Hello dear readers,
This week’s post is a short one because my body, staring down this long weekend, squinted off into the horizon, took a deep breath, and declared, “Aha! Now is the perfect time to get really, spectacularly sick.”
Thankfully, it’s not with covid or anything damaging long-term and, if I were to be extremely graceful and accepting (which I am, but only 20% of the time), at a moment when I am blessed with the space to rest and recover. So, this post is brought to you by a high dosage of amoxicillin, some good ole prednisone, and my apparently insatiable desire to see what the cards have in store for us this week. It’ll be short, sweet, and, best of all, actually finished & posted for you all to read.
Let’s dig in.
Ohhhh my. So I wrote all that before turning the cards over, and it seems like we have a tarot streak going, one that’s taking us through an interesting and powerful section of the Major Arcana, otherwise known as The Fool’s Journey.
The past two (!) weeks saw us working with The World card, the final stop on The Fool’s itinerary. This week? Well, The Fool themself is making an appearance. We’re being reborn, friends! How does it feel?
Well, as someone sweating profusely delicately from a dose of steroids, I’m inspired to label this moment as “intense.” Why? Because this process is a big one. We’ve made one cycle through The Fool’s Journey and now we’re starting another. In any other situation, I’d be implicitly reading The Fool as part of this reading, but no, this card is actually here, a moment of tarot circling, underlining, and highlighting this experience if I ever saw one.
If the past two weeks with our two visits from The World were all about culmination, appreciation, and taking in our newfound perspective, this is the week where things start happening. We’re thrown into the mix whether we’re ready for it or not; it’s beautiful, it’s a lot, it’s only the second week of September.
I am sensing a lot of resistance this week, as we have a beautifully complex card of connection and plenty - the Ten of Pentacles - enduring a headlong and, to be frank, rude interruption by the Knight of Swords. We may feel affronted, agitated, and threatened by getting what we want this week, and our reading is giving us two choices: either we can blindly follow our instinct to attack what’s new and good (The Knight of Swords) or lean into the change like The Fool. Both face the Ten of Pentacles, we’ll be experiencing both during the week, but ultimately we’ll choose one to embrace fully. Which will it be for you?
This reading is very on-topic. We’ve been grappling with themes of money, career, and the work it takes to sustain our lives for over a month now. The struggle-filled Five of Pentacles has been our theme for the month two readings in a row. (Listen to the Monthly Forecast if you want to hear me yell about this in more detail.) We’ve been learning how our ideas and experiences around lacking material resources may not be all that they seem; that behind them is some unresolved grief. What happens when we face this head-on and let ourselves be transformed? The Five of Pentacles becomes the Ten of Pentacles. Good things happen. Resources and feelings of plenty, abundance, enough-ness proliferate.
I can see why the Knight of Swords is so freaked out. This does not track with our main card for the past few months! Be gentle with yourself this week as you’re confronted with the changes you’ve been working diligently and bravely on start to bear fruit. Real, tangible, lovely fruit. It’s a far cry from the harsh, cold world of the Five of Pentacles, and if that’s the idea we’ve been holding as a cardinal truth in our world, it makes sense that there’s a part of us ready and raring to rush out, sword in hand, and attack gifts and plenty as something false, unstable, and dangerous.
Just take a look at the Ten of Pentacles. There is so much going on! An elderly person sits outside of an archway that frames a lovely human scene: a couple gazes at each other, a child pets a white dog while the elder pets another. It’s a gorgeous illustration of community, unity, and the vibrant chaos of life itself.
Now take a moment to compare this to another card of familial bliss, the Ten of Cups. This card is decidedly less chaotic; it’s as if the deck creators wanted to make a palatable, Hallmark-esque version of the Ten of Pentacles. A couple and two children frolic under a rainbow. Everyone’s neatly lined up. It’s beautiful! And not at all in our reading this week.
The Knight of Swords shows us how we’ll be tempted to raise of swords of criticism and discernment against a much more lived-in and authentic version of happiness, plenty, and togetherness. In other words, we’ll be up in arms over seeing the Ten of Pentacles in our lives instead of the Ten of Cups.
Like any tarot reading, this isn’t showing us the Knight of Swords as a state to reject or avoid wholesale. I don’t think that is ever truly possible. However, we can become mindful and use this card to gain more awareness of the ways we try to poke holes in very good, very real things happening to us under the misguided belief that just because they’re not exactly what we envisioned, they’re not what’s right for us.
And maybe that’s part of our new Fool’s journey: accepting the beauty of what is instead of fighting against it in the name of an intangible dream that can never truly become a reality.
Potential surprise/reframe:
I want to be clear. The Ten of Pentacles is delightful. Dreams are coming true, but they’re lived-in, authentic, the kind of experiences that have texture. Any real change involves the unknown, and I am seeing the Knight of Swords as a reflexive defense mechanism against the unknown. Yes, it can be perilous! But our now months-long tarot journey is showing us consistently devoting a lot of energy and consideration into the “whys” behind our path.
In this sense, this week is about letting go. That’s what The Fool does. They leave the realm of the unreal - the lofty, thin-aired mountains of potential - and trust fall into their next iteration. Just like we get born into life. Letting go is scary (The Knight of Swords hates it!) but so much loveliness is waiting for us on the ground.
This week, embrace:
Appreciating the world you’ve been building
Inspiration from elders, family history, ancestors (a facet of the Ten of Pentacles we didn’t get to touch on directly in the reading above)
Trusting in the process of your own becoming
Relaxing into good things that are happening to you
…and, therefore, taking it easy - tend to what’s there and let the rest unfurl (which it will do, slowly, over the next several months)
This week, avoid - Knight of Swords edition:
Analyzing the shit out of everything
Mansplaining the beauty in your life to yourself!!
Covering gifts, synchonicities, goodness over with justifications, rationalization, self-protective skepticism
Rejecting opportunities, connections, gifts, successes because they don’t match up with your definition of what they “should” be (There is a red-level alert for “shoulds” active this week! Stay emotionally indoors and avoid inhaling their noxious fumes!)
Knight of Swords PSA:
I like to treat this card like a bloviating uncle at Thanksgiving. You love them, you can’t change them, so just let them talk while you enjoy the delicious food on your plate. Not all thoughts in our heads have to lead to action; eventually, they’ll calm down, tired and ready to cede the floor to someone new.