By Sarah Taylor
“I am young, yes, but what I have learned is that love, the beauty of it, the joy of it and yes, even the pain of it, is the most incredible gift to give and to receive as a human being. And we deserve to experience love fully, equally, without shame and without compromise.” ~ Ellen Page
This week, we have a progression from the reading last Sunday: the shift from the Eight to the Nine of Swords, and the presence of a new Page — the Page of Cups.
Fear and self-loathing in the bedroom. That phrase — with apologies to Hunter S Thompson — is what came to me when I saw the Nine of Swords in the context of this reading.
The Eight of Swords — the self-delusion that we create with our thoughts — has crystallised into the potential of the Nine of Swords. This is the card that shows us what happens when our fears isolate us to the point where we find ourselves alone and in the dark. The figure sits up in bed; the palpable emotion is one of despair. Despair cuts us off from the life-giving vitality of our connectedness to each other, but most of all to our source of life. In this case, The Sun.
The figure faces away from the Sun, hands over eyes, in a dark chamber of anguish. The implied meaning of the Nine of Swords is the self-wounding of our own beliefs. Here, about life and love.
However, with every card there lies within it the possibility of change. What makes itself shown here are the presence of love and a sense of belonging — to a cosmos that drapes itself around us, as on the blanket that covers the subject. There are roses. Love, in its purest expression. Physical, embodied. There are astrological glyphs. The ordering principle of life. Love is interwoven into a system that can accompany us even through our darkest moments, and which reminds us that we can choose, once again, to uncover our eyes and see what is in our presence.