By Sarah Taylor
There is, or has been, a sense of loss that might have carried with it some considerable pain. But what has fallen away has created a clearing — the rubble indicative of structures that may have felt safe, but which were standing in the way of clarity and insight.
In the first card, the Five of Swords, if you’re able to look close enough, you’ll see that the German writing speaks of ‘anxiousness over defeat or loss’. The card isn’t about defeat or loss — it is about the anxiousness associated with defeat or loss. That’s an important distinction, and it may bear fruit to analyse it:
Are you mourning what was lost? Or are you focussed on the sensation of loss for its own sake?
It might be that you are no stranger to loss; it might be that what you have lost in the past has been significant, and a source of deep and legitimate grief. Is what you are facing now the same thing? Or is it an echo from some distant, perhaps buried, memory? No-one can know this apart from you, but to know the difference viscerally — in your body — is akin to experiencing the clarity that the figure has access to as he stands on the site of (his own) defeat.
Once bitten, twice shy. And he has been bitten for sure — look at the destruction around him. However, I find the structure beneath him to be dense and unyielding; lifeless. This isn’t a particularly attractive scene at all. It is a wasteland — it has the feeling of a derelict city after a battle, but one that wasn’t in tune with its surroundings. A concrete jungle, if you will. He has my empathy. There is loss and he is in a landscape that will no longer shelter him.
Yet there is the presence of two things. The first is the next card in the Swords suit, which isn’t in the reading, but which is implied: the Six of Swords, which marks a transition away from strife and towards new lands.
The second, is the light that shines around him like a corona, towards which he is facing. He is keeping the Ace of Swords in his sights. And so are we, central as it is to the reading and the story that is unfolding. Its light and the manner in which it stands — upright, keen, radiating its own brilliance that seems to part the clouds above it — leads the eye past it and down the cypress-marked, wide, green avenue and into the dawn.
I just love this card! The Ace is like an alien spaceship landed on a cultivated yet organic runway, in a place that is green, gentle, bathed in moonlight. It is an uncompromising visitor from another place, bold and larger than life, utterly unwavering in its presence. The Ace represents the opportunity to do something new — to add it to the Five and to move away from a place of loss and defeat and into a different realm: from concrete that strangles everything around it to a sense of living where there is cognizance of both the meeting of material needs and the preservation of the natural systems that support us.
And that comes to fruition in the final card, the Knight of Disks.
The card that holds the individuated potential of the Disks suit, the Knight here depicts a rebuilding of some form of structure, but this time it has the chance to retain integrity, to maintain balance. The Knight is the masculine custodian of the material world. He embodies man-made systems that are in synch with nature, attuned to them, being responsive to and protective of them. He is insight — the most constructive aspect of the Swords suit — partnered with earth.
Builder and healer, what he brings into form will not block out the light, nor will it pave over paradise. His direct gaze mirrors the planes of the Ace of Swords. In it, I see a commitment to something that honours both earth and air, humanity and nature, the mind and the body.
Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Five of Swords (Venus in Aquarius), Ace of Swords (the pure potential of air), Knight of Disks (the fiery aspect of earth)
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.
Thank you, Rob, muddpi, P. Sophia. And I love the interpretation of the Parting of the Red Sea — that speaks to me.
In coming back to this, was still looking for meaning into the Knight of Disks card. But was drawn to the Ace of swords. The card struck out to me in symbolization to the Parting of the Red Sea.
Parting of the Red Sea, in that one event is the final act in God delivering His people from slavery in Egypt. The exodus from Egypt is the single greatest act of salvation in the Old Testament, and represents God’s saving power.
Which seemed one way to look at the entire spread, the promise of Redemption.
Out of slavery, death, burial (IV Swords), delivered safely on a path to (Ace of Swords),
new life on earth -in Christ (Knight of Pentacles).
“…the Knight here depicts a rebuilding of some form of structure, but this time it has the chance to retain integrity, to maintain balance.”
“The Knight is the masculine custodian of the material world. He embodies man-made systems that are in synch with nature, attuned to them, being responsive to and protective of them. He is insight — the most constructive aspect of the Swords suit — partnered with earth.”
“Builder and healer, what he brings into form will not block out the light, nor will it pave over paradise. His direct gaze mirrors the planes of the Ace of Swords. In it, I see a commitment to something that honours both earth and air, humanity and nature, the mind and the body.”
Beautiful. Thank you again Sarah!
Yikes ! … the correlation of the 5 of swords with Venus in Aquarius is pause for thought –esp when she opposes the empty spot in a t-square 🙁
I am not familiar with this deck, but have always seen the images IV of Swords of other decks, as a card of Victory. Although Victory with learning, in understanding our limitations and boundaries. Accepting things as they are, will allow a higher energy to uplift us to freedom and if shared expands.
Even here in this deck, he is standing on top of destruction. He is triumphant. And, as your reading miraculously offers, with the next card the Ace.
The Ace, holds through experience and calm practice that –in spite of adversity– no ‘one’ wins in war. The Ace, with this seed of understanding, leads to new ideas, all the goodies, and an auspicious time of fruition and success!
Thank you Sarah for bringing such a positive reading to us.
Sarah;
Just after reading your Facebook excerpt regarding the Ace of Swords from today’s reading, I walked outside and immediately noticed something on the sidewalk in front of my apartment. It was a small magnetic refrigerator icon in the form of a Day of the Dead skull, with colorful fruit piled atop it’s head like some ghostly Carmen Miranda. Magnetically held to it were three sewing needles–one vertically arrayed on the back, and two crossed sword-style across the skull’s face.
The Three of Swords.
Today I’ve been moving through another keenly felt passage in the ongoing release of my family and community of origin. That’s been an unfolding narrative markedly delineated in the fall of 2011, when I intuited a last, final break from the remaining member of my family with whom I was close, as I beheld in a church one of the Stations of the Cross. A station which revealed itself as a penultimate version of the Hanged Man. I’d shared that story with you on PW, and in response you gave me a reading to help put things in context.
Cycles within cycles it seems. My weekend’s events, coming in the wake of the pattern-altering Grand Cross, have spelled an impending shift in home and locale for me. Another regrouping, another sought direction and chapter.
So again your collective reading resonates with the individual. One whose message is magnified by the appearance of the Three of Swords at my feet. Both the Five and the Three speak to core loss and its deep, sometimes paralyzing pain. But also to the need to accept loss and move forward, as there is no other option in the realm of the living.
The gold-toothed skull stares at me with bejeweled eyes as I write this, wearing a crown of fruitful abundance. That aspect points to gifts held within and awaiting fruition in the future. In the other direction, true to its traditional significance, it reminds me of my ancestors, whose lineage defined the identity I once held as a descendant of a unique tribe transplanted from Old World to New World islands. An identity now fading with the ties I held to those who shared it. Inherited within a landscape that will no longer shelter me.
Much of my life I chafed at those ties, feeling them limiting, narrow, and provincial. So many of my choices in that tableau stemmed from an innate compulsion to be freed from my subculture’s strictures and shadows. Even while I secretly yearned for an acceptance by it that many of my blood ties came to naturally. A late friend who once visited my ancestral home, after coming to know me outside of it, said to me afterward that whatever events had conspired to separate me from my tribe had happened with my consent, consciously or not. He was right.
This message is more for me more than you, of course. Sometimes I write things out to see what’s already there and known. Often a synchronicity like today’s spurs it forth. Like a symbol appearing in a dream from a deeper layer of awareness, the skull’s appearance reinforces a message already saturated into this day since sunrise. Lest I miss the point. How much of it’s apparition is warning and how much is retrospective glance, we shall see.
As you say, it’s up to me to grasp the Sword.