Classic meanings: Vigilance, retreat, solitude, hermit’s repose, exile, tomb and coffin. It is these last that have suggested the design.

In this tarot spread the card has complementary explanation: No regrets. He was no good for you, anyway. He didn’t understand you. He had no clue what it means to love.

Original description of the card by the author – Arthur Edward Waite: The effigy of a knight in the attitude of prayer, at full length upon his tomb.

Classic meanings: Death, failure, miscarriage, delay, deception, disappointment, despair.

The meaning for love is clarified by specific arcanum: A man cannot recover from such devotion of the heart to such a woman! He ought not, he does not.

Original description of the card by the author – Arthur Edward Waite: One seated on her couch in lamentation, with the swords over her. She is as one who knows no sorrow which is like unto hers. It is a card of utter desolation.

Classic meanings: Bad news, violent chagrin, crisis, censure, power in trammels, conflict, calumny, also sickness.

In this tarot spread the card has complementary explanation: He didn’t deserve compassion. He deserved worse, far worse than he had ever been given.

Original description of the card by the author – Arthur Edward Waite: A woman, bound and hoodwinked, with the swords of the card about her. Yet it is rather a card of temporary durance than of irretrievable bondage.

Classic meanings: Destiny, fortune, success, elevation, luck, felicity.

In relation to love and feelings, this card has additional arcanum: Fortune favors the bold. One doesn’t win glory by hiding behind the lines.

Original description of the card by the author – Arthur Edward Waite: In this symbol I have again followed the reconstruction of Eliphas Lévi, who has furnished several variants. It is legitimate—as I have intimated—to use Egyptian symbolism when this serves our purpose, provided that no theory of origin is implied therein. I have, however, presented Typhon in his serpent form. The symbolism is, of course, not exclusively Egyptian, as the four Living Creatures of Ezekiel occupy the angles of the card, and the wheel itself follows other indications of Lévi in respect of Ezekiel’s vision, as illustrative of the particular Tarot Key. With the French occultist, and in the design itself, the symbolic picture stands for the perpetual motion of a fluidic universe and for the flux of human life. The Sphinx is the equilibrium therein. The transliteration of Taro as Rota is inscribed on the wheel, counterchanged with the letters of the Divine Name—to show that Providence is implied through all. But this is the Divine intention within, and the similar intention without is exemplified by the four Living Creatures. Sometimes the sphinx is represented couchant on a pedestal above, which defrauds the symbolism by stultifying the essential idea of stability amidst movement.

Behind the general notion expressed in the symbol there lies the denial of chance and the fatality which is implied therein. It may be added that, from the days of Lévi onward, the occult explanations of this card are—even for occultism itself—of a singularly fatuous kind. It has been said to mean principle, fecundity, virile honor, ruling authority, etc. The findings of common fortune-telling are better than this on their own plane.

Classic meanings: It is a card of loss, but something remains over, three have been taken, but two are left, it is a card of inheritance, patrimony, transmission, but not corresponding to expectations, with some interpreters it is a card of marriage, but not without bitterness or frustration.

The signifficance for love is explained by specific arcanum: If your love doesn’t require any sacrifices, it ain’t love.

Original description of the card by the author – Arthur Edward Waite: A dark, cloaked figure, looking sideways at three prone cups, two others stand upright behind him, a bridge is in the background, leading to a small keep or holding.