The Weekend Tarot Reading — Sunday, December 29, 2013

By Sarah Taylor

The Page and the Knight of Swords, left-hand cards in the Weekend Tarot Readings of two weeks and then one week ago, have finally matured enough to take the throne as a ruling authority in the court of the intellect: both are replaced by the Queen of Swords — feminine principle of the mind, steadfast yet transformative. There’s nothing like a steady, unmistakable evolution to drive a point home (so to speak).

Queen of Swords, Temperance, The Fool -- RWS Tarot deck.
Queen of Swords, Temperance, The Fool from the Rider-Waite Smith Tarot deck, created by A E Waite and illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith. Click on the image for a larger version.

From an immature but incisive awareness (Page), to a fighting zeal (Knight), to a calm insightful presence (Queen), your mind — perhaps your point of view or beliefs — appears to have gone on a journey and returned with greater depth and wisdom.

The Queen is the first of this three-week Swords complement to turn her full attention to the other two cards in the reading. She is side-on to us, her sword resting in her right hand, her left acknowledging both Temperance and The Fool. With wisdom comes inclusiveness; the Queen has learned to ‘grow up and share’.

On the right, we also have a progression from last week: The World has given way to The Fool, and marks the beginning of a new cycle. Something that had reached a conclusion (whether it made sense or not at the time), has opened the door to a field of potential in which things are only just starting to take shape.

We have the idea of bringing something with us from previous experience (the energy of the Queen) into new territory (the land of The Fool). There is what is distilled and useful from the old, and there is the new. There is the meeting of the human and intra/interpersonal with the archetypal and transpersonal. In short, there is a sense of our personal lives running in parallel with patterns that are greater than anything we can weave alone.

Where the Queen and The Fool turn towards and meet each other is in the fourteenth card of the major arcana: Temperance.

If you look at Temperance, that meeting is implied throughout the imagery: the angelic and the worldly; the Sun over the hills, and the Sun on the angel’s forehead; the two cups and two lilies, one elevated over the other; the angel’s feet — one foot in the water, one on the land.

Temperance embodies the practice of alchemy — for it is indeed a practice rather than a concept. Temperance describes the mixing of base substances in order to create gold. Those base substances are separate, often polarised, and yet, together, form a new substance — a new experience. Temperance treads a fine line, understanding that for every movement one way, there is a complementary movement to readjust the imbalance.

However, by walking this line, a third way is forged in the fires of transformation, and it is one that appears to have no relation to its constituent ingredients. When this happens, you have participated in an act of magic.

There is an indication that things have matured enough to start mixing: the old with the new, wisdom with risk, the personal and the transpersonal, the worn path with the unwalked territories of the quest. It might not seem to make complete sense; it might not need to. If there is a sense of inner authority, and an alignment to a call to the adventure of spirit, then the next step will present itself soon enough. And the next, and the next. It is the forging of the path that is as precious as the gold of the sunlight that calls you.

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Queen of Swords (the watery aspect of air), Temperance (Sagittarius), The Fool (Uranus)

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.

5 thoughts on “The Weekend Tarot Reading — Sunday, December 29, 2013”

  1. “It might not seem to make complete sense; it might not need to.”

    Received with gratitude and appreciation. nilou

  2. “Temperance treads a fine line, understanding that for every movement one way, there is a complementary movement to readjust the imbalance.”
    ” …by walking this line, a third way is forged in the fires of transformation, and it is one that appears to have no relation to its constituent ingredients.”

    This is a brilliant light shining on us today. We are in a period of readjustment of ourselves. It calls for us to let go of much in which we invest in our identity and to meaning. The third way I also see as you introduce Sarah is different for each of us and points to it’s development through the cross we each bear and where we find frustration to the new expression which will ultimately reveal our new strengths and spiritual gifts.

    For those that have an easy time and move with change, it will be a time requiring much waiting and forbearance before action. For those that experience reluctance to change they will be called to courage, to take action which may feel like great risk. But both in time will bring these new skills of great blessings to freedom which will redefine who we are in this new cycle and age.

    Thank you for this reading Sarah!

  3. Truth-gasm! And so my new year’s day path up to the summit is my seeding metaphor.. Thanks so much, Sarah! 🙂

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