By Sarah Taylor

I have a feeling that the energy of the cards — especially the Knight of Wands — has a significant hand in a strong feeling of power that courses through me when I take in this week’s reading. I look at all three solitary figures, one in each card, and they are looking at me directly. No bullshit. Down to business.

The Chariot, The Magus, Knight of Wands from The Röhrig Tarot deck, created by Carl-W. Röhrig. Click on the image for a larger version.

Even the visored figure in The Chariot (who I will refer to as a “he,” taking his gender from other versions of the card) is revving his engine and facing me down.

The next thing I invite you to notice are the colours. Look at the three cards together, specifically the similarities between the left and centre card (The Chariot and The Magus), and their contrast with the third.

The Chariot and The Magus are Major Arcana cards, and early ones at that: cards 7 and 1, respectively. These are cards of self-definition, primarily about who we are on the individual level. As we shift through the Majors, we shift from self-definition into change and crisis and transformation, and arrive the other end seeing ourselves as part of the collective.

Here in this reading, though, we are concerned with questions such as “Who am I?” and “Where am I going?” and “What do I stand for?” This is borne out by the third card — but more on that later.

So, back to the colours of these two first cards: cool blues and blacks and feathered light. The star reflected in the visor of the charioteer is the light that burns from the crown of The Magus.

The Chariot is that part of you that is on the move, directed, focused intently on your own becoming. You head towards that one thing — that thing that is simultaneously drawing you towards it. Obviously, that thing is a part of you that you have yet to meet. And it seems obvious here that you have been homing in on an aspect of yourself that you’ve been in the process of defining. You may not have been able to articulate what it was, but boy have you been feeling it calling to you. It has been nothing short of magnetic.

That’s Mercury, The Magus, The Magician. The aspect of you who is able to create and work magic, to communicate deftly with your higher wisdom and to bridge the world of spirit and matter. It has been calling to you. And you listened: or a part of you did. It donned its crash-helmet (these kinds of journeys can be risky, as you know), jumped into its Formula 1 racing car, and sped off, following a star. Much like the Magi in that well-known New Testament story that many people celebrate next month.

You have been a Magus-in-waiting following a star. Following a star to yourself. You crossed lands, deserts, familiar neighbourhood hangouts, and strange, perhaps frightening, terrain to come to a place where The Magus sits opposite you, looking you in the eye, a small, almost imperceptible smile on his lips.

The Magus as an emerging aspect of you, looking at you, the seeker — the one who has been searching for such a long time. And the funny thing is that he doesn’t seem remotely surprised to find you here with him.

“Glad you could come around. I have been waiting for you forever. What next adventure are we going to go on, you and I?”

Well, the Knight, of course! He is your next adventure. While The Chariot and The Magus represent the story that has been happening inside you, and behind the scenes, the Knight of Wands is the outer expression of that story. And so back to the colours, because now we have shifted from blues and starlight to reds and fire. This is far more visceral; this is hot!

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How you are bringing this new, magical aspect of yourself into this world is through the flames of the individuated, fiery masculine. What does that mean, you ask? It means that you mean business.

You’re not going to sit back and let the same things pass you by that you did before. You’re not going to give yourself anything less than a high-octane boost — much like the boost it took for The Chariot to meet up with The Magus, except this time you’re going to feel it in your body: in the pit of your belly, that fire will burn. It is drive, it is zest, it is no-holds-barred action.

What are you going to do with this fire? That’s up to you, but I can give you a few pointers.

• You will want to channel your creativity in ways that you and others will feel palpably in your world.
• You will be unashamedly expressive with your erotic energy, but in a way that empowers both you and others.
• You won’t take any shit. Including your own.
• You’ll be cool as a cucumber with a red-hot heart and stomach.
• You’ll thrive in your inner fires, but you will not be consumed by them any more.
• You will give yourself sanity space and time — but just enough before you re-enter the flames.
• You will fearlessly allow what no longer works for you to be burned away by the very fire that feeds you. It will both nourish and cleanse you.

Two Majors associated with self-definition. One Court Card that embodies the ultimate in active self-definition. No excuses. Not that you’re inclined to make them any more. You have work to do.

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: The Chariot (Cancer), The Magus (Mercury), Knight of Wands (the fiery aspect of fire)

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

Having the Nine of Swords and the Ace of Cups side-by-side is to see what happens when one state of mind meets its polar opposite. I can’t think of two other tarot cards that are as perfect a counterpoint to each other as these.

Nine of Swords, Ace of Cups, The Sun from The Röhrig Tarot deck, created by Carl-W. Röhrig. Click on the image for a larger version.

You’re definitely no stranger to the Nine of Swords. It has come up several times recently — most recently of all on Oct. 25.

It might be useful to look back and see what was going on then and whether there is a connection to what’s happening now. With one significant difference: here, the Nine of Swords is in the near-past position, and it is the Ace of Cups that’s taking centre stage.

You, too, can choose whether to have the Ace take centre stage, or whether you want to continue in some same-old, same-old battle you have with yourself — those nicks, scratches, cuts that you inflict through self-judgment and self-talk. Some, you’ll know well; they tend to be the larger ones, part of a pattern of recriminations that often take on the voices of earlier authority figures. They’re the big-hitters. They pick up where your family of origin left off; they keep the story going.

Others are smaller. Maybe you don’t think they matter. Maybe you think they matter so little that you don’t notice them. They are the thieves in the night that steal into your psyche and exact their wounding — the death by a thousand cuts. Frequently they pass off as self-deprecating humour, when in reality they’re really not that funny at all. “I’m such a clutz!” “Oh, don’t mind me!” “C’mon, [insert your name here]! Get a fucking grip!”

The Nine of Swords is dis-ease — some experiences of it more concrete than others. When it appears, it speaks of the kind of unforgiving nature that we assume with ourselves rather than anyone else. The illusory bonds that are shaken off with a change of perspective in the Eight have become the sharpened barbs that wrap themselves around us so we feel their points digging into our skin.

Haven’t you suffered enough that you no longer need to pick up where others left off? You are entirely empowered to put those swords down. You don’t need them any more.

You never needed them.

Look to the centre card. The Ace of Cups is what is available to you when you stop pointing the finger of blame at yourself, and start to accept yourself wholly for who you are. In that moment that you begin to practise self-acceptance, something happens: you let go. You let go of those swords and instead you radiate. Ease, acceptance, forgiveness. Love.

This happens first through what you don’t do rather than what you do do. You can’t love yourself into the Ace if you’re not first able to unravel the patterns that underlie the Nine of Swords. What you stop doing is the negative self-talk. You catch yourself — not like a thief in the night, but like a child who deserves all the love in the world. The love you can now give yourself.

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If you need to off-load those swords, sometimes it’s best to do that in a setting that’s designed for just that purpose, whether therapy or some kind of practice that disarms you. You do not need to do this alone. Maybe feeling alone was what got you into this pickle in the first place.

Entrust yourself not only to your own acceptance, but to someone else’s too: someone who has earned your trust, or someone who you feel is up to earning it. It may feel like a risk, but it will be a risk that feels worth it — your body will exhale into it.

What you then meet is The Sun. Look at the figure of the woman in the Ace, and then look at her in miniature in The Sun, standing on top of that hill, in the same position, the same halo of light around her head. Except now you see that your halo, and the Sun’s halo, are one. It’s not that the pain disappears either. It is that the Sun encompasses everything — all experiences — and sees them in the light of awareness.

The embrace of who you are as the Ace becomes the embrace of who you are under the canopy of an intelligence that reflects your own acceptance back to you. And in that moment, you realise: you, and it, are one.

And you are enough.

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Nine of Swords (Mars in Gemini), Ace of Cups (the pure, limitless potential of water), The Sun (Sun)

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

It’s worth noting that every reading we’ve had from Oct. 11 onwards has included a court card, representing an aspect of the personality: the Knight (King in the Rider-Waite Smith deck) of Cups appeared twice, on Oct. 11 and Oct. 25, respectively (there was a two-week break between readings); the Princess (Page) of Swords appeared last week; and this week the Princess has shifted into the Prince (Knight) of Swords — also sitting at centre; also leaning into a ‘difficult’ card to his right.

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

It’s also worth noting that the Three of Wands that appeared back on Oct. 11, as the ‘current’ card at centre, is now, today, on the left, in the near-past position.

You have moved forward on the path of self-definition that you’ve chosen — one that may have meant going it alone. And you’re continuing to move forward, even if it feels like you’re hitting challenge after challenge. Sometimes paths are open, wide and smooth. Sometimes they feel like an obstacle course. Welcome to this second option, my friend. Careful as you go. It may seem like there’s a lot to lose but, really, what is held in this moment is the potential to negotiate familiar patterns that no longer need to have the same influence over you.

Last week, you brushed past “Failure”; this week, you’re rubbing shoulders with “Disappointment.” But you, Sword-wielding truth-speaker and insight-seeker, have grown a little wiser — more canny — over the past few days in a particular area of your life. You’re learning to discern what works for you, and what doesn’t. And you’re learning to say “no.”

“No, that doesn’t work for me.”
“No, I won’t do that.”
“No, that’s not who I am.”
“No, I’ve given you as much as I can give.”

You’re continuing to take back your freedom. Aaaaaaaand, just as you round the next corner on your journey, you come face-to-face with the hard, unforgiving planes of resistance. Emotional resistance. Your openness, your opening heart, is being countered by the cold, unfeeling walls of some kind of shut-down — whether from someone else’s behaviour or a circumstance that conspires to block you.

It might feel like it’s coming at you, so that you believe you have little or no control over it. That isn’t true. You have all the control you need. Not over that person or that circumstance, but over your response.

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When the Prince of Swords comes up in a reading — especially when he’s hot on the tail of the Princess — you’re sharp as the blade you’re carrying, for sure; but you also run the risk of contracting ‘foot in mouth’ dis-ease: a degree of back-chat that runs the risk of biting you on the ass.

That sword only needs to be used enough to reveal the truth, and so cut you loose from what previously held you back. Once you’ve done that, it’s going to take some discipline to stay at ease and ignore the urge to lash out. Especially when you meet with resistance.

You’ve got two secret weapons, though.

The first is that this particular form of resistance will be hard to ignore: you have the capacity to identify it quickly and pull back. Nothing needs to meet with the edge of your blade today.

The second is a support structure that may not be immediately obvious, because it has been with you all along. You may have ignored it, you may have taken it for granted. You may have turned your back on it. Funny thing is that it could be the one thing that has walked with you down this path of liberation consistently, quietly. You’ll know it because it reveals something to you about yourself that you would not otherwise see. Disappointment reminds you of its presence. You can turn to it if you want to.

But whether you do or don’t, you’ve got the ways and means to navigate disappointment so that it no longer disappoints in quite the same way it always has. Who’s to say it needs to disappoint at all this time? It feels like a blip on the radar of your larger mission: significant, but not your destination.

You’re meant for more than what blocks you. But what blocks you has the ability to free you further. Maybe it’s not so much a challenge as a gift.

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Three of Wands (Sun in Aries), Prince of Swords (the airy aspect of air), Five of Cups (Mars in 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

Some time ago — not too far; recent enough to remember clearly — you were inspired to liberate yourself. This liberation could have had any number of outer guises, but two things would have defined it behind the scenes.

Ace of Wands, Princess of Swords, Seven of Disks from The Röhrig Tarot, created by Carl-W. Röhrig. Click on the image for a larger version.

First, you were given the chance to make use of a bolt of fiery energy. This is described by the Ace of Wands. Here’s an excerpt on the Ace of Wands from an article I wrote about it in 2012 (An encounter with the Ace of Wands):

“Wands energy is the sensation that we get when we are turned on — and I use that phrase broadly as well as specifically. It ignites us; it is fire; it is heat, tingling, licking us into action. And, thus, we become tuning forks: we are tuned into the frequency of creation. We’ve hit the same wavelength with something, or someone, and that wavelength urges us to do something. Now!

How you feel it in your own body depends on the part of you it is spurring into action. When you’re with someone who makes your blood surge through your veins and your juices flow, it’s because Wands energy is asking you to meld and create something new — whether through alchemy or biology.

Artists might feel it as a tingling in their hands and arms which cannot be quieted until it is discharged in some artistic endeavour. Runners feel it in their limbs; performers feel it in the pits of their stomachs. I clearly remember the sensation of its coursing through me as a child, and when my mother — exasperated at the child-shaped dynamo pinging off the walls around her — asked me what it was that I wanted, all I could do was to match her exasperation with the cry, “I need to create!” That was the only way I knew how to articulate what I was feeling; I’m not sure I’ve managed to articulate it any better since.”

Let’s unpack this a little …

“I need to create:

• a new life for myself
• a new set of circumstances
• something I’ve never/that’s never been done before
• a work of art, a poem, a song, a child
• a change in the way I express myself
• whatever it is that makes me feel alive.”

One of these might have been something you said to yourself, whether out loud or silently; whether you were aware of it or not. However the Ace appeared to you, a part of you felt the driving force of fire. It lit you up. Once you’ve reached for it and taken it — held it as your own — it is a flame that cannot be extinguished, only ignored or neglected. And the price you can pay for not working with your fire can be high, for the simple reason that you are being asked to step up and step into a life that is more in line with your soul than with anything you had pretended to be before.

There is a quote that I will put at the end of this article to illustrate this. I’m putting it at the end, because the quote is apparently uncompromising enough in its tone to feel definitive in a particular way. I would argue that it is not. It is nuanced enough to accommodate any number of ways that we can sabotage our own creativity on this path that we call life. And we sabotage it in ways large and small.

In this context, the destruction is not so much to our lives as it is to our alignment with a truth that, once spoken out loud, serves both us and everyone and everything connected to us.

This truth is the second part to this story: the Princess of Swords (corresponding to the Page in the Rider-Waite Smith deck). Her sword is the sword of insight, and the way that she wields it is with the fervour and passion of the fearless. She doesn’t yet know fear, and this serves her. She is True North, and any backlash from her truth-telling means nothing to her because she hasn’t felt its sting. Not yet, anyway.

In a momentary swish of her beautiful blade — the force of her mind and her power to see so clearly that it cuts through everything — she speaks and she is a free (wo)man. She speaks where others cannot. Others who know better and so remain silent. She stands alone, the rope and chains around her wrist sliced through. She is young. People underestimated her.

People underestimated you. You do not need to underestimate yourself.

So speak. Speak and free yourself. And then wait. Wait for the backlash to clear. Because there may well be a backlash in the not-so-distant future. You may even be encountering it now. It is a tangible one; perhaps a sense of not being able to move forward, or the feeling that resources are scarce. Saturn in Taurus (the astrological correspondence to the Seven of Disks) speaks of the tight limits around resources and the sense that your values are being put under pressure. The Seven of Pentacles (Disks) also speaks of defying odds and working with faith (not blind faith, but one that is justified) that something will pull through.

Faith.

Look carefully at the card. The Sun is blotted out, sure. But the Sun is there.

As that figure, feeling dwarfed, you can look up, look back at the Princess and remember how you got here. Hold on. The Sun is there. And the sky is clearing. Failure is a moment of forgetfulness. And, yet, the Sun is there. Take heart (Cups, representing the heart, are the only suit not present; you work harder to get to this one). You haven’t stepped off the path. The fire remains with you. The next implied card, the Eight, sees its resurgence.

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” ~ Gospel of Thomas

 

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Ace of Wands (the pure, limitless quality of fire), Princess of Swords (the earthy aspect of air), Seven of Disks (Saturn in Taurus)

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’s reading is relevant for the next week, and beyond. However, it also links back into the readings of October 11 and October 4. There is a theme playing out. Once again, the invitation is between walking a familiar road, or striking out into new territory.

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

In short, it asks you to choose between the self-recriminating mind, and beginner’s mind. And there’s a clear bias in favour of the second, mediated by the Knight of Cups (the King of Cups in the Rider-Waite Smith deck). But let’s look back first.

On October 4, the Nine of Swords appeared in the same position it does this week — on the right — where I wrote this:

[T]he Nine is the concretisation of your predicament, your indecision and misgivings solidified into barbs and razored edges that you’re wont to turn on yourself. The Nine is regret, pain, anguish, worry.

“Why did I let that happen?”
“What if I’d made a different decision?”
“I knew I’d fuck it up.”

The most painful part of the Nine is not, however, the truth of your circumstances, but the supposed ‘truth’ you buy into without subjecting it to thorough, dispassionate scrutiny. It is also the supposed ‘truth’ you buy into when you’ve forgotten your blood-red heart beating in your chest, and the love that it holds — for yourself, for others.

The Nine of Swords is a perspective that has become so concretised that the inflexibility is an assault to our inner freedom — the freedom that we experience when our minds have the ability to apply thought creatively. That reading asked you to reach for a third option — one that may have required that kind of creative thought. A shift of perspective.

On October 11, the Knight [King] of Cups appeared on the left, and I wrote this:

The message that the Knight’s presence this week brings: your path may sometimes feel like a lonely one, but only if you close your vision off from the magic of another realm — one that is far more subtle, but which reveals the feathers of your angel wings. In some way, you have demonstrated courage beyond words by holding to your heart-felt convictions. You may have chosen to turn your back on what no longer makes sense to you any more. It didn’t make sense because it ran counter to your values. Now you carry your values with you, openly, unafraid of embodying and living them out.

Here, you can now see what you, the Knight, has in his sights, and what he has not. He has turned away from the Nine — “what no longer makes sense to you” — and towards The Fool. Card 0. The point where something new calls and it is so foreign that it takes the no-mind of The Fool to step fearlessly towards it.

I have a feeling that you, as the Knight, are on the edge of finding out whether your convictions are going to be borne out. You, as the Knight, who has travelled with a heart-felt focus on how you choose to define yourself out in the world and with others, are now looking at The Fool.

Maybe you’re not feeling so sure anymore. Perhaps this is not what you thought it would look like. It could be that you’re realising that your prior expectations had given your journey a particular shape and flavour even as you believed you were keeping an open mind.

If so, this is the time when you get to see how open-minded you’re committed to being. This is not the kind of open-mindedness that compromises your values or your safety, your passions or will. No — it is the kind of open-mindedness that asks you to give more wiggle-room to what is possible. It is asking you to stretch yourself — to exercise that wide-open, powerful, vulnerable heart. The Nine of Swords are the judgements that snap into place and shut you down. You’ll feel them immediately in your body, and you’ll feel a narrowing of perspective that is so sharp that it has a razor’s edge quality to it. No room to move or breathe at all. Fear.

This fear is an illusion.

The Fool is as far away from the Nine of Swords as you can get. And a part of you, dear Knight — somewhere deep inside you (so deep that you may not be immediately aware of it) — has already made its choice.

Barbed wire; or a rose. Cruelty; or compassion. The past; or the unknown. In that moment when you know you’re choosing something new, there are no guarantees. When you do it with your eyes open, and your heart unguarded, I’d suggest it is because you understand that trusting yourself and your choices is a true mark of self-leadership. Guarantees start to pale into insignificance next to the freedom to decide, to act, to take the next step.

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: The Fool (Uranus), Knight of Cups (the fiery aspect of water), Nine of Swords (Mars in Gemini)

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

Equipped with what he has taken a stand to protect, the Knight (King) of Cups now turns and walks down the open road, towards the mountains in the distance and the next phase of his journey.

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

When I write of the Knight, I’m not writing so much about a man as of the inner masculine that we all have. Sure, he may show up in your life as a man — whether you, or someone else — but even if he does, it’s still likely that he’s reflecting what exists in you already.

The Knight in his highest expression is the mature, individuated masculine. He is outwardly focused, active, directing his attention with laser-like precision. As the Knight of Cups, his focus takes him into the realm of the heart — what bubbles up out of the unconscious as emotions, those indicators of the presence of something that may not otherwise be identifiable.

The Knight of Cups knows both sides of love. The rose on his cheek, and the stem of thorns that extends down his neck, represent both the beauty and the pain that are experienced when one opens their heart. I like to think that the plumes extending up and away from the figure in the Three of Wands are the fragile yet exquisite and indisputable evidence of the Knight’s capacity to feel. Yes, he is alone, and yet still they emanate from him, a body of light that illuminates his path in darker moments, and calls others to him with their vulnerable beauty.

This is “Virtue”: the steadfast holding to what he knows, even in the most unlikely and isolated of circumstances. This isn’t virtue that asks for recognition. It exists simply for its own sake. The Knight knows what he is for: his “ability to give,” a “family of one’s choice,” “SPIRITUAL RELATIONS.”

In a hardened world where so many of us are taught to ‘man up’, and to hide our hearts under armour, the Knight is distinctly unfashionable — walking his path, witnessed only by the three wands that act as a gateway to what lies on the horizon. Oh, and witnessed by you, too. Your presence in the face of these cards is as important as the cards themselves. There would be no reading without either, no meaning without both them and you.

You and the cards, in this moment, are one.

The message that the Knight’s presence this week brings: your path may sometimes feel like a lonely one, but only if you close your vision off from the magic of another realm — one that is far more subtle, but which reveals the feathers of your angel wings. In some way, you have demonstrated courage beyond words by holding to your heart-felt convictions. You may have chosen to turn your back on what no longer makes sense to you any more. It didn’t make sense because it ran counter to your values. Now you carry your values with you, openly, unafraid of embodying and living them out.

Those mountains move steadily towards you as you make your way. Soon, a gateway will reveal itself to you, where you step out and away from what you have known for a long time, and into an invitation with the unknown. You are being called — by what, and whom, you’re not yet sure. One thing’s for sure, though. They can see you coming. You are announcing your approach with that wide-open heart.

No apologies for what you feel. Not anymore. When that threshold presents itself between the old and the new, you’ll know what to do.

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Knight of Cups (the fiery aspect of water), Three of Wands (Sun in Aries), Four of Wands (Venus in Aries)

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

Between Scylla and Charybdis; between a rock and a hard place; the devil and the deep blue sea. The Lovers have a choice to make, and it may be useful to bear in mind that the most immediate choice is not the only one available to you. Nor the second, even. Let’s look at both of those choices first.

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

To the right of The Lovers sits the Nine of Swords. Cruelty. This is the card that comes after the Eight of Swords (seen in the centre in the linked picture here), its presence implied in this reading, where the protagonist — you — felt trapped by circumstances, unable to find a way out, when in reality it was simply your mind and its fixation on a particularly narrow set of circumstances that held you in place.

Now, the Nine is the concretisation of your predicament, your indecision and misgivings solidified into barbs and razored edges that you’re wont to turn on yourself. The Nine is regret, pain, anguish, worry.

“Why did I let that happen?”
“What if I’d made a different decision?”
“I knew I’d fuck it up.”

The most painful part of the Nine is not, however, the truth of your circumstances, but the supposed ‘truth’ you buy into without subjecting it to thorough, dispassionate scrutiny. It is also the supposed ‘truth’ you buy into when you’ve forgotten your blood-red heart beating in your chest, and the love that it holds — for yourself, for others.

You don’t need to go there. You’ve been there before and you know what it feels like. This time, you have a choice not to go there. The Lovers lie at centre, choice embodied.

What else can you choose from? To the left of The Lovers lies the Five of Wands. Wands are associated with creative energy, whether that’s artistic, performance-orientated, sexual — anything where you feel that fiery drive in the pit of your belly and an urge to harness and make use of it.

Except with the Five there is a sense of being separated from the truth of what you want and need to create. There is a lack of fully owning and directing your creativity. When the Five of Wands is in activation in your life, something feels like it’s holding you down and back. Nevertheless, the yearning and drive remain. You can do this. There is the potential to break free from the strictures of inertia and ambivalence and come to stand fully by your own side. The Five speaks of the quest to find your inner authority by getting behind your creativity. Who’s going to support what you’re doing if you don’t?

And so there are the two obvious choices: self-denigration to the right of you, disorganisation to the left. Back to the card at centre, which has its own message.

In the Tarot de Marseille, one of the oldest incarnations of the tarot, The Lovers depicts not two people, but three. As does it in the Rider-Waite Smith tarot: the man, the woman, and the angel. Here, in The Röhrig version, we have three hands. The third choice is a creative one that isn’t immediately available if one is stuck in the land of duality. In our world of up-down, in-out, back-forth, masculine-feminine, we tend to forget that we are on a sliding scale of experience. We don’t need to choose between two black-and-white options: looking between the obvious, we find the shades of grey.

The paradox is that duality offers every option under the Sun.

Maybe it is that you find yourself at a point where there are two very familiar roads in front of you. One road is associated with the negative self-talk that has the power to undo what you have worked towards but so far never quite attained. The other road is associated with a lack of cohesive effort to bring to fruition what has been calling you to shape it into existence for — how long, now, dear reader?

Because, make no mistake, there is something beautiful that is present in your life. A balance that creates a third way. You are being watched over by angels as you sleep. Maybe now you can wake up and see what is available to you — what has been available all along. The power and will to step into a version of yourself that has creativity at its core. Your desire to bring something to life, to bring it down to earth, to feel the rush of life through your veins.

It’s not an illusion. You can do it. Time to steer away from what has always felt fatalistic and shift tracks, shift out of familiar patterns, reach for what is there. And take it.

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Five of Wands (Saturn in Leo), The Lovers (Gemini), Nine of Swords (Mars in Gemini)

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.