Erica Tucci

Constructing our ego

Today’s Tarot installment is going to talk about constructing our ego, where we venture out into the world, coming into contact with others, which in turn helps us to get in touch with our own essence. Hopefully, through our experiences, we learn how to make the right choices for our highest good. In other words, we learn to follow our own truth and accept and love ourselves for who we really are, warts and all! The cards that take us through this phase of the Fool’s journey are the Lovers, the Chariot, Strength, the Hermit, the Wheel of Fortune, Justice and the Hanged Man.

The LoversIf we look at the Lovers, we see that it reflects the courage to become involved with others, with life in the outside world. No longer is the Fool in us self-centered, identifying solely with ourselves. We are now projecting our inner yin (feminine) and yang (masculine) energies (as depicted in the Magician, High Priestess, Emperor and Empress in my last blog post) out into the world in the form of relationships. And this isn’t just about love relationships. It’s about all forms of partnerships, including our relationship with ourselves. Remember, we all have a balance of masculine and feminine energies within, and through understanding these energies, we can see ourselves more clearly.

And as we gain a certain mastery of ourselves, feeling strong with who we are, we develop anThe Chariot inner control that allows us to have reign over our environment. The Chariot represents our ego, showing how we now are attempting to control opposing inner forces so that we may move forward and advance socially. We become willful and assertive as we ride victoriously through our world that we are surveying.

StrengthHowever, we find that in our inner landscape, inner impulses try to surface, wanting to be heard. The Strength card shows us that we need to listen to these instincts, as they give us a broader perspective of our life. We also learn that our willful command must be tempered by patience and tolerance and a more loving approach to life, and that it’s necessary to have an open exchange between the inner and outer forces.

Sooner or later, there comes the time when we want to just retreat fromThe Hermit the world like the Hermit. We begin to see that there is more to life than just existing. We go on a quest to gain insights that may lead us to our own truth. We look inward, trying to understand our feelings and motivations.

This soul-searching leads us to the Wheel of Fortune, which shows how everything in life connects, how all events in our lives lead us to our destiny and how we must take responsibility for our lives. And when we do, we feel a sense of purpose in Wheel of Fortunethe grand scheme of things.

And as we look back over our lives and see how our behaviors and actions have played out, we then allow ourselves to be under the eye of Justice to make sure we have a very clear understanding of the connection between our inner and outer lives. We seek balance as we Justicecontinue on our journey of finding our inner truth.

This continued quest may reveal certain limitations, inhibitions and repressions that we need to assimilate and grieve so that we can release the emotional charge that is evoked. We must become modest, and surrender to our experiences and not resist them. By doing so, we can relinquish our need to control everything. This is the phase of the Hanged Man, where we gain a sense of deep wisdom, not from what we “do”, but more from our state of “being”. We move in the natural flow of life, instead of pushing upstream against the current.

Hanged ManUpon reaching the end of this phase of the Fool’s journey, we now have more awareness that will help us with any future confrontations we may encounter. The last nine cards of the Major Arcana, which will be the subject of my next post, discuss the integration of the conscious and unconscious and address how we handle these conflicts so that we can ultimately reach a place of complete fulfillment in life.

I hope you are enjoying my posts about the Tarot. I really would love to hear from you, letting me know if these resonate with you, or providing constructive criticism that would help me better serve you. And again, if you’re interested, please subscribe to my blog by clicking the Subscribe button below, to keep receiving posts that I hope will be inspiring and enlightening to you. And if you would enjoy getting a Tarot reading from me, click here.

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