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.