January 15, 2010 - Nine of Quills (Swords)

Want to know how often your mind circles round on it's hamster wheel of thoughts and worries? Start a daily tarot practice. I suspect you may not be as obsessive as I am about some things, like love for example. Does he? Doesn't he? Will he? Won't he? He loves me. He loves me not. Up and down, round and round I go. Still, even you might be surprised the times the tarot tells you to snap out of it, and here you thought you were evolving, progressing, moving right along that path of enlightenment.

This is not the first time I've gotten the Nine of Swords. It is a card of misery, usually self-imposed. I won't say there's no reason for it. Where there's smoke there's fire. If you doubt your love, no doubt there are some legitimate reasons. The thing is, you worry them, like a dog a bone. Or rather, I do. I sniff out all the ways things can go wrong. When they do, I'm not at all surprised. Of course it can be some time before my thinking the worst comes true. In the meantime, I've lost the blessings of some wonderful times always marked by the loss I'm sure is just around the corner. And of course there's the possibility of manifesting the worst as opposed to the best. If you travel in New Age circles you hear this a lot, how if you think negatively that's what you draw because that's what you have given energy to. It could be right, probably is, although I hate the idea that I'm my own torturer even if it's true. I do know that I ended up losing someone very important to me because of my fear. I reacted, badly, and the fact I was so scared is no excuse. Maybe things still would have ended as they did but I have the dubious honor of knowing I made this nail bed I lie on.

In the Jane Austen Tarot, the Nine of Quills (Swords) depicts Catherine Morland of Northanger Abbey caught in the nightmares of her own imagining. Of course they do have some basis in fact. General Tilney is a man more interested in fortune than his children's happiness. Once he finds Catherine is not an heiress he sends her packing. But he did not murder his wife. Catherine embarrasses herself in front of the man she loves all because she let her imagination and fears get the best of her.

So, guess it's time to hop off my particular hamster wheel of "he loves me; he loves me not." I don't have to interpret words, wonder what's behind them. I can read actions, the truest indicator of who a person is, the depth and breadth and soul of them. I can use all this energy and imagination for the real trials and troubles of my life instead of borrowing sorrow and worry. How many times do you need to get the same card before you get the message? As many times as it takes. Maybe at last I'm getting this.

"God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference."

The Serenity Prayer is not just for AA.