The Weekend Tarot Reading — Sunday, May 13, 2012

By Sarah Taylor

Six weeks ago, the Weekend Tarot Reading of April 1 featured the following cards: King of Cups, Seven of Cups, The World. This weekend, we have a reading with some parallels: the King again as the first card, the Six of Cups takes the place of the Seven, and another transformational major arcana card in the appearance of Death.

It feels like there is a revisiting of some form of experience, whether inner or outer, underpinned by the King, whose wisdom seems to oversee events in both.

This is what I had to say about the King of Cups last time:

“The King of Cups refers to our emotional natures when we align them with the flow of life. By doing this, we are fully in our feelings, but we are not dominated by them, nor do they dominate us; we do not shy from them, nor are we engulfed by them. There is a foundation to our experience that is unchanging, even while waves might lap, undulate, and crash around us.”

The King represents emotional wisdom in action; as the masculine card in the court couple, the King is primarily about doing while the Queen’s domain is being. Here, the presence of the King is calling us to step into the highest ideal that we hold for ourselves in terms of the expression of love in our world. Emotions either come from a place of love or of fear. The King is an invitation to see something from a more elevated perspective, no matter what is going on around us.

His ability to do this — to hold himself in balance amidst the constantly moving seas — is a reminder that we, too, can be kingly. It might be hard at times, but it is possible. We might not succeed at times — or many times — but ‘not succeeding’ doesn’t distract or deter the King. Not succeeding is irrelevant; there is no such thing as failure. When we are centred in our hearts, every action is a demonstration of love, and every so-called failure is simply another opportunity for compassion and forgiveness — towards ourselves and others.

In the context of today’s reading, the King’s regard is directed to the two figures in the Six of Cups. The Six of Cups is the ‘soulmate’ card, and by ‘soulmate’ I do not mean The One (You are The One!), but any relationship that wakes us up, urges us to grow, assists us in meeting a long-lost part of ourselves. They can range from the sublime to the hellish, they can be long-term or a momentary encounter. But you emerge from each soulmate encounter a different person from who you were before, whether you’re aware of it or not.

Here, through one such encounter, you are being handed a gift — just as the larger figure of the boy hands the smaller woman a cup containing a single, white flower. There is such tenderness and regard in this gesture, and reciprocity of feeling. The predominant colour is gold: warm, evocative of the Sun. There is a strangeness to the proportions of the two figures, which speaks to me of role reversals inherent in the idea of two souls meeting and re-connecting through different incarnations. It is not the outward appearance that is important here, but the nature of the exchange.

What is exchanged in the encounter — what each one receives from it — is what opens the door to transformation: the figure of Death carries on his standard a white flower, which has matured into something with greater complexity and depth, something that feels more enduring and archetypal than the newly emerged blooms in the Six.

And so Death moves forward, heralding the passing of the old and the advent of the new. The two towers in the shadowy and strange landscape of The Moon now frame the Sun, which is rising to a new day.

The message from Death: take the gift from what you have experienced — because what you have been given is a gift and holds the key to a part of your future that is waiting for you. It is the catalyst for transformation, for forward movement, for the journey out of night and into the emerging light.

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.