The Weekend Tarot Reading — Sunday, December 18, 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

Love lost; love rediscovered. That is the broad message in today’s Weekend Tarot Reading.

I write “broad” because the definition of love changes from person to person, from experience to experience, and can suggest something external — between two people — or internal — with oneself. Or both. I write “lost” and then “rediscovered” because, once again, the reading wants to be read from left to right. There is a sense of chronology to the layout, primarily due to the connecting factor of the presence of the two cups in the left card and the right — the evolution of the idea of love as the cups come into their own in the final card.

In the Five of Cups, a figure robed in mourning-black stoops over three cups, their contents spilled onto the ground. Two of the streams of fluid are red, suggesting blood; the other is green, suggesting putrefaction. Perhaps something vital needed to be sacrificed because of the presence of an element whose contamination would have spread like an infection. A necessary spilling of blood to rid the situation of something that, if not dead already, was in the process of coming to an end.

But all is not lost. Far from it. Keep an eye on the building in the background as the cards progress. Who wants to live in a fortress? It might be safe, but that safety comes at the cost of some freedom: The buttress suggests intractability, the small windows will let in only so much light. The bridge to its right, just behind the figure, leads away from it and towards the next card. It crosses a river, which is flowing. There is movement, suggesting that the emotions are in full flow. This is not a situation of stagnation but a loss encountered because things are in motion. That is significant.

And so back to the figure in black. He is grieving, and that is both natural and understandable. In front of him, he sees only loss. What he is not seeing, however, is the bigger picture. For behind him stand two cups, upright. I often refer to the idea that they are like guardian angels — ever-present, but invisible to the protagonist. They remain, and they still hold what needs to be held. They are the protectors of love — or, rather, of the love that matters: The love that is still expressed through matter, rather than draining away into nothingness. All the figure needs to do is to turn around, and when he does, he becomes fully present to them. (The cups themselves are always fully present; it is he who is absent to them.) So, in essence, they are already there — it’s just that there needs to be an intercessor in order for him to see them and to step into the energy that they embody. This intercessor comes in the form of the Ace of Wands.

Wands are energy and creativity, the I Am that calls to The Fool to step out into the unknown, The Emperor to step up to the responsibility of rulership, the force that comes to fruition in The World. The Ace of Wands holds the highest potential for that expression, coming as it does from spirit itself. Here, it provides the impetus to move away from a situation of pain and suffering, and the fixation on what is ‘wrong’, to experience — or, rather, to re-experience — what has been right all along.

The wand in the Ace looks as if it is being held up to the card on the left, and stands next to the two cups in particular: The two cups are connected to spirit, and there is a sense of unity between both cards. But this spirit is practical. It is fire, it is energy, life. It empowers and it animates; it is a revivifying agent. On the other side of the Ace of Cups, the couple are touched by the divine: The cloud out of which the hand appears is juxtaposed with them — and with the presence of this other-worldly cloud, all other clouds disappear: The sky, grey in the first two cards, is transformed into blue — clarity and freedom — in the third.

And take a look at the landscapes across all three cards. There are similarities to the backdrops between the Five of Cups and the Ace of Wands — the river is still flowing; there is still movement. Except, in the Ace, the hills have become greener, imbued with life. This life extends into the Two of Cups, but this time there is no river: The flow of emotions are symbolised through the two figures themselves, who have now internalised the watery aspect of the card. In the Two of Cups, as in the Five of Cups, the figures stand on a stage, yet the story is now different: that of two beings, facing each other. The male figure holds his hand out to the woman. From disconnection comes connection through the uniting force of the Ace of Wands.

Finally, the fortress in the Five of Cups is ’emptied out’ in the Ace of Wands, and then becomes a home in the third. The red roof is evocative of the blood in the first card, which is no longer sacrifice but shelter and protection.

This is what I wrote on the Two of Cups in an earlier article:

The Two of Cups has a yin-yang quality to it. Cups are concerned with emotions, and this represents an archetypal idea of love: a man, a woman, bringing with them qualities of masculine and feminine, in a picture that evokes a strong sense of balance… but which already starts to have an asymmetry to it in the landscape in the background and in the reaching out of the male figure’s hand.

The figures are contrasted yet complementary and, to me, traditional roles seem somewhat reversed. Where the man wears a patterned tunic, the woman’s dress and robe ― often ornate to attract male attention ― are plain; where he wears a wreath of roses ― symbol of Isis and Aphrodite ― she wears one of laurel ― symbol of Apollo. Hence the feel of yin and yang: in the incarnate world, there is no human who is purely masculine or feminine. We contain elements of the two, their proportions varying from one person to the next.

Above the two figures is a caduceus with a lion’s head. The caduceus is the symbol of Hermes, or Mercury, the messenger of the gods; and the lion ― powerfully evocative of grounding energy ― brings the messenger into the physical. The ‘agape love’ (selfless love of creation) of the Ace of Cups is manifested as love for the other. Because it is new, it is more of an ideal than a certainty. It is what we perhaps strive for in a relationship, and we might reach it. But equilibrium is hard to maintain, and it calls for constant adjustment, which is witnessed in the rest of the Cups suit. [From potential into action: The Twos in tarot]

In other words, this is not the end, but a beginning — a new beginning. From here, it is up to the couple to work together, with their differences, to bring a new form of love and relating into the world. This might be two separate parts of yourself; it might be something more concrete. Whichever it is, the Ace of Wands has taken up home in the form of the caduceus in the Two of Cups. Its energy of movement has now become the energy of negotiation — movement in another form, the method that we can harness to keep the wheels turning in our relationships. As a symbol for mercury, it is also a key element in alchemy. Are we not all alchemists when we strive to unite within ourselves and with each other? As Carl Jung (1933) wrote in Modern Man in Search of a Soul (It’s a quote I return to often):

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”

And this does, indeed, feel like alchemy. Cups, Wands, Cups; emotions, energy, emotions; water, fire, water (and, in this final example, I would argue that the Ace of Wands is more than capable of holding its own with two watery cards). We are witnessing the reigniting of the fire of passion after the flame has burned out. Treat it, yourself and others with the utmost respect. It is only when we can negotiate this course carefully and consciously that we allow each element its own space in which to exist and to express itself fully.