{"id":61497,"date":"2012-09-16T13:51:29","date_gmt":"2012-09-16T17:51:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=61497"},"modified":"2012-09-16T19:44:51","modified_gmt":"2012-09-16T23:44:51","slug":"the-weekend-tarot-reading-sunday-september-16-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/reading-tarot\/the-weekend-tarot-reading-sunday-september-16-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"The Weekend Tarot Reading — Sunday, September 16, 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Cups, Swords, Cups; water, air, water; a whole lot of emotive energy surrounding an issue of the mind that seems both harsh and uncompromising. What do you feel like when you look at the Nine of Swords?<\/p>\n

\"Princess<\/a>
Princess of Cups, 9 of Swords, Prince of Cups from the Thoth Tarot deck, created by Aleister Crowley and painted by Lady Frieda Harris. Click on the for larger version.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The first word that comes to mind when I see it is, Ouch!<\/em> — and not a light-hearted one. It comes with a sharp intake of breath, tongue pressed against teeth that are locked together, as if I’m steeling myself for the sharp end of their attack.<\/p>\n

What’s interesting is that the attack has already happened. The blades bear this out, dripping as they are with blood. In fact, they are<\/em> blood. There is no separation between the wounder and the wounded.<\/p>\n

That is because we are the ones doing the wounding to ourselves.<\/p>\n

The Nine of Swords is a card of intellect rather than of our feelings or our physical world. It can refer to a physical affliction, but given that it is aspected by two emotion-based cards, in this reading it represents anything we tell ourselves about who we are that is designed to induce guilt, fear and shame.<\/p>\n

The Nine of Swords tells the story of recrimination, which is really self-recrimination because it is only the things that we believe about ourselves that are imbued with the power to hurt us. An insult has no impact if there is no hook to hang it from. The nine swords are the mental and psychic hooks we harbour that turn thoughts into instruments of damage to our esteem and worth.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“I am not good enough.” “I am a failure.” “I am unlovable.” Especially<\/em> “I am unlovable.” Because all forms of self-recrimination come down to that one phrase. Nearly all of us carry the Nine of Swords with us to a greater or lesser extent, and we haul the swords out and use them in moments where something or someone helps us to forget that we’re not up to scratch.<\/p>\n

Those blades, jagged and rough through over-use, are clearly no longer fit for the purpose for which they were intended: discernment. The Ace of Swords — the prototype for its suit — holds the energy of the Swords in its highest ideal. That is intellect in the service of consciousness, of the divine, of God. In the Nine, we have traveled so far from that ideal that the swords are now in service to something altogether human: what we become when we forget we are divine.<\/p>\n

Well, enough. It is time to start remembering who we are. To do that, we have to grow up. The path to love, and to self-love, is one of evolution. By necessity we pass through one stage to reach the next. We experience the idealism of the Princess of Cups, and the questing passion of the Prince. These are important stages. They are not the end-point, however; they are signposts.<\/p>\n

In this week’s reading, the Princess and the Prince of Cups are signposts to what is implied rather than what is in front of our eyes. Along with the Nine of Swords, they indicate what we can step into. It is as if they are ‘containing’ the Nine of Swords — holding it in place so that we are able to move away from it and towards what they signify.<\/p>\n

That is the path to the King and Queen of Cups, who are the embodiment of individuated emotion. They understand that the path to a deeper sense of what love is is one that offers us the opportunity to experience what love isn’t<\/em>. Most importantly, they understand themselves. As Princesses and Princes, they felt what it was like to be at the receiving end of their own wounding thoughts — and with every such encounter was the choice to believe something different. These three cards are ushering in the possibility of a new way of thinking.<\/p>\n

The invitation is on offer to assume authority over how it is that you think about yourself by nurturing compassion and passion in equal quantities. It’s not only available, it is achievable. There is an opening to something different about the way that you relate to yourself. The journey might not be over, but you can strike out in a new and more enriching direction — and one that is more in line with your true heritage.<\/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 Cups, Swords, Cups; water, air, water; a whole lot of emotive energy surrounding an issue of the mind that seems both harsh and uncompromising. What do you feel like when you look at the Nine of Swords? The first word that comes to mind when I see it is, Ouch! — and not … 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\/61497"}],"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=61497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61497\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}