The Weekend Tarot Reading — Sunday, December 11, 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

You are embarking on an act of creation. You are in the process of shaping your world, and your experience of it. You have the tools to be able to achieve this — both personal and transpersonal. How will you choose to work? What is it that you are going to bring into existence? Both of these questions lie at the heart of the matter at hand.

This feels to me like a very balanced reading. An Eight, a minor arcana Two, card number Two in the major arcana. Two male figures out in the world, one female figure in the inner world. The juxtaposition of a card of doingness on the left, a card of beingness on the right, and one that seems to be mid-way between ‘doing’ and ‘being’ in the centre. Do the outer cards feed into the central card, which is then our focus, I wonder? That is the way the reading is leading me to interpret it.

The Eight of Pentacles is a card of work. After the giving to others witnessed in the figure offering alms to the poor in the Six of Pentacles, there is then the getting down to business of bringing something through for oneself, by oneself, in the Seven: We give first in order to open the way to receiving. When we get to the Eight, there is a sense of having overcome the hurdles of uncertainty in the Seven, where a certain amount of taking stock was necessary in the face of less-than-favourable circumstances.

Here, now, there is an ease to the picture that was not seen in the previous card. The worker has turned craftsman, building up a reserve of things — assets, skills, tools — that are ready for use if he needs them. This is about what we build up within ourselves that we can then apply as required out in the world. They might not all be tangible, but they are all practical, and can have practical effects. We have a wealth of means at our disposal if only we were a) to acknowledge just what we have developed through the sheer will of being here, and b) to look, not at others (who, distant as they are in the town behind the figure, cannot supply what we need) but right in our own backyards — right in front of our eyes, in fact.

We have everything that we need, here, now. We can recognise it because we are the ones who brought it into existence. Who knows what gems we might have been making behind the scenes, forged from the sweat, aridity and apparent hopelessness of past situations (the Seven of Pentacles)? Best we take a look and take stock. It is a treasure trove of gifts.

When my eye moves over to the next card, the Two of Wands, it is as if the wand being held out by the merchant is allying itself with the column of pentacles in the Seven. Next to the wand, he holds a globe. This is a progression: What we craft (the pentacles) contributes to a unique act of creation (the wand), the result of which is our world and how we choose to experience it (the globe). All three elements are interdependent; all three, like the three cards themselves, are in balance. When we create our experience, it is a confluence of the tangible and the intangible, the building blocks and the will. The Seven of Pentacles represents the tangible aspect of our creation, and the merchant’s hand upon the wand emphasises this. This is the part of what we bring to the mix that we can touch and experience with our five senses.

But our acts of creation also call upon something we cannot touch, which is where The High Priestess comes into play. The second wand behind the merchant is not held by the merchant; it is held by a bracket, an encloser of space. It is this space that ties in with The High Priestess. She, too, is a space-holder, her receptivity able to birth spirit into the world of matter.

The merchant’s back is turned to The High Priestess. He cannot fully apprehend her, but she is present nonetheless, encased in her own world between the pillars of the inner sanctum. Her contribution to the creative process is oblique; it is the negative space that surrounds and moves between the everyday objects that we see and know immediately. The Eight of Pentacles is the waking (daylight) life; The High Priestess is the dreamtime, governed by the Moon — planet of feminine power, intuition, where we might feel less at home, but where we tap into a principle of guidance that is not limited to the physical.

Although the Two of Wands feels like the result of the confluence of the two flanking cards, my eyes are drawn more to The High Priestess as being the accent, or final note, of that act of creation. Unlike the other two figures, both of whom are looking elsewhere (one down, one out into the world), The High Priestess faces us, unwavering. What does that gaze bring us? What is it saying to us? The role of The High Priestess carries with it great responsibility if it is to be carried out with clarity and integrity. When we align with our highest creative potential, we are, in essence, surrendering to it. In the same way, perhaps we need to surrender to the gaze of The High Priestess: Instead of embarking on a physical, psychological, or emotional staring match with what is asking to come through us, we submit to it.

This is how the world is made; this is how we are able to shape our world: With conscious intent, with dedication, through the love of our craft (there is a small but perceptible smile at the lips of the figure in the Eight of Pentacles), and guided by something that is not bound by our perceived limitations. When we stand back to appraise our work, will we see that it is good?