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I’m going to post a bit of an overview/brainstorm of ideas about the tarot cards used in this episode. I wrote most of this last night with reference to my own books and decks, none of which are traditional decks, and have checked it against online information prior to posting. Please feel free to add to this if you know more or have different ideas. As I said, mine are non-traditional decks, and I’m also out of practice. I tried to find this deck, which I’m sure I’ve seen before, but a google image search didn’t pull up any familiar cards, so I don’t know what deck it is. It looks a fairly traditional one, though. EDIT: It looks a lot like this one: http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/oswald-wirth/
The initial spread. From left: Audrey, Charlotte, Nathan, Dwight.
Note that Audrey, for some reason, is the only character in this episode who gets a card from the Minor Arcana, rather than the Major Arcana (effectively the Tarot Trump cards; you can map the rest to the suits and cards of regular playing cards, more or less, but the Major Arcana represent particular special archetypes). Perhaps the team thought that the image on it already looked like her a little bit? It does make things slightly strange because otherwise it would be possible to surmise that the fortune teller is drawing from a deck using only the Major Arcana, which does happen. If that’s not the case, then the cards drawn in this episode are absurdly weighted to Major Arcana cards, which actually only make up a quarter of the deck.
First the suit – swords are related to air/the realm of the mind, and thus the cards of this suit represent mental struggles, and rational and logical people. Audrey. Check.
I think this card is actually principally about balance and choices, possibly with a lack of information. The fork in the road. There are two shores, two swords. The woman can’t see to choose. Blindness would be a literal reading?? – Having checked this online it suggests a rational mind facing a choice, reversed would indicate indecision and the two choices being alike to being caught between a rock and a hard place, stuck between two sides or points of view.
There’s a ??comet in the background. (The information I’m looking at suggests it’s supposed to be a crescent moon, but it doesn’t look like the moon, and either way) Audrey is associated with celestial objects – the meteor shower – and cycles governed by celestial objects, which are also represented in her second card.
I find it hard to believe, especially considering that the show plumped for a Minor Arcana card here and nowhere else, that something about this choice wasn’t knowing and deliberate.
Charlotte – VIII Strength (reversed)
I think the Strength card shown here is a misprint. While I don’t own this particular deck, that picture should have a woman taming a lion on it in the vast majority of decks, and the images in this deck are fairly standard for the rest. I think that’s Justice with the wrong name on the bottom, there are scales in her hand. I’m not sure if this was an error or an actual misprinted version of the deck or if they subbed the picture for some reason. The card is reversed. It’s usually a positive card, but it’s been drawn upside-down. (I don’t personally like reversing cards in my decks, though sometimes I find they reverse themselves, so I‘m not massively confident extrapolating about these.) So I guess reversing Strength=weakness, and it manifests physically as that seems to be the fashion this Trouble works.
I suppose that Charlotte as a character isn’t someone we’ve seen display much doubt or hesitation or vulnerabilities since she came along. She’s usually been the one with the answers, the one bolstering the heroes up or providing them a foil. Strength reversed could actually be representative of oppression and misuse of power according to one of my handbooks, which is certainly something that lies in Charlotte’s past.
Nathan – X The Wheel of Fortune (reversed)
This was considered by some at various points in history, so I hear, to be the most sought after, most important card in the deck, but here it’s drawn reversed as ill-luck. Normally, it could indicate prosperity, opportunity, risk-taking, courage. Reversed obviously indicates the crash – or seeking too much, reaching too far, delusions of grandeur, and also exploitative and manipulative acts in the pursuit of the goal. I think Nathan in the show’s story so far has definitely been riding that wheel, and there’s some indication this card could be for self-inflicted ill-luck as a result of actions committed in the past, and accepting responsibility. Anyway – ill luck, and the Trouble’s usual literal manifestation: in this card I guess he’s the fellow, or creature (what is that??) being crushed beneath the wheel, while the fellow on the other side is raised up.
Dwight – XII The Hanged Man
The Hanged Man is supposedly one of the worst cards in the deck, and doesn’t need to be reversed to spell out alarming events. I would consider it more about world-turned-upside-down kind of upheaval and events, the article I’m looking at talks about suspension of decisions and waiting, and possible restriction and release from restriction, but I’m pretty sure it’s widely perceived more generally negatively than that. It has a sacrificial connotation, albeit willing sacrifice. I have seen it ascribed to this card that it can indicate death (the actual Death card is more about change and letting go, though that can indicate death, too). Just a note that the figure on the card can be read as a Christ figure; I don’t think that on this card the hanging man is actually stabbed in the side, but Dwight receives a Christ-like stab wound in his side as the Trouble progresses.
Dwight – XV The Devil
Dwight’s second card is The Devil. Ominous name, but actually more representative of chaotic mischief, excess, addiction and indulgence than evil per se. The results engineered by the Trouble in this episode take a very literal and physical form. I don’t see any obvious way that this is connected to Dwight’s character or ongoing arc. Unless, possibly, we could read this as his bondage in service to the town of Haven and its Troubled people, or possibly on another level that the show didn’t manifest, indicative to some degree of Dwight maybe feeling intoxicated with his new power since the rule of law collapsed in Haven and he took charge; there’s some references to this card representing being stuck to an idea or obsession. Both the temptation and bondage of leadership, perhaps. It’s interesting that this is matched with XII The Hanged Man, where restriction was an associated keyword.
Charlotte – VI The Lovers
Charlotte’s second card is the Lovers. It doesn’t have to be literal lovers, it can be about partnership and symbiosis, working together, or a close friendship. The tarot reader doesn’t particularly have any context here to ascribe the very literal reading that she does, and indeed, as we know from 5x19, the lovers don’t come back together. The card could easily have indicated/contributed to the success of her partnership in controlling the aether with Audrey. Note that the arrow and the overhanging threat actually makes this quite a visually ominous card, despite the name. Charlotte is strongly associated with partnerships x3 at this point in the show, with Croatoan, with Audrey, with Dwight, most especially both in this episode and 5x19. (Even to some extent with Nathan. In 5x19, she has messages for all of them, even if Nathan’s is purely a practical symbiosis of shared knowledge and ideas rather than one of emotional involvement.) I’m reading a website that suggests it’s also a card about reassessing personal philosophy and values, moral crossroads, challenges to established value system, which is very representative of Charlotte’s journey on the show.
Audrey – XVII The Moon
Like the tarot reader says, this card could mean many things. It’s associated with fear, anxiety, madness, dreams, delusion and illusion, and the loss of logic and reason. It’s associated with the subconscious and the “shadow self”. Obviously this is hugely relevant to Audrey’s character arc. It’s also, interestingly, a card with a connection with cycles and breaking out of old patterns. Post-Mara, it’s pretty clear this connects with Audrey’s feelings of being unreal and an illusion herself, and the literal manifestation of that a feature of her remaining feelings about fading away in 5A, first inside Mara, and then when she was rebuilt and retrieved but her body was failing while separated from Mara.
Note that Nathan is the only one not to draw a second card for himself. Given the foul luck he’s already cursed with, he could pretty well guarantee that it would be the worst card possible and he’d probably end up dead.
What Nathan does draw is the last card for everyone, though he has the idea to reshuffle and start a brand new reading that Croatoan hasn’t tainted. This doesn’t guarantee that his bad luck won’t taint it. Nor necessarily does his question and the narrow terms he defines for the reading.
All – XX Judgement
This is Nathan’s second draw but starting from a new reading, new question, for everyone. In my deck it’s more about objective self-evaluation, I’m looking at information that talks about awakening to new life, but this is a divine/universal judgement pictured, and it’s firmly established we are working in a field of literal interpretation so far as its physical results impact upon the heroes. Nobody in-show has stopped to wonder or examine what that says for Charlotte’s fate, though Charlotte admitted herself that she was not a good person before she came to Haven. Audrey seemed to suggest that this last reading was still in play in the dialogue of 5x19.
“See how your past created your present and what your present will create for you in the future”, my book says. It has to be said that this seems very fitting for Charlotte’s apparent end. The re-evaluation of Nathan’s choices has been a theme very present this season, most particularly in 5x16, and it’s returned to here. Some part of Nathan wants to be judged, I think. There’s a very strong vibe growing in this season for judgement and reparation, with him at the centre of it. This card is numerically related to X The Wheel of Fortune, which is Nathan’s prior card.
There are two more cards mentioned in the episode. XVI The Tower is an absolutely terrible card, symbolizing ruin, though it can also indicate purification or transformation through suffering to burn/scour/destroy the old. The chap who receives the reading is literally subjected to the depictions upon the card itself, though. VII The Chariot is about will and goals, motion and success and is quite a materialistic card but is not generally one you’d expect to indicate a deadly reading – the outcome from this one is just weird and suggests, in fact, that the Trouble is geared toward the drawn cards having literal and worst-case-scenario effects even when not deliberately guided by Croatoan for that purpose. I can’t remember offhand if this one was drawn reversed, but it would probably make some more sense from that perspective, figuring a loss of control.