My experiences with cards of the Major and Minor Arcana
Rather than repeating definitions from other sources, I'm writing down the cards that come up repeatedly or have specific-to-me meanings, with the hope that someone else can find meaning in them too.
The Fool: Going with my gut and leaping in, not taking time to overthink, as that's what usually gets me.
The Magician:
The High Priestess: Internal power. Greater self knowledge and power over one's self and stillness/quietness of mind. Good at the mystic arts, as those require intuition. Also represents an ex of mine, who embodied the best aspects of this card.
The Emperor: My favorite card, I'm sorry to say. Where I'm happiest. Boundaries being respected, sticking up for myself, protecting my own interests while creating systems that are fair to everyone.
The Empress: Self-love and interpersonal connection. Something I struggle with, but is the Emperor's other half, so I'd better get used to it. A real 'yes' card. Connection with the natural world, life and death, creation and destruction and how they bleed into one another. Sexuality.
The Hierophant: Another card I adore. Drew it at the beginning of the most exciting period of my life, summer-to-fall 2019, where I fell in with a path I knew was right for me. I studied Shakespeare with a professor who was a Hierophant himself, being a Lutheran minister with a Ph.D. in Divinity and Master's in Literature, I believe. It is during this period I set a goal for myself--becoming a Shakespeare professor--that shines dimly in the distance even now.
The Lovers: I drew this reversed when I was having problems with my best friend. Needless to say, we worked it out and she remains my other half :3
The Chariot: Be brave now, cry later. This came up in a romantic situation, where I regret not having acted earlier. I have a feeling that if I drew a card about my most recent romantic situation, I'd draw it again. Even if all loves end in death or heartbreak, you must try.
Justice: A skill or quality I could stand to master. Justice is hard when you're wimpy like me and suck at calling yourself out. This came up either during or after the fiasco with my best friend, where I allowed myself to be frightened into cowardly acts. Now, I'd like to think that if someone starts separating me from all my friends, I'd stop them.
The Hermit: I don't have this in my logs, which is funny because I've been straying from the Hermit as of late. Grief has driven me towards distractions (both in screens and other people), and I know that I'll be called to sit alone with my thoughts eventually. I just hope it's not soon.
Strength: Haven't drawn this one either. It's a complex card, about accepting yourself and taming yourself through that acceptance. Don't think I'm evolved enough for it yet.
The Hanged Man: Been feeling this in my life recently, though I haven't drawn it in my logs. Physical therapy, therapy-therapy, the specific way I need to sleep in order not to trigger hip pain literally looks like the card. Creating another path through the briars in order to achieve a goal.
Death: Haven't drawn this in my logs. Good thing, too. The grief I'm experiencing falls more closely under The Tower.
Temperance: A wonderful card that reminds me of magic and gods and goddesses. Sobriety and the middle path are difficult for me, and I hope one day to embody this card or communicate with something that helps me in this respect.
The Devil: My most recent draw was this card. In retrospect, it referred to an addiction-related scare in my family that left me unmoored and enraged for a few days. My family is rife with addiction on both sides. While I've done my best to stay away from the primary offenders (alcohol, opiates, benzos), the actual addictive tendencies have not left. They're just hemmed in by my psychiatrist now. A lifelong friend. Old curses coming to bite.
The Tower: When I asked a deck about my hidden potentials, I drew this card. When asking the same deck why it found me, I drew this card again. 1 + 1 = 2, the deck found me to help unlock my hidden potentials. I don't feel that much about my potential is hidden, but I suppose it could be true. The Tower has come up in my life, and it's hard to see this event as anything but an blow to my potential and my life itself. I've heard this card described, hauntingly, as an act of divine love. "This too, is for the good." It's a hard thing to think right now.
The Star: On a brighter note, this card represents my best friend. It represents her creative process, which is very different from mine. She has a Sontag-esque opposition to the idea of 'meaning' in art, and is willing to try any number of different approaches to an idea. She's a far more successful artist than me, and uses her art to connect in a way I've barred myself from. Much to learn from her!
The Moon: This one is my mom. Deeply strange and cursed card. It has something in common with Strength in that it involves taming inner wildness. Your unconscious must be excavated and aired before moving forward. That doesn't mean distrusting your subconscious or declaring it's silly, but honoring it.
The Sun: Ugh. My birth card. Endless, impersonal, benevolence. It's good I guess, I just never really connected with the idea of boundless joy, especially when I got into this at 16-17.
Judgement: Forgiveness of the self, an honest accounting. Can be found in the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. There are wrongs that can never be righted, and no damage can ever be undone truly. But you can still do stuff. Afterward, you can share your better self with the world.
The World: Maybe this will come into my life eventually. I hope so.
Swords
Swords are the suit I relate to most. They're the ones that come up during the most decisive and intense times in my life. Associated with the mind, logic, decision, vision.
Ace of Swords: Me in my most autistic and capable form. Starting something new (true for all aces), the exhilaration of solving a problem, making decisions, critiquing, weighing in.
Two of Swords: Make a decision. This one, if attended to early, won't get bad. A complication, a tangle of desires, an unwillingness to be honest or try something new preventing me from doing the right thing Often bureaucratic.
Three of Swords: Minor heartbreak, loss, betrayal, that nevertheless feels acute in the moment. It doesn't stay acute forever. A story I could laugh and wince about later. Betrayal that I probably should've seen coming.
Four of Swords: Knowing that things are coming up, but taking a respite to prepare. The summer before I started going to college.
Five of Swords: My tendency towards petulance, pettiness, pedantry. Keeping ledgers. Needing to be right. My inability to comprehend scale or importance of one problem versus another. A small array of habits that spirals and wreaks havoc on my relationships.
Six of Swords: I recognize it and know it well. The slog. Keeping my head down to do what needs to be done. My head needed to be clear, so I couldn't astral project my way out of it.
Seven of Swords: This one doesn't come up for me, but I've felt it encroaching in my life. Typically times where I feel trapped and compelled to lie to spare feelings. Unnecessarily prolonging a situation under the guise of solving it through trickery. Even if it's 'solved,' it'll hang on the conscience until the truth is told.
Eight of Swords: Sunken cost fallacy. Refusing to look at something that upsets me or may force me to change. Wedding myself to my misery and making it an everyday part of existence.
Nine of Swords: Don't trust how you feel about your life after nine p.m. Waiting for the jumpscare is worse for the jumpscare. Thinking all my friends hate me or that the future is hopeless. Might be exaggerated, might not, but cyclical doomthinking will not help either way.
Ten of Swords: The result of not freeing yourself from the Eight of Swords and allowing the Nine of Swords to overcome me. Interpersonal strife and torment. Will pass quickly, if you take action, but it will be a sore spot for the rest of your life.
Page of Swords: Also me at my best. New at everything, no matter how old I get. Refusing to allow that newness or blindness to potential problems stop me from trying my hand at it.
Knight of Swords: Taking the Page's ideas and sticking by them and defending them with my life. Dying on a hill. Sometimes it's worth it--I'm timid and easily discouraged--but it's good to maybe possibly keep the people around me in mind. Don't presume how they feel. But apologize if I was insensitive, while carrying on with the core of the idea.
Queen of Swords: I vaguely associate this with giving advice, or quick slices of logic that pull me out of spirals. Looking at a situation from the outside, weighing the past, present, and future and delivering judgement.
King of Swords: Being in an environment where I get things done, while also taking psychic damage every day. It's not interpersonal in this case, though it can be. More the need to improve and execute takes a toll. Requires a thick skin. A valuable skill will come out of it. Also some of my need for control in there.
I do draw Wands sometimes, but their energy is often too much for me.
Ace of Wands:
Two of Wands:
Three of Wands: I tend to ponder. To reference, and plan, and survey. This card doesn't discourage that, but it also says (much like the rest of the suit) to GO. To expand, to charge, to carry on with the energy I've gathered, which is the part I struggle with.
Four of Wands: This card always felt like it was mocking me. But upon re-evaluation, I think it is telling me to enjoy the small reprieves in face of an uncertain future. The New Year's Eve party before 2020, the Christmas Break before the last semester. Celebrating the past will allow you to move forward.
Five of Wands:
Six of Wands:
Seven of Wands: I like coming out on top :3. I like being proven right. This reminds me of my speech and debate career in middle and high school and my capacity for interrogating, teaching and convincing. People tell me I'm non-judgmental and good to talk to, and I'd like to think it's due to this rhetorical agility. Needing to be right and smart can be a bad way to interact with the world, but it's vindicated in this card.
Eight of Wands: This came up three separate times, all in the context of a relationship and creative jam I was participating at my school. Jams have big Wands energy--do a creative project start-to-finish in a weekend.
Nine of Wands: I consider this as in-context with the previous card. The pride, then the fall. Whatever I'm working on was worth it, despite the flaws. My jam project had audio issues that got me yelled at in front of the entire class, but I finished the thing and put it out into the world. My relationship fell apart after a day, but it got me out of a previous abusive one and let me begin to move on.
Ten of Wands:
Page of Wands:
Knight of Wands:
Queen of Wands:
King of Wands:
Ace of Wands:
Two of Wands:
Three of Wands: I tend to ponder. To reference, and plan, and survey. This card doesn't discourage that, but it also says (much like the rest of the suit) to GO. To expand, to charge, to carry on with the energy I've gathered, which is the part I struggle with.
Four of Wands: This card always felt like it was mocking me. But upon re-evaluation, I think it is telling me to enjoy the small reprieves in face of an uncertain future. The New Year's Eve party before 2020, the Christmas Break before the last semester. Celebrating the past will allow you to move forward.
Five of Wands:
Six of Wands:
Seven of Wands: I like coming out on top :3. I like being proven right. This reminds me of my speech and debate career in middle and high school and my capacity for interrogating, teaching and convincing. People tell me I'm non-judgmental and good to talk to, and I'd like to think it's due to this rhetorical agility. Needing to be right and smart can be a bad way to interact with the world, but it's vindicated in this card.
Eight of Wands: This came up three separate times, all in the context of a relationship and creative jam I was participating at my school. Jams have big Wands energy--do a creative project start-to-finish in a weekend.
Nine of Wands: I consider this as in-context with the previous card. The pride, then the fall. Whatever I'm working on was worth it, despite the flaws. My jam project had audio issues that got me yelled at in front of the entire class, but I finished the thing and put it out into the world. My relationship fell apart after a day, but it got me out of a previous abusive one and let me begin to move on.
Ten of Wands:
Page of Wands:
Knight of Wands:
Queen of Wands:
King of Wands:
