Welcome back to White Rose of Avalon my Darlings. Today’s post is about how Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland relates to the Fool’s Journey in Tarot! For the purpose of this post, I will be looking at some of the events in each chapter of the first book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and how they relate to the Fool’s Journey through the Major Arcana of the Tarot. Without further ado, let’s look at the journey!
Chapter 1: DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
~THE FOOL, THE MAGICIAN~
~The opening of the story is well-known to all of us, Alice is bored with her studies and gets distracted by a White Rabbit wearing a waistcoat and carrying a pocket watch. She follows the White Rabbit into his rabbit hole, falling down into another world, into Wonderland. This inciting incident that begins her journey shows Alice to be the Fool herself, willingly following the White Rabbit. In following the White Rabbit into the rabbit hole, Alice is confronting the Magician’s energy, as he is the master of manifestation, and Alice is experiencing the magick of travel to this new and strange land!
Chapter 2: THE POOL OF TEARS
~THE HIGH PRIESTESS, THE EMPRESS~
~When Alice finally stops falling, she is confronted with a door she must get through, which is the famed scene of drinking a potion to make her smaller and eating a cake to make her larger. After this occurs we segue into the second chapter. Alice is overwhelmed by the changing of size and cries giant tears in her enlarged form causing a huge pool of tears to form. This confrontation of her own uncertainty and the depth of her emotions aligns well with the High Priestess’s energy of channeling the Divine and being an initiatrix into the mysteries, and she is also a channel for emotional energy. The Empress’ energy comes from the self-nurturance that Alice must eventually bring to herself, even famously stating in the Disney film that she wishes she hadn’t cried so much!
Chapter 3: A CAUCUS-RACE AND A LONG TALE
~THE EMPEROR, THE HIEROPHANT~
~Both of the cards that align with this chapter have a deeply masculine energy. Obviously, the Emperor is a Divine Masculine card in the physical realm, but the Hierophant is also associated with religious hierarchy and teaching, giving it a very masculine energy in my interpretation of the card! The Caucus-race features a lot of nonsense from the animals participating, most especially the Dodo, a masculine character that greets Alice with his version of logic (which is inherently illogical) making for the ideal confrontation between Alice and the energies of the Emperor and Hierophant cards!
Chapter 4: THE RABBIT SENDS IN A LITTLE BILL
~THE LOVERS, THE CHARIOT~
~This is the part of the tale where Alice finds herself at the White Rabbit’s house in her quest to find him, after following him to Wonderland. Of course, all of us Alice fans will remember the scene for Alice growing gigantically large in the White Rabbit’s house causing chaos! Now, the Lovers’ energy of this chapter comes in the synthesis of Alice finding the Rabbit again, as this is a card of balance and partnership. The Chariot energy comes in the form of the chaotic nature of the chapter, where all of the plot of the tale picks up much speed!
Chapter 5: ADVICE FROM A CATERPILLAR
~STRENGTH, THE HERMIT~
~So this is the chapter with the famed Hookah Smoking Caterpillar. The cards that are aligned with this chapter are Strength and the Hermit. I think this is an interesting alignment, as Alice is beginning to show her own mettle through the inner strength to persevere through the chaos of Wonderland. The Caterpillar gives her advice through a series of riddles, acting as a sort of Hermit figure, he is alone in the woods but wants her to gain understanding, he is the Hermit as a teacher of Wonderland’s nonsense here!
Chapter 6: PIG AND PEPPER
~THE WHEEL, JUSTICE~
~One of the craziest sequences in the original novel, which was not in the Disney version, but is a deleted scene that was prepared and not released, is the Pig and Pepper chapter. Alice meets some crazy characters in a very chaotic home, most famously the Duchess, and a crying baby that when Alice is holding it turns into a pig! Now, through the alignment of chapters and the Major Arcana, this coincides with the Wheel and Justice. An interesting point in the tale to have these cards appear, as Alice’s fortune is in flux, just as the Wheel is ever turning. Additionally, Alice is becoming a vocal advocate for what is truly just in the situation, bringing in the energy of the Justice card! This is also the chapter that has the first appearance of the Cheshire Cat, who will send Alice on the next phase of her journey at the beginning of the next chapter.
Chapter 7: A MAD TEA PARTY
~THE HANGED MAN, DEATH~
~Oh, what a perfect pair of cards to coincide with the most iconic scene of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland! After being given directions and a warning from the Cheshire Cat that the Mad Hatter and March Hare are in fact mad, she ends up encountering them. This is the famed point where Cheshire tells Alice she is mad because “We’re All Mad Here”! The Mad Tea Party is aligned with the Hanged Man and Death cards. Alice is held captive during this Tea Party, full of misunderstandings, where she cannot follow what is going on, much like the Hanged Man, but through this captivity she begins to understand a bit of how Wonderland works, again aligned with this card! This is a time when we can slowly see Alice realizing she may never be the same again, a dying off of the old self, as a new version of herself arises from the ashes, embracing the energy of the Death card!
Chapter 8: THE QUEEN’S CROQUET-GROUND
~TEMPERANCE, THE DEVIL~
~Ah, so we encounter both the Temperance card and the Devil card in the chapter which introduces the Queen of Hearts! The chapter begins with the three playing card gardeners painting the white roses they have accidentally planted red to appease the Queen who had wanted red roses. This part of the chapter embodies the Temperance energy since the playing card gardeners are trying to keep everything in Wonderland in balance by keeping the Queen of Hearts from becoming angry. Of course, the Devil energy of the chapter comes in when the Queen of Hearts appears, as she uses her iron grip over her subjects and fear of beheading to keep everyone around her in line!
Chapter 9: THE MOCK TURTLE’S STORY
~THE TOWER, THE STAR~
~In this chapter, Alice is reunited with the Duchess, who was imprisoned by the Queen, and it is also the chapter where she comes to hear the sad tale of the Mock Turtle. The Mock Turtle’s sad story about once having been a real turtle, and all the chaos of the scene aligns very well with the Tower card’s energy of sudden change and cleansing destruction. The Queen herself with her many decrees to chop off people’s heads is a great example of Tower energy made manifest! The energy of the Star card comes in due to Alice herself beginning to understand Wonderland more and more, even as she questions the strange land, she comes to find herself with more compassion for the residents and is hopeful that her logic may win out!
Chapter 10: THE LOBSTER QUADRILLE
~THE MOON, THE SUN~
~In this chapter, the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon set about teaching Alice the Lobster Quadrille, a song and dance game of Wonderland. The chapter has some famous references to Alice having to stop herself from admitting she has eaten lobster and whiting fish, for fear of offending her new animal friends. As the chapter has Alice learning so much about Wonderland culture, she is in the half-light and confusion of the Moon card, she is both gaining the intuition famously associated with the card, but may also be delving into insanity, also famously associated with the Moon card! The Sun energy comes in with Alice being happy to have her curiosity over the odd ways of Wonderland being explained to her. The Sun card is, after all, very associated with childhood wonder and the warmth of summer days in childhood, which is exactly the setting of Alice’s adventure!
Chapter 11: WHO STOLE THE TARTS?
~JUDGEMENT~
~How perfect that the chapter of the famous trial aligns with the Judgement card! This is the trial of the Knave of Hearts, who is accused of stealing the Queen’s tarts. Of course, in Wonderland, the Judgement is an automatic belief that the Knave is guilty, and he will lose his head if Alice cannot prove his innocence! The desire of Alice to help the Knave, (whether stated outright or not, she definitely feels for him and his cause for she hates the Queen’s deep desire to behead all around herself) is very much in line with the renewal and rebirth of the Judgement card, as she wishes to give the Knave a new lease on life.
Chapter 12: ALICE’S EVIDENCE
~THE WORLD~
~The final chapter begins with Alice being called to the stand to present her own evidence. Alice does not even think she has evidence but presents what she can, and goes against the Queen when she insists on a sentence before a verdict. This is what leads the Queen to decree ‘off with her head’ to Alice, who would not hold her tongue! This is when she calls the Queen’s Guard just a pack of cards that she is not afraid of before waking up with her head in her sister’s lap. As she returned from Wonderland, all became right in the logical world, where Alice now returned to, but with stories and memories of the events that would never leave her. She had learned so much on her Fool’s Journey and became a new version of herself, and just like with the World card, as one tale ends, another would begin with the second book Alice Through the Looking Glass!
~I hope you have enjoyed my analysis of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a Fool’s Journey. Do you see her adventures as a Fool’s Journey? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
Note on Image: The image at the top of the post is the original Tea Party illustration. I found the image on https://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2015/apr/17/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-alice-in-wonderland-lewis-carroll.
Tarot Note: I have a page offering tarot and oracle readings for those interested in these services! I am very happy to be offering these readings to my treasured readers at White Rose of Avalon! Link to page: https://whiteroseofavalon.life/tarot-and-oracle-readings/
Further Reading/Watching
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
- Alice Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
- Alice in Wonderland (1951)
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