In Neville Goddard’s teachings, water is not just water. It is the symbol of the subconscious mind—deep, receptive, and formative. In the Rider-Waite tarot, the appearance of rivers throughout the Major Arcana cards is never incidental. These winding streams serve as visual parables: illustrating how the movement of belief and feeling shapes reality. Where the river flows, life responds. Let us look at these rivers, card by card, as signposts of inner transformation.
The High Priestess
A quiet stream passes behind the seated figure of the High Priestess, just visible beyond the veil. Here the subconscious is still and largely hidden. The High Priestess guards the threshold of inner knowing. The river is passive, a reservoir of potential. Neville might call this the resting state of the subconscious—receptive to suggestion but untouched until impressed by conscious thought. The river is not centre-stage because, like the subconscious, its work is not theatrical; it is profound and private.
The Empress
Here, the river begins to wind through lush gardens. It suggests that the subconscious has been seeded and is now nurturing form. This is the feminine power of creation through impression. The Empress represents the imagination made fertile by belief. According to Neville, when one feels the wish fulfilled, the subconscious takes it and grows it—just as the Empress grows all that lives along her flowing stream.
Temperance
This card presents perhaps the most active and balanced image of water. The angel pours liquid between two chalices—a dynamic act of transfer—and behind them flows a river that leads toward the rising sun. The subconscious here is fluid, harmonised, moving toward illumination. For Neville, this is the image of alignment: when inner and outer self are cooperating, and when the impressions passed between conscious and subconscious are deliberate and purified by intention.
The Star
The woman kneels with one foot in water and one on land, pouring water from two jugs—one into a pool and the other onto the ground. A river runs behind her under a starlit sky. This is the flow of subconscious expression, the assurance that what is impressed within will manifest without. Neville taught that feeling is the secret—here, the feeling is peaceful, generous, and untroubled. The river reflects the natural movement of fulfilled desire making its way into experience, as calmly and certainly as stars reflect in water.
The Moon
In this more mysterious card, a river snakes its way from a pool between two towers, flanked by a dog and a wolf. The subconscious is stirred here—uneasy, unsure, symbolic of deep internal shifts or illusions rising to the surface. This is the moment when the subconscious reacts to hidden fears or unresolved imaginings. Neville would suggest that this card warns us of the subconscious being directed by confusion rather than clarity—manifesting uncertainty when we are not watchful of what we consent to feel as true.
The Judgement
While the river is not overtly visible, the imagery of awakening and rising from the grave carries the sense of a tidal shift within the soul. There is a sense of waters parting or being crossed over. Neville often referenced the need to “die” to an old state of consciousness and rise into a new one. Judgement shows this moment symbolically, as the subconscious releases one’s old identity and brings forth a resurrected self, in alignment with the new assumption.
The World
The river is absent, but not forgotten. By this point, the subconscious has fully expressed what was impressed upon it. The dancer in the wreath is surrounded by four living creatures—symbols of balance and dominion. The river that once flowed beneath earlier cards has now become integrated. The subconscious no longer needs to be shown; its work is complete, and the outward life is in harmonious motion.
Final Reflection:
Rivers in the Major Arcana are not decorative—they are dynamic. They are the inner streams of thought, emotion, and belief that respond to conscious attention. Neville Goddard taught that imagination impresses, and the subconscious expresses. The river is that expression—sometimes hidden, sometimes rushing, sometimes quietly carrying the seed of your next becoming.
To read the tarot with this symbolic insight is to understand that every scene is a mirror of the soul. And the river? It is always you, flowing from within.
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