{"id":77984,"date":"2014-07-13T14:12:34","date_gmt":"2014-07-13T18:12:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=77984"},"modified":"2014-07-14T15:47:35","modified_gmt":"2014-07-14T19:47:35","slug":"the-weekend-tarot-reading-sunday-july-13-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/reading-tarot\/the-weekend-tarot-reading-sunday-july-13-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"The Weekend Tarot Reading — Sunday, July 13, 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

There is a calling towards Soul in a significant way this week. We have two major arcana cards in the reading, along with a senior member of the Court of Cups: Temperance in the centre, The Hierophant to the left, and the Knight of Cups to the right.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Hierophant, Temperance, Knight of Cups from the Rohrig Tarot deck, created by Carl-W. Rohrig. Please excuse photograph quality. Click on the image for a larger version.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I drew Temperance first, and it is the card on which the other two ‘hinge’ — which makes sense, given that Temperance is an alchemical synthesis and the endeavour to balance and work with two apparent opposites. The first thing I thought of when I saw the two streams of fluid pouring out of the bowls before the figure of Temperance was “blue pill” and “red pill.” Except here, the paradox is that, instead of choosing one over the other, there is the invitation to dance with both and see what comes of their ‘separate union’. The two streams come together — dance together, guided by Temperance herself — but they do not mix. There is interdependence rather than codependence.<\/p>\n

Can we align with the paradox, moving it, guiding it, while holding both qualities as separately together in our consciousness? This is the card of ‘growing up’ and understanding that nothing exists in isolation — that, in fact, we need contradiction in order to locate and feel ourselves in the time and space of our own existence, and in the existence of the world at large around us.<\/p>\n

The Hierophant is card 5 in the major arcana. It appears as an archetypal concept of ‘marriage’ that is held in place before our descent into matter in the form of The Lovers (card 6). The writing on the card:<\/p>\n

“Spiritual master,” “teacher,” “advisor,” “initiate,” “inner leader,” “spiritual father,” “highest transformation.”<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

While The Hierophant can refer to marriage as the act that we know of binding two or more people together under an oath to a higher authority, what The Hierophant means in a more general — sometimes a more profound — sense is the alignment that we can move into when we ‘marry’ our self to our Self: where our personal authority is in congruence with a higher authority, where there is no division between who we are, and how we choose to be, to act, in our selves as a separate body, and in the body of divine wisdom to which we are inexorably connected.<\/p>\n

Yes, we are connected, no matter what evidence we may find to the contrary. Yes, we have an authority that we can draw upon that both guides and feeds us — the paradox being that this in no way deviates from what feeds us personally. Our path is also the path of Soul — they merge, just as we can choose to ‘merge’ with another through a ceremony of intent<\/em>. This is the path to “highest transformation” that The Hierophant card describes, and the Hierophant himself is both the promise of that embodiment within, as well as the guiding force towards that embodiment.<\/p>\n

While The Hierophant reflects to us a ‘transpersonal quality’, in that it both activates something personal and, simultaneously, something collective (hence part of the call to alignment), The Knight of Cups reflects an archetypal quality that is very much personal — or personality based. He appears either as a person, or an aspect of a person, and that person may well be you.<\/p>\n

Look at the different gazes of The Hierophant and the Knight (and Temperance for that matter — though we will come to her later). While The Hierophant looks at us directly, intently, the Knight of Cups looks equally intently, but this time not at us, but at the two cards to his left.<\/p>\n

The Knight of Cups is person-focussed, both inwardly towards himself and who he considers himself to be, and outwards towards ‘the other’, the object of his gaze. The words on the card describe this state:<\/p>\n

“ability to give,” “devotion to a loved person,” “to reach higher emotional levels,” “SPIRITUAL RELATIONS,” “family of one’s choice.”<\/em><\/p>\n

He embodies relatedness to other through the heart. One particular phrase interests me: “family of one’s choice.” This is not relatedness through blood for its own sake, but through a heart choice. He is wholly devoted to finding his heart home among those who relate on the same level, who reflect his own choices.<\/p>\n

I also find it interesting that the Knight of Cups is designed to look like a cameo<\/em> — a portrait in profile that is carved out of its background. The Knight himself is aware of the metaphor in that: he is part of his own background, and yet he is also not of it — his eyes, his intentions set on Temperance and The Hierophant.<\/p>\n

As he does this, the figure of Temperance nudges her hip in the direction of the Knight, the fingers of her left hand seeming simultaneously to point towards him and also to hold command over the bowl beneath them, from which flows a stream of water. Her right hand hovers over another bowl — this time of blood — the two streams meeting in the middle.<\/p>\n

She is an adept at the art of a particular kind of magic: the magic of the subtle interplay of two substances that merge and still maintain their integrity. The distant constellation above the Knight’s head coalesces into a diffuse corona above the head of Temperance, finally crystallising into a vertical pillar of starry light that sits above the eyebrows of the Hierophant, who looks directly at us.<\/p>\n

We start out with a Knight’s desire, a drive, to form something that is meaningful to our hearts — and we can only do this when we acknowledge the experiences of relatedness that have brought us to this point.<\/p>\n

We are invited to understand the stuff we are carved from. If we cannot understand and know ourselves as a product of our family of origin, we return to and re-enact — with varying degrees of awareness, time and again — the adage that “blood is thicker than water.”<\/p>\n

Can blood (what we have been taught about love) and water (how we choose to love as an authentic expression of our souls) co-exist? Can we hold both in awareness so that we can act from a point of active, conscious choice?<\/p>\n

True relatedness is not in the intentions we hold, nor the words we speak. True relatedness comes from knowing where we come from, where we want to go, and who we are where these two streams meet. The Hierophant has his lips gently sealed while he meets us eye to eye. There is a sense of knowingness that I keep reaching for, but which lies beyond the ability of my words to convey. I return to his eyes, again and again. The answer is here, and it is one I feel. It is back to the heart, every time. It is the heart that knows.<\/p>\n

Astrology\/Elemental correspondences:<\/strong>\u00a0The Hierophant (Taurus), Temperance\u00a0(Sagittarius), Knight of Cups\u00a0(the fiery aspect of water)<\/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 There is a calling towards Soul in a significant way this week. We have two major arcana cards in the reading, along with a senior member of the Court of Cups: Temperance in the centre, The Hierophant to the left, and the Knight of Cups to the right. I drew Temperance first, 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\/77984"}],"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=77984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77984\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}