By Sarah Taylor

What’s on the mind of the Prince of Cups as he closes his eyes and faces into the cosmos of possibility? Not that it’s hard to take a guess — but perhaps the other cards speak to something more complex than first appearances.

“Desire,” “Wishes,” “Longing,” “The possibilities of transformation.”

Prince of Cups, Queen of Disks, Three of Cups from the Röhrig Tarot deck, created by Carl-W. Röhrig. Click on the image for a larger version.

It is this last phrase on the card that hints at that complexity. Yes, the Prince has sex on his mind — a melding of bodies, breasts, genitals, and long, feathered hair. However, that long, feathered hair becomes almost butterfly-wing-like over his brows as he contemplates his erotic potential. He is, after all, a Prince; not a Princess, who is just starting out, but a contender for the throne of the Knight.

How does he make that leap from contender to ruler? How does he own who he is, assume full responsibility for his role as an agent of transformation, and step into being someone who doesn’t just dream about desire, but whose life is offered in service to desire and to living that out as wholly, autonomously, and purposefully as possible?

The key lies in the central card, the Queen of Disks. Earth to the Prince’s water, feminine to his masculine, fully-fledged (the butterfly wings are formed, whole), the Queen of Disks also cuts a sensual figure, but in this case she is bound to nature while he is suspended in space. She is the grounding, feminine principle that, through her presence — looking straight at us as she does — sees what he cannot see, knows what he does not yet know.

One of the first things I noticed was that the Prince is turning away from the Queen. What can this mean? It signifies that they are not so much in direct (eye-to-eye) relationship as they are in psychic relationship. The breast that touches the Queen’s left cheek is also present next to the Prince. There is a bond here that is suggestive of, even if it isn’t only limited to, an inner relationship — a coniunctio, or marriage between two aspects of oneself.

But is it the Prince who is growing into the world of the Queen? Or is the Queen now realising her inner Prince? And does it really matter? I think not. Because what is important is not who comes first, but what happens when they come together (in a manner of speaking).

Abundance. The Three of Cups:

“Overflowing interchange of love,” “exceptional valuable feelings, which can be –”

Which can be what? The writing flows beyond the edge of the card. Don’t you love a good mystery?

What is clear from the final card is that there is a third element that that forms part of this marriage based on an “overflowing interchange of love”: a cup that stands at the head of the waterfall, unpatterned, a little different, and yet part of a cohesive whole. What does that mean? Perhaps this is part of the mystery: that third presence, or ingredient, that is necessary for the complete fruition of what this reading holds.

The Three of Cups is very much a feminine card, the cascade over two rocky outcrops reminiscent of a woman’s thighs parting to reveal her watery depths. Two come together and a third is formed. This is alchemy; this is conception; it is community. Or, it is the potential for alchemy and conception (whether creative, physical or both) and community. Right now, what forms from this vessel is that mystery alluded to in the phrase that currently sits unfinished.

Bringing these two aspects together, what are you feeling? And where are you being guided — by your heart, by your desire, by your groundedness which connects you to life? What is emerging from their union? What can be brought forth? I look at this reading, and I want to start fanning myself, quite frankly. Not so much because it’s hot-hot-hot, but because it is full, present, and charged with longing and knowing.

Why not slip into those waters, grounded in the certainty that you are held — and that it is you doing the holding?

See — or better, feel — where they take you.

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Prince of Cups (the airy aspect of water), Queen of Disks (the watery aspect of earth), Three of Cups (Mercury in Cancer)

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 two outer cards in this week’s reading couldn’t be more contrasted if I had gone through the deck and hand-picked them myself; while the card in the centre is the turning point, away from one, and towards the other.

Four of Disks, Princess of Swords, Princess of Cups from the Röhrig Tarot deck, created by Carl-W. Röhrig. Click on the image for a larger version.

Like all of the Fours in tarot, the Four of Disks is associated with a ‘pause’ — here, specifically, the pause that happens at the point of a consolidation of power, where a decision is being offered for consideration. In the Two and the Three of Disks, you started to understand how to move through, and work with, the physical world, including how to start working towards a particular material goal. In the Four of Disks, you have amassed enough (possessions, money, repute — take your pick) that you have attached a certain importance to it. It is the outer demonstration of achievement and agency.

And yet here is the decision that is on offer to you, if you are able to recognise its presence.

Do you stay where you are, holding on to what you have — and therefore holding on to the importance that you have attached to it — or do you acknowledge what it has taken to get where you are, and let go, not of what you have, but of a need to preserve what you have for fear of being without?

The Princess of Swords to the right, and facing away from, the Four of Disks tells me that a process of liberation has already started to take place. This is your self-enacted liberation from ideas and beliefs about who you are, and why and how you are in relationship to the world. And, especially, in relationship to power.

The Princess of Swords in her highest expression — the expression that is not held in the shadow of your sub- or unconscious — is the liberator. Her razor-sharp intuition and insight are as keen as the sword-blade that she uses to cut through the chains and ropes that bind her. Her youth, her rebellion, have an “out of the mouths of babes” quality to them. She is asserting her authority over herself. Hers is the embodiment of autonomy and the will and ability to fight for it.

In her shadow expression, she is the rebel for rebellion’s sake — taking an unquestioned and dogged polarised stance that binds her forever to her opponent. In which case, the bonds remain even as she believes that she has severed them.

In this three-card reading, however, the Princess of Swords’ self-liberation releases her into another world entirely: the world of Cups, and her watery counterpart.

“Self confidence,” “emotional Freedom.”

The Princess of Cups epitomises bliss in its most felt form. It isn’t simply the idea of bliss; it is the feeling of bliss, which she has the confidence and freedom both to allow to flow in her, and to flow from her and into her environment. She dives through the air, arms outstretched, heart opened and exposed. The vulnerability both of her body-language and her circumstances speaks of surrender. But in this case, it isn’t a surrender to another person, idea or thing; it is a surrender to herself and to life.

Where is it that you are perhaps holding on to something so hard that you have forgotten what it is like to let go into ecstasy? Where is it that you have the ability to discern between true freedom and (self-)sabotage? Where is the part of you who sees, and knows, and is ready to speak out, take action, and free you both?

Letting go doesn’t mean letting go of everything. “Letting go” doesn’t mean letting go of any thing. What it means is letting go of what ties you down and back from who it is that you are, and the value you bring simply by being you. What is meant to stay will stay, but it will no longer define you. Who and what you are is far bigger than that.

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Four of Disks (Sun in Capricorn), Princess of Swords (the earthy aspect of air), Princess of Cups (the earthy 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

This reading is as clear, clear, clear as the body of light that shines from the centre of the layout. You have a choice; and you are being guided towards the direction that serves you, and others, best.

Three of Wands, The Star, Three of Swords from the Röhrig Tarot deck, created by Carl-W. Röhrig. Click on the image for a larger version.

Before I turned the cards face-up, I was prompted to draw them in a different order from the one I am used to — and found myself laying them down, first centre, then right, then left. I pay close attention to any changes in how this happens, because it plays into the significance of the emphasis of the reading.

At the centre of the reading sits The Star. Or, rather, The Star radiates from the centre of the reading. I find it interesting that the card is related to the card at centre last week — Strength: corresponding to Aquarius and Leo respectively, the cards are complementary opposites. What you bring to yourself in Strength, you then extend to groups and others in The Star.

Flow, grace, inspiration, connection, touching the transpersonal: The Star (card 17 in the major arcana) is what you move into when the necessary destruction of The Tower (card 16) has done its job of clearing away the obstacles on your particular, singular Soul path. This is you, right now.

And what are you, as The Star, turning away from, and what is it that you’re looking towards? The order that the cards were drawn in — first right, then left — only emphasises the direction in which the figure in the central card is focussing her attention.

Two “Three” cards, placed symmetrically in the layout: this indicates the choice that The Star is clearly making (The Star = “clarity”). The Threes in tarot are associated with the state in which you find yourself when you have moved out of the binary and into complexity — where you find yourself when you are no longer looking in a single mirror, or at the other, but dealing with multiple reflections, or circumstances. Where, in short, you are no longer entirely accountable for, or able to direct, what is happening around you.

The Three of Swords represents a lack of mental/thought-based clarity caused by the presence of a “third” coming in — whether a conflicting idea inside you, or a conflicting idea introduced by someone or something outside you. They are really one and the same. What heretofore had seemed straightforward — hey, remember when you hand a handle on things, and you could guide your experience because you were the only one in the room? — now feels a little less so. Or a lot.

In the card, a big wooden door dwarfs you and bars the way. Or does it? Isn’t that simply your mental reaction to a set of circumstances where you have had no choice but to hand over some control to other/s — other/s who might have other ideas? The door is one you have closed — on possibility, on trust and co-operation, on being accountable for your own piece of the deal, and knowing which parts of the deal are not yours to handle. Sorrow.

Sorrow at a sense of feeling the limitations of something — but also the sorrow of feeling the limitations offered up by the human experience. But sorry is only one side of the story, as it is only one side of the door. Because on the other side of the door, if you look carefully, is a starry sky. The same starry sky that is the backdrop to The Star. And remember — she is looking somewhere else; the door is not part of her experience. She sees the other side so fully that she is looking somewhere entirely new.

You, too, have the potential to see the other side so fully that you are looking somewhere new.

The Three of Wands. Virtue.

“Integrity,” “Self-confident,” “No compromizes.” [sic]

What you are fully accountable for is you, your reactions and your actions. What you walk in the Three of Wands is your own path through the complexity — because that is the act of self-definition that shines out of you as a breath-taking beauty. You are a beacon of living, feathered light. And you are accompanied by the very elements of what could have, if you saw only the door, caused you pain — the very things, the very people, the very circumstances. It is you who has shifted this by changing your thoughts into self-defined, right action.

The possibility that you walk towards, by implication, is the Four of Wands — a threshold-crossing into a new state. An invitation extended to join something, or someone/s, through a conscious act of commitment. But that’s only the possibility, and it is not yet visible. For now, hold to your integrity and self-confidence — hold true to yourself and your vision — as you step away from conflict and keep the vision of The Star as your guiding light. Can you feel it? Exquisite!

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Three of Wands (Sun in Aries), The Star (Aquarius), 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

This is a reading of two halves: two halves in each card. Let’s explore how these two-halved cards are able to dance together to form a whole that, if not resolved, is an ongoing balance of opposites.

The further paradox of this balancing game is that it is an ‘all-or-nothing’ commitment; you are either fully in, or fully out. What is clear, though, is no matter your decision, it is going to ask for a giant step into the unknown.

Seven of Wands, The Fool, Temperance from the Röhrig Tarot deck, created by Carl-W. Röhrig. Click on the image for a larger version.

What strikes me first is the relationship between the Seven of Wands — or Valor — and The Fool. When I first looked at the two cards, I realised that the figure in the Seven of Wands is enacting what it is that the figure of the Fool seems to be about to do in many of the more traditional depictions of The Fool: taking a leap off a cliff, towards and into the mystery.

The very little English writing on the Seven of Wands offers us this:

“Bravery,” “no compromises”

And the two go hand-in-hand. To propel yourself forward over a chasm describing the unknown and into a different place is an act of bravery. It is also an act without compromise, because to do it part-way means to fall into the chasm itself, and to do it not at all means to stay where you are. What does this mean? Essentially there are three choices in front of you: to stay where you are; to offer conditional commitment, which puts you in a no-man’s-land, where there is a sense of psychic loss that asks for a renewed period of excavation; or to leap, fully, across that no-man’s-land and into a new land, where nothing is guaranteed save for the fact that you know that you have no idea what you are committing to.

The card, however, suggests that it is an action worth considering. It asks of you “valor,” and in The Fool’s Journey it is that bravery that informs the first step of The Fool along a path that, yes, will test him and will bring him new adventures, but which will also bring him the opportunity to follow the call of his Soul. And if there is a calling that is worth following more — if your desire is to live fully, to know yourself better, to expand your sense of what is possible — then it is eluding me right now.

And so the hero/heroine leaps — and so leaps into the world, and the state, of The Fool.

I love this beautiful Fool in the Röhrig deck. Masculine and feminine — and yet both edgy in their own rights: the masculine black and white with a clown mouth, the feminine decorative, heart on cheek. Together, they seek to find a balance with the resources that they have. Neither together nor apart do they form what we might consider to be a ‘conventional’ whole. And why should they? As humans stepping out on our own odysseys, we are beautifully, intricately, delicately, compellingly flawed.

We are two sides seeking union among the riches of our idiosyncrasies, our complexes, unpredictability, and magic. And yet we are heroes and heroines, and all in between.

“Courage to stand by oneself,” “independence,” “Creativity,” “great potential,” “possibility,” “frankness,” “freedom,” “possibility for quantum leap,” “following one’s own feeling,” …

“willingness to risk.”

The willingness to risk. That is The Fool in four words. He is the initiator, the instigator — very often at the hands of his own innocence or ignorance. But it isn’t willful or stupid ignorance; it is simply because he cannot know. How could he know what he is letting himself in for? Why, then he wouldn’t be The Fool!

We are Fools when we eschew convention and the well-worn path and strike out on our own, no matter the consequences that we are warned to take heed of — to fear, even. And, when we are holding to the spirit of adventure that The Fool embodies, we do this not as an act of rebellion. We do it as an unbridled act of Self-definition.

The final card underlines this further, and also brings in a stabilising factor. Again, we have similar qualities in the written descriptors:

“inner change,” “transformation,” “quantum leap,” “creative powers (forces).”

Alongside these, though, there are “uniting the opposites,” and “blanking out.”

Temperance describes the process of alchemy that happens when we learn to unite two opposites — in this case the elements of fire and water (“Feuer und Wasser“). One possible outcome of this is that we cancel both elements out. This is a fine art we are talking about here; it takes the courage of The Fool, and the precision of one — such as you — who is devoted to the craft of one’s life. It is when you are able to unite opposites that you create the kind of reaction that gives you a new substance that had previously been unavailable to you.

You have created your own inner gold.

This is your Great Work calling to you, and you have everything you need to bring forth what serves you. What it asks of you is courage — to move into the unknown with a decisiveness that takes you all the way there — and the ability to work with what feels like two forces at odds with each other but which, when brought together in just the right way, bring you something you never thought possible.

So, there you are, standing on the precipice. It might not, after all, be the abyss that you thought it was. And — wonder of all wonders — you get to find out for yourself.

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Seven of Wands (Mars in Leo), The Fool (Uranus), Temperance (Sagittarius)

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 week the cards are very clear; as clear as the sense of defeat and pain that they relate; and equally clear about the way that is available to you that moves you through both and towards something different.

Seven of Disks, Nine of Swords, Knight of Cups from the Röhrig Tarot deck, created by Carl-W. Röhrig. Click on the image for a larger version.

At the centre of the reading lies the Nine of Swords. Also known in this deck as Cruelty, the image of the Nine of Swords is its own effective description: an eye, its makeup belying the bloodshot veins that run through it, and the open wounds on the cheek below it.

Tears have been shed — are still being shed. There is injury: emotional, physical — in other words, the pain is visceral. It isn’t simply a matter of “I feel hurt.” In this case, “I am hurt,” and it is a phrase that can be taken two ways: first, describing a sense of self-injury; second, describing oneself as the embodiment of pain.

The Nine of Swords describes a sense of cruelty to oneself (written on the card) that is then projected onto the surrounding world. It is anguish writ large in how we experience ourselves and then our interactions with others. When we experience the kind of pain described by the Nine of Swords, we become its agent. Remember that Swords are associated with the mind; and so we turn pain into a belief about who we are, and what the world is in response to us. And so we, too, respond to that world with “heart less passions,” “fanaticism,” “passive opposition,” “martyrism [sic],” “vengeance.” It is a (very) vicious cycle.

Why has this happened? This is suggested in the preceding card, the Seven of Disks.

In some way, you have experienced something not working out the way you had planned or hoped. Your efforts appear to have blocked the Sun. You sit, small, beneath. It is a moment of humbling.

But what if there were no accidents? How about looking at the Seven of Disks more closely in this instance? The sky is, for the most part, clear, soft, and dappled with clouds. The Sun hasn’t disappeared; it is only obscured. But a part of you believes that you have somehow caused the Sun to disappear, when in reality you are not that powerful, and what you are seeing is described by the metaphor depicted in the card: just a passing cloud.

Yet you take it so seriously! So seriously that, perhaps, you have forgotten the courage that it took to embark on your endeavour in the first place. What courage that you even tried! The pain has come from identifying yourself with it so fully that it became its own belief system, an act of total self-definition.

But the Knight of Cups offers the antidote to the cycle of cruelty in which you find yourself enmeshed. His presence is a response to it on all levels. Where there are heart less passions, he brings higher emotional levels; where there is fanaticism, he offers devotion to a loved person; where there is passive opposition, he embodies the ability to give; where there is vengeance, he responds with spiritual relations. There is a St. Francis of Assisi aspect to the card that becomes very clear here: when you are revealed in the gaze of the Knight of Cups — when you look upon yourself and your world with different eyes — you become a channel for peace.

Maybe it is in this moment that you realise your project wasn’t the failure you thought it to be after all.

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Seven of Disks (Saturn in Taurus), Nine of Swords (Mars in Gemini), Knight of Cups (the fiery 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

From a masculine reading last week, to a predominantly feminine reading today, with our protagonist — the card I drew first — at centre: the Queen of Cups.

Ten of Cups, Queen of Cups, Nine of Wands from the Röhrig Tarot deck, created by Carl-W. Röhrig. Click on the image for a larger version.

The Queen of Cups is the watery aspect of water. Her elemental correspondence demonstrates clearly that she is at home in the depths: of emotion, and of the unconscious. Her environment is the amniotic fluid from which your experience of yourself as a sentient, feeling-based, receptive being is birthed. You are held in the gaze of the nurturer; and you, as the Queen, are the nurturer who holds the other in your gaze.

I’ve always found the Queen of Cups in this deck interesting and challenging to interpret for one particular reason: she is not the portrait of your typical mother figure — eyelid slightly lowered, full mouth parted, blonde hair falling across one half of her face. She is more Brigitte Bardot than traditional matriarch. How can someone who seems seductive on one hand be the symbolism of motherhood on the other?

Or, perhaps more pertinent questions: when did “seductive” take on the mantle of negativity that it so often wears — an aspect of the Shadow Queen that we have consigned to the darkness — and at what point were these two aspects of womanhood separated? The Queen of Cups in the Röhrig deck, as far as I can see it, clearly reunites the ‘madonna’ and the ‘whore’ into one beautiful, rounded card.

As such, the Queen in her highest expression is the individuated feminine who is complete in her own right, and it is this balance between two seemingly mutually exclusive qualities (in our society at least) that signifies the arrival of an inner balance that is now manifesting through you. The particular form it takes is written on the card:

“motherhood,” “emotional integrity,” “as above as below,” “feelings are shown openly.”

The Queen is unafraid to be who she is. You, too, have the wherewithal to be fearlessly yourself, and this stems from a level of nurturing and care that forms the foundation of the reading, in the Ten of Cups.

The Ten of Cups is also known as “Satiety” — fulfilment, or the state of being “sated.” As the last numbered card in its suit, it is replete with the quality of Cups. Like a child who has suckled its fill at the breast, so you turn from the Ten of Cups, and into a change that is inevitable when something has approached saturation point.

It is here that the Martian energy of the Ten of Cups (which corresponds with Mars in Pisces) takes over and shifts the energy. Becoming the Queen dissolves an internal block or stalemate in a burst of light in the Nine of Wands, and life changes gears once more. However, you don’t leave the Queen behind; she remains a part of your consciousness. It is her presence as one who is entirely at home charting the emotional complexity of who it is to be you that is instrumental in removing an obstacle that had stymied you — until now.

Where there was a paradox that held you in place, now you have the ability to step forward. You never did need to be either one thing or another; you finally see that a third choice was staring you in the face all the time. Now it’s on to the next adventure.

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Ten of Cups (Mars in Pisces), Queen of Cups (the watery aspect of water), Nine of Wands (Moon in Sagittarius)

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.