Editor’s Note: This is the first article in a weekend series on tarot, where we pick one card and see where it takes us. If you want to experiment with the 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
It is with not a little certainty that I suggest I am not the only one who has had a humdinger of a year.
This certainty comes from several sources, most notably the experiences of family, friends and friends of friends; the events that are playing out in the world, politically, economically, environmentally; and from what I read about the astrology of our times here on Planet Waves.
One of the prevailing words that sum up what is happening in my own life is flux. Nothing seems to want to settle. It is as if something is working to keep me on my toes, to see how flexible I am, to prod me whenever I start falling into old thoughts and behaviours. It is often not a comfortable place to be, and at times I am given to wonder whether there is a constructive purpose to it all, or whether it’s just a rather nasty habit I have fallen into: in short, whether I’m in the grip of a pathological fear of just stopping in acceptance and realising that this is it. This is my life. Not something that’s just around the corner, waiting for me. It is here, now.
I believe this is what this week’s single-card musing is about.
The card I drew is the 7 of Wands… or, in my Xultun deck, the 7 of Staffs. This card is widely accepted to symbolise the concept of ‘valour’. My Pocket Guide to the Tarot describes it thus:
A strong figure is able to defend himself against all odds…. Enemies and difficult forces retreat, and there is victory ahead.
I think there is sometimes the temptation to see this card in very straightforward terms — of ‘fighting the good fight’, where the opposing wands are there to thwart the figure, and his purpose is to prevail over them. Or maybe I have tended to approach it this way in the past. Today, however, I’m looking at it quite differently.