June 22-24, 2014; Eight of Swords

Al-Shariyf

INTERFERENCE
(Previously called, “Shortened Force.”)
Eight of Swords

Meditation Pattern: Place Atu X, Fortune, and Atu VI, The Lovers, side-by-side, with the 8 of Swords above them.

Traditional Description: Four pairs of swords, points upwards, emanate (two pairs each) from the bottom corners of the figure. All their points touch near the top of the card. Above and below are the Decanate symbols of Jupiter and Gemini.

Hod of Air: Unexpected interference or bad luck. Indecision. Lack of persistence in matters of intellect, contest, or effort. Constraint of mental faculties, possibly through overdoing it; “over-trained,” “overqualified,” “misses the forest for the trees.” Narrow, restricted, petty. Controlling by use of intellect.

Jupiter/Gemini: Too much force applied to small things; attention wasted on detail, at the expense of the principal and more important points; obfuscation. If ill-dignified, these qualities produce malice, pettiness, and domineering characteristics. Patience in detail of study; great care in some things, counterbalanced by equal disorder in others. Impulsive; equally fond of giving or receiving money or gifts; generous, clever, acute, selfish, and without strong feeling of affection. Admires wisdom, yet applies it to small and unworthy objects. Versatile (or distractible); obliging
(or overly conciliatory); well-mannered (when this may not be warranted); avoidant; carefree (or superficial).

Mercury + Jupiter: Intellectual; but frivolous, mischievous, unable to focus or concentrate, absentminded, autistic. If well-dignified: may indicate common sense, a gift for speech, ease of learning, resourcefulness.

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Danica

Such polarization of mind-stuff that it goes against itself.
Turmoil of intellectual processes, because there is no wider picture available to grasp; mind continuously “irritated” by its relationship with what’s Higher than itself, but painfully aware of its own limitation in this.
Inadequate communication; “mixing the planes”(and apples & oranges).
Empty intellectualism and academism (all -isms?); a lot of information that passes for “knowledge”, but little practice.
These are the Swords guarding the Sanctuary; either you are stopped outside by them, or you pass (by understanding them and their function).
Dialogues, everyday communication, verbal interchange.
Too much intellectual power in this card, but it seems hard to focus it (direct it) into practice, into a particular work. Concentration broken, loss of attention among many impressions and bounty of information.
Prattlers gathered before a Temple (or before a Holy Book); sophists in ancient Greece.

Empty blabbering, gossip; superficial approach to divination; being burdened by small, insignificant things; bad concentration, mind focused on many objects at once, not actually properly focused on any.
Prejudices as an “easier way” of facing experience.
Both Air (Swords) and Hod tend to fickleness and oscillation, this is the “source” of all negative aspects here. On the positive, constructive side: mind permeable to and guided by the essential life-force (Kaph); handling the Sward while fully conscious that “I am divided for love’s sake, for the chance of union”.
Reading, learning, thinking, analysis and synthesis; working on recognition of patterns and searching for the background connection between the different spheres/subjects, etc.
Prolific writer who managed to adequately channel his/her inspiration into rhythmical (like Ritual) work on a daily basis.
People who are “workers of Word” – journalists, novelists, poets, translators, to an extend teachers, etc. (But: there’s no way to translate a poem, you can only make an adaptation, if you have sense for the poetic)

Chaos of mental activity in continual spinning/circling (chita vritti).
Applied reason, with all of its machinery; often, it defies itself, is in contradictions and is self-destructive.
Daily news; trivia. Unstable mind.
Can be either highly fecund, or utterly futile, depending on the relation of Vau/Air/The Son to the He’’(Earth, The Daughter), and also to the extent of its being-open & transmissible in relation to Supernals (Yod-He’, Father & Mother).

Al-Shariyf

Day one:
Hyperbolic thinking, scope creep, micromanaging, myopia, can't see the forest for the trees, frivolity, overly analytical, extremely mentally rigid and narrow-minded, exceptional accounting skills, restrictive thinking, flip-flopping

Day two:
Being too smart for one's own good, OCD, intellect impedes growth and development, domineering, prejudice, rigid pre-conceived notions, prohibiting one from seeing the way things really are, mentally entrenched

Day three:
clever, cunning, methodical thinking, "my way or the high way", being persnickety, action prohibited by over thinking