Tarot Reading For The Collective ~ April © 2011 Sarah Barry

Posted by sarahthepsychic on April 1, 2011 · Leave a Comment

The 8 of Swords bids us farewell, pleased that we chose to hang out with her for so long. It’s not often that people realize that that she’s got more to offer than a whole bunch of swords. Steadfast commitment to trusting our instincts is her prime gift, and as we have humbly stumbled around trying to learn that one, she is willing to let us go, so that we can enjoy The Lovers.

The Lovers hey? There’s a card that hasn’t popped up for us for a while. The Lovers usually has less to say about relating to other humans, and more to say about how we are relating to ourselves. Are we happy about how we behave in every aspect of our lives? Are we switching off vital parts of our personality in order to maintain respectability and mainstream status quo? If so, The Lovers will help us sort that out. As an archetype it will make it easier for us to maintain all aspects of ourselves in all situations, so that we need not be polite just because that is what people expect. (Which doesn’t mean we be nasty – just reliably truthful to what is alive inside of us in any given moment.)

The Queen of Cups is grateful for all our Lovers work, because she has a story to share with us, and hopes that now we will be able to hear it as she intends us to.

“Long ago when the tarot cards were created, it was decreed that the Cups suit would be linked to the element water, and to the emotional state of human beings. In time, sentences like “she’s too emotional” would be thrown around, to imply that to be connected to one’s emotions was a sign of weakness.

What the humans would forget is to note the sameness of the water in the cup to the water of the ocean. That tremendous body of water that is constantly moving, constantly changing. There are parts of the ocean so deep that we will never access them. When the ocean is stirred up into a tsunami, there is no way we can stop it from happening. It is a powerful force and is one to be respected. These qualities live within us, if only we would take them seriously.

There are some humans who allow their emotions to be real rather than over-inflating or suppressing them. Some have learned to listen to their varying moods and take care of themselves wisely, rather than madly share their unchecked sufferings with us all.

For all the wars of this world have been caused by small-minded people who seemed to be disconnected from that Achilles heel called ‘emotion’, yet were really just throwing a classic case of a tantrum in the school playground. They were not being unemotional, they were undeniably deeper in their emotions than they had ever gone before, but had no idea how to work with them at such depth. If they had learned to sit with their emotions before diving deep, rather than skim around upon them before pompously dive-bombing in, perhaps less blood would have been spilt into my cup,” says The Queen.

“So where to from here my children?” she continues: “Make haste to note where you lose control and see if there is a better way of sitting with those difficult feelings rather than splashing water in the face of your neighbor. Just because they sit near you doesn’t mean they want to share your crap”.

I think we need a bit of 2 of Swords and The World after all that. With a dose of the 8 of Cups thrown in for good measure. The 2 of Swords will allow us to take seriously what the Queen of Cups has shared with us by making us stop and take stock of the choices we have, and the necessity of choosing wisely. The World will help us see how far we have come, and show us how to celebrate our hard work. Once we can notice our own wisdom, we can develop plans to start changing the parts of the old world where short-term thinking and obsession with power and greed have strangled our ability to connect with our fellow people.

The 8 of Cups gives us the courage to follow this path, even if we feel alone upon it some days. There are plenty of others out there committed to making positive changes in this world – we just have to keep trekking until we find more of them. (I have a list of internet-accessible inspiring people if anyone wants proof. Also many privacy-loving individuals, who I will not name, yet will hold in my heart for the healthy doses of real wisdom they have bestowed upon me.)

If there is anything else we need to know about this month it would be the Queen of Swords. Two Queens in one month has got to be a good thing. She can help us speak from the heart, and keep speaking (with our voices, our dancing, our writing, …) even when it seems that hatred has possessed so many of our kind. Now is as good a time as ever to keep waking up our hearts to more compassion, so that we can see how truly intelligent our species can actually be.

The tarot deck used for this reading: ‘Tarot of the Cloisters’ by Michelle Leavitt