The Weekend Tarot Reading — Sunday, March 4, 2012

By Sarah Taylor

Keep going; keep applying yourself; keep building on what you’ve got. It might feel like an uphill struggle at times, and as if you are working with little or no support, but you are making progress. Soon you’ll see results. When you do, there is a benefit to be had in remaining conscious of what it took for you to get there, and of any growing sense of accountability that you have been nurturing during this process. We live in a world of polarity, where every event is an adjustment towards balance. Treading a path of temperance will help to keep things on course.

The last weekend tarot reading felt like it was taking place at a soul level — what C G Jung would refer to as a pivotal point in our experience of individuation, where we are presented with an opportunity for self-definition that frees us from something that no longer feels authentic to our individual development. It was ‘big-picture’ tarot.

This week’s reading is concerned with the detail of day-to-day living: three minor arcana cards are more practical in nature, the ways in which we express our ‘macro’ selves in the ‘micro’ of our outer lives.

The Three of Pentacles has come up recently in a Weekend Tarot Reading — on the 12th February — so it might be an idea to see if there is anything going on in your life right now that links back to events around three weeks ago. Because something is starting to bear fruit, even if it is early days in a process that is ongoing and which is set to evolve over the ensuing months or years.

The Three of Pentacles is about the progress we can make when we draw on both practical and spiritual (emotional, psychological, pastoral) support, understanding that these resources will be eminently useful to us because we don’t have all the answers and our expertise is yet to be honed. This sits somewhat in contrast with the Seven of Pentacles, inasmuch as the figure seems to be alone in his task of cultivating his crop of vines. I don’t think they contradict each other; rather, there might be a need to be more aware of what support we can draw on knowing that the task is going to feel lonely at times, and a struggle against the elements.

What I do like is the feeling I get, when I look at the Three and the Seven together, that the pentacles in the Three have ‘tumbled’ into the picture and formed a shrub in the Seven. What was beautiful but lacking in vitality in the Three of Pentacles — as if in a planning stage and committed to paper only — has now been imbued with life. Yes, that life is fragile right now. It is going to need a lot of care and attention for the crop to reach fruition. But the indications are that the sweat and toil have been worthwhile: one pentacle rests, ready, at the figure’s feet.

The third card in this reading, the Nine of Cups, feels very different from the two cards to its left. First, there is a shift in quality because of the change in suit. Pentacles are about the physical world that we interact with — what we do — while Cups are associated with emotions — what it is that we are feeling. It might be that the result of our efforts is experienced in our inner worlds.

Second, the figure in the Nine is a far cry from those in the Three and Seven: his clothes suggest that his line of work is ‘hands-off’ — if he even has to work at all now. He isn’t dressed extravagantly, but there is a certain leisureliness in his demeanour, sitting there has he is, arms folded, a conspicuous red hat placed square on his head. In fact, he is sitting squarely too, arms crossed and legs apart, symmetrical. This to me conveys the presence of the potential for balance, while at the same time my eyes are drawn back to his arms. They are relaxed, but crossed nonetheless over his heart. His head seems drawn down into his shoulders, with no hint of neck. Is he not prepared to ‘stick his neck out’, to risk his heart fully for the situation? If Cups are emotions, he is surrounded by the opportunity to feel his feelings — and those feelings seem positive, colourful, buoyant. But there is a sense of something being ‘look, don’t touch’. Instead of opening himself to what the Cups represent, he isn’t interacting with them as much as he could. Look at the Three of Cups by way of contrast. In it, three figures are dancing, each holding a cup above her. It is an image of joy and participation, of movement.

The Nine of Cups has no movement. What it seems to represent, therefore, is a boon that holds significant potential, and in fact is having an impact on us as protagonist — but imagine what we could be if we weren’t so hell-bent on keeping it all for ourselves, or placing a limitation on it in terms of what we think it should look like, or resisting getting up close and personal with it? Things might get a little messy, indeed — or perhaps it would only seem like ‘mess’ if we viewed it through the eyes of the figure here? Maybe it wouldn’t get so much ‘messy’ as spontaneous, a little delectably chaotic.

This, I feel, is what we might benefit from paying attention to: that after our hard work, a period of reward might cause us to feel like we can stop being conscious of who we are and what we do. When we lose consciousness, however, we run the risk of losing the ability to get intimate with the feelings that are on offer to us. They have been hard-won. Remembering that might mean the difference between feeling the need to enjoy them from afar, or engaging with them fully and with the same awareness and dedication that we employed to bring them into being.

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.