I have schizoaffective disorder bipolar type, which means I have full-blown symptoms of both schizophrenia and bipolar I disorder. But for my first thirteen years on psychiatric medication, I had the diagnosis of bipolar. For more than a decade, and while I was learning tarot, I understood my mental illness—and, indeed, my core identity—to be manic depression. Even though my diagnosis has now changed, I still continue to have all the symptoms of bipolar disorder. The experience hasn’t been that different since my re-diagnosis, only the labels. And one constant I find comfort in is my philosophy that life, like the tarot, is rooted in cyclical change.
When I found tarot, I found way to understand my chaotic experience. I bought my first tarot deck when I was twelve, but I deemed it too complicated—and frightening—to learn. I picked up that very same deck again when I was in my mid-twenties and going through a Hermit-like quest for meaning. My life was ruled by turbulence: manic episodes followed by depressive spells, plus ultra-ultra-rapid cycling, which means my mood could shift between suicidal ideation and sky-high euphoria in the same day.
None of these experiences were new for me; as a teenager, I lived the full spectrum of mania, depression, mixed episodes of both, and the ultra-ultra-rapid cycling since I was a teenager. Back then, no adult suspected these symptoms were anything more than typical teenaged moodiness. Of course, I suspected something was wrong, but I had internalized my family’s stubborn attitude to never ask for help. Fortunately, I sought counseling my first semester at college and got paired up with a great treatment team and a solid medication regiment.
But after years of enduring mental illness, I sought meaning in life with an urgency I hadn’t felt since I was in middle school. Back then, I joined a local Christian evangelical youth group, but I failed to connect with the religion. I struggled. I was living through such profound suffering. How could God exist and create this pain? The youth pastor, who didn’t believe in science, told me I didn’t have depression, only a lack of faith. God and I parted ways, and instead I found meaning through writing, art, and creativity. By the time I picked up my tarot deck again in my twenties, I needed some reason to hang on, to find a purpose for my manic depressive illness, to develop a philosophy, to discover a reason to keep going. Because I was certain it was the end.
As I studied tarot, the cards that resonated with me most spoke to change, like the Wheel of Fortune.
Change, I realized, was perhaps the most important lesson of tarot. I went through a hell of a lot of change, often within hours. The bipolar experience is built on change. If there is one fortune that will always be accurate for people with bipolar, it is that life will be cyclical. Bipolar people ride the Wheel of Fortune up and down over and over. But here’s the comfort that tarot and the Wheel of Fortune made me realize: when I’m in the thick of an aching depression that seems endless, it’s only a matter of time before the cycle will change and the wheel will turn again. That wheel might spin me all the way up, or put me somewhere safely in the middle at baseline. The lesson in the cards is that things won’t stay this way forever—that includes despair and hopelessness. The promise is in the change, and it’s a prediction you can always count on.
If you just hold on long enough, you’ll change.
You don’t have to have bipolar disorder to experience intense changes. These truths can be applied to everyone. For any querent, there will inevitably be changes in life that rock your world and push you out of whatever epoch you’re in. But we can reframe these changes in ways that empower us through a closer look at the Major Arcana. The Wheel of Fortune is not change we cannot bear; it’s a second chance. The Death card is not the end; it’s a beginning. The Tower is not destruction; it’s an opportunity. If you’re finding life to be especially turbulent, hold on. Hold on. Hold on.