Many people have tried to work out correspondences between astrology and the
tarot—and then someone else comes along, disagrees with them, and works out a new
scheme, which also has its advantages and its drawbacks. Jessica and Nancy believe that
the court cards can sensibly be assigned zodiac connections, but not the rest of the
cards.
Some people prefer to leave astrological connections out of their interpretations
altogether. Whatever system you decide to use works best if it is just what works well for
you--what fits well in your understanding of how both systems work. And you needn’t
add anything like this if you are more comfortable (and therefore more accurate) in simply
reading the symbols on the cards without reference to other divination or philosophical
systems.
Numerology assigns universal meanings to numbers. Briefly, they are:
1 Beginnings
2 Duality
3 Creativity
4 Foundation
5 Change
6 Balance
7 Awareness
8 Power
9 Humanitarianism
These numbers can be incorporated into a reading by adding the keyword for the number into
the symbolic picture. For example, all of the fours represent some kind of foundation,
whether it is emotional, spiritual, mental or worldly. Or, all of the five represent some
kind of change.
James Wanless, PhD, creator of the Voyager Tarot, believes the Minor Arcana cards share
the same energy of the Major Arcana cards of the same number. For example, he sees all
sevens as bearing the same general energy as Major Arcana VII, the Chariot, with each
Minor Arcana representing a facet of the Chariot. Do you see a correspondence?
As a brief exercise, line up your Minors by number to see if there’s a connection
between them for you.
In some card decks, both specific tarot decks and other oracles, certain
correspondences—astrology, numerology, kabbala, alchemy, and other—have been
built into the symbolism of the cards. In such a case, learning the designer’s system
may seem to help with reading the cards, but if it doesn’t resonate with our own
perception of the symbolism, then it causes internal conflict and confusion. This,
obviously, is not good.
The important thing is to discover what works best for you, what makes sense to you and,
importantly, what makes sense to the person you are reading for, the querent. There is no
use in tossing a lot of technical terms at a querent if it just confuses him. In the final
analysis, we are looking for information and insight. Usually, the more clearly and
directly we convey that information, the more useful it is. Whether we are doing
divination or counseling, clear communication between reader and cards, reader and
querent, and querent and cards is the essential need. Anything that gets in the way of
that is not helpful. Remember the KISS principle: Keep it simple, sweetie!
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