All things in life come in threes, for the good or the bad, and Tarot is no exception. The trinity of the Major Arcana cards, the Court Cards of Cups, Pentacles, Swords and Wands, and their remaining Minor Arcana cards of one through ten presage the atmosphere of cause and effect, action and reaction, balance versus volatility, and possible decisions for new directions. The word divination in Latin means the power of foreseeing or more literally to be inspired by a god. Whether the cards can predict the future is up to the Querent, the seeker, asking the question because he must envisage his or her next actions and look directly into their problems, love intrigues, and exploits vis-à-vis. Regrettably, the obscure energy of our minds works to mislead us at every bend in the road. The trinity of the past, present, and future haunts us with what ifs, what is, and what will be.
Unfortunately, the blueprints of our lives are hidden behind The High Priestess’ cosmic veil. Strangely, the present is already the future and the past is always present in our lives, but you must live in the passing vagaries of the present and not let the past haunt you to occlude living in our yet unknown future. The trinity of cause, effect, and influence of affect connect us to our past, present, and future.
The interpretation of a Tarot reading is understanding of the truth of the underlying issues. Strings are always attached to success and failure, and The Wheel of Fortune card teaches us that these concepts are intertwined in the inescapable cyclic nature from the hands of the Goddess Fortuna, who purportedly changes the position of fates on the wheel as it spins. What goes up must come down. Whether you crash and burn on the ascent or descent is in your hands. Pain is inevitable in life but suffering is definitely optional when disparities of the physical senses (Pentacles), mental acuity (Swords), emotional feelings (Cups) and spiritual essence (Wands) are managed by dealing physically, coping mentally, controlling emotionally, and identifying spiritually with the great mystical workings of our past, present and future. The lessons taught by the rough crowd of the mind over matter conflicts of the Swords help facilitate the emotional distress of the Cups, the materialism versus comfort of the Pentacles, and the enthusiastically impetuous spirited trouble of the Wands. Although Swords are the least desirable to see in a spread, they are the governing teachers underneath the Major Arcana cards. In the big picture, the Major Arcana cards command our long-term prospective energies, and the strength of all the Court and numbered cards have a strong impact on our daily lives, but our minds are the key.
When the mind is overcome with negative thoughts–the body tenses, emotions run wild, and the spirit tanks. Positive cognitive thinking is the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding thought through experience and the senses, but it goes further than that with the concepts of the mental faculty of knowing, which includes perceiving, recognizing, conceiving, judging, reasoning, and imagining with perceptions, sensations, notions, and intuition. We have to change the way we think and change our minds. Tarot gives us the avenues of opportunity to contemplate these mind-altering options for positive change. We need to acquire insightful knowledge to use these cards as tools. The Fool is taught by the Magician to utilize his knapsack full of tools to conjure up infinite possibilities through self-awareness that appears like magic and leads you to self-realization that advances you to towards your higher-inner self. If the Fool can do it, so can you.
Constantine the Great had a vision before battle of a cross in a circle in the sky carrying the message, “With this sign you shall conquer.” In reality, we’re all looking for our cross and circle in the sky. Does free will, lot, kismet, destiny, and fate play a role on the stage of our lives or are the gods playing tricks on us? Is Tarot a vehicle that plays a hand in predestination by its mere intercession? If it does, at least we know what possible pitfalls to avoid if we are paying attention. The question then arises, is there some kind of cosmic synchronicity at play from Carl Jung’s idea of “meaningful coincidences,” which he himself found unable to prove. However, Jung felt synchronicity gave evidence to a collective conscious from the dynamics of human experiences and based this hypothesis on symbolism of the Major Arcana cards. He then expanded this theory to the meaning of the suits of emotional Cups, social Pentacles, psychological Swords, and spirit-driven Wands that he felt would lead to an ordered spiritual awakening. Whether Jung was right or not, the next question arises is if the subconscious mind can circumvent randomness in the selection of the Tarot cards from the energy of a collective. My article on “Synchronicity & Tarot” has some astonishing insights into the concept of randomness of the cards.
The trinity of mind, body, and spirit is the energy to connection us to something greater than ourselves in a unifying alignment. However, we have to remember that the body is in the here-now, the mind has to be in the present for this alignment, and the spirit is always seeking balance with this alignment. When this trinity aligns, we have found our true self. Although any card can symbolize you, someone you know, an event, a location, and even strange incidental oddities in your life that have had no connection before, let’s put them loosely into their three categories. The outranking energy of the Major Arcana cards trumps the journey of the mind to self-awareness with knowledge and wisdom with more of a sense of why things are happening. The tribunal of the Court Cards embodies you and the people in your life, which is more akin to who’s involved or who it’s happening to. The one through ten Minor Arcana cards are the spirit of living with fortitude, courage, and understanding to face our true selves in our day-to-day travails, for this reflect what is happening in the short-term vista. All these factors of mind-body-spirit alignment and hierarchy of the cards are intertwined into a third trinity of our past, present and future. Therefore, the "Trinity of Tarot" is a fulcrum of a trinity within a trinity. A fulcrum is a thing that plays a central or essential role in an activity, event or situation, and if not in the center, it is unbalanced and the load and the effort become burdensome. Archimedes contended that he could move the earth with a fulcrum, and perhaps the fulcrum of the "Trinity of Tarot" can assist in moving your world in the right direction.