Tarotscope

The Tarot’s representative for the sign of Gemini and for Gemini season is The Lovers, the 6th macrocosmic card. 

The first hit I get when I pull The Lovers card is that it’s not a Water card. As Gemini’s rep in the Tarot, this is an Air card. I read the realm of Water as pertaining to our subconscious, emotions, and intuition, as well as our capacity for vulnerability, intimacy, and connection. Air energy, however, is intellectual, pertaining to our consciousness, our thoughts and ideas, and the transmission of information across space and time. The Lovers card reminds me, through its association with Air energy, that we are not talking about a feeling of love or intimacy or connection so much as we are talking about a theory of love, or maybe, a love ethic.

If you search “the lovers card” you are likely to find an image that includes a masculine figure, a feminine figure, and either an angel, a sun, a heart, or some other symbol which I tend to believe represents the Divine (or the Sacred, or Spirit, or Higher Power, etc.). With this sort of image, it’s easy to read into the heteronormative, traditional meaning of this card as encouraging marriage or committment, demonstrating divine or sacred or heavenly support of a significant relationship. But if I apply an Air energy lens to my read, then it becomes less about commitment to a specific relationship and more a question about what I know, or what I think about relationships, commitment, and love in general.

As I journal and reflect on this question for myself, I tend to read this trinity of symbols (rooted in euro-christian heteronormativity) less in terms of a heteronormative gender binary and more along the lines of self, other, and the Divine (or the Sacred or Spirit or Higher Power…). The Lovers card reminds me of some of what I’ve (un)learned from the Black Feminism (I mean thinkers like Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Audre Lorde, and many others) I first encountered as an undergrad lit major, especially that the emotionally greedy definition of love I have internalized through the violent, cultural filters of white supremacy, misogyny, and heterosexism allows for someone to both “love” and literally ownanother human being.

If love is liberation (as I now know understand thanks to the courageous work of Black Feminist writers and artists), and therefore antithetical to slavery, to objectification, to violence, imprisonment, and oppression, then The Lovers card asks me to commit to living by a love ethic that culturally redefines love as liberation. The Lovers card asks me to commit to a practice of loving myself, loving others, and loving the Divine in ways that we all get freer and freer with every breath.

In western Astrology, Gemini is ruled by the planet Mercury, corresponding to The Magician, the Tarot’s 1st macrocosmic (Major Arcana) card.

In the macrocosmic line, The Magician is number 1, in terms of its place in the cyclical/spiralic mystery that is the Tarot, and in every other way I can think of right now as I ponder the meaning of “1”. If the Fool (0) is a great nothing, a point at which all things are possible and we are about to take a leap of faith, to begin a new journey from the known/now into the unknown/future, then The Magician (1) is the reminder that we already have everything we need to take the leap. While the Fool wonders, “Am I ready to take this risk?”, the Magician is the voice that answers confidently, “Yes, I am ready,” because I am not alone, I am not an individual, I am One with All Things and therefore always ready, always with everything I need right at my fingertips. If the Magician is 1 as in One, then it can be read as the Source of All Things, AND the Self, the Individual. The Magician knows 1 and One and Self are actually All One, as in Oneness, or Unity.

Everything can rapidly get giant and heady if I really let myself go in this direction. Not insignificantly, though, as a card traditionally read as either/both a Trickster and God, this Magician, associated with Mercury, the ruler of Gemini – an Air sign – and the planet known for its influence over communication and the transmission of information and knowledge across space and time, deliberately challenges me/us to think and talk and write about such philosophical questions.

When I image search “the magician tarot”, the first page or so of results are in the Smith-Rider-Waite tradition, depicting a person (usually gendered masculine) standing behind a table with symbols for the four Tarot suits (which are themselves symbols of the four basic elements, the primary components for all other things) laid out before them. This traditional Magician holds a wand in one hand, pointing toward the sky (“as above”) and the other hand is pointed downward, toward the ground (“so below”), an infinity loop hovering above their head.

Sometimes I like to think of the Magician as the Sky, as Air energy itself, as atmosphere, space, the metaphorical and literal stage for all that is. And in “as above, so below, for infinity” I take a magical reminder that precisely because I am not special or unique, I am stardust, I am magic, and I am one with all life, all space, and all time. I gleefully accept this card as a reminder that the Sky is made of me, just as I am made of the Sky. This can make me feel powerful, creative, and confident in my capacity to embody my “magic” – to do/be/make what I flows through me, to create change, to do all this yes, for myself, but for myself as a piece of the Sky, as an integral member of the communities, the magical collective bodies with which I am One. 

When I feel myself strong – when I have been able to tend my personal care well, eat well, move well, and generally feel well and clear and grounded – that is when I find it pleasurable to think of the Magician as the Sky. That is when I can wonder and dream here, open myself to what is possible, what is generative, what is creative and magic and life-giving. However, if I feel even a bit off, if I feel untethered, this read can easily overwhelm me, send me spiraling into a black hole of despair, fear, and anxiety, making it all the more difficult to return to the tending I know will help me feel myself strong again.

Luckily the Magician is a card about layers, and if it is true that I am One with Sky, that I am Ready, that I have all I need at my fingertips, as I can easily trust when I am feeling myself strong, then I can trust that when I am not, it is ok for me to come back to myself, to come back to square one. It is ok to focus on just one thing. One, small, basic thing. One little break. One next step. One word. One breath. One meal. One day. Just as the ocean is made of individual drops, the Sky is made of me and you and every other being, and it is ok for me to care for myself because if I am the Sky, then I do not ignore or exclude the Sky by focusing on the next one, small thing in front of me. Quite the opposite – The Magician teaches me that every single breath I take is from and for the Sky, from and for the One, from and for the All.

Both the Ace and Page of Pentacles cover the quadrant of the sky centered on fixed Earth, or the sign of Taurus. The cards’ reach extends one sign in each direction, spanning Aries – Taurus – Gemini (T. S. Chang).

Aces are the phase of a change process when we open ourselves to the very idea that change is even possible. If the Tarot “pips” (the Ace – 10 cards of each Minor Arcana, or microcosmic suit) signify transformative processes, then the Ace is the moment at which we first open ourselves to whatever change we are hoping to make.

The Ace of Pentacles, the Ace of Earth energy is a point at which we open ourselves to new material realities, new relationship to resources, community, safety, and abundance. When this card turns up in a random pull, it can indicate a new offering, a gift we are being invited to notice and receive. This is usually something like a new job opportunity, a new pathway toward better health, a new home or place or land to explore.

In a non-random reading, like this one, I like thinking of the Ace of Pentacles as a seed, full of promise and potential, but also just one seed. The Ace of Pentacles tugs gently at my sleeve, asking me to strike a balance between taking myself seriously enough to notice that every single move I make has a material impact on the world around me, but not so seriously as to become overwhelmed by an outsized sense of responsibility, which could lead me to not act at all, becoming dormant.

Both the Ace and Page of Pentacles cover the quadrant of the sky centered on fixed Earth, or the sign of Taurus. The cards’ reach extends one sign in each direction, spanning Aries – Taurus – Gemini (T. S. Chang).

The Page of Pentacles represents the relationship between microcosmic earth energy (maybe the body) and macrocosmic earth energy (as in, the Land). There is an exchange of energy here, whereby material resources (like home, security, nourishment, and health) are offered from the macro to the micro and vice versa. The Page of Pentacles teaches us about reciprocity, that if I have taken something offered to me by the macrocosm, the macrocosm will need to recover that energy, some way or another.

This is less about “owing” in a 1:1, tit-for-tat version of reciprocity (though sometimes it is about repair, return, or accountability to the collective) and more of an unbreakable, natural law.

For example, in this era of climate injustice and catastrophe, the Page of Pentacles would ask us to consider: what if the heating earth is settling a score, not out of revenge but as part of a realignment process, whereby macrocosmic life, collectively, is working to return to equilibrium?