Welcome back to Black Mirror Alchemy, dear reader!
Today, we are going to explore the third installment of our "No Reading is Truly a Cold Reading" series. If you missed the first two posts, make sure to check those out!
In this post, we are exploring the complex world of personality with the help of the Queen of Swords. The Queens in the Minor Arcana embody the nurturing, feminine principle that promotes the growth of their suit. The Queen of Swords, in particular, guides us to bring forth ideas, knowledge, and voices to foster clarity and understanding in our readings.
In our past two posts, we have looked at the smaller details of human psychology. The Page of Swords focused on the small details of human cognition, while the Knight of Swords synthesized those details into workable forms. Now that we know the inner workings of human psychology, it is time to start to pay close attention to the ways in which these processes form the whole person.
Embracing the Queen of Swords
The Queen of Swords is a sever figure in the tarot. Of all the queens, she represents the harshest and bluntest of the feminine archetypes. She, like her younger brothers, does not spare feelings when she tells you the truth, for the actualization of the real is her most valued principle. When we channel her energy, we discard the social niceties and gendered expectations society places on us. For her, these social customs only bar the path toward truth.
When we embrace the Queen of Swords as a tarot reader, our job is to get to the root of the querent's psyche to best construct reading space to allow for truth to emerge. We can do this by speaking openly and honestly with the querent, as well as focusing the reading on the underlying principles at play in the cards and their associations. The Queen does not soften the blow of a reading, regardless of how severe. For example, if the Death card appears, she will use it to concentrate on the querent's mortality salience, rather than talk in circles about the metaphysics of rebirth.
Personality and Tarot
One of the quickest avenues to get to the heart of the querent is to read their personality. Personality is described as the persistent patterns of affect, behavior, and cognition that we experience across our lifetime. While we may think that our personalities are hidden from the view of others, there is some fascinating research that has demonstrated that people are really good at guessing a stranger's personality based solely on their face (this is called, "zero-acquaintance personality perceptions").
In the first contact with someone, we get a real sense for what makes someone tick and create models in our own mind to predict how this person will behave. In psychology, we call this phenomenon "Theory of Mind," which is the ability to take a minimum amount of information about someone and predict their internal states and subsequent behavior. This skill is incredibly important when conducting tarot readings, as it can give us a core set of knowledge about our querents before we even start dealing cards. Once the cards are dealt, we can then tailor our interpretations based on our mental models about the querent.
The Big Five Model of Personality
While we tend to think of personality as an esoteric art, psychologists have deduced that there are five major components of personality that all contribute to the core self. This model is called the Big Five model and is composed of Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. These dimensions help us understand the broad aspects of human personality. Each of these dimensions has different aspects of human psychology associated with them. See the table below for some things to look out for when assessing if someone is high in a certain trait.
| Trait | Affect | Behavior | Cognition |
|---|---|---|---|
| Openness | Pleasure from new experiences, excitement at novel things, uncomfortable with routine | Does not keep a consistent schedule, engages in odd or creative work, never orders the same thing on a menu | Creative, curious, flexible worldview |
| Conscientiousness | Concerned with order, stresses out over clutter or mess, finds pleasure in tradition | Organized, punctual, clean and neat | Logical, systematic, thoughtful |
| Extraversion | Gains energy from social interaction | Socially engaged, has large friend groups, spends lots of time in public | Socially and emotionally intelligent, understands group dynamics |
| Agreeableness | Distressed when there is conflict, enjoys bringing joy to people | Apologetic, identifies love languages and acts on them, conflict avoidant | Empathetic |
| Neuroticism | Prone to anxiety and mood swings | Nervous tics, fidgety, always on high alert to their surroundings | Rumination, paranoia, pessimism |
Quick Assessment Tips
- Openness: Look for fashion-forward clothes and makeup. If they are wearing something outside of the norm, this is your clue they have high openness.
- Conscientiousness: If their clothing is streamlined, neat, or well taken care of, this is your clue that they are high in this trait.
- Extraversion: For extraversion, look at their mannerisms. People high in this trait tend to have better social skills, largely due to practice. If they command a presence, make you feel seen and important, or engage fluidly in conversation, you may be dealing with a highly extraverted person.
- Agreeableness: If your querent is highly agreeable, look for traditional dress and non-showy appearance. They may also be highly complimentary or apologetic.
- Neuroticism: Look for fidgety behavior, problems maintaining eye contact, or other signs of nervous energy.
From these cues, we can start to deduce if a querent is high in extraversion, or perhaps low in conscientiousness. This is helpful when constructing our stories from the cards. For example, if you get high neurotic energy from a querent, anticipate they may be bad at taking criticism from the cards, so you need to find softer ways of communication. Alternatively, if you suspect someone is high in agreeableness, do not expect honest feedback from them about the quality of your reading.
The Psychoanalytic Perspective
Outside of the Big Five model of personality, another way to think about reading the self is through the psychoanalytic lens. From this perspective, humans are a construction of a multitiered system of conscious and unconscious influences. While we may not be able to readily read someone's personality with this perspective, it is useful for exploring unconscious influences that may be at play with a querent.
In Freudian psychoanalysis, we understand personality as being a construction of the id, ego, and superego. The id is our unconscious mind, filled with our primal desires, like food, sex, and pleasure. The superego is our unconscious moral mind, which contains our judgments and our ideals. The ego is our conscious self, which has to balance the desires of the id and the superego. Imagine the id and the superego as a devil and angel on our shoulders, with the ego as the one trying to make sense of their conflicting demands.
Working in tandem with the ego is the superego. The superego is the strict, moral part of the personality that holds us to our higher ideals. The superego is the part of us that tells us to pay for our groceries before eating them, even if we are gluttonous.
Typically, the id and the superego work symbiotically, balancing our need for sustenance with our higher ideals. For example, the ego balances the id's desire for food with the superego's guidance to find something within budget rather than opting for an expensive meal.
The Collective Unconscious
Deeper into the unconscious, we have what Carl Jung called the collective unconscious. Jung argued that humans across the species have access to this shared repository of meaning and symbolism, which we use to engage with the world and construct our sense of self. Housed in the collective unconscious are the archetypes, which I've touched on briefly in past blog posts (See here!).
Two of the most important archetypes are the anima and the animus, representing the feminine and masculine aspects of ourselves. Jung theorized that only men have an anima and only women have an animus, but I believe that regardless of gender, we possess both unconscious influences. Balancing the anima and animus within ourselves is crucial for healthy self-expression.
An immature anima in a man can lead to negative feminine traits like gossiping, while an out-of-sync animus in a woman can result in violence or workaholism. Below the anima and animus are various archetypes like the wise old man, the great mother, the father, the hero, and the broken healer. These archetypes strive to manifest in our lives, but caution is warranted to avoid being consumed by them. Ideally, you should use the influence of these archetypes to complement who you are rather than allowing them to dominate your personality.
If you've ever met someone too committed to the role of "mother" who exhibits toxic behavior when not affirmed in that role, you understand this phenomenon. So, have fun channeling archetypes but be careful not to let them consume you.
New Tarot Spread: Archetypal Spread
For this week's tarot spread, I want to give you some tips on how to assess your inner relationship with yourself and the influencing archetypes in your life. Because archetypes live in the symbolic world and we cannot directly communicate with them, tarot is a fabulous way to do a check-in.
Notice that in the bottom row of this spread, I do not have specific guidelines for interpreting these major archetypical influences. I like the archetypes to speak freely during a reading, but feel free to assign additional meaning to these placements.
Thank you for reading this post! I appreciate your time and hope you have a fabulous week ahead!
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