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 tells you how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc
By Sarah Taylor
When you’re feeling stuck, when you’ve reached an impasse, when you feel like you’ve been put on the back-burner; whenever any of these sensations colour how you experience your life, drawing an Eight is a clear message that things are on the move, about to move, or that you at least have the power to make a move.
Welcome to this, our eighth part in the walk through the numbers and courts of the minor arcana. By way of a quick recap: the major arcana deal with broader and deeper themes around identity and the experiences of the soul on its journey towards individuation, while the minor arcana deal with day-to-day, functional aspects of life (which doesn’t necessarily mean that they are any less important or feel less significant).
In other words, the major arcana are the foundations of the path on our journey and the direction that it takes. The minor arcana are the experience of that path, from the different surfaces we walk on to the views that we see, and the potential for how we experience the people and things that we meet on the way.
With the Sevens, we reached the mid-point of the minor arcana, and with it came the opportunity to step back and “inquire into the nature of who we are.” As I also mention in the article on the Sevens, it is the point at which we are offered a choice: “Do we continue on a particular course, or do we choose something different? This cannot be done unless there is insight. And there is no insight without consciousness.”
In the Eights, things start moving again — or there is the potential to move. Whether movement is achieved through awareness or default depends on the circumstances surrounding a particular reading. Nevertheless, let’s look at each card in order (Wands, Cups, Swords, Pentacles) and see what comes to light.