It is such a pleasure to introduce you to Benebell Wen, a talented Tarot reader and author of the book, “Holistic Tarot: An Integrative Approach to Using Tarot for Personal Growth“. I was blown away when I had the privilege of previewing Benebell’s book in advance of its launch in January. Benebell presents the Tarot in such a grounded, down-to-earth way, and covers absolutely all bases in her book. I highly recommend it.

For now, I want to welcome Benebell to the My Tarot Club blog as she presents a two-part series on reading Tarot through the five components of circumstance. She integrates her Chinese background with her love for Tarot to provide a unique approach to working with the cards. I’m sure you will enjoy the fresh perspective! Over to you, Benebell…

There is a well-known saying in Chinese commonly associated with the divinatory world: “one: fate, two: luck, three: fengshui, four: karma, and five: education.” It is said that these five components affect our life path and future. I have taken that traditional concept and adapted it to modern tarot practices. I refer to the interpretive framework as the five components of circumstance.

I am grateful to Brigit’s amazing blog for hosting this two-part series on the Five Components. In this post, I’ll review what the Five Components concept is and discuss the first two components, Force Majeure and Karma. Next week I will conclude the series with Disposition, Education, and Action.

So what the heck is the Five Components and why care? Chinese theory suggests that there is a set formula for success that is deeply personalized according to how the five components of circumstance stack up for us. Our success is based on how well we apply that formula. The metaphysical rationale behind Chinese divination is to determine that formula for each person so that he or she can best manifest success and happiness.

Tarot can be used to help us uncover that formula. We can use the five components as a framework for interpreting tarot readings and by doing so, articulate that formula. So adding the five components to your arsenal of tarot reading techniques can only strengthen your divination.

 

 The Five Components of Circumstance

The five components take into consideration both nature and nurture. It presumes the cosmological concept that parts of our life are predetermined, while parts of it are up to free will and the choices we make. Fate is the predetermined circumstance you are born into, which if auspicious means you’re not likely to have to exert too much effort to succeed, but if not auspicious, then the other components are going to be more substantial factors.

Luck is related to fate and the notion that some are born lucky while others are born unlucky. Feng shui suggests that the environment we are in heavily influences the trajectory of our life paths. Karma then takes into consideration past lives, but more generally, it is about the consequences of our past actions. Finally, Education is the free will aspect, the amount of effort we are willing to exert to push the course of our own life paths.

My reinterpretation of the traditional Chinese saying blends it with more Western sensibilities, though remaining authentic to the cosmological principles behind the saying. I reinterpret the five components as: Force Majeure, Karma, Disposition, Education, and Action, which I will explain in this series.

 

 

 

 

FM: Force Majeure

Force majeure refers to the overriding superior forces that profoundly affect an outcome. They are chance occurrences. They are inevitable. They are the things that “just happen.” Force majeure is how the universe has helped or hindered your progress in accomplishing your greater purpose.

Force majeure is my synthesis of the Chinese concepts of fate and luck. It is what you were born with, whether you were born a king or born a pauper, but it is not a determination of what will happen for sure. Force majeure does not necessarily determine your outcome, because the king can become a pauper and the pauper can become a king. Force majeure is merely the kind of family, social class, society, race, community you were born into, but what you do with that given lot is a different story.

In my practice, the Major Arcana cards generally indicate Force Majeure, especially Death, The Tower, orJudgement. When these cards appear in a reading, in addition to the regular course of interpretation, I would note how fate and luck seems to play into the seeker’s situation, though I would also remind the seeker that fate and luck do not determine our outcomes.

The Eight of Wands, Nine of Cups, Four of Swords, or Five of Pentacles are also indicative of force majeure. When these cards come up, I often start thinking about how the seeker can harness the remaining four components of circumstance to adjust an outcome favorably.

Here, I do need to address the most important point of all: your tarot deck speaks to you directly, and I am not able to give fixed correspondences of which cards go with which of the five components because it will differ from practitioner to practitioner. The five components reading method espoused here is intermediate, and it is assumed that you are already conversant with the tarot and thus can use your own intuition and connection with your cards to determine which cards for you denote which of the five components. The Wheel of Fortune, for example, may denote Force Majeure for some practitioners, and for others, it may denote Karma.And it might even vary from reading to reading, case by case.

K: Karma

Karma is the accounting of your past acts and the consequences, positive or negative, on your present and future. Helping out a stranger in a parking lot, for example, might trigger a chain of events that leads back to a different stranger helping you out in your time of need three months later. Karma is the series of cause and effect that is also the score of your conduct.

The Chinese believe that you can tweak your fate and luck by generating good in the world. Compassion, benevolence, and acts of kindness can change your Force Majeure for the better. If you go out of your way to generate evil or acts of malice, what should have been great luck and fortune for you can take a turn for the worse. In that sense, per Chinese metaphysical concepts, Force Majeure and Karma are related.

The Lovers, Justice, or Wheel of Fortune often signify Karma to me, though The Tower has at times also suggested karmic influences. There’s also the Five, Seven, or Ten of Swords or the Seven or Ten of Pentacles. Again, the point here isn’t which cards correspond exactly with Karma, but rather the point is to begin thinking about a particular tarot spread as offering insights or specific messages about karmic influences.

 Preliminary Practice

As you proceed with your regular tarot readings this week, think about which cards you’ve drawn into a spread seem to suggest Force Majeure and which seem to suggest Karma. Remember: you and I are not going to agree unanimously on what suggests what. This is about your direct intuitive connection with your deck of cards and which cards in your deck trigger Force Majeure for you, and which trigger Karma, and how you can most effectively apply that in a reading to provide supplemental information to a seeker.

Here are three cards drawn at random to study, right to left: the Ten of Cups, the Five of Cups, and the Five of Swords.

Proceed with your regular reading technique. Let’s start with the Five of Cups. It indicates a time of sustaining losses and feeling regretful about those losses. Emotions are the undercurrent creating a sense of tension and anxiety right now. Opportunities were missed. However, not all of them are gone. There are the two intact cups behind the figure in the card that we can talk about. The heart of the message for this card is in those two intact cups: going forward, what can be done now to ensure no more missed opportunities and to minimize the damage?

For the purpose of this exercise, think about the Five of Cups as either Force Majeure or Karma. What does your intuition tell you in the moment? Don’t think about it. Go with your gut. Why the losses? What’s going on here? Did something “just happen” here, a greater external force that now has to be navigated? Or were the losses a karmic result of something the seeker did in the recent past? What does the Five of Cups denote here, Force Majeure or Karma?Hint:The Five of Swords might give some insight.

Note also how the two intact cups in the Five of Cups is closer to the final card in the spread, the Ten of Cups. Note how the “Five” in the Five of Cups connects to the “Five” in the Five of Swords leftward, and how the “Cups” connects with the Ten of Cups rightward. This should bear great relevance in how you interpret the cards as Force Majeure or Karma.

Now, that connection from the two intact cups into the Ten of Cups is most important: how do we identify that bridge? Five Components analysis can really help here. Once you identify for yourself whether the card expresses Force Majeure or Karma, you can use that determination to identify that bridge, and that bridge is what the seeker has to do to ensure the Ten of Cups outcome.

In the subsequent part of this series, I will continue with the Five Components to cover Disposition, Education, and Action, and explain how to put all of the components together and integrate them into any tarot reading.

Image Credits: All card images from the Anna.K Tarot (Llewellyn, 2013) by Anna Klaffinger

 

About Benebell Wen

 Benebell Wen is the author of Holistic Tarot, An Integrative Approach to Using Tarot for Personal Growth (North Atlantic Books, January 6, 2015). Visit her at www.benebellwen.com.

 

 

 

 

PSST... Do you want to create a personal and intuitive connection with each and every Tarot card and ultimately become a better Tarot reader? Later this month, I'll be opening the doors to my signature program, TF1: Master the Tarot Card Meanings, and you're invited!

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