Whoa, this card is incredible. The Smith illustration below shows a man with TEN swords in his BACK, lying FACE DOWN in the DIRT, BLOOD streaming from his body. Pretty shit! Almost…too shit. So…it’s a card for melodrama, for martyrdom maybe. The first interpretation I learned, and loved and feel reluctant to deviate from, is that this is a clear signal to pull yourself together. Maybe you’ve hit rock-bottom, the world’s thrown all kinds of crap at you…but it’s time to stop whingeing about it and feeling sorry for yourself.
I looked for this card everywhere today, and began to wonder if I’d drawn it reversed (I’ve not really thought about reversed cards in this daily draw thing…maybe I should pay more attention). Instead of finding people face down in the dirt moaning and groaning, I found people who’d suffered a lot, and picked themselves up, quit the whining and Got On With Stuff. Like the mouth-painter’s studio I visited today. Okay, so his art wasn’t really my cuppa tea but I loved what I saw of him in those acrylic (I think?) paintings of children on a bridge in the snow, a hedgehog snuffling among horse-chestnuts – the ace little things. On the wall was a short bio: he’d fallen and been paralysed when playing with mates aged 18. I can’t even imagine what that was like. And a woman who’d had a bad stroke who phoned up my work today because she wants to start getting out again, moving, dancing and meeting people and volunteering a bit. Whilst sometimes some seriously bad stuff happens, and it’s hard not to wallow in self pity, how inspiring are the people who pick themselves up and keep on living?
I’m a 30-something writer, artist, tarot reader, and perpetual explorer of the space between thought, feeling, and action.
I believe that spirituality and ritual are for everybody. I’m about the journey, in all of its messy, non-linear, chaotic iterations. I am excited by anticapitalist business and living with my whole entire self present. I use tarot cards to bring forth hidden truth, and ritual to affirm my commitment, over and over, to my ever-shifting path.
accurate assessment….what else could happen to this poor soul?
thanks Beth