The Weekend Tarot Reading — Sunday, July 17, 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 article explains how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc

By Sarah Taylor

A doorway stands open, inviting you to something that, until now, you have only witnessed from afar. The resistance you feel to this is not inconsiderable, yet the choice to fight, stay put, or to move depends on no-one but you.

We’re back to all minor arcana this week — moreso focused on the way something is expressed through the details of day-to-day life — although no less significant.

This is not a reading about matters intellectual or physical: there are no Swords or Pentacles. It is a reading that is focussed on the visceral, on desire, on the drive to create, and on feelings. Two Wands, one Cup. Fire, and water. Not, on the surface, complementary elements. So this is about the tension that the juxtaposition creates, and perhaps the necessity to let them co-exist as individual entities rather than seeking a resolution through their unification. Rather, it is the holding of that tension itself that is the resolution — the middle path between the two, acknowledging both.

The Four of Wands is making a repeat appearance here. As previously, this is about being on the outside looking in, but with the ability to step through the doorway created by the four wands and to join in.

This is something beckoning to you that you don’t feel you belong to, but which has been holding a place for you, if only you were to recognise that you are as welcome as anyone else you can see there. In fact, you aren’t just welcome: you are wanted. The two figures in the middle distance seem to be waving at you, acknowledging your presence, holding in their hands symbols of growth and abundance, inviting you through.

The wands themselves denote that fiery passion that drives all acts of creation and expression — anything, in fact, that you feel you have been brought here to do, even if you feel it is beyond your abilities right now to bring it into being. Here, they stand at the threshold of that sense of belonging. To step through them is an act of initiation — initiation in its broadest sense. There doesn’t have to be pomp and ceremony, and you don’t have to be an artist, a poet or a writer to nurture your creative spirit. This is the calling to express yourself in a way that aligns with what your soul knows you came here to do. Even if you have little or no idea of what that could be, a door is open — and it is a door that doesn’t close.

From the celebratory mood of the Four of Wands, we then move to the Seven of Wands. The same fiery energy, this time antagonistic and with a faceless adversary. There is a shift from being the separate observer to being so far in the thick of things that there is barely time to surface for air. The single figure, to me, speaks of an inner conflict. Reading the card literally, something is rising up from underneath, but the protagonist is fighting it. There are no other people in the card; this is the battle to suppress some form of creativity that is rising into consciousness. The wands themselves don’t look particularly threatening, and yet the figure is standing foursquare against them, a look of steely determination on his face, his own wand at an angle in an attempt to block all of them with one fell swoop. He’s not letting anything get the better of him.

But what if it is he that is getting the better of himself? What if he is his own worst enemy? What would happen if he were to stand up and let the six other wands rise up to join him? Maybe they would join him. Maybe his creativity would become formidable. Maybe. That is the risk: what if he were to be annihilated by them? What if he feels he is in a fight to the death? What if he were right to feel that way? What if. When I look at this card in this context I am reminded of the term “paper tigers”: those beasts of the unconscious that seem to want to devour us, but which really dissolve into the light of consciousness. What stands behind them, however — what they have masked — could be something entirely precious.

And, finally, we come to the third card, the Four of Cups, like the Seven of Wands making a reappearance. In both cards, the figure is wearing a green tunic: there is a continuity to the idea that is being expressed. Here, he sits beneath a tree, his arms crossed, unaware (intentionally or unintentionally) of the cup that is being held out to him. It feels like he brought the three cups that sit at his feet with him — so he knows about those. The fourth cup comes as a gift from the divine. As with the Ace of Cups, the hand emanates from a cloud, indicating its genesis from Spirit. It is God-given. However, the figure looks down, his body language closed to it. He may not be as active as the man in the Seven of Wands, but he is blocking himself off from something nonetheless. Active and passive resistance — not seeing what is on offer.

And what is on offer, exactly? That is something only your own connection to spirit can tell you. But it is fiery, passionate, loving and vital. It asks for awareness, and it takes courage to drop your weapon, to lower your defences, to let go, and to allow. Look at the Four of Wands. The doorway remains open.