Tarot Experiments: Rediscovering Knowledge
One of the things that’s come to fascinate me of late is the problem of lost knowledge. How do you recreate, rediscover, or excavate the kinds of knowledge that were traditionally handed down from generation to generation when those pathways for transmission were violently broken? War, conquest, colonization, and genocide are all ways knowledge transmission can and have been interrupted. But how do you reclaim something like a spiritual practice when such practices were outlawed, recordings of them were destroyed, and children were forcibly taken from their parents and educated in a different knowledge system that teaches such cultural practices were evil, ignorant, misguided, or simply false? If a language or a practice dies and traces of it are erased, are there nonetheless ways that it can be gleaned from what remains? Can there be such a thing as a historicism of the spiritual?
I’m visiting family in central Texas this week and was stirred to the question once again by the smell of oak and cedar that permeates the area. While oak can be found throughout the state, the redolent smell of the local cedar trees — or juniper, really, if you wish to be correct about it — is particularly distinctive to the Hill Country around Austin, where the trees have become something of a nuisance. Scrappy, twisted little things that have a tenacious ability to thrive even in arid, rocky soils, the trees have taken over the hills surrounding the city, sending local residents into fits of “cedar fever” every winter as clouds of pollen roll down into the valley of the city. As I smelled the trees on the wind, I got to wondering about the juniper’s metaphysical properties. Is it lucky? Protective? Does it represent longevity or wealth or any of the many things various herbs and trees can represent? I came inside to ask the Llewellyn Book of Correspondences, but just before doing so it occurred to me that I might actually be able to ask my tarot cards, instead.
Imagine my surprise and delight when the cards turned up a series of meanings that a follow-up search suggests are pretty accurate! The list of abilities historically attributed to juniper are not exhausted by my tarot reading, but they are included within it.
There are a lot of cards here, owing partially to the fact that I use a pendulum while reading in order to refine my interpretation of the cards. One of the things I’ll frequently ask the pendulum after drawing a set of cards, for instance, is whether I need to draw any more. In this case, the pendulum kept urging me on, and so I’ve ended up with a rather large spread. I’ve grouped them according to adjacent meanings, however, helping to make the reading a little cleaner and more succinct. Some nuance is lost this way, but it’s made the reading a little more manageable.
Shall we, jump in, then?
The first row is, roughly speaking, about juniper’s ability to help connect one to the divine world. The High Priestess suggests it helps with insight and intuition, and the Hanged Man says it can be a valuable tool when venturing out on dreamwork or vision quests, as well as for transformation. The Wheel of Fortune points to its role as a protective tree, one that can guard against the vagaries of the world. And while I originally interpreted the seven of swords to mean juniper connects us to honesty (truth being divine), I discovered that it has historically been used in several traditions to guard against theft, adding a surprising specificity to the appearance of this card.
On the second row, we have a series of cards related to juniper’s tenacity and ability to survive and even thrive in difficult conditions. The nine and ten of wands and three of swords are all directly related to this meaning, connecting to it with specifics like courage, hard work, persistence, and release and renewal (the three). The eight of wands, obliquely, connects to the other three through juniper’s ability to encourage swiftness and strength in action.
The final row points to juniper’s role as a generous provider, keeping its berries on tree as a source of sustenance even in the midst of harsh winters. It is traditionally believed to be helpful for manifesting security, increase, and prosperity, among other things. Even from the harshest environments, it manages to bear fruit for others.
I don’t think this little experiment was perfect, but I was fascinated to realize that one doesn’t have to limit tarot readings to asking about other people — you can ask about other entities more broadly. If trees, why not also rocks, soil, herbs, or animals? The world has ways to tell us about itself. But forgetting how to hear doesn’t mean it isn’t still speaking, nor that we couldn’t learn to listen again. I’m really looking forward to exploring and developing an approach of this sort in my practice more.
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