We do create our own life stories and the seeds of this personal legend lay within our desires to accomplish what will make us feel most like ourselves.
Author: Michelle Embree
Michelle Embree is an author, a Tarotist, performer, and podcaster. She has toured her work throughout the US over the span of two decades. Enjoy her podcast Secret Antenna on Spotify or her latest book: Daydream Tarot: A Basic Guide For Visionaries. You can purchase this book, schedule a Tarot reading, and find out more here: www.michelleembree.com
The Two of Swords means it is time to go deep into our core selves. This card will often appear when what we face is
Powerful rulers once employed alchemists to attempt the arduous process of creating gold from non-precious metals by way of magic. Though the tale is told that alchemists could, in fact, accomplish this task, it is said that they could not produce this gold in large quantities. It is also said that the attempt to perfect this process of gold making is how we wound up with both porcelain and gunpowder.
A naturally occurring conflict erupts from the basic inequities of society that remain part of the aligned group. Those organizing for their collective rights as workers will still be dealing with misogyny, racism, homophobia, and even classism because we internalize the bias we survive. This is a Five of Wands conflict in that one is not at odds with the goals of the others in the group but with the preexisting and unexamined social prejudices held by individuals. This is a worthy conflict that furthers the lofty goals of equity throughout society and it must be taken head-on with skill, strategy, and resolve.
The negative aspects associated with The Hierophant include dogma, spiritual institutionalism, favoring hierarchy over righteousness, and keeping sacred secrets from general knowledge. This card is
This figure could be Odin, who is often known as the god of war and death in Norse cosmology, hanging in the Yggdrasil tree. Odin wanted to know everything so he made a number of sacrifices in order to gain the knowledge and wisdom he desired, including giving up one eye and impaling himself on his own sword. After these acts, he strung himself up in the tree of life for nine days and nine nights over the course of which he learned the secret language of the runes. Through his ordeals, Odin also gained the capacity for both prophecy and shapeshifting. He is often depicted with his two ravens, Thought and Memory (Hugin and Munin), who fly around the world and report back with what they see.
The Seven of Swords is a point of no return. If we read the card as deception, we know lies can not be taken back. Once the lie has been told, it cannot be untold. We might forgive the transgression and move on, but the relationship has shifted and is no longer the relationship in which the lie took place.
The concept of Judgement has a fairly negative or frightening ring to most ears. We anticipate being scrutinized and summed up by a court system
It is not the case that any old job is worthy of our labor as long as we do our best. How our livelihoods feel to us is more than a matter of our internal perception of the effort itself. We need work that we value and is valued by a society that rewards our efforts with not only financial compensation but due respect and ample amounts of downtime.
The World is the final card in the Major Arcana and it offers us both physical and psychological freedom from our past. The World gives us a type of peace that is equivalent to grace though we are likely to resist the gift because it does not conform to our desire to be unwounded or to acquire that which we once sought.