Angela Osborne as Tarot’s Major Arcana VIII Strength

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Understanding Tarot’s Major Arcana

In Tarot the Major Arcana present a series of archetypes representative of stages of spiritual and personal growth or development. While the Minor Arcana (the same cards, basically, that we find in a standard deck of playing cards) indicate subtle processes that we can happen upon in any particular aspect of everyday life, the Major Arcana instead show a significant stage of a person’s overall life. The stages offered through the Major Arcana are told as a kind of story of the Fool’s Journey–the Fool being the fully open person guided by intuition with still a range of life experiences from which to learn. As the Fool (traditionally represented as a young man) moves forward on his life path he moves naturally through the growth processes of the Major Arcana (not necessarily in order) brought through the complexities of human life by his own choices and intuitive guidance both.

From this perspective, then, each Major Arcana can be understood as a sort of Jungian Archetype through which any of us may come to better understand tropes of human life and experience.

Superhero Archetypes

North American comic book superheros operate as a form of mythical archetype of the American psyche offering insight into our aspirations, fears, and stages of ethical development: Superman may stand as our cultures’ desire for principled truth and goodness; Batman as recognition of our darker inclinations and our will to generate right action even in the face of them.

When considering comic book heroes and women archetypes, however, its easiest to just admit we’ve not done enough work to develop really rockin’ women superheroes. They’re often ridiculously big-boobed, cranky, or generally sexually problematic. (I do rather like Storm from X-Men, but notice she never really hooks up. Or, Phoenix Force, also from X-Men, but notice she just flat destroys the men she tries to love. It would seem it’s hard to be a woman superhero AND happily in love. Though it actually seems men superheroes tend to have relationship trouble too. ANYWAY…) The point being, it can be hard to find an interesting range of superhero archetypes for channeling our favorite women wine makers through. With that in mind, I chose to look outside comic books to find the right figure for presenting Angela Osborne in her excellence. I find her, then, in one of the Major Arcana of Tarot.

Angela Osborne as Tarot’s VIII Strength

Having moved through a discovery of his own passions and power to wield them, the Fool leaves his recent struggles journeying into the next stage of his life journey. Along the way he encounters a woman in the distance that would seem to be struggling with a lion. Determined to save her, the Fool rushes forward, bolstered by his own previous triumphes through struggle. He is certain he will wrestle the lion, risk his life and thus utilize his masculine bravery to save the beautiful feminine figure. As he approaches, the Fool discovers the woman merely petting the lion, the beast having calmed from her presence now still strong and wild but at peace with the woman’s ease.

The Fool is confused. How could the lion relax its ferociousness to commune with the woman? And why would the woman wish to be so close to a beast? Compelled by the woman he asks her to explain. Without moving, the woman turns to the Fool and looks directly into his eyes. The Fool sees in her expression a great gentleness coupled with a calm certainty. In the combination he recognizes what would make the lion respond to her–she is in tune with her self in a way that allows her too to be in tune with her surroundings. It is not that she dominated the lion, but that she knew how to read and interact with the lion in a way that set it at ease. The Fool wishes to know what she would want with a beast. The woman reminds him that the lion is a unique energy with which there is much to experience and share.

(This version of the tarot story is largely thanks to aeclectic.net.)

Focused on honing her conscious awareness of what surrounds the wine she makes–both in the vineyards, and in the wine making facilities themselves, Angela Osborne presents a lived presentation of Tarot’s Strength card. She cultivates her already deep respect for the wine through a commitment to bio-dynamic vineyard and wine making practices. Additionally, she relies on her own intuition of what the wine needs as it is being birthed in the barrel, along with a sense of surrender to what nature will offer beyond her own control. Together these elements show the grounded, centered, clarity of the feminine figure of Tarot’s 8th Major Arcana, the Strength card.

We’ll spend the next two days considering Angela Osborne’s beautiful wines A Tribute to Grace, first through A Life in Wine story of how she came to making grenache, now alongside her husband Jason, then through a review of a complete vertical of the full Grace history.

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