Weekend Tarot Reading — Sunday, Nov. 1, 2015

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.