The Tarotcast – Week of June 27, 2016
If you’ve been reading the Tarotcast over the past few weeks, you may have noticed that court cards have made a regular appearance, from the Prince of Disks, to the Knight of Wands (accompanied by the Prince of Disks again), to the Queen of Disks, and, today, the Queen of Swords.
The Hanged Man, Queen of Swords, Eight of Cups from The Röhrig Tarot deck, created by Carl-W. Röhrig © US Games, Inc. Click on the image for a larger version.
You’re going through a maturation process — or at the very least being called to one. If you haven’t already, it feels like the presence, once again, of a senior court member, is indicating that now is the time to claim greater authority over your life. And, with swords on the table, that authority is around your beliefs, your thoughts, your voice.
The time is ripe to drop the personae that no longer work for you. What does this mean?
Your personae are the masks you wear in order to make yourself more palatable and acceptable to those around you. We all wear them. Many of them are masks we have worn for years. Some masks we remain unaware of. Sometimes it is very much in our best interests to keep wearing them; and other times we begin to understand that the only way we can breathe more fully and freely is to step out of the closet by unveiling a particular truth or truths.
There is something that you have gone through recently — a foundational experience — that encouraged you to take a different look at life and your place in it. “Encouraged” may be too gentle a word: frequently, the presence of The Hanged Man denotes a time where you have little choice other than to surrender. This surrender may have been imposed by external circumstances, or its cause may not be entirely clear.
What you will have experienced is a reckoning with the deep waters of the unconscious. They may have engulfed you in your dreams. You may have felt like your life had a dream-like quality to it — almost surreal. Perhaps an introspection. Perhaps a stillness, one in whose depths the unknown came to tap you on your shoulder. And, dammit, you couldn’t walk away this time!
The Hanged Man is the archetypal crucifixion. It can represent suffering — though this is a secondary response to your circumstances.
It is the imposition of authority from outside, or above.
It is where rules are upended, and in that lies the opportunity for a new perspective. Specifically, there is the opportunity to hear the truth of something whispered to you about who you are, if you have been still enough (or held in place long enough) to contemplate this familiar-stranger reflected back to you from a part of you that, while hidden, reaches out to you across the void when you are primed and ready for its messages.
And something seems to have been received.
So what now?
I’ve spoken about the revelation of self and one’s own governing authority, but there is something more about the Queen, because at an elemental level she represents the watery aspect of air: hers is a strange brew of feeling-based knowing, more Neptunian than the King, who is the fiery aspect of air.
You, as the Queen, are balanced between two states:
First, there is the state of self-definition through the application of a keen insight that is tapped into a formless, fathomless knowing, and which is given shape through your voice. By voicing what is emerging in you, you get to feel for yourself what fits, and what does not. Essentially, you are using the mind and the heart together. This is the purest expression of the Queen, whose ability to declare the truth is both unimpeded by fear, illusions, wishful thinking.
Second, and indicated by the card to the right in the reading, there is the state of “Indolence,” where water wins out over air, where the thread of your truth becomes confused with those of others’, where your own agenda is unable to be defined from a web of competing ideas. Indolence is where the truth goes to die — and it does this not so much by what you do as what you do not do. You let things slide, you fall into silence, you ignore the promptings of your new-found sense of yourself.
But that doesn’t have to be the case. There is a lot of water in this reading, for sure, and it can be hard to discern what’s up and what’s down, what’s mine and what’s yours in that place where consciousness dissolves into itself.
But you’re a Queen, dammit. And Queens are born to rule. There is a court waiting just for you: it’s called your life. No-one else can live it — although you may have tried to pass this particular buck many times. But the thing is: you don’t have to live it either. You can carry on going with the flow, letting others make choices for you — about who you are, in particular.
Or you can learn to work with the flow, and express what is both moving through you naturally and seeking your unique perspective to bring it into form. It asks for the dropping of guises — particularly the ones that have kept your voice hidden. But now that you have a clearer idea of what that voice wants to say, it probably won’t want to stay silent for much longer.
Whatever comes out, whether apparently pretty or ugly, whether whispered or strident, whether acceptable or unacceptable, let it simply be yours.
Astrology Correspondences: The Hanged Man (Neptune), Queen of Swords (the watery aspect of air), Eight of Cups (Saturn in Pisces)
So on the money, it is extraordinary, thank you Sarah, for sharing your gift…
Kelly Grace Smith
You’re welcome, Kelly! 🙂 xx
Completely reflects the ‘give it to me straight’ reading I had with you last week and moves me on a step beyond. Thank you for introducing me to myself.
I think what I did was help you to introduce yourself to yourself, Rossa – a small, significant distinction 🙂 And you are very welcome!
check!
check!
This has been/still is a roller coaster since mid April for me. I have stopped holding my breath and was just rolling along. With this reading I am ready to enjoy what is “mine”. Thank you
I am so happy to hear that you’re ready, Winnie. It would be a crying shame to waste it 🙂
Brilliant, Sarah. You tap into Truth with nary a linger in murky waters. And if there be murkiness — it is called out for yet another guidepost toward the authentic life. Bodily pains and a ferocious head cold have come to visit these past two weeks. It has been scary and a call toward intimate embodiment and care that cannot be ignored. From the abyss of depression to the desire to live as a clear channel for life to flow through rather than congest, I am running the gamut of what I intuit as a spiritual attunement. Sometimes the Hanged One needs to still movement to gain a perspective otherwise elusive. Thank you for your keen insight and deep advocacy for meeting it all with a Queen’s heart. Bows to you . . .
I hear you, Laura. I’m in my own descent right now. The readings seem not to mind this, and come through regardless — or perhaps they come through, and with increasing ease, because of the kind of surrender that I’m now slowly but surely getting used to.
“Sometimes the Hanged One needs to still movement to gain a perspective otherwise elusive.”
Indeed, yes.
We’re queens, dammit!
Dammit, we are! And “queenly” has many guises, wears many dresses — and pants, for that matter 🙂
Indeed! In tango, it’s one of the reminders given to women — you’re a queen!
Your “You’re a queen, dammit” has stayed in my consciousness in a way that continually reminds me of my wild dignity. Thanks for that!
That phrase came through as I was writing, and I committed the cardinal cartomancy sin of questioning it with a view to discarding it. Nope – it wanted to be there.
“Okayyyyyyy,” I said.
Thank goodness my own Queen stepped up to the plate just in time 🙂
May she reign!
👑
So… I wanted to post this pic in homage to the queen, but there’s no way to post a pic, and Sarah suggested a link, but i don’t know of a link to this pic, because I only have it in my computer, so I made a special page on my website just for us — this is probably a very old school way to share this pic with you, but at least it works!
http://apocalyptictango.com/for-the-queen/
Thank you, dominica. She is a fitting Queen for our reading <3
Much love.
WOW. That is a stunning image. New wallpaper on my computer now. Thank you!
You’re most welcome! Glad you enjoy!
Thank you , Sarah.
Amazing!
Perhaps ‘indolence’ is also a place where Truth goes deep diving when she’s all ‘whacked’ out from climbing out of her well! 🙂 I’m also reminded of the function of resistance in movement and change, perhaps a spiritual as well as physical law? I haven’t decided what shall be a final destination of this poem yet, but i feel it needs something more present and alive than between the leaves of a notebook, perhaps a painting, perhaps a mural, an installation, or written large in the sky….or maybe the words could be integrated into a bird’s nest type structure and nestled in the branches of a tree in the gardens of La Sagrada Familia? What wonders we can imagine, eh? Hugs for you. (())
Zero gravity in the deep
though i often wondered
what it would be
to drown in the depth
behind some other’s
eyes
i never thought through
going to that place
i would need
to feel
so much
of
me.
and in that mirror
i dropped into deepness
and underground hollows
so often
they began
to feel like the home
of a prodigal’s return.
in the depth
erotic fevers
and the vulnerability
at the core
of being
alive.
the price exacted for entry
to this wondrous fall
of freedom….
simple clarity.
in this profoundly
dark and disturbing
place of quite
sublime desire,
all expectation
fallen
upon that same
death that befalls
all who care
to know
that that which
forced understanding
is the same which
having
plunged and pulled us
to the lowest point,
will force us up to breathe again.
The call of the
Soul, known with appreciation,
wherefore all
else does conform
with renewed sincere
and heartfelt gratitude.
Ahhh. Being Still.
Nilou Marie – I feel so privileged to read the poetry you share here. Thank you, thank you ❤️
And yes to this: “Perhaps ‘indolence’ is also a place where Truth goes deep diving when she’s all ‘whacked’ out from climbing out of her well!” 🙂
Nilou Marie, thank you for sharing our poetry with us — I especially love the poetic inquiry into how to share it — “…or written large in the sky….or maybe the words could be integrated into a bird’s nest type structure and nestled in the branches of a tree in the gardens of La Sagrada Familia?” Thank you for that imagery in my mind — the words of poetry leaving the page for a place in the wider wilder world, embraced within a nest in branches or embracing wide in the spaciousness of the sky.