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
There is some disillusionment about — a ‘not-noticing’ of — what you already have, and what is also taking shape. It might be that you are so fixated on a sense of loss somewhere in your life that you are unable to see fully what has entered. It is the start of something new, and it is more authentic and more in line with the truth of who you are.
When first looking at these three cards, I see material security and the arrival of potent creativity. However, our emotions are still being directed at and fixating on something that is missing rather than noticing what has already arrived and is right in front of us.
Why can’t the figure in the Four of Cups see this truth? Does he not recognise it because he is expecting something different? Perhaps he is not prepared to risk what he might feel if he does see it. His arms are crossed, his legs are crossed. He’s not letting anything — or anyone — in. What he is not yet prepared to acknowledge is that what is being offered to him is a gift, and one that is priceless.
Be that as it may, the figure is receiving support in the form of the King of Pentacles, a wise and generous benefactor who has learned to live in balance with the natural and material worlds, knowing as he does that all things are connected, and that true power comes from his relationship to spirit. Here, the King seems to be looking towards and down at the figure in the Four of Cups with a sense of gentleness and solicitousness. In his hands he holds a sceptre and a pentacle; he is aware of his stewardship of, and responsibility to, them.
The young man is not yet in a position to do the same with the cup being held out to him. Perhaps this is a necessary time of inner preparation before he takes what is being offered to him. Perhaps the only thing that is necessary is for him to recognise how different the reality of his situation might be from how he imagines it.
And then we go to the Page of Wands — looking away from the seated figure in the Four of Cups and up at his Wand, seemingly full of wonder at this new tool he has been given. The Page is King in embryo — the youngest of the court cards. The flame on his hat is small, but it is there, burning, echoing the shape of the sprig of three leaves that grows out of the top of the wand. New life. Yes, he is in awe of what he has, but he is holding it nonetheless. In this sense, there seems to be a progression from the Four of Cups to the Page, from one who is disconnected, to one who claims what is his. From here, we return to the King — a figure who is reverent, and fully accountable for what he holds, but who is no longer in awe and therefore has full access to its gifts.