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?

Like this post? Please share it!