By Sarah Taylor
Seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world. What you see reflects your thinking. And your thinking but reflects your choice of what you want to see.
— A Course in Miracles
The reading this week is a short and simple one. If you are looking for liberation from a struggle that, in its current form, will only lead to defeat, then it is time to step on the path of The Fool.
The Five of Wands sits at the centre of the reading, an effective illustration of where a plan made with the best of intentions is experiencing interference for one reason or another.
If you look at the configuration of the wands, it looks like they are coming together to form a pentacle. However, there is strife — a lack of organisation, a lack of clear direction from a single source. All five protagonists are at cross-purposes; there is no meaningful, reasoned collaboration.
What is behind this is hinted at in the Ten of Swords: a thought process, or a belief, or both. At the point of the Ten, this has concretised to such an extent that the pressure it has created has nowhere to go. The figure has no choice other than to surrender to it — or to be surrendered.
The Ten of Swords is a dark night of the soul created by sanskaras, the term in Hinduism for “the imprints left on the subconscious mind by experience in this or previous lives, which then colour all of life, one’s nature, responses, states of mind, etc.” (This is from the Wikipedia entry on “Sanskara”.) Changing our thoughts as a means of changing our experience lies at the heart of many philosophies and spiritual and religious practices, a case in point being the quote from A Course in Miracles that introduces today’s reading.
When we find ourselves stuck in a sanskara, our energy is wasted, and even the noblest causes will suffer. We undo something as we try to create it. Sometimes the only way out of such a pattern is by seeing it through to the bitter end, our field of vision so limited that we aren’t able to identify a way of breaking through. When the Ten of Swords becomes apparent in life, we can at least know that the worst has already happened, and the sky towards which the figure faces is clearing, the mountains indicating new adventures.
Sometimes, however, we are thrown a lifeline. In this reading it comes in the form of The Fool who, as the Joker in a normal pack of playing cards, is just as at home among the minor arcana as he is in the major. He belongs everywhere and nowhere at the same time. As an archetype, he exists free from limitations, his number ‘zero’, his playground the field of potential.
If anyone can break us out of sanskara before we feel the swords of surrender in our backs, The Fool can. His surroundings are echoed in the mountains in the distance in the Ten, and in the colour of the skies above them. He is the quantum leap available to jump out of a groove.
Time to invoke The Fool. To do this, we must step into the unknown. So simple in theory, and not so easy in practice. Sanskaras sometimes drive us so deep that it is hard to see anything else, walled in as we are by our minds. The hint is in the name of the inhabitant of card zero. The Fool, by definition, is mindless. This calls for an approach that bypasses the mind in order to expand our field of vision. Meditation, bodywork, something practical, beautiful and engrossing. Something that appeals to the playful aspect of the inner animal — the instinct — rather than the reasoned, reasoning, reasonable thinker. Or it might be an encounter or event that seems to puncture the space-time continuum. Equally important: it is there for us to ask for it, to demand it with gratitude.
Play The Fool; take a risk; walk away from the strife; strike out in another direction.
Astrology/Elemental correspondences: The Fool (Uranus), Five of Wands (Saturn in Leo), Ten of Swords (Sun in Gemini)
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.
On the threshold of the eclipse month, Sarah posted the question:
Is anything I fear happening Right Now?
And my answer, looking back, is YES.
5 weeks later, I am still here. It happened, it didn’t kill me, I can still make a different choice. What if I had starting on the 21st, followed the directions at the end of the reading:
Play The Fool; take a risk; walk away from the strife; strike out in another direction.
I still can, today.
Oooh thanks, Lizzy. My flower essence genius blender always includes sweet chestnut in my blends.
I embrace my notoriety as I:
Run from what’s profitable and comfortable
If you drink those liquors, you’ll spill
the springwater of your real life.
Forget safety.
Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation.
Be notorious.
I am letting myself be bewildered, and bewildering. Tossing away self-judgment about letting people down, or being bad. The 10 is as bad as it gets the only way out is through, and even if apparently dead, surrendered, conquered,
Resurrection is the natural outcome of death.
It’s all good.
That’s so helpful Sarah. Thank you!
For any of you suffering right now from dark night blues, anguish, etc, I really recommend taking the Bach flower remedy Sweet Chestnut. It brings some sweet relief to the tormented soul. I remembered this and have just got some in.
“Is anything I fear happening right NOW?”
This week’s Powerful Question from life coach Paul Clark.
Sarah
As always you’re readings seem to fit the present moment so potently. This one though seems to be a lifelong theme for me. And when I looked at the astrological correspondences I had to laugh. Natally, I have Saturn in Leo, Sun in Gemini and Uranus exactly conjunct the Sun in the first house. I’m saving this reading to put in my journal.
Thank you, all.
kcritelli – I can relate to your comments well. I am poised between Ten of Swords and The Fool myself. But, as Bette says, I’ve been at the Ten before, and I came out wiser and more grounded. (The mudra that the figure is using is a grounding one; then again, what else would it be?!)
I have a feeling that the upcoming eclipses might well provide some Foolishness of their own, if we remain aware.
— S
Seems to me that you have to hang out in the world for awhile in order to stop fearing the Tower and the Devil … and the Ten of Swords. Each time we dance with them, we discover our self anew, peel another layer. I’m particularly fond of the Ten, since … well … since there’s no Eleven! This is how bad it is. Period. This, and we’re still alive (most of us.)
And — thanks, Green Star for the poem — as Rumi says, “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
Lovely throw, lovely reading, Sarah — nicely done, as ever!
I’m confused. Should I meditate, wait for an event or walk away? I’m doing all three actually! I realize I’m in a transition but I’m going crazy waiting for the next stepping stone. I have been knocking on many /any doors to open. I am waiting as patiently as possible, but this holding pattern is sucking the life out of me. Thanks for listening!
Like DivaCarla, I seem to be getting this message from all quarters just now.
Thank you again, Sarah.
Thank you for this reading Sarah…so perfect!! My favorite FOOL poem by the Master Fool:
Conventional knowledge is death
to our souls, and it is not really ours.
We must become ignorant
of what we’ve been taught
and be, instead, bewildered.
Run from what’s profitable and comfortable
If you drink those liquors, you’ll spill
the springwater of your real life.
Forget safety.
Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation.
Be notorious.
I have tried prudent planning
long enough. From now
on, I’ll be mad!
– Rumi from “A Spider playing in the house”
Seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world. What you see reflects your thinking. And your thinking but reflects your choice of what you want to see.
– A Course in Miracles
~~
Time to invoke The Fool. To do this, we must step into the unknown.
~~
Indeed. In deed.
~~
Lately, I have been going back and forth between looking out at things from the perspective of a victim -or from “in pain”- and that of the perspective of an artist. Looking from the perspective of an artist, I see so differently.
~~
Long Live The Fool.
In my sixties now, I can look back upon many trudges through dark nights of the soul. I also realize that during those passages I discovered and developed many strengths I had not known I was capable of. And yes, they hurt like blazes at the time.
My metaphor for those experiences became “sitting in a swamp” – or making my way through one, in darkness, with little more than intuition to guide me and a fierce determination to survive.
I’m a rookie in working with the tarot myself, just getting to know the Ancestral Path deck I chose (or which chose me).
Thank-you for this and your other posts, Sarah. The insights and encouragement you offer are great blessings.
Thank you for the reading, Sarah. I came to this very conclusion regarding my own life Friday/Saturday. Send in the Clowns, the Sacred Fool, for a quantum leap. And Disorder/chaos of tearing into the Bureaus, Boxes, and closets.
Bring in the dumpster.
reading
Thank you Sarah. It’s a pleasure to read you.
‘the quantum leap available to jump out of a groove’… perfect.
And I just realized I kept reding ‘grave’ till now. 😉
Thank you so much, dear Sarah, for another extraordinary piece and your wonderful advice. Came to the realisation this weekend that it is a pretty dark night of the soul for me right now, but it was a relief to recognise it, and am older and wiser this time round – more able to see the necessary growth process. And playing The Fool makes perfect sense.