Major Arcana conscious/subconscious

[tarotmka]

I am completing a Tarot journal with all of my experiences with each card. I just finished writing out all the numbers 1 through 10 along with their associations with the first ten cards of the major arcana.

It occurred to me that the cycle repeats itself after the Wheel of Fortune. Are the major arcana cards - the ones numbered XI through XXI - another level of the same numbers? I'm not being clear, let me demonstrate.

Conscious / Physical

I: Full potential / The Magician holds all the Aces
II: Duality / the High Priestess lives in both worlds
III: Growth / the Empress is related to growth
IV: Stagnation, Pause, Stability / the Emperor is the rule maker and boundary setter
V: Instability / I actually don't get how the Hierophant fits in
VI: Restoration of harmony, symmetry / The Lovers are about a twin "something"
VII: Challenges and Control / the Chariot
VIII: Overcoming / Strength
IX: Enough / when the Hermit finds what he's seeking, he's got "enough"
X: Completion / A full turn of the Wheel of Fortune

XI: Justice lives between the two levels

Subconscious / Ethereal / Theoretical?

XII: Hanged Man / duality of two perspectives
XIII: Death / ending of something to make way for new growth
XIV: Temperance / stabilizing by merging
XV: Devil / instability of power?
XVI: Tower / restoration of harmony
XVII: Star / another way to deal with challenges??
XVIII: Moon / overcoming illusion
XIX: Sun / the Hermit finds the sun, enough light, clarity
XX: Judgement / completion, laying the dead to rest

XXI: World / beginning of a new cycle in the world


Am I anywhere close to understanding these??

 

[Thirteen]

There actually has been a lot written on this. The first 11 (0-10) Are sometimes seen as earthly. The second set (11-21—or 0 again if you include the Fool at both ends) is sometimes seen as spiritual. But conscious/unconscious certainly works as well.

I believe Rachael Pollack talks about such match ups between "lower" and "higher" majors (first half/second half); you might want to check out what she has to say about it.

The most important thing to understand, however, is this: There is no one or ultimate understanding of the cards, or the similarities/differences/patterns among any set of them. There is only the understanding that you, personally discover, the similarity/differences/patterns that you work out, and how these make you the a better reader.

In other words, whatever patterns you see in the cards are there and you are understanding them just fine.

 

[Richard]

.......Am I anywhere close to understanding these??

In my opinion, yes indeed.

 

[tarotmka]

Wonderful, those were both very helpful! Thirteen, I will definitely look Rachael Pollack. And thanks LRichard! These cards are continuously fascinating.

 

[Alta]

tarotmka, I thought your comments were very illuminating, I like the way you did, makes a lot of sense to me.

 

[laurence]

I need to ask something here:

As I've just drawn the Hanged Man as the outcome of my job search and was very upset about waiting again and again, I was searching another positive meaning with the Hanged Man.
And the duality of 2 perspectives makes sense to me as It's broaden the outcome of my question.

 

[PAMUYA]

I have read Pollacks book, it is very good.

I have been thinking about the High Pristess, and Hanged Man, you used dualism. That got me thinking of using nondualism instead.
Nondualism as meaning to me "There are many shades of meaning to the word nonduality. As an introduction, we might say that nonduality is the philosophical, spiritual, and scientific understanding of non-separation and fundamental oneness.

Our starting point is the statement “we are all one,” and this is meant not in some abstract sense but at the deepest level of existence. Duality, or separation between the observer and the observed, is an illusion that the Eastern mystics have long recognized and Western science has more recently come to understand through quantum mechanics.

Dualities are usually seen in terms of opposites: Mind/Matter, Self/Other, Conscious/Unconscious, Illusion/Reality, Quantum/Classical, Wave/Particle, Spiritual/Material, Beginning/End, Male/Female, Living/Dead and Good/Evil. Nonduality is the understanding that identification with common dualisms avoids recognition of a deeper reality."

Just thinking.....

 

[tarotmka]

I like your thinking, Pamuya. And I completely agree with what Thirteen said about needing to understand the cards in our own way. Duality/nonduality are similar in the sense that I think we experience duality in order to come back to nonduality. You look at yourself (implying two) to then reintegrate into one. That's a big mythological, spiritual theme on this planet.