The Weekend Tarot Reading — Sunday, November 13, 2011

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 articleexplains how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc

By Sarah Taylor

As with so much that is going on in the sky right now, this week’s reading is potent. There are two major arcana — Strength and The Tower — both encasing a court card, the Knight of Cups. I’m taking the theme of the reading from the only suited card that we have; it seems to give direction to the two powerful archetypes that envelope it and give it further expression. This week, therefore, the theme is about emotions, relating, love.

Let’s take a step back first, and focus on the card on the left, Strength. The eighth card in the major arcana (which focuses on the archetypes that we both embody and experience personally and collectively at a soul level — at the level of beingness rather than doingness), Strength develops the idea of the union of opposites that we encountered in card six, The Lovers. Here, however, instead of that union being associated with looking into the mirror of another — very often in the form of relationship — Strength is about how we relate inwardly to the polarised aspects of ourselves.

Each one of us carries in us the characteristics of the two figures in the Strength card. We are the simultaneous incarnation of maiden and lion, human and animal, virtue and lust, civility and instinct. That is simply so. The challenge for us arises when we choose — consciously or unconsciously — to subjugate one in favour of the other, casting it so far away from us that it becomes part of what C G Jung referred to as the shadow, which he defined as, “the thing a person has no wish to be.” When an aspect of who we are is relegated to the shadow, it doesn’t go away: It simply expresses itself indirectly, usually in our interactions with others. We tend to project on to others what it is that we cannot accept about ourselves — and so it might seem to us that we meet the same kind of people again and again in certain situations, that we have similar experiences again and again. If we can bring these into awareness and shine the light of insight on them, they become opportunities: To rediscover and integrate an aspect of ourselves that, until now, we couldn’t admit to being — and these aspects can be negative or positive.

And so back to Strength. Here we have balance and a peaceful co-existence of opposites. The lion’s teeth are bared, its instinctual, libidinous energy symbolised by its red tongue as it licks the maiden’s arm, and its long, florid tail, held erect between its hind legs. And yet the lion is allowing the maiden to hold its head; it is submitting to her. Just which one is representative of “strength” here? Both. It takes a significant strength of will and of love to ‘lie down with the beast’ — and yet the maiden is achieving this. Dressed in white, she stands in contrast to the redness of the lion’s red-hued pelt, her gown strewn with flowers. The white might be virginal, but there is a palpable sense of fertility: The outgrowth of the union of these opposites.

Above the maiden’s head is an infinity symbol, which we first see in the second card of the major arcana, The Magician. This is the quest for balance, with its loss and regaining of equilibrium in an eternal dance. What is created in actively working with the energy of both is forward motion — evidenced in the growth of the flowers. When we understand that we are both our higher and our baser instincts, we can better move forward in our own integration process.

This forward movement comes to light in the Knight of Cups. An idealist at heart, he quests for the love of his lady. As I have written in previous articles, the Knight embodies the principle of “courtly love”. Well-intentioned but showy (shadowy?), courtly love is public display of affection without the deeply felt understanding that true love cannot be idealised and pushed ‘out there’ to admire from afar. Like Strength, love is visceral — watery, flowing, hidden, sometimes unfathomable.

Unlike the King and Queen of Cups, who are associated with the ocean, the water associated with the Knight is still a shallow river. Nonetheless, even though idealistic, the Knight’s potential is indicated in the fish and waves embroidered on his tunic (fish representing sustenance for the soul). Moreover, he is on a mission, his cup held out before him: He has courage and an adventurous spirit, and he is open — like the cup — to what he will find.

What he finds is The Tower — the structure itself bastion to pre-conceived notions, established institutions, beliefs, ways of life and ideas that have become cumbersome and unworkable, isolating (look at where the tower is perched) and damaging.

In today’s reading, the tower is a structure of idealism that has no basis in reality. It is perched so far above the rest of the land that it has separated itself from all signs of life. The sky is black; there is no vegetation; nothing can be sustained.

Out of the darkness, a lightning bolt. And with it, rulers will topple, thrown from their ivory tower of apparent safety, which sequestered them from the complex beauty of life in all its polarisations. The lightning comes from the divine: Nothing less than the light of pure consciousness can penetrate the blackness around the tower — the shadow surrounding the two people which, if the tower were to remain standing, would envelope them indefinitely. And so it gives way in a blast of enlightenment, the golden drops of consciousness raining down on the landscape. It is destroyed, and the couple is released together, yet separate.

Perhaps this happens to the idealism of the Knight. Or perhaps this happens because of the Knight’s approach — idealistic, yes, but also enquiring, adventurous, with his cup — his emotions — exposed in front of him. Perhaps both. Perhaps the Knight is both transformer and transformed. That’s the story of the Strength card: it is only by actively working with what lies inside ourselves that we can integrate internal forces at work and use them to gain momentum in our lives. In the face of this momentum, no structure that has outlived its usefulness can stand a chance. Let it fall.