defeat the Three of Swords

[Saturnus9]

everybodies favorite card **choke**. i like using tarot cards for incite on a situation, but i don't believe in fate. i feel that i am in control of what should really happen. we should be able to cut our own threads.


how do you all deal with this mortifyingly powerful card? any example situations?


this card came up for me and i wanted to see how everyone deals with it. I really feel that issues with the Three of Swords should be confronted. It shouldn't be a condemnation to yourself or the situation. the Swords card are our cards of action to become manifestation. if you get this card, there should be an action; it mustn't control our fate. this card does tell you to move on to avoid severe pain. However, the pain is a product of our inaction.

any ideas on this, people?

[aranarose]

The Three of Swords is my best friend lately... Confront it. Ask yourself what is causing (or will cause) the pain that this card represents. Can you avoid it? Sometimes we can, sometimes we can't. If you can avoid it, do so. Otherwise, start asking how you can deal with the pain, and begin working on healing.

[brymble]

I love the entire suit of swords. swords and the challenges they represent are the gateway to opening the heart chakra, and challenge means change!

I think the greatest lesson of this particular card is not "heart ache" as it is often interpreted, but the challenge of surrendering ego and letting go of outcomes. It is a reminder both of our smallness and our greatness. It frees us from the illusions of protection and control, and shows how we can trancend the most uncomfortable emotional pain. The lesson of this card is that when you are open to and moving with your True Will, yes, you are greater than even this great pain. Remember the original meaning of suffering is not misery, but endurance. You can rise above even this.

In holistic healing, pain is a teacher, drawing our attention to what needs healing. While we all deserve freedom from excessive pain, I think it's also important to listen to our pain, and to understand where it's coming from. Are we hurting because we do not have things the way we think we want them, or because we are fighting our own True Will? (Not the same thing as the ego-projection of little "w" will!) Are we hurting because we are unhappy with the conditions of our lives, or because we are putting conditions upon our own happiness that may be out of our control? When we are listening to the lessons of this card, we are learning that it is easier to place your goal in your path, than to try to force your path in the direction of your goal.

I love this card, I'm greatful for it and its lessons! Such a wonderful, powerful teacher!

[LisaT4P]

My trick to dealing with this card is to remember that IT IS NOT A CUPS CARD!

I don't care if it is an image of a heart... it is likely to have less to do with your emotions than you think. :)

I see the suit of swords as Air, so here... the pain is caused by communication or lack thereof.

If you see it as Wands, what sort of actions can you take re: the pain?

[SweetIsTheTruth]

how do you all deal with this mortifyingly powerful card? any example situations?

This card is somewhat of an anamoly at first glance. It definitely shows sorrow and pain, with the 3 swords penetrating a heart in most decks. What is so odd about this is, the suit of swords is typically associated with thoughts, yet the meaning would appear to be strictly emotional, which would place the card more in the realm of cups than swords.

Yet, if we look at it more closely, we can discover how intimately our thoughts are related to our emotions. In other words, our thoughts or beliefs can indeed affect our emotions. Our thoughts can be the cause that effects our emotions. Consider the case of a battered wife. Somewhere deep inside of her, she THINKS or BELIEVES she deserves to be abused. It's that belief that leads to the sorrow depicted in the three of swords. If such a person changes that THOUGHT to 'I don't deserve abuse,' she frees herself from the abuse, based on this change in thought. Whenever the 3 of swords appears, I am lead to look into what thoughts or beliefs might be causing sorrow, pain or hurt. In changing such thoughts, sorrow can be avoided.

[Windsmith]

I refer to this as "the melodrama card." If you take a look at the card in the Victoria Regina tarot (http://www.thefool.com/vr/index.asp?viewcard=3s) (which I use), you can see why. What it says to me is that the situation is not as terrible as it seems; rather, it is our own preoccupation with the situation that gives it extra power and makes it appear all-consuming and insurmountable to us. If we open our eyes and study the realities of the situation, a solution quickly becomes clear, and the problem seems easily defeated.

[HedwigHarfang]

I think tarot is more complicated than mere "insight" or "fortune-telling". In areas where there is scope for future predictions, some cards do definitely hint at a real crisis coming up. Since we are not all in charge of our own fates (other people act to change that all the time), there are times when there has to be a little sadness, grief or mortification before the process can begin anew. My soul-mate has wanted to be Prime Minister for many years, but when he had his chance at an election was beaten back by Tony Blair. There is nothing stopping him from trying again, because the current leader is looking pretty dicey and threadbare, but on the other hand other people have to recognise this and allow him a second chance. Fate also transpired to keep us apart for many years - if we really had been in charge of our own destinies, I would have been able to grow up around him and he with me. As it is, we only met properly for the first time as political allies in 1999 and immediately he felt the consequences of knowing each other even as loosely as that by being sacked from the front bench after whispers of him having an affair with me. It took us a further eight years to meet up again, during which time M was attacked and badly beaten up (he was in hospital in intensive care for a week and bedridden for a month), and his former wife became nurse rather than lover to him and they divorced amicably, finally allowing us to come together as lovers. Fate helped us together under circumstances more acceptable than most "sleaze" scandals allow.

The tarot is moving towards being used more for self-analysis and self-development, but we cannot ignore the role other people play in deciding our fates and therefore although we would at a stroke cut out any possibilities for sadness from life there are times when the 3 of Swords - or even the 10 - must be faced with dignity and spiritual boldness.

Asking the tarot perhaps to clarify the card is easy: I normally deal four cards around it:

-----1------
-2---S---3-
-----4------

where S is the card to be clarified, the positions are as follows:

1 - Conscious feelings
2 - Past
3 - Future
4 - Subconscious feelings

This gives me some more insight into the issues raised by the card; however, I find reading for myself a little bit too opaque and to get a firmer hold on what my future holds I tend to enjoy reading for others instead. God or Whoever brings to us the people who hold different perspectives into our own condition and allows us to learn from their spreads in order to help in our own lives. M used to enjoy reading at parties (before he made it into the British Cabinet and the papers found out about it!); I'm better at written readings but it still helps us to get more perspectives on our own futures to see what others around us bring to us to sort out.