Tarot for 2023
FORECASTING AN ENTIRE YEAR
is an intimidating task for a community as diverse as ours. So I divided the year, laid out three cards for each half, and asked what the most important issues will be for the whole community, excluding no one. The cards apparently focused on big things, national issues that definitely are floating in the zeitgeist. The same issues, on a personal level will manifest locally and individually, but the origin and impact of these forces, like the outer planets, refer to collective forces and trends.
The central card is the Knight of Swords. This is the main issue of the first six months of 2023. The four suits in the Tarot correspond to Jung’s four universal functions — intellect, emotion, sensation, and intuition. All of us have all in one degree of development or another, but everybody has a dominant function, usually meaning the opposite one is weak.
Swords are intellect, representing people or effects whose presenting issues are abstract as opposed to tangible (Pentacles) or emotional (Cups) or intuitive (Wands). This knight is angry about a principle, an idea, something abstract — possibly a legal interpretation and he is definitely on the attack. And he’s headed straight for the card, Justice — upside down — implying an injustice, something illegal, extreme inequality — or even the Supreme Court.
But on a deeper level, Justice refers to an inner, universal drive toward balance, signified by the scales. It exists throughout nature, nature strives toward balance, and in humans there is an inherent sense of right and wrong common to all peoples. Like psychic organs imbedded in the human psyche, everybody has kidneys and all religions have generated basically the same commandments. There is an inherent sense of right and wrong common to all peoples, and from January to June, anger against a violation of universal, spiritual, moral laws is going to be an issue.
The third card is the Hierophant. Immediately organized religion comes to mind. It is to the back of the Knight, behind him so to speak, and I can’t deny the association between the law and religion, with anger between them,
The spread of cards.
and how those issues are really big in the national zeitgeist and building in intensity toward the next election.
Each card has levels of meaning, and all apply in one way or another, but there is always one that fits with the surrounding cards and makes a comprehensive, symbolic narrative. On a deeper level, beneath the politics and legal questions currently saturating the media, I think the first six months of 2023 will bring up deep, profound moral questions about the history of Justice in our nation since its founding. We have reached a point of collective moral and spiritual reckoning, the skeletons have broken down the closet door, the graves are open and the chickens have come home to roost.
When I laid out the 3 cards for the next six months, and read them vertically with the above cards as well as horizontally, I could see how the issues of the first three months develop in the last three.
The central issue from June to December is the abuse of power. Strength upside down. Powerful organizations and people who have abused power will be exposed, and some will fall, die or lose influence. There will also be an increase in the abuse of power — naturally, as a reaction. The injustices, illegal and corrupt actions that pissed people off in the first six months will be exposed in the latter half of the year. And — to the left of Strength reversed is the 10 of swords, the picture of a man lying on the seashore with 10 swords stuck in his back — the perfect visual image for treason — or stabbing or being stabbed in the back. These themes do seem to be on the increase at high levels. This is right under the reversed card of Justice, evoking associations with the Supreme Court. But 10s are the end of the numbered cards and the beginning of the face cards. So the treason is exposed, it comes to an end or is stopped — but the card is upside down, so the ending is not sharply conclusive.
And the last of 2023’s cards is the
6 of cups, the picture of two children playing in a garden and it’s upside down too. This talks about children, obviously, the innocent ones who have been the most impacted by Covid, inflation, homelessness, the failure of social services — and who will be most impacted by climate change — and it’s upside down. A lot of young people will come of voting age in 2024, and you can be sure they know what past abuses of power and betrayals mean for their future.
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