Tarot Major Arcana: A story of spiritual growth – Part 2

This story began with “the Fool/the Magician” in their safe world, where each actor had their usual role and place in society. This first stage represented the body and its outward movement.
With the decision made to dig deeper into one’s soul, we enter this second part of the story.

Stage II: Mind – Inwards

The second line of cards or the second stage represents the road of “insight”, our relationship with ourselves and our lives. It’s the inner world in each of us and our inner battles with life’s many tasks; but also the battles to try and let go.

The inner urge for fairness, the need to differentiate and judge, to choose to do “the right thing” (the “Justice” card) implies insight and enlightment (“The Hermit”). This discovery of the “right course of action” is felt at heart and is intellectually logical, it’s like a “click”, the pieces fall into place.

When you’re in the dark, troubled or standing before an obstacle or an event placed by fate – “The Wheel of Fortune”– and you find “insight”, you convert yourself from the enlightened “Hermit” into the card of “Strength”:

You come to believe that it’s natural to find things or situations which you cannot really influence; one can learn to live this reality and still go our way perseveringly until we master the task at hand.

Though sometimes, we still resist ourselves and set about to fight against things we cannot change. At times we feel that that found strength runs out, we might be tired or maybe just went in the wrong direction in the first place; we got confused, simply ran out of vision or our personal motives or needs weren’t met how we expected (“The Hanged Man”).

This sequence repeats itself many times during life, be it divorce, separation, mourning, but also during the creation of an enterprise or a project, as well as experiencing something new in life (“The Wheel of Fortune”); it’s a learning process. You find light and direction or the solution “clicks” in you, and it is then when you are ready to do the “right thing” for yourself (“Strength”), you’re capable of assuming reality and making decisions.

That voice in the middle of action that suddenly stops you and asks: is this correct? Is this worth it? Will I succeed? What if I don’t? Why can’t I just have it easy or my way?, can sometimes be a real bother.

At this stop one might stick the head in the sand (“The Hanged Man”), not knowing where to go or where strength has gone. It might also be fear to leave old patterns or being to comfortable to do it; stubbornly sticking to ways that don’t bring anyone further. It’s hard to leave the security of a perfectly set world or society; it’s hard to not get things our way.

But as life is to be lived, the old concepts die and a stage in life dies (“Death”). There’s no comfortably set order in the world anymore and it’s sometimes difficult to accept. Naivety dies and reality takes over; it’s a new begin. Death and Rebirth are in one card.

In this accepting and mastering of many tasks you finally understand that life is made out of these ups and downs coming from the “Wheel of Fortune”. You learn to live with the opposites of victory and loss, achieving or letting go (“Temperance”):

all dualities are but two faces of the same coin. Understanding them as a unit will help one’s central core to remain unchanged, and to be able to decide how these ups and downs will influence life. Finally, in this stage, “balance” is obtained.

This is, at some points, Plato’s Soul of Will: “determination and self-determination” like it is written in Robert Place’s book The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination.

Read “Part 3” of this story of spiritual growth in the Tarot Major Arcana here!

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