This layout forms the shape of an arrow pointing upwards, symbolic of the focus of any ambitious, career-minded individual. The first card shows where you are currently at in your career. The second shows the challenge you will need to overcome on your way up the ladder of success. You can rely on your strengths, hinted at in Card #3 to help you along your way. Cards #4 and #5 show the Past and Future Influences that affect your journey. Finally, Card #6 shows the outcome of your efforts.

The Outcome![]() The Emperor |
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Past Related Influences![]() 6 of Cups |
Future Related Influences![]() The Tower |
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Your Strengths![]() Death |
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The Challenges Before You![]() 3 of Swords |
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Your Current Position![]() 2 of Cups |
Your Current Position
A youth and maiden are pledging the love of one another, and above their cups rises the Caduceus of Hermes, between the great wings of which there appears a lion's head. It is a variant of a sign which is found in a few old examples of this card.
Upright Meaning:
Love, passion, friendship, affinity, union, concord, sympathy, the interrelation of the sexes, and – as a suggestion apart from all offices of divination – that desire which Nature is sanctified.
Three swords piercing a heart; cloud and rain behind.
Reversed Meaning:
Mental alienation, error, loss, distraction, disorder, confusion, a storm brewing.
The Grim Reaper rides into town on a pale horse. The king has fallen, and the Pope greets Death with the king's family. The sun sets in the gateway on the horizon.
Reversed Meaning:
Inertia, sleep, lethargy, hope destroyed, depression, sloth, misery, undoing, ruin, subjugation.
Children in an old garden, their cups filled with flowers.
Upright Meaning:
Remembrances, looking back, as on childhood; happiness, enjoyment, but coming rather from the past; things that have vanished. Another reading reverses this, giving new relations, new knowledge, new environment, and then the children are disporting in an unfamiliar precinct.
Lightning strikes the top of a Tower, knocking the crown off the top. Reminiscent of the Tower of Babel, two figures fall from grace.
Upright Meaning:
Misery, calamity, deception, ruin, catastrophe, distress, adversity, disaster, discord, falling apart, going all to pieces, injury.
The Emperor sits on his throne holding his sceptre. He represents a male figure of power and authority.
Upright Meaning:
Authority, stability, power, protection, benevolence, realisation a greatness, aid, reason, conviction, willpower.