By Sarah Taylor
The Eight of Swords and the Nine of Wands have come up often enough recently for me to list their respective readings here from the past three months:
– Sunday, April 13, 2014 [Two of Disks, Eight of Swords, The Wheel of Fortune]
– Sunday, April 20, 2014 [Knight of Swords, Nine of Wands, Nine of Disks]
– Sunday, May 4, 2014 [Two of Disks, Nine of Cups, Eight of Swords]
– Sunday, June 15, 2014 [Nine of Wands, Princess of Disks, Seven of Cups]
My invitation: to look back — to the readings, and through your memory banks — and see if you can distinguish the pattern, theme or story that they bring into form. Are the dates significant? Feel into the two cards. Are they symbolic of something immediately recognisable in your life? More: has it seemed like there has been an endless back-and-forth quality to what they symbolise?
The reading this week is different in one significant way — that is, both cards appear together. My take on it is that this is a meeting point, or crux, of something that has been playing out over at least the last quarter, if not longer (the Eight especially has been present in earlier readings, the majority of those with the Rider-Waite Smith deck: different interpretation, same quality).
It looks like there is, at hand, the potential for a resolution, or the discovery of an exit point to a new way. What this looks like for you will depend entirely on your inner experience, and so my writing here will be short and to the point.
There has been a dilemma of some kind — the apparent pressure to choose between two or more options — that has left you trapped in your indecision, or in the seeming impossibility of your circumstances. So much so, that you have taken neither route; rather, like the figure in the Eight of Swords, you have become so seduced by your predicament that you have forgotten that there is a route to walk at all. You have been a sojourner in the land of forgetfulness — the forgetting of your true Self, which knows clearly the path that leads towards the best destination, the one to which your soul wants to guide you.
It is on this path that these two apparent choices converge in your realisation that you were never really obliged to choose in the first place. Here, you understand that it was your indecision itself that created the illusion of a second route. Paradoxical, but no less valid for being so.
By removing yourself from your stasis and stepping forward, you create the burst of energy needed to remove the blocks that were your perceived obstacles. Careful as you go with this one: self-care, compassion and support are wholly constructive things to turn to when a release of this magnitude happens. It might feel like a surge of vitality; it might feel like an emergence of something from left field into consciousness; it might be an insight that feels blindingly obvious while seeming to appear out of nowhere. It might be all three, or none of the above.
What won’t be in doubt is that you’ll know it when it happens. And things will not be the same again. The Death card spells the end of one thing and the beginning of another. It is rebirth, and that cannot happen without the laying to rest of something marked: a belief that you hold dear, a way of perceiving your life or the world, a part of your outward identity that you cling to in moments of movement and uncertainty. All change.
The Soul wants more than your certainty; it desires your unconditional embracing of what seeks full expression through you. It wants your uniqueness; it wants your singular heart. That heart is beating at your core, but so often it is hidden under layers of armour that have felt necessary — essential, even — to your very survival.
This has been the crux of your indecision: the fear for your own survival. But in order to embrace life, you must also embrace death. In so doing, you find your heart — your soul’s desire — and you become willing to carry it fearlessly on your sleeve.
There has been nothing to fear but fear itself — and it is that fear that has rendered you life-less. In that moment of understanding, perhaps you can crack a small smile at the irony that what you most avoided was where the light lay all along.
Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Eight of Swords (Jupiter in Gemini), Nine of Wands (Moon in Sagittarius), Death (Scorpio)
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 explains how to use the spread.
Racquel – Thank you for the gift of sharing your experience. I am taking its message of hope with me tonight.
Good golly gosh!
Completed homework & found a thread of my life story over the last three months that although I was consciously working on had not recognised the journey & its paradoxes & ‘shadow choices’ & pivotal moments until now … & the light is shining on the path. On April 15, I had only given myself the choice to stay or go (more like fight or flight!) & had a rather bleak outlook and looked to Planet Waves community for guidance & reflection – & you were there.
There was no need to look at what was happening around the dates as I remembered distinctly reading your analyses each week noted & being stunned, every time, as they were at such crucial times & development of choices & energy shifts within myself & meaningful/earth shattering communications with my husband of 13 years.
We have worked through, in these 3 months (gosh really only that long? almost feels longer than my marriage!) his severely controlling Passive Aggressive tendencies (miraculously nearly diminished) which was exposed on June 15 and with my Codependency (wonderfully almost dissolved) which not only enabled him, it diminished my responsibility at the real choices (Live & Love in the moment or stay in fear) that were open to me however ignored due to my inaction whilst overthinking on this relationship ‘choice’.
good golly gosh!
I can honestly say, as I did to my husband this evening, that I have hope for us as a healthy, working co-creative partnership that never felt possible before & that (oh joy)we are being kind to each other, even/especially when something huge rears its ugly head. If we can do this at home, it can happen in our community, and so the world… And you have been there, consistent and true through it all.
Sincere, open hearted gratitude for the grace this exercise (excise) has provided.
All Love, Racquel
Thank you!
I am so glad that this reading is speaking — and out loud, it seems! To me too … although I really only saw that after the fury of writing that seemed to possess me when I put fingers to keyboard yesterday on drawing the cards. We are living in powerful times. Powerful contrasts, powerful conflicts, for sure. But also much more power in our own hands — more, perhaps, than we can imagine. In a time where everything seems to be coming at us, it can be affirming to know that we, too, are behind that momentum. Each one of us. Each one of us can make a difference. For me, that difference starts with how we interact on a personal level — in our lives, with known others … and to see that extend outwards.
Many thanks!
This is awesome. I look forward to these each week! Feels like this week is symbolic of the Mars/Saturn journeys and the Grand Cross energies all coming to a close. The wheel in the sky is turning… 🙂
Wow. “a release of this magnitude happens.” I can feel it today, light open, sense of self -value and trust …. this is a beautiful read. Death for the first time for me, has never felt so glorious.
Consulting my calendar, the first dates happened during Saturn retro over my natal Saturn, and during the Grand Cross. The 2nd two dates were not so memorable, though I was/am in a shadow phase, stuck in the pattern, so much so that I wasn’t able to read the Weekend Tarot, or comprehend what I read. This one I am reading, reading hard!
And here I am today, right here: “By removing yourself from your stasis and stepping forward, you create the burst of energy needed to remove the blocks that were your perceived obstacles. Careful as you go with this one: self-care, compassion, support are wholly constructive things to turn to when a release of this magnitude happens. It might feel like a surge of vitality; it might feel like an emergence of something from left-field into consciousness; it might be an insight that feels blindingly obvious while seeming to appear out of nowhere. It might be all three, or none of the above.”
The step forward, and remembering self-care, compassion, and support as being essential to not falling back. I would love the blindingly obvious flash of insight, please? thank you?
Oh, here it is in your closing three paragraphs!!!
Sarah, top of your game here. This reading is a year of therapy, or might inspire a year of therapy to make it true.
An amazing reading! What it reminds me is something I have forgot; just take the next step. The idea – that the answer is not one of the polorized directions I seem to see but something new formed by my acceptance of self – feels very comforting to me. And yes I have been stuck in fear. Thank you
There have been so many Ends for me since 2011. I truly mean Real Ends. Why the H should I still quake in my boots about this one? It has all been Good on this side. What deep resistance to trust change triggers in me. Hhmmmm.
And. Thank you, amazing woman.
Astonishing, Sarah.
A.ma.zing.
Thank you!
Your reading today is especially insightful and astonishingly accurate for my circumstances! Trapped in indecision/impossibility, indeed, for a long time now, but I can feel the wheel begin to turn. Thank you, Sarah.
“what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death”
ee cummings
Succinctly prophetic.
🙂