The Weekend Tarot Reading — Sunday, August 21, 2011

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

There is some disillusionment about — a ‘not-noticing’ of — what you already have, and what is also taking shape. It might be that you are so fixated on a sense of loss somewhere in your life that you are unable to see fully what has entered. It is the start of something new, and it is more authentic and more in line with the truth of who you are.

When first looking at these three cards, I see material security and the arrival of potent creativity. However, our emotions are still being directed at and fixating on something that is missing rather than noticing what has already arrived and is right in front of us.

Why can’t the figure in the Four of Cups see this truth? Does he not recognise it because he is expecting something different? Perhaps he is not prepared to risk what he might feel if he does see it. His arms are crossed, his legs are crossed. He’s not letting anything — or anyone — in. What he is not yet prepared to acknowledge is that what is being offered to him is a gift, and one that is priceless.

Be that as it may, the figure is receiving support in the form of the King of Pentacles, a wise and generous benefactor who has learned to live in balance with the natural and material worlds, knowing as he does that all things are connected, and that true power comes from his relationship to spirit. Here, the King seems to be looking towards and down at the figure in the Four of Cups with a sense of gentleness and solicitousness. In his hands he holds a sceptre and a pentacle; he is aware of his stewardship of, and responsibility to, them.

The young man is not yet in a position to do the same with the cup being held out to him. Perhaps this is a necessary time of inner preparation before he takes what is being offered to him. Perhaps the only thing that is necessary is for him to recognise how different the reality of his situation might be from how he imagines it.

And then we go to the Page of Wands — looking away from the seated figure in the Four of Cups and up at his Wand, seemingly full of wonder at this new tool he has been given. The Page is King in embryo — the youngest of the court cards. The flame on his hat is small, but it is there, burning, echoing the shape of the sprig of three leaves that grows out of the top of the wand. New life. Yes, he is in awe of what he has, but he is holding it nonetheless. In this sense, there seems to be a progression from the Four of Cups to the Page, from one who is disconnected, to one who claims what is his. From here, we return to the King — a figure who is reverent, and fully accountable for what he holds, but who is no longer in awe and therefore has full access to its gifts.

How do we begin to understand and to claim what is rightfully ours? The key is in the suits: Pentacles, Cups, Wands, respectively the tangible world, emotions, and creativity. This isn’t about analysis, or thinking one’s way through things. We cannot think ourselves into consciousness. This is about listening to what is going on inside and acting on intuition, on heart energy, on something that lies deeper but that has something truly important to say. If we listen to the cards, they might direct us like this: Go with your intuition. What is available to you cannot be reached with the intellect. Rather, you will find it indirectly, seeing as you do with the eyes of your heart.

There is another process that comes to mind when I see these three cards from left to right: calcination. In her book On Becoming an Alchemist, Catherine MacCoun quotes from the Gospel of John [15:1-2, 15:6]:

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.

If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers, and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned.

In the King of Pentacles, I see the King as the embodiment of the ‘true vine’. The grapes that grow at his feet and adorn his gown are healthy and abundant. They are a visual depiction of his relationship both with a source that feeds him and his environment, interconnected as the two are. In the Four of Cups, the greenery is there, but it has become non-descript and lacking in contrast. Unlike the King, the figure no longer seems entirely at one with his surroundings: the ease and sense of belongingness are not there; there is fruitlessness.

With the Page we have the burning. The experience of calcination is both searing and ruthless. Ideas and beliefs about ourselves and our lives — many of which we held as dear and precious — are fed to the flames. Nothing that does not serve us is spared. It can be a period of profound pain and shame, and in its wake comes a reappraisal and a readjustment to our starker internal landscape. But what remains is all that we ever needed, and it has been given room to grow. The sprigs on the wand in the Page of Wands are that growth, and the Page himself is symbol that we have been initiated into the realm of fire. As initiates, it is our responsibility to use what we now have in order to evolve; we carry the transformative nature of fire within us.