{"id":29124,"date":"2010-09-25T15:09:33","date_gmt":"2010-09-25T20:09:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=29124"},"modified":"2010-09-25T15:09:33","modified_gmt":"2010-09-25T20:09:33","slug":"the-weekend-tarot-reading-queen-of-swords","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/daily-astrology\/the-weekend-tarot-reading-queen-of-swords\/","title":{"rendered":"The Weekend Tarot Reading: Queen of Swords"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor’s Note: If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator<\/a> using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article<\/a> tells you how to use the spread<\/em>. You can visit Sarah’s website here<\/a>. –efc<\/em><\/p>\n

By Sarah Taylor<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Interesting. When I was shuffling and cutting the deck in preparation for this weekend’s single-card reading, part of my mind was obviously still on Wednesday’s article<\/a>, where we had worked with three cards. And so I started by picking out three cards instead of one.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Queen of Swords from the Rider-Waite Smith tarot deck, drawn by Pamela Coleman Smith.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The first one is the one that I’m going to be working with today: the Queen of Swords. But I think it is significant that the second card that I had drawn was the 7 of Wands, the star of last weekend’s reading.<\/p>\n

For me, that marks an obvious progression; and a nod to the idea that the cards are all connected, and that the stories that they tell have no end and no beginning, but work together to mirror the flow of life.<\/p>\n

So, to the Queen of Swords — specifically the Queen from the Rider-Waite Smith deck, which I am going to be working from today.<\/p>\n

The little white book that accompanies the Rider-Waite Smith deck has, I feel, a rather narrow definition of the Queen of Swords, associating her with such things as “sterility, widowhood, embarrassment”. That’s not to say that these do not apply, but I believe that the cards speak to our light as well as our shadow aspects, and the Queen of Swords is no exception. There is a strength and richness to the imagery that is far from sterile or austere, and, in fact, evokes a sense of the Queen as one who is devoted to nurturing her subjects using the strengths that she has as a ruler.<\/p>\n

Court cards (i.e. the King, Queen, Knight and Page) often refer to people rather than situations or things. They tend to come up in a reading when the cards wish to draw the querent’s attention to someone in their life, or to aspects of themselves. This isn’t always the case, but I have found that my own readings have borne this out more often than not.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Queen is a serious ruler. Her hair and the resolve demonstrated in her firmly set jaw remind me of what we know of Queen Elizabeth I: a woman who was aware of her femininity, but who was able to draw on the more masculine aspects of assertiveness and action to protect those in her care.<\/p>\n

Her long red hair is partly covered by a red headdress and gold crown of butterflies. Butterflies — often symbols of transformation — adorn her throne, as do two sickles, which are associated with those who work the land: perhaps the workers over whom she holds dominion. The landscape behind her is far from austere: trees and water appear to her left, dominated by the sky, a mix of blue expanse and roiling clouds.<\/p>\n

Swords are representative of the mind and mental processes. Here, the Queen wields the sword of reason, which is thrust above the clouds and into the blue. Her mind rises above confusion and her hand points forward, her resolve apparent in her face, as she sees the way through the turbulence. She is in control of her thoughts — also seen in the fact that she wears a cloak that mirrors the sky: it is in service to her, not she to it.<\/p>\n

There is also something distinctly masculine about her sword: she owns the phallus as it stands erect. Here, again, she is both masculine and feminine incarnate. She has mastery over her sexuality and is able to channel it to her will. This takes me full-circle to Queen Elizabeth I as The Virgin Queen, who chose to direct that energy into her role as monarch, rather than as a wife or mother.<\/p>\n

In this reading, the Queen symbolises to me the idea of directed, controlled action of the mind in service to something. There is balance in the picture that is really not alluded to in many descriptions. There is nature (trees, water) vs. civilization (the throne); hardness (sword and stone) vs. softness (hair, clothing); colour vs. monochrome. All work together to create imagery that evokes upward and forward motion.<\/p>\n

The Queen of Swords is alone, yes — as are we all. To dwell on that as something to be feared or avoided, however, ignores the gifts that solitude can help us to find: clear-headedness, single-pointedness, unimpeded action, wholehearted devotion and the integration of both male and female rather than seeking for a sense of power ‘out there’.<\/p>\n

A small bird soars into the blue skies in the distance. My eye keeps getting drawn back to it, as if to remind me that even these qualities that we find in the Queen are not the be-all and end-all. That sometimes it is necessary to leave the firm, the directed and the resolute behind to be lifted on the thermals of something that we cannot control fully. All things are transitory and have their time. The Queen might have hers, but she is not necessarily the final answer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 tells you how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc By Sarah Taylor Interesting. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":470,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1,183],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29124"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/470"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}