By Sarah Taylor
Today marks the first Weekend Tarot Reading with the Röhrig-Tarot deck that I featured in the mid-week article, A View from the deck: the Röhrig-Tarot. (If you’re unfamiliar with the Röhrig-Tarot — and given it sits in stark contrast to the Xultun Maya Tarot that I’ve been using for the Sunday readings since September 23 — it might be useful to read that article first so that you become acquainted with its imagery, how you relate to it, and how you feel it is relating to you.)
This week’s reading is comprised of cards from the minor arcana: this will be something that becomes apparent in your day-to-day life and your interactions with others. From left to right, the cards are the Nine of Swords, the Nine of Wands, and the Two of Disks (Pentacles) — Cruelty, Strength, and Change respectively.
The suits are balanced, their corresponding elements being Air, Fire, and Earth, which are also seen in terms of thoughts/beliefs, libido/creativity, and the physical world. The missing suit is Cups — element of water, which governs emotions and our unconscious depths (emotions being a doorway to the unconscious).
Which says something to me immediately: there is a thrust into consciousness of that which was once hidden. It has been hidden under a layer of self-recrimination, shame, guilt — a layer of swords that has been preventing us from seeing past them. As soon as we came close to the source of the pain, it triggered our defence mechanisms. We turned the swords on ourselves — a fight so up-close-and-personal that it prevented insight.