ACE OF CUPS: Emotions are rising up for new love. The ace of cups usually indicates that the querent is feeling a new welling of emotion or beginning to have some vivid dreams. Theyre not writing the poetry yet, but they feel the desire to, or they may have caught sight of a figure across a room and felt a tug at their heart, or even passed by some holy place and felt their spirit yearning. They've lifted the cup and they want to drink from it.


THE DEVIL: The fool comes to the foot of an enormous black mountain where reigns a creature half goat, half god. At his hooves naked people, linked to the gods throne by chains, engage in every indulgence imaginable; sex, drugs, food, drink. The closer the fool gets, the more he feels his own earthly desires rising in him. Carnal desires, hunger for food and power, greed and selfishness. "I have given up all such desires!' he roars at the goat god, resisting the beasts power with all his might. He is sure that this is a test of his new spirituality, one where he must prove that the temptations of the material world cannot sway him. The creature responds to his defiance with a curious look. "All I am doing is bringing out what is already in you," it responds mildly. "Such feelings are nothing to fear, nothing to be ashamed of, or even to avoid. They are even useful to helping you in your quest for spirituality, though many try to pretend otherwise." The fool gestures angrily at the chained men and women, "You say that even though these are clearly enslaved to the material world?" The goat god mimics the fools gesture. "Take another look." The fool does so, and realizes that the chained collars the men and women wear are wide enough for them to easily slip off over their heads. "They can be free if they wish to be," the goat god says, "They remain here because they want to be controlled by their base, bestial desires. There are, however, others..." At this point the goat god gestures upward, toward the peak of the mountain. "...Others who have used these same impulses to climb to the highest heights. If they had denied their desires theyd never have gotten there." On hearing this, the fool sees that he has mistaken the goat god. This is not a creature of evil as he thought, but of great power, the lowest and the highest, both of beast and god. Like all power it is frightening, and dangerous...but it is also key to freedom and transcendence.


WHEEL OF FORTUNE: From out of hiding comes the fool, into the SUNLIGHT, as if being pulled up from some low, dark point on a wheel. It is time for a change. Staff in hand, he heads back out into the world, expecting nothing.
But, strangely, things seem to happen to him as the hours go by, good things. Wandering by a water wheel a woman offers him a drink in a golden chalice, and then urges him to keep the cup; as he wanders by a windmill, he stops to watch a young man swinging a sword; when he expresses his admiration of the weapon, the young man presses it into his hand, insisting that he take it. And finally, when he comes upon a rich merchant sitting in a wagon, right over one of the wheels, the man hands him a bag of money. "I decided to give this to the tenth person who walked past me today," explains the merchant, "youre the tenth". The fool hardly thought he could still be surprised, but he is. It is as if everything good that he ever did in his life is being paid back to him, three fold. All luck this day is his.

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