February 28, 2012 - March 1, 2012: 7 of Swords
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FUTILITY
(Previously called, “Unstable Effort.”)
Seven of SwordsMeditation Pattern: Place Atu II, The Priestess, and Atu XVII, The Star, side-by-side, with the 6 of Swords above them.
Traditional Description: Two sets of three swords each, extended from opposite sides of the figure. A seventh sword reaches upward through their center. The points of all the swords just touch each other, the central sword not altogether dividing them. The rose of the previous symbols of this suit twines its stem about the blade of the central sword, its blossom opening fully near the tip thereof, as if the victory were at its disposal. Symbols of Luna and Aquarius above and below.
Netzach of Air: Calculating, clever, adaptable; or conniving, deceitful, and unreliable. In character, untrustworthy. Flight, departure, avoidance, refusal or failure at confrontation.
Luna/Aquarius: Loss of energy, diffusion, uncertainty, doubt, vacillation, unstable effort. Unreliable, mentally distractible. Incapable of sustained effort. Yielding when victory is within grasp, as if the last reserves of strength were used up. Inclination to lose when on the threshold of winning, through not continuing the effort. Partial success at best. Love of abundance, fascinated by display; given to complaints, affronts, and insolences, and to spy upon others. Inclined to betray confidences, not always intentionally but through inattentiveness or weakness.
Netzach/Venus + Luna: Passivity, emotional, desire for comfort, moodiness, shyness, easily influenced by others, good intentions but unrealistic assessment. If well-dignified, may add tenderness, emotional expressiveness, affection, grace; but the quality of the suit of Swords seriously impedes these more desirable, tender, and feeling aspects of Venus and the Moon.
http://pturing.firehead.org/occult/thelema/libri/The Book of Thoth/thoth/swords07.jpg
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The colors of this layout are wonderful and unusual.
[attachment=0:3lq2vm3h]<!-- ia0 -->Swords 7.jpg<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:3lq2vm3h]
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When I see all of those colors blending together what immediately comes to my mind is mist. Not cool refreshing mist. I mean the kind of rainy mist that makes driving annoying and walking in it even more annoying.
As far as the card itself is concerned, a lot of intellectual effort (an unnecessary amount) is being used to produce crap results. Underneath it all is a fundamental flaw in thinking. The source of the flaw is a skewed view of what is possible and what can be done.
At best, the opportunity for correction presents itself when we get to the source of the flaw.
Some other ideas that came to my mind were: honesty vs. dishonesty, being superstitious, being too afraid to tell the truth, talking a lot but saying nothing worthwhile
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Excellent summary of an often frustrating state.
This stretch of cards reminds me to get back to basics: the 7 of Swords is showing us how the level of Swords interacts with our desire nature - producing pretty much what you observed. Similarly, the 8 will show us how Swords interact with our intellect, and the 9 with how they interact with our existing emotional patterns, especially reactive patterns.
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Jim,
Thanks for keeping this project on the board.
I recently gave myself a tarot card reading using a spread called the Psychosynthesis Spread, which is based on a loose adaptation of Roberto Assagioli's Psychosynthesis Egg diagram.
You can check out the spread along with a reading using the spread here --->> tarotelements.com/4267/the-psychosynthesis-tarot-spread/
The 7 of swords came up in the reading, occupying the position in the spread attributed to the "Higher Unconscious" in Assagioli's system. In short, the higher unconcscious is holds our highest aspirations that are seeking to express themselves but for one reason or another we repress them.
While I am still in the process of working out how my highest aspirations relate to this card, I got the idea that there is a direct connection between the energies represented by this card and the energies represented by the 10 of wands (Oppression), 8 of cups (Indolence) and 7 of disks (Failure).
Juat wanted to share that observation and spark a conversation for anyone that may find this interesting
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@Al-Shariyf said
"While I am still in the process of working out how my highest aspirations relate to this card, I got the idea that there is a direct connection between the energies represented by this card and the energies represented by the 10 of wands (Oppression), 8 of cups (Indolence) and 7 of disks (Failure).
"To me..., the things that these cards all have in common is the characterization of their energy in words that have "vice" connotations for me. In fact, if memory serves me correctly, they are perhaps the only four names for the cards that I tend to want to tweak to make better because I'd like to be able to say that none of the energies expressed by the cards are necessarily "bad." But everything I think of I can also criticize as insufficient. "Veil not your vices in virtuous words: these vices are my service..." criticizes me in this thought as well.
For the 7 of Swords - it would be something along the lines of the overly wordy "Desire for the victory of one 'correct' perspective alone," which desire seems to have been judged by the ideal of the 2 of Swords as an illusory hope and labeled "Futility," which to me, misses an actual expression of the desire but does seem to wrap up the desire and its consequences all together in the feeling of frustation it ultimately creates.
It's interesting to me that the 7 of Swords is a Moon card, while the latter three are Saturn cards. This distinction aside, the thing that it strikes me that they all have in common is some form of frustration with the limitations of reality. They all are able to be related to the idea of frustration quite easily - at least to me.