The Major Arcana and Our Journey Toward Liberation

Happy New Moon in Capricorn! Reflection on the diligence and resourcefulness of the Sea-Goat has led me to a new project for this year: I will be writing throughout the year about the Major Arcana, spending time with each card, to develop an understanding of  the deep symbolism and lessons they hold. I wanted to start off with a global view before getting into the nitty-gritty, so we are beginning 2025 with an overview of the Fool’s Journey, and how we can understand our own journeys toward liberation through the cycle the cards present us. Footnotes are at the bottom!

Beginning with the Fool and ending with the World, the Major Arcana Tarot Cards move us through the spiritual awakening of the Fool, their eventual liberation, and integration of this spirit into a universal divinity. I understand our spiritual journey as one of cyclical revelations, moving us along and towards integration with the Godhead, perhaps a climb towards Nirvana. Liberation Theology’s deep influence on my worldview leads me to integrate socioeconomic materiality into my impressions of the Fool’s Journey. When the cards are understood this way, the story that the cards tell develops our ability to make sense of our own unique journeys. We can  define and seek spiritual liberation for ourselves as a part of the spiritual and material fight towards the liberation of all peoples. To me, the Tarot can be made into a reflective tool so that we all can get free.

For me today, Spiritual Liberation is a process of extracting the hold that western systems of domination have over me and filling that void with my true purpose. In my infancy as an unlicensed folk theologian, I am deeply invested in a Process Theology framework(1). If you’re not familiar, one of the most famous and accessible examples is in the work of Octavia Butler. In Parable of the Sower, Earthseed’s founding tenet is the epitome of Process Theology. “God is Change.”  This means that The Divine does not really know the future. Every moment that we live and choose, our lives and our choices co-create Divinity.

As I tell this story to you, I am telling the story of how the Major Arcana leads us to co-create our own liberation with the Divine as an essential part of the process of liberating the world materially and spiritually from systems of domination. However that divinity is understood and manifested in your life, I hope this review helps you remember the meaning of the tarot cards, and helps you reflect on your spiritual journey thus far..

Now that we are done with all that intro, let’s get to the fun stuff.

The Fool represents our beginnings. There is a childlike aspect to this part of our journey, a capriciousness inherent in the way we handle our spirituality. As a learner, at this stage we don’t know what we don’t know. We haven’t focused our energy toward our purpose. There is great strength in this. There are many open paths. There is vulnerability in this. We can, and will, be led astray. Despite this, we step forward into our next spin of the wheel, our next lesson in spirit.

The Magician is our first experience with truly embodied manifestation. It’s that feeling of entering a high school woodshop. Safety Goggles on, the Magician guides all through the exercise of connecting our imagination with the material world. We, for perhaps the first time in our lives, feel an alignment with our mind’s eye and our divine tools. This is our first brush with ‘Divine Masculinity(2).’

The Magician, then, is when we first truly internalize our capacity to pour our energy into something and grow that energy into what we seek. Manifestation. We feel powerful in this. There is a materiality to this part of our journey.

There is a whole other experience of manifestation we have access to. The High Priestess is the ‘Divine Feminine(3).’ As we become aware of our ability to move energy and control focus, our capacity to understand the energies around us also grows. This part of our growth towards liberation grows our inner knowledge and our capacity to unite our subconscious with the physical. After the powerful realization of our part in creation present in the Magician, the High Priestess brings us to a previously unexplored capacity for reception. 

In our period of Divine Reception, we more acutely perceive our natural cycles, our natural impulses. When we make space for deep inner knowing, we also invest our capacity to understand ourselves as manifestations of the natural world. The Empress, then, is our growth toward acknowledging and integrating our landscape in our spiritual practices. This card brings Landback to mind for me: moving away from a capitalist, dominating, ownership mentality when it comes to land, replacing it with a stewardship, caretaking model. 

The Empress also represents how creation is handled within the energy of Divine Reception. Think of the difference between making a sweater and making a baby. The act of controlling the flow of energy and the material in the making of a sweater is the kind of manifestation we gain back in our Magician era. We are, in essence, working with existing energies and exerting control over them.

 But with the Empress, we are in a whole different arena. The co-creation of a spirit, represented in this card by fertility and motherhood, is an inherently receptive act. When one experiences pregnancy, they have no idea who they are growing! We provide our genetic code, and some of us provide our bodies as vessels, and Nature takes care of the rest. The Empress, then, is when we grow our capacity as life-givers to our ideas, and as nurturers of our spiritual growth and the spiritual growth of the collective. The land and water we are raised develops who we are just as our cultures do. Co-creation of spirit is the way it has always been done.

As we accept our roles as nurturers, we begin to ask ourselves what exactly it means to nurture. What do we have to offer our youth, or our ideas, or our individualization? The Emperor grows from this question. This card asks us to consider the role of structured practice and discipline in our journey. Many of us balk at the more hierarchical interpretations of this card as a figure of patriarchal authority (4).  In my liberation oriented view, it is more about sitting with and processing our relationship with Elderhood and the paradox of self determination. It is about an authority born from experience, how experience allows us to make meaning and build a practice for nurturing ourselves and our community. What ideas do we take on from our traditions and our familial past? How do we testify for and live in our own determination of self, spirit and all? What boundaries do you have, and how do you hold yourself accountable

 When we finally have the perspective and inspiration to understand the direction we want to head, we can then move toward a more grounded and empowered practice of spirituality. Many of us move toward a greater institution of spirituality in this stage of spiritual development, or look toward our Elders for guidance.

Who do the Elders look to for guidance? The Hierophant represents the role of our Venerable Dead, the Ancestors in our bloodlines and in our greater communities. As we move through our spiritual journey and perhaps find a place for institutions of spirituality in our practice, we come to learn about the place tradition holds in our life. Will we seek the guidance and mediation presented in Religion? What traditional practices of healing, mourning, and learning can we incorporate into our lives? In this stage, we are finding our place within tradition and honoring our ancestors by allowing their influence in our journey.

The Lovers card is oft reduced to its obvious associations with romance, but in the context of the Fool’s journey, it moves us from the internalization of tradition to a unity between the head and the heart. There is also a movement towards partnerships of shared value. This is where our peers, our coven, emerge in our spiritual journey. The feeling of being on the same wavelength as someone is special. This card moves us from the part of our journey that grows from our particularities into our ability to make a loving community.

Now that we have the gang all together, and we have a great read on our capacity as Divine Givers and Divine Receivers, there is a pronounced feeling of direction growing within us. Gone are the days of our Fool era. As we move to the Chariot, we find ourselves in a determined state of mind. For all the learning we did since the beginning of our journey, we are now action oriented in our spiritual journey. 

With all this new stamina and direction, Strength emerges as a representation of our newly realized inner strength in our journey. We find ourselves brave in front of adversity, and not just nurturing, but also protective. True strength has been gained through the beginning of our journey, and we find ourselves at a place to appreciate it and share it.

Here’s the thing though….after spending all that time building our capacity for spiritual growth, we get tired. We get tired of integrating tradition into our lives, tired of nurturing others, tired of all this noise and all these perspectives. Our sense of responsibility is now greater than we have ever experienced. There is this marked feeling of maturity, or rather oldness. Have we abandoned ourselves in our pursuit of higher purpose?

The Hermit brings us to a point where rest and recalculation is needed. Everyone needs to rest and reflect sometimes. This introspective period is deeply needed to process the places we’ve been. 

It is said that everything is cyclical, but I find things to be more like the widening gyre Yeats wrote on in his opus poem, The Second Coming. After the feeling of agency and responsibility associated with Strength, and the internality associated with The Hermit, we are reminded of the role chance has in our journeys. The Wheel of Fortune returns us to some of the energy we first had in our phase as the Fool. Instead of understanding the many paths we have in front of us, in this phase we are thrust forward into a path that harnesses our growth thus far. The most random occurrences will bring us to moments that seem destined. In our collective work towards liberation, as much as we prepare and learn, the moment when we must use our newly minted power is out of our control. We are halfway through our movement through the Major Arcana. We are in the part of the journey I like to call “Winter Solstice Cycle.” Sounds artsy, right?

As important and influential as chance is in our lives, we all must come to face our material choices and the effects they have in our journey. Justice teaches that we must answer to how our actions bring about our reality. In this part of our journey, we realize the balance in all things, and the consequences of actions(5).

These consequences unfold in a period of pause. The Hanged Man brings us to a point where we are led to loosen our grip. While our time in Hermit mode may have healed our spiritual burnout and allowed us to process the journey thus far, the utter randomness of the Wheel of Fortune moment has brought forward some questions. Our approach to moving toward liberation seems to stall. Our path clouds. We must detach from our definitions of things and allow ourselves a moment in chrysalis–not resting, not reflecting, just listening. 

In that space of listening and stasis, everything changes. When we release our control, our idea of what is supposed to happen, it changes our mindset in a profound way. Death brings us to a shedding of layers of our ego that no longer serve us on our path to liberation. 

Now that we have emerged from our cocoon, we mature with a new ability to balance our growing spiritual knowledge, our physical body’s needs, and our community. Every step of our journey, we’ve intensely experienced some aspects of ourselves that were unfamiliar. When we reach Temperance, we have formulated a harmony with ourselves. We are patiently learning ourselves through these experiences, and we have enough space to process on our time. 

In that peace we see ourselves in a new light, and can look to the shadows that we have denied or avoided. Even the most woo woo, namaste, peace on Earth, reiki bending spiritual thought leader has grown up in the world the rest of us inhabit. We are a Materialistic and Dopamine Addicted society, and if you think you have escaped the System without some problematic views and behaviors, you’re simply bugging.

The Devil emerges as we face our enduring patterns that support the systems of domination we are trying to dismantle in liberation. The Devil(6), like our shadows in the sun, is an illusion with real consequences. We ask ourselves, or perhaps we are asked by our guides, to dance with our shadows so the darkness cannot rule us anymore. We are halfway through the Winter Solstice Cycle.

While we have had our gaze directed elsewhere, a real oh shit moment has been brewing in our lives. The Tower is where we are faced with a cataclysm. Our Wheel of Fortune era was a fun way to find the role chance has in our lives. This one….not fun! 

“Things fall apart” around us suddenly, and “the centre” of our world view “cannot hold.” Of course, when a bomb goes off like that, we think to ourselves “Surely some revelation is at hand!” (alright I am DONE with the Yeats I swear to God)(7).

What is revealed when our foundations are shaken? The places where we are strongest withstand, and the rest falls away, and we must reconstruct(8).

The Star is where we find hope in our reconstruction. In our enduring dream for liberation, in our faith in a world outside of systems of domination, we transcend the events of our Tower moment, transcend our vices symbolized by the Devil, transcend our spiritual journey for a moment and become aware instead of our Soul. Optimism grows! (9)

Our journey thus far has definitely brought us to places we could not have expected. There is a question that still hangs in the air though. What we thought Liberation meant way back when we were Fools is not serving us anymore. What are we even working towards again? 

The Moon brings us to a place where we can return to the lessons of the High Priestess in a more evolved form. Our inner voice has grown through this journey to a point where we can feel at the edges of the illusions present in our own ideas of what it means to be liberated, to be spiritual, to be whole. These illusions come to us from society and from our own resistance to change. In this moment of contemplation, we can see outside of these standards or ideals and toward a more honest truth of what makes us happy and whole. It’s the vibe the Buddha was on when he said the Four Noble Truths. It’s the energy Neo had in The Matrix when he comes back to life at the end and starts beating the shit out of Agent Smith. Finally seeing through the Matrix.

And how does it feel for me, a huge nerd, to see Neo beat the shit out of Agent Smith? How does it feel for us in our journey to come to a point where we can see through the veil, finally empowered to see the path we walked and where we’re walking too? It feels like The Sun. Hope turns into joy, to optimism, to confidence. After what we’ve been through, we deserve it. We are done with the Winter Solstice Cycle.

Now that we are in a sunnier disposition, it's time to harness the lessons of the Justice and Temperance cards. From a positive, aligned place we can reflect more clearly. The Judgement stage of our journey comes to us as we now evaluate our choices from the state of clarity and composure(10).

We end at the World. Or rather, return to it. We have reached a state of completion and fulfillment. As close as we can get to the Godhead, or Nirvana. For me, the World card is about integration, or synthesis. We come to so many interwoven lessons, and find so many ways that Coloniality and Patriarchy have separated us from our spirits. We work to find our wholeness again. My goal for all of us is to live so fully and honestly in our spirits and with love for other spirits that our material liberation, our fight with Capitalism and Colonialism, is imbued fully with our presence and power. You cannot destroy a movement so honest, open, human, and divine. The World card reminds us that we are working towards being one again with our lands, our waters, and finding each other past the iron bars of the domination of Oligarchy.

Are we liberated when we pull the World card?  We are forever changed and definitely accomplished, as we have endured. Liberation is not a destination though, it is a process. 

The Fool and The World are both about an awakening. The Fool is like your first mushroom microdose, while the World is the feeling after a Ayahuasca retreat. What happens after? 

Well. We start again.

Thank you for reading through this absolute tome. Somehow, I still have so much more to say about each of these cards. I am excited to spend the year getting real granular with the symbolism, the references, the strange cross-cultural resonances, how I read these cards applied to different scenarios I see when I read for clients and coven members. I will post them all here, and I’m hoping to post this series with each new moon. 

If you would like to read my writings more focused on the practice of Witchcraft, Theologies of the Occult, Anti-Facist Magic, and Black Diasporic Spiritual Traditions, you can join my Patreon. Thank you so much to Singer Joy, Tavo, Ayoka, and Ox for taking my thoughts from esoteric to elevated. 

Put new water on your altar, make sure you eat a vegetable today, and I care for you. Let’s get free!

Footnotes:

1) There are so many theologies! Some important ones to me: Liberation Theology, Black Liberation Theology, Dalit Theology, Process Theology, Queer Theology, and Religious Anarchism. All of these are in conversation with a Christian framework. I am proudly an unbaptized Heathen. Regardless of my hellbound status, these methodologies are incredibly fascinating and useful to me in my practice and in my study of tarot and magic.

2) If you’ve ever looked up Divine Masculinity on Tiktok or Youtube, you are sure to have seen some gross reification of western gender roles. Let me impart to you my decolonial reading: Divine Masculinity in our reading of the cards is simply the act and energy of giving, of pouring out one's internal energy, of expanding. Perhaps we can collectively move away from the phrase in favor of “Divine Giving’ or something, until the cis hetero menace has been neutralized (kidding, kind of…).

3) In our reading, it is the act and energy of receiving, of perceiving, of intuiting. Divine Reception.

4) It makes me think of the Self Help dudes on Tiktok: “I ate only red meat for 7 days! I get up at 415 every morning to go to the gym! If you don’t do what I do you’ll be closer to being ugly and dying!”

5)  Here is the physics of spirituality, as I understand it: There is no such thing as good or bad energy. When energy moves, it affects the other energy around it. Every energy made dynamic is an action, and to every action there must be an equal and opposite reaction. There will always be balance.

6) Much can be said about the use of the Christian figure of the Devil and the imagery of Baphomet used in the Rider–Waite deck that most modern tarots are based on. I will bore you all with my thoughts and research on that in late September, when I plan to publish my in depth post on this Card on this website.

7) It was fun for me though!

8) Reconstruction is the popular term for the period of time someone raised in or otherwise baptised into Evangelical Christianity goes through when they leave the Church. The emotional, spiritual, and social effects of their decision to leave the Church are deeply reflective of the energy of this card

9) I know what you’re thinking. “Celestino, what is the difference between your spirit and your soul? Are you having a mania induced spiritual event?” Well I am firstly happy to report that I am on meds, they are strong, and I am in the expert medical care of not one, but two nice ladies who tell me when I get that crazy look in my eye. That being said, I am working on a whole piece about how the Spirit and Soul are differentiated in African spiritual systems as well as the Alchemical Systems developed in the West. Long story short, Spirit is where your personality lives, your psyche. Soul is where your divinity lives, your past life connections, where your Ori pours into you, such and so forth. Christian readings of this are, to me, nonsensical, but I will do more research for my piece, which I will publish in February for my Patreon Supporters.

10) It must be commented upon….the abrahamic vibe of it all! The Last Judgement, the day where the human experiment ends and God decides (or reveals) who is going to heaven and who is not. Note the imagery of the angel hitting the trumpet, the foretold ‘crack of doom’ (first with the Yeats and now Macbeth. I’m what happens when an English Major candyflips on the Blood Moon. Or maybe that’s Eco.) in the Christian Book of Revelations. More interesting to me is the Ocean where the bodies of the dead are awakening. Revelation 20:13 is referenced here, where the sea gives up the dead. My thoughts on this are still in the oven.