By Sarah Taylor
I find it interesting that the astrology correspondences to this week’s reading are so immediately relevant: the Six of Cups represents the Sun in Scorpio, The Fool is Uranus and Judgement is Pluto. Things seem to be lining up for a particular purpose — and if we are wanting to bring about movement, then alignment is the best precursor to that.
Of course, movement also means change, and the reactions to last week’s reading demonstrate clearly one of the prevalent states of the human condition: a fear of change. Most especially, a fear of big change that we feel is beyond our control.
Today, it seems that we are being given a feel for the quality of some of that change. There is a foundation that exists that has its roots in the recognition of a past connection; the stepping out into the unknown towards that foundation; and the calling forth into a new state where something is resurrected through divine intervention. The trumpet blasts in Revelation; the final blast heralding the return to connection.
Something that is altogether personal becomes something that sounds out into the collective, moving from the inside to be felt in the world around us. Inner and outer walls fall away and there is a return to love that is supportive, reverent and karmic.
Let’s start with the card in the centre, which is the one I laid down first.
The Fool stands out from the other cards in the major arcana (the 22 archetype-driven cards based on The Fool’s Journey, or soul’s journey, through life). It does so because its associated number is zero, which is not technically a number. It is what stands outside numbers; it is what some might call “the field of potential,” from which everything else springs — or, in this case, leaps. The Fool, in walking towards the edge of the cliff, is preparing to take a leap into the unknown. Based as he is on the Joker in a pack of cards, he is the ultimate wild card: he fits nowhere and anywhere. He can assume any identity. Standing alone, he is untried potential, without set identity. Standing here with two other cards, he starts to embody form and feeling.
Frolicking at his heels is a small, white dog — instinct at its most playful and open. In his left hand, he lightly holds a white flower. He faces the two figures in the card next to him, the Six of Cups, where the figure of young boy also holds a flower, held out to a smaller, but seemingly older, figure. The mood of this card is gentle, solicitous.
What stands out most to me — always has — is that the difference in size of boy and girl do not seem to align with their ages. He, a child, towers over her. There is a perspective that doesn’t make logical sense. This is perhaps why the Six of Cups is associated with soul mates: there are people who we feel we have known over lifetimes, incarnating in different bodies and meeting up again and again. One lifetime, we might meet as siblings, another as a parent-child dyad, yet another as lovers. And we meet to work things through on different levels; soul mates are here to work through karma.
The Fool — what is left once the structure of The Tower (in the previous Weekend Tarot Reading) has fallen — shows us where the energy wants to flow. Here, the energy is flowing towards a reconnection that is nurturing, loving and lies outside the bounds of reason and linear time.
Note here that the Uranus-Pluto cards are side-by-side. Given that we have just moved through the fourth of seven Uranus-Pluto squares, I take this to mean that both The Fool and Judgement are working together, even while The Fool is facing away from its major arcana neighbour. Maybe it is that the meeting of The Fool and the Six of Cups demonstrates the activation of something personal or interpersonal, and Judgement is what is simultaneously activated at a transpersonal level (note that we have transitioned from a single figure, to two figures, to multiple figures overseen by something that is unequivocally not human).
This transpersonal, Plutonic activation through the presence of Uranus is where the idea of resurrection comes in. By choosing to come back together in an experience that is very personal, we are also choosing to come together in a collective experience. No longer trapped in boxes, we are liberated by the calling of spirit, which seems to find its target first in the outstretched arms of the woman on the right of the Judgement card. Is this the return of the feminine to her rightful place, which then works together with the masculine and the child to bring life back to where there was none before?
When the last one of us is freed, we are all free. The recognition of the feminine by the masculine, and vice versa — the game we play within and around us throughout our lives — comes home to roost.
Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Six of Cups (Sun in Scorpio), The Fool (Uranus), Judgement (Pluto)
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.
Thank you Sarah. Like Strawberry Laughter, I too have tears streaming down my face at your beautiful description of today’s reading. Today I faced a fear and see it is one from way back when, which is now out in the open and free, and so am I, basking in the love of the Divine.
Thank you again
Thank you, Sarah! Today does feel like a stepping out toward a new place that has an old foundation; a place for a “new state where something is resurrected through divine intervention.” I continue to learn from you each and every week. Thank you so much for your wisdom and generous words.
With Makemake, Eros and Memoria transiting my natal Venus, I was moved to review what I had written during the transit of Venus across the Sun. This is what I found:
Spirit take me by the hand
lead me where I need to be
for when all is known and understood
it shall have been for love I follow thee.
With around 10,000 people feared dead and 500,000 affected in the Philippines by the ravages of Typhoon Haiyan on this remembrance Sunday, the world surely needs all the love we have to give.
Sarah, this post has me streaming in tears (aided, no doubt, by the fact that I’m listening to Daniel’s Phoenix music as I read it!) As the 6 of cups card is often considered to reference the past, I also look to the white flower being passed left-to-right. As if our held experiences of the past can be transmuted through gentleness of spirit and trust in love as a transformative act to a rebirth of the soul.
Your note of karma and soul connections makes it all the more sweet. Thank you, ever so.