Editor’s Note: If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article tells you how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc
By Sarah Taylor
A process, set in motion, is encountering a blockage. It is time to let go and hand things over to the power of the larger cycles that govern life.
Wands, wands, wands. If you have been following the tarot columns over the past few months, you might have noticed that we are no stranger to both the Eight and the Seven of Wands… most recently the Seven, which we covered as recently as last week.
Wands deal with creative energy — but don’t limit creative energy to the idea of works of art, or making things. This energy is life force itself: libido, or prana, or chi. Wands are the expression of the least tangible element described by the suits; they are the originating suit, followed by Cups (emotions), then Swords (thoughts), and then Pentacles (the tangible world). They are the energetic drive towards something — so hard to describe because they are a precursor to words. You can sometimes feel them as a fire in the belly. And the Eight of Wands is no exception.
The Eight of Wands can be summed up in one word: activation. It describes something that has been set in motion. There is a real force to this card. Something significant has happened to enable the Wands to take flight, although they are now angled downwards, which means that force has given way to a downward momentum. Moreover, it isn’t clear precisely where they are going to land: the immediate ground is not in sight — only the land in the distance — and it is implied that their touchdown is not within the scope of the card; it will happen once they have crossed the right margin of the picture.
What interests me next is the card numbering. The first card is the Eight; the second is the Seven. They appear in descending order, in other words, they can be seen as regressing. That they are both Wands emphasises this sense of regression, rather than progress. It is as if there is a desire to turn back the clock, to block what has been created. Look at the figure’s wand in the Seven. He holds it at an angle, as if in an attempt not simply to ward off the wands below him, but also to impede the progress of the wands that are moving towards him. He stands fully in their way. Either that, or he has grabbed one of them and is forcing it to go a certain way — to bend to his will.
These two cards, side-by-side, do not feel harmonious. They are not entirely dissonant, either, but there seems to me to be a desire to control something that now holds its own desire or force. Once the Eight of Wands have been released, they cannot fully be owned and manipulated. The figure can try but, as the Seven suggests, the conflict is one that he is waging alone. Is it something that he is battling within himself? Or is it that there is no sense of support he can turn to? Or both? What seems to be apparent is that he is pitting himself against something that feels overwhelming.
And, finally, we have The Empress. The presence of a major arcana card in the reading (one of the 22 archetypal cards in the Rider-Waite Smith deck) indicates that this isn’t simply a reading that deals with the everyday. The Empress is the archetypal Earth Mother. She embodies fertility, but with that sense of fecundity and creation comes the understanding that all beginnings are accompanied by endings, all endings by beginnings. Visually, she sits separately from the other two cards. Hers is a card of bright yellows and reds, interspersed with green and white. The yellow of the sun sustains life; the red is the blood let in service of life. It is the blood of birth and of death. The Empress as a figure is also larger than the figure in the Seven of Wands. She sits there, regal, unruffled, while he grimaces, focused intently on warding off the wands that rise to meet him, blocking the Wands that move in towards him.
The Empress holds her sceptre at the same angle that the figure holds his Wand; and yet its purpose is not to block. Rather, fashioned in the shape of a head of wheat and set next to the stars in her crown, it feels like a reminder of the innate power of the creative process, more potent than anything the embattled figure is currently drawing from. The Empress understands that the cyclical flow of energy in nature is more powerful than the figure’s ability to stem it. After the battle is over, she, as archetype, remains to restore balance, knowing that forward movement is inevitable.
It feels like there is a resistance to something that has been activated, and a scrambling to try and contain a push of energy. And yet we are being given the opportunity to hold The Empress in our consciousness. When we are able to stand outside a sense of conflict (and it is a conflict that is as much waged inside us as out), we come into touch with the wisdom of working with, rather than against, life and the laws that govern it.
Yesterday I thought I’d seriously gone mad. Massive explosions? Sea shells from Hawaii? A more thorough investigation has proven beyond doubt the origin of my shells. I went back to the beach, hardly a shell in sight. The sand was black & littered with bricks & rocks & fragments of road, bluemetal concrete. A 4.0 (minor) earthquake in Queensland(aus). Checked out earths recent earthquake data, HOW MANY minor trembles in my home state West Australia alone? Still thinking I’m nuts, I go to ‘home page’. Tokyo suffered another quake, another explosion at Fukashima(or whatever). People walking in & out of nuclear plants like it were a drop in centre. OK, I’m not mad. I’m a raving lunatic!
LOL!! Good thanks Sarah! Spent morning down the beach, got very sunburnt & some very cool sea shells! Some were unusual, so I googled. They’re known as ‘Hawaiian Stromb’. Very rare apparently, & not found on the beach!(I’ve at least 20 in my possesion, I always shell hunt with a big bag!) These critters live at minimum depths of 80 feet, & reside under the sand. For them to have travelled so far from home? It really is a small world after all!
What ‘zingy’ comments! My mind is boggling slightly — so much to take in — so I’m going to come back and have another look once the information has had time to settle. Thank you, everyone!
How are you doing there, Sparky?
..The Wands, (observations..) if you’ll notice, the number of sprouted leaves from each staff.. the 7’s have ‘mostly’ 3 sprouts, whereas the dude has four,.. except for the two wands aimed at his crotch, which also have 4. The Wands are very phallic, which goes beyond machismo or monkey-dom to the androgynous realm of Will. (Notice the scrotum-like protrusion from the ‘base’ of his staff and the expressing leaf-buds from the top). The dudes Will is being exercised.. the heat of the moment. He should (…’should’: horrible representation of language..) be focused on the two wands with more leafage (power), but instead his attention is drawn toward surpassing them (not a ‘bad’ thing, if it works,.. but very painful if those others’ get through).
This is an epic battle of control. Though, this is a battle waged within oneself (wands), vs. a battle waged in ‘external’ realms (pentacles). “It’s ON at this point”!
There’s definitely more to this story.. I require a bit more time to sort..
(Gotta rest here for now, you guys keep going.. I’ll catch up.)
..gotta make some cookies.
Your Friend,
Jere
Thanks Sarah. Also, thank you Charles – your interpretation makes a lot of sense to me. That was very helpful.
Cheers,
Indrani
Hi Sparky!
The information I found indicates that there are 55 reactors spread between 16 active power plant sites in Japan.
There are 6 reactors at Fukushima 1, and 4 reactors at Fukushima 2. Further north at Onagawa there are 3 reactors.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Japan
Righto. Sorry to push the issue, but so totally infuriated!! Just listened to local 9am news, & no mention of volcanic activity. I learn this from my astrology mag, from whom I look toward for guidance & reassurance? I’m an uneducated mother of 5 in a little country town Down Under, & ((I)) saw it coming? For fucks sake, ‘scuse language, but aren’t there highly(paid)educated specialists in this field of expertese? Why isn’t my ‘SKY NEWS active’, radio, whoever NOT SHARING!!! Oh, also noted (cheers Eric) a 3rd reactor in trouble… 3 down, 3 to go… LOL! Excuse my ignorance, but does anyone know exactly how many plants there are? I thought I heard 9 & 13 somewhere,(total 22) say it isn’t so…
Oh me oh my…. Just dropped kids at school, turned on ‘puter, MOST RECENT:”No kidding, Volcano pops to life in Japan” via wordpress. Morning peoples.
Sarah: Thank you for such a nourishing slice of synchronicity.
Jere: You are a wonderful bake-er. Thank you for being there.
I tend to read these 3-card spreads as non-positional, I usually don’t read them left to right, or right to left. Some people read these L to R as Past, Present, Future, but some Tarot traditions read short spreads like this from R to L without time indications. I usually start reading them as pairs.
As a Fire/Earth layout, this lacks Water and Air, no intellect or feeling here. This is about what causes us to be the way we are.
8W-7W, a very interesting pair of Fire cards that reinforce and activate each other. I’ve written before about the 8, I read it as Electricity, the essential quality is that it flows as long as the circuit is unbroken. It is pure Action, separated from the actor or the thing being acted upon. The 7 is “taking the high ground,” Valor, or operating from a position of advantage. I interpret this pair as a message to connect ourselves to our higher sensibilities, to truly operate from a higher perspective. Some people interpret the 8 as the arrival of a message. Perhaps we will receive a message that connects us to our ability to operate from a higher perspective (perhaps this spread is the message).
The 7W-Empress combination is Fire-Earth, they strengthen each other but are neutral, they don’t activate each other. The Empress is the powerful card in this pair. I read an interesting description of The Empress as “daughter of heaven and Earth,” she sits amidst symbols of the fertile Earth, but with a crown of stars on her head. She represents our universal link, a symbol of our birth into this plane of existence, and our ability to propagate ourself physically through our own daughters and sons. It is our connection to both our stars and our earthly realm that enables us to operate from a higher perspective, to connect with our higher powers (per the 7W “higher ground).
“A process, set in motion, is encountering a blockage. It is time to let go and hand things over to the power of the larger cycles that govern life.” Sarah your opening line rings *so* true today, followed by this spread you have chosen.
I’m going to hone in on the Empress as well, like the other few posters have done, as I am captivated by her in many regards but most especially because her place here today reminds me of the current Sabian symbol for Uranus newly ingressed in Aries at 1o, which Eric pulled up during this week; that of “A woman just risen from the sea. A seal embraces her.”
It sounds like we are all on the same page here, Medea, Jere, Sparky along with many other silent Wavers out there I’m sure. I have a strong sense that in spite of the horrors of many parts of this world, Japan, Libya, Ivory Coast……..we’re each of us feeling pregnant with creative forces that if acknowledged and applied with love and belief and trust, we know we can speak up for compassion and caring in all our various walks of life, wheresoever we find ourselves on this planet. We’ve been the silent majority for much too long and if we are to reconnect to that which can save us, we must honour ourselves and our ability to speak up and act.
The important thing here though is not to regress in fear for, as Dane Rudhyar puts it:
“In the symbol, therefore, the emergent entity is a Woman; symbolically speaking, a form of existence still close to the unconscious depths of generic biological nature, filled with the desire to be rather than self-assertion. The woman is seen embraced by a seal because the seal is a mammal which once had experienced a biological, evolutionary but relatively unconscious emergence, yet which retraced its steps and “returned to the womb” of the sea. The seal, therefore, represents a regressive step. It embraces the Woman who has emerged, because every emergent process at first is susceptible to failure. This process is indeed surrounded by the memory, the ghosts of past failures during previous cycles. The impulse upward is held back by regressive fear or insecurity; the issue of the conflict depends on the relative strength of the future-ward and the past-ward forces.”
So, let us heed the Empress and this moment where Woman has risen from the sea at the Aries point and recognise “the relative strength of the future-ward” at this pivotal moment in history ‘cos, as Jere puts it so succinctly:
“*She* is where a species wakes up to its collective bargaining rights!! *She* is the proverbial fork in the road. *She*, is where the negotiation takes place. And *She/We* will all wind up there together,..”
Volcanic eruption reported on Kyushu . . .
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/03/13/international/i080956D86.DTL&tsp=1
The rumblin’ that’s humblin’
Oh shite. Yesterday I commented on last weeks spread, a very poor joke of how SHE 9P really did let one go. This weeks spread confirms my fear. That Mother Natures bottom burp was a precursor to a very hot & violent explosion.(everything at it’s own pace, like March 19 ‘SuperMoon’ perhaps?) Me thinks we are to expect a volcanic eruption. Sarah, your description of the Empress..( Please forgive my poor explanation, I spent an hour on this comment only to find my server was down. I’ve not the energy to pull it all together again..) Anyway, 9 of popoffs has definately set things in motion – 8W, in the distance is a mountain(volcano?) ‘creative fire in the belly’. 7W – is man with one staff to fend off 6(nuclear plants?). Beneath his feet it appears as though the ground has ruptured, & again the image of a mountain(volcano?) Hows that for ‘up your ass buddy!’?? & so to the Empress, the imaculate presentation of Mothers hotblooded explosion. Her sceptre already raised, too late now. She couldn’t care less about 7W. 8W,7W & Her Majesty all have bodies of water. A lake? Snow beneath the feet of 7W & Empress? Are these clues to the location? Fricken fruglet pie peoples. For all life on Earth I hope she ain’t picked Japan… Down here in sunny Australia I’ve a spare house… LOL!! Hows that for Sparky imagination! Heres hoping my creative fantasticals will continue to sprout for hundreds of moons to come!! xx
..She is where a species wakes up to its collective bargaining rights!! She is the proverbial fork in the road. She, is where the negotiation takes place. And She/We will all wind up there together,..
..see ya there
..I got a voice..
(..still wanna look at the wands for a few.)
Jere
I’d like to comment on The Empress first (logically, as it seems we’re working backwards [frontwards/side to side]). I had a more profound vision of this card this morning, to fill in the details, than I’ve understood Her before. This is Where the trek of Humanity (our collective in specie) begins. HER road is the one We All start out From (it’s all ether prior). She is the point where we evolve from monkeys (or whatever universal critter) to something awaredly ‘cosmic’. She (as many of the cards) IS Birth. Her’s though, is of a socio-collective-constructive nature. She authoritatively reminds us that (whatever we may have thought through the Fool, Magus, and High Priestess) time and evolution continue, and they are one in the same. She speaks of new paths, new births, and, an order to those (but we can’t step too far into the Emperors dominion!). This is fresh territory, space we have the opportunity to ‘manifest’ in. She’s impartial (after all, she’s a pathway not a personality), She/We are the consciousness which spins the wheel harder (High Priestess set it in motion), and we know it never stops!! (hence the Tarot).
She speaks of “what paths do we Choose to travel, Together..”. (Her path is more wise than our individual considerations)
Gotta bake on the other two for a few.. I’ll get back.
(Keep the infinite-link up and running folk, we need it these days..)
Jere
One notices immediately that the movement of force in the 8 and 7 of Wands is from the left (sinister) towards the viewer’s right (dexter). It is an acknowledged and well practised fundamental in the drama that the bad, evil, and negative enters the stage or screen from the audience’s left, while the forces of good are propelled from the right (dexter) and move dextrously and flexibly towards the Right, the West and the Sun. Aside from the level-headedness of the Empress, all the other components of the card are inclined/progressing to the Right.
Her wand takes the form of a sceptre crowned with a sun-like golden globe, which is reiterated in the female wisdom of the circle of life – also in gold – and the heart of love which encircles it on the shield-like emblem of woman/venus. Her headdress is encrusted with stars, symbols of the feminine night even as they appear in the golden sky.
I also notice the flowing stream of life/water pouring towards the viewer and sustaining the life of the golden wheat in the foreground.