149. Deepening Tarot Connections: Eight, Nine, and Ten of Swords
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Welcome back to the Tarot for the Wild Soul Podcast with Lindsay Mack.
Today’s episode of the tarot podcast concludes our mini-series on deepening our understanding of connections within particular cards in the Tarot.
In this episode, we focus on the Swords in the Tarot which speak to the air element, the realm of the mind.
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About the Episode
How do we navigate our contractions in big moments of expansion? How do we tend to our discomforts and fears in the midst of big evolutionary experiences? The Swords suit in the Tarot offers potent medicine to face the elements, the cold wind of our scrambly brains and resource ourselves with compassionate self-examination and deep, sacred tending.
Explore the transformative and medicinal process of walking with the Eight, Nine, and Ten of Swords together.
What is the connective tissue between cards in the Tarot when they are held together? Sometimes we look at our deck of Tarot cards and really focus on individual cards without hearing the sound, the song, or seeing the atmosphere they can create with each other. Lindsay compassionately leads us through the unique environment of walking with the Eight, Nine and Ten of Swords together.
Is it possible to see the Eight of Swords (or any Sword card) as strength?
In the Eight of Swords card imagery of the Smith-Rider-Waite deck, the person depicted is bound and blindfolded. They appear to be caught, unable to see a way out. So, how can Eight of Swords be a card of strength? How can it be an ally if, similar to what we see illustrated on the card, we’re feeling trapped?
The Swords cards can look intimidating in most Tarot decks. Mirroring the mind with visual imagery can show us the texture of our fearful thoughts. Lindsay brings to light empowering invitations we have available to us when we pull the Eight, Nine or Ten of Swords. These allies all tend to show up when we are preparing to leap into something new and wonderful, but unfamiliar. They can assist us in skillfully navigating the discomfort that this kind of experience can bring up in us, inviting us to tend to ourselves and our fearful thoughts with curiosity and compassion.
In today’s episode, we will explore how to unpack and work with these beautiful cards, embracing them as friends and allies for our continued growth on this planet.
In this episode, we talk about:
Explorations of each Tarot suit: 0:06:17
Two of Swords: 0:09:53
Three of Swords: 0:10:25
Four of Swords: 0:11:32
Five of Swords: 0:12:12
Eight of Swords: 0:19:50
Nine of Swords: 0:26:50
Ten of Swords: 0:41:42
From Fear to Medicine: 0:56:47, 0:58:05
Nourishing the Wild Heart: 0:57:50
Related Episodes
If you enjoyed this episode, you can learn more about connections between tarot cards in Deepening Tarot Connections: The Hierophant, The Lovers, and The Chariot.
If you want to learn more about how to handle the “scary” cards of the Tarot, we invite you to listen to Fear and the Tarot.
Land Acknowledgement
Honoring and acknowledging that this podcast episode was recorded on the unceded land of The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, currently called Portland, OR, with the deepest respect to the Kalapuya Tribe, Cowlitz Tribe, and Atfalati Tribe.
Please Note
CW Tags: birth, death, grief, violence
The content in this episode contains references to birth, death, grief, and violence. We have done our best to identify difficult subject matter, but the labels may not be comprehensive for your personal needs. Please honor your knowing and proceed with necessary self-awareness and care.
Transcript
[Introduction]
[0:00:00]
(Instrumental intro music)
[0:00:12]
Hello Loves and welcome back to Tarot for the Wild Soul podcast. I am your host, Lindsay Mack and, as always, it is such a joy, such an honor, to be gathered with you in this virtual space. Thank you so much for being here with me.
So we are wrapping up our little mini series on deepening tarot connections with an exploration today of the Eight, Nine, and Ten of Swords.
I had my own ideas and thoughts about the things that I would explore in this episode, but, these three cards really came to the front of the line and raised their hands and were very enthusiastic about wanting to be talked about. So, that’s what we’re going to do today.
I think I may come back with this series in a couple of months and maybe we can explore this a little bit more in depth and talk about how we move from, like, for example, from the Ace to the Ten, how we move from the Ten to the Pages. I think that would be really valuable to talk about. In Rewilding the Tarot which is my foundational tarot course, that’s going to be out in not too long of a time, there’s an audio class on kind of how to work with cards that don’t really seem to really make a whole lot of sense, what we might call “disharmonious” but really seeing the unexpected or unintended harmony within particular card pairings and I can see that being really valuable to talk about here, too. So, I think maybe like, you know, six or so months I might come back with another round of this one cause it was really sweet to explore.
[0:02:08]
But, yeah, today we’re going to look at, we’re going to look at these three, these three beauties and the medicine they make together. The Swords are incredibly, incredibly important, potent medicine for this time. The Swords help us to navigate the realm of the mind; how we engage with, believe, interpret our relationship with our thinking, our relationship with the mind. And, of course, I think this goes for every human being on the planet in one way, shape, or form, in ways both, you know, because everybody’s relationship with their mind is very different, but, it’s challenging, I think, for everybody to have a brain (Lindsay Laughs) in these human bodies from time to time and I do think that the Swords help us with what that is and, more specifically, the Swords actually help us to become more intimate with ourselves in the midst of what the Sword cards invite us into.
So, each and every sword card calls us into a particular situation where the mind - it’s illuminating an invitation from the mind. And we get to practice, we get to play; how do we respond to that? How can we show up in such compassion for ourselves with clarity around what we’re available for or not available for with, you know, again, continued clarity on, you know, how we are engaging with the mind, how we’re, not discoursing necessarily, but, working through stuff with ego. It’s a very very powerful suit and really asks us to befriend our thinking. And that doesn’t mean that all the thoughts we have are meant to be spotlit or somehow celebrated or even pulled out of the woodwork and lifted up and celebrated or anything like that, but to know that a thought is just a thought, to know that there’s nothing wrong with us for a thought.
[0:04:59]
We don’t have to believe our thoughts. Thoughts are not necessarily the truth. Sometimes, our thinking can cover over much deeper emotional feelings, anxiety and very loud scrambly brain is often a very, a pretty common covering for wild grief. And the mind is always always always trying to protect, it’s trying to keep us, quote, “safe.” And it develops all of these different ways that are unique and both kind of shared by all of us; sometimes the mind does utilize stuff that makes us feel kind of bad, not because it’s trying to harm, because it’s trying to stop us. It knows it’ll stop us in our tracks, it knows it will pull us away maybe from what we’re doing that’s really expansive.
If we’re used to something being very chaotic, the mind tends to take that as, you know, “Oh, this thing is familiar, that must mean it’s safe.” Right?
So, obviously, I’m not a therapist and this is a pretty wild oversimplification, but, there’s a reason that the Swords exist within the realm of the Tarot.
[0:06:17]
You know, with the Wands we’re really exploring, kind of, it’s less specific than the Swords, but, we’re really exploring, like, our energy, how we work with our energy, what we’re giving our precious life force to, you know, or like the gas in our tank, so to speak. With the Cups, it’s really about honoring the emotions, allowing the emotions to flow allowing us to trust our intuition, to trust ourselves. With the Pentacles, we learn devotion. We learn how to externalize our soul work to bring it from within us into the world. And with the Swords, we learn and are invited to get far more intimate, way more deeply rooted into ourselves and to know the kinds of things that, um, to be aware that we’re being invited into something that may or may not be true because the mind might be trying to pull us out of what it is that we are feeling, that deep call toward, because it’s scared. And that really does happen.
We’re always in this dance, all of us, in different ways, where the soul of us, you know, the heart of us wants to be wildly brave and vulnerable. It wants to feel everything. It wants to take risks - guided risks, right? It wants to reach for what is expansive and uncomfortable. It wants to grow and evolve through what it’s handed. It doesn’t want to be - it doesn’t necessarily want instability, but it doesn’t want any stagnancy. It wants to be growing; growing, growing, growing, always going. The mind doesn’t want that (Lindsay Laughs), you know? The mind wants us to like figure out a thing and stick with it. The mind is the one that says, “Ugh, you’re in a thing that works - why would you leave it?” The mind is the one that says, “Don’t reach for that thing you actually want. Just play it a little safer.” It doesn’t want us to get hurt.
So, there is a kind of benevolence at the root of it all, it doesn’t mean that all thoughts feel good and benevolent. Some them feel awful and horrible. But, if we can see in this particular context, the Swords really invite us to see and investigate, how are we working with, engaging with the mind. Like, what are we doing with it?
[0:09:35]
And each and every Sword card offers us a kind of potent refuge, incredible tools, to deal with some of the most challenging places that we, all of us, get stuck with our thinking, with our thoughts.
Two of Swords: What is it when you’re triggered, when you’re activated, when you’re not sure what’s clear, what’s true - what is it to go within yourself, to put that blindfold on, to dive deeper, to ask questions, to use the mind as a kind of a sacred boundary, to be able to say, Hey, I’m gonna take my space here. What is that and how powerful of an act of self-sovereignty that is.
Three of Swords is not a card of heartbreak, not a card of betrayal, at all. (Lindsay Laughs) Like, not at all! The inevitable heartbreaks that come with life, be they related to some kind of a shock or some kind of a situation that involves an external factor or just simply acknowledging the fact that the heart is feeling deeply hurt or wounded today. We got triggered, we got upset, something, we had a rupture in some place. The mind doesn’t want us going into the deep hurt, raw feelings. It wants us kind of up on the surface thinking and with the wheels turning and what are we going to say, what are we going to do, what do we want them to say? And, unintentionally, we can totally bypass the wounds and the hurt of the pierced heart.
So, Three of Swords actually says, How do we honor what the mind is doing, just letting the mind do what it does, which is think, and come home to the heart?
You know, Four of Swords: What does it mean for us to take a mental break? What does that look like? That looks different for everybody, that looks different for everybody everyday, right? How can we be present with that? It might even be as simple as saying, like, I’m going to literally envision myself, putting this particular like problem or issue or something that keeps playing over and over again in my mind like in a little imaginary box and I’m going to devote myself to this book, I’m going to devote myself to this work, to this project, and I can always come back to it. But, that’s the empowerment of that, too.
You know, Five of Swords: One of the most detrimental fucking things that mind invites us into is, “You fucked up. You made a mistake. There’s something wrong with you.” There’s something bad and off and, you know, there can also be an energy inside Five of Swords that says, You lost, so, go walk away, go isolate, you know. And in the Smith-Rider-Waite, those people are literally isolating themselves from the energy in the foreground. And, that’s beautiful, like, we can walk away to tend to ourselves, but, really it’s about seeing beyond that illusion in the first place - that there’s nothing that can’t be discussed, honored, unpacked, brought forward - there’s no quote, “mistake” that cannot yield to some kind of wisdom, in some way. It doesn’t mean we want to just romanticize if we’ve harmed someone unintentionally, but, we can repair. It can be profoundly impactful to say, I messed up, you know, how can I repair this for myself, for others? Five of Swords really says, How do you respond when you feel like you fucked up? It’s a great life skill. (Lindsay Laughs) You know? And I could go on and on, right?
[0:13:39]
All of these cards are medicine. All cards in the Tarot are medicine.
The Swords, especially, it is the medicine right now. This is the tincture you’re looking for. It’s in the Swords, that bitter, potent, spicy medicine that is so deeply warming, that moves things, that activates that lymph, that allows that kind of psychic digestive system to kick in. It is a very, very powerful thing when we can start to recognize: I am Not my thoughts. I’m Not my thoughts, my thoughts are a part of the weather in the vastness of my being. But, they’re Just that, they’re just the weather. You are the sky. You are the universe in which the weather exists in, you know? And it’s very powerful. The Swords can be, just, (sigh) the most comforting, beautiful teachers, actually. They’re not for the faint of heart, they’re not like, fuzzy and warm, but, man, are they what you want with you when the weather starts to kick up and (Lindsay Laughs), you know.
And what can be so powerful is when we start to really see - and, by the way, this is Everyone; this is me, this is every teacher that you know and respect and love (Lindsay Laughs) you know - this is Everybody - so, I’m not talking to just you, the Listener, I’m talking to Everyone. I’m talking to myself, too. This is just human work that… all of us have places where, for exquisitely good reasons, I would say, the mind has developed all kinds of different programs and little trip wires and protections to keep us out of the void, out of the cliff drop-off of expansion. And there’s a million reasons for that.
Again, if you go off and leap into trusting yourself, that can bring up a lot - especially if, like, you’ve spent your whole life surrounding yourself with people who also don’t trust themselves. It can bring up all the things about our codependency. It can bring up all the, like, and this isn’t to say like - when we choose to trust ourselves after a lifetime, potentially, of not trusting ourselves, being so unclear, unsure of what to do or which way to go - that’s not to say that all of a sudden we snap our fingers and we don’t have any trust issues anymore. But, it means that we start unpacking what’s under them. It means that we can say, this is a familiar visitor. And, we can start collecting different evidence that when, perhaps, we’re about to expand beyond our wildest dreams, our trust issues might get really Loud. They may feel really deeply uncomfortable. I’ve never ever experienced a big, important, wildly successful and amazing and abundant expansion without bone-crushing contraction that has preceded it.
It's never happened. It's never not happened, I should say. And why? Why? You know, so in that moment, we're essentially choosing the soul while honoring the brain just trying so desperately to keep us in what again, is known and familiar what's worked before, what stopped us before what slowed us down. The brain and the mind don't want us like out in the ethers, they want us in solid fucking ground because they don't know about the ethers. That feels unsafe. Pretty much everything that is unfamiliar to the brain, it's going to label as unsafe, in some way, shape, or form.
[0:18:06]
So for us, as you know, we might call ourselves seekers or intuitives, or, you know, whatever kind of label feels comfortable to us, as folks who in one way or another want to build a relationship where we're living from the soul. That doesn't mean we don't listen to the brain. It means we bow to what the brain and the mind are bringing, and step forward from the soul.
We've, I mean, we've been in those times, like forever, but, you know, they're especially very present in the collective themes now, you know, as we really navigate like, what is it to say “yes” to myself, to no longer give myself away, like - to bring what I have to bring today to the world instead of sitting on it. And by the way, sitting on it is like great, too, you know. Sometimes giving ourselves the permission to be like, “I'm like, really burned out, I'm really exhausted and I need to be able to cultivate permission to not do,” that's so beautiful, too.
But when it comes to recognizing the kinds of bonds and chains that the mind can sometimes inadvertently place upon us out of a sense of protection, in terms of identifying those and beginning to gently break contact with them, there really is no finer ally for that work than Eight of Swords.
[0:19:50]
In the Eight of Swords, we feel like we're trapped.
We feel like we're caught. We feel like we're stuck. And the feelings are wholly valid and they are real, but, they're not necessarily true - necessarily. Our invitation in this card is to explore it, is to investigate it. And that is ultimately, the greatest gift that the Swords bring us is practicing what it is to investigate, to pause and say, “Okay, you know, Eight of Swords is here... Am I kind of, like in this loop? Am I kind of in this funk? Am I kind of in this story, like: I gotta figure it all out, I got to get it done, I got to do it in this way,” when, potentially, it could be, maybe, a lot easier than what we imagine? That's a great and big hallmark of Eight of Swords, is trying to desperately construct an elaborate way to break down a locked door when the window is open. We're just not looking in the direction of the window.
Breaking away from the one track linear intensity of the mind in those moments where it says, “I have to get out of this, I have to figure this out, I have to, I have to break down this door…” being able to touch out of that and move the head, look around, is the act of shifting from that really deep identification with the mind to the soul. There are lots of ways to do that particular thing and it can be personal to everybody: Meditation, fresh air, a walk outside, splashing cold water on your face, taking a break, some really intense exercise, even if it's for like two minutes - literally like walking away and doing something else and coming back to the situation. It doesn't always feel pleasant, or comfortable to do that, but, it can help to flip it and then more possibilities can show themselves.
[0:22:42]
This card, any Eight in the Tarot, any of the four Eights, we go into them one way, as in one state, and we leave them in a different state. We leave them transformed, shifted, renewed. And that is no exception. You know, Eight of Swords is no exception to that where we come into this card typically feeling, again, that sense of stuckness, of being caught, of being trapped in something - trapped in our own thinking or trapped in the limitations of our situation. And, by the way, this is never to bypass. I mean, again, those feelings are completely real. And they may even be true.
What Eight of Swords says is, They can be true and it also might be equally or even more true, that there are possibilities that are presenting themselves to you from Spirit, from your higher knowing, from your soul, from your wise self that you may not even be taking up on right now because you're so so trained and drilled down on trying to get out through this locked door. What if it's a totally different way out of the room? What if it's a completely different way over the wall? What if you're metaphorically bound and tied and blindfolded, but your feet are completely free? That's what we see in the Smith-Rider-Waite: Yes, this being is bound. Yes, they're blindfolded. Yes, swords are surrounding them. But it's not a complete circle. They can walk away anytime. They may not know where - we don't necessarily always know where we're going.
[0:24:41]
The key is the transformation. That key that clicks over and unlocks the door happens in the Eight of Swords when we start to say, “Well, I can't see how to get out of this room, so to speak, but I'm willing to consider there might be an open window somewhere that I'm not seeing.” And then we can open the heart to our guides, our ancestors, our angels, whomever you pray to, work with, your higher self, like whatever it is. We can open to intuition, to the soul. We open and we, we reach out for something greater than what the mind can see. The mind is so beautiful, but it is so deeply limited.
And we can say, “I'm willing to be shown. I'm willing to be shown an easier way. I'm willing to see how this could be way more useful than what I am seeing.” Sometimes, I know for myself, sometimes I encounter these big heavy locked doors, just so I can practice shifting. Like sometimes that's the whole function of Eight of Swords in our life is that we get to practice that recentering from feeling that we have to smash something down, utilize all our energy, thinking energy being like, “How the fuck do I get out of this,” to just simply walking away, you know, looking for that unlocked window.
The act of engaging with Eight of Swords, in this way, is a transformative act. And it starts, it's one of those moments with this card that potentially has the capacity to really groove some new neural pathways, and allows us to bring that kind of sacred investigation to other places. And that's how we move into the Nine of Swords.
[0:26:50]
So the Nine of Swords is depicted in lots of decks as, quite literally, a nightmare.
I mean, in the Smith-Rider-Waite, this is, you know, we see a person kind of like bounding up out of bed with their head in their hands, because of the ferocity of the nightmare that they've just had. In many decks, we see kind of, really harsh, heavy, like, painful imagery. And that's not incorrect. Nine of Swords is very intense. But we, what it brings is something that's quite extraordinary.
So once we know, in the Eight of Swords that, Oh, wow, like, I'm seeing the dissonance, the difference between the best way forward in the view of the mind and the best way forward in the mind of divine, like seeing the differences there. Because in general, if you're working with Spirit, I mean, this isn't always the case, trust and believe, but (Lindsay Laughs) a lot of the time it's possible for things to open up and be just a little bit more easeful, especially working with that statement of: I'm absolutely willing to receive this much, much more graceful, easeful, like I'm willing to consider this could be, again, so much more clear, rather than, like really exhausting myself trying to figure out how to, quote, “get out of this thing.”
Again, that opens up so much that then it can draw us into a space where we're able to do some deep caretaking for ourselves around places where we get invited into the worst case scenario. And that is Nine of Swords.
[0:28:53]
Nine of Swords is: “What if this could happen? You should do this. What if that?” It's pure fear. It's pure fear. But again, now that we're up to Eight, Nine and Ten of Swords, we're really getting to the highest kind of climax point of what we've learned in the swords, which is that the closer we get to a new level of expansion, a new kind of commitment to honoring our soul honoring our knowing, choosing the much more expanded path versus what's familiar, what's safe, the harder the mind will try to pull us into what could go wrong because it is so scared for us.
So in the Nine of Swords, we get to practice what it is to gently unpack those worst case scenarios and say, What if? Yeah, okay, what if? What if this thing happens? Okay, what if it does? What might I do? What kind of support could I draw upon? What's the story of: If this happens, my life would be over? Is that really true? And then we just keep gently investigating.
Sometimes we do our best Nine of Swords work in the company of others. That might be with a therapist with a psychiatrist with a spiritual counselor, with a trusted figure, a processor of some kind, it could be a dear friend, somebody who is available to be that sounding board for us.
It's a powerful, powerful pocket of work, because we start to, again, really see. You know, again, it's quite significant that this card is not fear as a result of something potentially really scary happening. It's a nightmare. Nightmares, we wake up from them. They're not happening. It's the possibility of what could happen. It is the “What if?” It's that really scary place of like, “Oh, my God,” the risk versus the reward. It's really intense. And yet, we've all got it. We all do that all the time. And it is, of course (Lindsay Laughs), “Oh my God,” every time I do any course, any offering, anytime I change anything, anytime I jump into something new, which is like every fucking day. My mind always says like, What will people say? What will they think? You're not going to, you know, you'll, you won't survive it. You'll have to, like, go back to your old job, like whatever it is. That still fucking happens to me.
So it's just scared, it's always wanting to protect me. We've been through a lot together, this mind and I. So it's not always the most pleasant or helpful of protectors, but I get it.
[0:32:18]
I get Nine of Swords all the time, when I'm in the midst of huge creative expansions. And what comes up in my mind is never true. It never happens. Not even like once (Lindsay Laughs). Not one thing that my mind has ever brought forward happened. But it does give me the extraordinary opportunity to get more fully aware of what the mind tends to bring forward in those moments. Where does it go? What is it - What buttons does it push? What places in me get the most activated the most nervous, the most scared, and why?
Sometimes Nine of Swords can be so powerful to call on especially when we're about to do something really big, really courageous, or potentially just in alignment with our values. And it may not really seem risky to anyone else but us. That's really powerful to investigate that and be like, “Oh, wow, like, what is the story? What is the risk? What's the tale of the risk?”
Another one of the most extraordinarily important things about working with Nine of Swords is we want to bring it out of, kind of this, you know, the room that we're sleeping in at night into... we want to like turn on the lamp. We want to really illuminate. We don't want to get tricked into believing like there's something over in the corner because we can't quite see it because the light’s not on. And we might think like, “Oh my gosh, that pile of blankets is a monster!”
Working with Nine of Swords in the Soul Tarot way is essentially clicking on the flashlight and shining it on there and being like, Okay, like this is the invitation, this is what I’m being told - you're telling me if I do this thing, x is going to happen and sometimes the most powerful thing to, at least I know for myself, sometimes is just saying it out loud. It's hilarious (Lindsay Laughs) how ridiculous it is. And sometimes like my husband or, you know, someone else - and it's always in such a loving way - but, like there's laughter and that can be beautiful. Not because they're laughing at me, but it's such a wonderful moment to take kind of the spooky monster, you know, like a story or whatever it is, to take some of the scariness, the spookiness out of the equation. That assumption will be like that is, I get it, I honor it, but like, that's not true. (Lindsay Laughs)
[0:35:03]
We're waking from our own nightmare, and bringing in our own sacred, external resources. We're also bringing in our own inner caretakers, that kind of energy and scooping up our own, as my teacher, Michelle would say, you know, there's so much of Michelle's wisdom within this willingness to consider and always making space for the inner child, always, you know, just always bowing to my teacher, Michelle. Yeah, like, making space for the fears of our kids, too, and letting them know we've got them. That's one of the most important, and again, there, I've just, there's been so so much that we, even if we had great parents, we are our own parents. We are our caretakers. We are our protectors.
And sometimes what's underneath Nine of Swords is our own little kids being like, “Do you have me? Is it okay? Is it safe?” When our child wakes us up after a nightmare, we don't want to say, “Oh, wow, that might happen,” right? “That might be true that, like, there's a monster under the bed.” We want to cuddle them and love them and kiss them and give them a glass of water, maybe snuggle up with them, maybe even shine a flashlight and look under the bed and say, “There is nothing here, but, I honor that it would be so scary. What could we do,” right? And we can do that for ourselves, too.
So we're building upon this realization that we get access to an Eight of Swords, like, Whoa, there is an opening, a medicine and easefulness that's possible that is in direct opposition to what my mind is telling me here - that there is an easier way, potentially, that I can - I'm not as trapped as I think I am. And where that then leads us again, is to the space where we can show up as our own inner caretakers and start to be so gentle and clear and just kind of pick up that basket of, you know, Nine of Swords toys, so to speak, and kind of dump them out on the floor and see what we've got, like, Okay, this potential disaster, right? This thing could happen here. True, true, true... I mean, it's unbelievable. Like, obviously, I believe that, you know, we want to take care of ourselves and live in a way that's in alignment with what will ideally keep us as supported as possible, in whatever way that looks like.
But, the mind, I feel like it just, you know, we're not getting out of this life alive. So it, (Lindsay Laughs) you know, like, yeah, what if, you know, you try something and you fall flat on your face? And of course, there's risk involved. Of course, there might be a ripple effect to that and we get to decide like, Is that worth it to me? Am I really feeling that pull to do it, in spite of the potential risks? Let me look at why.
[0:38:44]
We learn in Nine of Swords how to work with the fear that comes up, the raw fear that comes up as a result of the fact that we're about to expand.
The mind never ever kicks up as much dust as it does when we're about to deeply expand into something new and likely unfamiliar. And that's one of the reasons why these cards are so important to talk about right now, because we're doing this on a collective level. There are so many deeply unfamiliar transitions happening right now. Things are leaving, things are coming in where, I mean, it's a powerful time of building something new and in both macro ways and micro ways.
So it's really good medicine for us on all levels, right? We’re all going through this individually in some way and we're certainly going through it collectively. So how can we be with these things and just like, watch, notice where the brain, like, watch the weather move through, watch as the clouds roll in and out, watch as you just notice, like, “Wow, how fascinating, that that would be the thing that would come up. How interesting.” And then we can bring it to others. You know, one of the most important things with the Swords in general, I think, is just not to isolate with it, to be able to speak some of these things out loud and say, “You know, this is what's coming up for me.” And to ideally do so with someone who can receive it and really hold that space for us.
So the transformational effect of working with this card really can't be overstated because there's never really like a snap of the finger and, all of a sudden, we're just not scared in Nine of Swords. But, we can start appreciating why the fear is there, we can start saying like, “Whoa, I know that I must be in this because I'm about to expand, as much as it might not feel that way.” It never feels that way for me. Expansion, like, doesn't feel good. It's very uncomfortable, you know, as we navigate how expansion looks as we're moving through it, right?
In general, the mind wants us in the familiar, the soul wants to fly. The Swords are really where we get to practice on the ground level how to work with that. And then once we've started to set the foundation for this beautiful, internal honoring and unpacking that can happen in the Nine, we move into the Ten.
[0:41:42]
I say this without, at the risk of sounding perhaps a bit, like, annoying to some... I know some will hear this and be like, “Get the fuck out of here;” but, I really do mean it that Ten of Swords is one of my most favorite cards in the Tarot. And if it was a tincture, it would be the tincture that I would pack to take with me everywhere. It's an ally and an anchor that is just, it's like the nettle of the Tarot world. It just is so profoundly, weirdly, very nurturing - it only really comes up in extraordinarily beautiful situations. It's a very unexpected anchor for many things. And before we understand what it does, it can just look horrific. It can look like, because often the images on the card are very violent, because that's how...
Ten of Swords is a sacred death process to a kind of attachment to our thinking.
It's a signal, you know, that we've been talking about. The mind tends to get so scared, when it knows that it's about to kind of lose a certain amount of control over us when we're about to expand into something new and unfamiliar.
There is a kind of a death that we go through when that happens when we expand because we can't have both things. We can't have the brain screaming at us, inviting us into fear, believing the fear, not leaping and expand. What we really do is the brain screams, it gets so upset, it gets scared, and we leap. But in doing that, there is a loosening, there's a shedding and a clearing and what might have stopped us before doesn't this time. We get to practice what it is to say, “All of these big fears are here, but I'm willing to step forward into what is possible, what I'm really hearing to try, what might feel risky and yet wholly aligned for me.”
Really all good things in life come with a certain amount of risk. Loving someone, becoming a parent, like there's huge vulnerability and risk involved in that, quote-unquote “risk” to the brain. You know, we'll say, like, “This is not what we know. This is not what’'s familiar,” whatever it is.
So with the Ten, there's, without going off on a tangent, and part of the reason why Sword images are often so violent-looking, is because the folks who have done a great deal of the of the visual interpretations of cards have only gone so far as the story of the mind on itself, which I know makes no sense. But we're basically seeing like, when we look at the Smith-Rider-Waite image which is a person like stabbed through with swords, we're looking at that from the perspective of the brain, not the actual truth of the soul, which is that what's really happening there is that the thoughts, the swords, the stories have taken us as far as they can go, like that protective cocoon that the mind may have invited us into to say, “Don't do that. Don't do this. Don't let yourself be vulnerable. Don't let yourself be seen. Don't try this thing. Don't step out in this way. This could happen, this could happen, this could happen...” If we're in the Ten of Swords, none of that worked.
[0:46:20]
And we're still, we're leaping forward. If you get Ten of Swords, you're already in that transformation, you already in some way said “yes” to your soul and said, “No thank you” to your brain inviting you to play it smaller. So naturally, that part, that skin that you've shed, took you as far as you're gonna go, but now it's an empty shell.
And so, as kind of thunderous and scary as those images look... You know, when the mind... the Swords are very meta. They're kind of the mind commenting on itself. So when a card looks thunderous and so scary and there's like, clouds in the sky, and everything's red, and there's blood, the mind doesn't want to lose control over that. When the mind says, “Oh, my God, everything might be horrible for you, you're gonna risk it all.” And really, what the mind is saying in there is, “I could risk not having as much safety as much hold on you as I do now and I need that to feel secure and safe.”
So of course, it's a death. It's a death for all parts of us. But it is a beautiful thing. It's beautiful. It really is. And it doesn't have to be horrific. It just, it doesn't.
Often, when Ten of Swords comes up, it's a clarity that that pattern of thinking, that story, those beliefs that we've held, like we all have them, they can't go anywhere anymore. Like, we can't continue to travel forward together. We've gone as far as we can go on that. It's clarity that we've already taken a leap. Now just commit to it... that the mind and our relationship with the mind in some way is changing, often radically.
I know that I've mentioned this a couple times before, but I really do mean this quite sincerely that every course I do, I go through massive contraction. My work, my service, and this is always true with soul work, is where... it's the biggest place that I evolve and grow as a person, as a teacher, as an intuitive. It's not like I'm all good and just like working from this soaring comfortable place. It's actually pretty uncomfortable.
And I've never ever in my whole career done a card or done a course - and my courses are often, they're all beautiful births, they’re all incredibly beautiful, vibrant, alive, abundant, exquisite babies - like I've never birthed a course into the world that I haven't loved and treasured, that hasn't been exactly right. Whether a really small amount of people attended or a huge amount of people attended (it's really not about measuring success in that way anyway, because the actual experience of bringing the offering into the world is the deal, not how it performs necessarily), I have never, ever done anything that has been really big and important in my life without Ten of Swords by my side, letting me know, You're gonna absolutely be called upon to lay a bunch of shit on the fire in order to step forward into this.
[0:56:26]
The Ten of Swords has The Fool energy contained in it, it has Tower energy contained in it, it has Judgment energy contained in it... it is very powerful.
And such an anchor and ally for transformative growth, for evolving through what is uncomfortable to recognizing the limitations of the mind bowing to it, saying thank you, and stepping forward into what is uncomfortable and unfamiliar because you hear that call. Because you hear that, Yes. And again, detaching from like, “it'll be successful / it won't be successful.” You're gonna learn either way. Anytime we get this card, it's never an accident. It's letting us know, it's like, you know, it's exactly like a snake shedding its skin. The skin got us to where we were gonna go - now it's too tight. You know, that's it.
We can no longer walk around with swords stuck through our spine, cutting off flow and access to our channel. So this card isn't violent. It doesn't mean, really, kind of anything that anyone has ever said that it does, actually. We don't ever have to be motivated by fear to do something. It doesn't have to be that way. We can just choose, you know, we can let fear be its own invitation, we can let ourselves get curious about it.
Ten of Swords is a freedom. It's a liberation. It's very uncomfortable, but it does invite us to commit to the leaps that we take. And to say, yeah, we're not going for like perfect, we're not going for all squared up, we're not going for, “Oh, if I take this risk, if I take this leap, it's got to all be perfect.” We're here to learn. And if we get that, Yes, sometimes the hard things that we get inside of a “yes” teach us everything. Sometimes that's exactly what has to happen. But it's a moment where we break from that snakeskin, Ten of Swords, where we actually move out of what has held us just a little bit too tightly, and break away and say “yes” to the soul.
And what I have found for myself is that working with Ten of Swords doesn't mean that my mind can't come with me. It means that I get to say to it, like, “Thank you so so so much for all of this beautiful and challenging and painful protection. We don't need it anymore. We did need it. Thank you, I see it. Thank you; not needed.” You know? It can help me to be really clear with my thoughts sometimes and just say, “No, I'm not available to be pulled into insulting language toward myself,” or you know, anything like that. Doesn't necessarily mean that the thoughts stop, but it does mean I feel, sometimes, more empowered in those moments. And it's a very powerful point of initiation.
[0:54:00]
The journey from the Eight to the Ten is really extraordinary and comes up more around creative pursuits than I think most people give themselves credit for.
It also comes up around big life decisions, around some that could even involve, like relationships or children or you know, whatever it is we tend to just think about like these things, so singularly like: “Swords is the mind.” Swords is anything, any topic of life where the mind is showing up in response to something very expansive. Becoming a parent is really expansive (Lindsay Laughs) - like a lot! And, if we're rolling like this, getting married - it's a big deal. Like it's big, you know, and sometimes it's not big. Moving in with someone is very big - sometimes it's not, you know.
But we all have different trigger points. We all have different places where the mind is particularly protective. We all have places where the mind is really loose and open. And that's different for everybody. Being respectful of where those moments show up for us, is a really, really important part of what this like working with ourselves holding both - holding our inner child, honoring what's coming up in the mind and always, always, always as best as we can saying Yes to the truth of ourselves and holding the sometimes dissonance of the experience when the mind is really scared at the expansiveness, at the the lack of “known.” You know, it's, I mean, if you're looking for like, I mean it’s hilarious because really, the more one drops into their intuition, like the less we know. So it can feel very threatening to the mind. And - poor minds! Like they're just, they're trying so hard to just keep us alive on this planet.
We're not going just for being alive - we're going for thriving, we're going for experience, we're going for mastery, we're going for messiness, like, that's the point of being here. We're not going to get it all perfectly, right? So, we are in, I think, if I can say this, I think a time on the planet right now where these three cards can be tremendously helpful medicine for us. And I encourage you to play with them and see how you could befriend these energies.
[0:56:47]
I also, if you want to go deeper with it, I have an offering called From Fear to Medicine that really explores and unpacks all different kinds of ways that we can work with the cards that scare us. I know that the Swords, basically the whole suit, is in that course (Lindsay Laughs). I know that this whole suit of Swords is in From Fear to Medicine. It's on my website, it's available for purchase; the link is in the show notes, but it's a really gentle exploration of some of the more, kind of classically, quote “scary” cards that can come up for us in the Tarot.
If those particular cards aren't frightening to you, if you're not moved or shaken by like Ten of Swords or the Tower, it offers the framework to be able to look at cards like Empress and like Ace of Cups and unpack that because, I don’t know, I think a lot of us are really scared of those cards, too. We just don't talk about them as much.
[0:57:50]
And if you often struggle with the quote-unquote more “positive” cards, there's also an offering on my website called Nourishing the Wild Heart where you can look at how to befriend those energies as well.
So there's definitely some good Tarot medicine on my website should you want to unpack and explore these a little further.
There's a lot of really good stuff in From Fear to Medicine on how to work and make friends with these energies that are a little bit more spiky, bitter, how to work when you feel really triggered when they come up in readings, lots of different things.
But either way, I just encourage you to let this wash over you see what sticks with you, see what doesn't, do your own exploration. That's obviously the most exciting part of all this is like, we work with the Tarot to see what comes in through us.
[0:58:49]
So I hope that this served you, that it landed with you. It's certainly, for better or worse, a very potent time to be looking at where these energies and these archetypes are showing up for us right now. So, yeah, I hope that you are able to play with it and that some really good nourishment can come from it. So thank you so much as always for being here, Wild Souls. I'm so grateful.
[0:59:29]
Next week is Monthly Medicine for February, which is shocking, that we're almost in February.
The rebrand for the website is coming along quite beautifully. We were originally supposed to have the new website tentatively up by this week, but it's probably going to be about a month longer than that which is really just perfect, actually. It's been so nice to really just surrender to the different rhythms and directions that this project has wanted to go, but I think it's going to be quite beautiful and I'm so excited to introduce y’all to the new kind of Foundations course in just a bit and then we'll do a whole different kind of Tarot for the Wild Soul course later in the year which is going to be really sweet.
And it's all unknown to me right now and (Lindsay Laughs) things are very much in the swirl and still forming themselves and I have my own Eight, Nine, Ten of Swords stuff coming up around that. Just so important always to remember when it's really exciting, really good, really expansive, that's when the mind tends to be the most freaked out. Even just doing this podcast is such a lovely reminder of the truth of that. So I hope that it lands with you in a positive way as well, that you're not alone, and that if you're about ready to expand in some way, that's really potent and important. Likely, you are having lots of big sword energies come your way so all the more reason to really lean in and befriend these beautiful anchors.
I love you Wild Souls. Be well, take care. Links in the show notes for those courses that I mentioned. Can't wait to see you for Monthly Medicine and, again, until we meet for that episode, please, take care of yourselves.
[Conclusion]
(Instrumental exit music)
[1:01:41]
Thank you so much for listening to Tarot for the Wild Soul.
This podcast was edited by Chase Voorhees. The podcast art is by Chelsea Iris Granger and it is hosted by me, Lindsay Mack. For more about the podcast, visit wildsoulpodcast.com or follow us on Instagram, @wildsoulhealing. For more about me and my work, please visit lindsaymack.com.
To support Tarot for the Wild Soul, please consider subscribing to the podcast on iTunes and leaving us a five star review. It helps people find us and it is greatly greatly appreciated.
Thank you so much for being here.
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