Today's Tarot - 2 of Swords

The 2 of swords is often read as "mystical unity" or some reference to re-joining, or reunification or one-ness from many. I suspect it is from the crossed swords on the classic Rider-Waite artwork.


I was reading earlier, doing research for "The Vampire Diet" when I came across an interesting statement..."We believe the body is the vessel for our spirit." (Valentine, Cunningham Kindle version, location 116-18) On the surface, this seems like a very enlightened thing for a diet book to say. It is certainly head and shoulders above the body-focused diets that have been popular in the past.


Yet it just doesn't get real mind-body unity. Yet again, it smacks of the way modern medicine uses holistic-ish things in a modern medicine way...like prescribing an herb in the same way you would prescribe a medication...holistic health doesn't work that way.


Neither does real whole-ness, mind-body connection OR the 2 of swords for that matter. (YES - you know I'm loving the chance to put my two favorite topics in one blog post, holistic health and tarot!)


Think of this spirit-in-the-body concept as water in a glass. Yes, it is IN the glass, but the water and the glass are not ONE, they are not a holistic unit. The glass can break, but the water doesn't.  You can evaporate the water, but the glass continues essentially unchanged. While this is a beautiful example of how the spirit can continue after death...it isn't an example of wholeness.


While alive, the mind, body and spirit are unified in a much more integral way. The body isn't the spirit's muscle car. The body is deeply inhabited, right down to the cellular level. We are more like water in a sponge than water in a glass. Either way, the water and the thing holding it can be separated, but while together, the integration is more complex, deep, and thorough...more sponge than "vessel".


That is one of many lessons the Two of Swords can teach. Not the structural differences between a glass and a sponge...the idea of real unity. At this level, the analogy becomes even less like water in a glass or a sponge, but more like salt dissolved in water. The card hints at unity taken to another level, a cosmic level. We are one with the cosmos even more than salt molecules are one with  the water molecules in the ocean. When you are talking about all-that-is, that kind of unity can be a very powerful idea.


So mad props to the authors for teaching about body-spirit connection in a diet book, but I think it is worth remembering we are more than souls in a vessel, we are spirits saturating the material world, which can be both comforting and empowering, exactly the intent of the 2 of swords.


Source: Valentine, J., Cunningham, J., 2003 "Weight Solutions: The New Body-Mind-Spirit Approach"  Kindle edition, originally with Trafford Publishing.

Daily Meditation Tarot Reading - 2 of Swords

Two of Swords: The over-guarded heart is starved and isolated...not protected. Emotion, good and bad, is part of the human experience.






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2 of swords: In Memoriam

Humans are social creatures. We enjoy feeling like we are part of a group, that we have a connection to something larger than ourselves. That sentiment has been applied to everything from "star children" to religions to a favorite bar. We like it when other people know our name.
The 2 of swords has many meanings, but one of my favorites is "mystical unity" (Morgan, 2003). Most often the sense of this card is individual and internal. In a reading, it often speaks of our individual connection to the cosmic or to the divine. Today the sense of the card is different. It is about the connection amoung groups. There is the connections of one human to many others, the connection to that something larger.  The connotation of this connection is one of universality. The sense if it is of something larger than all of us...something we all can get behind no matter what other ideology may separate us. It is like people of all creeds and walks of life being able to appreciate a good bowl of soup on a cold day: It is basic and transcendent all at the same time.
On of my favorite expressions this idea is when a meeting of like minds is not organized in any way, but rather is a spontaneous experience. That feeling of being a part of something greater is more powerful when it springs from a time of unspoken assent and wordless unison. It is a little like the way everyone cheered at the explosion of the Death Star at the theaters when the remastered Star Wars was released. No one told us to cheer. It was a shared cultural experience with a room full of random strangers who just happen to love the same movie.
I had another experience like that while camping with some college friends. None of us are particularly morning people, but we had to get up early to make it home in time to get to work the next day. The only sound outside of the tiny chime of a digital watch alarm was the morning birds. We all got up, and without a word just did what needed done. The camp was down and we were standing by our cars in half an hour.  Even though we were friends, this was the first time and only the second day camping together for this group. It was a stuporous, coffee-less mind-meld of epic proportions considering the personalities involved.
It felt the same way last night when the first tweet came.
I'm a science geek. I like technology. I like twitter, smart phones, blogs, quantum theory, Carl Sagan and CERN. That is my "other". That is my like-minded peer group as much as tarot, psychics, intuition and spirituality. Maybe more so.
When the news broke last night of Steve Job's passing, you could feel a global moment of respect and silence. The universe gave way, we could sense the dent.
Everyone who was a tiny bit tech minded, especially those of us who remember the days of a blank screen and a blinking C prompt, touched a sort of cosmic ethernet of respect and condolence. In our hearts and our minds - some literally - we raised lighted iphones and ipads and ipods in silent, unified tribute.
In sympathy, and with condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Steve Jobs.


Morgan, Diane. Magical Tarot, Mystical Tao St. Martin's Griffen Publishers, 2003.

Daily meditation reading: 2 of swords

2 of Swords: wholeness means past and future co-exist. That which you cherish is still with you and abundance to come is fulfilled already.

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2 of Swords and the Gulf Oil Spill

The suite of swords often asks us to look at our relationship with authority and society of the whole.

The news of the Gulf oil spill is almost inescapable...as it should be. If this isn't a frying pan over the head, I don't know what would be. Oil will end eventually, it will just be gone, done, burned, over. Then what? We missed our first chance back in the 70s with the embargo and solar panels on the white house...now we are getting a more urgent message to change.

The 2 of swords is a card often read as "mystical unity". I think of it, as always, in holistic terms. Tarot works as a guide because the physical cards, the mind and intuition reading them, the spirit / esoteric / unknown elements at play...all are part of one greater, seamless whole.

Current events can be viewed as part of that whole, that mystic unity.

The question this card asks today is how can you harm nature...anyone or anything...without in turn harming yourself? We are all one, all connected. This is also the mechanism of the "rule of 3s" or the idea of "what goes around comes around"

Harm the environment, and we harm ourselves. We are all united. The harm we do to nature is harm we do to ourselves and those we love.

We use oil, gas, and electricity, and we are part of the fires, disasters and loss of life.

"We work the black seam together" as the song goes.

How do you ally your energies? Are you willing, knowing partner in disaster, or do you cast your intents and actions with a different vision? To what are you mystically united?

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