By Sarah Taylor
This week, we are back to the Eight of Swords, at centre. It feels, over the weeks, that there has been a lack of clarity, which has caused confusion and a consequent sense of feeling trapped. This feeling of being trapped is one that is self-induced: as if you cannot get out of the machinations of your mind, as if you are rendered helpless by thought patterns that keep you bound in one place.
But this is not really the truth, which is embodied in the Eight of Swords itself. The woman is a prisoner of her own making. No-one is holding her prison in the wall of her imagination. Not even her bonds are true shackles — although that doesn’t make them any less compelling or, from one vantage point at least, hard to remove.
The key here is that it is she who is responsible for removing them. In other words, it is you who are responsible for removing a particular set of circumstances in which you have a sense of confusion and/or powerlessness. And although swords are associated with thoughts, it might be that your environment itself — your physical circumstances — may feel imprisoning.
But it is your mind that also offers the way out. It seems to be one of those situations where, if you were simply to step away and free your arms with a few shakes, and remove your blindfold, then you would have a new vantage point. From there, you might wonder what it was that was really holding you back in the first place.
The nature of this confusion is implied in the card to the woman’s right — or on the left of the spread. It is the one that she is currently most associated with, both in terms of her proximity to it and her body language.