It’s [NAME WITHHELD]’S assistant again. I found this message in what I thought was a stack of flyers from who knows when. I would have tossed it in recycling and lost it forever except I keep flyers around to line my birds’ cage. I hope [NAME WITHHELD] is okay. I’m getting seriously worried here…

FOUR WINDS you will die

Placement: The Obscure Arcana

Description: A windstorm emanating from four clouds blows the four creatures of the evangelists, along with a boat, a panicking man and a sadly resigned dog.


Right side up:

The fan-hitting excrement of the universe.

While the Wheel of Fortune card covers fate and karma, and the Jeopardy card covers the random connections we form between facts, the Four Winds overlaps these as the card that represents the random nature of life’s events that we like to call fate.

This card ought not to exist. If there is any randomness in the universe then how could fate exist? If fate does not exist then the future cannot be accurately predicted. If one cannot accurately predict the future then what are we doing reading tarot cards such as The Four Winds? Is it all for nothing? Can we find whatever meaning we want, deep down, in any symbolic imagery? Does that even matter, so long as it inspires lateral thinking? What am I doing? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!


Upside down:

Doldrums. While the adage “anything that can happen, will happen,” The Four Winds reversed symbolizes the utter lack of happening. Your world does not advance. You become like a still, silent ship’s starving sailors, or like a meteorologist trapped in the existential horror of a frozen Groundhog Day.

The Four Winds reversed may also indicate that the querent is blowing problems out of proportion. What you mistook for the fan-hitting excrement of the universe was, in fact, the ambrosia of the universe, and by ducking behind an asteroid you tragically miss the very best splash.

Incidentally, there was a short-lived television game show called The Four Winds in the 1980s in which contestants consumed many bowls worth of chilli and then… the rest tested too poorly with audiences above the age of twelve.


Classic The Four Winds deaths:

  • Crushed under a Kansan farmhouse
  • Caught in the kite-eating tree
  • Sliced by a ceiling fan
  • Stalked by a squealing fan
  • Defeated by a Firebender
  • Abandoned by your magic Edwardian nanny
  • Gone with the spoiled southern belle
  • Down will fall baby, cradle and all
  • Walking down far too many roads for the answer