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. 

Oh, no, does this mean the "standing prophecies" continue beyond 2021?

In my October 2020 post "Can the deck itself be prophetic?" I investigated "standing prophecies" in the Rider-Waite deck -- that is, readings that do not depend on which cards you happen to draw from a shuffled deck but rather are implicit in the deck itself. Richard Arrowsmith had noticed how the 19th trump, The Sun, predicts the appearance of the birdemic in China in the year '19; and I then went on to demonstrate how the cards numbered 0, 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20 predict the winners of the U.S. presidential elections in the corresponding years of the present century.

This was before the 2020 election, and it unambiguously predicted that Trump would win. The 20th trump depicts and angel with orange-blond hair blowing a trump with a flag on it -- obviously indicating a certain orange-haired man named Trump who was born on Flag Day.

Well, so far Trump has still not been recognized as the winner of the 2020 election, but I think the hit is still impressive; regardless of who won, the 2020 election was undeniably about Donald Trump, and the 20th trump shows that. It also comments on other aspects of that election. For example, below the angel we see a crown of gray people celebrating. Could these not represent Biden voters, as in the meme?

These gray people are depicted rising from the grave, which is also relevant.

So I think that, despite the failure of my prediction about 2020, it remains true that the trumps of the Rider-Waite deck correlate with their corresponding election years.

There are only 21 trumps, though, so it would appear that there are no more standing prophecies for the rest of the century -- or are there?

Let's go back to the 2000 election. The Fool card is numbered 0 in the Rider-Waite, and it unambiguously calls the election for George W. Bush.

First there's the name of the card: "The Fool." In the running joke about the evil party vs. the stupid party, everyone understands that the Republicans are the stupid party. Bush in particular was portrayed by the media as a likable idiot (as opposed to Al Gore's "smart but wooden" persona), and one of his famous malapropisms even features the word fool.

Then there's the name of the winning candidate: George Walker Bush. The Fool is walking, and is the only depiction of a person walking in the Major Arcana, so there's Walker. He holds a rose, a flower which grows on a bush, so there's Bush. To get George, we have to take into account the astrological correspondences associated with the Fool card. The Golden Dawn, in a system based on the Sepher Yetzirah, assigned the 22 Major Arcana to the 12 zodiac signs, the seven classical "planets," and three of the four classical elements; and the Fool was assigned to Air. Following the discovery of Pluto, though, it became common to replace the three elements with the three "new" planets, and thus the Fool became associated with Uranus. Uranus is not that planet's oldest name, though; when William Herschel discovered it in 1781, he proposed the name Georgium Sidus, "the Georgian Star," in honor of King George III. That's a link to the name George, of course, but it's more than that: Dubya was literally President George III, having been preceded by his father and George Washington.

In my reading for the 2022 midterms, I drew the Fool card twice and tentatively interpreted it as referring to the state of Georgia. I reached this conclusion by browsing a gallery of state flowers and finding the one that most closely resembled the flower held by the Fool: the white Cherokee rose, state flower of Georgia. Only later did I make the Uranus connection -- the Georgian Star -- and then realize that one of the candidates from Georgia was named Herschel Walker. There's that name Walker again, and Herschel is about as explicit a reference to Uranus as you could ask for. Furthermore, Walker was even called "the Georgian star" when he was playing football for the University of Georgia -- whose mascot is a white dog.

At the time of this writing, it is still undecided whether or not Herschel Walker has won his race for the Senate; it was judged too close to call, and a runoff is planned. Anyway, win or lose, there is no denying that Herschel Walker is a key figure in the 2022 election, and that the Fool card fits him just as perfectly as it fit George W. Bush 22 years earlier.

This suggests that the "standing prophecies" continue beyond 2021 -- that after reaching the 21st and last trump we go back to zero and begin again. That would mean -- and this is where it gets ominous -- that the trump corresponding to the next presidential election, in 2024, would be the 2nd -- the High Priestess.

This is the same card I got in my one-card reading for Inauguration Day 2021, and it corresponds precisely what we saw on that day: a woman touching a Bible with her left hand while JB stands in the background.

Note also that the Golden Dawn system of correspondences associates this trump with the Hebrew letter gimel, meaning "camel." The Thoth version of this card -- designed and painted by a woman named Harris -- even includes a picture of a camel.

By the way, see that black crescent on the Thoth card? That even matches the phase of the moon on January 20, 2025 (but not in 2021, when it was a First Quarter, with the right side illuminated).

Can this possibly mean the reelection of Biden and Harris? With fraudulent elections, it certainly can't be ruled out. Or perhaps it will be Harris herself as president, without Slow Joe.

Debbie keeps predicting that we will get a Triumvirate government soon. I believe the Triumvirs she originally proposed were Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, and Jeff Bezos, though recently she's suggesting it may be Barack Obama rather than Harris. I don't really put too much stock in this prediction, but it's interesting to note that Jeff Bezos also has the initials JB. Or what if Obama is replacing Trump, not Harris? Then the Priestess is Kamala, and the pillars represent a black man named Barack and a white man named Jeff.

Or it could be someone entirely different. After all, getting the Fool again in 2022 didn't mean George W. Bush was coming back, just another person who also happened to match that card.

Election prediction assessment

In my midterm reading, I got the Five of Cups as the overall effect on the GOP. Daily Kos agrees.

For the overall effect on the Senate, I got the Fool -- a card I had already identified with Georgia. At the time of this writing, Georgia has emerged as the key state for the Senate, with a runoff election planned. Assuming the other races go as expected, the result in Georgia will decide whether or not the GOP gets a majority in the Senate.

I identified the Fool with Georgia for two reasons: (1) the white rose he holds suggests Georgia's state flower, the white Cherokee rose, and (2) "this card has been associated with the name George in the past." This was a reference to my 2020 post "Can the deck itself be prophetic?" in which I retrospectively read the Fool card -- numbered 0, and thus corresponding to the '00 election -- as predicting the election of George W. Bush. One of the reasons I gave was this:

The Fool card depicts a man walking. Bush was commonly referred to by his middle initial: W, or “Dubya.” His full name is George Walker Bush.

I would say that's a pretty good omen for Herschel Walker, one of the candidates in the Georgia runoff.

Update: Dude. The "Walker" link is just the beginning.

That's right, the Fool card is traditionally linked to a planet for which the proposed names included "Georgian Planet" and Herschel.

(This also further cements my George W. Bush interpretation of the card. The Fool is Uranus, and the discoverer of Uranus originally wanted to name it after George III. Dubya was America's "George III," the third president of that name after Washington and Bush père.)

Hey, Rider-Waite, anything to say about the midterms?

I haven't been following the lead-up to the election and have no particular expectations. I'm just sort of testing my equipment here.

Three States with particularly significant or dramatic results:

Fool: This is a shot in the dark, but I'm going to say this is Georgia. There's a white rose on the card, and Georgia's state flower is the white Cherokee rose. Also, this card has been associated with the name George in the past. Eight of Pentacles: Looks like business as usual, presumably a win for the incumbent. Which doesn't sound very significant or dramatic.

Ace of Cups: Washington, D.C. There's a dove (D) and a cup (C), and there's a big W on the cup. The overall imagery is also connected with washing, and the Latin for "dove" is columba (District of Columbia). I guess California is a possibility, too, since its capital is Sacramento, but overall I'm pretty confident this is Washington. Does anything interesting ever happen in D.C. at midterms? It's so overwhelmingly Democratic that I can't imagine there are ever any surprises. Eight of Swords: Paralysis and blindness. A looong wait for the results. Again, I can't imagine this actually happening in a D.C. local election, so perhaps it refers to the effect on the federal government of the election as a whole.

Hanged Man: Not sure about this one. The gallows forms a big T, so it could be Tennessee or Texas -- more likely the latter, since TX = Tau cross. Just a wild guess. Nine of Swords: A nightmare -- but from whose point of view? Update: I'm kicking myself for not recognizing the Hanged Man as the Oz/Fetterman race. Upside down = antipodes = Australia = Oz, and it's literally a man hanging by a fetter around his ankle.

Overall effect on...

Okay, that's literally a blue wave in the House, and that imagery is echoed in each of the other cards. A major loss for the GOP, and the Dems feeling their oats. Not what any sane person would predict, but then sane people don't base their political predictions on Tarot cards, do they?

And finally, the whole election in a nutshell:

Defiance. Refusal to concede.

What it looks like to me: Massive, absolutely undeniable fraud, handing a big win to the Dems. A general rejection of the legitimacy of the results, leading to paralysis and a crisis in Washington. Perhaps accusations of fraud in the other direction in Georgia, where the Republican incumbent will win. And maybe something shocking in Texas? Don't tell me Beto's going to "win"!

Visualize the devil, and he doth appear.

I’ve been experimenting with truly random card selection, using Random.org. Since this means drawing cards “virtually” on a computer, I decided that just before each virtual draw I should visualize myself physically drawing and turning over a card.

The first time I did this, I was a bit surprised that when I visualized turning over the first card, it was a specific card that presented itself to my mind’s eye: the Two of Wands. When I clicked "Randomize," though the actual card I got was the Nine of Pentacles, which is not at all similar.

The visualization of the second card was vague and generic, with no specific card appearing in my mind.

When I visualized turning over the third card, I got a extraordinarily clear mental image of the 15th trump, called the Devil -- specifically of the devil's face as portrayed on the Rider-Waite version of that card. I dismissed this, thinking it had come to mind only because that card had featured prominently in my recent "Reading for 2022" -- but when I clicked "Randomize," the card that came up was in fact the Devil.

There are 78 cards in the deck, so if you guess the card twice, the probability of getting it right at least once is roughly 1 in 39 (or 1 in 26, if we count this as three guesses instead of two) -- not extraordinary, but still "statistically significant" by the arbitrary standards of the Studies Have Shown racket, so it seemed worth noting.

More on the U.S. presidency in 2022

What fascinates me about Tarot reading is not that what the cards say always comes true, but rather the simple, astonishing fact that they always do say something. Whatever question I put to them, they always address it. It is not the accuracy that impresses so much as the sheer responsiveness. In theory, it can all be dismissed as coincidence and apophenia; in practice, this becomes harder and harder to do with a straight face.

Sometimes I think people like me shouldn't be allowed to play with Tarot cards. You take a tool designed to turn synchronicity up to 11 and put it in the hands of someone like me, and -- well, isn't that a bit reckless?

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My January 4 Reading for 2022 involved drawing "before" and "after" cards showing how various people and things would change or develop over the course of the coming year. Included were "before" and "after" cards for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

On January 6, wanting further clarification, I drew "before" and "after" cards for the presidency as a whole. Below are the two cards from the January 6 reading, with the corresponding Biden and Harris cards from the January 4 reading below.

The Two of Cups, for the start of 2022, clearly matches up with the Biden and Harris cards from the earlier reading.  It has precisely the same layout as the Devil card: a woman on the left, a man on the right, and a central non-human figure looming in the background. The man on the Two of Cups is wearing practically the same tunic as the Page of Wands, confirming that he is Biden, the woman is Harris, and the lion/devil is the shadowy power behind the throne.

At the end of 2022, the Queen of Cups shows a woman alone on the throne, dressed similarly to the woman on the Two of Cups (blue and white clothes, laurel wreath). Strength shows a woman with a lion. In my earlier reading, I was unsure as to which of the figures on the Devil card this lion represented, the man or the devil. In the Two of Cups, though, the lion clearly corresponds to the devil. It appears, then, that the year begins with Biden and Harris sharing nominal power but in fact controlled by a hidden "devil." By the end of the year, Biden is out of the picture and Harris is in control, in partnership with the "devil."

Leaving aside the Five of Wands, in which the five figures are not readily identifiable as individuals, we have the following mappings:

• the Devil = the lion-headed caduceus on the Two of Cups = the lion on Strength
• the Page of Wands = the Devil's male captive = the man on the Two of Cups = Joe Biden
• the Queen of Cups = the Devil's female captive = the woman on the Two of Cups = the woman on Strength = Kamala Harris

Let us look at each of these in turn.

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The Devil

Looking at the Two of Cups in isolation, I would never have thought to connect it with the Devil. Once the connection has been made, though, another image immediately comes to mind as the "missing link" between the two: Éliphas Lévi's famous drawing of "Baphomet" or "the Sabbatic Goat," first published in 1856 in his Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, and since coopted by self-styled Satanists. 

There is no question that Waite was very extensively influenced by Lévi, and his Devil is very clearly patterned after Lévi's Goat. We see the horns, the pentagram, the torch, the position of the arms, etc. -- all rather different from the way the Devil is typically portrayed in the Marseille tradition. However, Lévi's drawing also features feathered wings and a caduceus -- which appear not on Waite's Devil card but on his Two of Cups.

There is no lion's head on Lévi's Baphomet, though. For that, we need to look at another image: the myterious "Leontocephaline" (lion-headed) figure associated with Mithraism.

Notice the lion's head, the feathered wings, and the caduceus -- all the elements that feature in the Two of Cups. The exact identity of this figure is a matter of speculation and scholarly debate, but it has become conventional to refer to it as Arimanius -- that is to say, Ahriman, the "devil" of Zoroastrianism, whose name would later be used by Rudolf Steiner (and later still by my own circle of Romantic Christians) to refer to the materialistic, bureaucratic, "lawful evil" aspect of the demonic.

Are the two people on the Two of Cups drinking a toast to the devil, then? Ah, but the cups combined with the caduceus give an added meaning.

The cup and serpent is the Bowl of Hygieia, symbol of pharmacy. Here we have two cups and two serpents -- but the serpents are combined to form a caduceus, symbol of commerce. Isn't such an unholy combination precisely what we have in mind when we say "Big Pharma"? And isn't Big Pharma one of the primary manifestations of Ahriman in the modern world?

In this context, another detail of Lévi's Baphomet image becomes interesting: The monster's raised right arm is labeled "Solve," and his lowered left arm is labeled "Coagula." These have an alchemical meaning in their original context, but in the context of Big Pharma in 2022, it is impossible not to notice the resonance with a particular medical intervention, being pushed relentlessly by the Ahrimanic establishment, which is supposed to "solve" a supposed crisis but is actually causing a real crisis having to do with hematological "coagulation."

In addition to whatever Mithraic meaning it may have, the winged lion also appears in the Bible (Daniel 7) as a symbol of Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon. The "guardian of peace and security" statue that was briefly installed at the UN headquarters at the end of last year was connected by many with this beast, as well as with the Beast of Revelation -- which also represents "Babylon," meaning Rome.

Babylon, Rome, 666, the UN, Big Pharma -- Ahriman. The devil figure on these cards represents not some particular person who is the real power behind the throne, but rather the Ahrimanic System which is the power behind all thrones -- at least "till the thrones are cast down" (Dan. 7:9).

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The Page of Wands (Biden)

There is little to add to my discussion of Biden in "Reading for 2022." However, the addition of Baphomet to the mix suggests a possible interpretation of the Devil setting fire to the Biden figure's tail with the torch he holds in his left hand. The corresponding arm on Lévi's Baphomet is labeled coagula -- could this be a hint that Biden could be removed from action by pharmacologically induced thrombosis? That would be a very plausibly deniable way of offing him wouldn't it -- Alec Baldwinning him next time he does a fake peck photo op? The effect needn't be immediate, either. The Devil card shows his tail being lit as if it were a fuse, which makes me think of these lines from the They Might Be Giants song "Hide Away Folk Family."

Tippy-toe to the front door, Mother,

'Cause there's a guy with a long, long fuse

And the one thing you can't hide is all the fear you feel inside

As the fuse is spelling out these words

Chorus:

Hide away folk family

Or else someone's gonna get ya (Someone's gonna get ya)

Someone's gonna get ya

Hide away folk family

Better hide away

Better hide away

Tippy-toe to the flat-bed, Father,

Because they're pouring out our gasoline

And sadly the cross-eyed bear's been put to sleep behind the stairs

And his shoes are laced with irony

Chorus

Hello. This is Lesley Down with the daily home astrology report.

Taurus: Contemplate domestic turmoil.

Aquarius: Abandon hope for future plans.

I'm not sure if the Taurus and Aquarius references mean anything, but it's interesting to note that Inauguration Day is often the day the Sun enters Aquarius.

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The Queen of Cups (Harris)

Looking at all of the cards we are considering, we find Harris represented four times: twice as a woman with a cup, once as a woman with grapes growing from her tail, and once as a woman with a lion. This theme of cups and grapes reminds me that in Aleister Crowley's version of the Strength card (renamed Lust; in order to maintain his cred as the Wickedest Man in the World, Crowley renamed all three virtue trumps), the woman is portrayed as the biblical Whore of Babylon and is holding a cup.

Crowley himself characterizes this cup as "the Holy Grail burned with love and death," but in the Bible it is "a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication" (Rev. 17:17), and "the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication" (Rev. 17:2). 

The identification (divinatory, not literal!) is clinched by the way this character is introduced in Revelation: "I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters" (Rev. 17:1). If you look at the Queen of Cups, you will see that she, too, sits upon many waters, her throne being on a tiny island or promontory, with water all around. Note also that Biden and Harris are often disparagingly referred to as "Joe and the Hoe" -- the latter title being nothing but a dialect version of the word used in Revelation.

Oh, and did I mention that "Crowley's" cards were actually painted by a woman named Harris?

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. 

Copper Queen (The Empress and August 2021 in the "Ripple" video)

Well, August is turning out to have a number of prominent month-specific events, so I thought I should take a look at what the "Ripple" video has for August. It's the Empress, varying little from the Rider-Waite.

Instead of the biblical crown of 12 stars, the "Ripple" Empress has only nine. This suggests no obvious interpretation, though it is perhaps worth noting that Oswald Wirth's Empress has a circle of nine stars around her head. The heart marked with the emblem of Venus is blue instead of gray and yellow (blue is more appropriate, since it is the color of venous blood), and she's holding her scepter at a different angle -- almost as if it were a microphone she were holding for someone to her right. She and her throne are being held by a disembodied hand.

Later in the video, the Empress puts out her other hand, and a yin-yang symbol appears in it.

This may also be a nod to Oswald Wirth, as he puts a yin-yang symbol on the cover of the book held by his Papess.

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The planet Venus is associated with copper and could be called the "copper star" This connection led me to the Wikipedia article for "Copper," of which I show a screenshot below.

Note the two images that appear together on the screen.

On the left, the symbol that does double duty for copper and Venus, and which appears on the Empress's heart-shaped shield. On the right, the idea of "copper ornaments" could have been illustrated in any number of ways, but they just happened to choose a yin-yang symbol.

Arizona is known as the Copper State, and its flag prominently features a "copper star" -- a fact that the synchronicity fairies brought to my attention back in October 2019, when I was reading James Shelby Downard's conspiracy classic "King Kill 33." Downard has this to say about Arizona and its copper connection.

Arizona is the "Copper State". Copper (Kypros) is symbolically as well as etymologically associated with Cyprus (Kypros) and cyprian. The word "cyprian" indicates a 'wanton woman' and this meaning is traced through the word Kypris to Aphrodite Pome, Venus, Al-Uzzah. The "Great Whore" of mythology and those women who fulfill this role in magic sexualis from time to time are called "Copper Queans" or "Copper Queens". 

An association of the name Cyprus to Copper in Arizona is indicated by the Cyprus and Baghdad Copper Company which operates a mine near Prescott. There is a Copper Queen Hotel in Bisbee, Arizona that was built and operated by a copper company. 

By this means one can expect to find a number of palimpsests pertaining to sex magic in the state of Arizona. 

This suggests that, despite the focus on the goings-on in Afghanistan, the truly important events of August 2021 are taking place in the state of Arizona.

"Copper Queen" also suggests Kamala Harris, who used to be a "copper" (law enforcement officer) and who is currently one dementia diagnosis away from becoming a "queen" (female head of state).

Downard's explanation suggests another sense in which the label "Copper Queen" applies -- the one implied by the nickname "Heels Up Harris."

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Note added Sept. 30, 2021: It's a month late, but here's a photo from Slow Joe's fake peck photo op.

The woman has a syringe in her scepter hand and is standing in front of the presidential flag in just the right position to make it appear that she is wearing a crown of nine (I think; possibly only eight) stars. This was supposedly Slow Joe's third peck, which is the number of the Empress card.

The woman is just some random nurse or actress, of course -- but if my interpretation of this part of the "Ripple" spread is correct, she is symbolically Kamala Harris. "Kamala" with a syringe made me think of Jesus' famous statement, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God" (Mark 10:25, Matt. 19:24, Luke 18:25) -- and I'd rather leave the synchronistical implications of that unstated for now. We'll see if anything interesting happens.

Strength in the Grateful Dead "Ripple" video

The Tarot spread in the 2020 Grateful Dead video "Ripple" places Strength in the November position. Where the Rider-Waite card features a white woman with a lion, the "Ripple" version has a black woman with a wolf.

Strength is numbered 8 in the Rider-Waite, so I connected it with the '08 election and saw it as accurately predicting Obama's win. The white woman paired with a male from Africa represents Obama's parentage, and Obama also happens to be a Leo.

Since Biden was Obama's vice president, it makes sense that he would be symbolized by a spin-off of this image. If a lion represents Leo, a wolf corresponds to the constellation Lupus, spanning a portion of the sky from 18°46' Scorpio to 06°44' Sagittarius. This Lupus region features very prominently in Joe Biden's birth chart, including his Sun (23°33' Scorpio), Mercury (21°32' Scorpio), Venus (28°33' Scorpio), and Ascendant (03°11' Sagittarius). Astrologically, the wolf is the perfect animal to represent Biden. (The wolf is also an emblem of the biblical Tribe of Benjamin, and a recent sync connected Biden with Abidan, captain of that tribe.)

The woman of course corresponds to Biden's vice president, who doesn't just happen to be a black woman but was specifically chosen because she is a black woman. Kamala Devi Harris is named after Kamala Devi -- that is, the Hindu goddess Lakshmi -- and the wreath of red flowers on the "Ripple" card suggests the red flowers associated with that goddess.

The Strength card shows the woman controlling the animal, and it seems fairly obvious that Harris has power over Biden rather than the reverse (though I assume neither of them is really calling the shots).

There is widespread speculation that Biden will either step down or be removed using the 25th Amendment, and that Harris will replace him as Antipresident. Interestingly, the "Ripple" video shows the opposite: The woman vanishes, leaving the wolf alone.

The Grateful Dead "Ripple" video and January 2021

On December 18, 2020, the Grateful Dead released a new video for their old song "Ripple." Two days later, on December 20, I was led to it by a completely random series of clicks. The video begins and ends with a spread of 13 Tarot cards. In the beginning, all the cards are face down, but we see enough to know that the card at the top is laid down first, then the others clockwise around the circle, and finally the one in the center. At the end of the video, we see the whole spread face up.

This is apparently a version of the "Year Ahead" spread, and since it was posted near the end of 2020, we might naturally interpret it as a year-ahead reading for 2021.

The cards themselves are based closely on the Rider-Waite deck, but with some perplexing differences. I might go through them all, one at a time, later if I feel so inclined, but for now I will focus on the one in the first position, corresponding to January. This is simply because I have a clear idea of "what happened" in January 2021. For the rest of the year so far, no notable month-specific events stand out, but January had two: the Worst Mostly Peaceful Protest Since the Civil War on the 6th, and the inauguration of Antipresident Biden on the 20th.

The "Ripple" video gives the January position to the World card. Here is how it compares to the Rider-Waite on which it is based.

The central figure is obviously copied exactly from the Rider-Waite. The artist must have had the Rider-Waite card in front of him as he drew, and therefore the differences must be deliberate.

The Rider-Waite, like the Marseille cards on which it is based, puts the Four Living Creatures in the four corners of the card. These represent, among other things, the fixed signs of the zodiac: Leo, Taurus, Aquarius (the man or angel), and Scorpio (the eagle). In the "Ripple" video, the angel is replaced with a black bird, and the golden eagle is changed to an American bald eagle. Looking at this now, in August 2021, I thought, "Hey, it's Jim Crow  and Jim Eagle!" And then, remembering that the pie is a bird closely related to the crow, I thought, "No, no, it's an American Eagle and American Pie!"

The two birds have been lowered down from the upper corners to the central part of the card. This was a very strange design choice, since it leaves lots of empty space in the upper corners. The only rationale I can think of is that the five heads (of the central figure and the four creatures) now form a pentagram arrangement that matches the traditional elemental pentagram.

Leo is a Fire sign, Taurus is Earth, Aquarius is (confusingly!) Air, and Scorpio is Water. If the woman in the center represents Spirit, the layout of the "Ripple" card matches the pentagram perfectly. The elemental correspondences have perhaps even been made a little stronger by replacing the Aquarius symbol with a bird and the land-based golden eagle with a species of sea eagle.

The fact that the birds have been moved down from their rightful place at the top of the World card made me think of the Patty Griffin song made famous by the Dixie Chicks (and recently featured on my friend S. K. Orr's blog).

Think I broke the wings off that little song bird

She's never gonna fly to the top of the world right now

So, how does all of this relate to the events of January 2021?

January 6 is only hinted at. On the Rider-Waite card, the wreath separates the woman within from the four creatures without, but on the "Ripple" card, this boundary has been breached, and the creatures have entered the inner sanctum.

Next we come to the inauguration, when Joe Biden was given the position that rightfully belonged to Donald Trump. This is almost too easy. The Rider-Waite World card features a blond-headed angel (we know it is an angel, not just a man, because of the corresponding figure on the Wheel of Fortune card, which has wings), and the "Ripple" card replaces this with a crow.

Since October 27, 2020, I have identified Trump with the blond-headed angel depicted on the Judgement card of the Rider-Waite deck, who is blowing a trump with a flag on it. (Donald Trump's birthday is Flag Day, June 14). Since the Judgement card is numbered 20, I had interpreted this as a prediction that Trump would win the '20 election.

But on the "Ripple" card, this symbol of Trump is conspicuous by its absence and has been replaced by a large, black bird. On October 24, 2020, just days before connecting the angel of Judgement with Trump, I wrote a post identifying Joe Biden with the Dr. Seuss character Slow Joe Crow. So, where we would expect to see Trump, we see Biden instead -- and both the presidency (the crow) and America itself (the bald eagle) have fallen down a notch from their former lofty positions. Sounds like January 2021 to me.

I've already mentioned in passing that the Rider-Waite deck connects the World card with the Wheel of Fortune. In fact, the central figure strongly resembles the goddess Fortuna.

On the "Ripple" card, as on its Rider-Waite predecessor, Fortuna's face is turned to the left side of the card, so Fortune is smiling on the Left. The creatures on the left are the crow and the bull. The crow represents Biden, by way of Slow Joe Crow. The bull or ox is the traditional symbol of the biblical Tribe of Joseph and thus also represents Joseph Biden. (Colloquially, of course, bull is also a synonym for malarkey.)

On the right of the card, Fortuna has turned her face away from the eagle and the lion. Can it be a coincidence that both of these animals have been used in Trump campaign logos? Both logos were (of course!) criticized in the press as racist dog whistles.

Of course, the thing about the Wheel of Fortune is that it turns. As Dylan put it, "Don't speak too soon, for the wheel's still in spin, and . . . the loser now will be later to win." We might also note that Fortuna's body is facing the right, suggesting that she will shortly turn her face in that direction as well.

Who is Joe Biden?

The day after the inauguration, I asked that question, drew a single card -- and got just about the most confusing answer possible:

As I have explained in great detail, this card says Donald Trump loud and clear. I mean, look, it's a guy with orange hair blowing a trumpet with a flag on it. How can we not connect it with a certain orange-haired individual named Trump who was born on Flag Day? It's Trump. Name, birthdate, hair color — it might as well be his damn driver’s license! What can possibly be meant by saying it's Biden?

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As I've detailed elsewhere, the Rider-Waite Tarot has accurately predicted the winner of every U. S. presidential election since 2000 -- with the apparent exception of 2020, since the 20th trump is the Judgement, the Trump trump. We can say that Trump was the "real" winner because Biden won through fraud, or we can hold out hope that the election may yet be invalidated and Trump reinstated, but as things stand right now it just looks like the Tarot got it wrong.

Of course, if this card actually represented Biden all along, then the prediction was right, and this is another example of how prophecies can be deceptive without actually lying. Gee, Bert, whatever made you think I was thinking of Trump?

How can it be Biden, though? How? All I can do at this point is explore some possibilities.

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1. The point is not the details of the picture but the name of the trump: Judgement. God allowed Biden to "win" as a judgment or punishment, giving the American people exactly what we deserve.

2. The orange-haired guy with the trump and flag is indeed Trump, but note that he is an angel -- i.e., "in heaven," dead. Since the reelection of a sitting president could scarcely be represented by an angel's suddenly appearing from heaven, this angel must be departing to heaven, leaving the scene, to the cheers of the "NPC gray" people below. And where is Biden in all this? Nowhere. He's nothing. Remember how popular it was to write the words "Bye Don" in the style of Biden's campaign logo? Biden's only selling point is that he isn't Donald Trump, and so this image of Trump flying away captures his essence.

3. Biden is in some sense the second coming of Trump, continuing Trump's work. That seems impossible, but what after all was Trump's work? He obviously didn't "make America great again." His main contribution seems to have been making it undeniably obvious that the System is irredeemably corrupt -- a revelation represented by the angel sounding a trumpet, broadcasting what had previously been hidden. Biden, if his first few days in office are any indication, is certainly set to continue that work.

4. Biden is Trump's puppet. Is that any less crazy than it sounds? Someone is obviously pulling the strings, and it makes sense that it would be someone who has absolute proof that Biden stole the election and is using that to blackmail him. Who has that proof? China? The EU? -- or Trump? I'll admit this doesn't make a lot of sense. Why would Trump use that proof to control the president when he could have used it to be the president? Just brainstorming here.

5. Trump is still going to win somehow, and the Tarot is telling me to unask a question that presupposes Biden is of any account. I say Mickey Mouse, and the cards shout Donald Duck!

6. The sync fairies are just messing with me, giving me an obviously bogus answer in the hope that I'll put the cards away, disengage from politics, and get on with my life.

Inauguration Day reading

Hours before the inauguration in Washington, I did a one-card reading with the Rider-Waite deck, asking, "Is Trump really going to pull this off today?" I drew the High Priestess.

The first thing I noticed was Joe Biden's initials on the pillars Jachin and Boaz.

One of my commenters suggested that the woman in the center might represent Kamala Harris, and that fits surprisingly well. The woman is obviously the card's center of attention, with JB off to the side and in the background -- reflecting the disproportionate emphasis placed on the VP ("a Harris administration, with Joe Biden as president") and the general expectation that she will replace Biden in relatively short order.

Note also that on the card we see the woman's left hand touching a Bible (Torah scroll), corresponding rather literally to what happens during a swearing-in ceremony.

The decision to be sworn in on two Bibles was a little strange, but the second trump is all about duality.

Traditional Golden Dawn correspondences even link this particular trump to Harris's given name.

So, the reading pretty unambiguously says: No, Trump is not going to pull this off today. Kamala Harris (with, lest we forget, Joe Biden as president) will be sworn in.

Beyond coincidence

My interest in the Tarot, though deep and persistent, is largely theoretical. I hardly ever do readings, though of course I know how and even seem to have a bit of a knack for it. I would estimate that I have done fewer than 20 in my entire life.

The less often you do something, of course, the less likely it is that amazing coincidences will occur in connection with that activity -- but occur they do.

One of the most amazing of these occurred fairly recently when, under circumstances on which this is scarcely the place to elaborate, I had occasion to use the Tarot to interrogate a poltergeist so violent that its antics were later to become potentially life-threatening. "Who are you?" I asked, after shuffling and all the other preliminaries, and turned over the first card: The Devil. "What do you want?" I asked, and turned over the next card: Death.

The perfect answer, right? I don't mean that the geist in question was actually "the devil" or anything; I'm talking about dramatic appropriateness. I mean, if it had been a scene in a horror movie rather than an episode in real life, those two cards -- precisely those two, as answers to those two questions -- are the ones the screenwriter or director would have chosen. And those are the two I drew, by "chance," against odds of 6,084 to 1.

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This past Saturday night, I was trying to sort out my thoughts regarding Donald Trump. Despite my brain telling me that he's not on my side, and that whether he or Biden wins out in the end should be a matter of complete indifference, I find that I am not in fact indifferent -- that I think of him as good, that I will be elated if wins and would view a Biden win as an unmitigated disaster.

Brooding over this cognitive dissonance, I ended up turning to the Rider-Waite deck -- shuffling it, asking "Who is Donald Trump?" and drawing a single card -- and that card was The Sun.

Now, this is considerably less impressive than the other reading I have described in this post. Instead of yielding the single most appropriate card, twice in a row, it yielded one of three possible "perfect" results. I had already written that Mr. Trump's 2016 and 2020 victories were predicted by The Tower and The Judgment, respectively, and had identified The Sun as "the other Trump trump" -- so any of those three would have been "perfect." The odds of drawing one of the three from a 78-card deck is 1 in 26 -- not extremely low, but just low enough to be "statistically significant" by mainstream standards.

And if the Tarot wanted to decline to pass judgment on Mr. Trump one way or the other, it could scarcely have chosen a more perfectly ambiguous card. The Sun is traditionally given a positive meaning, but my own recent meditations on it have uncovered a dark side as well. It represents, among other things, the birdemic (the sole ill) and the number 666. In discussing these two sides of The Sun, I have borrowed a concept from Superman. There is the Yellow Sun of Earth (good) and the Red Sun of Krypton (evil), and the card represents both.

And what is President Trump's characteristic color? But of course: orange.