8 of Swords

I have Tarot decks - get over it. I have lots of Tarot decks - get over it. I find messages and meanings in the cards - get over it. LMAO. OK - I do like them. I do get messages with them. I always have from the very first deck I ever saw - which was probably age 10 or so.

These were boring decks where the suit cards were more like a regular deck of playing cards such that the four of wand had an image of 4 wands and nothing more. I saw (and bought) my first Rider-Waite deck in my 20's from Victory Books in Covington. I didn't really use the deck, I just needed to have it. At that time I was still bogged down in the idea that the cards meant what the book said they meant and nothing more. So if I tried to use them and interpreted the cards a certain way that the book did not agree with, I thought I was wrong. Western education taught me to believe books were always right. ZOIKES!!!

Anyway, one of the cards in the RW deck that I have never cared for (no not the death card - that one I have always found oddly beautiful in its Dios de los Muertos kinda way) is the 8 of swords. I don't know why it bothers me. Maybe it's the passive way she stands there controlled by her bonds. No effort to shake herself free or even try to have it be different. It is a card that says someone has given up and accepted a situation that is so bad for them. It speaks of physical, emotional and mental abuse that has been internalized. A place where you become resolved that this is how it will always be. I want that woman to fight and claw her way free of those bonds. Undoubtedly that is why this card bothers me more than any other in the deck. More than Death. More than the Tower. More than the 3 or 10 of swords. Because I have been that woman. Surrounded by shadow, cut off and seemingly without hope.

I recently got Stephanie Pui-Mun Law's Shadowscapes Tarot as I mentioned in a previous blog. I love everything about this deck from its name to the flawless execution of each card. It reads effortlessly with images that are rich and vibrant and miles away from the first Tarot deck that I had seen. So to become used to each other I have been drawing a card or two every morning and sitting with it. This morning I met SPML's 8 of swords. This one has the same kinda thought as the RW image, a swan caught in the briars surrounded by those familiar swords - except the swan struggles to be free of the brambles. The energy of that situation feels more commonplace than the heavy resolve of the RW card. Finding ourselves in a hard spot and flailing to be free. Finding ourselves more and more enmeshed the more we struggle. The only way out is to become calm and cease to struggle. To allow that tiny hummingbird that makes my heart leap with hope to show us the way out.

And yes I see that is the same message my cinnnamon told me on Wednesday.