THE THREE OF SWORDS REDUX

The Three of Swords in the Rider/Waite/Smith Tarot

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Three of Swords recently as in its best aspect it can be about singing. However, given the turmoil with which my determination to reclaim singing is rife, it really is a more fully negative Three of Swords experience – at first blush, that is. If you haven’t read my previous post, I have joined a chorus here in my new retirement community home in California. I haven’t tried singing in decades and even when I was, I was always terrified – not stage fright, mind you, stage terror – of singing in front of others, even close friends or family.

What I think tends to get lost in all the negative takes on the Three of Swords – you needn’t have studied Tarot to get what they are from just looking at the above version - is that the sorrow and pain it references goes some place. The storm ends, the sun breaks through. For me, the sun has come out brighter each time after I have hung in and weathered whatever the singing storm rained down upon me. I..e, I did not give up, or try to blame myself or others but went straight on through that storm, keeping as focused as possible on what I knew to be my love of singing. (By the way, these storms are internal, mostly stirred up by old family history that I’m still working through. The folk around me are wonderfully supportive and encouraging, though they know little to nothing of my “storms” or their terrible intensity.)

So what does this all say about the Three of Swords? Yes, there is pain and deep sorrow in life. But if we can go with it all and not give ourselves further grief by fighting the process or playing the blaming game or assuming further dire circumstances will come as a result, it all does most definitely tend to change. I’ll even go further and say that the nature of existence is to change. As one meaning for the Two of Disks (Pentacles) in The Thoth deck says: the only stability is change.

Boil this all down? Riding out the storms in our lives with a “wait and see” attitude. Though I must admit that for me in my reclaiming of singing it’s like riding a bucking bronco. I do hope I’ll become a more skilled rider with an at least somewhat tamer mount as I go along. :-) To see my previous post about The Three of Swords, with additional meanings, click here.

For comparison, here’s two more Three of Swords cards:

The Three of Swords in The Thoth Tarot

The Three of Swords in The Karma Tarot

And lastly, here’s a link to a You Tube video with the artist of the Mountain Dream Tarot about the Three of Swords card:

Video of Bea Nettles, creator of Mountain Dream Tarot

If you’re not familiar with the Mountain Dream Tarot, here’s a link to some cards from it:

Mountain Dream Tarot on Aeclectic.net

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‘til next time, keep knowing that all things change, and enjoying The Tarot,

[aka: Patricia Kelly]
****If you wish to copy or use any of my writing, please email me for permission (under “View my complete profile”)**** SEE ALSO: Roswila’s Dream & Poetry Realm for Tarot poetry; Roswila’s Taiga Tarot for taiga (illustrated tanka); and Yahoo DREAMJIN: Group for Dreamku – Haiku-Like Dream Poems.****