{"id":36528,"date":"2011-04-03T13:34:55","date_gmt":"2011-04-03T18:34:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=36528"},"modified":"2011-04-03T17:58:03","modified_gmt":"2011-04-03T22:58:03","slug":"the-weekend-tarot-reading-sunday-april-3-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/reading-tarot\/the-weekend-tarot-reading-sunday-april-3-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"The Weekend Tarot Reading — Sunday, April 3, 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

You have hit a period of boredom or disillusionment. You are invited to pick yourself up, embody a sense of discipline, and assume the mantle of responsibility.<\/em><\/p>\n

The three cards this week seem to me to be calling for a change, a shift in attitude and\/or action. In the first card, the Four of Cups, a man sits under a tree, his body language closed, his face sombre … this in spite of the fact that he is well-dressed; the sky is uninterrupted blue; the world around him is thriving, leafy; he is supported and sheltered by a tree that seems to look at him with one eye, its branches dropping towards him. Three cups sit in the foreground, a distance from his crossed feet. A fourth cup is presented to him by a hand emanating from a cloud — but he is having none of it.<\/p>\n

\"4<\/a>
4 of Cups, The Hierophant, King of Cups from the Rider-Waite Smith Tarot deck. Click on the image for a larger version.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Every aspect of each illustration by Rider-Waite Smith artist Pamela Colman Smith is deliberate. The fact that there is no apparent (i.e. visual) reason for the man’s obvious disillusionment to me indicates that the cause lies within. In other words, it is in his mind.<\/p>\n

Not even the presence of the divine — the hand and cloud — is enough to immediately rouse him from his ennui. This is a moment of boredom, suspended in time. The hand doesn’t seem forceful, however: to me, it is not the kind of hand that is going to put the cup down and shake him to his senses. Rather, it embodies a gentle, but persistent, patience: I feel like it will hover there, waiting, until the man is otherwise prompted, or prompts himself, to look up and see it. And once he does, the potential is there for all change, heralded by The Hierophant.<\/p>\n

The Hierophant can sometimes be a bit of an archetypal stick-in-the-mud, standing for formal doctrine as he does, even dogma. The flip-side to this, though, is the sense of discipline that he asks of us — the dedication to a path, and the commitment to oneself in the pursuit of a discipline.<\/p>\n

What I find particularly interesting about these three cards is the linking nature of The Hierophant. Take a look at the two figures at his feet. They represent two different paths. The one on the left has a tunic of red roses — and it is a red that I immediately pick up in the tunic of the young man in the Four of Cups by virtue of the proximity of the two objects. Now look at the man on the right, whose tunic is decorated in blue fronds, and then move your eyes to the right, and into the card inhabited by the King of Cups. There, the blue is continued in the King’s robes, in his head-covering, in the swirl of the waters and the fish that seems to have jumped from the waves. Two paths, two different cards — one of them a youth, introspective, unaware, the other a man, present, receptive, centred. It is also clear to me that he now holds the cup that was earlier being offered to him. He has assumed that mantle of responsibility that I referred to in the introduction. He is not only kingly by decree, but also by demeanour.<\/p>\n

There are also echoes of The Hierophant in the King’s position. Both sit on thrones; both are raised above their surroundings (whereas the young man is at ground level and presided over by the tree, which, though inanimate, immediately seems older and wiser); both hold in their hands the symbols of their authority (while the youth’s hands are tucked mostly out of sight).<\/p>\n

There is a choice at hand: to continue as a youth, full of potential but still waiting for the promptings of an outside ‘other’. Or to become an adult, who stands alone, but who embodies and owns the ability to activate and enact their experience. And because this reading focuses on cups, it is about your feeling nature. What is it that you disown emotionally that prevents you from ‘growing up’, so to speak? Boredom can often be a defence against something that needs to be looked at — or, in this case, felt. What path of discipline can you follow that will lead you to your feelings, and to a stronger sense of mastery? You don’t have to get bogged down in dogma in order to progress, but at the very least there is the calling towards a courageous and steady self-application that enables a fuller flow of emotions, and of consciousness.<\/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 You have hit a period … 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\/36528"}],"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=36528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36528\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}