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 explains how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc
By Sarah Taylor
For this week’s Wednesday article, and given there was no Weekend Tarot Reading last Sunday, I thought I’d draw some cards to mark the ending of one year and our move into 2012 in a few days’ time. My intention for the reading: That the cards help us to identify an event, encounter or theme that was meaningful to us this year, which then brings us to a point where we can use what we have discovered to move forward with more insight and more awareness.
Like previous readings, I drew three cards — in this case, the Five of Pentacles, The Empress and the Eight of Cups. Unlike previous readings, I felt moved to draw a fourth, a qualifying card to cast more light on the nature of the third card. What came up was the King of Swords, another recent visitor to these pages.
For many of us, 2011 has been a pretty challenging year. I write ‘challenging’ not as a euphemism for ‘hard’, but rather because, no matter whether the curve has seemed positive or negative, it has frequently seemed steep. More is being asked of us; more than usual, we are being called to “put away childish things” [Corinthians] and to grow up.
Sometimes, when we leave the shelter of the known, we can feel cast out into the cold. It isn’t easy giving up the hope that our parents will change, or — the same idea on a larger scale — that governments will come in and save the day. For many, the idea of leaving shelter is no longer a metaphor: Here in the UK, people are losing their jobs every day, and with them the ability to put an adequate roof over their heads. Many households are facing what is known as “fuel poverty” — where over 10% of household income is used to keep warm.
The Five of Pentacles speaks of a time when we have been cast out — whether literally or figuratively. We might have had a hand in it. We might have actively sought it. We might have little idea what the hell happened to put us out on the sidewalk. However we got here, this is where we have found ourselves. It can feel like a lonely place. And yet, and yet… What we tend to ignore when we are fixated on the struggling couple in the card — what they, too, are ignoring — is the warmth that emanates from the stained-glass window behind them.