The Dilemma of the Reverse Cards
‘The Tarot’ in the 20th Century as most people have come to understand it, which includes Tarot Readers and authors alike, is actually NOT a reflection of the ‘True Tarot’. This was brought to my attention by a friend and great Tarot Teacher, Patricia Walker – author of ‘The Tarot Tells It All’. She told me that for some strange and inexplicable reason someone, in the early part of the Nineteenth Century, decided to bring a lot more doom and gloom to the unique and remarkable fortune telling qualities of The Tarot. They did so by including ‘reverse’ cards and a whole list of negative interpretations that Patricia made very clear had no basis of existence in the first place! She also stated that the original Tarot has enough negative connotations, designed for interpretive human growth, which certainly didn’t need any negative reinforcement. Knowing Patricia as a most gifted Tarot teacher and reader, I decided to look into this and see if I could help prove her right.
Astrological Harmonics
You might say ‘How can you possibly prove this?’ Well, I happen to be a research astrologer and have come to the conclusion, after a certain amount of research and the understanding of a near-lifetime in astrology, that the Tarot is actually based on the harmonic equivalent of the aspect division of the 360 degree Zodiac – in other words, every card in the Tarot has an astrological harmonic equivalent. Before I give you some examples, I will first give a brief explanation of what astrological harmonics are all about. A number of years ago a well known astrologer, John M. Addey – author of Harmonics in Astrology – proved that astrology is actually based on harmonic wavelengths, similar to the wavelengths of light and sound (or even waves of the sea), etc. In other words the twelve Astrological zodiac signs are not twelve pedantic box-like structures but are actually based on positive and negative flowing wavelengths of the 12th harmonic, as created by the cyclic actions of the Earth around the Sun. Now the 12th harmonic is all powerful because it happens to hold the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 6th harmonic embedded within like a tapestry – 12 can be divided by 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6. There is no smaller and more powerful harmonic number that can hold so many harmonics in one – hence twelve zodiac signs! To learn more about this I would recommend the reader get hold of John Addey’s book – Harmonics in Astrology.
Harmonics and the Tarot
Tarot Card – Strength
This is now where we can show that the Tarot cards are actually a representation of these astrological harmonics. By the way, as this is a limited article we cannot possibly have an in-depth exploration (which would mean having to virtually write a book) so I will give only a number of interesting examples:
When we look at the card number eight (8) in the Tarot then we see that it’s called STRENGTH – with a picture showing a woman holding open a Lion’s mouth. When we divide the 360 degree zodiac wheel by eight we get the 8th harmonic aspect of 45 degrees (aspect being the distance between planets or points in an astrology chart), which in astrology is an ‘aspect’ denoting strength of character where we get tested out – in other words, it means exactly the same thing as its Tarot counterpart! The eight harmonic also rules over our material world and represents everything that has mass with physical and material realities.
Tarot Card – The Tower
Let’s take this a bit further now and double this card number from eight to sixteen (16), which in the Tarot is called The Tower and is a number represented by a tower hit by lightning and a King falling off losing his crown – a card of transformation and destruction. When we look at the astrological equivalent we get the 16th harmonic – 360 divided by 16 = 22.5 degrees and the 22.5 degree aspect, which falls in the middle and is half of the 45 degree 8th harmonic aspect. The 16th harmonic astrologically represents the eventual seed of destruction that is present in all material things. In other words, it again has the very same meaning in that everything in our material world must sooner or later transform through age, death and/or destruction!
The Relationship Between Astrology and the Tarot
Tarot Card – The Empress
I’ll give you a somewhat different example now of two closely related Tarot card numbers with cards three (3) The Empress and, card four (4) The Emperor, as these cards graphically reflect. These two Tarot cards are shown to be of major importance (part of the Major Arcana) and have rulerships over the Feminine and Masculine principles of life that includes the emotions, intuitions and intellectual planning that we all have to apply to everyday life in order to learn, build and survive. This is strongly reflected in the closely related 3rd and 4th harmonics as well, as these represent the very important Triplicities (3) and Quadriplicities (4) of the Astrological wheel that sets up three lots of Water, Fire, Earth and Air signs, eg., The three Cardinal, Fixed and Mutable Water signs of Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces, and so on… In other words three lots (Triplicities) of Cardinal, Fixed and Mutable, times the four lots (Quadriplicities) of Water, Fire, Earth and Air signs that in total represent all twelve zodiac signs. Again this has very much the same meaning astrologically in that we need to use all of our emotional and intellectual male and female planning to learn, build and survive in life – the twelve zodiac signs should in reality be called the twelve ‘ecology’ signs, as astrology is actually the study of life itself! Now this close harmonic kinship applies to every other Tarot card as well. Still it’s not in the scope of this limited article to explore each and every Tarot card (76 in total) and its harmonic equivalent.
Tarot Card – The Emperor
Now we do finally get to our point here, in that ‘How can we possibly interpret an upside down or reverse harmonic which would have no difference in meaning whatsoever and has no basis in reality?’ Every single harmonic exists in a very specific dimension of meaning that has no opposite or upside down value. Upside down harmonics therefore simply do not exist. We can apply exactly the same analogy to the Tarot cards as they are actually one and the same sibling of their harmonic counterparts. Remember, the Tarot, as it stood, had survived for countless centuries unchanged and for some inexplicable reason some egotistical or silly person/s (in the early part of the 19th century) decided to include reverse meanings – ridiculous! The inescapable conclusion therefore is that reverse Tarot cards simply do not contribute additional meanings at all, negative or otherwise, as was carefully researched and understood by Patricia Walker and her life-time of experience in the Tarot.
Peter W Whitewood
Patricia’s book ‘The Tarot Tells It All’ – The No-Reverses True-Tarot Handbook, is only available from Starburst Publishing Pty Ltd – 08 8340 8834