{"id":60301,"date":"2012-08-12T13:56:56","date_gmt":"2012-08-12T17:56:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=60301"},"modified":"2012-08-15T13:36:02","modified_gmt":"2012-08-15T17:36:02","slug":"the-weekend-tarot-reading-sunday-august-12-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/reading-tarot\/the-weekend-tarot-reading-sunday-august-12-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"The Weekend Tarot Reading — Sunday, August 12, 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Ye gads, this has been a testing tarot reading to sit down and write about today, to the point where tears came to my eyes when I first drew the three cards and laid them out in front of me. The origin of those tears lies somewhere between release and relief — and a guardedness around my heart.<\/p>\n

\"Prince<\/a>
Prince of Cups, Nine of Cups, Knight of Cups from the Thoth Tarot deck, created by Aleister Crowley and painted by Lady Frieda Harris. Click image for larger version.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For this week’s reading is beautiful beyond what I was expecting, and I have been wounded enough to give what they offer a double-take and wonder whether I want to make myself vulnerable to them in ways that I have done so before, knowing that vulnerability brooks no discrimination. When we choose to lower our defences and lay ourselves open to beauty, there is a kind of surrender in that which can take us down into the depths as well as up to the heights. When we choose love, we choose both.<\/p>\n

Do we want to step out in faith again, Fools<\/a> that we are?<\/p>\n

And now, writing this, I remember what I wrote in an article published on this blog in May:<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t the point that we connect\u00a0at all<\/em>? That we are prepared to have an encounter with love that cannot be conducted on our limited terms. That we meet with something that we are not able to rein in and hold to our accounting. And that when we do so, we do it fearlessly and with the acceptance that we may, indeed, fall on our arses? Hell, we might even get hurt.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And to that statement I say: So what? So\u00a0what<\/em>\u00a0if it hurts? Maybe we need to break a few shells and shatter a few illusions \u2013 the ones that keep us trapped inside the story of our past, of our parents, of the things that we have held on to because we never thought to question whether they were ours in the first place. Here\u2019s to fissures, cracks and ruptures in the crust of acquiescence and acceptability. [Of Love and the Eternal Triangle<\/a>, May 2, 2012]<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(I guess the answer for me then is, yes, I do.)<\/p>\n

This reading invites us to open to it and to feel what it is bringing to us. If we are to do that, perhaps we can meet it halfway. Not with hope or expectation — which put limits on cards that seem to want to transcend our idea of limits — but with curiosity, discernment (two words which I have read here often of late), and a willingness to work with them actively.<\/p>\n

The reason I add this last point is that this is a very ‘watery’ reading: Cups are ruled by the element of water, and this suggests a fluidity, like our feeling natures, that needs grounding in order to give it shape. So we seem to have a dichotomy: to surrender to an experience and yet to harness the experience, much like the two male figures of Prince and Knight, who harness the creatures on which they sit.<\/p>\n

This is about surrendering without losing centre — giving up to the flow while remaining aware of ourselves and our surroundings. Do this, and we are better able to readjust our courses when we see an obstacle, and check ourselves when we are gripped with the desire to turn tail and swim upstream (which only works for salmon — and the bears waiting to catch them).<\/p>\n

When I see the figures of the Prince and the Knight of Cups (bearing in mind that the Knight here is the equivalent of the King in other decks, including the Rider-Waite Smith), I see two things.<\/p>\n

First, there is an evolution. We start with a passionate youth, transfixed by the snake (physical aspect of sexual energy) in the cup he holds, who skirts the surface of the water, but who is yet to dive in (he rides an eagle, which is not aquatic); we move to a man, his wings spawned from the peacock, a bird of transformation, who, instead of gazing into his cup, offers it to the heavens. Love in service of spirit.<\/p>\n

Second, there is the point of transition: the Nine of Cups — Happiness. It’s as if the Prince has learned to enter the watery nature of his feelings, scooped his cup into its depths, and, as the Knight, brings something with him that can then be shared with others. In keeping with this idea is this part of the description of the Knight of Cups by Gerd Ziegler (from Tarot: Mirror of the Soul<\/em>):<\/p>\n

The pale blue wings of the spirit uplift emotional relationships to higher levels of exchange and mutual understanding. …<\/p>\n

Seek your true family, the community in which you feel at home. There you will find the quality of communication you long for.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Some modes of therapy see the search for love as the search for ‘home’. Home is that primal place where our consciousness merges with another’s and which we spend so much of our time either trying to rediscover, or to resist as a form of annihilation (which it is), or both. That merging is an important part of our process of individual evolution, because it is in the losing of ourselves that we have the opportunity to find ourselves, and to come into contact with what it is that lies at our core that is dependent on nothing and no-one else.<\/p>\n

And so back to the Nine of Cups, each cup replenished by a lotus; no cup dependent on another for its sustenance. Mutual interdependence through love that feeds us and feeds spirit at the same time. Damn, I can’t think of anything better than that!<\/p>\n

If 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>\u00a0explains how to use the spread.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Sarah Taylor Ye gads, this has been a testing tarot reading to sit down and write about today, to the point where tears came to my eyes when I first drew the three cards and laid them out in front of me. The origin of those tears lies somewhere between release and relief — and … 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\/60301"}],"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=60301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60301\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}