By Sarah Taylor
Between this week, last week, and the week before, we seem to be travelling up and down the hierarchy of the court of Swords. This means that there is an emphasis on your ideas and beliefs, and that both are undergoing some kind of transformation. Prince, Knight, Queen, Prince (Knight, King, Queen, Knight in the Rider-Waite Smith deck): a revisiting, revising, and ironing-out of the creases and wrinkles of perception and misperception.
Ace of Disks, The Hanged Man, Prince of Swords from The Röhrig Tarot deck, created by Carl-W. Röhrig. Click on the image for a larger version.
Which thoughts empower you? Which hold power over you?
Where is it that your rebellion serves you? Where does it not? Where is it time to break free? Where is it that freedom beckons by not breaking free in the ways you may usually do?
Do you find yourself, at times, morphing into a hot-head, who believes vehemently in what you are saying, and acting on it with impunity — yet, if you were to drop your sword and take a moment’s breathing space, you might find that you can muster the humility to admit that you are not as free as you think?
I’m under no illusions — and speak from frequent personal experience — when I tell you that this is hard to do. Dropping that Sword to your side — letting go of your certainty — is hard to do. It’s particularly hard when a belief is so much the fabric of who you are that an alternative has never remotely occurred to you. There will be good reason why it hasn’t; and there is good reason why it might be making itself known now.
In the near past, you encountered a possibility. Nascent, yes. The hint of an idea or a vision. A feeling of expansion that swept past you quickly as it ran ahead into the future, leaving a compelling, deeply familiar but as-yet-unknown scent in its wake — one that reminded you of what could be.
The Ace of Disks is the as-yet-untapped pure potential of bringing something into physical existence (Disks are anything we can interact with using our five senses). Whether a project, or money, or a job, a house, a relationship, a partnership, a new product, a new child: the Ace holds in it the seed of a creation. The final suit in the four-suit complement, Disks are the culmination of the properties of the three suits that come before it: Energy (Wands), Emotion (Cups), Intellect (Swords).
But first. Hold on! Whoa!
Just when you thought you were headed straight towards it, whoosh! There you go, stepping unawares into the middle of a circle of rope lying silently on your path — and now you find yourself, upside-down in the forest, the trees close-in around you, a pool of water beneath you.
WTF just happened?
I know it’s all too easy for me to say this when you’re dangling there, unable to right yourself, your path temporarily waylaid, but I’m going to say it anyway: relax. If you can. This is not a mistake; this is part of the journey to that Ace.
Of all the places this rope could have been, it was lying across your path. It is here for a reason, and so are you. To find something you’ve been looking for but which had eluded you. Perhaps to find something you didn’t even know you were looking for. This rope is not here to inconvenience you. It is here to assist you. You’re being tied up for your own good, in a manner of speaking. If you weren’t, you’d be rushing ahead, and you’d miss a vital piece of equipment you need for the onward journey.
That Ace is still there in the distance. This rope, this suspension of action, is your task-at-hand. Surrender to it. There is nothing else you need to do. Wait, and what is heading for you will come to you. Wait, and find in the space that has been created what has the capacity to shift your belief about who you are, and what it is that you’re doing here, and how it is that you are capable of something that you may not have considered possible.
Hell, you may not have considered it at all. This is self-discovery of a more Zen kind than that Prince is used to — the Prince who wants to get out there, ride on ahead, fight those battles, take no prisoners, make his point clearly, enlighten others with his vast knowledge.
No. Stay still. Stay where you are. Just. A little. Longer.
Hold back, lean in. Just. A little. Further now.
Just a little further.
The crest of the hill is coming, and soon the landscape will open enough for you to take your next step.
Until then, hang around, take in what’s here, rest down towards the pool, into a place that feeds you even while you are unaware of it, and be present to what is reflected back to you. No work needed. Listen to the sounds of your own breathing, the rhythmic expansion, contraction, expansion of your life. That is all. It will arrive in the spaces. Then you can better, and more effectively, make your move.
Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Ace of Disks (the pure, limitless potential of earth), The Hanged Man (Neptune), Prince of Swords (the airy aspect of air)
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.
Thanks Sarah! I’ve been Hanging Out, Hanging On, Hanging In (there)…wondering and waiting…guess I can stay tied up a little longer, if it’s for my own good!
I’ll be interested to see what comes to you as you hang out, hang on, and hang in, Gwen. Please do keep me posted.
Sarah…..Thank you…………confirmation……BE STILL!!!!!!!!!!!!
Don’t. Move. An. Inch!
Yes. I really can’t thank you enough for this reading, dear Sarah. I seemed to be galloping towards that goal, but whoops! didn’t see the rope you describe, that has scooped me up into the air and left me hanging, and rather miserable. Thanks to you, I can hang around with more serenity, and let life unfolds as it has to – rather than trying to make things happen as I think they should, or anxiously anticipate changes al the time. Bless you for this.xxx
You’re welcome, Lizzy. Here’s to finding that essential ingredient!
sarah, could you elaborate this: “Where is it that freedom beckons by not breaking free in the ways you may usually do?”
and… the ‘hanging’ tells me this –
maybe we are hanging upside down because the thing which we need to see in the ‘forest’, will be missed when we are ‘upright’. only by a reversal of eyes will we our attention catch it. that is how ‘it will come to us’.
or
maybe – if we are not hanging upside down – we can never see ourselves fully into the mirroring pool. the only way we have seen ourselves, till now, is from the side of the pool, which shows us only part of us.
maybe…
love.
and hugs
b.
I think that both are relevant, Biren, and certainly connected.
“Where is it that freedom beckons by not breaking free in the ways you may usually do?”
How do you usually try to break free? What can you do differently? Do you need to do anything at all?
Despite a (seemingly) sudden slowdown and diffusion of energy and direction yesterday, I do not think this post would have resonated as well had I not read it today. Between retrograde Venus, Jupiter about to change signs, the lunar cycle, and his idea of being suddenly brought up short by an unseen (yet all to familiar) rope, and hanging to look into the reflective pool, something is coming into focus. The view of what I’m looking at has not completely resolved into clarity, but I think I’m sensing its shape.
I also have a tendency to sense a shape, or a presence, of something before I know what it is, Amanda. And given you’re the one who’s suspended, the advantage is that it is doing all the leg-work; it will reveal itself to the person who looks with inner eyes.
A beautiful way of explaining the reading.
It’s as if I deliberately stepped into that rope yesterday morning, even seeing it was there. I was already feeling surprisingly calm & peaceful but I just wouldn’t leave it alone; intrigued by how I could be suddenly feeling that way. So okay there was a major upheaval; needed release of energy.
Now it is a relief to just lay down the swords and cups and even the disks and hang there, just being still,…(and what is there, really, that I can do anyway in the midst of an “impossible” outer situation I have no control over?)—and just say “I don’t know” and relax in peace this time; upside down.
You’ve got it, Jan.
Oh, and we are always each the architects of our own suspension. Sometimes we’re aware of it and it is a direct consequence; sometimes we are caught unawares and it is an indirect consequence.
Your reading reminds me of the Norse god Odin, and how he acquired sacred knowledge of the runes. To earn that wisdom required one to undergo a ritual death and rebirth. Odin performed the ritual by wounding himself with a spear and then hanging upside down for nine days and nights–sacrificing his “lower self” for his “higher self” as it were–until the runic wisdom was his.
It is not all that different from sacrificing–willingly and consciously–a long cherished belief or perception that we’ve grown beyond. Doing it on the battlefield, as you described, is dramatic (and Odinesque) but aren’t we always on a battlefield until we become enlightened, and all internal argument is resolved? Could this be the symbolism of the reading? The Animas River disaster this weekend pierced an old, toxic wound in the earth that is a watershed of other stored toxicity that needs to be released and cleared, healed, returned to the earth and swept clean away. The wound will bleed until it is drained, but what then?
As we are being shown daily, the earth is crying out, trying to wake us up, to show us that we need to relinquish our old paradigms and strife-based perspectives before we destroy her ability to support life. Could it be that great strides are about to be made in that effort … that the 9 days of the hanging man’s sacrifice can be stretched into the 9th month of September … and that we are on the brink of an awakening that will take all of our intention to manifest all of our nascent powers to change things. Really change them. Transform them. No going back change. Once in a 25,000 year cycle change. The “one ring to rule them all being cast into the molten fires of Mordor” change.
Could it be that we are about to partake collectively in this ritual of sacrificing our old, lower consciousness for a new and greater one? I hope your reading is telling us to get ready …
I have nothing to add to your beautiful writing, Jeannine. It speaks volumes to me.
The myth of Odin and the Tree of Yggdrasil is very much linked to The Hanged Man – astute! One deck in particular that draws on this mythos is the Haindl Tarot.
“WTF just happened?”
Yep, the trap..the rope was set. And what did I do.. I walked right into it, again. Sarah, thank you for your valuable reading because of course what I have always known, but acutely, intimately am reminded in your comment here pointing out.. I am the architect. Just as the other that I am offering mirror to, is his own architect too.
Another interpretation I read about the Hanged Man hit this understanding home for me in stating this:
“The Hanged Man presents to us certain ‘truths’, but they are hidden in their opposites.”
And i believe positively here, the Knight of Swords’ is my ally. In swift, courageous action in the moment represents the necessary push towards movement to holding a firm line to this calling of change. Quickly ushering in, in symbolism the Cross, we bring on ourselves in striving towards furthering growth.
Problem is, there is such a feeling of unsettledness in Still, moving away from pattern fix, that I often do not allow myself to suspend long enough. Consequently I give up my precious power of individuality not quite getting to that beautiful potential held out in the Ace.
I often don’t ‘trust’ my self suspension, and the need for change. But.. a sacrifice must be made sometimes to gain something of greater value. If only, save the truths!
I also learned about the story of Odin in another Tarot Hanged Man interpretation. After reading this, (even tho admittedly i already slightly wiggled from that cross last night and again this morning), I made an oath to myself right then and in commitment again today, that I will be STILL! And trust.. For at least 9 days from the day of my suspension, from last Saturday. A week, 7 more days to go.. Faith and patience, to fruition. I can do this.
In self co-operation, I will fully trust myself; my heart, my integrety, intuition and initiative. I am looking forward to seeing what new energies come in..