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.