{"id":51211,"date":"2011-12-28T14:06:29","date_gmt":"2011-12-28T19:06:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=51211"},"modified":"2011-12-28T16:39:34","modified_gmt":"2011-12-28T21:39:34","slug":"looking-back-looking-around-looking-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/reading-tarot\/looking-back-looking-around-looking-forward\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking back, looking around, looking forward"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor’s Note:<\/strong>\u00a0If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free\u00a0tarot spread generator<\/a>\u00a0using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread.\u00a0This article<\/a> explains how to use the spread. You can\u00a0visit Sarah’s website here<\/a>. –efc<\/em><\/p>\n

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

For this week’s Wednesday article, and given there was no Weekend Tarot Reading last Sunday, I thought I’d draw some cards to mark the ending of one year and our move into 2012 in a few days’ time. My intention for the reading: That the cards help us to identify an event, encounter or theme that was meaningful to us this year, which then brings us to a point where we can use what we have discovered to move forward with more insight and more awareness.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Five<\/a>
Five of Pentacles, The Empress, and Eight of Cups qualified by the King of Swords - Rider-Waite Smith Tarot deck. Click on the image for a larger version.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Like previous readings, I drew three cards — in this case, the Five of Pentacles, The Empress and the Eight of Cups. Unlike previous readings, I felt moved to draw a fourth, a qualifying card to cast more light on the nature of the third card. What came up was the King of Swords, another recent visitor to these pages.<\/p>\n

For many of us, 2011 has been a pretty challenging year. I write ‘challenging’ not as a euphemism for ‘hard’, but rather because, no matter whether the curve has seemed positive or negative, it has frequently seemed steep. More is being asked of us; more than usual, we are being called to “put away childish things” [Corinthians] and to grow up.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, when we leave the shelter of the known, we can feel cast out into the cold. It isn’t easy giving up the hope that our parents will change, or — the same idea on a larger scale — that governments will come in and save the day. For many, the idea of leaving shelter is no longer a metaphor: Here in the UK, people are losing their jobs every day, and with them the ability to put an adequate roof over their heads. Many households are facing what is known as “fuel poverty” — where over 10% of household income is used to keep warm.<\/p>\n

The Five of Pentacles speaks of a time when we have been cast out — whether literally or figuratively. We might have had a hand in it. We might have actively sought it. We might have little idea what the hell happened to put us out on the sidewalk. However we got here, this is where we have found ourselves. It can feel like a lonely place. And yet, and yet… What we tend to ignore when we are fixated on the struggling couple in the card — what they, too, are ignoring — is the warmth that emanates from the stained-glass window behind them.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I think that many people get caught up in the overtly religious imagery of the Rider-Waite Smith deck at the expense of a more expansive meaning. Don’t think of just ‘the church’; think of what creates a church in the first place: a community, united by a purpose, supported by a collective energy that can inspire and drive them. Pentacles are about imbuing matter with spirit. They are the last of the tarot suits, the physical manifestation of the first three, namely Wands (spirit\/creativity), Cups (emotions), and Swords (thought\/analysis).<\/p>\n

When we are working with Pentacles, we are participating in an act of creation. In the Five of Pentacles, we are not only the couple walking outside the church: We are the congregation inside; we are the church itself. When we feel abandoned to the elements, the Five of Pentacles is asking us to look in another direction and to the support that we can find there. Looking at the other side of the coin (or, to torture a metaphor, from the other side of the stained glass window), the Five of Pentacles might be asking us to look outside<\/em> at those who might need our help. Because it is by giving that we are able to receive.<\/p>\n

It is this cycle of giving and receiving that takes us to the next card. The Empress feels to me to be working alongside the idea of the Five of Pentacles. The Empress governs the cycles of nature, its endings and beginnings. She understands that it is necessary for things to die in order to be renewed and reinvigorated. When we work with the archetype of The Empress, we, too, understand the need for death and renewal, knowing that another kind of energy is at work when the corn withers and the leaves have fallen from the trees. During this time, we are in a preparation phase, gently nurturing the kernel that lies under the ground. Part of the preparation also involves harvesting what we can in times of plenty to see us through the winter. <\/p>\n

In other words, we rely on the support that we have received from the past season while we rest and anticipate the arrival of something new. Again, this goes back to community. The harvest was a particularly important time of year in our early agrarian economies, and today this tradition is continued in the celebrations of many communities, both religious and non-religious.<\/p>\n

When seen side-by-side, the Five of Pentacles and The Empress look like the change of the seasons — the dead of winter, followed by the abundance of late summer\/early autumn. Full circle. What is not, perhaps, required is the sense of isolation that the couple endures. The building behind them offers bounty. Will they take it?<\/p>\n

And where does that bring us in the reading?<\/p>\n

In the Eight of Cups, what strikes me immediately is the Moon overlapping the Sun. On Nov. 25, we had a partial solar eclipse. This, to me, feels like there is a reference to timing here. In other words, the Eight of Cups is associated with an experience on or around Nov. 25, and it would have been emotional in nature. The endings and beginnings reflected in the first two cards find their expression in something that is deeply feeling-related in the Eight, and it is usually to do with the act of walking away from something in which we have an emotional investment.<\/p>\n

The cups are participating in the scene as much as the figure. To me, they are standing aside, giving space, flanking the man even as they are separated by distance. They do not \u2018crowd out\u2019 by covering his exit. There is an awareness of him even as he walks away.<\/p>\n

Water often symbolises emotions in the tarot, and here, broken as it is by the rocks, it feels complex in nature. There are too many interruptions for it to flow smoothly or to achieve any depth. And finally, the Sun and the Moon in the sky indicate the mood. The Sun \u2014 symbol of enlightenment and of clarity and joy \u2014 is blocked by the Moon \u2014 where everything is cast into shadow, unclear, and where all manner of things real and unreal lurk in nooks and crannies. The Moon is meditative rather than sad. This is what she does. She renders things indistinct and ambiguous.<\/p>\n

That being said, an eclipse (of the heart, of the soul, of direction) might be intense but it is not permanent, nor has the Sun gone: it is simply out of sight for a while. The figure is moving, perhaps unaware of the pivotal role that the cups are still playing in the experience of the card, and perhaps with some despondency (his hunched shoulders and the reliance on a staff bear testament to this) \u2014 but he is moving nonetheless. As is the Moon over the Sun. This is a moment of transition, and it will pass. [Finding your way forward: the Eights in tarot<\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There has been a painful but necessary walking away; a changing of the seasons; something ending in order that something new might come to life. It hasn’t yet emerged, but when the Sun returns once again, its light will not only encourage the green shoots from the ground, the butterfly to break out of its chrysalis: It will also offer the light of awareness so that we can witness this birthing process.<\/p>\n

How to work with what it is that we are holding right now? How to make the most of our time in the semi-darkness of the Eight of Cups? By embodying the archetype of the King of Swords. He sits and waits, but it isn’t an idle passing of the time. He is ready, sword drawn, his intellect and powers of observation and discernment at the ready so that he can know his cue when it arrives. When he identifies it, he will act decisively, authoritatively and with integrity. In the meantime, we have all the support we need, and we have more than enough to give.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor’s Note:\u00a0If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free\u00a0tarot spread generator\u00a0using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread.\u00a0This article explains how to use the spread. You can\u00a0visit Sarah’s website here. –efc By\u00a0Sarah Taylor For this week’s Wednesday article, and given there … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":470,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","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\/51211"}],"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=51211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51211\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}