CARDS FOR THE WEEK

September 16th-September 22nd, 2024

This week’s cards are The Knight of Swords and The Lovers. They tell us about the tension between intensity and consistency in living out our values.

This week’s deck is Ink and Intuition: Tattoo Tarot.

In tarot, all of the Knights are about action, about forward movement. With the knights, I use the pronoun “he,” but please know that the Knights and what they represent can be of any gender. Like all of the court cards in tarot, the Knight could represent an aspect of you, it could represent an aspect of someone you know, or it could just reflect the general vibe of your life right now.

The Knight of Swords moves forward toward his goals quickly, with bat-out-of-hell intensity. This Knight is adamant. Adamant about what exactly? Oh, everything, but in particular, matters of an intellectual and ideological nature. The Truth with a capital T. However, this Knight often has tunnel vision and often misses the human element in pursuit of his ideals. He can be laser-precise in going after what he considers important, but clumsy and callous about the collateral damage he causes along the way. This is the type of person who gets into a political discussion and self-righteously argues without checking facts or considering the context in which other people live. This is a person who has an “ends justify means” mentality. This is a person who alienates others because they are so “real” and “unfiltered.”

For all of the negative, the Knight of Swords has the significant talent of getting right to the heart of any matter with a pithy comment or insightful observation. In this sense, this Knight’s appearance heralds the initial stages of values clarification, where you can use intense focus to burn away what’s superfluous and elevate what is essential in your life. What do you really want? What is really important to you? What “should’s” do you need to ignore because they’re not authentic to you? The Knight of Swords suggests that is would benefit you to pay attention to these questions this week.

As long as you give something your sincere attention, you’ll have something true to contribute. The Knight of Swords doesn’t sugar coat and is definitely not passive-aggressive. You’ll never, ever wonder where the Knight of Swords is coming from or what he believes. He will definitely tell you, even if you don’t ask. Apply this internally, and write down what you honestly think, feel, and believe about a given issue.

The other theme this week comes from The Lovers card. The Lovers card is from the Major Arcana, so in some ways its themes are a bit more over-arching, though it’s not necessarily going to overpower the Knight of Swords in the moment. It’s what I like to call a slow-burn card. The Lovers is also about our values and where we choose to invest our time and emotional labor in a consistent fashion. As one of my favorite writers, Zadie Smith, says, “Time is how you spend your love.”

The Lovers is about what we care about enough to exchange days, weeks, months, and years of our life. It is a card that is weighted and fated. Some traditional interpretations say that, yes, you may have a significant relationship in your life either beginning or coming up for review, hence the lovers on the card. But the underlying meaning of the card is really about choice. How do your choices reveal what you value? If the two don’t line up, that probably means you need to make different choices.

In the Rider-Waite-Smith version of the card, the two figures are said to resemble Adam and Eve. Their story represents a choice if there ever was one. A choice between the approval of a God that wants to keep them in a state of ignorant bliss… or knowledge, even though it comes with tremendous, destiny-for-all-humanity-level costs. What do you choose to value enough even if you may have to pay for it with objective pain, difficulty, and disapproval from others? What is worth it?

This week’s cards encourage you to carefully consider that choice, to think about your choices in the context of all that you are and who you surround yourself with, and to only commit to a choice you can back up with your actions, again and again. Otherwise, like the Knight of Swords, you risk being a blow-hard, or as in one of my favorite Texan phrases, all hat and no cattle. Yes, definitely use the insight and quick intelligence of the Knight of Swords to help you get to the bottom of what you believe. Talk, journal, argue. Remember, it’s often what you do that often carries the most weight after the beginning. Sometimes, however, your words can overlap with your deeds, so make sure that any written or verbal agreements you make reflect your true values and not what is merely convenient, expedient, or just aligns with a bloodless, idealized version of reality that only serves you.

So that’s it. That’s the reading. I hope you have a wonderful week! Next weekend, I’ll be celebrating my 41st birthday on the Fall Equinox, so next’s week’s newsletter may be delayed (or it may not, who knows! Haha).

As always, I am deeply grateful for each and every one of my readers. Please don’t hesitate to comment below and let me know how this reading plays out for you.

XOXO

Layla

Reading: The House of Broken Angels, by Luis Alberto Urrea.

Listening to: Pacific Notions radio show with DJ Alex on KEXP Seattle