June 25-27, 2014: Nine of Swords

Al-Shariyf

DESPAIR & CRUELTY
Nine of Swords

Meditation Pattern: Place Atu XVI, The Tower, and Atu VI, The Lovers, side-by-side, with the 9 of Swords above them.

Traditional Description: Four pairs of swords, as in the preceding figure, nearly upright, but with the points falling away from each other. A ninth sword is upright in the center, as if it had struck them asunder. No rose at all is shown, as if it were not merely cut away, but utterly destroyed. Above and below are the Decanate symbols of Mars and Gemini.

Yesod of Air: The disruption and severity of the Swords, ripened to its greatest development: illness, suffering, malice, cruelty, pain. Unconscious primitive instincts are roused. Often pathological. Nightmares.

Mars/Gemini: Despair, cruelty, pitilessness, malice, argument, rage, revenge, suffering, worry, anxiety, loss, misery. Agony of mind, suffering; frustration, restlessness. Exhaustion of thought or powers of mind. Burden, oppression, labor, subtlety, craft, criticism, dishonesty, lying, slander. If well-dignified: mental discipline, reserve, faithfulness, patience, unselfishness, analysis, inquiry, discrimination, etc.

Luna + Mars: The automatic, reactive stirring of heartless passions. Friction, hurt, irritability, excitability, emotional pain, severity, conflict, quarreling, hastiness; or great emotional force, fighting nature, candor, forthrightness.

http://reclaimingbeauty.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/thoth_swords_nine.jpg

Danica

Brutal aspect of the mind: discord, which has the effect of destruction at the level of automatic consciousness & basic bodily drives.
The “inner enemy”. What may be the point of this – how to make it a teacher? Purification!
It’s the necessary ruthlessness in development of discipline of the mind; vital energies are locked into the perpetuation of bio-cycles, and there is no escaping this circle unless with relentless honesty with one’s self, which includes cutting off everything redundant, toxic (this includes patterns of thought and the information we feed ourselves with, not only the emotional and physical consummation).
Yesod marks a turning point in Initiation; raw animal energy either becomes refined (via making its processes conscious) or keeps circling “enslaved” to the biological needs & their perpetuation; Swords: role of the mind in this.
Peh + Zain: the mouth and the sword! Word cutting sharper than the sword, etc.
The question of consummation and processing of received energy & information: does this poisons me, or feeds me, and to what end? The symptoms are there to be seen: if I’m free, if I flow, if I’m joyful – it nourishes me (healthy food); on the other hand, if I’m afraid, tense, cruel to myself and others, etc. – it poisons me.

Dissension (dis – cordia); destruction of love; primitivity with devastating, poisonous effects to self and others; selfishness; coarseness, crudeness, indelicacy, vulgarism; inappropriate sharpness; unconscious & unbalanced aggression.
All of destructive forces from the instinctive psyche, flooding the channels of subconscious mind.
On the positive side: being able to acutely analyze and recognize this; dissection, SOLVE.

Purifying the instinctual drives; exposing to the “light of day” (illumination) the main elements of own psyche in the subconscious; this is mainly painful, but very healthy, essentially it’s necessary for further development.
There is strong sexual intonation to this card, the drops associate of sexual fluids (of both genders), and the colors on the card of menstrual blood mixed with sperm… but there’s something brutal, cruel to it. (rape; sexual harassment; sadism driven by mental curiosity; absence of empathy… )

Al-Shariyf

Day one:
Reactive anger, malice, spite, disdain, automatic hostility, uncontrollable rage, a nervous breakdown, an anxiety attack, intense sexual passion, BDSM, being cantankerous, an outburst of anger and fury

Day two:
Ruthless and unapologetically self-centered, swift automatic merciless severence, mental anguish, adverse psychological projection, hidden agendas, burning bridges, intentionally causing pain to another, dishing out touch love, cutting one's losses, losing the dead weight, sexual frivolity and promiscuity, deviousness

Day three:
Curt, rudeness, ass-holery, complete and utter selfishness, no regard for others, total consumption with one's self and point of view, confronting the cold hard reality of a situation, lack of tact, no space or tolerance for bullshit