Though it ended 32 years ago, the classic sitcom The Golden Girls continues to attract newer, younger fans thanks to its excellent cast, great characters, and top-notch comedic writing. The show has also inspired homages, drag show parodies, and all sorts of memorabilia. One interesting collectible inspired by the series is The Golden Girls: A Look Into Your Future From the Lanai, a Rider-Waite tarot deck illustrated by Chantel de Sousa and published by Smith Street Gift in 2020.
de Sousa excellently matches the personalities and stories of Rose, Blanche, Dorothy, and Sophia to the iconology of the Major and Minor Arcana. Since there are 78 cards in the deck, I’ve chosen one Major Arcana card that represents each Golden Girl. I’ll discuss the card’s meanings and the way the character depicted on the card complements these meanings to show how well this deck was designed. This deck makes a great gift for anyone who loves both the Golden Girls and tarot reading – you can also treat yourself with it!
A Tarot Card for Rose Nylund: 0 – The Fool
An upright Fool represents freedom, innocence, and idealism; a reversed Fool represents naivety, foolishness, and gullibility. The card can symbolize that you’re starting an exciting new journey that will shape your character; it can also indicate that you’re literally acting like a fool, ignoring the consequences of your actions, and not seeing the danger you could be in. Rose Nylund’s pure heart and naivety make her an ideal embodiment of The Fool.
Known for her endearing (to viewers) and irritating (to her friends) naivety and childlike innocence, Rose enthusiastically takes on new opportunities, whether it’s starting a job as a TV reporter or taking up skydiving to renew the passion in her relationship with her boyfriend Miles. She also regularly shows her idealism, such as when she initially tries to befriend the cantankerous Frieda Claxton or when she writes to Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan to plead for the Cold War to end.
Rose is also well-known for being naïve and foolish. Her gullibility often leads her to fall for other people’s lies and schemes, whether it’s Sophia or Blanche foisting their work on her or Miles’s old mob boss dating her to figure out where Miles is. Sometimes her well-meaning but misguided honesty gets her and her friends in trouble. She once tells a building inspector that Blanche was housing more tenants than allowed under Miami law, which almost causes one of the girls to get booted out of the house they share.
A Tarot Card for Blanche Devereaux: II – The High Priestess
An upright High Priestess represents desirability, sensuality, and intuition; a reversed High Priestess represents superficiality, lack of self-belief, and uncontrolled outbursts. The card can symbolize that you should trust your gut over your intellect or that you’re highly irresistible to other people, but it can also mean that you don’t trust your feelings or are being kept in the dark about important information. Blanche’s sensuality and desirability, as well as her self-doubt when these fail, shows how well she embodies The High Priestess.
Blanche Devereaux certainly defines herself by her sensuality and desirability to men; there’s rarely a scene when the prospect of romance or sex isn’t close to the top of her mind. She unabashedly goes after what she desires and is usually successful. While she can be self-absorbed much of the time, she’s also capable of deep wisdom, such as when she pointedly tells Rose that AIDs is not a form of divine punishment for supposedly bad behavior when Rose lashes out about her fear of being diagnosed with the disease.
Blanche takes it very hard whenever she fails at love or work. When Dorothy becomes more popular than her with the men at a bar she frequents, she laments that her life is over. When Blanche successfully gets Dorothy a job at the art museum where she works, she’s initially happy for her friend until Dorothy’s given responsibility for a special project Blanche can’t know about. Blanche lashes out at Dorothy, accusing her of taking Blanche’s place at the museum, until Dorothy reveals that the project was actually a banquet to celebrate Blanche’s hard work.
A Tarot Card for Dorothy Zbornak: XXI – The World
An upright World represents success, a sense of belonging, and fulfillment; a reversed World represents a lack of success, burden, and disappointment. The card can signal hard work and determination paying off, a major life milestone being achieved, and a commitment to improving the world; it can also symbolize a barrier to or a feeling of hollowness after achieving success. Since her time in Miami involves a constant push-and-pull between success and failure and culminates in a fulfilling conclusion, Dorothy is an ideal representative of The World.
Over the seven years she lives with Rose, Blanche, and Sophia, Dorothy fluctuates between disappointing failures and great successes. Throughout the series, she deals with the aftermath of her divorce from Stan Zbornak, a man whom she had two children with, who repeatedly cheated on her, but whom she can’t quite get rid of. As a substitute teacher, she teaches her students well but struggles with the lack of respect and financial security the job provides her. She often finds herself the butt of jokes about her lack of femininity and unsuccessful love life.
On the other hand, Dorothy uses her hard work and intellect to achieve positive things for herself and others. She helps Rose earn her high school diploma; she helps Blanche to break up with an abusive partner; she finds success as a standup comedian at an open mic night; and she even has an official audition for Jeopardy! Even though her roommates often joke about her love life, Dorothy gets the last laugh by becoming the only one of the girls to successfully remarry by the series’ end.
A Tarot Card for Sophia Petrillo: V – The Hierophant
An upright Hierophant represents traditional values, beliefs, and knowledge sharing; a reversed Hierophant represents challenging tradition, not conforming to society, and living an unconventional lifestyle. The card can indicate a need to embrace long-lasting existing beliefs and systems or to question and break free of oppressive conventions. Since she both holds fast to certain long standing traditions and challenges repressive and outdated ones, Sophia is the perfect representative for both sides of the Hierophant card.
As the oldest and usually wisest Golden Girl, Sophia dispenses sage advice through her tall tales about her life in Sicily. She adheres to or acknowledges many long-standing values and practices that come from Sicilian folklore, Catholic teachings, or mob traditions. She knows how to place or dispel curses; she stays legally married to but separated from her second husband because divorce goes against her Catholic beliefs; she chastises Dorothy for throwing a priest out of their house while defending her relatives who threw priests out of windows since that was tradition.
On the other hand, Sophia is more than willing to challenge certain traditions and support unconventional lifestyles as she sees fit. Although openly supporting homosexuality was still controversial in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Sophia is totally fine with Dorothy’s friend Jean being a lesbian and convinces Blanche to respect her brother Clayton’s decision to marry another man. Back when she lived in Sicily, she abandoned her arranged marriage so she could marry the man she truly loved; she learns to overcome her lingering guilt with Dorothy’s help.
Final Thoughts
Chantel de Sousa’s Golden Girls themed tarot deck is a wonderful piece of memorabilia for any fan of the show who’s also interested in divination or the iconology of the Arcana. de Sousa’s careful selection and beautiful illustrations of characters and scenes from the show to represent each of the Major and Minor Arcana shows how well she understands both the TV series and the Rider-Waite deck. This deck will make you feel like singing “Thank You For Being a Friend” if you give or receive it as a gift among Golden Girls-loving friends.
For More Great Content
Total Apex is an all-encompassing content producer. We provide heavily detailed articles every day on entertainment, gaming, sports, and so much more! Check out all our great entertainment content at Total Apex Entertainment. Check us out on X @TotalApexSports and our other sites: Total Apex Sports, Total Apex Sports Bets, and Total Apex Fantasy Sports.
