Aces in the Hole: The Gateway to the Minor Arcana

(Based on the representations found on the Rider-Waite-Smith deck.)

There was something more than a little predictable about journeying through the Major Arcana one card at a time. Despite intentions to fly in the face of convention, I was trapped by the safety of linear thinking. One archetype at a time, one static examination, some occasional meandering, and a single radical pairing of the Lovers and The Devil in a rare attempt to draw out the complex tapestry of related, yet contrapuntal meaning.

I sit before my computer, facing the next threshold: the descent into the Minor Arcana and the Court Cards. Will I approach this differently? And, if so, how?

If you read my post on Mercury in the Tarot, then you saw my musings around the Minor Arcana’s decanic correspondences. I’ve been trying to unravel the mysteries around the decans and their various images for some time. While my experience should not be taken as universal, there is an “aliveness” to the Minor Arcana’s mundane images that I have found difficult to map to the decans with exactness. I know most Tarot practitioners would agree that systems are only as good as individuals find them, and that frameworks for oracular insight are more guideline than prescription. As such, experimenting with the planetary correspondence between each Minor Arcana card and the current transits of the planets allows for a kind of relatable fluidity, capturing the changing nature of the card’s “ruler” through the zodiac.