Divinitory Meanings of the Tarot by Baird Stafford


Eight


   COINS

Favorable:  This card represents beginnings, preparations, apprenticeships in material endeavors, though it may also represent a new course of study and application in matters spiritual; surrounding cards will indicate which.  Entering upon a new job or career, with the suggestion that it will not be wholly the same as positions one has filled previously.

Unfavorable:  Questionable ethics; cunning and deceit though a surface of honesty is maintained.  Vanity, greed.  Ambitions not met through some lack in skill or character:  this is the card of one who sees others promoted time after time while he or she remains at one level.  In such a case, one's own qualifications should be examined closely before accusations of office politics or "sexual harassment" are hurled.

   SWORDS

Favorable:  Imprisonment, inability to move whether due to indecision, fear of failure, or of social or professional sanctions.  The horns of a dilemma.  May indicate illness.  In matters sexual, the card may indicate a tendency toward "kinkiness."

Unfavorable:  Release, freedom, movement; an obstacle is removed, allowing one finally to act.  Opposition collapses, unforeseen opportunity.

   CUPS

Favorable:  The decline of a matter; a matter believed to be of great importance is actually of small consequence; success of a laissez faire policy.  The result in all cases may be either good or evil.  Loss of interest in a project or relationship.

Unfavorable:  "Party time!"  Joy, happiness, feasting, merriment, usually in celebration of a success, though it may indicate holiday pleasures.

   WANDS

Favorable:  Speed.  Rapid development of an undertaking; rewards are not long delayed.  Also, in modern times, travel by air; arrival of a letter or package by air mail or overnight delivery (usually in combination with the Deuce of Coins); when Triumph XVI (The Tower) appears near it, the card may indicate the arrival of an electronically propagated message, such as by telephone, fax, email, or news broadcast.  In a less prosaic mode, the card is often said to represent "the arrows of love."

Unfavorable:  Non-arrival of a communication upon which one has pinned one's hopes.  The arrows of jealousy, the sting of conscience.  For domestic partners, the card may indicate disputes of some kind.  One reference suggests rote learning without true understanding and preaching the "One True Way."

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