April 23, 2010 - Nine of Swords

Astrologically speaking, I am an Air sign.  I live in my head.  When I was young this was a gift for it got me through.  And it has its good side, the ability to see what would be, what you're aiming for, what is possible.  However, it also has its bad side -- seeing what could be, where I'm headed, what is possible.  I can live lifetimes in my head, have lived lifetimes.  Some days I'm so exhausted from futuring I crawl into bed and retreat gratefully into dreams, the one place I let unfold without my conscious effort.  I can lucid dream, but don't.  Yet I have no trouble in waking life, skipping years ahead, telling and retelling my story, trying to make it work out just my liking.  It's paradoxical, this hands on, hands off attitude, and perfectly human.

The Nine of Swords is a card of worry, guilt and anguish.  In the deepest dark of the dark night of the soul, the figure rises up and sobs, unable to escape the worries and fears that seem more surmountable in the light of day.  Often, in my worst of times, I could make it through the daylight hours without breaking down, but at night my eyes seeped tears I could not seem to stop.  Anguish seems too small a word for what I felt.

The Nine of Swords is about the pain we put ourselves through, our own worries and fears.  It reminds us that we are best at torturing ourselves, judging ourselves, hurting ourselves.  There is physical cutting and there is emotional cutting.  I never took a knife to my skin but I would take memories, regrets, and hurt and work away at my poor heart.  The anguish seemed nearly unbearable but such better than the numb, dumb pain of the rest of my life.

I am my own worst enemy.  I overthink things.  In the name of managing (control) I furiously and tirelessly work to keep all my balls in the air, to get and keep that happy ending.  It's exhausting and it's impossible.  I know some writers claim they control a story from beginning to end but I think that's just talk.  Stories like life ask you to collaborate but we never get it all our way.  At least I haven't managed.  You may be of sterner, stronger stuff.

In the Jane Austen Tarot, the Nine of Swords depicts Catherine Morland beset by her doubts and fears and dark imaginings as she spends time at Northanger Abby.  Catherine is a young woman of sweet disposition, intelligence, but an extremely active, some might say over-active, imagination.  It doesn't take her long to come under the influence of the gothic novels she's read and the shadowed past of the people and home she is visiting.  She grows sure that General Tilney has murdered his wife.  The General is not a kind man nor a particularly good one.  He is neither a loving father nor was he a loving husband, not surprising at the time of this novel.  It was Jane Austen's world.  Still, he was not a murderer.  Catherine let her imagination run away with her and in so doing jeopardizes her new friendship and burgeoning love.

The astrological correspondence for the Nine of Swords is Mars in Gemini.  That is the natal position of my Mars.  In such a position, the red planet in the mercurial sign of the intellect, the mind often runs away with us.  It works overtime, often to our detriment.  My mind does that and my work it seems, these days, is to find other ways to occupy it, ways that don't rely on focusing on all that could go wrong.  That will then leave it plenty of energy to form creative strategies to deal with the times things do go awry.  The key is to come to discriminate between real and imaginary hurts and foes, to stay in the present even when the future calls, tugs, pulls me towards "what ifs".  When those "what ifs" become "what is" then I'll worry about them.