By Sarah Taylor

For a long time, it felt like you were carrying it all alone; holding things together, shouldering the burden of an experience or task that seemed to give you space for little else.

Three of Disks, Nine of Disks, The World from The Röhrig Tarot deck, created by Carl-W. Röhrig. Click on the image for a larger version.

Now, things have shifted, and opened, and there is a feeling of that burden being shared — or at the very least a spaciousness that had heretofore eluded you.

You can look up, and see ahead of you; you can feel the support of those around you. Those, perhaps, who have been with you through your time of trial, but who were also caught up in their own “Work,” equally involved in a task that called for their attention.

I drew the Nine of Disks first, and put it at centre. Very clearly this is the point at which you find yourself. A lack of perceived equality in the Three of Disks (the card of apprenticeship to life) — a needing to learn — is in the past, and there is a dawning knowledge of a ‘standing together’, where each entity is its own, and nothing holds authority over anything else. The only authority to be held is one’s own, over oneself.

The landscape in the central card reflects this evolutionary step from Three to Nine (three times three; three figures bringing shared experience in the spirit of equality): fecund, blooming, the sky colours soft, a light radiating from the heads of the two men and woman, and from behind the mountain range in the distance. The inner light meeting the outer; as within, so without.

“the more I give the more I get,” “association of love wisdom and creativity.”

That connection was always there, but, bent double, it was nearly impossible to see or to know it. There is a ‘pay it forward’ feeling to the Nine, where all aspects are in co-operation to bring it about.

However, the central card would not have been possible without the card to its left. A card that combines both “effort” and “success.” The seeds of success were held in the effort itself. It might have felt like it was too much to carry, or that you were alone and forgotten. You were not. The Three and Nine are intrinsically linked, serving the same purpose, which becomes clearer in the final card to the right.

The World. The closing of one door and the opening of another. What better card to see in the Solstice? What better planetary correspondence (The World is associated with the planet Saturn) when Saturn is in the last degree of Scorpio, and just about to move into Sagittarius?

The writing on The World is in German, but one of the phrases stands out to me:

“The conclusion of karma.”

The woman, who is The World, is liberating herself from the chains of karma. You, who are your own world, are seeing yourself in this mirror. The snake is freed too, and works in unison with the woman: the unleashing of erotic energy that is held comfortably and yet allowed its own expression. There is no controlling; no runaway uprising.

Both are in co-operation — and this is reflected in the co-operation in the Nine of Disks. Except this time it is the co-operation of one aspect of self — a sense of place in one’s world that has been hard-won — with another: that mysterious, root connection to a primal creative force that lies at the foundation of everything.

This might feel strange at first — difficult, even. You have a handle on it; and if you don’t, you have the ability to acquire it. It is at your fingertips.

You can own this experience. You, and your band of brothers and sisters — whether inner, human, material- or resource-based — have been working a long time for this.

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Three of Disks (Mars in Capricorn), Nine of Disks (Venus in Virgo), The World (Saturn)

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.