A Wealth of Tarot Card Interpretations:

Beyond the “By-The-Book” Meanings

MAJOR ARCANA ONLY

By Zahara Vinson
Copyright © 2018 Zahara Vinson

All rights reserved.

Published by Kimberly Gedeon 2018

New York City, New York, United States of America

No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way
of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise
circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of
binding or cover other than that in which it is published and
without a similar condition including this condition being imposed
on the subsequent purchaser. Under no circumstances may any
part of this book be photocopied for resale.

Cover art drawn by Zahara Vinson.

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 Table of Contents
Introduction………………………………………………………………..4
Shadows & Reversals...........................................................................6
The Fool ………….……………………………………………………….10
The Magician ……………………………………………………………17
The High Priestess …………..…………………………………………….24
The Empress ………….…………………………………………………...31
The Emperor …………..…………………………………………………..37
The Hierophant …………………………………………………………….46
The Lovers …………………………………………………………………..54
The Chariot …………..…………………………………………………….62
Strength …………..…………………………………………………………69
The Hermit …………..………………………………………………………75
The Wheel of Fortune …………..…………………………………………81
Justice …………..…………………………………………………………...90
The Hanged Man …………..………………………………………………99
Death …………..…………………………………………………………….107
Temperance ………….…………………………………………………….114
The Devil ………….………………………………………………………….121
The Tower ……………………………………………………………………..128
The Star …………..…………………………………………………………...136
The Moon …………..…………………………………………………………143
The Sun ………….……………………………………………………………152
Judgement …………..………………………………………………………158
The World …………..…………………………………………………………165

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Sample Reversal Interpretations………………………………………….173
Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………178

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 Introduction

Aren’t you tired of finding tarot card interpretations that don’t seem
to resonate with your readings? If you feel this way, you’d absolutely
love this book.
I wrote this book for tarot enthusiasts who are tired of reading
“by-the-book interpretations” because they don’t seem to “fit” with
their readings. Trust me, I understand how you feel if you’re a
beginner – sometimes the interpretations you Google just don’t
resonate.
But as an experienced tarot reader, I’ve recorded my own personal
experiences with the cards retrospectively; I’ve now accumulated
years of culminative interpretations for each card – upright and

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reversed – that go far beyond the by-the-book meanings you’ll
discover online.
Now I don’t claim the meanings in this book will list every single
possible interpretation of each tarot card because that book would
probably be a million pages at least. However, I absolutely do expect
that you’ll find a few definitions of the cards that will make you say,
“Oh, that’s different,” and it will jump start your thought process to
guide you to what the card is trying to tell you.
This is the book you will frequently consult during tarot reading
sessions when you feel as if you need definitions that go beyond the
by-the-book meanings.
This book will give you that “aha!” moment you’ve been looking for
because I will share my own personal experiences with the card that
will trigger your mind to say, “Oh my gosh! Now it all makes sense!”
That is my ultimate goal with this book – I want this to be your
comprehensive guide through all things tarot.
This guide is provided for you all for free – it’s taken me eight
months to write it all from start to finish. I do plan on writing a book
that includes majors, minors, and court cards that will be available for
purchase. If you have any comments, you can e-mail me at
ZaharaVinson@gmail.com.

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 Shadows and Reversals
What you’ll love about tarot is that it uses many different angles to
speak to you, including showing you its “shadow” side or turning up
reversed.
I cannot stand it when I hear people say that there are “good” and
“bad” tarot cards. This isn’t true! Every single card, even the ones
that have a reputation for being “good” – let’s take The Sun for
example – has a “shadow side.”
What is a shadow?
Let me use a personality trait as an example. Let’s say you know
someone who is highly analytical and technical. This personality trait
will shine when this person is at work as a data analyst and they’re
able to point out trends, correlations, and facts through their
research. But during social situations, this personality trait would be a
nightmare because every time someone would make a joke or be
sarcastic, this analytical person will spend more time dissecting the
joke rather than just going with the flow.
Jokester: I have a joke! A bear walks into a bar and ...
Analytical Person: Wait, bears cannot walk into bars. First of all, no
sane person would allow a dangerous animal to enter into his
establishment. And secondly, before a bear could even reach
civilization, someone would have called animal control already!
Jokester: ... Dude, it’s just a joke!

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While being analytical is awesome for this person’s career, it does
have a shadow side, which is overthinking things and being too
technical in social situations.
Apply that same concept to tarot cards. Every tarot card has a
shadow side in which its qualities and traits are disadvantageous in
certain situations.
The Sun, for example, is all about energy, attention, spotlight, and
positivity – how could this possibly have a shadow side? Well, what
happens when you sit under the sun for far too long? You get
sunburned! What happens if you incessantly need attention and
spotlight? You come across as being arrogant and self-important!
So when you pull a “good” card for a question that doesn’t seem to
make sense because you were expecting a “bad” card, think about
the card’s shadow side. Let me give you an example. For personal
growth, I like to ask tarot about how I’m perceived by others. One
day, I asked, “What does my friend think is my worst quality?” I got
The World. This is one of the so-called “good” cards, so it’s easy to
get confused. But the shadow side of The World is being a
knowledgeable know-it-all. I may have come across as being some
sort of snobby smartypants and I had no idea!
Throughout this book, I will be offering some interpretations of the
shadow side of each card for your convenience.

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What’s a reversal?
When a reversal appears, tarot is trying to tell you the card’s
energies lack potency. For example, if you get Justice Reversed in a
reading, there is a lack of fairness and impartiality. When the card’s
energies are potent, someone is using a non-biased approach in the
situation, but when the card is reversed, tarot is warning you that
someone is being unfair and prejudiced.
In order to decipher a card’s reversal meanings, simply consider the
opposite of the card’s upright interpretations. If The Fool is impulsive
and carefree when upright, when /he’s reversed, he’s afraid to take
leaps of faith. If The Star is optimistic and hopeful when she is
upright, when she’s reversed, she is pessimistic and despondent.
What’s the difference between the shadow and the reversal?
My rule of thumb is that the shadow side as an excess of the card’s
upright energies while the reversal usually points to a lack of the
card’s upright energies. Another way to look at it is that the shadow
side points to the card’s disadvantageous aspects and the reversal is
the opposite of the card’s upright energies. Let’s use The
Hierophant (Upright), as an example, which represents someone who
complies with societal, religious, or cultural rules.
The shadow side of The Hierophant:
- Someone’s individuality is restricted due to being heavily
oppressed by societal pressures to “follow the crowd” (excess
of cultural oppression).
The reversal of The Hierophant:

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 - Someone who is rebellious and defiant against the rules (lack of
compliance).
Another difference is that the shadow is always negative, but a
reversal can be positive OR negative. Let me explain to you what I
mean. The “shadow” side reveals the card’s disadvantageous
energies. Being too dreamy, for example, is the shadow side of The
Star. However, the reversal of The Star points to the card’s
weakened energies, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing! Coming
out of a state of “fantasy” and “daydreaming” in order to materialize
your plans into reality is good! The Star Reversed can appear as
someone who has finally stopped floating around in Lala Land and is
now ready to achieve their goals.
In addition to the shadow side, I will be adding interpretations of
reversals.

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 The Major Arcana
The Fool

Upright Energies: A fresh start, a spontaneous and unplanned event,

childlike wonder, novice exploration, a brave jump into something new,
carefree attitude, taking a risk
Examples: A young teen who doesn’t care what people think about
her odd sense of style, aimlessly exploring a city without a map,
deciding to spontaneously fly to Hawaii without much planning
Shadow: Irresponsibility, not doing proper research, unprepared,
carelessness, negligence
Examples: A drunk man deciding to get into his car and drive, a
woman leaving her bag of groceries at the supermarket, a teenager
walking carelessly through traffic even though the “walk” signal is not
on

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Reversal: Fear of unplanned adventure, hesitation, avoiding the leap
of faith, neophobia (fear of new situations)
Examples: A woman who turns down a marriage proposal because
she’s too afraid to take such a life-changing plunge, an older man
refusing to learn how to use a smartphone due to fear of new
technology, and a teenager too afraid to ride her first rollercoaster
Upright
The wondrous trait that The Fool emanates is that he doesn’t have a
care in the world! This is someone I would say has “thick skin”
because he doesn’t allow people’s opinions or thoughts to sully his
self-worth. If you tell The Fool that he’s the worst dancer in the
world, he isn’t going to pay you any mind, and he’s going to dance,
dance, dance as if no one is watching!
The Fool is also not afraid to take risks which, in some instances, is
an excellent characteristic to have. If every single man feared
rejection and didn’t have the courage to approach the woman of his
dreams, the human race would cease to exist. If early humans didn’t
venture off into the unknown out of pure curiosity about what’s out
there, we’d never even know about the existence of other countries
and cultures, let alone have awareness that there’s a whole
extraterrestrial galaxy out there!
The Fool is oblivious to what lies before him, which is what makes him
a brave risk-taker. If a mother constantly told her little girl that the
world is full of murderers, terrorists, and thieves, chances are high
that this poor child would be too afraid to step foot outside of her
house. But if that same little girl had no clue about what lies ahead of
her outside of her own little bubble, she’d be excited to explore the
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unknown, meet new people, and see the world for herself! In the latter
case, she’d be The Fool – completely unaware of what lies before
her, which makes her fearless.
The Fool asks us to wipe away any pre-conceived notions from our
minds and, like an oblivious toddler, waddle and crawl our way through
the situation and develop knowledge through experience. Yes, we’ll
make mistakes along the way, but that’s a part of our journey to
become wiser and smarter in what we do.
As feelings in a love reading, The Fool shows someone who is has a
very carefree, “whatever happens, happens” vibe to them. They have
no inhibitions and they’re taking a very free-spirited approach toward
you in which they don’t want to be tied down or anchored by a
relationship – not yet at least. That may or may not change in the
future.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Fool Upright:
• A skydiver
• A student starting her first year of college
• A young girl who is innocently naïve to the perils and dangers of
our world
Shadow
Here we have an absolute reckless fool who lives life without having a
care in the world. Two months late on rent? “Who cares?” Driving like
a nutcase during a snowstorm? “Why not? Live a little!”
The shadow side of The Fool loves the thought of living life on the
edge – he may even have a passion for flirting with death. This is
someone who will ride the tops of subway cars, they’ll post YouTube

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videos of themselves jumping from roof to roof, and they’ll go drag
racing on the highway. If death is a possible consequence, sign them
up!
The shadow energies of The Fool also loves seeing how far he can go
without getting in trouble until, of course, he falls right off the edge
into destruction. “How far can I go without paying the rent?” “How
many times can I have sex unprotected before I catch something?”
“I’m going to blindly give my credit card information to this Craigslist
seller, what can it hurt?”
I’m not afraid to say it: The shadow side of The Fool is a moron who
trivializes the consequences of his idiotic actions.
This is also someone who makes egregious mistakes as a result of
not double-checking his or her work. Think of a student who
completes a math exam, but doesn’t realize she’s lost a lot of points
because she didn’t double-check her work for any errors.
I’d like to add one more interpretation for you in regard to The Fool
(Shadow) – not doing enough research.
In my own experience as a tarot reader, I’ve personally seen this to
represent a querent who got scammed by a scam artist. Falling for
some of the oldest tricks in the book, the victim mindlessly offered
her bank information, credit card number, address, and other sensitive
information thinking that the online scam artist was legit in offering
her an at-home job – all she would need to do was purchase a few
items for her home office, and she would be all set!
Little did the victim know that this scam artist had no desire to give
her an at-home job, all he was going to do was take her money for

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her so-called “home office products,” and he’d scurry away with her
hard-earned savings leaving her unemployed and $3,000 poorer.
If she did a little more research before jumping head first into this
fishy “job,” she would find thousands upon thousands of complaints
about these “home office job scams.”
The Fool (Shadow) implores you to find out more information about
something – read the fine print and do a little Googling – before
signing your name on the dotted line.
As feelings, The Fool (Shadow) shows someone who wants a no-
strings-attached type of relationship because they don’t want the
responsibilities or obligations that come with commitment. This is
someone who will seem to lack any respect for you (e.g. they’ll be
late all the time) because The Fool inherently doesn’t care about
what anyone thinks – they will do what they want to do, whether you
like it or not!
Here are my own personal experiences with The Fool (Shadow)
• An ignorant man who has no idea what’s happening in current
news these days
• A six-year-old who wants to staple his finger just to see what
happens
• A new bike rider choosing not to wear protective knee pads and
a helmet just because she doesn’t want to.
Reversal
With The Fool’s reversal, we have a deprivation of The Fool’s power.
This means that the explorative, untroubled, fearless energy of The
Fool is severely weakened. This card - instead of emitting
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spontaneous adventurous, light-hearted, carefree emotions and
childlike wonder - we have someone who is often afraid and
apprehensive about new experiences.
Though some of us may wish to live in a bubble and stay safe from all
of life’s perilous dangers, if we don’t take some risks in life, the
chances of us receiving rewards are slim.
Sure there’s a high chance you’ll lose your money by testing your
luck in a raffle, but if you don’t give it a try, the chances of you
winning that $1,000 prize is ZERO. Yes, going up to your crush and
professing your undying love for her may result in a painful rejection,
but guess what, if you don’t take the risk, the possibility of you
making a romantic connection with your crush is ZILCH!
The Fool Reversed warns us about being too much of a scaredy-cat
and playing it too safe. There are many of us who wish to launch our
own businesses, but because we don’t exactly know how to do it, or
we don’t have someone to guide us through it all, we say, “I don’t
want to take the risk.” The Fool Reversed says, “Just go for it! Take
the plunge! You don’t need to know how, when, or where – you don’t
need to spend an eternity planning for the ‘right moment’ to start
your own business! Just go for it!”
Yes, there will be some hiccups along the way because of your
inexperience, but if you’ve ever listened to any successful
entrepreneur tell their story, they all have had some mishaps, but
guess what? This didn’t hinder them from being where they are
today. In fact, they will tell you they appreciate their fumbles because
it taught them to be the wise and discerning business person they’ve
grown to be.

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You’ve got to start from somewhere, and The Fool is your launching
pad. Don’t be afraid to take a leap of faith.
Now, if you spot this card in a love reading – beware. There is
someone who is not willing to take the plunge in regards to a
relationship milestone, whether it’s “becoming official,” an
engagement or marriage. They feel as if doing so would be too
thoughtless, reckless, and careless. Perhaps their mind could change
later on down the road, but for now, they’re against the whole “devil-
may-care” attitude when it comes to love.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Fool Reversed:
• A student passing up career opportunities due to fear of new
experiences
• A woman who despises spontaneous activities and unplanned
events
• A man who just can’t take the leap to take things to the next
level with his girlfriend due to apprehension

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 The Magician

Upright Energies: resourcefulness, MacGyver-like inventions, charm,

artfulness, beguilement, ingenuity, masterful illusionist, bewitchment,
optical illusions, hustling, reality-warping spectacles and shows, jack
of all trades
Examples: A low-income mother making her son a guitar with just a
shoebox and rubber bands, a religious speaker dazzling the crowd with
his captivating stories and charming presence, a make-up artist
beautifying her client, a grandfather impressing his grandkids with his
cool magic tricks, an eye-catching CGI movie
Shadow: trickery, deception, all smoke and mirrors, marketing ploys,
fraud, scam artist, a slippery salesman
Examples: A saleswoman enthusiastically promoting a dysfunctional
product, a charming man whispering sweet lies to a woman in order to
get what’s in between her legs, a magazine photoshopping a model to
a point where she’s unrecognizable, propaganda from an oppressive
regime
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Reversal: Poorly skilled, lack of prowess and finesse, not using the
tools and resources available to make something beautiful and
worthwhile, not believing in one’s ability to make something out of
nothing, juggling too many obligations at once
Examples: A student who ignores the tutoring resources at her
university, a man who just cannot captivate the crowd with his
lackluster presence, a mother trying to build a crib, but is having
trouble using the power tools
Upright
The core energies of The Magician is being able to make something
out of nothing. This card says, “You already have what you need to
create what you want!” If we look at the Rider Waite card, The
Magician has all four tools of tarot – a pentacle, a sword, a cup, and a
wand. This is symbolic. This card is reminding you that you have the
financial means (pentacle), the smarts (sword), emotional intelligence
(cup), and passion (wand) to make magic!
When I was about eight-years-old, I wanted to fly a kite. My father
knew how to make one, so he gathered what we had – some printer
paper and string. That’s it! Somehow, with just those two items, my
father made a kite that I spent all day playing with in the wind outside
of my parent’s New York City apartment.
People passed by in awe. It’s not every day you see someone flying a
kite in the busy urban centers of New York City.
My father is The Magician for sure, but sadly, that’s because he had
no choice. His ability to “create something from nothing” is a part of

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who he is because he grew up in extreme poverty, and when you
don’t have money to live comfortably, you have to use what you have
to survive – your resources (pentacle), your connections (cups), your
intellect (sword), and your will (passion).
My father, thankfully, is nowhere near being the poor young boy he
once was. Though he’s saddened by his poor childhood, it made him
who he is today – my father could make a doll out of a mango seed,
he can build a table with very little at his disposal, and he can talk
himself out of paying an exorbitant cable bill!
The Magician is also an artist in many ways. Think of celebrities who
can sell out movie theatres just by using their acting talent. Think
about the painter who can create a portrait that’s so realistic, you
have to question whether it’s a real photo. Think of the author who
can write 300-page fantastical novels that send your imagination to
incredible, faraway places, and all the author used was her mind and a
pen.
The Magician asks us to use what we have to create abundance!
As feelings, someone is determined to use their charm, charisma, and
alluring appeal to win your affections.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Magician Upright:
• A young brilliant student who can make a battery out of two
potatoes, a penny, a nail, and a wire.
• A man who can talk his way out of a parking ticket because
he’s got the gift of gab
• A woman who can entertain her dinner guests with her hilarious
stories

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 Shadow
The Magician (Shadow) is perhaps one of the most crooked,
deceptive characters in the tarot deck. We have too much
beguilement, a preponderance of charming cunningness, and an
overwhelming amount of trickery and illusion.
Yeah, not good.
My favorite example of this aspect of the Magician is The Music Man,
a 1962 musical film which follows a con man who travels from town-
to-town pretending that he is a marching band instructor (spoiler
alert: he’s not). You should see his costumes and his persuasive
demeanor! You’d never suspect that he’s a dirty crook underneath
such a credible façade.
This man can’t even play a harmonica let alone lead a band.
But with his enthralling presence and convincing disguises, he wins
over all the adults in town – they enrolled their sons in the fraudulent
“marching band” and paid the con man to purchase phantom
costumes and non-existent instruments.
Once he got the money, the con man would flee town with the money,
leaving his victims empty-handed and bamboozled.
That is the best characterization of The Magician (Shadow).
What makes this reversal so troubling is that it produces a character
that is too good at what he does and, as a result, many people will fall
victim to his slippery schemes.
The Magician (Shadow) is the seductive, irresistible woman who lures
wealthy men to bed just to steal from them. It’s the marketers who,

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pushed by the cigarette industry, make smoking look “cool” through
titillating ad placements. However, they know good darn and well that
they’re beguiling customers to an insidious death.
In love readings and as feelings, The Magician (Shadow) is the
charming man who puts on a façade of wanting a relationship, but
deep down inside, he is simply using his charisma and charm to bed
you, and as soon as he gets what he wants, he’s out the door.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Magician (Shadow):
• A crooked doctor falsely claiming to have a cure to an ailment,
but he just wants money
• An Internet scam artist preying on desperate job seekers with
illusions of a well-paying salary and benefits
• A teenager wearing too much make-up to a point where she
looks like a different person
Reversal
When The Magician is reversed, it’s stripped of the savoir-faire,
acumen, and dexterity of its upright energies.
We no longer have the inventiveness of MacGyver, the spectacular
showmanship of Houdini, or the alluring articulateness of Joel Osteen.
The Magician Reversed best represents incompetence, clumsiness,
and inelegance. The Magician Reversed is what I would refer to as a
man with no “game.”
He has no idea what to do or say to seduce his love interests, he
cannot impress investors due to his lifeless sales pitch, and he
doesn’t have faith in his ability to create abundance from poverty.

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To be concise, The Magician Reversed has lost his mojo – he doesn’t
have the “magic” to woo others.
Someone operating under The Magician Reversed energies can also
have difficulties manifesting their ideas into reality. If you receive a
sudden spark of an idea to create a wacky invention, you may find
yourself encumbered with blockages – for some reason, you just
cannot materialize your idea into something tangible.
Now I am a big fan of The Law of Attraction – I genuinely believe that
we have the ability to manifest whatever we want by electrifying our
thoughts into blueprints, and converting those blueprints into
prototypes, and eventually, those prototypes will mold into exactly
what we visualized in our minds.
When The Magician is upright, if he says, “Hey, I’m going to make
$10,000 in a week to start up a new business,” he will because he
truly believes he has everything he needs – right at his disposal – to
make that happen. Whereas someone operating under The Magician
Reversed energies would think, “No, I couldn’t possibly make $10,000
in a week. I don’t have the skills. I don’t have the talent,” and the
truth is, they absolutely do have everything they need to receive
abundance into their lives. But because they lack self-belief, they
couldn’t even manifest a penny if they tried because they don’t
realize that all the power they need is all in the palm of their hands.
The Magician upright would say, “I know I have a bunch of electronics
around the house that I’d like to get rid of, and I can make $2,000
easily. I’m also an excellent artist, so I know I can sell about four of
my paintings for $1,000. The remaining $7,000 I know I can crowdfund

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by asking people to invest in my start-up on Kickstarter or
Indiegogo.”
That same person, operating under The Magician Reversed energies
would say, “There’s no chance in me getting that $10,000. It’s
hopeless.”
The Magician Reversed invites us to use our personal power to
create something from nothing – you can do it!
One more thing I’d like to add about The Magician Reversed. It can
also refer to someone who is spreading their effort and time too
thinly across too many obligations and tasks. When The Magician is
upright, he’s a jack of all trades and master of none – he can do a
little bit of this and do a little bit of that, and it’s impressive.
However, when reversed, this can indicate someone who is trying to
accomplish too many tasks at once. The Magician Reversed, then,
could be asking you to focus on ONE task at a time so that none of
your projects suffer from you being too distracted.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Magician Reversed:
• A man who flounders when it comes to sexual prowess in the
bedroom
• ,A woman having difficulties persuading investors to buy into her
new invention
• A job candidate failing to get the job due to employer not being
impressed with his skillset

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 The High Priestess

Upright Energies: secrecy, esoteric knowledge, mystery, inner voice

and intuition, what you don’t know, introversion, quietude, passive,
the wallflower, retreating and withdrawing, chastity and virginity
Examples: A man who is observant and absorbs his surroundings, but
is shy and introverted, a woman who prefers to remain modestly
clothed and chaste, a video game character that players must seek to
find answers to puzzling situations
Shadow: too secretive, overly guarded, and excessively passive
Examples: A woman keeping a deep, dark secret, a man who abstains
from involving himself in a situation he should be vocal in, a woman
who cannot get herself to be vulnerable enough to self-disclose,
which affects her romantic relationships
Reversal: unearthing a mystery, the beans have been spilled, opening
Pandora’s box, a revelation of the truth, too much information being
shared

24
Examples: A man who is shocked to find an incriminating text on his
wife’s phone, a senior employee telling a new worker about the inner
workings of the institution’s office politics, a woman who doesn’t
leave much to the imagination
Upright
The High Priestess represents everything we don’t know – the
skeletons in someone’s closet, your best friend’s deep dark secret,
tomorrow’s winning lottery numbers, how life began, why we dream,
the cure for cancer, and what’s at the very bottom of the deep, blue
sea (95% of the ocean is unexplored).
The High Priestess also advises us to keep our mouth shut because
it’s not the right moment to reveal a secret. If, for example, you’re
going on a date and you’d like to reveal a skeleton in your closet, but
The High Priestess shows up as advice, the card is saying, “Don’t do
it. Keep your secret to yourself. It’s not worth it.”
The High Priestess is also about being intuitive. I love seeing The
High Priestess in readings because it sometimes says, “Why the hell
are you asking me for? You know the answer already! Listen to your
intuition! Use your inner knowing!”
The High Priestess also points to our inexplicable “knowing” about
someone or something. Have you ever gotten bad vibes from
someone you just met, but you don’t even know why? This person
hasn’t done anything wrong to you at all nor did they give you a
reason to dislike them, but there’s just something about them that
rubs you the wrong way. Their aura just makes you feel so
uncomfortable.

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That is your intuition helping you. Something is setting off alarms in
your inner self saying, “Run! This person is not a nice woman!”
Usually, we choose to ignore it because it seems ridiculous to rule
someone out based on a “feeling,” but in the near future, there will
always be a moment you’ll say, “Aha! My intuition was right, but now
I have proof.”
The High Priestess is also an observer. She’s passive, but that
doesn’t mean she’s standing there doing nothing. She collects
information about her surroundings without needing to interact with
anyone. She surveys the room, she sits in her little corner, and she
psychoanalyzes everyone. If you don’t know anyone at a party, The
High Priestess advises you to observe and absorb knowledge about
your surroundings first; this way, you can intuit who will the best
person for you to approach and start socializing with.
The High Priestess also advises against speaking out about our
concerns and worries. It’s best to remain quiet and keep to
ourselves.
In love readings, someone may feel as if you’re a tough nut to crack
and difficult to attain.
Here are my own personal experiences with The High Priestess
Upright:
• A locked diary filled with juicy secrets that one cannot open
• A criminal being interrogated and he refuses to spill the beans
on his accomplice’s wrongdoings
• A man choosing to stay mum and not reveal the truth about his
infidelities

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 Shadow
The High Priestess (Shadow) says someone is being quiet and
secretive to a fault. In certain situations, being the people-watching
“wallflower” is key, but in other environments, it’s detrimental.
At work, for example, standing out and showing off your talents is
essential in order to move up the career ladder, and it is not the best
time for you to express your High Priestess energies.
You want to be active and aggressive in pursuing promotions and
raises, not be passive and receptive. With the High Priestess
(Shadow), we are seeing a person or situation that expresses super
quiescent and reserved energies.
The High Priestess (Shadow) can also represent a person – an
alluring, mysterious person who doesn’t reveal too much about their
lives. It represents a woman who won’t allow you to touch her with a
10-foot pole. You’ll never know what she looks like naked because
she’d rather remain clothed and chaste.
This is the man who will never fully open up to you about his past (or
present for that matter). There is always something The High
Priestess (Shadow) refuses to reveal to you, whether this is out of
malicious intent or desire for privacy, no one knows. Maybe his or her
secrets may be harmless – something you wouldn’t want to know.
But there are times when secrets can be dangerous and can threaten
one of the many ingredients needed to keep a relationship healthy:
intimacy.

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This is the person who is too afraid to be intimate in his or her
relationships. And by intimate, I am not talking about sex (I find that
this term is used much too interchangeably with lovemaking).
Intimacy is all about developing closeness with you and someone else
– and this happens through letting the other person “in.” You entrust
your love interest to take a peek through the skeletons in your closet.
Intimacy is being comfortable with self-disclosure and connecting
with your partner by sharing secrets with them – it creates a bond
that is unrivaled to the other relationships you have in your life
because they know your deepest, darkest secrets.
The High Priestess (Shadow) simply cannot entrust others into the
skeletons in his or her closet. He or she refuses to be vulnerable and
that’s that.
As feelings, this is someone who feels the need to keep a secret from
you and remain mum about something.
Here are my own personal experiences with The High Priestess
(Shadow):
• A criminal being interrogated, but refusing to give up useful
information to authorities
• Someone who is very closed-off and overly introverted
• A woman who did poorly in a group job interview because she
was too quiet and passive

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 Reversal
When The High Priestess is upright, she’s the entity that harbors
valuable, instrumental knowledge, but will only share these tidbits with
those deemed “worthy” of such sensitive information. This makes her
tight-lipped, reticent, and mysterious.
However, when she is reversed, these qualities are diminished.
I remember getting this card for a client who asked how her night
would go one Saturday – she made plans to go to the club and dance
the night away.
I pulled The High Priestess Reversed, which I assumed to mean that
she would be revealing herself in ways that The High Priestess
upright might disapprove of.
As it turns out, she ended up having a one-night stand with a man at
the club and later regretted the act.
She felt as if she “revealed” herself too soon to a guy she had just
met.
The High Priestess Reversed, lacking in her usual mysterious
energies, can also represent the action of “uncovering” and
“unveiling” something.
You may see this card when someone unearths a secret or exposes
too much of themselves.
The High Priestess Reversed can also be about someone not
listening to their intuition, gut feeling, and inner voice.
Here are my own personal experiences with The High Priestess
Reversed:

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• A daughter finding her mother’s journal and being shocked to
read all the salacious things she’s done in her past
• A woman who doesn’t leave much to the imagination when she
dresses
• A journalist writing an image-damaging exposé about a
prestigious tech company

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 The Empress

Upright Energies: creative development, mother nature, feminine

quintessence, gestation, nurturing, sustenance, healthy self-image,
feeling sexy in one’s own skin
Examples: The mind-blowing and beautiful process of childbearing,
nurturing a friend with care and hospitality after an accident,
providing a plant with sustenance, such as water and sunlight
Shadow: helicopter parents, overnourishment, micromanagement,
spoon feeding, out-of-control growth
Examples: A father who just cannot fathom the thought of his
daughter maturing, a mother who still does her adult son’s laundry,
an employer micromanaging his annoyed employee
Reversal: an obstruction to feeling feminine, poor self-image in terms
of feeling “womanly,” lack of care for the self or others, mother
nature goes “haywire,” something unnatural, something being “out of

31
season” like fruit and vegetables, no creation, blockage to
childbearing, poor productivity
Examples: A mother who feels as if she’s not quite feeling her
beautiful self because he hasn’t given herself the time for self-care,
a teenage girl who doesn’t feel pretty due to the odd changes going
on in her body, a miscarriage
Upright
The Empress is someone who feels immensely comfortable in his or
her body, and as a result, they feel “one with the universe.” They
thrive in their sex lives because they are in love with every bump,
curve, and scar on their bodies. Their relationships flourish because
they know how to nurture the people they love. Their self-image is at
an all-time high because they do not neglect themselves as they care
for others. While the baby is napping, The Empress will run herself a
bubble bath to get some much needed “me” time.
Mother Nature is often depicted as The Empress.
Without a nurturing soul, proper growth is threatened. Without water,
proper soil, and sunlight, a seed will never come a tree. Mother Nature
is the entity behind why our trees stand with such healthy poise –
she is the creator behind our breath-taking landscapes and jaw-
dropping waterfalls that are too beautiful for words.
Mother Nature is the mother of all mothers, but on the earthly realm,
there are women giving birth to beautiful sons and daughters
everyday – the thought of how incredible it is that a mere human
being is able to create life never ceases to amaze me.

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What you need to understand about The Empress is that yes, it’s
about pregnancy, but it’s more about the perfect balance of
reception and assertion – a union of feminine and masculine to create
something beautiful. A woman is receptive to a man’s assertion,
which begets a baby, and the earth is receptive to the insertion of a
seed, which creates a gorgeous tree. This concept can even apply to
creative projects – a canvas is receptive to a painter’s art strokes,
which begets a masterpiece!
When the Empress is upright, we have a fertile, receptive entity that
is ready to work with a proactive energy to create. Beautiful, isn’t it?
In love readings, this is a sweet card to get as feelings because it
means that someone is willing to take care of you. He or she may also
see you as their ideal woman.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Empress Upright:
• A friend lovingly and supportively holding her roommate’s hair
back as she hovers over the toilet after having too much to
drink
• A woman molding and carving her clay creation until’ it looks
like a replica of a famous celebrity
• A man taking hair growth supplements to grow thicker hair
Shadow
The Empress (Shadow) could be best visualized as a little girl that
hugs her tiny kitten to death, literally. The Empress Reversed is all
about smothering someone with nurturing love and care to a point
where they are hampered from growth.

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A mother has to eventually allow her child to learn how to cross the
street for she cannot hold her kid’s hand forever. A fearful, paranoid
father must one day allow his daughter to go out with friends and
socialize, and trust that she has enough smarts to be safe in this ugly,
beautiful world.
With the Empress (Shadow), the parents never truly allow their kids
to flourish and smother them into regression or stagnation. They
spoon feed them to a point where kids feel entitled to anything and
everything because they were never told “no.”
Or perhaps we have a young adult who wishes to explore the world
and experience everything life has to offer, good and bad, but we have
a parent here that figuratively locks them in a cage and says, “No,
you can’t go anywhere.”
Another aspect of The Empress (Shadow) depicts squandering one’s
resources – time, effort and money – for someone or something, and
in the process, we end up neglecting our own well-being.
Also, if you’re having a weed problem in your garden, and you asked
tarot about the outcome of this issue, The Empress isn’t a card
you’d like to see because it’s an indication that those weeds will
continue to grow out of control!
To sum it up, The Empress (Shadow) is all about overgrowth and
overnurturing someone or something.
In my experience, The Empress (Shadow) as feelings can show
someone who feels the need to smother, micromanage, or even be
condescending toward someone. This can also be someone who feels

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the need too much hospitality for someone who doesn’t deserve it,
and in the process, they end up neglecting their own needs.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Empress (Shadow):
• When my potatoes start to sprout
• An overprotective mother who ends up stifling her daughter’s
growth in terms of gaining life experience and knowledge
• A woman who cares a lot about a miserly love interest, but
neglects to wonder whether that love interest is deserving of
the self-less love she’s offering
Reversal
The Empress Reversed is a person or situation in which there’s a
lack of the “feminine soul.”
First, let’s talk about “feeling” feminine – it’s about being
comfortable in womanhood and/or motherhood. In feeling feminine,
one embraces the bumps and curves that comes along with it. This is
the woman who looks at her so-called “flaws,” such as her stretch
marks, and loves it all as she understands it’s a part of being a
woman.
However, when we have the Empress Reversed, we have someone
who experiences a hindrance to embracing their womanliness and
femininity. Perhaps this person anguishes over feeling “out of her
element” in her womanhood – not feeling beautiful, not feeling
comfortable in her skin.
A common example is a mother who doesn’t have the time for self-
care and, as a result, she doesn’t feel quite like herself when she
looks in the mirror. Perhaps she doesn’t like her weight due to not

35
having the time to work out or fusses over the dark circles under her
eyes due to lack of sleep.
Now here’s another The Empress Reversed situation. Let’s say a
boy wins a pet fish at a fair and then, a week later, he is discouraged
to see that his pet fish has died even though he did his darnedest by
keeping the fish alive.
The Empress Reversed could pop up in this situation to demonstrate
that, despite the boy’s best efforts, there was still some sustenance
necessities that were missing, like a proper tank and a good filtration
system. This should tell you that some form of neglect is happening
when this card appears, even if it’s not intentional.
The Empress Reversed can also point to issues during the creative
process, for example, some sort of a hindrance of a fetus growing to
full-term or a preteen having mental blockages in creating an A+
project for school.
Under The Empress Reversed energies, you may also find a man or
woman who chooses to not have children.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Empress Reversed:
• Someone who has a bad skin condition and, as a result, feels
uncomfortable in embracing herself as a beautiful woman in her
sexual life
• A woman who finds out her fallopian tubes are damaged and she
cannot have kids
• Infertile land that will not support the growth of plants

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 The Emperor

Upright Energies: order, authority, regulation, self-discipline,

fatherliness, regimen, law and order
Examples: Maintaining a strict exercise regimen, a father laying down
the rules of the house to his kids, a police officer warning protesters
to stop their antics or they will be arrested
Shadow: domination, tyranny, coercion, overregulation,
micromanagement
Examples: Someone who imposes strict limits and boundaries on their
significant other, an institution with laws that make the workers feel
oppressed and caged, a militant dance instructor who won’t allow her
students to leave until each and every one of them grasps the routine
Reversal: lack of self-discipline, anarchy, no boundaries or limits, poor
regulation
Examples: A father who allows his children to run amok and does not
discipline them, a boss who suddenly quits and leaves employees

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without management, an area with no traffic signage causes many car
accidents
Upright
The Emperor is often painted as a controlling, stubborn, “my way or
the highway” energy, which is partly true, but that’s more of its
shadow side. In a more positive light, I would describe The Emperor
as the imposition of law and order to prevent chaos.
Without a leader of a group, there will be confusion and disarray. If
there were no laws or regulations, there would be absolute mayhem.
We need The Emperor because, without its energies, it would be an
absolute madhouse!
A teacher who operates under The Emperor’s energies knows how to
implement rules in the classroom so that there is order, peace, and
buy-in from her students.
The Emperor doesn’t always have to depict a person – it can
represent the red octagonal sign that says “STOP” when you’re
driving on the road. It can represent a law that boldly states that you
cannot purchase alcohol on Sundays. Some people might see The
Emperor as the entity that tells you what you can and cannot do, but
through an optimistic lens, I like to see The Emperor as the entity
that establishes organization and discipline.
Aside from law and regulation, The Emperor is someone who is very
disciplined. Let me give you an example. Let’s take a man who has a
very busy day tomorrow – he has to wake up at 6 p.m., drive his kids
to school at 7 p.m., and get to work at 9 p.m. The night before, a
disciplined man will make sure his children picks the clothes they will

38
wear for school the next day, he will already have lunch packed and
ready-to-go for himself and the kids, and he lays out his suit, tie, and
all his work documents for easy access. That way, when his busy day
begins, everything is smooth sailing.
Now imagine how chaotic that busy day would have been if he wasn’t
disciplined (Emperor Reversed). The kids would make the poor guy
late by spending an eternity choosing what clothes to wear to school.
Already tardy, he’ll have to spend an additional 30 minutes preparing
lunches for everyone. And his boss will throw a fit at him for arriving
an hour late and say, “I don’t want to hear the ‘my kids’ excuse!”
The Emperor loves schedules and routines. If this card pops up, it
could be reminding you to be more disciplined – write down your
grocery list instead of trying to “winging it” because you’ll forget
something, get an organizer to keep track of all your scheduled
appointments, and get a folder to keep all your documents in one safe
place.
The Emperor also represents patriarchy, masculinity, and the
society’s perception of how a “manly man” acts. When The Emperor
appears in your love readings, there’s a good chance that your
person in question prefers a “traditional” household – the man calls
all the shots and the woman does all the cooking and cleaning – as
opposed to a “progressive” household in which duties are split 50-50.
As feelings, The Emperor is someone who is feeling quite fatherly
toward you – they may want to protect you. They may also feel that
you need some instructional guidance and discipline, and they are
there to help you “stay in line.” This is also someone who cares more
about enforcing boundaries and limitations than forming emotional

39
connections at this time. This is a very mind-over-heart card in
regard to feelings.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Emperor Upright:
• An employer laying out the rules of the office to a new
employee
• A teenage girl who has enough self-discipline to wake up at 5
a.m. every day for her morning jog in order to stay fit
• A father reprimanding his son for running around the house
because he fears the little boy will fall and hurt himself
Shadow
The Emperor (Shadow) is an unpleasant energy for many – it
describes an entity that overregulates, usually to a point of
oppression and subjugation.
Law and order is necessary to prevent chaos and confusion, however
when there is a deluge of that energy, we have draconian rules and
austere decrees – basically a dictator!
What we have here, with The Emperor (Shadow), is the absence of
democracy – you have no say or voice. You will do as you’re told and
that’s that. No ifs, ands, or buts about it!
This is the severe mother who doesn’t care to hear the story about
why her teenage daughter came home 15 minutes late from school,
even though it was not her fault. The teacher lost track of time while
giving a lecture on early American history, but the mother only sees
the outcome, not the cause.
As a result, the young girl faces a beating from her mother for coming
home too late.
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The Emperor (Shadow) is the man who will only date a woman who
asks “How high?” after he says “jump!” Having control over a woman
cushions his ego and his machismo. Women and men need to steer
clear from falling prey to such power-hungry people – they do not
love you, but they do enjoy having someone to control right in the
palm of their hands.
The Emperor (Shadow) is also a leader who takes advantage of the
clout he or she has in ways that are immoral and unethical.
The Emperor (Shadow) can, sadly, also be about someone who is
controlling and/or abusive – he will expect everyone who he
considers to be “beneath” him to submit to his orders. He can be
extremely patriarchal to a point of misogyny as well.
The Emperor (Shadow) is extremely unpleasant, especially for
subordinates, because it is difficult to subdue and overcome a person
who has such a wealth of power that punishment and consequences
for his oppressive actions tends to evade him or her.
In love readings, watch out! This is someone who is a control freak,
extremely hard-headed, and could even be physically and/or verbally
abusive. As feelings, they may wish to strip away your power so they
can control you.
If I could sum up the energies of The Emperor (Shadow), it would be
an oppressive shutdown of marginalized voices, opinions, and
freedoms due to a dictatorship-like environment.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Emperor (Shadow):
• A TSA agent at an airport taking advantage of his or her
position to suggestively touch travelers

41
 • A pre-teen who lays down extremely strict ground rules for her
sister when she visits her room
• A corrupt police officer who harasses a civilian simply because
he has the power to do so.
Reversal:
The Emperor Reversed represents an entity that lacks authority,
discipline, and governance.
For instance, think of a time when you were adamant about starting
to eat right and exercise regularly. A lot of the times, we start off
strong, cutting out buffalo chicken wings and French fries out of our
diet, and going to the gym three times a week.
But then, we slip back into our old habits and start wolfing down junk
food again while being a total coach potato. Not being able to upkeep
a routine or regimen is The Emperor Reversed.
There are no external forces requiring you to keep up your diet and
exercise, such as a personal trainer or a nutritionist. So in order to
stay on your weight-loss journey, you’ll need self-discipline, which is
exactly what The Emperor Reversed lacks.
This is an example, but it sums up what The Emperor Reversed is all
about – the absence of regulation.
Under The Emperor Reversed, authority figures are either
nonexistent or too weak and therefore cannot impose any rules or
guidelines – it’s a free for all! Now this may be a good thing if, for
example, you’re driving five miles per hour above the speeding limit,
and a police officer spots this but decides to leave you alone.

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The Emperor Reversed is not so pleasant, on the other hand, if
someone tries to rob you in broad daylight and a police officer drives
by but decides he simply does not feel like getting involved. “No
thanks. I’d rather have a donut.”
You can also apply this card to political situations in which a leader is
ousted out of a country due to a rebellious uprising. The nation is
then left in shambles without a captain to steer the ship.
There are also underdeveloped countries who suffer from poor
regulations, which attracts unscrupulous characters who take
advantage of loopholes in the nation’s system for their own personal
gain.
The Emperor Reversed energies can also describe parents or
guardians who do not set ground rules for their children, and as a
result, their kids are causing all types of trouble for others because
they do not have a disciplinarian.
These kids cause trouble in school and don’t flinch when the teacher
says, “I’m going to talk to your mom about this” because he or she
knows that their mother will not reprimand them for their poor
behavior.
And as we are on the topic of school, here’s one more example: Can
you remember a time when you were a student and you knew which
teacher you could “mess” with? Think about why you thought you
could get away with some things in his or her classroom in
comparison to other teachers.
Chances are, this teacher did not know how to manage a classroom
of rowdy kids. Perhaps the consequences that he or she imposed on

43
her students for bad behavior was too lenient. Whatever this soft-
handed teacher did, it did not help to “straighten” the students out
and, as a result, kids were more likely to wreak havoc in the
classroom.
In love readings, I’ve seen female querents complain about a love
interest not taking a more “manly man,” dominant role in their life and
they act far too immature for their taste. As an example, perhaps he
isn’t taking initiative to be the breadwinner of the household, he plays
video games all day, or he lacks the “backbone” of a leader. For male
querents, under The Emperor Reversed, I’ve seen them complain of
women are too easily influenced by others or they do not know how
to discipline themselves as an adult (e.g. they skip showers, they
sleep in ‘til 3 p.m. every day, and they’re terrible at time
management).
When you apply The Emperor Reversed to your interpretations, think
of the following: inadequate leadership, lawlessness, and
disorganization.
As feelings, this is someone who doesn’t feel the need to accept any
responsibilities that he or she obligated to follow through with. It can
also depict someone who doesn’t feel the need to step up and take
control – they’d rather take a backseat and take an easy-going,
lenient, merciful approach.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Emperor Reversed:
• A traffic guard directing drivers in such a poor manner, he
caused a car accident
• A young man without a mother or father in his life to give him
good guidance on how to navigate through life’s troubles
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• An incompetent shift manager who lacked clarity on how to
keep a tight fist on his employees

45
 The Hierophant

Upright Energies: cultural norms, societal expectations, traditional

values, the straight and narrow path, institutions and establishments,
guidance, group and social identity, being polite and respectful
Examples: a woman making a decision based on her Christian values,
a student choosing to be a part of a sorority in college, a man feeling
awkward about being too emotional because it conflicts with
society’s gender expectations
Shadow: sheep mentality, mindless conformity, caged by societal
pressures and expectations, holier-than-thou attitude, a corrupt
establishment, an institution indoctrinating their followers using
propaganda and brainwashing
Examples: A man who does not want to follow through with an
arranged marriage, but chooses to do so anyway because it is part of
his cultural expectations, a terrorist organization evangelizing civilians

46
to be hostile toward a targeted group, a woman who cannot make
decisions on her own without consulting her pastor
Reversal: anti-establishmentism, non-conformity, rebelliousness,
individualism, unorthodox values and principles
Examples: Women protesting society’s dismissal of female sexual
freedom, a priest engaging in lewd acts that contradict his teachings,
a young girl choosing to keep her hair curly despite pressures to
straighten it
Upright
The Hierophant is a collection of expectations that are imposed on
you by your religion, family, culture, peers, employers, and society. If
you’re a woman and you want to get a pixie cut, The Hierophant will
pop up and say, “No, you can’t do that ‘cause women are to keep
their hair long.”
If a man wants to cry his eyes out, The Hierophant will appear and
say, “No, you can’t do that. Men are to be emotionless.” If a
daughter of Christian parents decides to co-habitate with her
boyfriend, The Hierophant will pop up and say, “No! You’d be living in
sin!”
If you ever felt “pressured” to do something, that is exactly what The
Hierophant is – an entity that threatens to marginalize you if you do
not follow the crowd. Though this may come across as unfavorable
for some, there are plenty of benefits that come from the concept of
“societal expectations” and the standards we’re expected to uphold
in our daily lives.

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The Hierophant is what prevents a college professor from
romantically approaching his student (though he may want to). The
Hierophant is what blocks a man from groping a stranger in public
(though he may want to). The Hierophant is what keeps you from
knocking your boss’ teeth out (though you may want to). It’s NOT
socially accepted to engage in any of these behaviors and it won’t be
tolerated due to our cultural values! The Hierophant says, “That is
not the right thing to do.”
This is why religion is important to so many people. Yes, you’re
pressured to follow certain protocols within that religion’s sacred
texts, but many religious people love this because it provides them
with an “instruction booklet,” so to speak, on how to “be” in certain
situations.
My father, a staunch Christian, loved the concept of Christianity
because he said it instilled morality into the world. “People know what
they should and shouldn’t do thanks to The Bible.”
I’ve argued that people didn’t have to be Christian to have morals –
not to mention there are plenty of religious people who, ironically,
don’t have even a modicum of morality. But I understood my father’s
point. If you ever felt lost and you wanted to know how to live an
ethical life, you can just pick up a sacred religious text – The Torah,
The Bible, The Koran, and whatever else – to give you some guidance.
That’s another aspect of The Hierophant – he’s an excellent teacher
and advice giver. Religious or not, this is someone you can confide in
with your questions and you will always get an enlightening answer.
This is someone who would make an excellent mentor, professor, and
tutor.

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The Hierophant also represents large institutions – colleges and
universities, banks, and big businesses.
Lastly, The Hierophant depicts politeness and respect. If you were to
ask tarot what someone likes about you the most, and The
Hierophant pops up, they may love your moral compass, they may
appreciate how much of a great advice-giver you may be, or they may
praise how well-mannered, polite, and respectful you are.
In love readings, as feelings, The Hierophant speaks of someone who
does not want to overstep their boundaries – this could mean they’re
already in a relationship, they don’t want to cross over the “platonic”
line, or their line of work disallows it (e.g. you’re their student or they
don’t want to date a fellow co-worker). The Hierophant can also
speak of someone who sees the relationship purely as a teacher-
student or advice-giver/advice-receiver dynamic.
You may have heard The Hierophant as a “marriage” card, but I
would only put emphasis on that meaning if you’re already in a
relationship with the person in question and you specifically ask a
question along the lines of, “What is the ideal relationship he like to
have with me?” Clarifiers such as The 4 of Wands will validate the
fact he or she would gladly walk down the aisle with you.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Hierophant Upright:
• A student body all dressed up in uniform, as instructed by the
school, to promote unity and to stifle individual expression
• A mother offering advice to her daughter about how to best
handle sticky situations in the dating world
• An instructions booklet

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 Shadow
With The Hierophant (Shadow), we have an entity that is too
conforming and mindlessly obedient to cultural, societal, or
institutional expectations.
If we look at the dynamics at play in schools, consider the quiet,
introverted student who follows everything the popular girls tell her to
do because she doesn’t want to get on their bad side.
Think about the person who cannot make a decision on her own
without first consulting a religious figure or an oracle.
With such a heavy emphasis on following the right path dictated by
culture, society, or an institution, we often find people who are too
easily influenced by peers and society to adopt certain behaviors –
even though these actions may be against their best interests.
Now with The Hierophant (Shadow), when we discuss the “powers
that be” (the entities who establish principles that people must follow
to be “accepted” by the majority), we have authorities who brainwash
followers for their own self-interested gains, and not for the genuine
good of all people.
In this case, consider a corrupt cult in which the leader manipulatively
indoctrinates followers that a certain group of people is the source of
all their grief and the only way to relieve themselves of their
misfortune is to commit a massacre.
On a less extreme scale, The Hierophant (Shadow) can be a holier-
than-thou person who presents himself as morally superior to others,
but behind closed doors, he’s doing the unimaginable.

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As feelings, this is someone who weakly allows outside pressures to
overshadow their own desires toward you. For example, I’ve seen
The Hierophant (Shadow) appear for myself in which I’ve allowed by
mother’s austere views on courtship take precedence over what I
wanted to do in my love life, which greatly affected my love
relationships.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Hierophant
(Shadow):
• A woman chastising her sibling for choosing to move in with her
boyfriend before marriage
• A young boy who engaged in some mischief due to pressure
from his peers
• A father brainwashing his son to be hostile towards a certain
cultural group due to his own prejudices
Reversal
The Hierophant Reversed signifies that its upright qualities are faint
and muted. This indicates that we now have an entity that is no
longer emboldened by institutional rules and regulations, societal
pressures, and conformity.
Instead, The Hierophant Reversed breeds self-expression and
individualism, disdain for convention and established authorities, and
rebellious behavior.
The Hierophant Reversed is the doctor who covers himself in tattoos
and proves that what he chooses to inscribe on his body does not
affect his fine work in medicine.

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It represents minorities who may feel marginalized by society such as
members of the LGBTQ+ community.
The Hierophant Reversed is the employee who puts her foot down
against a regulation that she feels is unfair and discriminatory.
Much less heroically, on the other hand, The Hierophant Reversed
can represent people who are rebels without cause. It is the worker
who chooses to ignore company policy to be punctual at 9 a.m. and
strolls in at 10:15 a.m. instead “just because.”
This is the student who dismisses the guidelines for her college
assignment and decides to do her own thing “just because.”
This is the young preteen girl who wears make-up to school despite
her private school regulations demanding that students attend
classes with a fresh face. Why? You guessed it, “just because.”
If you get The Hierophant Reversed in a love reading (and as
feelings), there’s a chance that the person in question doesn’t like
to follow the traditional “life script” that is culturally imposed upon us
– engagement, marriage, kids, and more kids. He or she may prefer a
more untraditional path like, for example, skipping out on marriage and
preferring a long-term partnership like Oprah Winfrey and Stedman
Graham instead. Or perhaps they’re polyamorous and would rather
pursue an open relationship. Just don’t expect them to propose to
you anytime soon!
Here are my own personal experiences with The Hierophant
Reversed:
• A woman trying to stand out among job applicants by creating
an untraditional resume and cover letter

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• An unmarried couple who minimizes marriage as just a “piece of
paper.”
• A man wearing a green suit to an all-white party.

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 The Lovers

Upright Energies: a match made in heaven, a romantic or platonic

bond, being stuck between two or more choices (e.g. love interests or
career paths), something coming in pairs, advice to consider an
alternative option, symmetry, substitutions
Examples: A business partnership that strengthens the profitability of
a company, a hiring manager choosing one candidate over the other
after comparing them, a study-abroad college student who is
wondering whether she should move back to her hometown or shack
up with her boyfriend
Shadow: double trouble, co-dependency, paired entities having
difficulties separating, unattractive packaged deals, being distracted,
split personality
Examples: Twins who struggle to find their individuality, a mother who
can’t focus on her home business because her attention is divided
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between work and child-rearing, accidently submitting a double post
on a forum
Reversal: the disintegration of a partnership, faulty comparisons, two
people who do not work well together, mismatched pairings,
inauspicious decision making, poor symmetry
Examples: Business partners disagree on the direction of the
company, a love – once strong – fizzles out in a relationship, a toddler
trying on two left-footed shoes at the store
Upright
When I first started learning tarot, I was so confused over
experienced readers claiming The Lovers is all about choices. I mean,
the card is called “The Lovers,” what the hell does that have to do
with making a choice? But as I’ve developed more wisdom in learning
tarot, “choices” is the most salient interpretation of The Lovers for
sure.
If we look at Rider Waite imagery, yes, there are two naked people – a
man and a woman standing on the card - but these two people can
often represent two pathways – a forked road, if you will. The angel
on The Lovers can depict a querent asking, “Both are so appealing!
Which one do I choose?”
When The Lovers pops up as advice, it is telling you to compare all of
your options and make the best choice. You cannot continue to stand
at the forked road and scratching your head – make a decision now.
One day, I was very frustrated with the state of my finances, and I
decided to consult tarot about it. One of the questions I asked was,
“What is the beneficial lesson I’ve gained from being broke?” The

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Lovers popped up. I was befuddled – what the hell does this lovey-
dovey card have to do with my financial troubles?
Then, it hit me.
The positive skill I’ve acquired from being damn-near penniless is
understanding how to make better choices as I could no longer afford
to buy everything that I wanted – I had to learn how to choose the
item that made the best sense economically.
For example, let’s say I spot two jeans that I love from my favorite
store. When my finances were more stable, I would have bought both,
but now I must be more cautious with my spending. Being strapped
for cash forced me to weigh up my options and select the best choice
based on criteria like quality, price, fit, and style. That’s when I
realized that The Lovers card is all about the process of making the
best decision when two great choices are placed before your eyes.
So this card isn’t just about love. You should also think of The
Lovers as being two competing entities existing simultaneously, and
you need to choose the right one.
In a nutshell, you can call “The Lovers” card the “either/or” card.
You have two choices: you can either have A or B, but you can’t
have both.
I’ve also seen The Lovers appear as advice to substitute one thing
for another. As an example, a mother choosing to cook with quinoa
instead of white rice because she believes it is a healthier alternative
would reflect this particular Lovers scenario.
Of course, The Lovers is sometimes literal – it can represent two
people who are each other’s “halves”: twin flames, past-life

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connections, soulmates, and long-time friendships, flourishing
business partnerships. This card oftentimes reflects someone who,
even if they are not in your life at the moment, will always be in your
heart for the rest of your life.
Lastly, I’ve seen The Lovers to be all about symmetry, in which one
side of something is perfectly proportional to the other side. So for
example, if you were to ask tarot why your love interest thinks you’re
beautiful, and you pull The Lovers, it’s because your face is perfectly
symmetrical.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Lovers Upright:
• A HR manager agonizing over which two equally yoked
candidates to hire for the position
• A chef substituting white rice for cauliflower in a dish
• Soulmates who have an unbreakable bond
Shadow
The Lovers is such a feel-good, heart-tugging card, isn’t it? How can
it have a shadow side? Oh, I’m about to tell you!
The Lovers represents duality and pairings, but this could be a good
thing or bad thing. Having fries with your burger? Great! This
represents a harmonious pairing, but what about Jekyll and Hyde
personalities? That type of pairing is no longer harmonious and
therefore it is considered the “shadow” side of The Lovers.
I often see The Lovers as representing someone who seems to have
split personality disorder – seems is the operative word here because
I am in no position to diagnose anyone. But for example, this could be
someone who seems confused about their identity – one minute

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they’re this sweet, docile character in person, but on social media,
they’re wild and naughty, and completely different from their “real
life” persona.
Perhaps “alter ego” is a better term than “split personality,” but
either way, my point is that a person in question seems to have more
than one personality and it’s difficult to discern who they truly are.
I’ve also seen The Lovers pop up as distractions – you’re trying to
focus on one thing, but something else keeps trying to divert your
attention away from the task at hand. Again, it’s that inharmonious
duality. As an example, let’s say you’re writing a fantasy novel, but
you can hear your next-door neighbors arguing their heads off. Your
mind keeps diverting its attention between two situations, and it’s
driving you crazy!
Another aspect of The Lovers (Shadow) is an undesirable pairing.
Let’s say, for example, you’re selling a packaged deal online in which
buyers can purchase an XBOX and two used video games for $400,
but for some reason, no one wants to purchase ‘em!
If you were to ask tarot why you’re not able to sell your $400 bundle
on eBay, and you got The Lovers (Shadow), tarot is telling you that
buyers just want to buy the XBOX without all the other additives.
They’re willing to shell out $300 for the XBOX, but not willing to
spend another $100 for the extra stuff you’ve added in the package
(the pair of video games).
In seeing The Lovers (Shadow), I would also be concerned about a
love relationship that is too co-dependent. Ever heard of the term
“attached at the hip?” One or both partners are cannot seem to

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function without the other, which chips away at one’s individuality,
self-expression, and uniqueness.
One more thing – I’ve also seen The Lovers pop up when someone
loves two people equally and is unsure which person he or she should
choose, so he or she decides to keep both! Cheating could be an
issue when this card appears. Indecisiveness, whether it has to do
with love or not, is a big theme of the shadow side of The Lovers.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Lovers (Shadow):
• Mistakenly ordering something twice in an online store due to a
technical error
• A woman turning down a cable package because it has too many
added features, and she wants something more practical and
cheaper
• A co-founder of a business who loses confidence giving a
speech about her start-up because she’s too dependent on her
partner, who is currently too ill to attend the conference
Reversal
Many tarot readers report seeing The Lovers Reversed after a
significant break up in their lives, whether it’s a dissolution of a
business partnership, a friendship, or a romantic coupling.
I am no different as I have experienced The Lovers Reversed pop up
quite often in my own readings when partnerships fall apart.
The Lovers Reversed describes situations in which connections and
communications are disseminating. The solid bond emanating from
The Lovers Reversed upright is no longer a reality and there is a
weakening.

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Duality, once strengthened, is no longer formidable.
The Lovers Reversed describes the couple who realizes their
relationship doesn’t have longevity because they have misaligned
values.
I’ve found that The Lovers Reversed is a lesson about how some
partnerships are not meant to last. He or she is only meant to be in
your life for a season – to teach you a valuable lesson about yourself
and how you can grow to become a better person from it. It says,
“This is not your soulmate.”
The angel in The Lovers card, if we’re talking Rider Waite, is the
entity who placed that person in your life. Whether it’s fate, the
universe, God – whatever you believe in personally – this person was
meant to be in your life, but only to be a short-lived teacher who
gifted you with lessons that you could only learn from impactful
experiences. Now it’s time to let them go.
Now when it comes to choices, The Lovers Reversed’s decision-
making energies are weakened. The Lovers Reversed can represent
making the wrong choice between two paths, people, or things, and as
a result, negative consequences will ensue.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Lovers Reversed:
• A man who realizes that it is in his best interests to separate
himself from his girlfriend and find someone who is more suitable
to his own personal values
• A sexual encounter in which the woman felt that her needs were
not being met by her partner because they were not compatible
in the bedroom

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• A student who is blindly chooses one of two careers he had in
mind without properly weighing both paths.

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 The Chariot

Upright Energies: fierce leadership, assertiveness, acceleration,

ambition, boldness, forwardness, moxie, vehicular travel, knowing
one’s destination and how to get there, managing opposing forces to
reach a goal
Examples: A speedy road trip with friends, walking quickly with an
intent to get to the nearest restroom before you wet yourself, a lion
running through the savanna to catch an antelope for his next meal
Reversal: lack of direction and being all over the place, poor ambition
and zeal, travel troubles
Examples: A driver losing control of the wheel on a slippery road, a
student who feels she’s wavering off track in regard to her career
goals, a woman who can’t find her way to her destination because
her GPS system isn’t working
Shadow: ruthless ambition, bulldozing your way through things,
forceful behavior, one-track mind at the expense of others, hostility,
domineering personality, throwing people under the bus
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Examples: A hit-and-run accident, a student in gym class who will
knock everyone to the ground to get the ball, an abusive man using
forceful, physical aggression to intimidate his wife
Upright
The Chariot knows how to get from A to B without getting lost – the
charioteer’s got his eye on the prize, and he’s not going to let
anyone get in his way.
One aspect of The Chariot is personal conquest: having “tunnel
vision” and seeing nothing else but the finish line for one’s own
sense of accomplishment and victory. What a lot of tarot readers
don’t understand, though, is that The Chariot card isn’t about
victory – it’s about the journey to making sure that your path to
success is well-carved for a smooth ride home to triumph.
Let me give you the best example of The Chariot! Imagine you are
someone who’s volunteered to help chaperone a class trip. In order
to get 25 students - kids with different minds, thoughts, desires, and
personalities – to one place, they’re going to need a masterful leader.
This masterful leader will make sure that the students walk in a single
file line, command that they stay away from the curb, and wrangle the
students onto the school bus to get to the museum. If the masterful
leader – the charioteer – can successfully get all 25 students to the
museum and back to the school without so much as a hiccup, this
person, my friends, is the epitome of The Chariot card.
If we look at the Rider Waite version of The Chariot, you’ll see a
charioteer steering a black sphinx and a white sphinx – this is a
representation of conflicting interests working against each other, and
it’s up to the charioteer to get a hold of both sphinxes so that he
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can get to his destination. Those 25 students represent the two
sphinxes – a bunch of rowdy, loud, snotty-nosed nine-year-old kids.
But somehow, someway, a good chaperone who exhibits the incredible
energies of The Chariot will make sure that these kids get from A to
B – and back to A – in one piece.
The Chariot is the ultimate leader – this card is all about using your
willpower and determination to steer someone or something toward a
destination. A manager at a company is a good example. It is his or
her job to make sure all the employees act accordingly in order to
reach a certain goal each quarter.
But again, this card isn’t about reaching the finish line. The Chariot is
about the struggle, the journey, the headache of making sure
everyone – even the stubbornest employees – are thrusting forward
into the right path.
The Chariot is also about a sense of purpose. Whether you’re in a
relationship or you’re setting out to succeed in your career, you need
to place yourself on the right path to get to your desired destination.
A couple with a sense of purpose will say, “In about a year, we will
decide to get engaged, and six months after that, we will get married
at the neighborhood church.” A careerist with a sense of purpose will
say, “In order for me to become a well-paid journalist, I will get an
internship at the local newspaper, and after they see my amazing
skillset, they will hire me for a full-time position.”
The Chariot is about not only knowing where you want to go, but also
knowing how to get there.
A vehicle, which is often represented by The Chariot in tarot, won’t
go anywhere unless you know how to operate all its parts in a
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masterful fashion and drive safely to your intended destination. So
you should also understand that The Chariot is also all about
wrangling all the right people, parts, or things to work together in
harmonious unison order to get to where you want to go.
In love readings, as feelings, The Chariot is all about personal
conquest – this person is more concerned about achieving an end-
goal, which may or may not have anything to do with you. What,
exactly, is their end-goal is unknown – you would need to pull another
card for that. However, just know that if you are somehow in their
way, they will gladly push you aside to get to what they want.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Chariot:
• A trip in which the travelling is much more eventful (lots of highs
and lows) than the actual events of the destination.
• A man who is determined to win the affections of a woman to a
point he may come across relentless
• A professional dog walker successfully directing all her clients’
pets from A to B.
Shadow
Watch out for The Chariot (Shadow)! Someone will run you over and
he or she does not care who he or she has to knock down to get to
his or her destination.
The Chariot (Shadow) is about ruthless ambition and sinking oneself
to low levels to achieve one’s goals.
If you’re a fan of The House of Cards (US), a political show that
highlights the vicious friction in the United States White House, you’ll
notice that Frank Underwood – a character who would resort to

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murder to become president of the United States – epitomizes The
Chariot (Shadow).
He wants to become the president of the United States, and there is
nothing that will stand in his way – even if he has to ruin a few lives,
or even end a few of them, to achieve his grandiose ambitions.
Much less dramatically, you may also see The Chariot (Shadow) to
describe someone who is a little too forward and aggressive in their
behavior and actions. A salesperson at a mall, for example, using very
pushy tactics to coerce a customer to buy a product.
The Chariot (Shadow) is ambition that is accelerated to a point of
being threatening and menacing whereby anyone around this volatile
energy feels at risk, uncomfortable, or attacked.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Chariot (Shadow):
• A cruel man driving his car into an unsuspecting crowd of
pedestrians
• A woman who would lie through her teeth and throw her co-
workers under the bus to heighten her chances of getting a
promotion
• A basketball player who dives for the ball, not caring who he
hurts or injures in the process of retrieving it.
Reversal
Imagine you’re in a completely different country. You just got off the
plane and now you’re trying to figure out how to get to your hotel.
You don’t know the language, all the signs around you are foreign,
and the map you have in your hand might as well be a scroll of
gibberish!

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You don’t have any direction. You don’t know how to get from A to
B. That is what the Chariot Reversed is about. There is a blockage to
being propelled forward to reach your destination, whether this is a
career goal or just to get to your hotel in Malaysia.
You will see this card pop up when a querent is lacking drive to
complete or fulfill a mission they must accomplish. You will also see
this card when someone has trouble managing things – they have a
tendency of veering off the path instead of developing a straight,
determined path to reach an end goal.
And here’s a great analogy: The Chariot Reversed signifies a driver
who – well – can’t drive. And figuratively, The Chariot Reversed can
represent a leader who will drive the company into a ditch because he
or she couldn’t even lead a dog on a leash if his or her life depended
on it!
I’ve also seen The Chariot Reversed being about something or
someone lacking grace and balance. It can represent someone who
has a tendency to trip on his or her own feet a lot and be accident
prone.
Lastly, The Chariot Reversed can point to someone who lacks a
sense of purpose – they have no idea what career path they want to
pursue or they’re completely clueless on what direction they want
their love relationship to go.
If I could use two words to describe the The Chariot Reversed, it
would be aimlessness and chaos.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Chariot Reversed:

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• A student fresh out of college with a bachelor’s degree, but has
no idea what next steps she should take in her career
• A man losing control of the wheel while driving his car in a
blizzard
• A tour guide who is new on the job and gets a little lost guiding
sightseers around the historical landmarks

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 Strength

Upright Energies: reticence, self-discipline, soft control, restraint,

fortitude, courage
Examples: Maintaining your cool when a co-worker provokes you,
training your dog to engage in positive behavior by rewarding him with
treats, a runner who suddenly finds an extra ounce of energy to
complete the last mile
Shadow: too prideful to accept help from others, “I was born alone,
I’ll die alone,” stoic and emotionless, too cool for school
Examples: Passersby who do not flinch when someone screams “help
me” in the distance, a woman who rejects help when someone offers
to help her carry her grocery bags, a man who refuses to take
medicine because he believes he can beat his illness all by himself
Reversal: fragility, fearfulness, a pushover, shyness, having no back-
bone and being weak-kneed, poor self-control, illness, anger and
irascibility
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Examples: A woman who doesn’t have the strength to get up from
bed because she has the flu, a teen who promised herself to forgo
desserts for a month, but couldn’t help but indulge in a slice of
cheesecake, a little boy who can’t face up to a bully in school
Upright
Let’s stray away from this card’s obvious meaning – strength. Yes,
this card can be about brawn, muscles, and pumping iron, but it’s
about so much more than that!
Have you ever heard someone whisper, “Lord, give me strength!”?
They’re not asking their higher power to turn them into Hercules or
anything. No, they’re asking their divine being to give him patience
and self-control so they do not end up screaming their head off at a
co-worker or slapping the hell out of their boss.
They are just praying that their emotions and baser desires do not
get the best of them!
That’s what Strength is about, despite what someone may say to you
or no matter what may be going on around you, you maintain
composure and poise. Someone who operates under the Strength
card, for example, will pass an interview with flying colors because he
was able to get his nerves under control. To give you another
scenario, Strength can represent someone who is angered by a
comment made by their partner, but they take the time to calm down,
and proceed to confront the partner is a very calm, cool, and
collected manner – as they say, you catch more bees with honey!
Strength is all about repressing your wild side, whether it’s your
desire to fight, cry, scream, or even succumb to lust.

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As feelings, this person could be smart enough to reign in all of their
feelings in a composed manner so they do not bombard you with too
much emotion all at once. For example, if this person is angry at you,
they know how to repress the desire to lash out and take a more
tranquil approach to the problem.
Shadow
When Strength Reversed lands on the Shadow, we are told that there
really is such a thing as being too composed.
Society has assigned gender roles in which men are supposed to be
tough – tears, sadness, and any other emotions that supposedly hint
at vulnerability are looked down upon. This mentality often breeds the
“macho man” who is too afraid to show his soft side.
This is the man who holds back tears while watching The Notebook in
front of his girlfriend because he’s too embarrassed at how she’ll
take it.
This is just an example, though. You’ll find people of any gender who
do not feel comfortable showing their emotional side, whether it’s
sadness or anger, which isn’t good for their well-being because
they’ll eventually blow up if they don’t let it out.
Everyone needs an outlet to release their emotions, whether it’s
screaming into a pillow or writing a cathartic poem on their
frustrations with their love life.
With Strength (Shadow), we also find people who are too prideful.
Although they are in desperate need of help, they will never admit it.
They would rather have everyone believe that everything is fine and
they can handle everything on their own. But the truth is, behind their

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“all is well” façade, everything is crumbling down – they’re going
through a dreadful divorce, they’ve got an eviction notice on their
apartment door, and they’re extremely stressed out by their work
demands.
They need someone to step in and, at the very least, give them a hug
to get through their issues, but they’re more concerned about their
ego and keeping up appearances than ameliorating their stressors.
In love readings, as feelings, this is someone who is biting their tongue
and putting on a poker face. The feelings they could be repressing
could be anything from sexual desire (cards like The Devil or The Ace
of Wands would validate this) to frustration (look for the 10 of
Wands). This could be someone who may want to reach out and
communicate with you, but they’re applying a lot of self-control to
keep themselves from succumbing to their own desires.
Here are my own personal experiences with Strength (Shadow):
• A prideful man who turned down an offer for rent money from
his parents even though he’s running dangerously low on funds.
• A man who secretly wants to speak to a love interest, but he
doesn’t want to seem needy, so he holds back
• A woman who is hard to read – she doesn’t wear her emotions
on her sleeve.
Reversal
Where there is scarcity in Strength, self-control and perseverance
goes out the window. When you are radiating Strength Reversed
energies, you will reach out to an ex who you swore you would never
contact again because he adds nothing but a toxic presence in your

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life. You lash out at a stranger because he bumped you without
apologizing, and you could no longer maintain your composure. You
succumb to your inner desires to munch on turkey on Thanksgiving
despite the fact you’re a vegetarian.
That dollar bill that’s sticking out of that stranger’s pocket that you
know you shouldn’t take, you thieve it.
When Strength Reversed, all those things we know in our hearts we
know we shouldn’t do because it’s socially impolite, can get us
arrested, or goes against our values, we do it anyway! There’s a part
of us that just loses control and says, “Screw it!” and you end up
flying off the handle, eating foods that are banned from your diet,
punching an annoying co-worker in the face, or succumbing to sexual
desires when you promised yourself you’d never sleep with that bad
boy character at work.
One day, I raised my voice angrily at a classmate who really pushed
my buttons. With the smuggest smirk I’ve ever seen, all he said was
“anger is weakness.” At the time, I didn’t know what he meant. But
looking back on what he said retrospectively, it makes perfect sense.
With anger, you’ve allowed someone to manipulate your temperament
to a point where your ears are burning hot, your hands are curling
into fists, and you’re screaming at the top of your lungs. On the
other hand, those who block out provocative people in their lives and
maintain their composure are said to have the strength and patience
of an angel (Strength Upright).
Strength Reversed can also refer to someone who is having
difficulties fighting against an illness.
Here are my own personal experiences with Strength Reversed:
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• A man getting so angry at a cashier, he punches him in the nose
• A little girl who felt too shy to stand up to her bully
• A pervert who succumbed to his inner desire to grab a woman’s
behind

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 The Hermit

Upright Energies: quietude, solace, old age, experience and wisdom,

introspection, introversion
Examples: A woman taking a solo trip to the Costa Rican jungle for a
spiritual connection with nature, the accumulation of knowledge one
achieves with a great number of life years under their belt, a father
enjoying a quiet bath after a long day with his kids
Reversal: Lack of experience, being set in your ways, unwillingness to
learn new things, not taking the time for solitude, searching in all the
wrong places
Examples: Someone who’s still a little green around the ears and still
decides to take on clients, a teenage girl who thinks she knows all
about love, a grandparent who is too stubborn to change his rigid
viewpoints on life
Shadow: withdrawal, loneliness, companionless, detached, outcast,
reclusive
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Examples: A woman who locks herself in a room for days due to
depression, an agoraphobic man who doesn’t like to step outside, a
little girl who is far too shy to greet her parents’ guest in the house.
Upright
As a loner myself, The Hermit is one of my favorite cards in the deck.
Believe it or not, there are people who crave solitude and would
rather spend more by themselves than have the companionship of
human beings.
However, as a tarot reader – trust me – I know there are a lot of
people out there who would rather stick their hand in a blender than
experience a sense of isolation or singleness. But there are times The
Hermit will pop up as advice and tell you what a lot of co-dependent
men and women hate hearing – “Take some time out for yourself and
learn to love it!”
Let me tell you a fun, super quick story of why I love The Hermit so
much. Back in grade school, I had a classmate who was not allowed to
watch TV – he had no idea what was going on in the world, he didn’t
know what were the hottest shows to watch, and he couldn’t even
tell you the name of a pop star in that era. He was completely shut
off from the influences of the media.
He got his entertainment by watching old classic musicals and
attending Broadway shows in New York City. As a result, people
thought he was the oddest kid in the world – he was a teenager who
wore purple top hats and funky boots, and he was a brilliant dancer
and singer who was built for theatre!

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People made fun of him, but I found him intriguing! Because he was
shut away from the world like a true hermit, he developed his TRUE
individuality – he wasn’t told by the media how to dress, how to act,
or what to like. He didn’t know what was trendy and what was uncool
– all he knew was that he had his own style, and he developed it on
his own.
This is why The Hermit is so important! When we withdraw from
society – away from all the noise about what’s “cool” and what’s
not – we learn to truly understand who we really are.
Think about it, if you didn’t watch TV at all from birth to present, do
you think you’d be the same person you are today? The Hermit says,
“Society influences us and carves who we are, so take a moment to
remove yourself from the crowd and find out your true nature – what
you really want!”
Without people around, we have no desire to impress. And when we
don’t have a desire to impress, we become our true, rawest selves,
and that’s what The Hermit promotes.
The Hermit wants us to develop our own mindset and our own
perspective of the world – without the propaganda pushed by our
culture – so that we don’t become another sheep in the herd. The
Hermit is deemed as “the oddball” by society because he doesn’t
accept the “common knowledge” accepted by society. No, he will do
his own research and find out his own answers.
The saddest part about The Hermit is that when he does find
answers that go against the grain, he will be deemed as the crazy one
and shunned by society. This is why The Hermit is alone. Society, by
nature, wants everyone to agree to one way of thinking, so anyone
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who breaks out of that monolithic mindset is deemed an outsider. The
Hermit, when it’s not a “shadow,” is okay with this. While he would
love society to “wake up and smell the roses,” he would rather know
the truth and be alone than be a part of a group and be told lies.
In love readings and as feelings, your person of interest wants you to
respect the fact that they need their privacy and alone time – they
would prefer to read a good book than be in the company of others.
They would even prefer to sleep in their own bed than have someone
constantly twisting and turning by their side. If you can accept that,
this will be a loving relationship. If not, their Hermit-like qualities may
start to frustrate you eventually.
I’ve also seen the imagery on the Rider Waite card take on a literal
meaning – someone searching for something in the dark with a
flashlight!
Here are my own personal experiences with The Hermit Upright:
• A teenager who is wise beyond his years and known as an “old
soul.”
• A man who would prefer to do his own research in solitude
rather than blindly accept
• A worker finding solace in the bathroom to catch a breather
from her job’s demands
Shadow
The Hermit (Shadow), at its core, is an excess of self-reliance and
isolation. When these energies are active, we have someone with
anti-social personality who would rather live in a figurative “hole”- a

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place completely devoid of people and access to new information -
than actually interact with human life.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being alone – some people
prefer to be hermits and that’s alright. But when this card pops up, it
is telling you that your extreme reclusiveness is throwing a wrench in
your goals.
As an example, I’ve seen this card appear for a woman who
wondered why she couldn’t find a long-term partner. The Hermit
(Shadow) says, “Well, for one, stepping outside of your house would
be a good start!” She’s a homebody who would rather stay in on the
weekends and catch up on her favorite shows than head out to some
social event to mix and mingle. Perhaps she was expecting her dream
guy to appear at her door, but unfortunately, that’s not the way life
works.
She could, at the very least, check out a dating app to see if there
are any suitors who would galvanize her to get out and get some
fresh air after inviting her out on a coffee date.
This card advises against excessive isolation and implores the
querent to let go of that “I’m fine all on my own” mentality because
this is hindering you from attaining his or her goals.
The Hermit (Shadow) can also point to feeling marginalized,
outcasted, and lonely. As an example, this card can represent a
woman who attends a party, but none of her friends have arrived yet,
and she feels this overwhelming sense of dread that she’s all alone –
despite being surrounded by so many people. It can also describe a
man who moves to a new city, and he has no one to socialize with. “I
just feel so alone,” he’d say sadly.
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In love readings and as feelings, this is someone who will give you the
cold shoulder and purposely seek to make you feel unwanted and
undesired by them. He or she may also withhold affection. If you’re in
a relationship, it may hint that someone either wants to take a break
from you and/or he or she may be considering becoming single.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Hermit (Shadow):
• A man who desperately needs a job, but finds it too difficult to
attend networking events
• A boyfriend who gives his girlfriend the “silent treatment.”
• A distrustful person who fears the outside world
Reversal
The Hermit Reversed can be someone who is lacking the
accumulative knowledgze one gains from experience. If we look at the
Rider Waite version of The Hermit, we see an elderly man with a fluffy
white beard who we speculate has isolated himself from society.
Just by the very fact he is a man of a certain age, he has seen,
heard, and soaked in a lot as far as life goes. Because of this, it’s
likely he can offer better life advice to you than a 12-year-old – he’s
just lived more life!
So if The Hermit Reversed appears, there might some sort of
blockage in attaining experience and wisdom. It can even be old age
itself that can be a hindrance to learning new things if an elderly man
feels he knows everything already and doesn’t need to know much
else. Or it can be young age or poor “soakage” of knowledge that
blocks one from inheriting the great qualities of The Hermit card.

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Either way, The Hermit Reversed describes an impediment to being
wise.
I’ve also seen this card pop up for a querent who was searching in all
the wrong places or just doing a poor job of trying to find something.
As an example, imagine a mother asking her son if she left her car
keys in his bedroom. The Hermit Reversed represents a son taking a
hasty glance around the room and saying, “No Mom!” But the keys
are sitting right on his dresser – had he searched thoroughly around
the room, he would have found those darned car keys for his mother.
This card may also be asking you to get the hell out of solitude!
You’ve been spending too much time on your own and it’s time for
you get out there and speak to human beings again.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Hermit Reversed:
• A doctor who allows his years of experience to get to his head
and refuses to read up on new research studies for a disease
before treating a patient for it
• A job candidate turned down for a job because he lacked having
adequate experience
• A grandmother who simply cannot have an open mind because,
as they always say, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

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 The Wheel of Fortune

Upright Energies: cyclical timing (e.g. seasons and the 12-hour clock),
life’s ups and downs, instability, variability, capriciousness, volatility,
going with the flow, coincidences, good luck, being at the right place
at the right time, unexpected events, rhythmic patterns
Examples: The inevitable curveballs life throws at us when we least
expect it, the volatility of the stock market, someone who has a
seasonal business like a Halloween costume shop
Shadow: interruptions, bipolar tendencies, unfavorable events,
repetitive bad behavior
Examples: A teacher offering a lecture and then, suddenly, an
inconsiderate student walks in with a boombox, a man with an up-
and-down temperament in which one minute he’s very chipper and
the next minute he’s down-in-the-dumps, a little girl asking her
mother if she can go out and play when her mother just got into an
argument with her ex-husband (bad timing)

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Reversal: being inflexible to changes, little to no spontaneity, too
predictable, bad rhythm, advice to avoid taking risks, a desire to turn
back time,
Examples: A doctor who cannot handle the thought of being
transferred to another unit, a movie plot that fails to have any
elements of surprise or twists and turns, a wife who secretly wishes
her stagnant marriage was more like a “rollercoaster” – filled with
exciting ups and downs
Upright
The Wheel of Fortune, when upright, epitomizes the clichéd quote
that says, “What goes up must come down.” Sure life has its joyful
moments, but inevitably, there will always be something to bring you
down eventually. That’s just how life is – hence, what goes up must
come down.
That’s what makes The Wheel of Fortune such a bittersweet card.
On your down days, it tells you, “Don’t worry. After all the rain, the
sun will come out again. Things will get better.” But on your happy
days, The Wheel of Fortune warns, “Soak this moment up as much as
you can because, as much as I hate to break it to you, another
stressor will be headed your way right around the corner. C’est la
vie!”
The upright energies of this card also represent randomization and
relying on chance to get a desired outcome – think about the U.S.
game show Wheel of Fortune. Contestants have to spin a wheel with
slots of cash prizes, but it also features unfortunate slots such as

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“Lose a Turn” and “Bankrupt.” The contestants cannot choose
which slot they want – otherwise, everyone would say, “I want the
$10,000 cash prize!” No, they have to leave it up to Lady Luck as
they spin the wheel and hope that the arrow lands on a super large
cash prize ($1 million), and avoids hovering over
“Bankrupt”(contestants end up losing all the money they’ve
accumulated).
While Wheel of Fortune partly requires contestants to be experts at
solving word puzzles, you also need to have luck on your side and
hope the wheel lands on money-making slots in your favor. Without
luck, you’ll simply lose to a contestant who’s luckier. It’s not your
fault though – it’s out of your control.
That’s another message of The Wheel of Fortune: there are some
things in life you can’t control, and you just have to accept it and
leave it up to fate. So if you ask tarot, “What can I do to achieve X?”
and you get The Wheel of Fortune, chances are the cards are telling
you, “Sorry dude, that’s not something you have control over.”
The Wheel of Fortune also encapsulates the concept of cyclical
timing – the four seasons is a good example of this. Spring won’t last
all year, unfortunately. November will eventually rear its ugly little
head and, by January, I’ll be on my front lawn breaking my back to
shovel six feet of snow. However, we know that spring will be back
once again next year when April comes around.
The Wheel of Fortune, by the way, is a card that is the best
representation for the words, “Wow, what are the odds?” This is the
card you’ll see when you’re vacationing far away from home in Bora
Bora, and you run into your ex-significant other! “Wow! What are the

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odds? I’d never thought I’d run into my ex-lover so far away from
home,” you’d think. Wheel of Fortune moments make you wonder,
“Whoa, was this fate or just a coincidence? Maybe this was meant to
be!”
I’ve also seen The Wheel of Fortune describe someone who knows
how to go with the flow in regard to the ups and downs of life – even
when things don’t go as planned, they still keep a pretty positive
perspective on life and say, “Oh well, that’s life!”
In love readings, this can depict a relationship that is far from
stagnant – there are lots of unexpected twists and turns that will
make this love ride quite bumpy. As far as feelings, one positive
aspect I can think of is that this person may think that you two were
fated to meet, even if the relationship fails to last.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Wheel of Fortune
Upright:
• Winning a sweepstakes
• A woman being at the right place and the right time to be luckily
scouted by a modeling agent
• A man getting an unexpected visit from a relative

Shadow
When you’ve got the Wheel of Fortune (Shadow), there’s just too
much fluctuation and variation. Imagine a rollercoaster ride that has
way too many loops and curves – everyone would be hurling their
lunch out of the thrill ride.

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I hope no hiring manager would do this, but The Wheel of Fortune
(Shadow) would represent an employer who would pick a new
employee by saying, “eenie, meenie, minie, mo!” And whatever
resume the hiring manager randomly picks, he or she is the winner –
no questions asked.
The Wheel of Fortune (Shadow) also embodies someone who is a
little too “go with the flow.” Maybe instead of attending to their
obligations as a parent, a father would rather go out gallivanting
around the world and leave the mother to raise their newborn son.
This card would represent someone who is completely unstable.
Instability, in this case, doesn’t just represent someone with a
wanderlust soul, but it can also personify someone who is emotionally
volatile, too.
This is someone who has a bad habit of being fine and dandy one day,
but the next day, they’re screaming their head off at you.
In love readings, I’ve seen The Wheel of Fortune (Shadow) depict
someone who tends to come in and out of your life constantly, and
it’s extremely aggravating because this person expects you to
welcome them back with open arms after returning from their recent
bout of disappearance. As feelings, it often means that someone’s
emotions toward you are not stable – one day they’re over you, and
the next day they’re pining for you.
If you’re wondering if someone will change their behavior, and you get
The Wheel of Fortune, it’s a clear sign that their bad actions will stop
for a little while, but it will rear its ugly little head again. And that
cycle will repeat – the bad behavior occurs, “I’m sorry I’ll never do it
again,” the behavior ends for a bit and you have hope, and then

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suddenly the bad behavior appears once more. In short, The Wheel of
Fortune can point to someone who has trouble being consistent.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Wheel of Fortune
(Shadow):
• A woman who keeps trying to lose weight, but cannot keep up
with her fitness regime which leads to fluctuations in her weight
• Unexpectedly running into an ex and being pissed about it
• Dating someone who is active in the military and does not have
the luxury of staying in one place, which caused the relationship
to very unstable.
Reversal
The Wheel of Fortune Reversed means there’s a lack of inconstancy,
unexpectedness, and oscillation.
For example, The Wheel of Fortune Reversed would represent the
moment when a deck of cards isn’t shuffled well and, as a result, the
cards aren’t randomized enough to play your favorite card game.
Another similar example of this would be a teacher pretending to pick
a name out of a hat to choose the next student to answer his math
problem, but unbeknownst to his students, he takes a less
randomized approach by picking a quiet student sitting in the back of
the classroom.
The Wheel of Fortune Reversed can also refer to something that is
too planned and too predetermined because there is no
randomization. If I were to give you flashcards of the alphabet without
shuffling them, and you saw “A, B, C, D, E, F, and so forth,” there’s
absolutely nothing “random” about those flashcards. Everything is

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where it’s supposed to be and positioned in the right place, which
makes it a perfect representation of The Wheel of Fortune Reversed.
With those cards being in A to Z order, they don’t reflect the
“surprise” factor that a shuffled deck of flashcards would offer.
Seeing “F, A, Z, R, M,” on the other hand, would then be a better
reflection of randomization, and therefore a great representation of
The Wheel of Fortune’s upright energy.
Bad timing and interruptions can also be a facet of The Wheel of
Fortune Reversed. Think about the time when you turned on your TV
and your notice your favorite film is playing, but then you’re
disappointed when you realize there’s only 10 minutes left in the
movie. “Aw man! Bad timing,” you say.
Continuing to use TV as an example, think about those moments
when you’re engrossed in your favorite late-night TV drama and
then, suddenly, your local news station decides to interrupt the
programming for some “breaking news.” It’s not fair, but that’s just
The Wheel of Fortune Reversed doing its job.
I have also seen The Wheel of Fortune Reversed as a lamentation
that one simply cannot turn back the clock – life must go on, whether
you like it or not. So for example, if you accidently send an
embarrassing e-mail to the wrong person, as much as you’d love to
hit the “undo” button, there’s nothing you can do.
The Wheel of Fortune Reversed can represent someone who is
resistant to sudden change and spontaneity – they prefer routine and
they cannot stand when things are not “on schedule.” They simply
cannot “go with the flow.”

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In love readings, The Wheel of Fortune Reversed can represent a
relationship that suddenly takes a turn for the worst – everything was
going so well and then, bam, a sudden stroke of bad luck. This can
also represent one’s feelings toward you as well – “Darn, everything
was going so well, and then this mess happened!” As another aspect
of feelings, it could represent someone feeling very resistant to life’s
sudden changes in their relationship with you, which is always
understandable when those changes are inauspicious.
The main idea here is that The Wheel of Fortune Reversed is
changeability and unpredictability that’s gone haywire. And as a
result, it can bring you a stroke of bad luck.
That is the Wheel of Fortune Reversed in a nutshell – things are far
too predictable.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Wheel of Fortune
Reversed:
• Entering my parent’s bedroom at the wrong time, and seeing
things I wish I could erase from my memory
• Someone rigging a raffle so that a specified person can win
instead of leaving it up to chance
• Reading an awful novel that didn’t seem to have any ups or
downs – no rising action, no climax, no falling action.

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 Justice

Upright Energies: an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,

objectivity, non-biased decision-making, evening the score,
punishment, consequences of one’s actions, karma
Examples: A man who decides not to reply to his girlfriend’s text
because she made him wait six hours, so he feels it’s only fair that
she, too, waits six hours, a judge imposing a death penalty on a
convicted murderer, child getting slapped after back-talking his
mother
Shadow: red tape, detached, disconnected, impersonal, hard-hearted
Examples: an institution spending an absurd amount of resources to
vet candidates, a husband who sides with his wife’s opponent, even
though she is his spouse, because he firmly believes she’s wrong, a
persuasive essay that is too dispassionate and therefore fails to
emotively move the reader
Reversal: discrimination, subjectivity, prejudice, unfairness

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Examples: A hiring manager rejecting a job candidate solely based on
his or her skin color, a judge allowing public opinion to sway his or her
decision, a mother giving her favorite child more attention over the
rest of her kids
Upright
Justice reminds us that there will be a response – a consequence
that can be good or bad – for every action you take in life. If you
overeat, you’ll become obese. If you mistreat your children, don’t be
shocked when they throw you into a dingy nursing home as adults. On
the upside, if you exercise regularly and eat well, you will be awarded
with a toned body. If you study for a test, chances are you’ll get a
good grade.
Justice is about balance – think about a scale, which is the perfect
tangible representation of the concept of justice. In fact, let me draw
a few illustrations here so you can visualize what I’m explaining. If
you put a brick on one side of the scale, it will be left unbalanced,
right?

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In order for the scale to become leveled again, you’ll need to add
another object of the same weight on the other side. When this
occurs, you’ve achieved balance.

Now apply this scale analogy into the real world. Imagine a bartender
landing a punch on a rude patron – this a representation of the first
object being placed on the scale (there is unfairness and unbalance).

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 When the patron says, “I’m going to get you back” and decks the
bartender in the face in return, this represents the second object of
the same weight, creating balance.
He punched him, he punched him back – they’re even. That’s what
Justice does; it evens the score. The bartender, deep down, knows he
deserved that vengeful punch and the patron feels satisfied in
knowing the bartender felt the same pain he felt.

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In love readings, I’ve seen Justice be a fair exchange between two
partners. Here’s an example: “You pay for the dinner today, and I’ll
grab the bill next time.” As feelings, this person will feel the need to
treat you as you have treated them. So if they feel you’ve been kind
to them, they will be kind to you. But if they suspect you are playing
mind games, they will manipulate you right back.
Here are my own personal experiences with Justice Upright:
• A woman who understands she must pay late fees as a
consequence of keeping a library book for far too long.
• A man offering to buy his female colleague lunch because she
was nice enough to do the same for him the day before
• A fair exchange in business – the buyer gets a product of great
value and the seller is satisfied with the payment

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 Shadow
Justice (Shadow) is an excess of objectivity, detachment, and
judiciousness. I wouldn’t be too alarmed to see this energy in a
courtroom, but in the aspect of our lives where we need more heart
than head (e.g. love relationships), this card could be a problem.
How we initially select our partners is, for some of us, very subjective
– we love the color of their eyes, we are enamored by their smile, and
we are physically attracted to their facial features. Very few of us
would deduce someone’s compatibility by pulling out a calculator to
determine our love interest’s statistical probability of being a good
partner, right? That would be a little silly! We’re supposed to follow
our hearts.
Well, Justice (Shadow) is someone who doesn’t allow emotions to
cloud their judgement when they select a partner. This is someone
who would analyze your DNA before considering you as the future
parent of your child. “Ah, I see you have the baldness gene and
there’s a high probability my future child may be short, too. I’ll
pass!”
The energies that emanate from Justice (Shadow) are an excess of
impartiality. This represents the friend who doesn’t care about
“loyalty” - if she feels that your enemy is right and you’re wrong,
she’s going to take your enemy’s side.
Also, someone who epitomizes the Justice (Shadow) card wants to
see proof even if the evidence is clear view.
Let’s take, for example, a boyfriend who apologizes to his girlfriend
for being late to a date after getting into a minor fender bender.

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There is clearly a dent in his car, but under the Justice (Shadow)
energies, the girlfriend would say, “Lies! I need more proof!”
Love does require a little benefit of the doubt, and under this card, it
ain’t happening – any kind of ambiguity will be analyzed to death by
anyone who operates under its energies.
Justice (Shadow) can also point to spitefulness, pettiness, and
revenge. In a love reading, if someone feels this way toward you,
beware – especially if you’ve wronged them in anyway. They will feel
the need to even the score, so they will make sure you feel just as
hurt as they did when you hurt them in the past.
Here are my own personal experiences with Justice (Shadow):
• Being too “black and white” with my perspective on
relationships instead of allowing my heart to find love
• A TV sports journalist who prattles on about athlete statistics
during an on-air game, but fails to emotionally connect with
viewers by telling a few jokes and making snarky comments
• A disillusioned son expects his father to promote him, but
instead of going the nepotism route, the father hires a business-
savvy woman with impressive credentials
Reversed
Justice Reversed indicates unfairness – “evening the score” is
absent. This is card would pop up for a teenager’s feelings when she
feels as if everyone in the world, but herself, can have a tattoo. “It’s
not fair!” The door slams and the angsty teen wails about her life
being so awful.

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On a more serious note, Justice Reversed can also point to racism,
sexism, ageism, and any other -ism you can think of in which one
group faces a far greater degree of discrimination and prejudice than
others.
For example, a woman finding out that a male underling makes more
than her, even though she is a step higher on the corporate ladder,
might feel very Justice Reversed.
This card might also appear for a man who got scammed by a con
artist where he paid for a product or service, but the con artist runs
off with his money, leaving him $500 poorer and devoid of the product
or service he paid for. The con artist has the upper hand while the
victim is left feeling wronged.
Justice Reversed is the essence of inequality. Someone gets the
short end of the stick while another gets a leg up.
In love readings, someone is feeling as if you did not get what you
deserved. As an example, let’s say you suddenly dumped your ex
partner, and he thinks, “Whatever, karma will come her way
eventually.” But a year later, he sees that you’re married and
extremely happy. There’s a good chance that he feels very Justice
Reversed – “This is so unfair! She dumps me so viciously, but yet
she’s the one who gets the happy ending?!”
Here are my own personal experiences with Justice Reversed:
• Purchasing a product and feeling as if it wasn’t worth the
expense – the seller gets more than what she deserves and I,
the buyer, didn’t get enough bang for my buck

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• An adopted little boy lamenting how unfair it is everyone at
school has their “real” mother and father
• A corrupt police officer brutalizing a man simply because of the
color of his skin

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 The Hanged Man

Upright Energies: sacrifice, the law of acceptance, surrender, letting

go, seeing things in a different perspective, having unpopular views
Examples: Sacrificing sleep to work a night shift to bring in greater
income for your family, an employee pretending to agree with his boss
to let things go, a wife seeing her husband in a different perspective
after she discovers a secret
Shadow: procrastination, leaving someone hanging, being passive-
aggressive, submission
Examples: A teenage girl allowing her cluttered room to remain untidy
due to procrastination, a man feeling left out to dry when a potential
employer doesn’t reply to his e-mail, a wife playing the submissive
role in her marriage
Reversal: selfishness, unwillingness to put up the white flag, closed-
mindedness
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Examples: A husband who refuses to contribute more to household
chores though his wife is begging for help, someone who won’t back
down from a fight, an older, conservative relative who doesn’t
understand nor grasp the liberal values of the new generation
Upright
The Hanged Man is all about experiencing a personal loss or
surrendering something for the “greater good” – for the benefit of
something that is more important than ourselves.
Let’s say, for example, your house has caught fire. With just seconds
to flee, you have the choice of grabbing your laptop with all your
important files in it or saving your beloved cat. By grabbing your pet
and running out of the house, you’ve accepted the fact that you’ve
lost something of value – your possessions – but it’s all for the
“greater good” because you have saved your kitty.
The concept of The Hanged Man explains that there are moments in
our lives when we will have to make sacrifices, and those sacrifices
will suck sometimes, but it is all for the benefit of someone or
something greater than you.
Similarly, The Hanged Man is also about surrendering. It’s about
throwing up the white flag and saying, “Okay, you win! I don’t want to
fight about this anymore.” This is someone who is the complete
opposite of stubborn and hard-headed – they will gladly put away
their own personal desires to have the “upper hand” in order to keep
the peace.
You’ll also see The Hanged Man appear when someone has a new,
fresh perspective on things. Perhaps they’ve found out some

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additional information about a friend and it has helped them see this
person in a better light, or maybe they’ve watched a documentary
about a particular issue and now their perspective on the matter has
completely changed.
Lastly, I’ve also seen The Hanged Man describe someone who knows
how to “let go and let God.” This is all about The Law of Acceptance,
which states that we can’t control everyone and everything in our
lives, and for the sake of your own sanity, sometimes it’s best to
take a step back and let things unfold.
In love readings, I’ve seen this to represent someone who is taking a
more passive approach to things and allowing their partner to get the
“I’m right” crown. Or perhaps they’re willing to see things through a
open-minded lens as opposed to taking an obstinate stance on things.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Hanged Man
(Shadow):
• A man understanding that he will have to pay a cancellation fee
to get out of his phone contract, but it’s worth it because he
will sign up for a better cellphone-service company.
• A woman who paid tickets to attend a concert, but then finds
out that her partner isn’t feeling so good, so she decides to skip
out on going to see her favorite rock band perform
• A man explaining the psychology behind his bad behavior to his
ex, and the woman sees him in a better perspective now that
she understands why he did what he did

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 Shadow
Where there is an egregious amount of sacrifice, The Hanged Man
(Shadow) will appear. This is what we call the martyr complex. These
are the people who would give you their left nut, literally, for someone
who would never do the same for them. These are the people who
subconsciously, but perpetually, seek to find themselves in scenarios
where they allow themselves to be unnecessarily trampled on. They
are selfless to a fault.
There’s a difference between sacrificing sleep to work extra hours to
make ends meet and sacrificing your sleep for a selfish frenemy who
needs you to come out at 3 a.m. to pay for her exorbitant bar bill. The
former scenario promotes a greater outcome in that working overtime
means more money for one’s family. The latter, on the other hand, is
a manipulative situation in that one person is allowing herself to be
used to maintain a friendship with a frenemy who’s only around to
take advantage of someone with a martyr complex.
People with martyr complexes constantly feel the need to throw
themselves into the line fire even if doing so would be completely
unnecessary and does more harm than good. This isn’t about
extreme selflessness – it’s about one’s inability to understand that
their sacrifices makes them nothing more than a doormat.
They abandon their needs – their hard-earned income for example –
for someone who will gladly take advantage of their self-sacrificial
personality.
Martyr complexes, for an example, can be found in wives or husbands
who abandon their hopes and dreams to become a doormat for their
spouses – allowing their husband or wife to beat, degrade, and/or
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demoralize them all for the sake of being a passive-aggressive, self-
sacrificial partner.
You can also find the martyr complex in men and women with poor
self-esteem. To get someone’s attention, they will often subject
themselves to doing unspeakable things, sacrificing their dignity and
self-respect, to win the affections of someone who is not good for
them.
The Hanged Man (Shadow) can also be about being in a state of
stagnancy, and there’s nothing you can do about it. I sometimes like
to call The Hanged Man (Shadow) the chrysalis stage of a butterfly’s
development. Things will change for the better in the future, but for
now, you have no choice but to wait in your little cocoon until the
wheels start moving again.
Lastly, I’ve also seen The Hanged Man (Shadow) as procrastination
and leaving someone hangin’.
In love readings, there’s a chance that someone will leave the
relationship on a cliffhanger. As feelings, your love interest will feel
the need to procrastinate in regard to putting in effort into the
relationship, which will hinder the relationship’s progress.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Hanged Man
(Shadow):
• A boyfriend who says he’d would jump in front of a train for his
girlfriend, but his girlfriend wouldn’t do the same (sounds like a
Bruno Mars song, doesn’t it?).

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 • A man who would do anything to get his bully to like him and
would make sacrifices that the bully wouldn’t dream of doing for
him.
• A girl during a debate competition who brushed off an
opponent’s retort, but it worked against her favor since she
came across too passive-aggressive.
Reversal
When the Hanged Man Reversed emerges, there is a scarcity of
sacrifice, which can be synonymous with selfishness. A good friend
would understand the importance of sacrifice – he or she would come
to your rescue if you’re trouble (even if they’d rather stay home), he
or she would pick up your phone calls if you need to vent (even if
they’d rather watch Netflix), and he or she would, within reason, do
you some favors (though they’d rather not).
A not-so-great friend wouldn’t do any of those things and therefore
harbor The Hanged Man Reversed energies. They would much rather
put their needs first rather than attend to anyone else’s. While that’s
not necessarily a bad thing, when it becomes excessive, he or she
couldn’t possibly make a good friend. This is the financially healthy
friend who refuses to be your bridesmaid at your wedding because
she thinks it’s a waste of money to buy a dress that she’ll only wear
for a day. This is the friend who you’ve helped financially when they
were unemployed, but when you’re down on your luck, they wouldn’t
even spit on you if you were on fire.
The Hanged Man Reversed, though, isn’t so much about selfishness
– that’s only a part of it. It’s much more about someone failing to
realize that their small sacrifice could have contributed to a greater

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good, but they don’t realize this. In essence, their selfish “I come
first attitude” has contributed to a less-than-ideal outcome.
As an example, let’s look at a wife who feels overwhelmed by her
household duties, and she asks her husband to carve out an extra
hour to help her around the house. However, the husband says, “No
thanks. I promised to be at my friend’s house at 6 p.m. for the
football game,” and he walks out the door.
Though the husband thinks he’s happier in being more self-interested
and dodging the tedious activity of picking up a broom, he doesn’t
realize that he’s creating a bigger rift in his marriage. His wife will
grow to resent her husband as she is angered by the unbalanced
share of household duties, the husband will sense some distance and
tension between him and his wife, and 10 years later, if they even
make it that far, the marriage falls apart and they’re considering
divorce.
Had he just said, “Okay, I’ll carve out an hour,” that sacrifice would
have contributed to the greater good of the marriage because the
wife would love that she and her husband are a team, and as they
say, “happy wife, happy life.”
The Hanged Man Reversed can also point to closed-mindedness.
When The Hanged Man is upright, besides sacrifice, it can also be
about being open to seeing things in a different perspective. If we
look at the card’s imagery, we see a man tied up on a pole upside
down – he’s seeing things in a completely different light than he did
before.
So when The Hanged Man is right side up, it can depict that moment
we have after reading an intellectually stimulating book and makes us
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say, “Wow, this book really opened my eyes and allowed me to see
the world in a different way!”
But when The Hanged Man is reversed, we have someone who lacks
the ability to open their mind and broaden their perspective. This is
someone who is stubborn and refuses to let go of their insular views
– no matter how many times you try to persuade them into seeing
things your way, he or she will remain closed-minded.
As I mentioned in the beginning of the book, I do not believe that
reversals are inherently bad – it’s just a deprivation of certain
energies. So if we take an example of a cult leader trying to
indoctrinate people to believe that the world is flat, someone who is
radiating the energies of The Hanged Man Reversed would never,
ever believe the cult leader’s propaganda – their mind is locked and
no cult leader in the world could change their perspective on Planet
Earth’s shape.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Hanged Man
Reversed:
• A man who cancelled frequently because he saw dates as an
inconvenience to him; he saw them as financial sacrifices that
he deemed to be unworthy of his time and resources.
• An Uber driver who told me he cannot understand why the
younger generation uses Google for research when they can just
use an encyclopedia.
• My father, even if he knows he’s wrong, would rather argue with
you to death rather than throw up the white flag and say “Okay,
you’re right.”

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 Death

Upright Energies: expiration, endings, drastic changes, erasure, and

fatality
Examples: A man getting the axe from his job, a young student
deciding to completely scrap an original idea for a better one, a swath
of bad reviews that puts an abrupt stop to a woman’s shoe sales
Shadow: rotting, something lasting beyond its expiration date, mold
Examples: Keeping spoiled milk in the fridge, an older male relative
who still uses floppy disks, a just-back-from-vacation employee who
was not informed about the new guidelines and still continues to
operate under the old rules
Reversal: An impediment to change, clinging to outmoded beliefs,
refusing to give up bad habits and/or negative thought patterns
Examples: A writer who doesn’t want to get rid of a good-for-nothing
paragraph despite the fact everyone suggests he remove it from his
novel, a teenage girl who laments the thought of leaving her high
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school friends behind as her college years loom, a man who cannot
stay in a healthy relationship because, in order to become a better
boyfriend, he would need a drastic change in how he perceives
women and partnerships
Upright
In all my years of working with tarot cards, I have not yet seen the
Death card as a representation of an actual human fatality (knock on
wood). Instead, Death often depicted a difficult transitional period in
one’s life or an abrupt, inevitable ending that is difficult to endure,
but you understand that it’s for the best.
Think of Death as winter. The existence of verdant, lush trees and
flourishing, blooming flowers is replaced with a bare landscape of
leafless, spidery branches and snow-topped bushes. The vivacity of
spring and summer has perished.
This is just the cycle of life – soon enough, in a couple of months,
new life will form once again.
There is a sort of beauty in winter in that you develop a sort of
appreciation for the warmer, effervescent months. Without the
feelings of Death winter brings, we wouldn’t be so thankful for the
breath-taking landscapes that spring and summer displays with all the
flowers in bloom and the trees standing proudly with greenery.
Winter’s an inevitable season, and for some people, an unwelcome
period, but most of us make the best of it – we wear our favorite
coats and fashionable winter accessories, we go cavorting in the
snow, and we celebrate festive holidays.

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That’s the lesson of The Death card – accepting the inevitability of
endings and understanding that new life, in some way, shape or form,
will revive again.
In love readings, it can indicate that drastic changes are afoot – it will
mean that here on out, nothing will be the same between you and a
love interest. This could mean that the relationship will end, or the
dynamics of the relationship will take a complete 180 turn. For
example, I’ve seen The Death card appear for a couple who had the
first child – everything changed in the relationship since being a first-
time parent is a life-changing event. But then again, I’ve also seen
The Death card represent a break-up.
The Death card in love doesn’t necessarily say that a break-up will
occur, but it does say that an ending will definitely happen, but the
question is, what – exactly – will end? Will it be an end of living a
childfree life and welcoming a newborn into the home? Will it be the
end of seeing each other often after splitting up? Will your partner
suddenly end his unappreciative behavior toward you after having a
near-death experience?
Pull a extra card to clarify what ending is coming your way.
As feelings, this card is saying that your person of interest is
acknowledging that things have drastically changed between you and
him or her. In “feelings” questions in love, I mostly see this as an
“It’s over” card.
Here are my own personal experiences with Death Upright:
• A woman quitting smoking after seeing the damage its done to a
relative’s health

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 • A man deciding to walk away from his wife after realizing that
his toxic marriage no longer has legs to stand on
• A woman undergoing hardcore counseling to a point where she
is no longer same person she once was
Shadow
The most difficult part about Death is adapting to the transition
period. As an example, getting fired from your job isn’t what will
cause you grief per se, it’s the whole process of looking for a new job
and adapting to your new way of dealing with your scant finances that
really pains you.
The ending happens, but then we have to find a way adapt to those
changes, and that’s where we really struggle. That’s the shadow part
of Death – the aftermath of loss is devastating because it strips us
away from our old habits and what we’re used to, and we’re forced
to live a different way a life.
Death (Shadow) can also be an excess of death – so dead that it’s
beyond extinct: rot, decay, and decomposition. There’s no way in hell
that it can be revived.
Imagine pulling out a slice of pizza under your bed that has been
sitting there for a year – gross! Think of the mold that’s grown on
that formerly delicious slice of heaven.
Consider a gallon of milk that’s been sitting in the fridge for a few too
many months past its expiration date. Don’t you think that it’s about
time that it’s thrown out already?
These examples are perfect reflections of the Death (Shadow) card –
something that’s dead enough to be toxic to our health.

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In mid-June of 2015, an apartment balcony in Berkeley, California
collapsed, killing six students in their mid-20s. If one were to ask
tarot what caused the collapse, there’s a good chance that the
Death (Shadow) card would have appeared. Inspectors found that the
outer beams of the balcony suffered severe rotting and decay, which,
in part, caused the weak structure to collapse under the weight of the
students.
Death (Shadow) is something that’s rotten to the core – it’s putrid
and nauseating, and what’s worst is that it jeopardizes our well-
being.
As feelings in love, I’ve seen Death (Shadow) it mean that the person
of interest is thinking, “This must end for my own sanity! Out with the
old and in with the new!”
Here are my own personal experiences with The Death (Shadow):
• A decaying tooth
• Growing pains
• A dead laptop that couldn’t even be revived by a computer
repair expert
Reversal
Death Reversed is a resistance to the inevitability of death.
The Death Reversed card can symbolize a man, for example, who
receives divorce papers from his estranged wife, but cannot get
himself to sign them because he cannot accept that it’s all truly
over.

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I’ve also seen this card appear for querents who refuse to change
their antiquated beliefs, which in turn prevents them from evolving
into a better person.
In one reading, a woman once asked me why it’s so difficult for her
husband to put himself in her shoes and empathize with her – The
Death Reversed appeared. This tells me that the husband has a very
set-in-stone way of thinking and doesn’t want to allow someone else
to skew that view – his obsolete mentality makes him comfortable
and it’s possible that putting himself in his wife’s shoes would make
him uncomfortable.
He doesn’t want to transform his way of thinking, and that
contributes to his solipsism.
As I mentioned before, I’ve seen The Death card predict a new baby,
particularly for a first-time parent. The father who came in for my
reading agreed that his lifestyle completely transformed. He can no
longer kick his feet back on weekday nights and hang out with his
buddies – he has an extra mouth to feed and he has to buckle down
on being the breadwinner for his family. He truly loves his daughter
with all his heart, but she was a transformative force in his life in that
his life changed dramatically.
That being said, when Death is reversed, consider the opposite of this
revelation – someone who refuses to change their lifestyle despite
there being a necessary need to do so.
The bottom line is Death Reversed is a hindrance to metamorphosis.
Here are my own personal experiences with Death Reversed:

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• A man determined to hold on to his childhood teddy bear even
though it looks like it’s been through a few wars
• A woman who cannot get her ex-boyfriend out of her mind
despite the fact he’s no good for her
• Reading a news article about a woman sleeping with her dead
husband’s decomposing corpse for a year

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 Temperance

Upright Energies: experimentation, alchemy, concoction, dilution,

mixing, compromise, moderation, happy medium
Examples: editing a homework assignment ‘til it’s “just right,” the
process of baking to make sure a cake turns out delicious, sugar-
coating the truth so that it’s more palatable
Reversal: poison, bad mixture, “like oil and water,” incompatibility,
poor adaptability
Examples: a couple who cannot sustain their relationship due to racial
or cultural conflicts, a dish that is poorly seasoned, stepping into the
shower and the water’s too cold.
Shadow: too middle-of-the-road, fence-sitting, someone who doesn’t
like to rock the boat, someone who doesn’t like to pick a side,
something that’s too watered down
Examples: Music at a party that is neither too low or too high, but
guests prefer louder music so it can be heard above the chatter, a

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politician accused of being too neutral in attempts to pander to both
the left and the right side of his constituents, someone who plays it
too cool when a dose of passion and anger is needed
Upright
I learned the true meaning of Temperance the HARD way!
I used to work as a content writer for a site. On this site, editors
would give writers a list of topics based on their expertise, and the
writers got to choose which topic they’d like to write about. Cool,
huh? So what I ended up doing was pulling a tarot card for each topic
– I’d ask, “How would my editor feel about my article if I wrote about
this topic?”
I wanted to make sure that whatever topic I chose to write about, my
editor would be totally impressed with my writing skills.
One of the topics concerned dog care, so I pulled a card to see how
my editor would feel about my article on puppy training, and I got
“Temperance.” Temperance is such an attractive card in the Rider
Waite deck – you’ve got a beautiful angel dipping her right foot in a
pond. Relying on its attractive imagery and internet buzzwords for
Temperance like “balance,” I came to the following conclusion: “Oh,
my editor will think my piece is beautiful and well-balanced.”
Boy was I wrong!
She told me my article required a lot of tweaking – I had to remove a
few sentences, add a few paragraphs, rearrange a few things. It was a
lot of adding, subtracting, and extracting before my editor could finally
say, “It’s finally perfect and ready to publish!”

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That’s when it clicked. Temperance isn’t about balance per se, it
represents the process of finding ultimate perfection. It’s about
trying to find the golden mean when you can finally say, “Ah, now it’s
just right!”
Temperance basically describes the experimentation phase. For
example, when you taste your own soup and think, “Hm, it needs a
little more black pepper.” Then you taste it again and say, “Now, I
think it’s too thick,” and now you add water. That’s what
Temperance is – adding, mixing, and diluting until it’s “just right.”
Now that you understand what Temperance is all about, it’s a lot
easier to apply it to all aspects of life. If you were to get this card
after asking tarot if someone is lying, Temperance is saying, “Yes –
they’re diluting the truth with lies so that it seems more palatable.”
If you were to get this card to ask, “How does this person feel about
me,” chances are that their feelings are quite lukewarm. The fire and
intensity that one feels when they’re “in love” is tamed with the
coolness of detachment – so they’re not in love with you, but they
don’t hate you either.
Another great aspect about Temperance is the “opposites attract”
cliché. This represents an odd couple where one is shy and the other
is extroverted, but for some strange reason, they work really well
together because the extrovert helps to bring her partner out of his
timid shell, and the shy man helps to mellow out his excitable lover.
I’ve also seen Temperance for couples of different religions, cultural
backgrounds, and ethnicities who are trying their best to make it work
romantically.

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This card can also be asking you to compromise – add a little bit of
your ideas and your partner’s ideas to make one beautiful outcome
that is a mélange of two people’s brainpower.
Lastly, Temperance is someone who seems to get along with
everyone and can adapt to any situation.
Here are my own personal experiences with Temperance Upright:
• Two writers harmoniously working on a novel together
• A man who’s afraid to show that he’s in love, so whenever he
feels he’s being too “mushy,” he reels it back by taunting and
jeering her
• A woman who who sugarcoats the truth because she doesn’t
want to hurt her partner’s feelings
Shadow
Temperance (Shadow) will tell you someone or something is sitting on
the fence.
Let me give you a personal example of Temperance (Shadow).
After I got a rejection e-mail from a potential employer, I pulled a
card to ask why I didn’t get the job. I pulled Temperance (Shadow) –
this tells me that the interviewers felt I was trying to be too palatable
and moderate instead of taking a decisive, passionate stance on
something.
They were looking for journalists who had an extreme passion for
something – a firmly held obsession over a social justice issue that
they are determined to solve. I, on the other hand, played it too cool
because I was afraid that my interviewers would be turned off by my
passion. But as it turns out, whether they agreed with my stance or
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not, they wanted an employee who had a lot of verve and moxie about
certain social ills.
Here’s another example. Imagine a bully who loves poking fun at his
victims because he enjoys getting a rise out of ‘em. He enjoys seeing
them get red in the face, purse their lips, furrow their eyebrows, and
blurt out obscenities. A bully’s worst nightmare, then, is someone
who operates under Temperance (Shadow) energies. Their
temperament is, well, too tempered – they’re neither angry nor upset.
They’re callous, stoic, and completely unbothered by the bully’s
provocations.
Temperance (Shadow) tells us that there really is such a thing as
being too much of a cool cucumber.
This card also points to something that might be construed as too
diluted and too watered down. If, for example, you order a cup o’ joe
at your local café, and you feel that the coffee isn’t strong enough,
Temperance (Shadow) may pop up to describe how you feel about
your coffee.
As feelings, this is someone who has a bad habit of reigning back his
or her feelings toward you when he or she feels as if their emotions
are getting too intense. For example, this could represent a man who,
if he feels he’s getting too close to you will start to become more
elusive so he doesn’t get too emotionally involved – he dilutes his
strong feelings, so to speak, by keeping you at arm’s length.
Here are my own personal experiences with Temperance (Shadow):
• Feeling as if the alcoholic drink I ordered at the bar tasted too
watered down

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 • A supremacist father concerned about his daughter marrying
outside her race and “diluting” the purity of his progeny.
• A blasé boyfriend who doesn’t feel compelled to jump in and
defend his girlfriend while she’s in a tension-filled argument

Reversal
Now when Temperance is reversed, someone’s served you an over-
salted bowl of soup at the table. Temperance Reversed describes an
immoderate mixture of two or more ingredients. That’s why people
say baking is a bit of a science – if you put more eggs, flour, or milk
than your muffin recipe calls for, then you’re going to have your
guests gagging at the dinner table.
If you want to know what your friends think of your baking skills, and
you pull Temperance Reversed, don’t expect them to come back to
eat your funny-tasting blueberry muffins – they don’t have a very
high opinion of them! They think that there’s either too little or too
much of one or more ingredient, which makes your muffin
unappetizing.
When we apply Temperance Reversed to relationships, we find two
people who are not compatible. As an example, imagine two assertive,
decisive, stubborn students working together on a project. With both
having dominant personalities, they’re going to attempt to have full
control over the assignment. This will inevitably lead to a clash as the
two assertive students bump heads trying to gain the upper hand on
the project.
They’re mismatched and will not create harmonious partnership.

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To sum it all up for you, Temperance Reversed represents
incongruous pairings.
I’d also like to add this – Temperance Reversed can indicate a
refusal to adapt and assimilate. When Temperance is upright, it can to
refer to one’s willingness to conform to the environment in order to
create harmony. However, when this reversed card, it is a clear sign
that someone has no intentions of adjusting and changing oneself to
reduce friction and clashing between himself and others.
But as aforementioned, reversals are not inherently bad. The
Temperance Reversed card can also advise you to keep it 100% real –
do not sugarcoat the truth. Don’t dilute anything; keep your words
authentic and unadulterated.
As feelings, your love interest believes that you do not complement
him or her well.
Here are my own personal experiences with Temperance Reversed:
• A poisonous substance inadvertently being added to someone’s
food and he had to be rushed to the hospital for medical
assistance
• A man telling a McDonald’s cashier “No ice in my soda please!”
as he does not want the cubes to dilute his Pepsi.
• Dating someone who I couldn’t get along with no matter how
much I tried

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 The Devil

Upright Energies: obsessions, irresistibility, contractual obligations,

dependency, materialism, toxic attachments, bad influences,
temptation, abuse of power, unbridled ambition, taboo desires
Examples: a woman is on a diet, but she is tempted to eat a decadent
cupcake, a power-hungry prison guard sexually taking advantage of a
female inmate because he believes it’s her word against his, a man
who knows that his relationship is toxic, but can’t let his girlfriend go
Shadow: Stockholm syndrome, being trapped in an oppressive
situation, depravity and perversity, corruption
Examples: A kidnapped woman is conditioned to love her kidnapper,
signing a contract and being legally bound to a binding stipulation you
overlooked, a child surrounded by bad influences and, therefore, loses
his naivete

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Reversal: self-control, freedom, going “cold turkey,” cutting one’s
self off from a toxic attachment, ignoring temptation, imperviousness
to seduction
Examples: A married man not succumbing to the sexual advances of
his female assistant, a woman going on a budget to stop purchasing
unnecessary items, a young girl dumping her boyfriend after finally
realizing her relationship was doing more harm to her than good
Upright
The Devil is a powerful energy – one that is tempting and irresistible,
but if you take a closer look, if you succumb to The Devil, the
consequences are far worse than you think it is.
At its core, The Devil represents mindless desire for instant
gratification. Sure, your seductive co-worker is attractive, and you’d
love to succumb to his sexual advances, but have you thought about
how it would affect your marriage? Have you considered how your
kids would be indirectly hurt by the fallout of the relationship with
your husband? If you’re single, have you thought about how this
would affect the office dynamics?
The Devil is the snake, the seducer that lures you into his lair. Will
you take the bait – hook, line and sinker? Or will you overcome
seduction and escape The Devil’s clutches?
The Devil doesn’t have to be a person. It could be that sparkly dress
at the window that costs $300. It’s so shiny and so beautiful, and you
want that dress! Now if you were to ask tarot if you should purchase
it, and you get The Devil, tarot is saying, “It’s all temptation to buy
useless goods. That dress is a trap! It will make you happy for a day

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or two, but then you’ll get bored as it sits in your closet for the rest
of your life. This is not $300 well spent.”
The Devil warns us about being attached to materialism – things that
are marketed to make us drool all over it, but the truth is, the product
isn’t nearly as great as it’s portrayed to be.
Case in point. My mother kept talking about how she wanted to have
a NutriBullet, which was a high-end blender at the time. My mother’s
sister – my aunt – wasn’t able to purchase a NutriBullet for her, but
she got her an economical, but feature-filled blender. The blender was
pretty awesome, but because it didn’t say “NutriBullet,” so my
mother wasn’t particularly impressed with the gift.
I ended up purchasing the NutriBullet for her, and after a month of
using it, she realized she hated it. The NutriBullet does not allow
users to put ice in their fruit smoothies and the serving size for juices
is only good for one person.
Guess what? My mother starting using the economical blender that
her sister bought her, and she loved it! She could use all the ice she
wanted and she could serve the whole family with her delicious
smoothies.
This is exactly what The Devil is trying to tell you. Don’t be tempted
to purchase materialistic crap because chances are high that the
“book cover” is way more impressive than its actual contents.
The Devil can also come to you as advice to make something more
alluring and beguiling. If you have a business, it’s telling you to make
your product too irresistible to resist! If it’s a love reading, it’s

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asking you to be so titillating, not even a religious leader under a vow
of chastity could resist you.
Lastly, I’ve seen The Devil depict those moments in our lives when
we feel anchored and burdened by our responsibilities and obligations.
It’s weighing down heavily on us and it’s very taxing, but we can’t
get out of it – we have no choice but to finish it ‘til the very end as if
we’re enslaved to our work.
In love readings, The Devil can represent someone who is so
obsessed with a love interest, they couldn’t even detach from him or
her even if they even tried. This card exemplifies the “Love is a drug”
cliché in which someone feels that their partner is so irresistible, they
can’t get enough of ‘em. You should also beware of seeing this card
in love readings as it can point to an unhealthy relationship that is
toxic, and yet, the partners can’t seem to pull themselves away from
each other.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Devil Upright:
• A man being tempted to succumb to his sexual desires as his
secretary touches her décolletage suggestively.
• A woman feeling trapped to work at a job that she hates, but
she can’t leave because she needs the income
• A business woman who successfully sells out her lingerie line
thanks to her eye-catching, sexy social media campaigns
Shadow
When The Devil (Shadow) appears, we have a subjection to greed,
power, perversity, and depraved behavior that is out of control.

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Someone is allowing their hunger for their baser desires to overcome
them to such an overwhelming extent that they are suffering the
consequences of their poor self-control.
Here, under this card’s energies, we have a film mogul, Harvey
Weinstein for example, who thought he could get away with using his
power to fulfill his baser desires by taking advantage of lower-ranking
female workers in the industry. However, by the end of 2017,
everything came to a screeching halt as accusations of his
manipulative behavior ruined his reputation.
And let’s also talk about up-and-coming talents who actually agree
to exchange sex for fame – here we have a fledging actress who
happily nabs a major film role by using her body. While she garners
the fame she’s always dreamed of acquiring, rumors of her “sleeping
her way to the top” follows her throughout her career for the rest of
her life. This is another aspect of The Devil (Shadow).
Consider bribery as another example. Under this card, a judge will
gladly accept a few thousand dollars under the table to rule in favor
of a perpetrator – even if the criminal has a preponderance of
incriminating evidence against him. Unfortunately, the perpetrator
gets away scot free and justice isn’t served simply because of a
court judge’s greed.
Or what about a restaurant food inspector who accepts bribes to turn
a blind eye against egregious violations? Sure, the inspector brings
home a huge wad of cash, but this is at the expense of the poor
customers who have no idea that they’re patronizing a pigsty!
The Devil (Shadow) warns us all to not sell our soul to the devil.

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As feelings, be careful! You’ve got someone who wants to seduce
you into their evil trap, and once they’ve got you, it’s going to be
difficult to escape.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Devil (Shadow):
• A popular, pretty high school girl using her charms to persuade a
sychophantic, servile male classmate to commit a dishonorable
act for her
• A political figure accepting bribes to ignore bad deeds at the
expense of his constituents
• A phone company that drafts up attractive “bait and switch”
contracts to trap customers into their business
Reversal
Sure that cable package is only $49.99 a month for now, but have you
looked at the contract? After two years, your bill could skyrocket to
$89.99 per month!
Yeah the burger, fries, and milkshake pictured on the fast food
advertisement looks delicious, but is indulging on all of that junk food
worth it if it’s a major setback for your fitness journey?
When The Devil is Reversed, you have someone who considers all
those questions before finally realizing that the instant gratification
isn’t worth the consequences they may suffer down the road.
The Devil Reversed reflects a college student who turns down an
offer to partake in sniffing cocaine – while the “high” from the
experience may be enjoyable for now, the consequences will be grave
in the future.

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The Devil Reversed pops up when a wife is fed up with her physically
abusive husband and realizes she’d be better off without him, so she
escapes the toxic marriage.
The Devil Reversed is all about distancing one’s self from
temptations, seductions, and contractual obligations that have a high
possibility of going awry.
As feelings, your love interest is making the decision to detach
themselves from a relationship they feel is unhealthy,
Here are my own personal experiences with The Devil Reversed:
• A discerning man realizing that a seemingly appealing contract is
actually a trap
• A woman turning down $10,000 to commit a crime
• A man deciding against purchasing the newest iPhone, despite
its allure and “cool factor,” because his current iPhone works
just fine

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 The Tower

Upright Energies: sudden upheaval, a shocking surprise, an

unexpected event that shatters your world, a life-changing truth is
revealed, structure with poor foundation collapses
Examples: A father suddenly finds out that he has a long-lost
daughter, an unexpected fire shutters local businesses, a once-
hopeful woman being told by her crush that he’s not interested in her
at all
Shadow: bottled up anger, implosion, internal failures and collapses,
false foundations and weak structures that will inevitably fall, no
matter how much you try to resist it
Examples: A serious illness that happens internally, but may not show
externally, a company that falls a part due to the actions of a devious
internal employee, a secret or lie that creates fractures in a
relationship and is bound to collapse at any moment

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Reversal: avoiding a necessary purge, narrowly escaping a horrendous
situation, imprisonment, anti-climactic events, sudden change that
occurs without fuss or chaos, agoraphobia due to fear of life’s down-
on-your-luck moments
Examples: restraining one’s desire to sneeze, urinate, or any other
bodily function for a more suitable time, running down the stairs in
time to stop a fire from causing irreparable damage, a woman who is
afraid to go out because she believes the world is a cruel place
Upright
The Tower captures that moment when we’re thrown outside of our
comfort zone. The Tower can often represent the “ivory tower,”
which describes someone or something that has secluded themselves
from the harsh realities of the real world.
And when life starts to get pissed at you for being stuck in your little
ivory tower, it will find a way to throw you out of it.
Sometimes, this can be good! I’ve seen The Tower represent a man
who loves to travel. And I’m not talking about someone who travels
to a foreign country, but then decides to stay in his resort the whole
time. I’m talking about someone who craves being put outside of his
comfort zone – he loves the thought of putting himself in situations
where he will find surprising and shocking details about
others’culture.
He’d hate to stay imprisoned in his safe little ivory tower. In fact, it
would be his nightmare.

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So if The Tower ever comes up as advice, it’s telling you to shake
things up! Get out of your comfort zone and do something completely
out of character. Walk out of your imprisonment – your ivory tower –
and throw yourself into something new and exciting!
In love readings, on rare occasions, I’ve seen it come up as someone
unexpectedly falling love with someone and being completely taken
off guard about it because it’s out of the blue! Yes, The Tower is
shocking and surprising, and it will push you off your pedestal and
humble you, but the impetus behind The Tower moment does not
have to be bad at all.
The Tower could represent a surprise birthday party for all you know!
People jumping out of different corners of the room would give
anyone a figurative heart attack and knock them off their feet.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Tower Upright:
• A woman shocked out of her mind as a barbershop quartet,
hired by her boyfriend, sing the words, “Will you marry him?!”
• An unemployed man gets a message from a recruiter on
LinkedIn that they’d like to hire him immediately, but he’d have
to be willing to move to another U.S. state
• A teenager surprises her friend with tickets to see her favorite
singer in concert
Reversal
When the Tower Reversed appears, something was supposed to
explode, but there was an obstacle that prevented its eruption. The
best way to describe this card’s energies is to think about shaking a
bottle of soda and keeping the lid on it – it really wants to bubble up

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and burst out of its plastic prison, but the tightened top is preventing
its explosion.
The Tower Reversed can be favorable in some circumstances.
For example, let’s say you spot a toddler fall into a backyard pool.
Fifteen seconds later, you’re scooping up the little boy and you’ve
prevented the child from possibly drowning. This moment very much
represents The Tower Reversed – something terrible was poised to
occur, but you’ve grabbed the toddler just in time before anything
unspeakable could have happened.
The Tower Reversed, like every card in a tarot deck, has its
downsides – it can demonstrate something that is anti-climactic. If a
film director is wondering how his audience feels about his movie, the
Tower Reversed is not a card he’d want to see. With this card, the
people who watch his film felt as if the movie was missing a climactic,
thrilling, exciting moment that makes one say, “Oh, this is getting
good!” or “Oh my god! I wasn’t expecting that.”
There may have been a chaotic or dramatic moment that the
audience was anticipating, and the film fell flat.
This card can also depict someone who is afraid of facing life’s
curveballs, so instead of putting on a brave face and tackling
whatever life throws at them, they’d sit in their room all day and
never step out their front door.
For example, imagine a young pimple-faced teenage boy who doesn’t
want to go to the school dance because he’s afraid of the many
mishaps that could happen – being rejected by a girl he wants to

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dance with, being bullied by the popular clique, being alone and left to
stand by himself like a wallflower.
In foreseeing the many setbacks that may happen at this school
dance, he chooses to stay home to avoid any trouble.
In love readings, if you see the The Tower Reversed, beware of a
shocking secret that has the capacity to rock you to the core, but it
is being kept from you by someone so as to not stir things up.
However, the very action of stifling this secret is causing the
foundations of the relationship to whittle away and an implosion is
imminent.
In health readings, I’ve seen The Tower Reversed pointing to
something going on inside the body that is not immediately seen
externally, but there is something going on internally that should be
quickly addressed before it gets worse.
In love readings, someone has to be careful not to cling to a
relationship that has poor foundations because it is going to topple
down to the ground sooner or later anyway!
As feelings, someone is trying to make sure that they don’t blow
their cover. They have a lot of bottled up emotions inside and they’re
suppressing something. Perhaps it’s a shocking secret and/or it’s
possible that they’re repressing a strong emotion (love or hate). But
it is starting to eat away at them internally, so the truth will come out
eventually.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Tower Reversed:

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 • Almost setting my apartment on fire while leaving something in
the stove, but I got to it on time before something disastrous
occurred
• Truly expecting my favorite singing competition contestant to
win that I was ready erupt with a happy little session of jumping
for joy, but was stopped dead in my tracks when the rival
contestant won instead
• Being afraid to face someone head-on about something wrong
that I did, but I knew that the explosive confrontation was
inevitable
Shadow
The Tower isn’t my favorite card in the deck – I’ve gotten it when I
lost my job, I’ve seen it appear when a friend does something
unexpectedly cruel that threatens our friendship, and it pops up when
someone says something that tears down my self-esteem.
The Tower is a representation of our ego, which can be very fragile
and based off false perceptions of ourselves. As an example, there is
a Tower for how sexy we think our spouses perceive us to be, there
is a Tower for our illusion of work stability, and there’s a Tower for
how solid we think our relationships are, and so on and so forth.
So when our spouses suddenly advise us that we need to lose weight
because they’re losing attraction to us, there goes one Tower
crumbling down as we face the truth about our appearance.
When we suddenly get fired, that Tower falls apart as we’re reminded
that we’re not as secure as we once thought.

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And when a lover cheats on us, that Tower explodes as we are
confronted with the fact that our relationship was standing on shaky
legs the whole time.
The Tower is our false beliefs that pander to our egos, and it can
crumble at any time.
But The Tower is a necessary card because, as I mentioned, it
represents our ego and everything else we thought was stable, but
the truth is, the foundations were faulty and we needed that Tower
moment to make us realize that our perceptions of things are
completely off.
The Tower brings shocking truth and a sudden sense of revelation
that was hiding underneath our egos and faulty foundations for far too
long.
The Tower, in my readings, can often represent someone who is the
bearer of truth at best, but at worst, they can be terrible people who
want to constantly chip away at your self-esteem because they
don’t want to see you happy.
In love, a shocking, unexpected event is imminent – it can be a break-
up or it can be a situation that will threaten the mettle of the
relationship. But what is certain is that, with The Tower (Shadow)
card, the news will be surprising and painful, and it will go against all
of your preconceived notions you once had.
As feelings, the person in question feels as if a truth has been
revealed and their ego and assumptions have been wrecked by the
power of The Tower.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Tower (Shadow):

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• A man shocked to find out that his girlfriend cheated on him
with his best friend
• Accidently dropping a whole tray of food – fit for feed 20 people
– on the ground
• A woman’s heart drops after her boyfriend tells her that he’s
no longer in love with her and he wants to move on

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 The Star

Upright Energies: hopes, dreams, planning for the future, optimism,

silver linings, the light at the end of the tunnel, fame and celebrity,
attention, long distance
Examples: A man stranded on a deserted island for four days, but
then sees a helicopter in a distance, a boss who knows how to inspire
her employees by offering promotions and incentive, a 9-year-old
gifted whiz kid rises to fame as a YouTube star
Shadow: fanciful, wishful thinking, far-fetched ideas, failed long-
distance relationships, very imaginative, but not proactive
Examples: A mechanic who’s always daydreams about becoming an
engineer, but never takes steps to make this dream come true, a
young woman with far-fetched ideas about marrying her celebrity
crush, a relationship that fails due to distance issues

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Reversal: despair and hopelessness, avoiding the spotlight, pessimistic
attitude, not drawing up plans for the future
Examples: A teen feeling hopeless after doing everything he can to fix
a laptop that remains broken, a man fearing the thought of public
speaking because he doesn’t like having too many eyes on him, a
woman’s boyfriend is uncertain he sees a future with her
Upright
Without hope, we’ll all die. It’s a morbid statement, but it is true
nonetheless. What keeps us all alive is anticipation for the future,
from whether we’ll become wealthy one day to what’s going to
happen next week on our favorite TV drama.
If one’s been stranded on a deserted island for days, the sound of an
approaching helicopter represents hope. When one receives an e-mail
from a HR manager after being unemployed for months, this is hope.
A man swamped with bills suddenly given a financial gift from a friend
– this, ladies and gentlemen, is hope.
Hope is that inner knowing that things will get better. It is that feeling
of encouragement, optimism and positivity that your current
circumstances are only temporary, and good fortune is headed your
way.
I’ve also seen The Star denote long distances in time or space. So if
you were to ask tarot “Where is my soulmate?”, and The Star
appears, well, he or she could be halfway across the world for all you
know because The Star represents an entity that is far, far away.
The Star can also represent long distance relationships. In this case,
it’s such a sweet card because two people can be miles and miles

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away, but as they look outside their window and yearn for each other,
they could both be dreaming upon the exact same star, wishing to be
reunited once more.
On a few occasions, I’ve seen The Star portray a querent who is in
the spotlight and is poised to garner fame and fortune.
As feelings, The Star represents someone who believes that the
object of their affections is way out of their league – only in their
wildest dreams would they be able to get someone was incredible as
him or her!
In regards to feelings, it can also portray someone who is optimistic
about the future with his or her love interest.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Star Upright:
• Being inspired by a rags-to-riches tale that makes me say, “If
they can do it, I can do it!”
• A woman who is still in love with her ex suddenly gets a
Facebook message him, and has hope for reconciliation
• A young girl suffers from an illness, but then the doctors say
they’ve potentially found a cure
Shadow
Unrealistic expectations – that’s what The Star (Shadow) is all
about. Yes, there is such a thing as being too positive and too
optimistic. There’s nothing wrong with having dreams of being a
rocket scientist because it’s, at the very least, feasible. However,
praying that your childhood dream of becoming a real-life Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtle comes true is a little bit out-of-this-world, don’t
you think?

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The Star (Shadow) pops up when our dreamy optimism makes us too
fanciful and there is an absence of down-to-earth, practical, and
pragmatic qualities.
The Star (Shadow) asks us to make sure our improbable ideas are
possible.
This card also warns of someone who refuses to accept reality and
continues to have their head up in their clouds – perhaps they still
believe they can get back with an ex-boyfriend who is very happily
married with five children and has no intentions of leaving his wife or
kids. This can describe someone who swears that a Nigerian prince is
after her affections, but in reality, it is a pedestrian man simply out to
scam this person out of thousands of dollars.
Operating under The Star (Shadow) energies could be detrimental to
someone’s career, business, or project goals because it indicates
that someone is doing a little too much dreaming and not enough
acting.
Lastly, as I mentioned earlier, The Star can indicate great distance.
So the shadow side of The Star could point to distance causing some
sort of obstacle. I’ve seen this card pop up as a reason why a man is
considering breaking things off with a girl he’s been dating – she
simply lives too far and commuting to and from her house is quite the
hassle.
The Star (Shadow) also asks us to be mindful of people who might be
selling us false hope; for example, a company claiming to have some
sort of remedy for an incurable ailment when, in actuality, it’s all
nonsense to get your hard-earned cash. This card reminds us that

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too much optimism could be just as disastrous as too much
pessimism.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Star (Shadow):
• Being swamped with great ideas, but never putting them into
action
• Having unrealistic expectations that a man I’m dating - who
doesn’t believe in monogamy and has a history of cheating -
could possibly remain faithful while serving the military in a
foreign country
• Still maintaining hope that a company could still hire me even
though months have passed since the interview
Reversal
When The Star Reversed appears, we have the absence of hope. This
card could depict a situation as grave and somber as someone who
feels there’s no motivation to keep living. This person might ask,
“There’s nothing left for me in the future, so what is the point of
pursuing life?”
While many of us cling to someone or something to stay alive for,
maybe our children, our spouses, or some other hope-producing
entity, there are some people who lose hope and feel as if there’s no
incentive to stay alive. This, of course, is a more tragic expression of
The Star Reversed.
There are certainly less heart wrenching emanations of this card such
as someone who is having difficulties drafting up plans or visions for
the future. Maybe this could describe a student who just doesn’t
know what topic to choose for his essay, and the deadline is

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approaching rapidly! This could also depict a woman who suddenly
realizes that she doesn’t see herself with her fiancé long term, so
she considers leaving him.
I’ve seen a good side to The Star Reversed, too! It can indicate that
someone is no longer spending all day wishing and praying – they’re
finally putting their foot down to get things done!
The Star, with upright energies, depicts someone under the spotlight
– a celebrity, a well-known scientist in his field, or even a highly
venerated author. But when The Star is flipped, there is an absence
of recognition and attention. For someone who is a bit of a wallflower
and doesn’t like being under public scrutiny, this could be a good
thing.
I have seen this card appear for a reason why someone prefers to be
a radio presenter as opposed to a TV host – there are no lights and
cameras, and there’s no need to worry about how one appears to the
public eye. So under The Star Reversed energies, he feels most
comfortable.
I’ve also seen this card foreboding the querent that he or she will not
get a role that requires any type of public recognition like a TV role.
The Star Reversed can also quite simply point to a pessimistic
attitude – someone who has no faith in themselves or others. This is
someone who cannot muster a modicum of optimism because they do
not see a favorable outcome in the future.
As feelings, it indicates that someone can no longer envision a future
with their love interest.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Star Reversed:

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• Not getting the reality TV role I auditioned for
• Falling into a bout of depression after a string of career
rejections
• A date who felt embarrassed at me dancing at a bar because of
all the attention I was attracting

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 The Moon

Upright Energies: the unknown, vagueness, poor clarity, fear, mental

disturbances, secrets, uncertainty, illusions and delusions, vivid
imagination, the subconscious, omission of truth, confusion
Examples: A woman walking through her house at night and – for a
split second – thinking her swaying curtain is a ghost, a house seller
who hides an unattractive hole in the wall by strategically placing a
bookshelf in front of it, a psychologist using guided meditation to help
patients reflect on thoughts lodged and concealed in their
subconscious
Shadow: addiction to escapism, trapped in a state of paranoia and/or
mentally unstable mindset, madness, lunacy
Examples: A man who is overly dependent on using drugs and/or
alcohol to escape from reality, a woman suffering from an incurable
mental disorder, a maniacal psychopath

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Reversal: revelations, secrets poised to be unveiled, lack of mystery,
absence of imagination, drug rehabilitation, gaining comprehension and
understanding
Examples: A writer struggling to create an imaginative plotline for his
supernatural fiction novel, a mother revealing the subconscious
impetus behind her daughter’s odd behavior, a hacker cracking
someone’s password
Upright
The Moon is a place that is far from reality – filled with illusions and
fantasy.
The Moon could represent your dreams and nightmares, which take
us on a wild, eerie ride to lunacy while we sleep.
It can depict our fanciful daydreams while we stare off to space in
class.
The Moon can represent our imagination as we envision made-up
characters and picturesque storylines as we write our science-fiction
novels.
The Moon can also portray escapism and the strange places we drift
off to as we ingest mind-altering drugs.
I’ve also seen The Moon reflect our subconscious – the deepest
layers of our psychology that is suppressed below the undercurrents
of our mind that we do not wish to unearth.
Lastly, I’ve seen The Moon describe the process in we “fill in the
blanks” with our own assumptions when there are holes in a story. To

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give you an example, let’s say your neighbor texts you while you’re
at work and tells you that there’s someone lurking around your home.
Without knowing the details, your mind immediately starts to “fill in
the blanks” of who this lurker is and what they plan to do. “Oh my
god! What if it’s a thief? What if it’s my ex-boyfriend trying to attack
me again? What if it’s a murderer? Oh my god, it’s definitely a
murderer!”
But in actuality, it’s not a murderer – or even a lurker - at all. It was
just a package delivery man searching for your back door since he
was instructed to place your package there.
The Moon captures that moment when our minds lose sanity and
reality is elusive.
As a person, The Moon can depict someone who has “mystique” –
there’s something inexplicably dark, secretive, mysterious about this
person, but you can’t really put your finger on it.
As feelings, The Moon often comes up for one of two reasons: (a)
they are confused about their own feelings toward you and they’re
trying to figure you out (b) they are at a loss about where you stand
romantically, which confuses them in return
They feel there’s a lot of vagueness that needs to be cleared up
before they can truly know where they stand.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Moon Upright:
• A woman who comes up with a crazy idea for a novel that
others think is nutty, but it ends up becoming the No.1 best-
selling book of the year

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 • A psychologist trying to tap into the subconscious mind of her
patients to understand what makes them tick
• A student reading an unclear paragraph over and over again and
still feeling as if he can’t quite comprehend what the author is
trying to convey
Shadow
With The Moon (Shadow), you will find someone who is batsh*t crazy,
delusional, irrationally fearful, or creepily deceptive.
The Moon (Shadow) says, “You’re losing it! That shadow in the dark
isn’t a ghost! It’s just your drapes swaying in the wind!”
This card’s energies radiate lunacy, madness, and psychopathy. This
is the card you’ll find that best represents behind the psyche of
celebrity stalkers – men and women who genuinely believe that
famous people they’ve never met are in love with them.
Celebrity stalkers are not in their right minds – their thoughts are
swirling with untruths and inaccuracies that they truly believe to be
real and sound.
Miley Cyrus, for example, a U.S. pop star who made waves on the
charts in the early 2010s, dealt with a stalker named Jason Luis
Rivera who tried to break into Cyrus’ home while holding a pair of
scissors. When police thwarted his plot and questioned him, Rivera
told police that Cyrus is his wife and that she had been friends with
him for five years.
Needless to say, Cyrus didn’t know the man from a can of paint, but
in his mind, Cyrus was indeed his wife – the pop singer just didn’t
realize it yet.

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The Moon (Shadow) also represents someone with poor discernment
who lacks the ability to distinguish truth from reality. This card
reminds me of the popular U.S. show Catfish – the show’s host, Nev
Schulman, travels around the country helping romantic hopefuls meet
their online lovers in person. The term “catfish,” by the way, refers to
people who are deceptive about their true identity. Many of the
romantic hopefuls on the show fall prey to catfish despite clear
evidence that something is amiss. They allowed romance, imagination,
and unreality to take precedence over logic. They were enraptured
and enthralled by fantasy created by the catfish and, as a result,
chose to perpetuate the false world where their online lovers are
breathtakingly beautiful models or handsome famous musicians.
But the truth is, behind the computer screen is a truth they’d rather
ignore. The true face of the catfish is much more unsightly in reality.
Perhaps there is a modicum of their intuition that nudges them that
something is off, but they choose to ignore it because ingesting the
lie is sweeter than having to swallow the bitter truth.
Many of these romantic hopefuls would rather maintain, for example,
that they’re dating Katy Perry than acknowledge that there is,
instead, a rotund, elderly man behind the screen who hasn’t
showered in days.
In this case, both the catfish and the victim emanate Moon energies.
A female catfish, for example, who pretends that someone else’s
model photos are her own is definitely a Moon energy because she is
hiding her true identity and she is being deceptive. And though the
catfish clearly shows signs that she is not real because she refuses
to meet up with the victim in person, the victim chooses to live in this

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fantasy world that the catfish is truly who she says she is – this is
another reflection of The Moon.
One more thing I’d like to add about the shadow side of The Moon –
this is where irrational fears, paranoia, and phobias live. From the man
who has a strange fear of balloons to the woman who doesn’t go to
her basement in the dark, The Moon represents people who don’t
realize that the scary scenarios that they paint in their minds are far
from reality. No balloon seeks to harm anyone and there are no
“monsters” down in that woman’s basement.
The Moon (Shadow) can also indicate someone who is going through
depression.
As a person, The Moon represents someone who is a loon – they are
not in their right mind, and they are suffering from mental imbalances.
This could also represent someone who is very moody and tends to
be extremely temperamental, but the reason for their moodiness is
often something they are not upfront about.
As feelings, watch out! Someone might be actively trying to hide
something from you and do their best to cover up things they do not
want you to know in order to make you believe a fantasy. If it seems
like it’s too good to be true, something’s up!
Here are my own personal experiences with The Moon (Shadow):
• Dealing with a man who is trapped in his own delusions that I am
in love with him because the fantasy is easier to live with than
the truth
• A pathological liar that crafts fantastical stories to deceive
others for his own personal gain and benefit

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 • A woman whose memories are too vague and has too many
holes in it, but she maintains that her recollection reflects the
truth of the past
Reversal
The Moon Reversed is all about the disappearance of illusions,
whether this is good or bad, well, as I always say, that depends on the
context of your reading.
If, for example, you were to ask tarot if you will eventually find out the
truth about something that seems unclear to you, The Moon
Reversed is a card you’d want to see. It’s a card that describes the
evaporation of vagueness which, as a result, means the entrance of
clarity and lucidity.
The dark shadows, whether literal or figurative, are being illuminated
and revealed.
The Moon Reversed reflects why many of us appreciate GPS
systems. For those of us who are prone to getting lost, we can take
out our smartphones and the GPS system will guide us out of
confusion and into a state of comprehension. “Ah, now I see how to
get where I need to go!”
Directions to our destination are no longer ambiguous – thanks to our
smartphones, we are now absolutely certain about how to get to
where we need to go. That feeling of “Oh, I get it now!” is the energy
that The Moon Reversed radiates.
The Moon Reversed can also indicate someone who is phasing out
their dependence on drugs. The Moon’s upright energies can
emanate a state of being “high” where one uses mind-altering

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substances (i.e. drugs) to escape one’s reality. So when The Moon is
Reversed, there is sobriety and clear-headedness.
As aforementioned, The Moon can also refer to depression because it
points to mental imbalances that affect one’s emotional well-being,
but when The Moon Reversed appears, the brain chemicals that
promote better mood regulation become more prominent.
However, to give you an example of a situation where this card would
be unfavorable, imagine asking tarot why you’re experiencing major
writer’s block in completing your novel. If The Moon Reversed pops
up, it is telling you that you’re experience a lack of imagination
Having flights of fancy is essential for creativity and mental agility.
There are many inventors and scholars who had people around them
who thought they were absolutely nuts, but they stuck by their
“crazy” idea and, as it turns out, their ideality changed our lives for
the better.
Consider William Harvey, a 17th-century English physician. He
disrupted the medical community by proclaiming that blood passes
through the heart, not the liver. His peers thought his theories were
absolute madness, but we know now that Harvey was correct in his
conjectures and it was his peers, instead, who were publishing false
claims on blood circulation.
Was Harvey out of his mind? Most likely. But without this brand of
mental agility, there would be no innovation, no scientific
breakthroughs, and no technological advancement.
In other words, you need crazy for creativity.

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As feelings, someone feels as if they’re getting a clearer picture of
their own intentions as well as yours in regard to where they stand in
the relationship. Vagueness and nebulousness is no longer an issue,
and they’ve fallen back down to earth.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Moon Reversed:
• Finding out the truth about the dishonorable intentions of a love
interest
• Realizing that the “menacing footsteps” behind me at night was
just a stray cat stepping through dead leaves.
• A friend revealing that the reason he’s been exhibiting distant
behavior is because of all the stress he’s been dealing with at
work

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 The Sun

Upright Energies: heat and energy, positivity, radiance, warmth, the

limelight, clarity and understanding, truth, outdoors, warm weather
Examples: A woman who lights up the room whenever she enters
because of her optimistic aura, that “aha” moment when a student
finally understands a nebulous concept, a family enjoying the beach
under the warm sun
Shadow: vanity, arrogance, bragging, lack of privacy, overexposure,
too much heat, highly energetic
Examples: A man’s resume that is too vain and self-aggrandizing for
a recruiter’s taste, a celebrity feeling frustrated over paparazzi
violating her privacy, a woman suffering from a sunburn
Reversal: misunderstandings, cloudiness, lack of warmth, reduced
energy and vitality, lack of attention and praise, feeling dispirited

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Examples: A remote-controlled toy loses steam because its battery is
running low, a family feeling glum as a raincloud looms over their
picnic, a woman feeling ignored as her best friend receives all the
attention from men
Upright
A lot of resources will tell you that the The Sun is all about positivity
and happiness, and while this is an aspect of what this card is all
about, it is not the most prominent definition of The Sun.
In my experience, I’ve seen The Sun to be all about enlightenment,
truth, and revelation. Depending on the content of the truth that is
revealed, it might actually be a sad card – as opposed to a positive
one.
For example, I’ve often seen this card appear when my clients find
out something painful in their love life. It’s usually a secret that’s
been undercover for quite a while and, finally, it comes out into the
open – into the light – and everything seems to make sense, no
matter how painful the truth might be.
The Sun can be all about clarity as well. Think about how wonderful it
is to have a tutor who can illuminate a complex mathematical concept
in just a few minutes. But your teacher, who has been talking about
the this hard-to-understand concept for months had you scratching
your head in complete confusion. The Sun is that moment where we
say, “I can clearly now the rain is gone!”
If we look at the Rider Waite energy, we see a naked baby on a horse
underneath a bright, luminescent sun. The nakedness represents the
absence of deception and secrecy – everything’s all out in the open.

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When someone’s naked, all their flaws are out for the world to see,
and that’s what The Sun card can point to – exposure.
The Sun can also be all about being the center of attention. If you
walk into a party lookin’ fly, and all eyes are on you, then honey you
are radiating The Sun’s energies through and through.
The Sun, as a person, can describe someone who lights up a room!
Lastly, The Sun can be all about energy, heat, and warmth. This card
can depict someone or something with lots of vitality.
As feelings, this is someone who feels as if they can be open and
honest toward you. They feel as if there’s warmth, positivity, and
truth radiating in the relationship dynamic.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Sun Upright
• A child who is energetic and full of life
• A woman who is free and happy with herself
• A man who craves being in the limelight
Shadow
The Sun (Shadow) speaks of overexposure – too much sunlight,
spotlight, and showboating.
In this era of social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram,
I imagine this card has been working overtime to point out this
generation’s obsession with image, ostentatiousness, and showing off.
There are men who are gaudily flaunting their rental luxury cars,
women uploading Instagram pictures that are photoshopped to high
hell, and teenagers acting a fool on YouTube – all for the sake of
garnering attention through “likes” on social media.

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Now there’s nothing wrong with a healthy esteem, but there comes a
time when showing off too much can work against you. Take Kim
Kardashian, for example, who, in October of 2016, was robbed by a
group of men in Paris who decoded her whereabouts simply by
following the star’s Snapchat updates.
The famed reality TV star learned one important thing from the
terrifying incident – don’t be too candid about your personal life.
You’ll leave yourself exposed to people who will take that information
and use it against you.
The Sun (Shadow) can also be about vanity. In my experience, I’ve
certainly seen this card pop up as why a hiring manager threw a job
candidate’s resume by the wayside – he came across too cocky and
arrogant, though that was certainly not his intent!
Immodesty is also a feature of The Sun (Shadow), if you were to pull
this card for how your mother-in-law felt about your outfit today,
well, let’s just say she would have wished you wore a shawl or a
sweater to cover up a little more.
Beware of overheating and high temperatures when The Sun
(Shadow) appears. This card cautions against high temperature-
related ailments such as sunburns and heat exhaustion.
If it’s sweltering outside, make sure to stay indoors, but if you
absolutely must go out, this card warns us to wear sunscreen to
protect yourself from the sizzling heat.
Lastly, “burnout” can be a feature of The Sun (Shadow) as well.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Sun (Shadow):

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 • A worker feeling as if she has to exert too much energy for work
every day to a point she feels fatigued.
• A friend who revealed a secret she promised she’d keep
• A girlfriend annoyed by her partner constantly oversharing their
experiences on social media

Reversal
The Sun Reversed epitomizes what happens as the sun begins to set
– the atmosphere gets cooler, there is a lack of warmth, there is
reduced illumination, and a sense of gloominess as nighttime
approaches.
When the sun is at its peak, nothing can hide under its bright light. My
mother strongly believed that nothing good happens after midnight –
and that’s probably because it’s easier to hide any transgressions
when there’s no daylight.
But when the sun’s out in full swing, it’s a lot more difficult to pull
off any surreptitious plans because everything is out in the open. So
when The Sun Reversed appears, there is some dimming involved.
Things are less lucid and transparent. There may also be some
misunderstandings here.
If you were to pull The Sun Reversed to uncover how someone felt
about your e-mail, there’s a possibility that this person felt slightly
unclear about a statement you made. There’s also a chance that this
person feels as if you’re not being entirely transparent and clear
about something – you may be fibbing or fabricating something.

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The Sun Reversed can refer to someone who is feeling downcast,
gloomy, and glum.
The Sun Reversed also describes a lack of vitality and energy. When
you car has a full tank of gas, it’s ready to go to take you from A to
B. But when it’s low on fuel, it’s a bit clunky ‘til it slows down to a
complete stop when it’s out of petrol. The Sun Reversed represents
those moments when the vigor behind someone or something begins
to dissipate.
After a long day of work or chasing after your toddler all day, there’s
a good chance you might be emitting The Sun Reversed energies.
When upright, The Sun can also be about exposure, attention, and
praise. This is, I imagine, how actresses feel when their name is called
to receive their Academy Award – the camera pans to their face,
everyone claps and congratulates them, viewers around the world
have their eyes on this stellar thespian. Now when The Sun is
reversed, someone is experiencing a lack of attention, which could be
a positive or negative depending on how much spotlight one craves.
If you’re dressed to the nines, and you attend a gala with your best
friend where she’s receiving all the compliments for her beautiful
appearance, but you haven’t received so much as a “you look nice,”
you may be feeling neglected, ignored, or disregarded. In feeling
unnoticed, you’d be operating under The Sun Reversed energies.
Here are my own personal experiences with The Sun Reversed:
• My smartphone dimming due to its low battery
• A woman’s hair strands lose its luster and shine after its been
over-processed

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 • Two sisters lament how their parents showered their youngest
sibling with attention, but seemed to ignore them
Judgement

Upright Energies: second chances, renewal, revival, catharsis and

cleansing, releasing grudges and letting go of the past, being assessed
and evaluated, a wake-up call
Examples: a woman deciding to forgive her ex for dumping her
because her anger was starting to eat at her soul, an innocent
prisoner released from jail after investigators found he was wrongly
incarcerated, a formerly disgraced celebrity gets a second chance to
rebuild his reputation in the public eye
Shadow: being too judgmental, giving an unworthy person a second
chance, a loud sound

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Examples: a woman who is too quick to dismiss her dates due to
faulty judgements, a man who constantly feels the need to “wake”
people up to become aware and conscious of the world, being startled
awake by your neighbor’s loud music
Reversal: clinging on to grudges, feeling tormented by one’s past
sins, ignoring or not hearing a call to action, refusing to forgive or
offer second chances, blockages to renewing one’s self
Examples: A murderer gets away with a crime, but he is haunted by
the criminal act for eternity, a co-worker who decides to ignore a
colleague he does like for the remainder of his tenure, a fallen movie
star chastised by the media is too ashamed to revitalize his acting
career
Upright
Judgement, when upright, is all about rising from the ashes. If you’ve
ever heard Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” song, it speaks about how
she was once afraid and petrified, but then the song picks up into a
proud and uplifting beat where Gaynor belts, “Did you think I’d lay
down and die? Oh no, not I, I will survive!”
Whenever you think of Judgement, think of Gaynor’s inspiriting “I Will
Survive” song – it captures the energies of the card perfectly
whereby someone once felt “dead” in some way, and then suddenly,
wham, they experience a sudden feeling of being resuscitated and
revived for a second chance at life.
For example, think about a celebrity who was disgraced and
besmirched due to a horrendous scandal, but after a few years of

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laying low, they rise back up to superstardom and say, “I’m back!”
This is Judgement.

This is a card you’d love to see if you were to ever ask if someone
will ever wake up from a coma – Judgement says they certainly will!
But on a more mundane level, Judgement can just represent someone
being startled awake by an alarm.
Judgement also encourages us to follow our “calling.” If you see
Judgement appear as advice in a career reading, it is telling you to
pursue your true vocation. If you’ve taken a sabbatical in your
career, Judgement can be telling you it’s time to wake up from your
slumber and jump back into the fray.
Judgement encourages us to release the past and let go of grudges
as well. If you’re stuck on an ex or you are still pissed off at a friend,
this card is appearing to tell you to purge and cleanse yourself of the
past and move forward.
Judgement upright implores us to let go of grudges and forgive
(though you don’t necessarily need to forget) because holding
grudges does more harm to you than it does to the person you’re
furious at.
Paraphrasing Wendy Williams, “It’s good to forgive. It prevents
wrinkles.”
I’ve also seen Judgement represent someone having an epiphany.
For example, it could be that “aha!” moment when something finally
“clicks,” like a solution to a difficult math problem. Or maybe it could

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even be the moment that I like to call “when sh*t hits the fan,” which
is most common in relationships.
As an example, there was a woman suffering abuse from her husband,
but she tolerated it for years, but “sh*t hit the fan” when he almost
left her for dead and she saw her three-year-old daughter in
complete distress, crying her lungs out. It was that moment she had
an epiphany – she suddenly became Mama Bear, and after she
recovered from her injuries, she scooped up her child and fled.
Interestingly enough, I’ve seen Judgement depict a room renovation,
which makes sense because, as I mentioned before, Judgement is
about renewal and rising from the ashes.
As feelings, someone is choosing to let go of a grudge or purge
themselves of a love interest and start their lives anew.
As a person, I’ve seen Judgement appear as someone with a good
judge of character.
Here are my own personal experiences with Judgement Upright:
• A pastor, who used to be a drug dealer, had an epiphany and
changed his life for the better
• A woman decides to forgive a man who assaulted her because
it’s the only way she can move forward
• A man waking up after being unconscious for a couple of hours
Shadow
Being a good judge of character is crucial for healthy social
interaction – it helps us decide who is truly on our side, and who is
nothing but toxic waste in our lives. However, there are times when
we may overdo it, which is what Judgement Reversed represents.
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Being too judgey could result in us making erroneous assumptions
about someone and ruling them out too quickly when, in reality, if we
got to know them on a deeper level, he or she might not be as bad as
we originally thought. The shadow side of Judgement may represent
someone who is being too critical of themselves as well.
If you pull Judgement after asking tarot whether or not you’ll get the
job you recently interviewed for, unfortunately, you will not. This card
often tells me that a hiring manager has made a final judgement
against the candidate’s best interests.
Judgement, as a shadow card, could be warning you that it’s not a
good idea to revitalize someone or something, whether it’s a career
or a relationship. As an example, if you were to ask, “What am I doing
wrong in regards to my reconciliation with Tim,” and you get the
Judgement card, tarot is letting you know that you’re trying to revive
something that really should remain dead for eternity.
Lastly, on its shadow side, I’ve also seen Judgement depict a
cacophonous sound.
Here are my own personal experiences with Judgement (Shadow):
• A boss continually offering an incompetent employee second
chances
• Putting too much weight on judging by first impressions
• Being awakened by the sound of police sirens blaring through
the neighborhood

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 Reversal
Judgement Reversed, as a message, could be as light-hearted as,
“Hey, stop hitting the snooze button so often! It’s time for you to
wake up and get to work” or as heavy as, “It’s time to let go of the
grudge you have against your ex-husband. It’s not healthy for you.”
When Judgement Reversed pops up, there is a hindrance to
regeneration and rejuvenation. For example, if your lover tells you
he’s breaking up with you, and five years later, you’re still harboring
anger towards him, you are operating under Judgement Reversed
energies.
Judgement Reversed also warns us about getting caught up in your
past wrongdoings and mistakes – you’re impeding yourself from
renewing yourself to become a better person. For example, think of a
high school basketball coach who gets fired because his higher-ups
didn’t like his wacky methods of leading the team. If he were to
operate under Judgement Reversed energies, he would allow that
firing to get the best of him and he’d say, “Well, I guess coaching
isn’t for me. I don’t know what to do with my life anymore. I’m a
failure.”
Whereas if Judgement were upright, he would have said, “I am just
going to learn from my mistakes from this firing and do even better
next time when I get my next job!”

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Judgement says, “The past is behind you! Learn from your mistakes
and renew yourself!” Judgement Reversed says, “Why bother getting
back into the field? I’m a loser.”
On another note, Judgement Reversed could also be telling you that
you’re ignoring a “calling” in your life. Maybe you have an inner voice
telling you to ditch the corporate world and become an entrepreneur,
but you keep sticking your fingers in your ears and saying, “La, la la! I
can’t hear you!” The upright energies of Judgement can be about a
sudden spark of inspiration to walk away from your current journey
and renew yourself into a new path of life.
So when Judgement Reversed appears, think about what calls to
action you may be ignoring – maybe that family member who keeps
telling you that you should be a lawyer might actually be worth
listening to.
As a person, Judgement Reversed can depict someone who is a poor
judge of character.
As feelings, this is someone who has not learned how to forgive and
forget, and they are still feeling anchored by the past. This is
someone who is a huge grudge-holder and he or she does not feel
“cleansed” of his or her wrongdoings nor do they feel as if they’ve
moved on from certain people of their past. There’s a possibility this
person might still feel guilty for what they’ve done.
Here are my own personal experiences with Judgement Reversed:
• Facing a string of job rejections and feeling too exhausted to
rejuvenate myself back into the job hunting process
• A man festering in guilt for a horrid crime he’s committed

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 • A woman completely ignoring the alarm on her phone that’s
prompting her to wake up and start her errands

The World

Upright Energies: fulfillment, seeing the big picture, completion,

closure, feeling whole and “at peace” with one’s self, travel, end of a
journey, culmination, accomplishment
Examples: A couple mutually deciding to part ways on good terms,
finally finishing an intensive educational course and receiving your
degree, feeling fulfilled and accomplished in your career
Shadow: a painful ending, observing an effect on a macro level, but
failing to see how it affects an individual, someone who’s a know-it-
all.

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Examples: a boss who makes sweeping changes that positively affect
the company at large, but fails to understand how it negatively effects
individual employees, realizing that your ex has found closure and
wants to move forward, a teenager who thinks she’s got it all figured
out
Reversal: lack of closure, something that seems never-ending,
warning about resting on one’s laurels, quitting and throwing in the
towel, feeling unfulfilled and unaccomplished, closed-minded mentality
Examples: A woman feeling as if she hasn’t fully gotten closure from
an ex, a student dropping out of college because it’s too difficult, a
gossip columnist feeling unfulfilled in her career
Upright
I had a relative that lived until 103. She was born in 1915 and she
died in 2018 – wow! She was even dancing on the dance floor when
we had a big party for her 96th birthday – without a cane or anyone
else’s help! It was incredible.
She didn’t die of any illnesses or diseases; she was healthy and vital
for a century. She simply died of old age.
During her wake, one of her grandsons said, “Don’t cry for grandma.
She lived a long life. It was full, whole, and complete – she did her
time, and now it’s time for her to go home.”
On her deathbed, her grandson told me he said, “Don’t leave me!
You’re going to leave me grandma?” And she said, “Sweetheart,
there’s nothing left for me here. I’m ready to go.”
That right there is The World in a nutshell – it’s all about living a full,
radiant, and vital life while accumulating a lot of knowledge and
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experience, and at the end of it all, you say, “I feel whole now. I’m
ready to move on.”
This is a card you’ll often see when someone graduates from college
because they’ve studied for four years, and they’ve accumulated a
lot of knowledge and experience, but now it’s time for them to grab
their degree and move forward into the corporate world. Every
graduate is ready to leave it all behind and jump right into “adulting.”
The World can also depict someone with an open mind. This is
someone who may love to travel or loves the idea of visiting different
parts of the world to develop knowledge and experience of other
cultures. It could be someone who is very accomplished as well.
If you are seeking a partner, The World is an amazing personality trait
you should watch out for. This is because, as a character trait, The
World depicts someone who is easily fulfilled, whole, and satisfied in
the relationships that they’re in. They just have this incredible sense
of appreciation for their partners and they don’t need a lot to feel
completely satisfied. If you were to ask, “How happy is my partner in
this relationship?”, and you get The World, you’re in luck because
this person doesn’t feel like anything is missing – they feel as if they
have The World in their hands!
Here are my own personal experiences with The World Upright:
• A man finally completing a project he’s been working on for
years
• The season finale of a TV drama leaves everyone feeling
satisfied and fulfilled
• A man spending 25 years in one company and it’s his last day
on the job before he retires
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 Shadow
As beautiful as The World card is, it’s not a card I like to see in
relationship readings in most instances because it often means that it
is all coming to an end. Your higher power – if you believe in that –
believes that you’ve learned everything that you needed to learn
from this person, and now, it is time to move on to bigger and better
things.
As feelings, especially if this is an ex, he or she feels that the
relationship has reached the end of the road, and they feel
comfortable saying, “Okay, I’ve ended this chapter, and now it’s time
for me to write a new one with someone else.” Sure they will look
back on the relationship every now and then nostalgically, but they
don’t feel the need to resurrect the relationship in any way shape or
form.
The World is an ending after all – this is the shadow side of the card.
When The World (Shadow) appears, you should also consider
narrowing your perspective. For example, sure moving to another city
with a lower cost of living may be a good idea as a whole, but don’t
forget about your children and husband. How would this move affect
your family on an individual level? Would your husband be able to find
a job within the same salary range or higher? Would your kids feel
displaced and uprooted? This card urges you to divert your attention
away from the big picture and look at the individuals who may be
affected on a micro-level.

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As a person, The World (Shadow) can represent someone who’s a bit
of a know-it-all and has a bad habit of saying, “Been there, done that,
got the t-shirt. Next!”
Here are my own personal experiences with The World (Shadow):
• A woman who must accept that her ex has found closure and
moved on
• A little boy who enjoys reading a particular book series feels a
sense of sadness when the author says the storyline has run its
course and she will stop writing new novels
• A natural death – all good things must come to an end
Reversal
Have you ever watched a movie that seemed to drag on and on with
no end? The film could have been wrapped up in 30 minutes, but the
director behind the movie manages to elongate the story over a span
of three hours. You’d have to have the patience of a saint to get
through the movie without losing your mind.
The World Reversed can be about something that seems never-
ending – it’s exhaustive, vast, and there is a feeling that completion
is far from near.
The World Reversed signifies the absence of completion.
The World Reversed can also represent the absence of fulfillment and
closure.
Have you ever had that feeling after reading a book where you felt
unsatisfied? Perhaps you felt the ending was disappointing; maybe
you felt the author left out too many details. Either way, you feel
incomplete – you didn’t get that closure from the book you were
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seeking. That is The World Reversed – not feeling fully satisfied with
something.
I’ve also seen this card appear in readings when someone still feels
the need to tie up some loose ends with an ex. Perhaps he or she
feels as if the journey with his or her ex ended too abruptly and
hasn’t yet reached a state of completion and/or closure. This
doesn’t necessarily mean that the person wants to get back with his
or her ex (though it very well could be). It could also mean that he or
she needs to have a clarifying conversation in order to finally move
on from the past in peace.
For example, a man who was dumped by his ex-girlfriend may feel he
still needs her to answer some questions that’s been weighing
heavily on his heart before saying, “Okay, now that I have a complete
understanding of what went wrong, I can move on.”
The World Reversed is also about quitting something too early –
someone’s abandoned a journey they were on. I, for example, am
notorious at quitting things too early – diets, fitness challenges,
relationships, friendships, jobs, etc.
When it comes to putting myself on a path to complete a task, I
definitely operate under the energies of The World Reversed.
Someone like me would have to be extremely passionate about what
they’re doing to pursue a path to completion, which is probably why
you’re able to read this book right now. I am passionate about tarot
and, as a result, I am able to complete this how-to guide.
But there are times when you have finished a goal, but you still feel
incomplete. Perhaps you’ve gotten into a relationship like you may
have wished, but it doesn’t satisfy or fulfill you. Or maybe you’ve
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gotten the job you’ve always dreamed of having, but something just
doesn’t feel right – you don’t feel “whole.”
This is another interpretation of The World Reversed – not feeling
wholly satisfied with your situation.
Lastly, another aspect of The World Reversed is small-mindedness.
There are some people who do not have the ability to see the big
picture because they are not well-travelled, lack education, or simply
do not care to expand their horizons. Because of this, they have a
very closed-minded, solipsistic view of the world where they do not
care how their actions affect the whole – they are only concerned
about how it affects themselves.
They may have a poor grasp of the world beyond their small village or
town; it would behoove them to, at the very least, pick up a
newspaper and read about what’s going on beyond their neck of the
woods.
As a person, The World Reversed can point to someone who has
already achieved a lot, but is constantly on the hunt for fulfillment –
they’re never satisfied with what they have even though they already
have a wealth of accomplishments behind them. This is someone who
takes the “don’t rest on your laurels” quote to the extreme, and
they refuse to catch a break despite how much they’ve accomplished
thus far.
Here are my own personal experiences with The World Reversed:
• A student deciding to give up on pursuing a college degree in
chemistry

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• A man feeling as if something is missing – a void isn’t quite
filled – when it comes to the woman he’s dating, so he doesn’t
want to take it to the next level
• A small-minded politician who ignores the concerns of low-
income residents because he doesn’t quite understand their
world

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 Sample Interpretations
Okay, so now you’ve read through this book and you’re wondering,
“This is all great and dandy, but how do I put this stuff into practice?
How do I get started on reading tarot cards?”
Well, in my humble opinion, the best place to start is by asking tarot a
question about yourself. You know yourself more than anyone, so
when you pull a tarot card asking about how you feel about someone
or something, you’ll develop experience in understanding what each
card means.
Clarifiers
Clarifiers are cards that help to corroborate your interpretations.
These are helpful if you’re unsure about what the card is trying to
tell you. For example, if I were to ask tarot, “How does my friend see
me as a person?” and I get The Hermit, there are times I wonder,
“Hm, she could either think I’m very lonely or very wise. Which one is
it?”
Here’s the process I’d use to figure that out:
Me: Hey tarot. Can you show me a clarifier for The Hermit?
TAROT: THE HIEROPHANT

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Me: Okay I know that The Hierophant can be about giving someone
good advice, and The Hermit can describe someone is wise, so my
friend must see me as someone who she can count on for intelligent
counsel.
Let me show you some other examples:
ME: Hey tarot. Can you tell me what’s blocking me from finding true
love?
TAROT: THE EMPRESS REVERSED

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1. ME: Hm, okay, so The Empress Reversed represents a lack of
nurturance and/or feminine energies. Using my intuition, I know I’ve
had difficulties embracing my womanhood and truly loving my self-
image inside and out. Still, I’m not too sure. Hey tarot, can I get a
clarifier?
TAROT: THE HIGH PRIESTESS

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ME: The High Priestess is a woman who can be unattainable because
she doesn’t want to be vulnerable. There are times her mystery can
be alluring, but oftentimes, her quietude can be due to a fear of
intimacy and not wanting to share the skeletons in her closet. The
High Priestess also isn’t aware of her sexuality – after all, she is
known as “the virgin” in tarot. So I now know tarot is telling me that
my timidity about my body, self-image, and beauty is what I should be
focusing on in regards to The Empress Reversed.
So what’s blocking me from finding true love is my poor self-image in
regards to my body (Empress Reversed) which manifests as me not
truly owning my sexuality (The High Priestess).
2. TEACHER: Hey tarot. Can you tell me why I’m having a hard time
controlling the kids in my classes?
TAROT: EMPEROR REVERSED

TEACHER: Hm, I see that the Emperor is reversed, so there must be

something about discipline and control that’s out of wack, which is

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definitely true. But I’d like to get more information on this. Tarot, can
you show me a clarifier?
TAROT: THE FOOL

TEACHER: Ah, I see. The Fool is a carefree character, so I believe

tarot is trying to tell me I am taking too much of a laissez-faire
attitude with my students – I am operating under The Emperor
Reversed energies. In order to manage my classroom, I need to
enforce rules, keep the kids busy with scheduled classwork, and I
need to make sure I am proactive in nipping bad behavior in the bud

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 Acknowledgements
I’d love to take this moment to dedicate this book to the Aeclectic
Tarot community, which is a forum that’s been online since 1996. For
over a decade, this internet forum has been a well of knowledge for
both novice and experienced tarot readers alike.
I wouldn’t be where I am today without the many incredible readers
on the forum who have nurtured me, guided me, and even served as
my guinea pigs so I can practice my tarot reading skills.
Now I am more than confident enough to not only write this book, but
also have my own YouTube channel called Zahara Vinson Tarot and
offer in-depth, detailed, accurate tarot readings to answer-seekers
on Fiverr (https://www.fiverr.com/kimmiexsweetie/give-you-an-
accurate-tarot-reading-in-under-24-hrs).
Though Aeclectic Tarot is now defunct, I am eternally grateful for
Kate Hill, the founder of this incredible community, and how her forum
gave us tarot lovers around the world a place to find an incredible
wealth of information on those mysterious, beautiful, otherworldly
cards.
Oh, and I can’t forget my wonderful, amazing, fabulous, hilarious,
supportive subscribers! I wrote this book for you and I hope you all
become as enthusiastic about tarot as I am once you finish reading
this guide.
Special thanks to those who have tipped me! I cannot thank you
enough for your support. I do plan on writing a full-version book –
equipped with both majors and minors – that will be available for
purchase.

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