By Sarah Taylor
So, here you are, standing on top of a derelict, bombed-out building: the Five of Swords; Defeat. You — looking at a distant star on the horizon. Or maybe you are that distant star on the horizon, a soft glow of light surrounding you. You have survived. You are very much alive. You are following a light. Your own inner light.
Nine of Cups, Five of Swords, Knight of Disks from The Röhrig Tarot deck, created by Carl-W. Röhrig. Click on the image for a larger version.
Can you hold that light to you when it looks like everything around you has been torn down, the girders exposed, bent, the walls of your experience bearing the cracks and holes of an attack that has passed, leaving you seemingly alone? But there is that light. There, are you.
Where have you come from? Ah, that’s such a different scene. Somewhere, in your past, or in the recesses of your heart, is a vision that lies so much in contrast with where you are that it may be hard to reconcile them.
The Nine of Cups is also known as “the wish card.” Take a look at it; it might be easier to grasp it, not through your mind, but through how your body and heart respond to it. There are beauty, softness, sensuality and flow. There is inspiration; there is delicacy. In it, there is a kind of heart-sung grace. The words on the card reflect this:
“Happiness,” “Deep Joy,” “Overflowing Love,” “Blessing,” “Rapture.”
The Nine of Cups is a prayer answered and reflected back. It is the light in the Five of Swords — that kernel of truth that you carry with you over the wasteland. It offers a gentle vortex into which you have the choice to let go in order to move you through your immediate circumstances and out into ones that are different.
The Nine of Cups, being of the heart as it is, has a quality to it that is not always easy to grasp and to hold to yourself. It is there; but if you try too hard to ‘make it behave’ or bend to your will, it is apt to slip through your fingers like a rainbow. How do you hold on to a rainbow?
The answer lies in the destruction under your feet. It feels paradoxical. A construct — no, a fortification devoid of that Cups energy — needed to be brought down so that you could be reunited with that grace in the Nine of Cups. A dose of reality brings it in closer. There is another way to hold that rainbow. You can’t trap it in steel and concrete — which has been your mind’s way of negotiating with the heart. You hold it by becoming it.
You are the Nine of Cups. You are Happiness.
“Everything you were looking for was right with you all along.”
Maybe you, too, had to travel to some distant, inner land to find your heart and your courage — to find the right use of mind — in order to face down what told you that you were anything but, and to come back to yourself.
What emerges from your travels is the card that you are now able to move towards: the Knight of Disks (the King of Pentacles). As the individuated adult in the suit of Earth, the Knight has made the journey through the Five of Swords in order to reunite himself with what once felt ethereal and dreamlike, which slipped through his fingers.
The Knight has grounded the Nine of Cups, and now lives it out in physical reality. Look at the Nine and the Knight as if they were side-by-side. Do you notice the correspondences? The upward-and-outward movement of the heart-and-cups infused panel at the top of the Nine and the key, coins, notes and stamps that sit over the gold circlet on the Knight’s forehead. The feathered striations that radiate down on the Nine, and the Knight’s own beard. And finally, the spiral just above centre on the Nine where the Knight’s face now appears — and that same spiral — now tangible — that seems to emanate from him.
The Knight is holding the paradox by embodying what was unable to be embodied — the supposed fantasy of the Nine. From fantasy to reality. From Oz to Kansas. He has returned from the fray a different person. He is more than he was before, because he now knows.
“I know,” he seems to say to you. “I know what it is to search for what reveals itself in the rainbow — the promise of what I knew I felt, but which eluded me and nearly abandoned me at the time where everything seemed to crumble beneath me. It, and I, are one.”
Time to tap your heels together and come home. That thing you were searching for? You are it.
Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Nine of Cups (Jupiter in Pisces), Five of Swords (Venus in Aquarius), Knight of Disks (the Fiery aspect of Earth)
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.
5 of Swords = Venus in Aquarius.
That gives me some new information to go on.
I’m so glad, Carla!
Thank you for this tremendous reading!
You’re welcome, laura!
I am loving the echo of the spiral from the 9 of Cups to the Knight of Pentacles. In the first card, it looks like a Moon snail, its center or origin emanating from the heart center, down in the body. In the third card, that big ol’ snail of spiraling inner evolution has flipped orientation, atop the Knight’s head: heart smarts feeding into and mirroring/supporting head smarts — and all of it growing.
(And that middle card… yes, sometimes getting from heart to material abundance is difficult, takes some struggle past various perceived obstacles, and can feel a little alienating. So may thoughts trying to tell us it can’t be done…)
At least, that’s my first impression. Now I’ll read the article!
A great observation, Amanda. I love your description of the spirals, and your wording of the one on the Nine of Cups feels bang on.
I like how he is now standing on top of that cube, shining.
I’ve been looking for a home in the physical world, a home base, foundation. It’s been a deep desire for me. I realized, shortly ago, that the home base I was truly looking for was my heart, my cup of love.
I know it sounds very simplistic and cliché – home is where the heart is – but it was a very organic and deep embodiment for me. My heart is where my home is, and it goes wherever I go (wherever I go, there I am), with mindful thought. My outer world existence will flow back to me from that.
That lovely Sagittarius arrow of Jupiter found it’s way to my Divine Masculine Mars, and the rainbow is filled with sacred, passionate harmony.
Thank you for the beautiful reflection, Sarah.
“I realized, shortly ago, that the home base I was truly looking for was my heart, my cup of love.”
You and me both, Mandy. Thank you.
Eegads ~ great reading!
Eegads indeed, Sara!
Sarah, your readings are always so synchronistic for me! I was just standing in that place of destruction…questioning my Leaps of Faith and wondering where my joy went…when I read your Tarot for this week. I also heard your wonderful discussion with Eric on PW FM, which was also intruiging regarding connecting to the joy locked up in our bodies! Yes we do hold the key…we are the key! Thanks for the reminder. You are one amazing, talented lady! -In gratitude!
Thank you so much, Gwen. We are the key.
Thanks so much Sarah. I cannot believe how much this reading resonates with me today! Love this line.. “How do you hold onto a rainbow?”
With faith, in finding and in keeping a personal balance in what appears as a negative vibration of energy from the Five of Swords, to that of the hopes and dreams of the Nine of Cups. Pretty much been one of the top stories of my soul’s mission in practice and understanding, in this life anyway.
I believe things are shifting though. As experienced in the very recent New Moon in fact. Finally, and with a greater realization of this vibrational paradox came the understanding that this synthesis, just as is of the center and left hand cards, brought in a greater sense of the inner security, of protection and personal power that was already, always been there. This is just as you describe in the representation of that Knight, it is the beneficial vibration of understanding and forgiveness that brings in the positive energies of the Nine.
With hindsight and vision, i know the heart and thinking are foretelling the direction I need to continue in. I had another strong confirmation of this from the sky, and the formations i saw in the clouds today..
“That thing you were searching for? You are it.”
I know I am happiness, and light, and in me I am filled with blessings and love.
Yet, i am also human. And in the reality of my life I want to also share this gift with another in relationship. So much of this personal healing for me of late, has been about liberation and letting go in relationships (some even physically) which can be empowering. But (after being so consumed in/by another) that can also feel lonely growing up and apart, at first anyway.
Sarah, i feel the Knight is personally healing in this reading, still i have to ask (and believe), is there not.. ‘the next card’? The Knight does not seem to be the final one, or the complete answer for me. I will be patient and see.. Yet would love your thoughts on this as well.
One thing I did notice tho, the suit that is missing, is Wands, of new beginnings, co-operation and creativity!
P. Sophia — The Knight for me has tended to foretell the appearance of the new. He is the usher, as the Healer. A knowingness that we can then move into, and, from that, to something waiting on the other side.
Beautiful reading, Sarah! Thank you.
You’re welcome, jinspace
Wow Sarah, what a reading! As I read through it, I immediately thought of the book, “The Alchemist,” by Paulo Coellto. I had to retrieve my copy, went to these two pages, rather intentionally, only leafed to the back page by one, so, expect the Universe is with me on this one (at least for my own self).
From the Beginning of the book this passage:
“My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer,” said the boy. “Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams because every second of the search is an encounter with God and with eternity,” said the Alchemist….
and from the Epilogue:
“You Old Sorcerer,” the boy shouted up to the sky. “You knew the whole story. You even left a bit of gold at the monastery so I could get back to this church. The monk laughed when he saw me come back in tatters. Couldn’t you have saved me from that?” “No,” he heard a voice in the wind say. “If I had told you, you wouldn’t have seen the Pyramids. They’re beautiful aren’t they?”
I’d say the Universe was with you on this one, Pisces Sun
I’m very grateful you posted both of these quotes.
Thank you, william. Having read what you’ve written, I want to acknowledge the depth and breadth of what you have just come through, and to wish you recovery, discovery and healing.