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
The Six of Swords has a sombre feeling about it today — perhaps influenced by the grey snow clouds gathering in the sky outside the windows here. It is a card of hope; and yet the ordeal that the people have been through is still apparent.
I feel the need to be mindful: to acknowledge that what the three figures are moving from is as much a part of their experience as what they are moving towards — perhaps even moreso, because while the future is unclear, they carry the weight of the past with them. I suggest that this card often asks respect and sensitivity of a reader. Not probing questions, nor the dissection of what has happened, but a holding of space — a gentle inward nod — before turning in the direction of the horizon.
A man stands at the back of a punt, pole in hand, moving the vessel through the water. A larger figure and smaller figure — a woman and a child, perhaps — sit in the punt. Are they a family, or is the man doing the punting simply offering the other two passage across the water? Whatever the relationships, there is a suggestion of everyone ‘being in it together’: all of their backs are facing us, and the larger figures — especially the one seated — have hunched shoulders, as if they are carrying an invisible burden.
Six Swords stand vertical in the bow of the punt, tips down, crowding around the feet of the two seated figures. If Swords refer to thoughts, it is as if they are dominating the people in the boat, standing guard over them and keeping them seated, in a state of submission. They also obscure their field of vision, preventing them from having an unimpeded view of what lies ahead of them.
On the near side of the punt, the water is choppy; to the left, it is calm. This is the passage from something volatile to quieter shores… although the land and water that the figures are heading towards are monochrome, the skies a flat grey. Nothing shows in relief. It has the same feeling to my eyes as the dusk, where a semi-blindness sets in while one set of sensors for the night take over from those for the day, and vision is consequently impaired and inefficient. So while calmer waters are promised, ground needs to be covered, a mental clarity is demanded, before it is reached.