Meaning of Lightning in the Oracle of the Triade

Card no. 44

It is the card announcing a certain chaos to come over the querent’s life. It is therefore negative to them, predicting that the mistakes of the past will suddenly resurface to sow discord and failures in their life. The substance of these problems will be serious and their consequences catastrophic for the events to follow. The querent will then have to question everything they thought they had built for the best, in order to be able to get back on their feet after the storm has passed over their life. Like a boomerang, the Lightning card thus sends the person concerned back to pay their debt for the harm they may have let trail behind them in the past.

The Lightning card is very sober in its depiction, and oddly enough rather luminous for a card so dark in what it announces. The only reference to Greek mythology that one can glimpse there is a column such as could be seen everywhere in that ancient age. But what is striking is the fact that the latter is shattered in two, struck by the Lightning that descends from the sky to crash down upon the earth with violence and great fracas. Spiritually, lightning symbolises the wrath of the Gods towards the foolishness and the cowardice of men. It therefore embodies a certain call to order before the punishment that the Divinities might inflict if the human did not become aware of their own mistakes. Like any good storm, the card is linked to the month of August, and therefore to the astrological signs of Leo and Virgo, but also to the number 44, which expresses the dynamic transition that leads to liberating consciousness in numerology.

During a divinatory reading, the Lightning card is certainly not welcomed with open arms. It is a dreaded card, which indeed announces that darkness is going to descend upon the querent’s life in the form of events that will hurt them, for they will be extremely destructive. This card is said to deliver its baleful announcements often as a “backlash” in the latter’s face. It should nonetheless be noted that a few very positive cards such as Alpha, Wisdom, Wealth and Fusion will limit the damage of the Lightning card should they happen to be near it.

Keywords: Misfortune, Chaos, Past, Faults, Destruction, Punishment