Tarot: The Fearful Cards

In tarot there are certain cards that when flipped over for a reading can cause a little bit of shock, fear, awe, dread, you name it! We either groan in protest, catastrophize, freeze like a deer in the headlights, responding negatively in one manner or another. We might fantasize about scenarios very unlikely to happen thinking life is going to offer us some sort of ordeal or suffering. Well, the truth is that things do happen that are downright difficult. Internal or external to our control, hardships will occur in your life.

With experience and skill we can learn to reduce personal suffering greatly so that when circumstances enter our lives, we can be more prepared to handle things to the best of our abilities. Also, having emotional fluency, self-responsibility, open-hearted communication skills, healthy personal boundaries, discernment, and any number of other practiced virtues, we can relate to each other better, creating better worlds.

Challenges That Lead to Growth and Healing

One way we learn to grow (certainly not the only way) is through challenges. In tarot there are certain cards that plainly show us the challenges such as the Three of Swords, The Devil, The Tower (also called The House of God) and others that offer us all sorts of work such as The Hanged Man, The Moon, or Death.

These latter cards may feel less like challenges and more like lessons in acceptance, surrender, change, healing, and more. This inner work can be meditative and produce change over time. Whether the profound transformation of our lives is created over long periods of time or experienced as abrupt upheaval, these challenger archetypes will show up in our lives. Tarot contains the entirety of human experiences.

How do we show up?
How do we rise to meet the road under our feet? That is the main question.

The Devil Card

Let’s start with The Devil card XV. This card is ascribed the Hebrew letter Ayin, meaning Eye. The Devil is associated with the zodiacal sign Capricorn and there are three other cards in the minor arcana under Capricorn: The Two, Three and Four of Disks (Change, Work(s), and Power). The Devil contains the other side of The Lovers, a dark mirror of them. If we live an unexamined life we will be unaware of the suffering that is of our own making and powerless to stop it.

The loose chains classically depicted in The Devil card hold us in a metaphorical house of cards. So the Devil also offers us a look at freedom, liberation, and self-empowerment showing us that we hold the chains and can shrug them off with acknowledgement, determination, effort, and willpower. When our minds are controlled by others our bodies will feel less than ideal. We have the power to be creative in the material world. We can meet challenges with work (Mars is exalted here in Capricorn), appreciation and the ecstacy of being alive.

The Tower XVI Card

The Tower XVI is also associated with Mars and the Hebrew letter, Pe’, a mouth. This card is about cosmic or divine manifestation through inspiration or destruction in the mental, emotional or often enough in the physical built-up world (house). It could signal something as large as an end of an era, an eon, a culture, society itself. Or something as personal as stories we craft about our lives–the things we have built up in our minds. Our minds inform us on how we craft the physical world.

This divine inspiration or destruction is illustrated in this card with a lightning strike. a structure crumbling, people being cast out, or with a fiery mouth consuming the structure that is at an end. What a challenge indeed! What an opportunity to come to terms with that necessary deconstruction! How, why, and what we rebuild comes later after our confrontation with The Tower. The divine will offer opportunities and tragedies as a way to show us that some things need to change and need to come to an end. There is trouble with the old way of doing things begging to be replaced with what actually works better.

The Death XIII Card

Another card that can be dreaded is Death XIII, associated with the zodiacal sign of Scorpio and the Hebrew letter, Nun, meaning Fish–the symbol of life beneath the waters. Scorpio is ruled by the planet Mars in traditional astrology. This fiery planet is said to start an action, a reaction, or an alchemical change that transmutes permanently something into something else. Death is asking for something to take a new form and release the old one. This is most challenging when we are attached to the old form, not ready to accept or embrace the inexorable change.

Death comes dressed not in an elaborate costume or robes hiding its form but most often with a simple tool of severance and a crown of office. Death reaps creating permanent endings and beginnings. The creatures of this card are the scorpion, serpent and eagle and the overall affiliation with Nun, the fish. Therefore it is shown that death touches life in all of its elements. Its dominion is everywhere in the world. If nothing existed in the physical world, death would not ask anything of us.

Curiosity, Kindness and Courage in the Face of Adversity

We may become stronger when we face the challenges in our lives, when we peer into ourselves lovingly with curiosity and kindness seeking truth and knowing authentically. When these cards (and a few others not discussed) come up in a reading or a meditation we can use our empowered minds instead of being driven into a state of fear, anxiety or dread.

These cards tell us, somewhat dramatically, what is going on in our field and what is called for by our souls. When we combine this guidance with other life skills we can experience more beauty, less suffering, and progress masterfully in our lives, step by step, one day at a time.