{"id":51629,"date":"2012-01-08T14:17:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-08T19:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=51629"},"modified":"2012-01-08T14:17:00","modified_gmt":"2012-01-08T19:17:00","slug":"the-weekend-tarot-reading-sunday-january-8-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/reading-tarot\/the-weekend-tarot-reading-sunday-january-8-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"The Weekend Tarot Reading — Sunday, January 8, 2012"},"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

Someone saved my life tonight, sugar bear.<\/em>
\n You almost had your hooks in me, didn’t you dear?<\/em>
\n You nearly had me roped and tied.<\/em>
\n Altar-bound, hypnotized,<\/em>
\n Sweet freedom whispered in my ear,<\/em>
\n “You’re a butterfly.<\/em>
\n And butterflies are free to fly.<\/em>
\n Fly away. High away. Bye bye.”<\/em><\/p>\n

— Elton John and Bernie Taupin<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"King<\/a>
King of Swords, Knight of Pentacles, Ten of Swords from the Rider-Waite Smith Tarot deck. Click on the image for a larger version.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you’re looking at today’s cards, homing in on the Ten of Swords, and thinking to yourself, “Well, this doesn’t make for a particularly up-beat reading,” — you’ve just had a taste of how Swords can play out in your experience. <\/p>\n

Swords, by design, are sharp creatures. They are the tarot suit that holds the most negative associations. It is a reputation not entirely unearned. Unlike the organic, leafy contours of the Wands, the promise of succour and satiety of the Cups, the money-like, feminine associations brought up by the Pentacles — Swords are lean and mean. They are designed to cut; there is an association with death because they are what man has brought into battle from the time of the iron age.<\/p>\n

If you reacted that way to the Ten of Swords, then I’d like to ask you to do something: Not to avoid it or mitigate your feelings, but to look at them. Invite them in, feel what it is like for them to cut into your consciousness. Let them go in as far as they want to. And when you have done this, you might feel something else happen; something unexpected. Beneath that swords energy that is taking up so much attention, there is something altogether… calmer, perhaps? Accepting? Really quite okay with it all? Perhaps they don’t feel as threatening as they did. Perhaps, now, they don’t feel that threatening at all.<\/p>\n

That is the full experience of the Ten of Swords.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Swords can represent the beliefs that hold you to ransom, that seemingly plunge everything around you into darkness, that feel like the kind of pain that might be worth avoiding at all costs. However, what we tend to forget is that swords create, sustain and heal too: the blade that whittles a log into a work of art; the knife that cuts open a tough shell to reveal edible flesh inside; the sword that defends rather than attacks; the scalpel that saves lives.<\/p>\n

The whole reading seems to me to be happening in the present. The Ten of Swords has had its moment, and it is passing. All the things you have ever believed about yourself, that you\u2019ve told yourself about yourself, that you\u2019ve bought about what others have told you about yourself, that you have told yourself about others: All the thoughts that have caused damage, that can still cause damage, are in a process of being released. The figure has sustained all that he needs to sustain, and he is still with us, his fingers in a mudra, his head directed towards the clearing skies.<\/p>\n

When the Ten of Swords makes an appearance in our lives, we know that it is not going to be an easy process, and it isn’t going to be painless. However, it is transitory, and it is, in a sense, necessary: Sometimes the only way out is through. Swords precede Pentacles, and the Ten of Swords precedes the King of Swords. The King represents the potential for the highest expression in human form of the Swords suit. His sword represents the blade of insight, wisdom and clarity. Yes, it can be used in battle, but the King is not dressed for battle. His garments are flowing — a softness juxtaposed with the blade he is holding. Before the court cards, the last time we were in the company of a single sword was in the Ace of Swords. As we have moved through the Swords suit to get to the King, all the dead wood has been trimmed away: the fighting, tension, wounding, emotional pain and defeat. The sword that the King holds out to us is the only one that we need.<\/p>\n

To the King’s left, the Knight of Pentacles sits on his horse, as if offering his pentacle to the figure in the Ten of Swords, who is lying, seemingly defeated, at his horse’s feet. The Knight is not a King, his edges are a bit rough, but of all the Knights he seems the most stable, the most reliable and solid — which is fitting because of the suit with which he is associated. Pentacles follow Swords as the final suit and the highest form of physical manifestation. We cannot hope to start to work on mastering our physical world if we haven’t first mastered our minds. When we see the King and the Knight, we are looking at an evolution from one stage of the creative process to the next.<\/p>\n

This reading is about the process of becoming the ruler of your own domain — what form your expressions will take in the physical world. But, first, if we are to become rulers of our domains, we need to surrender everything about ourselves that we think makes us unworthy of the role. The Ten of Swords is, therefore, a key part of this process, helping us to let go of anything that no longer serves us. Our dark night of the soul is lifted by the dawn and the butterfly on the King’s throne, as yet cast in stone, can proceed to its next stage of metamorphosis.<\/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 Someone saved my life tonight, sugar bear. You … 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\/51629"}],"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=51629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51629\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}