Fickle Fates?
How I learned to read Tarot is a bit of a long story, so I'll try to keep this portion of my post short. Like many of you, I suppose, I learned the old fashioned way - with a new deck of cards and a little white book. Then that grew into more cards and more books. And more cards and more books.
I noticed something early on in my collecting. Those LWBs didn't seem to really change, or much at all when they did. But the images from pack to pack where indeed rather unique. And some came with very wondrous stories attached to their meanings that would help me understand more fully the cause of "why this card means this, and that card means that."
Take for instance the Mythic Tarot (Juliet Sharman-Burke & Liz Greene & Tricia Newell) the story of Orestes is the myth attached to the suit of Swords, and in the Five of Swords we find Orestes facing Apollo, who is telling the young boy what he must do without remorse. This is the card of winning and losing, fate has played the evil hand of making sure you now must choose - there is no choice but consequence now.
I liken the card to "the blame game." This is the point in time when the querrent sees the situation as "not my fault" often times. Or, at the very least, "mostly out of my hands." It is a defeatist, negative attitude to adopt - looking for fault everywhere but within when maybe it appears the chips are about to fall.
One of the great lessons of Tarot is in this very card. Whether it be the Mythic Tale of Orestes being compelled to Matricide to honor his father and his father's kingdom, or if it is the Rider-Waite depiction of two men seeming to leave behind their defeated swords while one victoriously stands and collects them, the lesson is the same.
The suit of swords is symbolic of the mind. This is man's "thinking," "rational" self, with which he slices through life with philosophies and theories. The number five, the fifth sphere of the Qabalah known as Geburah, is the number of disruption, breakdown, decay, and friction. And, oddly, in a way, the workings of Mind are very much like that themselves - workings of disruption, breakdown, decay and friction. But only if we deny Coagulation, induction, inclusion, comparison and a slew of other words describing the other half of analysis.
The five of swords is half the process of analysis, but so many people get it confused with being a complete process. And when they do, the "cause of" the problem so often seems evident to them. And usually this "cause" is that one thing that is furthest from them, that one thing so not within their sphere of influence, that indeed, we might as well surrender hope.
So ponder for a moment when that Five of Swords arrives in your readings. Am I doing all I can to see all sides of the story? Is blame really necessary? Do I have more control of this situation than I'd really like to admit?