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.