I had a couple lucid dreams the other night. This isn’t a super uncommon experience for me - I’ve written a number of times about dreaming and the strange things I experience in this space. For some reason though, I’ve been more fascinated than usual about the most recent episodes, I think because I intuit they have much to teach us about not just dreams, but the nature of reality as a whole.

So, what is it about lucid dreams? For anyone whose had one, you will recognize that remarkable feeling when reality clicks and then shifts - that moment you realize you’re in a dream. It’s as if some great epiphany has been bestowed upon you and now, you’re in this elevated, illuminated and liberated state. And for the most part, the dream usually looks the same even once this realization is achieved, but the feeling you have while in it is what’s been altered. It’s exciting - the prospect of no longer being bound to the rules of the world! You can do as you please, at least for as long as you can remain in the dream.

You know we love to play “link the cards” over here (see 78 Connections). The other day we were exploring a reading and we were reminded of a certain little detail that pops up in 4 of the 78 cards, 3 of which are majors. We touched on this briefly in a post we did sometime back exploring the symbolism of The Fool. The detail in question is, of course, the red feather.

The red feather can be seen on the heads of The Fool, Death and the child in The Sun. It can also be seen on the Page of Wands, and likely carries many of the same themes that we’ll be looking at, but for the purpose of this post, we’ll be sticking to just the Majors.

Well, it’s taken half a year but we’re back with another installment of our Tarot Pillar series. If you’re new to this, you may want to check out the introductory post where we lay the groundwork for the elements we’ll be exploring.

To summarize what has previously been written, we essentially began this journey by supposing that the pillared cards in tarot have something to tell us about the unfoldment of consciousness (individually and collectively). There are 3 apparent pillared cards in the Major Arcana which are The High Priestess, The Hierophant and Justice. Each of these cards represents one of the 4 elements and contains a different background colour. Given this, we speculated a fourth (hidden) pillared card also existed to fill the gap. We figured it was The Emperor because that would account for the missing element (fire) and also supply our 4th unique background colour (red).

It was almost one month to this day that we shared our last entry in this series, highlighting the High Priestess as a Guardian to the Water Gate. In that post, we speculated that The High Priestess contained keys to a path that, if followed, would lead to unlocking hidden faculties and a greater sense of awareness. Today, we will continue with that exploration, diving straight through the gates of The Emperor into the land of Fire. Of course, if you’re feeling a bit lost, you may want to go back and read the full introductory post. Now is also a good time to remind readers that these are just ideas and in no way are we making any definitive claims. This is just one way of many to understand tarot and we hope others find it interesting and resonant.

Last month we introduced a new series where we opened up an exploration of the pillared cards in tarot (The Waite/Smith deck specifically). In that post, we set the stage for what we envision will be a 5-part journey through each of the following Major Arcana - The High Priestess, The Emperor, The Hierophant, and Justice. The purpose of these posts is to create the supposition that each of these cards is a gateway to greater degrees of consciousness, demonstrated through 4 separate plotlines that also intersect. Along those lines, we are asking the following - what might these 4 entrances veil? What other cards connect to their plotline? And what can be learned by approaching them in this way? While you can read the full introductory post, we will provide a brief recap before we jump through our first gate guarded by The High Priestess. This is a good time to remind readers that these are just ideas and in no way are we making any definitive claims. This is just one way of many to understand tarot and we hope others find it interesting and resonant.

The pillared cards in tarot are among the most fascinating. They act as gateways or portals to elsewhere...but where do they lead? What lies beyond their veil? In what way should we approach them? And how may we be granted access?

When we first decided we would write about the pillared cards in tarot, we did so with the intention of producing one article with our speculations and explorations. But we've realized that there is more to say than can be contained in a single post and so this will be at least a 5 part series, starting with this one, an introduction to the whole scheme.

What are the pillared cards in tarot? Simply put, they are the Major Arcana cards which feature a central figure sitting between 2 pillars. There are 3 which are obvious - The High Priestess, The Hierophant, and Justice. But examining these 3 cards, the set feels incomplete. A reliable structure, after all, is typically defined by its 4 posts. As well, we have only 3 of the 4 elements represented, so it stands to reason we’re missing a fourth. The elements so far accounted for are water, earth, and air - so, where’s the fire?