#i spent the past 3 hours typing away about the astrological significance of michael berzatto's tarot birth cards

[ferida-kahlo]

✨️ Michael Berzatto's Tarot Birth Cards & what they tell us about his life 🔮

So, we know from a fast shot of Mikey's funeral card in Season 1 that he was born on November 15th 1979.

[For the sake of this half-assed meta, let's suspend our disbelief and pretend the writers didn't mess up everyone's ages so his birthday probably doesn't mean anything]

Me being an astrology & tarot nerd, I had to know more. This website calculates your birth cards and gives you a great combined analysis of the result.

Mikey's birth cards are The Tower and The Chariot. Just by looking at them you get a lot of clues about their meaning, and they couldn't seem more different!

While The Tower represents a chaotic, scary and abrupt destruction of everything, The Chariot is the picture of control, symmetry and purpose, visible in the confident way the rider poses.

To me, this contrast perfectly reflects the contradictory aspects of Mikey's personality, and how difficult it was for his family and friends to reconcile these paradoxes, when they remember him. And, sadly, how he himself ultimately was unable to balance out the opposing forces inside him, pulling the strings of his life from one extreme to the other.

How could he be depressed if he was the life of the party? How could he be loving and protective if he stonewalled Carmy to such an extent he obliterated their relationship? Why did he start so many businesses he was passionate about but never followed through with them? How could he care so deeply if his posture in life was that of the class clown?

Now, I want to draw special attention to the astrological symbolism of these cards:

🪐 Mars rules The Tower and it describes someone who is "brilliant, flashing, in-the-moment; violent emotions and activity; male sexual potency; pride, war; full speed ahead".

♋️ Cancer rules The Chariot, describing traits of "self-sufficiency & protection; nurture & care; coolness & courage; focus & determination; initiates activity but steps sideways".

I mean... do I need to say anything else? I couldn't give a better description of Mikey if I tried.

Despite the differences in approach, both cards share similar themes: love, passion, control, balance. Mikey's drive to impulsively start shit but never finish it manifests in a life filled with crumbling structures, the most obvious one being the restaurant.

His charismatic personality is, at its best, genuine. It comes from a place of true empathy for others and a profound sense of intuition. He understands people, what they need, and when he cares about you, he cares deeply. That leads to people following him out of unwavering love and loyalty, sometimes to their own detriment. See Richie's arc, the way he jeopardized his own family, first to stay by Mikey's side through his disastrous financial decisions, and later to save the Berzatto's crumbling family structure after his death.

The most tragic aspect, I think, is that Mikey is aware of all this. Both Cancer and The Chariot symbolize intuition, emotional connection, and deep awareness. That is why he sacrifices his relationship with Carmy and never wavers in that decision. Because he would rather die than see his little brother tangled up in his mess. So he keeps him away. To keep him safe. He literally slaps himself out of the dream of happiness Carmy conjured up at the Christmas dinner, when he showed him his vision for The Bear.

The tragedy of Mikey's life is that, in the best version of events, The Chariot and The Tower symbolize a journey of enlightenment. It is The Chariot's unwavering need for control that causes the fall of the Ego in The Tower. Sudden destruction is painful and scary, but it is usually the only way to begin meaningful change when the former situation / frame of mind was unsalvageable.

Mikey's sense of self (and masculinity) is almost entirely tied to his ability to successfully manage the restaurant and provide for his family and friends (Chariot's Ego). When that fails, all he has left are his stories: the narrative structure he builds out of an idealised past is the only lasting barrier, protecting him and his loved ones against the reality of his failings (The Tower). When Lee destroys that at the Christmas dinner, he destroys whatever was left of Mikey's sense of self. He is left entirely vulnerable.

When you hit the proverbial rock bottom, it could be a changing point. But you can't build a house without cement, or a building plan, or help. And Mikey doesn't have any of those.

He doesn't have the material means to turn his life around and build something from scratch.

His belief in his own ability to make something of himself has been obliterated by a hardwired sense of self-hatred and outside judgment. He thinks he is beyond saving. So the only plans he conceives in his last years are destructive, instead of creative (eg.: trying to set fire to the restaurant to collect insurance money), or they are about shielding the ones he loves from his toxicity, as much as he can (eg.: saving the money for Carmy to find after he is gone).

And lastly, he doesn't have any help, despite all the love that surrounds him, because he went his whole life projecting himself to the world as The Chariot Rider - confident, cheerful and in complete control. When in reality, the cracks on the foundations of the Tower he built around himself were always there, held together only by his magnetism and other people's inability to look harder.

Because of this, Mikey's response is to double down on the chaos and misery. The Tower and The Chariot's worst qualities combined result in a deep melancholia, manifested in an aggressive and violent response to the loss of control. Instead of someone who resiliently withstands upheaval and rebuilds from the ruins with a new, improved plan, we are left with a defeated soul, jumping to attack and destroy as he stands on the ruins of his own life.

And that's why he throws the fork.