmare = really shitty day.” That was not Soul’s answer. It was, shall we say, subtle and complex, like a Pinot from the Central Coast.
W.B. Yeats, in his mystical A Vision, identified the twenty-seventh day of the moon as “the secret is in the shadow.” Okay, that will made a stack of reverse cards a bit more intriguing. What could the King of Disks, 2 of Swords, The Magician, 7 of Swords, 8 of Cups, and Justice standing on the head, mean? Kind of like God doing a hand stand in the classic cult film, Dogma. The answer to the riddle is more in the collective than each individual card, just as no one singular dream completes the narrative.
So, quick and dirty:
King of Disks—lots of tasks need mastering.
2 of Swords—making decisions requires the owl of wisdom to show up.
The Magician—think magic.
7 of Swords—soul retrieval.
8 of Cups—tend the heat of the emotions.
Justice—speak for those without a voice.
Hmm, the shadow is in the complex. What’s lurking behind the wall? For brevity’s sake, let me work with one card, the 7 of Swords. My interpretation of this image is a twist on the traditional read. Rachel Pollock, in her classic book, Seventy-eight Degrees of Wisdom, interprets this card as a daring act requiring planning and carried out by a single person. For me, the daring act is soul retrieval, something only I can carry out. Soul retrieval, in his case, is collecting the parts of my self that have been buried because of trauma, or from the denial of a failure, or a vast number of other unpleasant experiences. These undealt with issues are hiding in my shadows. Pulling the 7 of Swords is an encouragement to continue my shadow work; things I have been processing for years. Drawing the card in reverse, however, is calling my attention to what I am unwilling to confront because it’s entwined within the complexities of my identities. Right now, I don’t want to deal with my grief; it’s too raw. That’s okay for the moment. But grief is never an isolated experience—it’s layered. One loss, stacked on top of another, and another, and another, piled upon epigenetic grief. There’s stuff down in there I have avoided for way too long. Time to talk to my Ally.
Every day’s pull of the cards is Craftwork. To read, study, meditate, and inwardly digest what I see on the table in front of me. Some of which causes me to reach for an antacid. But, no heartburn, no Soulwork. To engage in Alchemy, Tarot, and Soul is not the easy way, nor someone else’s way. It’s each person’s way.
My latest book, The Bible and the Tarot, is out for pre-sale and you can find it on Amazon. In the book, I provide my interpretation of the cards and their correspondence to biblical stories. Fair warning, this book probably won’t find its way into any church’s Sunday school. But, hey, it’s only my way of sorting through the complexity of six reverse cards.
