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
I was struggling this morning to come up with a collective idea for the Nines — a theme that runs through each and all of the cards. With some of the numbers that we’ve explored, the Twos and Fours for example, something has made itself known to me right away in terms of a connecting principle.
With the Nines, though, there seems to be such a striking contrast between the Wands and Swords — both suggesting a form of conflict — and the Cups and the Pentacles — which on the surface seem to indicate achievement — that I was immediately taken in by their differences, not their similarities.
But, as I have so often experienced when working with tarot, it’s better to take a closer look before coming to any conclusions; not everything is as it first seems. This was discussed in an article and the accompanying comments when the Nine of Pentacles was drawn as part of a Weekend Tarot Reading. What we see on the surface isn’t necessarily the whole story. In fact, it seldom is, as we peel away one layer of meaning, only to come across another.
Therefore, taking a closer look, what strikes me most about the four cards this week is that all of the characters are alone — or, at least, they are the only human figure on their card. Have you noticed that the minor arcana in the Rider-Waite Smith deck has focussed increasingly on a single figure as we have moved through the numbers, from Ace to Nine? This sense of isolation started in the Sevens, continued in the Eights, and is present in the Nines for the final time. (I am excluding Court Cards here, which I feel are discrete in many ways, even as they move with the evolutionary flow of the minor arcana. I’ll write more about this when we look at them in upcoming articles.)
What is this isolation about? To me, it feels like a process of going within. In the Nines, we are close to reaching some point of expression, although it is still currently taking shape. Hence culminating rather than culmination: the idea is not yet fully developed.