By Sarah Taylor

What happens when last week’s Seven of Cups becomes the Eight of Cups? They’re in the same positions, on the left of the reading, and there is some significance to that. But what does it mean, where is it taking you, and what is your inner guidance system telling you about the circumstances you’re facing (albeit from what feels like a totally different perspective)?

Eight of Cups, The Hanged Man, Death from the Haindl Tarot deck, created by Hermann Haindl. Click on the image for a larger version.

Last week, I wrote of the Seven of Cups that it “speaks of an imbalance in the watery, emotional areas of life, and also of the one true path out of it.”

The Eight of Cups is the point where the imbalance becomes apparent enough that a clear a step in a different direction is the way to clarity. It’s when you know the best way you can handle what’s happening is through the acceptance that your energy — your heart — is better invested elsewhere.

The Eight of Cups helps you to know, in that heart of hearts of yours, the one true path you were seeking in the Seven. It encourages you to turn and search it out; it encourages you not to stay where you are for long. Your work here is done. The card speaks of “Failure” but there’s an invitation to consider “failure” in a different light from the one we tend to default to:

It is not you who is a failure. Nor is anyone else. It is simply a situation that has failed. It is worn down, worn thin, worn out. The wear and tear of a particular way of feeling, of an emotional approach or assumption.

Consider the concept of “failure” when it no longer has to be accompanied by shame or humiliation. It is a neutral description of a particular state. It isn’t about “should’ve” and “could’ve.” It also assists you in reaching a greater understanding of where it is that you are in your life, with yourself, and with others. It does this by creating the conditions that bring you into the realm of the card at centre, The Hanged Man.

You are perfectly on track. How could it be otherwise? This is your track to walk, it is unique, and the only mistakes are ones of misperception. You are here. How can you be anywhere else? And where you are is in a state of suspended grace, where you are afforded the opportunity to see your world in a completely new light.

You are connecting with a wisdom that wouldn’t have been available to you if you had not kept still enough — held in a place of surrender long enough — to let your hair, the seat of your waking consciousness, root itself into the earth. It is here, upside-down, that you are fed differently; you are fed by what lies beneath: the rich, fertile soils of all that has come before you, and all that you unwittingly pass over when you see only the surface of things.

The Hanged Man is the grace that you open to when you say, “Okay, I give up. This isn’t working anymore. I am through walking the same steps down an all-too-familiar route that holds no further charm for me. Those charms have all been spent. Now. Show me something new.”

And there, suspended, something new blooms. Another leaf replaces the one that is shed in the final card, Death. The Hanged Man and Death appear in this reading as they do in the Major Arcana itself, cards XII and XIII, respectively. Under these circumstances, what you are looking at is the surrender into transformation. First, there is the crucifixion; then there is the resurrection.

The Spring Reading is now published. You may order all 12 signs here or choose your individual signs here for immediate access. You may listen to a free audio introduction here now.

You are brought back to life after your suspension; you are returned to the upperworld, where nothing may seem to have changed, but everything is different. The colours of the rainbow in The Hanged Man shift into the subtle hues of the feathers on the throat of the peacock that heralds a sweeping away of what has become old and dry.

Did I say “subtle”? Yes, for now. Nothing may seem to have changed, but at the edges of your awareness a new spectrum is dawning out of the misty air. For now, your outer vision will be limited as you tend to what’s cooking within.

The peacock knows this, overseer of what is passing away and witness of what is coming through. His tail may be celebrated for for its breathtaking beauty, but that is because the peacock is a master of keeping it under wraps, and unfurling it at just the right moment, when everything is in place.

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As all things come to a conclusion and a point of transformation, so it is that my wonderful six years writing for Planet Waves is meeting its own conclusion in today’s reading.

It was Eric’s intuitive hunch in 2010 that I might be able to write about tarot that started off a period of rapid expansion in my relationship with tarot, and it has been both nurtured and supported by both Eric, and my editor-extraordinaire Amanda Painter, over the ensuing years.

My time working at Planet Waves has seen me through raising my son from toddler to tween; a divorce; relocation; the death of my mother (thank you for teaching me the value of tarot, Mum); fearless exploration; and a career redefinition. I list all of these because, through them all, Planet Waves was a source of knowledge, encouragement, a constant presence — and instrumental in many of the decisions I took that got me from there to here.

And now it’s time to pay my deepest respects, and shift into something new; to move further into my own life and experiments with my art. If anyone is interested, they can keep in touch with me by visiting my website (www.integratedtarot.com).

What is left to say is, “Thank you.” Thank you beyond adequate words, and, as always, they will have to do.

With love,

Sarah

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Eight of Cups (Saturn in Pisces), The Hanged Man (Neptune), Death (Scorpio)

If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread.

By Sarah Taylor

“On the individual level, the Devil[‘s] … silence can suggest secret desires. These may be sexual desires, but they also may be desires for a different life, or for more passion in a life that has become dull. Often we do not know our own desires. Habit and fear and social conditioning hide them from our conscious awareness. In order to reach the total awareness shown in the later trumps [Major Arcana], we need to explore the dark areas of ourselves.” [Rachel Pollack, The Haindl Tarot — The Major Arcana]

Seven of Cups, The Devil, Seven of Wands from the Haindl Tarot deck, created by Hermann Haindl. Click on the image for a larger version.

At the centre of this week’s reading sits The Devil.

To the left and the right are two Seven cards; alternatives; a choice point, if you can take a moment to gather your wherewithal to know that you do, indeed, have a choice. It’s not a choice between The Devil and something else. The Devil is here regardless. The choice is in how you choose to approach The Devil and what it means — and how it can be applied in your life.

So let’s get a clearer idea of what The Devil means in the context of this reading, and what it does not mean. Clarity is nothing if not focussed intention, and here your intention is your great ally in a reading that is entirely liberating at its core. It is, in effect, the liberation of you.

I started out this article with a quote by a living tarot legend, Rachel Pollack. In the quote, she writes about “secret desires.” What we tend to do in our world with secret desires is to mask them with fear, so that we never go near them.

The Devil is a convenient and highly effective mythos that relegates those fear-enwrapped desires to a place we lock out of our consciousness. We erect fire and brimstone around it; we place warning signs on its perimeter; we construct belief systems to defend against its breach. Yes. There is much set up in our world to make sure we never go there.

Why? Why don’t we go there? Maybe personal freedom feels like too much to bear in a world that is constantly asking for your obedience, your conformity. Maybe liberation is risky. It certainly risks the status quo. It absolutely risks you beginning to feel and experience feelings and experiences that may be — well, inconvenient. Who knows what you might want to change when you understand the changes effected in you? “Oh! The places you’ll go!”

But as you contemplate The Devil, you can know this: what is implied in the reading is the previous card, Temperance. In some way, you have been through a period of learning to balance, to hold the tension of opposites without swinging one way or the other in an attempt to resolve them. You know what it means to mature into a sense of equilibrium.

You, journeyer, are supremely equipped to meet the central card in front of you now. It wouldn’t have appeared if you weren’t.

The Devil is there, as are the desires within you that it’s calling to your attention. Those desires may be connected with sex and sexuality. They may be creative. They may feel subversive — as if following them will overthrow regimes. They will almost certainly feel taboo. Yet, yes, you’re supremely equipped to meet them.

And the two cards on either side suggest the ways these desires are often met. They are your choice point.

On the left is the Seven of Cups, also entitled “The Illusions of Success.” The Seven of Cups speaks of an imbalance in the watery, emotional areas of life, and also of the one true path out of it. In the Rider-Waite Smith version of the Seven of Cups, the protagonist — you — faces seven divinely sent choices. But in truth there is only one choice to be made: the central, shrouded figure enveloped in a red glow.

The figure is the mystery. It is the release into trust. Everything else is window-dressing. To be caught up in the other cups is to be caught up in appearances. Victories may be sweet, but deliver little. The jewellery turns out to be paste. The tower turns to ivory. The dragon, the head, and the snake are two-dimensional.

The Spring Reading is now published. You may order all 12 signs here or choose your individual signs here for immediate access. You may listen to a free audio introduction here now.

And then there’s the card on the right, the Seven of Wands: “Courage.”

The courage to look within. The courage to stop resisting what is so vibrantly seeking expression in you (and damn the nay-sayers). The courage to call into question the boundaries and parameters that you have placed around the forbidden. The courage to explore what “desire” means to you.

Important, important: the trust that you have earned the ability to do this because you know what it is like to lose balance, and what it feels like to hold it; and the support you can ask for from trusted others who reflect your truth back to you without distortion or agenda. Those who have your best interests at heart. Those who love and accept you without any need to make you different.

It’s time to come out of the closet. What, you didn’t know you were in there? Then ask yourself where you hold yourself back, or where you feel the resistance of what no longer serves you. Ask your body where it wants to take you, trusting that it, your heart, and your mind are able guides (who will also tell you when you’re off-track).

Feel the freedom of your choices, your self-responsibility, and your desires. When you come to know yourself, and you stand in your own integrity, they will show you where you need to be.

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As you know, Planet Waves produces exceptional content every day on its blog. It is current, relevant, engaging, enlightening (I learned everything I know about astrology simply from reading the site regularly), and for many it is a place to hear, and to be heard.

I’ve always been inspired by the editorial decision not to include ads with this exceptional content; and the reason Planet Waves is able to continue to do this is through Eric’s renowned reports, and by building up a community of subscribers who support the site through a small monthly payment.

If you haven’t considered doing so yet, check in and see what a Planet Waves Core Community membership offers — unlimited access to all Planet Waves blog content is a great start, along with a members’-only horoscope mailed to you on Mondays! Eric has also just released his 2016 Spring Reading. In a new video format, it will equip you with invaluable information to get through the current Mars retrograde season. Change is afoot, and a companion is a huge help. Consider PW your online companion through the cosmic weather for the next few months, and beyond.

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Seven of Cups (Venus in Scorpio), The Devil (Capricorn), Seven of Wands (Mars in Leo)

If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread.

By Sarah Taylor

What an interesting and absorbing reading — at least from this tarot reader’s point of view. First, there’s the more immediate, easily accessible layer to the three cards laid before us. Then, there is another force of meaning that rises up to meet us as that upper layer is parted to reveal what lies underneath.

It’s also a potent reading. Potently feminine. (But not lacking in masculine. Oh, no.) Bear in mind that we all hold feminine and masculine within us, and our psyches host a dance between both that is ever-moving. So if you feel this reading isn’t for you when you look at the two figures on the outer cards, then perhaps you can think again.

The Empress, Six of Cups, Queen of Cups from the Haindl Tarot deck, created by Hermann Haindl. Click on the image for a larger version.

Let’s go for that upper-most layer first. We have a balance in the reading in that we have a Major Arcana card (The Empress); a “pip,” or numbered, Minor Arcana card (Six of Cups); and a Court Card — also part of the Minors (Queen of Cups). We have a second balance in that we have two distinctly feminine cards flanking the Six of Cups.

This is not only a celebration of the feminine, but a call to the feminine — the feminine in each and every one of us. This is a call to understand, embody and embrace the complexity of “feminine” — questioning and redefining our assumptions about her if necessary.

The feminine isn’t some sexualised add-on — known primarily for her fertility and her Playboy-esque buxomness that emphasises tits and ass over substance. The feminine is not simply some statue to add to our altars, without embracing her wholly in our hearts. She isn’t some frippery that frills out what it means to be driven in a driven world — some motherly respite and haven from the legitimate business of going out and getting things done; of being taken seriously.

This feminine — this wholistic, all-shade celebration of the feminine — means business. But it is business in her own way.

So if your business — whether professional, familial, financial, intimate — somehow feels slighted, or insignificant; if you feel like what you are embodying in your lunar, watery, intuitive, sexually independent and aflame, creative, cyclical femininity is not taken seriously — no matter what sex or gender you are — then it is time to look at the figures of The Empress and the Queen of Cups and hear what they have to say to you.

I am woman. Hear me roar, sing, laugh, cry, create, destroy, birth, bury, intuit, know. I am all of these things, and more. I am the beginning, I bring the end. I was there at your birth, I fed you through life, I nourish you now. I am the upper, and I am the under.

And I meet the masculine in my full force, as he meets me in his.

And this is where the second layer comes into the story — that meeting of the feminine who cannot be her full self without the masculine. The Mother of Cups (the Queen), who cannot be who she is without a Father. The Empress, the figure of Demeter, who descends into the realm of Pluto to find both her daughter, and herself.

The Six of Cups corresponds to the aspect Sun in Scorpio. Scorpio is ruled by Mars and Pluto — both masculine. If you look at the card itself, there are four cups on the left, bathed in the light from The Empress, and two on the right, in the darker earthiness, which is both the terrain of the Queen of Cups (as the goddess of Willendorf) and the god of the underworld, Pluto. But it is the two cups on the right that hold me, as they seem to come together in the darkness, a star falling into the top one (the light of The Empress), as they birth a bubbled embryo between them.

Persephone rises. There is birth; there is spring. Demeter and Pluto have come together to create a new way forward.

The only way this birth happens is for the feminine to have her full place in her world — in our world. Nothing can be birthed when she is relegated to a two-dimensional figure that pays lip-service to a role that is as integral as the egg is to sperm. That egg has to be viable; it has to be whole. The egg of creativity and potential is not a charm to be placed on a mantle, to look pretty. It holds and nurtures life.

So wherever it is in your life that you are holding back because your feelings are an inconvenience; or you are complying to some outward expectation of femininity, sexuality, sensuality; where you play down your intuitive abilities, your beauty (inner and outer), your shine, your razor-of-light-sharp knowingness that can guess the game in an instant. Wherever you are denying your connection to your body, to nature, to the world and its people while they call to you: this reading is the call back to nurturance of self and others, and the marriage between body and mind.

Both are richer for the union, and one has been sorely underestimated and under-used for a long, long time.

And, what do you know? Once again, the tarot cards are reflecting the astrology.

Find out what the Mars retrograde will mean for you in Eric’s 2016 Spring Reading. You may pre-order all 12 signs here at a value price. Includes video readings!

The Empress, as Venus, gives birth to The Emperor/Aries, associated with Mars. The Six of Cups is associated with Scorpio, which Mars will be retrograding through in a matter of weeks. We are shifting into a time of inner (feminine) contemplation of how we act in and move through the world (masculine).

The 2016 Spring Reading from Planet Waves covers this combination of inner and outer, higher self and physical self, spirituality and sexuality. And I know for myself that Eric’s readings are the most phenomenal piece of equipment to carry at times like these.

To get your own copy to help you navigate through the coming weeks, sign up here.

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: The Empress (Venus), Six of Cups (Sun in Scorpio), Queen of Cups (the watery aspect of water)

If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread.

By Sarah Taylor

What happens when you feel like you’re reaching a point of bringing something into form — of finally birthing something that, until now, has been conceptual — and you become aware of the fragility of the moment you’re in? That moment when you are in the space between the in-breath of your work and effort, and the out-breath of your finished product, where you can practically smell and touch what you’ve been working towards.

Ace of Swords, Nine of Stones, Two of Swords from the Haindl Tarot deck, created by Hermann Haindl. Click on the image for a larger version.

It hangs before you — your labour, your baby — and it is materialising in front of your very eyes.

What goes through your mind, just then?

The Nine of Stones (Pentacles in the Rider-Waite Smith tarot) is the second-to-last numbered card in the tarot deck. It is the second-to-last card in a sequence that has moved you from inspirational spark (Wands, the first suit), to emotional response (Cups, the second), to intellectual concept (Swords, the third), to the concrete (Stones).

It’s been quite the journey to get you from there, to here. To this moment, when you can look at the card at the centre and see what has coalesced. It’s taken some time, and the road has not been smooth — there’s little doubt about that. Tarot, seen chronologically, is the ideal. Then there is life. Life doubles back on itself; it has unexpected turns and loops; it has ladders, and it has snakes. And not all of the snakes are there simply to stymie your progress. No. Those snakes are there as quality control: their presence tests your mettle, your product, your resolve.

Your Soul is a divine taskmaster that asks you to be as much as you can be. It demands nothing less of you. You haven’t learned the steps to the dance that will free you? It will send you back to dance school. One pirouette forward, three pirouettes back. You want more money? It will show you both its presence, and its absence. You say you want to be a healer? You learn what it is to be a patient.

And you learn what it is to be patient.

It’s your patience that brings you to where you are now, oh beholder-of-the-Nine-of-Stones. Your patience, and your desire to learn balance (the Two of Stones), to take instruction (Three), to understand the limitations of power (Four), to know poverty (Five), to know wealth and what you do with it (Six), to have your faith tested (Seven), and to dedicate yourself over and over again (Eight).

So, here you are at the Nine. Your Nine. And what is going through your mind as you watch what happens when you release your creation into the big wide world?

Actually, what’s going through your mind holds the potential to be entirely supportive of what you’re bringing through — but it asks for two things: first, a faith in your ability to see clearly and to act on that; and, second, a willingness to keep the peace and balance two potentially opposing forces, so that there is safe passage for the Nine to take shape.

Swords are associated with air and the mind. Like both of these, they are fast-moving and quick-changing. The Ace and the Two, however, are two of the most harmonious Swords cards, and it is these that are ‘holding the Nine in place’, both visually and metaphorically.

So imagine, if you will, that you are the guardian of the Nine of Stones (as you are), and you are in the cave of your creation and you must bring these stones to light so that you can share them with the world. What resources are available to you that will be your allies in this task? On your left, you see the Ace — one of the psychic book-ends to what you’ve been writing into existence.

The Ace embodies clear thinking, the truth, a keen ability to get to the crux of what’s going on, to make a decision, to communicate that clearly and keenly. There is nothing spared; that blade cuts clean. Don’t go in ragged because the truth has all it needs to get the job done. You will know it when you wield the Ace because it will be a cool, directed fire in your mind and belly. Your will is in service to your insight. This is your first ally.

Find out what the Mars retrograde will mean for you in Eric’s 2016 Spring Reading. You may pre-order all 12 signs here for less than $40. Includes video readings!

Your second resource is the Two of Swords. Your ability to hold space open between two different points of view. Your ability to negotiate, if only to see a particular part of the process through.

The Two is your desire to choose peace and negotiation above conflict and over-involvement. It is uninvolved. That means that there is a detachment, for sure — and you know you won’t be able to keep that kind of stepping back going for long. But sometimes that detachment serves a purpose for a moment, until clarity (the Ace) comes through.

So step back, rise above, hold the tension, demand a contract knowing it will be short-term only. This is a temporary alliance, but it serves the purpose.

These are two fragile, but paradoxically perfect and robust, means to hold that Nine as it emerges from the birth canal and takes its first breath. And when that happens, reapply that insight (Ace) and the knowledge that your Two of Swords is a finite equilibrium: let that shit go. Your role was to bring this through. Now it is to be custodian and safe-guard.

When it emerges — and you will feel it and know it — you can let go that part of you who has sweated and slogged over its becoming. You can afford to sit back, and breathe. Because it can now breathe on its own. You are no longer obligated to it. But you are perfectly entitled to enjoy it.

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Ace of Swords (the pure, limitless potential of air), Nine of Stones (Venus in Virgo), Two of Swords (Moon in Libra)

If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread.

By Sarah Taylor

“This is a card of a happy person, someone gentle rather than passive, calm rather than weak. She is happy for she lives her life in beauty. Like the Son, the Daughter of Wands is sensual, she delights in sex. She is devoted to her partner, without losing her sense of herself.” [From “The Haindl Tarot: The Minor Arcana” by Rachel Pollack]

Princess of Wands, Ace of Cups, Ten of Stones from the Haindl Tarot deck, created by Hermann Haindl. Click on the image for a larger version.

These words describe the first card in today’s reading — the card on the left: the Princess [or Page] of Wands.

This is the foundational card to the story that is unfolding in front of you. She is a foundational part of you, too; possibly another person who recently played a part in your life, also. Either way, this person or aspect is young, or young-at-heart. She is playful, without shame, free from the trappings of judgment or expectation that weigh more heavily when we become aware of ‘shoulds’ or ‘musts’.

If the words “Just too dang much!” were directed at you when you were younger — or even now that you’re (supposed to be) a little older and wiser — then you can probably relate to the Princess of Wands’ joie de vivre, and perhaps also the effect that it can sometimes have on others. Those others who may not be feeling the flames of enthusiasm licking at them. Those same ones who feel compelled to tamp those flames in others for fear of the impact of their own. To tamp them in you, perhaps?

When did someone shame you for your flame?

Come to think of it, it works the other way too: when did someone flame you for your shame? Is there not the freedom to feel, and to have that feeling acknowledged, no matter what it is? Surely the fiery creativity that longs to show itself through us is as natural a way of being as anything? Wands are the first suit; they underpin everything, after all. They are the creativity from which all else in life springs.

You are the creativity from which all else in your life springs.

In the tarot, Wands are the first suit, and Cups are the second. So, while looking back (maybe on the results of her handiwork?) the Princess of Wands leads us into the next suit, Cups, embodied in the central card. I have the strongest sense that it is her essence that coalesces as that single drop that we see suspended in a moment above the Ace of Cups.

I love the Ace of Cups in this deck. Cups are associated with water, but this image is, to me, as much fire as water: it is swirling and vibrating with warmth. It glows out of the card. The cup seems to be shaped by motion, as if on an energetic potter’s wheel. Again, given the order — Wands (creative energy) before Cups — that makes perfect sense.

And then I look at that central card once again, and I see that it is creating a vortex of sorts. It’s a vortex that draws the two outside cards towards it. It is the grace, the love, the soul, the feeling that holds these two outside aspects together. The Princess is held by, and in, grace, love, soul and feeling. Against any odds, and in spite of opposition, she is held — always has been — by that Ace: invisible, infinite, indivisible.

And that relationship is mutual. Radha is in the human realm, the Ace is in the spiritual realm. Her music is the music of love: love of self, love of life. And it is fed by Love, and also feeds it.

Find out what the Mars retrograde will mean for you in Eric’s 2016 Spring Reading, which we’ll publish in mid-April. You may pre-order all 12 signs here for less than $40. Includes video readings!

The same is true of the card on the right: there is a mutuality to it and to the Ace of Cups. The Ten of Stones [Pentacles] is also known as “Richness.” As the final numbered card of the final suit in the tarot deck, it is also the final descent into matter that was created by the glint in the creator’s (Wands) eye, coalesced through heart (Cups) and thought (Swords) into form.

How does this apply practically? First, you have the foundation formed by the Princess of Wands, which is an aspect of you, or of your experience, that is able to create freely and with joy. This has enabled you to access the possibility of the present moment — the Ace of Cups — which offers to you an expansiveness that you feel rather than think or believe to be true. The Ace is a knowing, but it is a knowing that lies at your core, and not in your mind. Look at the image; no, feel that image. If it is thrumming and humming its song in your depths, then that is the Ace, and she is there for the taking.

Open your heart. To yourself. You, who can hear and appreciate your beautiful song for what it is. You, who are not obliged to be anything other than who you are. Open your heart.

The result that is on the horizon — not yet here, but starting to be felt at some level — is the falling into place of something in your material, physical world. It either ends, comes through, or goes as far as it needs to go. This will be tangible; this is the stuff you can hold, see, smell, taste, hear. And soon it will be time to pass the baton and shift to new matter/s.

What is left, however, is infinitely more precious: it is the love that you devoted to it, returned to you, perhaps in a different form. You may need to look a little closer or adopt a manner of curiosity about the shape of this love. It is there, nonetheless. It is there in your joy, your enthusiasm, your lust for life, your eroticism, your sexual innocence, your creativity, your fire. It has been fed by your ventures, and is there to replenish your resources so that you can draw from it again when you feel the calling to a new adventure.

Too dang much? I’d say you’re perfect.

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Princess of Wands (the earthy aspect of fire), Ace of Cups (the pure, limitless potential of water), Ten of Stones (Mercury in Virgo)

If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread.

By Sarah Taylor

The one who weaves and tells the story of life; the one who walks that story and makes it sacred. We have here a power couple in the Queen and King of Stones (or the Queen and King of Pentacles or Disks, depending on which deck you’re familiar with). They are working together within you – as you work within the world – to create something that is both stable and enduring.

Queen of Stones, King of Stones, Three of Swords from the Haindl Tarot deck, created by Hermann Haindl. Click on the image for a larger version.

The reason for their appearance? The reasons may be many and far-ranging, but in the confines of this reading, there is one specific reason: to equip you with the inner resources to return to and to renegotiate your encounter with the Three of Swords.

Last week, the Three of Swords came up in the near past position. In my words then, “Something has been — well, if not lost, then it had the quality of confusion, an over-involvement by unwanted parties, or a compromise that has left its sting.”

However this was experienced — whether tangible or intangible, whether by degrees or in extremis — “Loss” defined something in your near past. What was clear from last week’s reading, however, was that it brought you to a point of change, where old patterns around emotions and relating could be released, and where you were being guided into the possibility of integrating aspects of yourself that had heretofore been projected on to others.

In other words, you are in the process of reclaiming parts of your heart for yourself rather than relying on them to be care-taken by those around you, no matter how trustworthy or well-meaning (or not) they were.

When I look at the first two cards in this week’s reading, I see a maturity in you that is as wise and ancient as the natural world around you. It has deep roots that hold you to yourself — and those roots also connect you to a collective sense of knowing and embodiment, as well as the knowing you have garnered from understanding your place in your family and your ancestors.

This place may have been comfortable; it may have been wrought with pain. But the presence of the Queen and King indicate that there is a groundedness that your wounds and experiences have given you that has enabled you to start belonging in your own skin. And when you do that, you are simultaneously stating your belonging to the world and to everyone and everything else. Everything is connected; nothing is left out. Neither are you.

You may not be able to feel this immediately. Remember: these are archetypes. They are not you, but they act through you. You cannot inhabit them entirely, you can never know them fully. They are aspects of a manifold psyche that hold the potential to come forward to deal with the matter at hand — whatever matter that is that you are facing.

Don’t feel much like a Queen or King of Stones at all? Wait. Be patient. Listen. Hold to yourself. Get yourself on to the land. Dig your feet deep into the earth. Watch, with due care and attention, the same patience demonstrated by grandmother spider as she spins her web; watch, with forbearance, how the land unfolds at its own pace, even if over millennia.

You, who rushes everywhere: Where is your pace? Where is your calm? Where is your faith that you are in sync with what is? Where have you felt you didn’t belong, and what is it that is calling to you that tells you that you do, indeed, have a place in this?

And I’m not talking about those voices who tell you that you need to be something you feel you are not, that you need to prove yourself, or cross yourself or others, that you need to compromise the values that you hold secretly in your heart. No, I’m talking about those still, strong voices that talk through your body to you about what is important to your heart, to the hearts of those you know — and by extension to those whom you have never met but with whom you share this land, this ground, this dust.

This may sound dramatic. But, good grief, if this isn’t important, then what is? You are being summoned by the royal court — and its chieftains. They have something to tell you about the Three of Swords:

“You may find you come around again and revisit what you’ve just been through in a different form, but it will never be the same — because you aren’t the same.” [March 22, 2016]

So, if by chance an all-too-familiar sensation crosses your path — if you get a sense of loss revisited, or isolation or complications raising themselves up in front of you again, then it can be invaluable to keep this in mind:

First, you are equipped for this. You have the wisdom and the chops to deal with what happens in ways that may surprise even you. There is the potential for a knowing heft to your action that demonstrates that you mean business.

Second, it is not the same, no matter what your mind may tell you. These circumstances are not the same. Because you are different.

Sink your feet into that loamy earth. Observe the industriousness of the weaving of the story of life around you. You do not have to do this alone; and yet you are also a part of this unfolding. Get back to your roots and your rootedness, and you’ll get back to yourself.

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Queen of Stones (the watery aspect of earth), King of Stones (the fiery aspect of earth), Three of Swords (Saturn in Libra)

If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread.

By Sarah Taylor

Full disclosure: I am writing with a bad head-cold and at the tail-end of a family emergency (which has passed, but continues to leave its mark). So today I am going to be brief — and for some reason, that feels fitting for a mid-ish-week reading that falls the day before a lunar eclipse. The cards reflect this timing, too. I am holding trust that you get everything you need.

Three of Swords, Ten of Cups, Princess of Swords from the Haindl Tarot deck, created by Hermann Haindl. Click on the image for a larger version.

The foundation to this reading is held by the card on the left: the Three of Swords. “Mourning.”

Something has been — well, if not lost, then it had the quality of confusion, an over-involvement by unwanted parties, or a compromise that has left its sting. You know that saying, “Too many cooks spoil the broth”? This broth — a hope, an idea, a belief pinned to your vision board — has indeed been at the mercy of one too many cooks.

Often, in cases like this, a swift, tactical maneouvre to extricate yourself from the immediate ensnarement and clashing of words is the best shot you have at restoring a sense of balance.

And, my goodness, it seems you’ve achieved that. The Three of Swords could have felt like a fleeting moment in the greater scheme of your life — a small scuffle, a minor “yikes!” (or a big “OUCH!” ) — but its effect is greater than that. The Three of Swords has paved the way for your current situation: the Ten of Cups. Haindl titles this card “Success,” yet it’s success of a very specific kind. As the final card of its suit, a Ten represents a fulfillment; the success refers to the coming together of disparate parts of yourself. It is an inner family reunion, where love has been the currency that has enabled you to return those disparate parts to the fold — the sanctum of your heart.

You’ve experienced complications that arise when you step into the complexity of interrelatedness; you now understand the wholeness that comes from that, as paradoxical as it may seem. In some way, you’d been working behind the scenes from yourself, contemplating the matter of love and what it actually means (and no, it’s not what you find in the movies). You have found your version of it — the one that works for you, right here, right now.

This is a place that no-one else can touch; it is dependent on no-one other than you. You have tended it — possibly with the kind of care that you weren’t able to offer yourself until recently — and enriched it so that it beats at your centre.

Time to move forward. This is as good as it gets for now. You may find you come around again and revisit what you’ve just been through in a different form, but it will never be the same — because you aren’t the same.

And as if to emphasise this moving on, the figure of the Princess of Swords in the final card — represented by the Ancient Egyptian goddess Isis — looks away from the two cards to her left, and greets what will be shifting into life, as yet unseen by you. As the Princess, you have the Ten of Cups at your back; as do you the Three of Swords. Your own Sword — your agility with ideas, words, and your laying down of the law in your life — is tempered with that beating heart.

“As mother [of Horus] and wife [of Osiris], as the heroine of the battle against Set [Osiris’s brother], Isis represented love, courage, and devotion. Pictures often showed her feeding her infant Horus, a scene like the Christian Madonna and Child.” [Rachel Pollack, The Haindl Tarot: The Minor Arcana]

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Love, courage, and devotion. As the Princess of Swords, your wisdom is focussed on nurturance — your own, as well as toward other people, and other things.

You are learning what ‘motherhood’ really means (and, again, it is not the stuff of movies). The mother is the heart-centred custodian of life. She is the wisdom that springs from that. She is clear-sighted in her commitment to it. She is earth, she is family, she is intuition. She underpins all things.

Isis is associated with both the Sun and the Moon — perfect timing given this reading marks the second of two eclipses. This not only anchors it into your psyche and the collective: it also gives you an indication of timing and what will be ushered in by the new cycle that is now being birthed.

Resonating as you are with the archetype of the mother, you are perfectly positioned to know what to do, and how to be, in the form she takes in your life.

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Three of Swords (Saturn in Libra), Ten of Cups (Mars in Pisces), Princess of Swords (the earthy aspect of air)

If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread.