This is where it ends. This is where it begins.

A white butterfly flutters through the blackness, its delicate wings trailing a rainbow. Find your own mysteries within it.

It has no elemental associations. It has no astrological associations. The void was there before the constellations were lit, and will be there when the last one burns out.

It is emptiness; how will you fill it?

Initial conditions; the butterfly is a reminder of how sensitive a chaotic system can be to those. Chaos theory gives us the “butterfly effect”, the thought that the vortices of air coming off of a butterfly’s wings could be the root of a tropical storm halfway across the world. Move carefully, for what you do may have long-reaching and unforseen consequences; move uncaringly, for your life is as short as a butterfly’s in the grand scheme of things.

The same butterfly can be found in the Star. And maybe in a Fool. Perhaps a few other places, too. Go seeking.

In general, this is a card of beginnings. This is the void of raw potential, not the void of the end of all things. Or perhaps it is both, if you like the cyclical-universe theory – everything collapses into a Big Crunch, with seethes for an unknown timeless time, then explodes, starting the universe anew. How will we define the universal constants this time? The Aces are the Big Bang, and the Void is the precursor to that.

Divinatory meanings: The Butterfly Effect, chaos, raw unformed possibility. Potential. Things are about to happen, and might happen fast. If ill-dignified, it is ‘analysis paralysis’, illusions of conspiracy, insignificance. Clusterfuck.