TAROT
AND EMOTIONS RESEARCH PROJECT REPORT revised 10/9/03
by
Mary K. Greer, ©2003
Permission
is hereby granted to use this information in teaching as long as
acknowledgement is made. Do not reprint on the web or elsewhere without
permission from Mary K. Greer <mkgreer@pacbell.net>
GENERAL COMMENTS
Fifty-three
people responded to the Tarot and Emotion Research Project. They were asked to
match the cards of the Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) deck, as objectively as
possible, with 78 out of 99 emotion words, based on the emotions depicted by
the images. I want to thank everyone who participated, and especially the
American Tarot Association who provided pages for the instructions and Mark
McElroy who created the pages and the report form that made it so easy for
everyone to respond. Without all of your efforts there wouldn’t be this report.
87% were women (47)
13% were men (7).
This
is consistent with average class and workshop attendance. While it is not
unusual for there to be fewer men in classes, the percentage of men increases a
little at professional gatherings and on the internet.
The average age was 43.5 with the men
being slightly older.
Under
20 = 2% (1)
20
to 29 = 11% (6)
30
to 39 = 29% (15)
40
to 49 = 29% (15)
50
to 59 = 19% (10)
Over
59 = 10% (5)
Their
familiarity with the RWS Tarot deck:
Not
Familiar = 5% (3)
Somewhat
Familiar = 11% (6)
Familiar = 30% (16)
Very
Familiar = 48% (26)
Their
Tarot knowledge:
None = 4% (2)
Little = 9% (5)
Intermediate = 34% (18)
Significant
Personal = 30% (16)
Professional
Reader = 23% (12)
Most
people took three to six hours to do the project including cutting out the
emotion words, matching words and cards, and recording their results. Some took
much longer. Many participants said they learned a tremendous amount and that
it was the most exciting Tarot work they had done in years.
In
collating the material the main thing I discovered was the great variety of
responses to each card, averaging twenty-five different words per card (from a
minimum of 9 to a maximum of 36). Some cards had tremendous congruity (similar
emotions) while others had little agreement or similarities. For instance,
nearly everyone saw the Four of Wands as festive, mirthful and happy, and the
Three of Swords as heartbroken grief. On the other hand, the Wheel of Fortune
could be accepting or surprised, daring or indecisive, and the King of Swords
could be depressed or confident. Most cards showed clear conceptual trends
rather than precise agreement.
Conflicting
emotions were not necessarily bad. The King of Swords could be depressed when
weakened and confident when strengthened. Such a range is actually helpful in
interpretation because one card can agree with a variety of other
cards—pleasant or unpleasant.
It
was essential to use just one deck for this project to narrow the variables. I
chose the Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) deck since tarot readers often have one of
the close variations. Additionally, it has pictures on all the cards, and
emotions are depicted deliberately, in some cases, through face, color, body
positions and/or environment. An unlooked for but enlightening result of the
project are a list of emotions that are particular to this deck. In
fact, we now have a description of the emotional attributes of the RWS deck,
yielding the overall tone or tendency that we can expect, on average, from a
reading.
The
two words used most often and for the greatest number of cards are: determined
and expectant. After that come: hopeful, resolute, cautious, fulfilled, secure,
and wondrous. The words that were used least are equally revealing: jealousy,
guilt, hatred, spite, disgust, and envious. The latter group are least likely
to be revealed through the cards of the RWS deck. Nevertheless, a querent may
come to a reading with negative emotions at the forefront, and they can be
depicted by the cards. Readings with the RWS deck will tend to an expectancy
to determine a hopeful resolution, cautiously yet securely fulfilled in a
wondrous manner. From a healing context, as scientific research has demonstrated
over and over again, this is exactly the attitude that is most likely to help a
person improve his or her sense of well-being and life circumstances. As Eden
Gray so wisely advised in 1971 “Give those for whom you read encouragement to
strive for their highest ideals” (Mastering the Tarot, p. 197).
While
it is my theory that Tarot cards are metaphors of emotion, not all cards in the
deck are depicted emotionally. The cards that seem to be the least emotional or
have the least clarity about what emotions are depicted are: the Magician,
Wheel of Fortune, and Temperance, along with three of the Aces (excluding
Pentacles), and eleven of the sixteen court cards. Other cards that stand out as
emotionally ambiguous are: the Eight of Cups, Six of Swords, and the Three and
Ten of Pentacles. Also, three-quarters of the Aces and more than two-thirds of
the Court Cards are unclear about their specific emotional content, suggesting
that the focus of these cards may be different. Aces are dealt with as their
own segment of the deck.
Cards
with the greatest emotional clarity and consistency include: the Lovers,
Strength, Tower, and Sun, the Knight of Swords, and sixteen Minor Arcana number
cards (44%). The Minor Arcana numbered two through ten have, in general, the
clearest emotional content in the RWS deck.
I
began this project out of a concern that emotions are usually associated only
with the suit of Cups and, with the exception of a few cards like the painful
Tower or the happy Sun and World, other cards are not often acknowledged as
having emotional content. My own experience with Tarot readings and Tarot
readers, however, is that any card can trigger emotional responses that are, to
some extent, predictable. Also, the best Tarot readers are usually gifted
empaths, who use their emotional “genius,” consciously or unconsciously, as a
major component of their intuitive and communicative skills. Add this to the
fact that people usually seek advice from a Tarot deck or Tarot readers for
emotional reasons (as mentioned above). Emotions seem to me to be a hugely
unacknowledged aspect of Tarot—the size of an elephant in the living room. If
we are to improve our skills as readers and understand the how the cards
operate at a functional, psychological level, then it becomes imperative to
understand how emotions are expressed through the deck, how card images trigger
emotions in both querent and reader, and how emotions function in helping a
person resolve issues and understand themselves and their life circumstances.
The
field of emotion research has mushroomed in only the last fifteen years and
continues to grow rapidly. Neurophysiologist, Antonio Damasio defines emotions
as “complicated collections of chemical and neural responses, forming a
pattern: all emotions have some kind of regulatory role to play, leading in one
way or another to the creation of circumstances advantageous to the organism. .
. . Their role is to assist the
organism in maintaining life” (Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens, p.
51). In spite of the infinite variations to be found across cultures we can
predict with some success that certain stimuli will produce certain
emotions—and, like it or not, Tarot readers are in the business of prediction.
Emotions motivate us to move, take action and make plans. Emotions also have a
special ability to bridge across the unexpected and unknown and thus serve as a
guide to reason and a setter of priorities. In a reading we have the
opportunity to evaluate past, present and future actions and plans by evoking
the physiological mechanism that was engineered to regulate these. People go to
a Tarot reading to alleviate anxiety, achieve desires, and find meaning (through
perceiving patterns). The process results, unless blocked, in increased
awareness or consciousness. Emotion, it turns out, is an essential component
all of these, and is thus central to the very act of reading the cards and
interacting with the querent.
In
the following summary reports I’ve included only emotion-word choices that were
corroborated by at least two people. Respondents were asked to indicate
emotions that were depicted on the card and not their own reactions to the images
(i.e., personal projections), but, as to be expected, some responses were far
more subjective and idiosyncratic than objective. For instance, one person felt
that the main emotion in the Hierophant was self-doubt. A case could certainly
be made that the two acolytes at the feet of the Pope need reassurance in the
face of their own self-doubts. From an objective standpoint, however, there is
nothing in the picture that indicates an assumption. Single emotions are still
helpful in rounding out the emotional description of and adding depth to a
card; they strengthen trends and show otherwise unacknowledged dimensions.
I
eliminated all the write-in words since they were uncorroborated, but
especially since more than three-quarters of them were not emotions at all.
This substantiates a realization I had early in the project that most people do
not really understand what emotions are. We are a society of emotional
semi-literates. All the more reason for this project.
Since
my starting place was the emotional content of the suits, I’ll begin with a
summary of results for the Minor Arcana suit cards numbered two through ten.
(Aces and Court Cards function most significantly in their own groups.) I
sorted the ninety-nine emotions (all appeared in the suits) into five
categories (see chart) for the sake of easy comparison. (See the appendix at
the end of the report for which emotions I’ve put into each category.) The
numbers in parentheses are the result of a point count weighing their importance
by repetition per card and number of cards in which the word appeared. The
words were not evenly balanced among the categories (i.e., there were about
twice as many joy words as any other, with the joy plus desire categories
equalling the other three to give a fairly even balance of positive and
negative words).
WANDS
Fear (147) Desire (126) Joy (103) Sorrow (86) Anger/Hate (80) |
SWORDS
Fear (195) Sorrow (195) Anger/Hate (147) Joy (95) Desire
(23) |
CUPS
Joy (310) Sorrow (179) Fear (60) Desire (58) Anger/Hate (52) |
PENTACLES
Joy (240) Sorrow (104) Fear (97) Desire (60) Anger/Hate (34) |
From
the chart we can see that both Wands and Swords (the Yang suits) lead with
fear-based emotions, while Cups and Pentacles (the Yin suits) lead with joyful
emotions. Then the characteristics of Wands and Swords change dramatically,
with Wands featuring desire, joy, sorrow, and anger (in a close match), while
Swords feature sorrow that is equal to fear, followed by anger and joy, and
only a little desire. Cups and Pentacles take a big jump from joy to sorrow and
then to fear and end with desire and anger. Respondents were much more in
agreement about Cups’s expressions of joy than about any other group of cards
and their emotions. The entire list of words appearing for each suit and card
is too massive to present in this report.
In
an interesting corroboration of the general tenor of each suit, the following
words were used exclusively in a single suit:
Wands: hopeful, impatient, inflamed,
irritated, resolute, angry, triumphant, proud.
Cups: joy, shy, bliss, happy, lust, awed.
Swords: mischievous, shame, spite, bitter, fear,
guilty, arrogant, hatred.
Pentacles: secure, interested, benevolent,
envious, pity, confident, serene.
All
four suits share only two corroborated words (at least two responses):
melancholy and worried.
Aces
seem to have more in common with each other than with other cards in their suit
although suit characteristics are apparent—especially with Pentacles.
All
four Aces are awe(ful), wondrous, and inspired, while three out of four are
aroused, desirous, fulfilled, grateful, hopeful.
The
Ace of Wands primarily is aroused and inspired, and, to a lesser extent,
daring, decisive, enthused, respect(ful), arrogant, desirous, inflamed,
surprised, triumphant and wondrous.
The
Ace of Cups primarily is bliss(ful) and compassionate, and, to a lesser extent,
awed, desirous, fulfilled, loving, wondrous, aroused, caring, enthused,
grateful, happy, hopeful and joyous.
The
Ace of Swords primarily is decisive, triumphant, daring and determined, and, to
a lesser extent, aroused, arrogant, belligerent, inflamed, irritated, respect
and secure.
The
Ace of Pentacles primarily is grateful, secure, welcoming and benevolent, and,
to a lesser extent, accepting, awed, calm, desirous, expectant, fulfilled,
hopeful, inspired, peaceful, satisfied and wondrous.
The
Court Cards are among the cards for which there is the least agreement. The
most clearly delineated are the King of Wands, Page of Cups, Page of Pentacles
and, especially, the Knight of Swords.
The
most frequent words for expressing Court Card emotions are: proud, arrogant,
resolute, interested, expectant, confident, amused, kind, caring, hopeful,
respect(ful), daring, impatient, wary, yearning.
Wands Court Cards feel arrogant and
interested.
Cups Court Cards feel yearning.
Swords Court Cards feel arrogant and irritated.
Pentacles Court Cards feel reverent.
Pages feel curious, interested, hopeful
and wondrous.
Knights feel impatient.
Queens feel caring, compassionate and
benevolent.
Kings feel proud and stubborn.
(A
few of these emotions appear in only 3 out of 4 of their group.)
When
looking over the Major Arcana characteristics it is notable that some cards
share a number of emotions in common. For instance, the Emperor and Hierophant
share six out ten of the same emotions—which should not be surprising since
both are patriarchal authority figures and rulers. Both demonstrate respect,
arrogance, pride, resoluteness, decisiveness, and wariness. Other emotions
differentiate them from each other. The Emperor is stubborn, determined, angry
and suspicious, as compared to the Hierophant who is reverent, secure,
benevolent and patient. Words that appeared only once further differentiate the
two. The Emperor is confident, daring and triumphant, as compared with the
Hierophant who is calm, caring, and welcoming (sharing these sentiments with
the Empress). On the more negative side, the Emperor is defensive and
irritated, while the Hierophant is contemptuous, smug and scornful.
It
is through the similarities that we are able to find connections and establish
patterns in a reading, while the differences help us see where a particular
energy is moving. The Emperor in the past, becoming the Hierophant in the
future could suggest, for instance, a change in masculine decisiveness from
determined but suspicious to being more reverent and patient.
Some
emotion words only appeared for one Major Arcana card. These were often the
most negative or disturbing emotions. For instance, the Devil was given the
following emotions that were not share by any other Major Arcana card:
apathetic, disgusted, scorn, shame, spite. And only one other card shared with
the Devil the following: belligerent (Tower), defiant (Chariot), and desirous
(Lovers).
The
High Priestess was the only shy Trump card. Several emotions were shared by a
maximum of seven cards. For instance, serene was chosen for the High Priestess,
Empress, Star, Temperance, Hanged Man, Strength, and World (given in the order
of most frequently chosen – thirteen times for the High Priestess to twice for
the World). By contrast, the number one word for each of these cards was: High
Priestess (serene), Empress (benevolent), Star (hopeful), Temperance (calm),
Hanged Man (accepting), Strength (caring), and World (bliss). We can see that
these cards are part of a group that share a lot of emotional characteristics;
with the exception of the Hanged Man, we like getting these cards. The High
Priestess, Hanged Man and Temperance share another word—cautious. By contrast,
the angry Majors are the Tower, Emperor, Moon and Devil. The “determined” cards
are Emperor, Magician, and Chariot.
Whereas
all 99 words were used by at least two people per card for the Minor Twos
through Tens (36 cards), only 79 words were used for the Majors. The unused and
uncorroborated words were bitter, contemptuous, defensive, depressed, envious,
exhausted, guilty, hatred, heartbroken, hopeless, inflamed, irritated, jealous,
pity, regret, sad, satisfied, self-doubt, smug, worried. What makes the Minor
Arcana cards that feature these emotions different than the Trumps?
Psychologist
Daniel Goleman has popularized something called Emotional Intelligence. He says
that some people are much more adept at perceiving emotions in themselves and
others, at dealing with these emotions, and at communicating about them,
yielding a high EQ versus an IQ. Although some people are naturally
talented, these abilities can be developed. Doing Tarot readings for others
improves these skills.
To
test my own ability to “read” emotions, I counted how often my choices in this
project were corroborated by others. Only seven word/card choices that I made
were uncorroborated, which means I had a 91% corroboration rate. At least five
people agreed with 54% of my choices (two to four was typical). I randomly
picked two other people who identified themselves as Very Familiar/Professional
Readers and calculated their corroboration rates which were considerably less.
I theorize that my “success” arises from over thirty years reading and teaching
Tarot using an interactive style during which I ask people to describe the
feelings and attitudes of the figures on the cards and the mood and atmosphere
of the environment. I’ve listened to thousands of people describe the emotions
they perceive in the cards (most often the RWS deck), and I’ve asked them to
follow those emotions back to life experiences which we then related back to
the card, the spread and the question. I see their emotion as a bridge to an
unknown (or unacknowledged) but very relevant piece of the pattern described in
the spread. These experiences have refined my knowledge of the pictorial
inducers of specific emotions, of how they relate to life events, and of how to
use Tarot images as emotion-inducers to help resolve issues.
Tarot
readers can increase their EQ and learn to become more conscious of the
patterns, priorities and actions empowered by emotions as they are indicated by
the cards in a reading and by the querent’s responses to the cards.
Watch
for further articles describing emotions in more depth along with their
function in a Tarot reading.
Again,
I want to thank everyone who participated in this project, and I urge others to
do the project for themselves.
I endeavored to have an equal number of
positive emotions (joy and desire) and negative emotions (sorrow, fear,
anger/hate). Many emotions could go equally in other categories, like jealousy
(fear, anger, sorrow and desire), guilt (fear and anger), depression (a
variable complex). I determined their context by referring to people who have
written deeply about emotions and by looking at the cards with which they were
matched. The division is not perfect, but I feel it is now consistent in
relationship to the RWS deck.
|
JOY |
DESIRE |
SORROW |
FEAR |
ANGER/HATE |
|
Accepting |
Aroused |
Apathetic |
Ambivalent |
Angry |
|
Amused |
Awed |
Depressed |
Cautious |
Arrogant |
|
Appreciated |
Curious |
Exhausted |
Defensive |
Belligerent |
|
Benevolent |
Daring |
Grief |
Despair |
Bitter |
|
Bliss |
Decisive |
Heartbroken |
Envious |
Bored |
|
Calm |
Desirous |
Lonely |
Hopeless |
Contemptuous |
|
Caring |
Determined |
Melancholy |
Impatient |
Defiant |
|
Compassionate |
Enthused |
Nostalgic |
Indecisive |
Discontented |
|
Complacent |
Expectant |
Overwhelmed |
Insecure |
Disgusted |
|
Confident |
Hopeful |
Pensive |
Jealous |
Fear |
|
Contented |
Inflamed |
Pity |
Panicked |
Guilty |
|
Ecstatic |
Inspired |
Regret |
Perplexed |
Hatred |
|
Festive |
Interested |
Resigned |
Shy |
Irritated |
|
Fulfilled |
Lust |
Sad |
Surprised |
Scorn |
|
Grateful |
Resolute |
|
Suspicious |
Self-Doubt |
|
Happy |
Yearning |
|
Wary |
Shame |
|
Joy |
|
|
Worried |
Smug |
|
Kind |
|
|
|
Spite |
|
Loving |
|
|
|
Stubborn |
|
Mirth |
|
|
|
|
|
Mischievous |
|
|
|
|
|
Patient |
|
|
|
|
|
Peaceful |
|
|
|
|
|
Proud |
|
|
|
|
|
Respect |
|
|
|
|
|
Reverent |
|
|
|
|
|
Satisfied |
|
|
|
|
|
Secure |
|
|
|
|
|
Serene |
|
|
|
|
|
Shameless |
|
|
|
|
|
Triumphant |
|
|
|
|
|
Welcoming |
|
|
|
|
|
Wondrous |
|
|
|
|
Permission is
hereby granted to use this information in teaching as long as acknowledgement
is made. Do not reprint on the web or elsewhere without permission from Mary K.
Greer <mkgreer@pacbell.net>
Mary K.
Greer is an
author and teacher specializing in methods of self-exploration and transformation. She is featured at Tarot conferences and symposia in the United States and abroad. Active in several Tarot associations and internet discussion groups, she teaches and writes for the women's and pagan communities, and is an Arch-Priestess/Hierophant in the Fellowship of Isis. Tools And Rites Of Transformation (T.A.R.O.T.) is a learning center founded and directed by Mary for the study of divination, women's mysteries, and the transformative arts. As a world traveler, Mary has lived in Japan, Germany, England, Mexico, in six states in the U.S., and leads workshops around the world. She resides in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas.
Her books include:
Understanding the Tarot Court (2004) with Tom Tadfor Little.
The Complete Book of Tarot Reversals (2002)
Tarot for Your Self: A Workbook for Personal Transformation (1984,
2002)
Aromatherapy: Healing for the Body and Soul (1998) with Kathi Keville
Women of the Golden Dawn: Rebels and Priestesses (1995)
The Essence of Magic: Tarot, Ritual, and Aroma-therapy (1993)
Tarot Mirrors: Reflections of Personal Meaning (1988)
Tarot Constellations: Patterns of Personal Destiny (1987)