This podcast episode explores the philosophical underpinnings of Tarot, focusing on the concept of balance through the lens of gender in the Major Arcana and elemental energies in the Minor Arcana, offering practical guidance for understanding card meanings.
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you're listening to root lock radio [Music]
hello and welcome to rootlock radio a
podcast for uncloaking
learning and exploring the tarot cards
my name's weston i live in new york city
and i'm your host
in each episode we do a little bit of
philosophical exploration of the tarot
cards and we also provide
step-by-step practical instructions for
people who are just learning about the tarot
tarot
that said if you're new to tarot you'll
probably want to start it episode 1.
even if you're not new you might want to
start there too i probably won't teach
you how to read the tarot cards but
maybe you'll get some insights from my approach
approach
in this episode we're going to talk a
little bit about the philosophical
background of the tarot
particularly the concept of balance
we're going to look at how
balance of gender plays out in the major
arcana cards
we're also going to look at the
elemental energies of the minor arcana
cards and how balance plays into those two
two
my hope for this is to provide some
philosophical background and building
blocks for you to understand the
meanings of the cards
which we'll get into in more detail in
episode 3.
that said you're probably getting
anxious to learn the cards so i'll also
tell you about an exercise that you can use
use
to get started on that thanks again for
listening and i hope you enjoy the
second episode
of rootlock radio [Music]
as i mentioned last time the 22 major
arcana cards
are often conceptualized as a journey
through the human experience and human life
life
some people call this the fool's journey
because the
first card in the deck is the fool so
you can kind of imagine
the figure depicted on the first card
as the person who ends up going through
the journey
on the next 21 cards now i'm not going
to quite get
into the whole thing about the fool's journey
journey
today we will cover that to some extent
in future episodes
but today i'm going to kind of give you
an idea of
how gender plays into the philosophy outlined
outlined
by the fool's journey now i have to tell
you that i'm borrowing this exercise from
from
one of my very favorite tarot books it's called
called
78 degrees of wisdom and it's written by rachel
rachel
pollock if you want to know more about
the fool's journey i definitely
recommend you pick up this book
and generally i just recommend it as a
tarot resource
it has some of the best explanations of
the individual cards so
if you want to have a book on your shelf
where you can
access explanations of each of the cards
i recommend this one
i think it's the best so if you have
your deck with you i recommend pulling
out four cards the fool the magician the
high priestess and the world
so these cards are 0 1
2 and 21 in the major arcana
the major arcana begins with the card
the fool
the fool often denotes a completely
clean slate
someone who doesn't know anything is
starting brand new
and beginning their journey in some way
in the context of the major arcana you
can think of the fool
as being a newborn baby or as
a spirit that hasn't been conceived as a
baby yet or
someone that's got complete amnesia and
is sort of starting their life new
um if you look at the card the figure
definitely looks like an adult
so perhaps that's an easier way for you
to conceive of it
the narrative the major arcana begins
with the fool and ends with the world
the two cards following the fool are
number one the magician and number two
the high priestess and this is where
we get introduced to the gender tropes
in the tarot the masculine side is
represented by the magician and
masculine is associated with
action the feminine side is represented
by the high priestess and the feminine
is associated with meditation so if you
think about these two things
they sort of are in balance with one
another so if you look at the card
the magician you see a male figure
standing upright
holding a wand towards the sky and
pointing his finger towards the ground
you can kind of think of him as some
sort of conduit
of energy he's not really thinking about
anything he is
channeling energy through his body the
high priestess on the other hand
representing the feminine
is sitting contemplatively between two columns
columns
and if you look carefully she has sort
of a
vaginal appearance to her she's sitting
between two columns
her robe has sort of a labial look to it
her hat has a round object on it
and the overall look of the card is a
bit vaginal
the magician on the other hand being erect
erect
and upright and if you look at the wand
that he is holding
it is phallic so what we're being
introduced to
here is the idea that masculine energy
is action-oriented and feminine energy
is meditation oriented now if you look
at the world
card what you see is a figure floating
and this figure which appears to be
female because she has breasts
is holding two wands in previous
versions of the tarot
this figure has actually been depicted
as having a penis
which means that the figure is
intersexed quite literally combining
male and female traits into a single
human body
and this is important to realize in the
history of this particular image because
basically what is saying is that when
you reach
the final stage of the major arcana when
you get to the end of that journey
the feminine and the masculine are
blended together
and you can see that clearly in the
imagery in this card
the idea that she's holding two of these
phallic looking wands that we see in the
magician card and how
that mirrors the high priestess
in that she's between these two columns
and we still have the roundness of the
high priestess and sort of a
vaginal appearance in this card and also
the erectness
of the magician and that the figure is
standing very upright
so it's a blending of the imagery of the
two so considering this
i would like to assert what i think is
one of the most
interesting and most important
philosophical aspects of the tarot
and that is that to live a fulfilled
life and that's what the world card
represents is that sort of enlightenment
or fulfillment at the end of a journey
in order to live this fulfilled life we
need to blend
the masculine qualities of action with
the feminine qualities of meditation
and this makes a lot of sense when you
really think about it we've all been in
experiences where we
act without thinking and we usually
regret it we've also been an experience
where we think
without acting and that sort of stewing
isn't any fun either
so the tarot's sort of asserting that in
order to
get the most out of life we have to blend
blend
action with meditation we have to think
things through
carefully and really get in touch with
the deeper
more subconscious aspects of decision making
making
but we also can't be afraid of making
moves and doing things
this will play out a lot throughout the
tarot but i'd like you to
keep this in mind as you learn more
about the cards and as you pull cards
for yourself
in future exercises and tarot readings
this should always sort of be the
overarching narrative of guidance that
the tarot
offers and that is that we need to
meditate before acting we need to act
on our meditations and we need to
meditate on our actions
we need to blend thinking things through
and taking decisive
action in order to live the most
to further understand the way that this
balance plays out in the tarot we can
also look to the
minor arcana cards now as i've said
before the minor arcana cards come in four
four
suits sort of like the four suits in a
deck of playing cards
you have the wands the cups the swords
and the pentacles so to continue this
exercise i recommend
pulling out the four ace cards and
taking a look at them
so when you have the four cards pulled
out i want you to put them into a
diamond shape with the swords at the top
the pentacles at the bottom
the wands to the left and the cups to
the right
now keeping in mind the magician high priestess
priestess
action meditation balance that we saw
in the major arcana take a look at the wands
wands
and cups cards and you'll see sort of a
similar energy in those two cards so
what we're dealing with here is the
elemental energies the wands are
associated with the element of fire
but you can also think of them as being
similar to the action
oriented energy of the masculine
magician card
and when you look at the wand card the
ace of wands you can see
some similar imagery the wand reminds us
of the wand that the magician is holding
the wand is very upright and erect and a
little bit
phallic there's a certain confidence and certainty
certainty
in the way that the hand from the clouds
is holding the wand
and the fire energy is usually
associated with things that you can
think of
as sort of a conduit between the inner
and outer world now that's a little bit
hard to wrap your head around and a lot of
of
times the wands are one of the more
difficult suits for people to
really understand but they tend to rule
things like
sexuality spirituality creativity
and things like that and you may ask
well what do those things have in common
why are they all ruled by the same fire energy
energy
and to me the main connection between
those things the spirituality the
sexuality and the creativity
is that it's sort of a meeting of your
inner world
and the outer world so when you think of
spirituality it's a way that we
connect our sense of self with the
greater universe and come to understand
the meaning of our place in the world or
in the universe
when you think about sexuality it's a
blending of of your soul
with somebody else's soul so it's some
way of connecting what's
internal with something that's external
and when you think of creativity
the arts are always a form of expression
of expressing
some impression that you have about the
world or some feeling that you have
about life and so there's there's again
that sort of conduit
of energy you're channeling something internal
internal
into the external world and so those are
the things that the wand
energy the fire energy tends to rule
now looking at the ace of cups
this is where we have our association
with the minor arcana with the high priestess
priestess
card and her feminine more meditative
energy and if you look back at the high
priestess card
you see that there's a lot of water
imagery on that card as well
her dress looks like a waterfall
and behind the curtain that she's
sitting in front of
there is a body of water the element of water
water
is usually associated with emotions
and the subconscious and these two
things are
are closely connected right a lot of
times when we feel something very strongly
strongly
we can't quite rationalize it it's
coming from somewhere
deeper within us something that we can't
quite understand
and only through careful consideration
and meditation
do we really begin to get where our
emotions are coming from and
of course there's a lot in the practice
of psychology
around the subconscious and emotions right
right
the ways that we attach to our parents
our early life experiences
are often things that determine the type
of emotional life that we have as adults
so there is this strong link between the subconscious
