Tarotscope

The Tarot’s representative for the sign of Cancer and for Cancer season is The Chariot, the 7th macrocosmic card.

The Chariot represents an emotional-relational threshold between what feels comfortable, normal, and easy and what feels risky, strange, and unknown. The Chariot has wisdom about what it takes to expand our hearts, to grow our capacity for vulnerability, intimacy, and authentic connection with other beings, human and not, across the veil, across any barrier at all. It is an important card because it tells us that such growth is possible, and that it is not a thing that just happens to us, but that we are a charioteer, a driver of such expansion. 

In the Smith-Rider-Waite tradition, The Chariot often features a vehicle of some kind (usually a chariot, sometimes a boat, sometimes others) guided by two creatures (sometimes sphinxes, or cats, or others), one dark and one light, or one masculine and one feminine to (incorrectly, because the Tarot is also shaped by oppression) signify two opposing intuitive hits – one to retreat to an even more emotionally comfortable situation and one to take the risk and move into the unknown, to be vulnerable.

When I first moved to Minnesota it was 2004. I had a cell phone but not a smart phone. I had a car and before I had built community for myself, I had a lot of free time on the weekends and I used it to explore the Cities and the surrounding areas. I would get up on Saturday morning, go to the Map Quest site on my computer and print out a map of the area I wanted to explore, and then I would get in my car and drive. One day I was doing this, it was early fall, and I had Map Quested an area away from the Cities that included a couple of farms that looked like they had apples for sale. I am not a good map reader and I ended up on the wrong side of the farm, on an unpaved road across a field from the building I was looking for. I was tired and hangry and it looked like if I were to go around, it would take a very long time, but if I walked across the field, the building would be just over the crest of that little hill. I looked around – no one in sight. It was starting to rain a bit, and in my car I had some boots and an umbrella. I checked my bag and had a little cash and some pepper spray in there. I decided it was worth the risk to leave my car and walk. And it was. It was a short walk up and down a hill, I came upon the farm stand from the back but I found it! I got some apples and walked back to my car just as the skies really opened up. I had just enough time to get off the dirt road before it turned to mud. On my way out, I saw political billboards and lawn signs that I simply hadn’t seen on my way in, and they made me feel unsafe. I remember feeling glad I hadn’t seen them on the way in, or they may have deterred me from getting my apples, which were so crisp and sweet I still remember them, 21 years later!

In fact, if any number of variables had been different that day, I may not have taken the risk to step out of my comfort zone and walk across a random field in a place unfamiliar to me. If I hadn’t had boots or an umbrella, if I didn’t have any cash on me, if I hadn’t had the pepper spray, if I had seen the signs in the yards – any one of those factors might have been enough to have me say nope! Not today! And turn around and go back home to get apples from the grocery store instead.

The Chariot always reminds me that I have the capacity to take risks, and that this capacity, like water, changes shape and size depending on the many factors that impact my sense of safety, my ability to trust that I am protected enough to do the emotional stretching necessary to reach across the boundary of my comfort and into a new experience. The Chariot teaches us that in order to expand our comfort zone, we are well served by paying attention to the practices, relationships, places, and sacred objects that help us feel protected enough to allow ourselves to be vulnerable, to take the risks we know we need to take if we are to grow in new directions.

In western Astrology, Cancer is ruled by the Moon, corresponding to The High Priestess, the Tarot’s 2nd macrocosmic (Major Arcana) card.

The High Priestess Tarot card represents intuition, the kind of knowing that is clear but nonverbal. In the Smith-Rider-Waite deck, our High Priestess holds a scroll close, but does not look at it. The scroll is tucked partly under a blue robe, resting near the High Priestess’s lower abdomen. The High Priestess asks us to take very seriously our emotional experiences and reactions as information, as communication, as divine guidance.

This card is about what we know in our gut, and all the ways subconscious information and experiences flow through us. As a macrocosmic card, it reminds us that our intuition is not merely an individual thing, but a collective well from which we receive wisdom and guidance. The well is a collective subconscious, the same well the salmon draw from to know which way to swim, even if there are no other salmon around to follow.

Personally, I like to think of the 2nd macrocosmic card as The Ocean, or as Water itself. It is a reminder that we didn’t always move on land, that we have non-human ancestors and relatives who were and are living in the waters, and they are talking to us. And we have the Ocean, and Water in all its forms (rain, rivers, lakes, puddles, tap water, ground water, springs, geysers, clouds, etc.) itself as an ancestor, relative, and guide. When we get that deep-down gut feeling and we pull the High Priestess when we ask about it, we can trust that what we are feeling is communication from the divine, from a collective subconscious.

If we find ourselves unable to “hear” our intuition, the High Priestess reminds us that that is normal and ok, and it doesn’t mean that our intuition is broken or that our guides have abandoned us. This very notion, that our spiritual guides and ancestors even could abandon us if they wanted to (which they don’t, generally speaking) is evidence of our internalized oppression. We are one with Spirit, and it is not possible to be separated from our ancestors or for them to not be in communication with us. When the High Priestess card shows up randomly in a Tarot reading, it suggests that our way back to “hearing” and trusting intuitive wisdom is simply to turn toward it, to allow it to flow like water through us. And often literally going to the water – a beach or a river or sitting in the rain or under a shower or in a bath or in a pool – can help us remember how to listen, how to connect, how to allow our feelings to flow.

Both the Ace and Page of Wands cover the quadrant of the sky centered on fixed Fire, or the sign of Leo. The cards’ reach extends one sign in each direction, spanning Cancer – Leo – Virgo (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. If we are trying to go from caterpillar to butterfly, the Ace is the point at which we, without any wings at all, start to wonder if it’s possible to fly. For the summer (in the northern hemisphere), we are guided by the Ace of Wands, or the Ace of Fire. The Ace – 10 of the fire (spiritual) suit represents a change of fire, which I think of as a change of spirit, or a change in what motivates me to act.

By the time I moved to New York City for grad school, I had already undergone a major air (intellectual) change – I had learned through academics and through my friendships and community as an undergrad that my fear of Black masculinity was manufactured, a tool of oppression lodged in my thinking like a sword in a stone. I had already unlearned the lie that this fear was somehow “natural” and appropriate, but I had not yet moved away from my very white, suburban environment. And so, when I first moved to Brooklyn and found myself living among more Black people than ever before, I had to reckon with the dissonance between the fear I felt, which was real and big in my body, and the truth I had learned about that fear. I decided I no longer wanted to be motivated to act by that false fear. I wanted to open myself to a change of fire.

The moment I began to believe this kind of change was possible was the very same moment that it became possible. That is the power of the Ace of Wands. 

The Ace of Wands as a guide for these summer months asks us to open ourselves to the fact that it is possible to experience a change in what motivates us to act. The Ace of Wands also promises that whatever has motivated us before is not likely to work now, here, in this specific context. We would be wise to notice what new fires are lit within us, and to remember that we can decide to feed or starve any of those inner fires at any time.

Both the Ace and Page of Wands cover the quadrant of the sky centered on fixed Fire, or the sign of Leo. The cards’ reach extends one sign in each direction, spanning Cancer – Leo – Virgo (T. S. Chang).

Pages represent a point at which we have come through a change and now, as a new and changed version of ourselves, we are ready to engage with our world in a new way, a new role, or with a new framework. By the time a Page shows up, we have already transformed from a caterpillar into a butterfly, and we are starting to see the same old world from a new perspective, with a new set of skills and a new set of questions.

As court cards, Pages also represent an intersection between the microcosm (the Minor Arcana) and the macrocosm (the Major Arcana). I associate Pages with earth (material) energy, and so the Page of Wands represents a spiritual-material exchange or alchemical process. We are now able to leverage our fire to make something real out of our spiritual/sexual/creative desires and urges. We are able to contain a fire that is threatening to grow too big or too hot by creating a material structure around it to protect both the fire and the surrounding ecosystems, or we can cover it with dirt and snuff it out entirely.

The Page of Wands as a guide for this Cancer season invites us to get curious about what motivates us to act and the connection between those fires and the material world around and within us. The energy of fire within us can feel really good or really bad, but it is not neutral. Fire energy can sometimes be sexy, exciting, or thrilling, but it can also come through like rage, frustration, or even fear, if it is big and hot enough to move us.