King of Bats
My card this morning was the King of Bats.
I’ve been bats all week this week. I guess I’m living in my head these days.
I don’t know whether this card reflected my day, or is admonishing me about my day. I do know I did a lot of planning, but I don’t feel that I really made much headway with all my plans. It’s as though I made tons of lists in my head, that all seemed perfectly reasonable and necessary, and then simply tossed them all away and made a fairy necklace. I took a walk. I chatted with the ladies in the bead store. Then I bought some beads I really can’t afford, and bought some candy that my body definitely Does Not Need.
So much for behaving logically.
Maybe the King is yelling at me. My husband often comes up in readings as the King of Swords. And he does his share of ‘yelling’ at me to get organized and Get Things Done. He of the logical brain, and me with my head in the clouds.
Okay my husband does not really yell at me. He’s very sweet about it actually, and tries to encourage me in the efficiency department. And I feel bad, and feel like I’ve let him down, when I can’t seem to get my act together. And to be honest, the King does not look like he yells at anybody either. I think maybe he just wants folks to get on with things. Straighten up and fly right and all that. Doesn’t he seem that way sometimes?
Still, I made a very pretty necklace today. Maybe the King can let me off the hook this time. Just this once…
Page of Bats
I had to consult the Halloween Tarot book to learn that those are x-ray specs that she is holding in this artwork.
This one is a trooper. She is ready with her spy gear, her boots on and her scarf against the evening chill. She is on a journey of discovery.
Whenever I see this card in any deck, the illustration from the Robin Wood Tarot always springs to mind. There you see a young woman running fast, sword at the ready and spyglass on her hip. Her eyes fixed on the horizon, she is determined to get to the bottom of things and will let nothing stand in her way.
The Halloween art is not quite so dramatic. Still the message is clear. I should have been more attentive, and perhaps would not have wasted the day trying to force creativity in my workshop, and simply read the book that I have been trying to finish. Some days, you simply cannot compel yourself to do what you think you should be doing. I know I have a lot of work ahead to fill my jewelry store with new designs, and therefore sat myself down at my table and struggled. I accomplished nothing, and felt bitter afterward. Meanwhile, a wonderful book about magic that I have been reading was left on my night table for another day. When I went to bed I saw it there and regretted that I didn’t make time to read it. Sometimes the cards are telling us that we need to do something different than we had planned. I did not pull the Eight of Pentacles (or pumpkins in this case) to encourage me to work with my hands that day. I pulled a card that told me it was time to seek answers, to gather information and knowledge and let nothing stand in my way. A missed opportunity and a wasted energy.
Three of Bats
Yesterday I pulled the Three of Bats as my daily card.
The overall tone and mood of this artwork reflects the artwork of the standard Three of Swords. In the Halloween Tarot, Bats are the ‘Swords’ of the deck and related to mental things and many of the challenges that we face in our lives. The standard artwork of the Three of Swords is very similar. Both cards show a heart suspended in a rainstorm. The feeling is one of gloom and, when the swords are seen piercing the heart, also pain. The ever-present black cat in the Halloween deck is crouching beneath the stormy night sky, glaring balefully out at the reader, conveying discomfort and looking depressed. The bats are holding and surrounding the heart in the sky.
The Card a Day exercise does not usually deal with larger issues, but by it’s very nature, the small mundane events of the ‘every day’. (Unless the card you pull is one of the Major Arcanas, in which case it may portend a life-changing event on a small scale). Yesterday for me was a series of physical ills… headaches, cramps and general irritation at my body. Even though Swords represent the element of air and thought, this card conveys discomforts and pains, which is basically how I felt for the entire day.
When I read, Threes represent the divine, personal power and first foundations. So generally this card doesn’t mean major pains, sadness or illness. It’s bumps and bruises, not broken bones or death. It’s aches and pains, not hospital visits. This aptly described my day, where I was spending more time tending my aching, complaining body than completing the work I had planned.
In this deck, you can see the Bats as the mind overcoming the pains and stresses. Today I see the bats are gathering around the heart in an attempt to shelter it till the storm has passed. Our thoughts have a profound effect on our reality. While we may not be able to eliminate the pains and stresses, we can remain positive and we can think our way through any situation. We can use our mind to overcome small pains (and sometimes larger ones), and to overcome a tendency toward depression or sadness. These bats are the power of the mind protecting and supporting the tender heart from the elements that threaten it.
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Today is a new day. This morning I have pulled the Page of Bats, and we shall see later how this card relates to the coming day.
Ten of Swords
Few cards are more dreaded than the Ten of Swords. The one shown here is from the Waite Smith deck.
It graphically illustrates a man on the ground, in a spreading pool of blood, with ten swords sticking out of his back from haunch to neck. Unarguably the most gruesome of the Seventy-Eight. At least, in this deck. Even understanding the nuances of the image, I still tend to cringe when you see it, especially as an ‘outcome’ card.
But what does it mean; endings, finality, complete annihilation? Yes, it does. But it can also mean ‘relief’. It can mean ‘overkill’. Imagine you are in an intolerable situation and you are at wits end regarding how to end it. When you see this card as the ‘outcome’ or ‘answer’ in a spread, you might think that you are simply going to die from the stress. But what if the card is telling you that the situation is coming to an end? Relief. This situation has run it’s course, and will be ending soon. Or what if this is a case of you brewing a tempest in a teapot, and the card is telling you to stop worrying yourself sick about something over which you have no control? Overkill. Sometimes we are our own worst enemy, making matters far worse than they need to be.
We tend to identify with the figure being pinned to the ground by many blades. But what if the figure represents something that is causing pain, suffering, trouble or anxiety? If that is the case, then this card is a welcome sight.
I know that many of us, myself included, tend to think the worst when reading for ourselves. It’s overcompensation in and effort not to sugar-coat a reading by seeing only what you want to see in the cards. So it is important to remember what you would tell a client when this card appears. And yes, sometimes this card is indicating negative things. But you would try and explore ways in which this card could be a positive message for your client before assuming otherwise, so why not do so for yourself? And even if the message is one of failure or disappointment, there is almost always a silver lining. After death comes rebirth or resurrection. There are no truly final endings, not as long as Time continues to flow.
As with the other ‘dreaded cards’ there are always positive ideas to be found in their seemingly negative meanings. It’s just a matter of being open to them.
Three of Swords
This will be the first post in a series I’m calling Dreaded Cards. There are cards we all hate to see turn up in a reading, be it for ourselves or others. My idea is to take each of these cards and see what I can discover about them that will take some of the fright out of them.
I use the Tarot as a tool for insight and answers. I like to think that there is always something positive in every card no matter how negative it may first appear.
This is the Three of Swords from the Rider Waite Smith
My initial reaction is to cringe. It hurts to look at it.
Here is part of the interpretation to be found at tarot.com:
General Meaning: Traditionally, the Three of Swords signified separation or the breakup of a significant relationship, including the tragic emotions that come along with such an event. Some cards show the horizon filled with storm clouds and flashing lightning.
This past week I read a book called Stories in Stone
A particular passage caught my attention in the section on religious symbolism. It states,
In religious and cemetary symbolism, a flaming heart symbolizes religious fervor, a pierced heart indicates repentance and devotion, and a heart wrapped in thorns is associated with the Great Promise of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. (Italics mine).
It got me thinking about the Three of Swords in a different way. Yes, it would still represent pain or difficulty but not necessarily sorrow or grief. If you see it as repentance and devotion, perhaps it symbolizes this to a degree of completeness signified by the number three – as represented by the three swords that pierce the heart. Maybe in a spread it could be speaking of self-sacrifice because of devotion to the point where it hurts. It could also be speaking of true and absolute repentance that affects not only the mind but the heart as well. That the heart is seen in the clouds could show that it takes place on a higher level of consciousness. The rain can represent tears, not of sorrow, but of true repentance that truly seeks forgiveness. The tears could be of the higher joy that comes from sacrificing everything out of devotion to a person or a higher cause, or of the kind of religious devotion that strips away everything but the love that emanates from God.
Depending on it’s position in a spread it could be asking the querent to make such a sacrifice or choose a path of devotion. It could the cause of a situation, the reason things are happening they way are. It could be warning, if someone is giving too much in a relationship out of a false sense of devotion, not realizing they are hurting themselves in the process.
These are just a few ideas, and I’m sure it could be elaborated on with further study and reflection. I find comfort in this new way of seeing this card, because it can mean something positive resulting from something that may seem at first read to be negative. That pain and difficulty can sometimes serve a purpose for good. It’s the silver lining I was searching for in this particular cloud.
Into the Flow
One day in the past week or so I drew for my morning reading the Four of Pentacles, the Page of Swords and the Seven of Pentacles.
I was not happy to see the Four of Pentacles. This is a very limiting and claustrophobic card for me. It gives me the sense of being tied down by material things or a stubborn sense of duty to the point of martydom. How can you fly free when you are held down by money worries, or a sense of “doing what is required of you”. You can see the bitter-looking old man here, hanging on to what he has. Unaware and uncaring about the open sky, the birds in flight, the breezes and the life going on outside his self-imposed walls. This card makes me think of stale air in a closed room.
Fortunately the next card gave me a deep breath of fresh air. The Page is outside of boundaries in the open air, running to a goal on which she has fixed her eyes. She’s almost flying. Her feet have wings on them, and are not touching the ground. She wears feathers and streamers in her hair to accentuate the illusion of flight. Nothing is holding her back. At her hip is the spyglass she no doubt used to find the point in the distance toward which she now runs. Her sword is held high. She is positive she has found what she seeks and will reach it without fail.
My circumstances have such that I have been worried about losing what little I have. Financial troubles have caused stress and have made me feel like the old man holding onto what he has. The problem with that sort of outlook is that this does not allow any energy to flow. You may keep what you have, but you also will not allow any more to flow to you.
The Page exhorts me to let go and run toward what I seek. By not clinging to what I have, I can then free my energies to do the work of bringing more into my life. Swords represent thoughts, and this seems to represent very positive thinking. The Page does not doubt her success and neither should I. Neither should anyone. I love the spyglass. It seems to represent farsightedness – keeping one’s attention fixed on the goals ahead, instead of getting mired in the troubles of the present moment.
The final card shows the result of working toward a goal. Reaping what we have sown. Rather than sitting in a fortress holding onto what little he might have, this gentleman has gone to some trouble to turn what he had into more. Only by planting tiny seeds and cultivating them, can we reap a bountiful harvest.
Both first and last cards are Pentacles, relating to material things. The center card is Swords relating to mental power, in this case the mental power needed to break out of the cycle of hanging on to things and stopping the flow. The reading is about my financial situation. The Page is telling me to let go and run toward my goals, rather than worry about whether or not I will succeed and lose everything. If I would not end up like the old man in the fortress, I will have to get out in the open and take chances. But also be confident that I will succeed. You do create your reality. I must stay positive and persist.
Conflict of Queens
Yesterday, I had an interesting experience. I did my usual three-card spread in the morning to understand the major influences for the day. I drew the Five of Swords, the Queen of Cups and the Queen of Wands. But the only thing significant that happened to me yesterday was a major panic attack I had while worrying needlessly about someone I love.
I can have an overactive imagination, and sometimes worries will take absolute control of my thought processes. The worries become stronger than anything, and I cannot seem to prevent them from overriding any rationality or reasoning that I normally use to calm myself. It is like being in a car with no brakes and no steering and going down a steep hill very fast. You can only pray that you don’t crash and burn. I don’t know why I get like this, but I do.
I tend to read the Five of Swords as “cheating” or “gloating after winning”, but sometimes I find it signifies a mental imbalance of some kind. When I pulled the card in the morning with the two Queens I immediately thought that I would have some sort of confrontation with someone who would be the Queen of Wands, and one of us would have a bad attitude about the outcome of the confrontation. When I pull the Queen of Cups I usually think that it is me, as this card tends to signify myself in readings. But I could not determine who the Queen of Wands would be. All the ladies I work with would likely be Queens of Swords, Cups or Pentacles. There is only one co-worker who could be the Queen of Wands I had no confrontations with her that day.
So, in retrospect I think this spread was warning me of my impending panic attack. But I can’t quite figure out how.
It could be that the two Queens were opposing aspects of myself (Cups=Water, Wands=Fire) with the resulting turmoil in my psyche (the Five of Swords) causing the disturbance. I can also note that at certain times of the month I tend more toward panic attacks than at other times. The presence of the two Queens in the spread could certainly point to such a state in my body and mind, with the Five of Swords representing the mental imbalance that can result from that state.
Whatever the meaning and however it might fit the events of the day, I will continue to ponder it. The cards speak clearly, it is just sometimes hard for us to understand what it is they are trying to tell us. This is why a daily spread is such a good learning tool for those who would understand the Tarot. Comparing spreads with the daily events can help us understand how these various elements interrelate, and work together to form a meaning and a message.
