{"id":35536,"date":"2011-03-13T11:53:51","date_gmt":"2011-03-13T16:53:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=35536"},"modified":"2011-03-13T11:53:51","modified_gmt":"2011-03-13T16:53:51","slug":"the-weekend-tarot-reading-sunday-march-13-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/reading-tarot\/the-weekend-tarot-reading-sunday-march-13-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"The Weekend Tarot Reading – Sunday, March 13, 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor’s Note: If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free\u00a0tarot spread generator<\/a> using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread.\u00a0This article<\/a> tells you how to use the spread. You can\u00a0visit Sarah’s website here<\/a>. –efc<\/em><\/p>\n

By\u00a0Sarah Taylor<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

A process, set in motion, is encountering a blockage. It is time to let go and hand things over to the power of the larger cycles\u00a0that govern\u00a0life.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"8<\/a>
8 of Wands, 7 of Wands, The Empress from the Rider-Waite Smith Tarot deck. Click on the image for a larger version.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Wands, wands, wands. If you have been following the tarot columns over the past few months, you might have noticed that we are no stranger to both the Eight and the Seven of Wands… most recently the Seven, which we covered as recently as last week<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Wands deal with creative energy — but don’t limit creative energy to the idea of works of art, or making things. This energy is life force itself: libido, or prana, or chi. Wands are the expression of the least tangible element described by the suits; they are the originating suit, followed by Cups (emotions), then Swords (thoughts), and then Pentacles (the tangible world). They are the energetic drive towards something — so hard to describe because they are\u00a0a precursor to words. You can sometimes feel them as a fire in the belly. And the Eight of Wands is no exception.<\/p>\n

The Eight of Wands can be summed up in one word: activation. It describes something that has been set in motion. There is a real force to this card. Something significant has happened to enable the Wands to take flight, although they are now angled downwards, which means that force has given way to a downward momentum. Moreover, it isn’t clear precisely where they are going to land: the immediate ground is not in sight — only the land in the distance — and it is implied that their touchdown is not within the scope of the card; it will happen once they have crossed the right margin of the picture.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

What interests me next is the card numbering. The first card is the Eight; the second is the Seven. They\u00a0appear in descending order, in other words, they can be seen as regressing.\u00a0That they are both Wands emphasises\u00a0this sense of regression, rather than progress. It is as if there is a desire to turn back the clock, to block what has been created. Look at the figure’s wand in the Seven. He holds it at an angle, as if in an attempt not simply to ward off the wands below him, but also to impede the progress of the wands that are moving towards him. He stands fully in their way. Either that, or he has grabbed one of them and is forcing it to go a certain way — to bend to his will.<\/p>\n

These two cards, side-by-side, do not feel harmonious. They are not entirely dissonant, either, but there seems to me to be a desire to control something that now holds its own desire or force. Once the Eight of Wands have been released, they cannot fully be owned and manipulated. The figure can try but, as the Seven suggests, the conflict is one that he is waging alone. Is it something that he is battling within himself? Or is it that there is no sense of support he can turn to? Or both? What seems to be apparent is that he is pitting himself against something that feels overwhelming.<\/p>\n

And, finally, we have The Empress. The presence of a major arcana card in the reading (one of the 22 archetypal cards in the Rider-Waite Smith deck) indicates that this isn’t simply a reading that deals with the everyday. The Empress is the archetypal Earth Mother. She embodies fertility, but with that sense of fecundity and creation comes the understanding that all beginnings are accompanied by endings, all endings by beginnings. Visually, she sits separately from the other two cards. Hers is a card of bright yellows and reds, interspersed with green and white. The yellow of the sun sustains life; the red is the blood let in service of life. It is the blood of birth and of death. The Empress as a figure is also larger than the figure in the Seven of Wands. She sits there, regal, unruffled, while he grimaces, focused intently on warding off the wands that rise to meet him, blocking the Wands that move in towards him.<\/p>\n

The Empress holds her sceptre at the same angle that the figure holds his Wand; and yet its purpose is not to block. Rather, fashioned in the shape of a head of wheat and set next to the stars in her crown, it feels like a reminder of the innate power of the creative process, more potent than anything the embattled figure is currently drawing from. The Empress understands that the cyclical flow of energy in nature is more powerful than the figure’s ability to stem it. After the battle is over, she, as archetype, remains to restore balance, knowing that forward movement is inevitable.<\/p>\n

It feels like there is a resistance to something that has been activated, and a scrambling to try and contain a push of energy. And yet we are being given the opportunity to hold The Empress in our consciousness. When we are able to stand outside a sense of conflict (and it is a conflict that is as much waged inside us as out), we come into touch with the wisdom of working with, rather than against, life and the laws that govern it.<\/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\u00a0tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread.\u00a0This article tells you how to use the spread. You can\u00a0visit Sarah’s website here. –efc By\u00a0Sarah Taylor A process, set in motion, … 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":[183],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35536"}],"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=35536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35536\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}