{"id":54298,"date":"2012-03-11T14:41:47","date_gmt":"2012-03-11T18:41:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=54298"},"modified":"2012-03-11T18:29:01","modified_gmt":"2012-03-11T22:29:01","slug":"the-weekend-tarot-reading-sunday-march-11-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/reading-tarot\/the-weekend-tarot-reading-sunday-march-11-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"The Weekend Tarot Reading — Sunday, March 11, 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

We are obviously doing a lot of processing. I cannot think of another card that rivals the Seven of Wands in terms of number of appearances in The Weekend Tarot Reading. Its regular visits feel like a journey of review, an opening to something new emerging, a cleansing; review, opening, cleansing.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

By way of a reminder, the Seven of Wands is about something coming up from below — and I see this as a pushing up of the unconscious into consciousness and the fight of the ego to keep it hidden. The reason I see it this way is because of the suit (Wands representing energy and movement of consciousness) and the fact that there is only one figure in the card while the remaining six wands are being held and thrust upwards by an invisible source: the unconscious is nothing if not invisible to us. And what often happens with the unconscious is that we project<\/em> it.<\/p>\n

The unconscious, unknowable as it is, feels dark to the ego. Its mystery feels chaotic to the organising powers of our conscious mind. And so our conscious mind resists it — and it has developed sophisticated mechanisms to do just this. There is no blame here; it is how and who we are. For the most part, and as hard as this is to admit sometimes, we don’t like change and we are programmed to avoid it.<\/p>\n

As I mentioned in last Wednesday’s introduction to James Wanless’s article on projections in tarot,<\/a> the acknowledgement and withdrawal of projections — of taking them back when you finally see them for what they are — is ceaseless, the work of a lifetime. Whenever we feel an emotional ‘pull’ or ‘hooking in’: that’s a sign that a projection might well be at work. When we feel so invested in something about another person or situation that we fixate on it: that’s the time to look inside to see if, in actuality, it has its origin in us.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We hate the way someone seems so needy? We can look for our own neediness. We feel jealousy toward someone who is given something we think we ought to receive? We can admit how we deprive ourselves of that very thing. We are in awe of someone’s ability to light up a room? We’ve yet to recognise that the same ability lies in us. Making someone else responsible for our joy and pain no longer cuts it. The world is asking us to grow up; we are being asked to become whole.<\/p>\n

So when the Seven of Wands appears in a reading, perhaps in this moment we are being asked to strive for wholeness by taking an honest look at where we battle against our own best interests — what it is that we hold off from experiencing in a way that could very well be counterproductive. It also suggests that we be compassionate with ourselves for the resistances and the delays. Blaming ourselves is not the point. Taking ourselves in our arms is. Being willing to give ourselves due care and attention — perhaps for the first time — might be what is called for.<\/p>\n

What we come away with is a gift: the Knight of Pentacles. The Knight of Pentacles is a much-maligned Knight in some of the interpretations I’ve read. I don’t read him that way here. Here he seems to symbolise a steadiness and dedication. His horse might seem to plod a little too slowly; he might seem to verge on being a stick-in-the-mud (he is but one step away from the bare earth in front of him, after all). But he is coming away from the Seven of Wands with something palpable, something usable in our world. That counts for a lot. That single thing may be hard won. It might have required a certain doggedness, an unfailing dedication to cause, and a steadiness that is not seen in the Knight of Wands, for example — hot-headed and hot-footed as he is.<\/p>\n

Wands energy at its purest is the energy of the unconscious. It is libido, unfettered. In order to ‘fetter’ it — to bring it down to Earth — we need a quality that is more grounded. That quality is the domain of the Knight of Pentacles. He is the most fitting carrier of potential into the earthly realm. He gives it immediate shape and form. And in so doing we can put it to use in our lives.<\/p>\n

Thus the artisan in the Eight of Pentacles takes what the Knight gives him and works with it. He takes the raw material and crafts it, putting it to one side where it can be drawn from at will. This is the honing of an inner skill — one derived from what was unconscious and what we refused to own.<\/p>\n

Now we own it, we can use it. We have earned it. How can it now work for us?<\/p>\n

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> explains how to use the spread.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Sarah Taylor We are obviously doing a lot of processing. I cannot think of another card that rivals the Seven of Wands in terms of number of appearances in The Weekend Tarot Reading. Its regular visits feel like a journey of review, an opening to something new emerging, a cleansing; review, opening, cleansing. By way … 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\/54298"}],"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=54298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54298\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}