By Sarah Taylor
Whoa there, tiger! Before you go rushing off, sword drawn, ready to make your conquest, why not let these questions compassionately penetrate the membrane of your consciousness:
“Am I headed in the right direction? And what am I running from?”
There is no coincidence that this is the second appearance of The Moon in the triple eclipse period that has taken place over the last four weeks.
The first eclipse was a lunar eclipse on April 25/26; the second a solar eclipse on May 9/10; the third a lunar eclipse that took place May 24/25 — in other words this weekend.
The first time The Moon card appeared during this period, on May 5, I wrote:
If we can let go of our fear … and accept a period where not everything is clear, where it is best to travel light and remain flexible, where details are obscured, and where there is an ‘edge’ to our experience that is jagged and chaotic, then what these three creatures [jackal, dog and crustacean] bring to us is contact with something that has a particular kind of wisdom.
Yes, it isn’t rational, and it is impervious to our need to analyse, categorise and understand. It is nevertheless an integral part of us and one that we often disown or ignore because it plays by different rules. …
Thus the Moon becomes a gift — the potential for something to become manifest.
The time is ripe for you to stop racing ahead — to stop your thoughts racing too — and move within to discover and embody fully this gift while the power of the three eclipses is only just beginning to take shape. The suggestion here is not to be side-tracked by a need to embark on a crusade that would have you rushing from pillar to post, in attack mode. “If I just get in here fast enough, then everything will fall into place.” “If I get out into the world, show them who I am, then I’ll get places.”
But who are you? You are your thoughts, but they don’t tell the whole story. Not even half of it. What about this thought:
“If I ride fast enough, then maybe I can outrun the loss that is calling me back to it so that I can see another way.”
This is not about going back to what is lost. This is the acknowledgement of the extent of a loss and discerning whether your tracks are leading you somewhere new and in line with your unmanifest potential — or if they are simply leading you away from your feelings about the loss, or about loss itself in its many forms. What does loss mean to you? Where do you stand in relation to loss?
The three cups in the Five of Cups have spilled what needed to be spilled: the fact that we enter the world of the Five when the cups have already been upended suggests that this is a fait accompli. There is something to acknowledge and mourn, but there is also the clear suggestion of another aspect of the card that might lie out of awareness: the two cups that remain behind the mourning figure. They are the Two of Cups in another form.
The Two of Cups offers the opportunity to experience oneself as love in the presence of another. It is the first card after the Ace, which is love as an archetype, i.e. the pure, untapped potential of its suit that is available to be drawn down into the physical world. Next to the Ace, the Two of Cups is the dualistic notion of love, where we contact it through something or someone external to us.
The cards may describe a situation in the outside world, but it is its reflection of the inner journey that is more significant, because that is the point at which all outer experiences start. Seen in this light, look at the cards in terms of an inner flight from loss. When the cups were spilled, did you see the whole picture of what was going on in your heart? Did you see what remained, as yet unexplored? Did you see what was available to you where you were?
If there is a focus on loss alone, and a need to move away from painful circumstances, then there is the risk that any decisions stemming from it will be reactive rather than proactive: you run from, rather than to, a place in yourself that is open to receiving an invaluable source of love and support. What if you were to acknowledge the presence of love, to pick it up, and to take it with you? You might head in the same direction; you might go somewhere different. The difference is that you would be taking all of you with you — the pain, the loss, the grief, the shadow, the fear, and also the connectedness to a depth of you that you would never have explored otherwise.
As you are willing to look into the night, to release yourself to your fears, you also release yourself to the parts of you that you held back along with your fears. Your intuition — asking you to turn around and acknowledge the gift in the loss, leading you back into relationship with yourself, and so others — is then seen as an ally rather than a chaotic landscape that howls with more than the mind can contain. Don’t enter it with your mind; enter it with your heart. You have no idea where it could take you.
Many of us seek that which we will flee if we find it. I have seen this time and again, both in myself and in others. We seek, we search, and then we find a calling or a relationship that is a perfect reflection of our yearning… we turn away and go back to seeking, almost as though the light of our true-path was too bright for us, too vulnerable for us, too real for us. This is a pattern that we have to recognize and heal or else we will never stop looking for what is already there. True-path is not always around the next corner. Sometimes its right under our feet.
— Jeff Brown
Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Knight of Swords (the airy aspect of air), Five of Cups (Mars in Scorpio), The Moon (Pisces)
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.
When I see these cards I feel another possible (additional) interpretation for this reading for the collective if we apply it to current events:
– Senator John McCain rushed headlong to Syria to speak to the rebels ( behaving as if he is the President or his representative) on THE weekend when no one would dare call him to the mat ( Memorial Day ). Acting like a Knight (or a King) who thinks he knows best, he rushes in supposedly without Presidential blessings (though I’m sure it is plausible deniability in action) to do what exactly? Brandish a sword surely… a dangerous and provocative move. A maverick in action like a Crusader of old and old this story is.
– we, the card in the middle are empty, fed up, rung out from all this war-mongering. We are cloaked in Death and the ruined city of our “high” ideal lays distant and broken on the horizon. We are ashamed, disillusioned and stand at a threshold of seeing how we waste so much of our precious resources on emotions that do not serve. Like righteousness, anger, the desire for control/revenge. Two cups are not spilled but we are so tired and burned out we don’t trust that what may remain might be worthy of keeping. We turn our backs. We try to hide. We want to deny. Will we stay lost in our disillusionment?
– We are at a threshold… The “Pillar and Post” space that we run between so often (see Elisa’s article) is dead ahead. What will we choose? More of the same senseless warring (the dogs of war endlessly barking with tails wagging the dog) OR… something else? With the Moon, things always feel fated, destined…but this is only because we are overcome with huge tidal emotions that seem stirred and swirling. Karmic patterns do run deep but they are not our only choice. If we step back, calling upon the Chariot Archetype (the Crab-like crustacean is the only figure not caught up in the mirroring/shadowing ) and hold to the Infinite Peace that is within while we move forward into the uncertain future, then perhaps we can find the middle road and journey out of this soup to the Sacred Mountains in the far but visible distance.
Just another perspective to add to the mix.
Thank you, both, for your sharing, Amanda and Strawberrylaughter. Evolution through spirals is a part of our DNA — it’s the very structure of our DNA. I hold to that when I feel a sense of the familiar, reminding myself that it may well be that the most familiar part of what I’m experiencing is the story I am telling myself about it, which may have little bearing on the truth. But if I stick to that story, it will surely become truth. Time to develop a different relationship to truth too.
with so much happening these last few weeks, and the middle eclipse conj my sun (in my “blind spot”), and part of this weekend spent in the wonderful sensory overload of a contact improv jam with old friends and new faces and introducing my partner to that community, and the attendant hiccups…
you know, i just forgot how i was going to finish that sentence. 🙂
i’ve kind of been in “background processing and physical recuperation mode” for the last 24-30 hours, i guess. contemplating my partner’s tendency to fear loss — and even more — my own tendency to still fear the expression of that fear of his, even though it has been changing and lessening in him. and although my own fear of triggering it has also been diminishing as he and i both work through our shadow and communicate…. man, i think i am seeing that i can really “hold on” to my fear of his emotions beyond the point when it is reasonable.
that is to say: we are *both* getting much better at recovering after a relational “hiccup.” i just feel today like i’m seeing how hard it can be for me to accept that the landscape really is different now. a spiral progression… retracing steps, although from a slightly different point along the path.
am i fearing losing something (autonomy? freedom? flow? a certain expansion of myself to connect with others?) that is not *actually* hanging in the balance? have i found something i was searching for, and am i having a hard time trusting that it really is what it is, that it is strong, that it can hold all of me, that it can grow and flex and expand, too?
am i looking too hard at those spilled cups & not noticing the full ones? feeling temped to race away from the primal and intuitive, from just going with the flow and seeing what happens?
oh… i remember what i was going to say: i somehow had not noticed that for this last eclipse, mercury and venus were exactly conjunct my south node in my 12th.
another image of a “blind spot” (the 12th house), and i did not notice it, b/c the eclipse itself was in another part of gemini. i had been looking instead at how neptune is sitting n my MC, square the sun & moon.
ok… some new information for me to sift through and percolate.
yes, for sure, something about habitual mental processes and communication, esp with regard to love and *receiving* love, seem to be up for review and asking to be released.
*sigh*
i’ll stop babbling, now. thank you all for holding the space open!
Sarah, thank you so much for your reply about what we’re not seeing in ourselves.
I’ve been reading about Sedna–natally, she’s near my midheaven, so when something significant happens around where she is, I try to pay attention. And as her current position is near (within 4 degrees) the midpoint of these three eclipses, I’ve been trying to see the past month through the perspective she offers.
Melanie Reinhart says Sedna is about “acknowledging just how bad things really feel and starting from there; radical acceptance.” Her myth also contains that of beating our drum and singing to life. To me, that resonates with this notion of hearing the call to reassess our pain and find the gift within.
As you were saying, one of the ways our pain calls us back to it is through repeated patterns in relationship–the two standing cups we can’t see. Apropos of nothing (I’d thought), two days ago I was asking myself, once again, why I continue to repeat X pattern in my relationships. It’s not an especially self-destructive pattern, but it is one that pulls me out of my life–one that dissociates me from the reality I’m living.
And so, in response to your idea of not entering this with my mind but rather my heart, I chose to emulate Sedna and sing whatever this thing is to life. I love the way meditative chanting can open chambers within which have no doors.
What has come up for me is an incident I’ve been over so many times as to have stripped it of all emotion–been there, done that. Completely. There cannot be anything left of this episode. And yet, I can see my body is not yet free of it, since I continue to repeat its pattern. So, I sang. And cried tears ancient as the moon. My mind cannot access what my body’s been holding, and as much as I’ve worked with this over the years, in many ways I’ve just been racing about, dragging it behind me.
To stop, turn around, honor the pain by singing its bones back to life and find that what’s there is an ability to love that I’d given up on, is a gift I can’t yet fully grasp.
Carl Jung once said that synchronicities occur when something is emerging into consciousness. In so many ways, I feel that what’s emerging is myself.
“Thank you” doesn’t even begin to cover it, but I thank you.
It does, Daniel!
DivaCarla – “Know you are loved. Know this before you go racing off to achieve or fix something. You must know this first, whatever it takes.” Beautiful, and yes.
KathyC – You’re welcome 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NPNcRuaGQI
seems fitting.
I’ve revisited the readings of the Eclipse series. I’ll surely have to come back to this one, after some space. Right now it’s fascinating! what a contrast that knight of swords is to the stillness of the wheel of fortune. How fascinating that 3 of the 4 knights have appeared, and another mounted figure, as Death. Why is the knight of Swords racing off in the opposite direction than the more composed Knights of Cups and Pentacles? Perfect that Luna appears twice, and her towers preside at a distance over Death, framing a setting sun?
The Five of Cups resonates as a thematic card of my life. Focused on what I have apparently lost: spilled water, wine, blood, Life? I am suddenly seeing the 6 of Swords from a few weeks ago as the avoidance of decision. Is that the barge the figure in the 5 of cups boards, when she is done contemplating her losses? I feel like this wild Lunar eclipse, called out by the Moon card (pisces) is saying turn this way, pick up those two cups and sip from each.
Know you are loved. Know this before you go racing off to achieve or fix something. You must know this first, whatever it takes.
Just Amazing. Thank You.
Thank you, all, for your comments. Again, I am not immune from my own reading, but it was only some time after I wrote it that I saw what needed to be done in my own family.
The fact that this seems to be a collective experience helps me to feel that we are never alone.
Yes, I join the thanks here, Sarah. Reading this feels like a rider gently but firmly taking a horse’s reins and calming him down, leading him in the right direction. This is so what I needed to read right now. Bless you, dear Sarah, for your wonderful gifts and compassion.
All of your readings through this eclipse cycle have physically manifested for me. This week is no different. It’s obviously not the most comfortable place to be, but I’m sitting with it and the blind spot of what is emerging from the darkness.
Sarah, like totally high-five awesomeness wow factor times infinity plus ice cream. 🙂
…and the Jeff Brown quote was perfecto.
I like this article, Sarah! I’ve read it a couple of times, absorbing your words, your intent. I’ve set aside trying to “learn” tarot for awhile, and instead letting your lessons flow in me and through me in anticipation they will assist with awakening dormant intuitive tendencies.
Thank you!
Looks like a hangover. Nightmares after a bender. The aftermath of a tornado. Horse man charges in with gusto and…evaporates what love was left in the cups. 5 of cups: dehydration. Yep, dehydrated humans have a harder time staying cool. Piss clear! Drink water!
Thank you, Strawberrylaughter 🙂
What came to me when I read your comment was that we can explore our shadow material through our contact with another or others. We can see ourselves in the mirror of another person, and we can also experience what we are not seeing in ourselves in them, too, when we discover something new in them — especially something to which we are drawn or which causes us to recoil.
In that moment, there is a projection at play, and we can choose to own it and to take it back. In this light, the Five of Cups is about the withdrawal of projections so that the essence of one and other remains.
This is beautiful, Sarah. The notion that we leave a part of ourselves behind when we banish our pain carries such power.
My desk is strewn with post-its, one of which has been calling my name throughout this eclipse season. It’s from a post of yours this past January 31 & it seems to fit with today’s. You’d asked “Are you open to alternative interpretations of what your shadow material might mean or need from you to resolve it?”
I get so much out of your readings. Thank you.
It’s in no way easy to turn around and look at what we’re hiding from. But sometimes, that first step is the hardest part.