Divinatory bull's-eye: It's 2019 all over again in China

In my reading for 2022, I drew these two cards for the birdemic: the Four of Swords for the beginning of the year, and the Sun for the end.

My interpretation was as follows:

The Four of Swords often indicates rest and recuperation, corresponding to the widespread sense at the beginning of the year that the birdemic is winding down and will soon be over. The design of course also suggests death, and it is impossible in this context not to notice the resemblance of the swords to syringes.

It's not really over, though, because at the end of year we have -- the birdemic! In particular, the Sun card depicts the beginning of the birdemic, coming out of China and going forth "conquering and to conquer" (Rev. 6:2). There is widespread expectation that birdemic panic will be ginned up again in the lead-up to the midterm elections in 2022, or perhaps is will be a new phantom menace coming out of China.

As I've explained in other posts, the Sun card, numbered 19 like the birdemic, specifically indicates China. It features a red flag, for example, and the charges on the flag -- one large star and four smaller ones -- are represented by the sun and the four sunflowers. And what do we find at the end of 2022? The birdemic is considered to be mostly over in most parts of the world -- but China is going absolutely bonkers, welding people into their homes and all that, just as they did at the beginning of the birdemic.

For now, people are just seeing this as an oddity: Why is China alone reacting so extremely to something that the rest of the world has pretty much learned to live with? In my reading, I suggested that the panic would spread out of China, just as it did three years ago, but that remains to be seen.

Note added: AC's speculation regarding the birdemic situation in China:

It is possible by pursuing their zero-birdemic policies, China preserved small pockets of the original, more virulent strains as they originally existed, and they never let O come in to crowd out the old strains, or let the virus get passed around enough to mutate into a less virulent form. So this could be the same death plague which was originally there, and now we have gone and pecked all our populations, so they cannot fight off even the more harmless strains. And now China will let this death plague free on our societies

It'll be "interesting" (in the sense typically attributed, appropriately enough, to a "Chinese curse") to see how this all plays out. 

Reading for 2022

On the morning of January 4, 2022, I decided to do a reading for the year ahead. Not having any cards handy, I did this in a rather unorthodox way: I put a list of the 78 Tarot cards into random.org's list randomizer, and for each card I wanted to draw, I concentrated on the question and clicked "randomize," and took the first card on the randomized list. To draw the next card, I didn't take the second card on the list, but rather clicked "randomize" again and took the first. As a result, it was possible to draw the same card more than once, and in fact this happened twice.

I decided to look at a few different aspects of the United States in 2022, and I drew two cards for each of these: one for the start of the year, and one for the end -- the idea being that comparing the two would suggest what if any changes would take place over the course of the year.

I'm not entirely sure why I decided to do this, and even less sure why anyone else would want to read about it, since my credibility as a Tarot reader is essentially zero at this point. Readers of this blog will know that I mainly write about the history and symbolism of the cards and rarely ever make Tarot-based predictions -- the one exception being my extremely confident prediction that Trump would win the 2020 election. I made this prediction before the election, when it seemed that I was just stating the obvious, and then I stood by it for months afterwards, insisting that, no matter how increasingly impossible it appeared, somehow the election results would be reversed and Trump would end up back in the White House after all. The message of the cards was just so unmistably clear!

I suppose this could in principle still happen -- my prediction won't be definitively falsified until the 2024 election, after which even if Trump comes back, it won't be as the winner of the 2020 election -- but I'm not holding my breath. I could also try to defend myself with special pleading -- saying for example that I had predicted the true winner of the election, not the usurper who actually took power -- but I'm not going to do that. To all appearances, my prediction simply failed. Given free will, that happens. "Whether there be prophecies, they shall fail" (1 Cor. 13:8). Let's see if I have any better luck this time.

Here's my spread:

A few things immediately jump out here. I have written extensively about the link (originally proposed by Richard Arrowsmith) between the Sun card and the birdemic, and the Sun appears in this spread as one of the two cards for the birdemic. My probably-failed prediction about the 2020 election was entirely based on the extensive links between the Judgement card and Trump, and that card appears here under Trump. Finally, I interpreted a variant of the Strength card as Harris controlling Biden, and the Strength card appears here under Harris. So that's a pretty impressive set of coincidences.

How impressive? The Sun is the only card I have associated with the birdemic, the chance of at least one of the two birdemic cards being the Sun is 2.548%. I have associated two cards, the High Priestess and Strength, with Biden and Harris. The chance of at least one of the four Biden/Harris cards being one of those is 9.869%. I have associated two cards, Judgement and the Sun, with Trump. The chance of at least one of the two Trump cards being one of those is 5.062%. The chance of all three of these things occurring in a single spread is the product of the three percentages given, or 0.01273% -- approximately 1 in 7,856.

Now for my tentative interpretation of the details of the spread.

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Birdemic

The Four of Swords often indicates rest and recuperation, corresponding to the widespread sense at the beginning of the year that the birdemic is winding down and will soon be over. The design of course also suggests death, and it is impossible in this context not to notice the resemblance of the swords to syringes.

It's not really over, though, because at the end of year we have -- the birdemic! In particular, the Sun card depicts the beginning of the birdemic, coming out of China and going forth "conquering and to conquer" (Rev. 6:2). There is widespread expectation that birdemic panic will be ginned up again in the lead-up to the midterm elections in 2022, or perhaps is will be a new phantom menace coming out of China.

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Biden

Biden begins the year as the Page of Wands, whose quarterstaff and feathered cap suggest Robin Hood. The main point, though, is that a page -- a personal attendant of a person of rank -- is not in any way a leader. As is obvious to everyone, Biden is barely even enough of a leader to qualify as a "figurehead"; he is taking orders from someone. A "page of wands" is literally a servant to a wand or staff, and Biden has said before that he's going to "get in trouble with my staff" for taking unapproved questions from the press. "As if the rod should shake itself against them that lift it up, or as if the staff should lift up itself, as if it were no wood" (Isa. 10:15).

The year ends with the Five of Wands -- a chaotic brawl. This same card appears at the end of the year for Trump, suggesting that the chaotic conflict depicted will be between Biden and Trump.

The good news, from Biden's point of view, is that he's apparently still alive at the end of the year!

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Harris

The first card for Kamala Harris is the Devil. Her middle name is Devi, so even the name of the card is a hit! One obvious interpretation is that Harris begins 2022 as "the devil" -- that is, as an extremely unpopular person no one in either party likes. A closer look at the image on the Rider-Waite card suggests a more interesting, reading, though.

Suppose we identify Harris not with the devil himself but with the only female figure on this card. Since it seems obvious that neither Biden nor Harris is really running the country, the devil figure in the background represents whoever or whatever is. The two chained figures, then, would be Biden and Harris -- naked to indicate that they are a public embarrassment. If you ignore the devil figure, Harris is standing on Biden's right, indicating that (to those who can't see what's really going on) he is the leader and she is his "right hand man." In  fact, though, the devil is the central figure and thus the leader, Harris is his "right hand man," and Biden is in the less important "left hand man" position. Furthermore, the devil appears to be using his firebrand (French brandon) to set fire to Biden's tail! I have mentioned many times my persistent premonitions regarding Biden and "spontaneous human combustion"; one dream even had people saying "Joe Biden didn't spontaneously combust" in much the same way they say "Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself." Whatever is to be made of this puzzling theme, this card would seem to reinforce it.

The Harris figure's own tail ends in a bunch of grapes, and this made me think of an old sync post which I had not connected with Harris at all at the time: "Vineyard shouting with the bee whom hump" (sic). Hump suggests camel and thus Kamala. Bee is interesting because of the other Harris card in this spread, Strength. As I have said elsewhere, the Strength card is a "female Samson" -- that is, it was originally a picture of Samson killing a lion, but the figure was later misinterpreted as female because of the long hair. The only real "female Samson" -- that is, the only woman ever to fill Samson's role of biblical "judge" -- was Deborah, whose name is the Hebrew word for "bee." The Hebrew name is actually more accurately transliterated as Devorah -- so the nickname Debbie would be equivalent to Devi. Furthermore, the word-salad title "Vineyard shouting with the bee whom hump" is from a Google search result for a video of a sermon about the Hindu goddess Durga, referred to in the sermon as Mata, "Mother." Kamala Devi Harris is named after a Hindu goddess (Kamala is an epithet of Lakshmi), and she goes by Momala even though she is not a mother. Durga, according to Wikipedia, "is worshipped as a principal aspect of the mother goddess Devi," and "is often depicted as a beautiful woman, riding a lion or tiger" (like Magna Mater in Rome). A woman riding a lion is obviously related to the image on the Strength card, and the tiger is interesting because the Year of the Tiger -- and thus of Durga? -- will begin on February 1, 2022.

If the year begins with Harris in a position of weakness -- chained and subjected to the devil -- it ends with her in a position of strength. Where the Devil card has three figures, Strength only has two, and the woman is in control. Which of the figures on the Devil card does the lion correspond to, then -- the chained man (Biden) or the devil (the shadowy power behind the throne)? In my post "Strength in the Grateful Dead 'Ripple' video," I discuss a variant of this card in which the woman is black and is controlling a wolf rather than a lion; I identify the black woman with Harris, and the wolf with Biden (whose horoscope prominently features the constellation Lupus).

Alternatively, the lion could correspond to "the devil, as a roaring lion" (1 Pet. 5:8) and thus to whoever is controlling both Biden and Harris at the beginning of the year. There is widespread speculation that the power behind the throne is Barack Obama, who is a Leo. It is intereting to note that the biblical Deborah controls a man named Barak. I have also floated the idea here that Trump, another leonine figure and a popular "devil," is actually the power behind the throne.

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Trump

Trump begins the year with the Judgement. As I have already detailed many times on this blog, the angel on that card unambiguously represents Trump, encoding his name, his birthday (June 14, Flag Day), and even his trademark orange/blond hair. The image shows that Trump begins the year as quite popular (though his supporters bear a disturbing resemblance to gray "NPCs") but also "in limbo," suspended between heaven and earth, his status unclear. He has no contact with the ground, suggesting that he is increasingly out of touch with his base -- as can be seen in his recent tone-deaf shilling for the pecks, causing his own supporters to boo him.

As mentioned above, the year ends with Trump and Biden locked in some sort of chaotic combat -- with staves, not swords; a brawl, not a war. Is it possible that, after all this time, the result of the 2020 election will be challenged in a meaningful way, so that the year will end with it still up in the air? It can be argued that, since Biden is going to be in office for a while, it is in Trump's best interest to let him serve two years and make his comeback as soon after January 20, 2023, as possible. That way, depending on how the courts interpret the 22nd Amendment, Trump may get a 10-year presidency -- being elected twice, in 2016 and 2024, plus serving just under two years of a term to which someone else was elected (Biden in 2020). I don't think this is likely to work, but it does seem likely that Trump will give it a try and may intensify his efforts to challenge the election around the end of this year.

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Cabal

By "Cabal," I mean Them -- the demonic Establishment, spiritual wickedness in high places. They begin the year with godlike power over the whole World and end it as -- the Knight of Wands? I'm not sure what to make of this, except that it clearly seems to be a step down from the World. There's also an obvious connection to Biden as Page of Wands. A knight is a page's master. The two cards also feature the same background scene of a desert landscape with three mounds or pyramids.

The most optimistic reading would be to note that the Knight of Wands traditionally represents departure or flight, and to see Cabal "on the run" by the end of the year. I lack such optimism, to put it mildly.

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Christianity

Nothing very clear here. The Queen of Cups often means "loyal but stupid; loving, but overlooking the obvious" -- all of which I suppose could be called a fair description of organized Christendom's pathetic loyalty to the satanic System.

The King of Pentacles -- "dogmatic, materialistic, doing only what is expected of him" -- strikes an even bleaker note at the end of the year. We might note that many of the themes from the Devil card -- horns, grapes, a pentagram -- reappear on the King of Pentacles. It doesn't look as if we can expect any mass Christian awakening this year.

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Daily life

Absolutely unchanged! The before and after pictures are the same: Queen of Swords -- representing loneliness, isolation, and pointless cruelty. 

The Sun is 19

Remember Louis Farrakhan's 1995 "Million Man March"?

Now, we’re almost finished. I want to take one last look at the word “atonement.”

The first four letters of the word form the foundation: “a-t-o-n” . . . “a-ton,” “a-ton.” Since this obelisk in front of us is representative of Egypt. In the 18th dynasty, a Pharaoh named Akhenaton, was the first man of this history period to destroy the pantheon of many gods and bring the people to the worship of one god. And that one god was symboled by a sun disk with 19 rays coming out of that sun with hands holding the Egyptian Ankh -- the cross of life. A-ton. The name for the one god in ancient Egypt. A-ton, the one god. 19 rays. Look at your scripture.

A woman, remember the nine means somebody pregnant, with an idea. But, in this case, it’s a woman pregnant with a male child destined to rule the nations with a rod of iron. God is standing over her womb, and this child will be like the day sun, and He will say “I am the light of the world.” Hands coming out of that sun, come unto me all ye that are heavy laden. I’m gonna give you rest, but I’m gonna give you life, because I am the resurrection and the life and if you believe in me, though you are dead, yet shall you live again.

You’re dead, Black man. But if you believe in the god who created this sun of truth and of light with 19 rays, meaning he’s pregnant with God’s spirit, God’s life, God’s wisdom.

Looking up the surviving images of Akhenaten's god, I find that, while the number of rays varies, 19 appears more often than any other number.

What Nephilim? That's a conspiracy theory.

Akhenaten was a weird-looking dude.

The 19th letter of the Hebrew alphabet is Qoph, which appears to be etymologically related to words having to do with revolution and time, and may originally have represented the Sun on the horizon.

The Wikipedia article on "Gematria" currently uses a rather strange spelling for the name of the 19th letter:

This suggests "the coof," which has emerged as a slang term for the birdemic -- the official name for which features the number 19 and has been connected by Richard Arrowsmith with the 19th Arcanum.

Red Sun, Yellow Sun

One day, you'll look
To see I've gone
For tomorrow may rain, so
I'll follow the sun

-- The Beatles

Once you've noticed something, it's everywhere. Found this flipping through a random children's book (Flying Colors by Robert G. Fresson) at a secondhand bookstore.

Apparently, the man in yellow with his yellow sun is leaving the larger country represented by the red sun and becoming independent. Can a Mormon see this and not be reminded of a certain prophet, often depicted in yellow robes, leaving his country and heading east under the guidance of a yellow ball?

This is Lehi holding the Liahona. The name Lehi also occurs in the Bible, where it refers to the jawbone of an ass with which Samson slew a thousand men. The name Samson comes from Shamash, the Sun, and I have repeatedly drawn connections between Samson and the Sun card.

The origin and meaning of the word Liahona is unknown. However, one fanciful but fairly influential proposed etymology analyzes it as l-iah-ona --  the first two elements being the preposition "to" and the divine name Yah, and the last (I told you it was fanciful!) being On, the Hebrew name for the Egyptian city more usually known by its Greek name Heliopolis. Since Heliopolis is the City of the Sun, and the Sun produces light, the whole is supposed to mean "to God is light." The Greek name Heliopolis was used because that city was a cult center of the sun gods Ra and Atum; but the Hebrew On comes from the city's native Egyptian name, which mean "the pillars" -- Samson again!

Note added: The red sun-disc being held by red hands suggests the Egyptian god Ra.

While the country Lehi was leaving was Babylon-occupied Judah, the prototypical country from which people go out under the direction of the Lord is Egypt.

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Not directly related, but also discovered by chance the same day:

Further confirmation that one of the meanings of the 19th trump, The Sun, is the birdemic.

I happened upon this picture because I had seen the Tupperware logo, noticed its obvious resemblance to -- uh, the Wuhan Battle Flag, which also has 19 circles in a sunburst pattern -- and was searching the Internet in vain for anyone else who had noticed the same thing. I found plenty of stories like this one:

But, although it seems impossible, not one of them mentioned the Tupperware logo. I mean, whether as a joke or as a conspiracy theory, how can you not mention it?

The sole ill

Not to put to fine a point on it
Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet
Make a little birdhouse in your soul

-- They Might Be Giants

I recently posted on how the Sun -- the 19th trump -- foretells the birdemic (a discovery for which all credit goes to Richard Arrowsmith).

Today I noticed the French name of the card: Le Soleil. Le, of course, means "the." Add a space, double the final letter, and you have the sole ill.

How appropriate!

At one level, the birdemic is an illness which is being fought by enforcing solitude -- quarantines, social distancing, solitary confinement -- and those unfortunate enough to die of it die alone, with no visitors in the hospital and no mourners at the grave.

At a level both deeper and more literal, though, institutions around the world have all decided to treat the birdemic as the sole ill -- the only problem -- to the defeat of which all else must be subordinated. No trade-offs need be considered, because no sacrifice is too great if it means saving even one life from the world's one sole ill. As Bruce Charlton recently put it in one of his best posts ever,

If the cost of ridding our world of an invisible rabid-leper-zombies is that most people (including me) are killed by the measures ostensibly taken to rid the world of invisible rabid-leper-zombies - then That is a price worth paying... We can, at least, then look forward to the a birdemic-free-world! A world finally free of fear...

Look again at the Tarot de Marseille card. At the bottom we see two people making contact with each other, labeled "the sole ill." This -- human contect -- is what must be stamped out. At the top is the coronaform Sun, labeled with the number 19, looking down on the world -- which from now on revolves around it. The birdemic is from now on to be, like Chairman Mao, the reddest red sun in our hearts, the only bee in our bonnets. Unless of course it's climate change (represented by the blazing Sun and by carbon dioxide rising into the atmosphere like raindrops in reverse) or racism (two people who look alike daring to be friends!). The exact nature of the sole ill may change from time to time, but the basic situation -- one sole evil, to which all else is to be subordinated -- remains the same.

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Note added: We can take this double-the-l thing a step further. If a world revolving around le soleil is heliocentric, one revolving around the sole ill is -- that's right, hell-iocentric.

Rider-Waite versus Marseille on the birdemic

I recently posted on how the Rider-Waite Tarot deck predicts both the birdemic and the results of every U.S. presidential election from 2000 to 2020. Curious about the extent to which it is specifically the 1909 Rider-Waite deck (not "the Tarot" in general) that makes these predictions, I will be comparing that deck's trumps with those of the Tarot de Marseille (Pierre Madenié deck). I will cover the birdemic in this post and the elections in a future post.

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The birdemic, the official name of which features the number 19, is predicted by the 19th trump, the Sun.

Here are the points the two cards share:

• The shape of the virus: The sun is shown as a circle with two different types of protrusions, somewhat similar to the shape of the birdemic virus.

The birdemic virus

• Solar corona: The term corona refers to the outer atmosphere of the sun.
• Stay home, stay safe: Both cards feature a brick wall, alluding to the global lockdowns and other totalitarian restrictions.
• Big Brother is watching you: The sun has a face and is looking down on us all, symbolizing government surveillance. The human figures are naked or nearly so, meaning they have no privacy.

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Points specific to the Tarot de Marseille:

• Spike glycoprotein and Trump hair: While Pierre Madenié does not show this, his son Jean-Baptiste (followed by a minority of other cardmakers, including Rochus Schär, Claude and Jacques Burdel, and François Gassmann) puts some of the sun's protrusions in clusters of three, resembling spike glycoprotein, and also gives the sun a head of distinctly Trumpian hair.

François Gassmann

• Droplets of contagion: The (strangely inverted) raindrop figures on the card could represent the spreading of the virus. Back in April, one of my young students spontaneously made the same connection, modifying and labeling this illustration from Aesop's fable The North Wind and the Sun:

• Don't touch anyone: The two figures are touching, which is what we're not supposed to do. (I don't think I can really count this as a hit, though; after all, if they were standing apart and not touching, I'd say it showed social distancing!)

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Points specific to the Rider-Waite

• The flag of China: The child on the horse bears a red flag. The five yellow stars on the Chinese flag -- one large and four small -- are alluded to by the sun itself and the four sunflowers.
• Viruses multiply: The sunflowers, as mini-suns, represent the replication of the virus and the ineffectiveness of walls at preventing its spread.
• Another corona: The child wears a crown (corona) of flowers/viruses.
• Birdemic: The child also has a large feather in its hair.
• White Horse: The first horseman of the Apocalypse goes forth on a white horse, "conquering, and to conquer" -- just as the birdemic has ushered in a worldwide totalitarian takeover. Mormon readers will also have heard of the apocryphal "White Horse Prophecy" attributed to Joseph Smith. It refers to "the White Horse of peace and safety" (mostly peaceful! safety first!) and predicts, "You will see the Constitution of the United States almost destroyed. It will hang like a thread as fine as a silk fiber. . . . A terrible revolution will take place in the land of America, such as has never been seen before . . . and every species of wickedness will be practiced rampantly in the land."