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.)

The Mischievous Dog and the Fool

In this post at From the Narrow Desert, I mention seeing -- and failing to take a photo of -- a knockoff Winnie-the-Pooh doll that said "Mischievous Dog" on its T-shirt. Searching the Internet to see if anyone else had taken a photo of such a toy, I found the Wikipedia article about one of Aesop's fables called "The Mischievous Dog."

The story concerns a dog that bites the legs of others. Its master therefore ties a bell around its neck to warn people. The dog, thinking the bell is a reward, shows it off in the streets until an older dog reminds him that the bell is not a reward but a sign of disgrace.

The accompanying illustration reminded me of something.

The dog is given a bell because it bites, but it mistakes this sign of disgrace for an honor. The envious Fool, thinking it unfair that the dog, who is in the wrong, should be so honored, puts bells on himself instead.

Can the deck itself be prophetic?

When people talk about the Tarot predicting the future, they're generally talking about a Tarot reading. Cards are selected at random, and the fact of those particular cards' being chosen, rather than others in the deck, is what the divination is based on. But can there be, as it were, "standing prophecies" in the deck itself -- specific future events coded into the cards themselves, independent of any given spread or reading?

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Richard Arrowsmith, the once and (perhaps?) future king of synchromysticism, has recently resurfaced after a seven-year silence and posted on the birdemic. It is, in true Arrowsmith fashion, a very long, sprawling, profusely illustrated post that touches on dozens of different things, but one of the things it does is to tie the birdemic -- the official name of which prominently features the number 19 -- to the 19th Tarot trump, the Sun (especially the Rider-Waite version).

The sun as depicted on the card somewhat resembles the birdemic virus -- a round object with numerous protrusions -- and of course the word corona refers to the outer atmosphere of the sun. The brick wall depicted on the card suggests the lockdowns implemented around the world. But most specifically, and most impressively, the card clearly alludes to the flag of China -- a red flag with one large star and four smaller ones.

One could go further. The sunflowers, as mini-suns, represent the replication of the virus, and they peep over the wall, showing the ineffectiveness of all the lockdown nonsense. The child, with a crown (corona) of mini-mini-suns, goes forth on a white horse, like the first horseman of the Apocalypse, "conquering, and to conquer" -- spreading the birdemic and the subsequent totalitarian coup all over the world.

I find this very impressive, and once pointed out it cannot be un-seen. From here on out, the birdemic is part of the meaning of this card.

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Wondering what other "standing prophecies" might be hidden in the deck, I suddenly had this thought: I'll bet all the trumps whose numbers correspond to U.S. presidential election years -- that is, '00, '04, '08, '12, '16, and '20 -- accurately predict the winners of those elections. So, let's see. Since Mr. Arrowsmith got such impressive results from the Rider-Waite, let's stick with that deck.

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2000: Bush defeats Gore

We're off to a good start. George W. Bush was consistently portrayed as an idiot, but Al Gore was not. He became known for his "Bushims," including the most famous of all: "There's an old saying in Tennessee . . . I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee, that says, 'Fool me once, shame on . . . shame on you. Fool me . . . You can't get fooled again!'" (If you type george w bush f into Google, the second search suggestion, after father, is fool me once.)

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.

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2004: Bush defeats Kerry

This is an easy one: The sitting president wins reelection. (So much for not getting fooled again!)

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2008: Obama defeats McCain

The most distinctive thing about Obama is that his father was from Kenya, making him (sort of) the "first black president." The lion is predominantly an African animal, and Kenya has one of the highest lion populations in the world. Taking this a step further, the two figures on the card -- one male and from Africa, the other a white woman -- could symbolize Obama's parents. (I know it's totally racist for the white woman to be represented by a person and the black man by an animal, but that's how it is. There are no black people in the Rider-Waite Tarot, so African-ness has to be represented in some other way.)

When it was first decided that Obama was going to be a "rising star," and nobody really knew who he was yet, I remember that NPR ran a "funny" piece about this poor politician who had the misfortune to have a name so similar to Osama. Osama, of course, means "lion" in Arabic.

It was also in 2008 that the slogan "diversity is our strength" began to gain currency (see evidence here).

(Note added: At the time I posted this, Google Trends showed no hits for "diversity is our strength" until 2008. Clicking the link again now, later the same day, I see that this is no longer true! I'm not sure why data for 2004-2007 would have changed in just a few hours' time. Google Ngrams shows the phrase's popularity peaking in 1997.)

Note added: It turns out that Obama is even a Leo (born August 4, 1961).

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2012: Obama defeats Romney

This one's not as obvious as the others have been so far, but wasn't it around 2012 that the noose began to be promoted as a symbol of anti-black racism and to be used in hate hoaxes (at the University of Wisconsin, for instance)? Implicit in the assumption that nooses are racist is the equation hanged man = black man. Notice also the hanged man's O-shaped halo.

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2016: Trump defeats Clinton

The simplest analysis: a trump called "The Tower" = Trump Tower = Donald Trump.

But doesn't it show the tower being destroyed? It seems that neither the tower itself nor either of the two persons falling from it can represent the winning candidate.

The lightning represents Trump -- a "bolt from the blue" whose win surprised nearly everyone. The woman dressed in Democratic blue is obviously Hillary Clinton, and the man -- whose red outer garment hides the fact that he is blue underneath -- represents the fake-conservative Republican establishment.

The imagery of this card also suggests 9/11, which was a major symbolic undercurrent in the 2016 election. Clinton's campaign logo showed two towers, both blue, being cut through by a big red arrow (cf. the arrow-shaped lightning bolt destroying the tower on the card). Clinton later physically fell down on September 11 at a 9/11 memorial event, and in the early hours of the other 9/11, 9 November, Trump was declared the winner.

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2020: Trump vs. Biden

Not exactly subtle. Which candidate has blond/orange hair and is literally named Trump?