By Sarah Taylor
“Will you take just one sacred pause? Set aside everything you know, for just one moment, and lay your hands on your heart. Feel the aliveness of the sacred world. See that there is no grace coming in the future, there is no awakening around the corner, for love is here now.” ~ Matt Licata
I read this passage from psychotherapist and writer Matt Licata (who posts some truly pithy words of wisdom on Facebook) moments after drawing the three cards for this week’s reading, and I was immediately drawn to the interior image I had of the figure in the Four of Swords: “lay your hands on your heart.”
All of the Fours in the tarot’s minor arcana represent pauses of one kind or another. As far as Swords go, the Four of Swords is one of the least ‘barbed’ of its suit, but it is still very much a Sword: this particular pause is more necessity than preference — a heads-up. Or, rather, a heads down.
If we are to avoid the skirmish and pain of the Five of Swords, then we need a rest, and a rest of a very particular kind: this describes a meditative state, a sense of spiritual nourishment that feeds us when we unplug from the world and go within. If we do not go within, we go without. The Four of Swords is as simple as that.
Seen in the context of the other two cards, the Four of Swords implies the preparatory work needed to ensure we are sufficiently restored and aligned for a creative endeavour that extends beyond the individual.
Whereas the Two of Cups is about falling in love with oneself through the mirror of another, the Three of Cups is a deepening and broadening of that idea to include community predicated on a feeling of celebration and mutual support. There is an abundance to this card (which lies in contrast to the Three of Swords in the centre of last week’s reading) — a fecundity. Love begets love; the presence of love influences those around it.