Four of Swords – The Naked Heart Tarot* by Jillian C. Wilde

Raw Truth

It seems my post from last night struck a chord with many of you. As shocking as the image of that poor rat, impaled by ten swords as it was, the raw truth of its message feels undeniable. After all – it took ten swords to kill that rat, that persistent story, that frame through which we observe and judge ourselves, our family, our country, or maybe even the whole world. The time has come for us to ‘stick a fork’ in old paradigms that no longer work and which, maybe, stopped working a long time ago.

It’s hard to let go of cherished versions of the way things are. In fact, a lot of times we don’t even realize that what we believe or tell ourselves is so, isn’t (and maybe never was).

And we humans can be so amazingly stubborn. It doesn’t matter how many times we may be shown exactly how circumstances or relationships are not as we imagine them to be, we persist in seeing what we want to see rather than what’s actually there (or isn’t). Hence why we need all those swords to finally get the message across.

The Foundation

We’re being asked and, if we don’t comply, forced to reassess some pretty fundamental and core beliefs this year. I’ve been suggesting that this drastic disruption of our foundations is reflected in the planets, specifically how Saturn is squaring Uranus three times throughout 2021. As energies that influence us wax and wane, it’s easy to tell ourselves we’ve done the work being asked of us – only to discover, like the unexpected kick of a mule (not one of my precious donkeys!), that we were only telling ourselves we’d shed those beliefs. Turns out we do still believe the stories we’ve been telling ourselves all this time.

The longer we persist in playing this game with ourselves, the longer we avoid taking our place at the helm of our lives.

All of which brings me back to the card I chose last Saturday (The Hermit) and the card that supported and gave context and foundation to yesterday’s 10 of Swords: the 4 of Swords.

Time and Space

Now more than ever we need to give ourselves space to simply be with our own thoughts and feelings. It seems so simple, doesn’t it? And yet, at least for me, it is one of the hardest things to actually permit myself to experience. Maybe it’s because I don’t want to look at how some of the beliefs I’ve held all my life aren’t true. Or how some of the relationships I thought were rock solid turned out to be ephemeral.

The truth is, we all require a safe place where we can simply be; a place where we can look at what is no longer solid and decide to build new foundations elsewhere.

Don’t forget to give yourselves that safe place as we navigate these turbulent circumstances. Find that place of stillness. Don’t be afraid to look and see what’s really there. Then we won’t be nearly as surprised when (and if) the structures we though were there crumble before our eyes.

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(T-100)