three of swords

The Knight of Cups and Love as a Class Room

Developing a healthier model for love and romance.

The Tarot suit of Cups is the suit of emotions and particularly of love, the grandest of all of the emotions. The Knight of Cups shows a Knight riding forth on a quest, his cup extended in front of him. He’s on a quest of some sort having to do with love, but we can’t see the contents of his cup.

Is it full of love that he wants to share with someone else?

Or is it empty and he wants someone to fill it for him?

Kind of a crap shoot, isn’t it? And it’s pretty much like what we go through when we start a new relationship. The other person is on his or her best behavior and we can feel quite certain that their armor is buffed to a high polish and their horse has been carefully groomed. They look mighty good at first glance. But what’s going on with that cup? Are they full or are they empty? Do they have something to share or do they want us to somehow fill up their emptiness? Or maybe a little bit of both. . .

There is also, of course, the ass end of relationships, where they’ve ended, our hearts have been broken, and we’re recovering and trying to move on. In the Tarot, that’s represented by the Three of Hearts reversed, showing that our hearts have been pierced with pain but the swords are falling out and the pain is going away.

Oddly, those two phases – the quest for love and the end of love – are very intimately connected in our culture. They’re connected with what we might call the, “til death do us part,” model of love. The idea is that love is for life, that it’s a permanent, life-time commitment.

Of course, the divorce statistics tell us – plain and simple – that that’s a bullshit idea. Most relationships are NOT for life and about fifty percent of them end up in parting.

Still, we cling to that idea that a romantic relationship is for a lifetime. That belief causes us unbelievable amounts of pain when reality rears its’ ugly head and we have to split the sheets with someone we loved. And then we beat the hell out of ourselves.

What went wrong?

What’s wrong with me?

Am I just totally unloveable?

Louise Hay, in her wonderful book, You Can Heal Your Life ,proposed a different model of love that takes away a lot of the pain, and it’s just a matter of having a different perspective on relationships. And a different perspective on ourselves.

“Being needy is the best way to find an unhealthy relationship.” Louise Hay.

That’s a pretty powerful statement when we take the time to think about it because it focuses straight onto the question of why we feel that we need (as opposed to want) a romantic relationship. What is it that we’re trying to get from the other person? Why is it that we feel so devastated when we don’t get it?

She suggests a simple exercise: get out a pen and a pad of paper and make a list of all of the qualities that you want in your lover. What should he or she be to make you feel fulfilled?

Compassion?

Tenderness?

Strength?

Humor?

Empathy?

Now flip it around and ask yourself: how much of those qualities do I have toward myself? Do I treat myself with compassion? With tenderness? Am I strong and reassuring to myself? Can I see the humor in my life and laugh out loud when it’s just me here? Do I really have empathy and understanding for my self? And then start working on building those qualities, in your self.

You get the drift: the more we have those qualities in our own lives, the less we’ll feel the desperate need to find them in someone else. And the less devastated we’ll feel when the other person goes away.

The other person going away is also a part of the process.

As I said, the divorce statistics don’t lie. In our culture, nobody gets married with the idea that it’s for six months or a year, or maybe a three month contract with the option to renew. It’s for a freaking lifetime. Til death do us part.

Which means that if you’re not RIGHT THERE AT MY BEDSIDE WHEN I CROAK at the age of 186, then you didn’t really love me, you bastard! Uh, huh.

So . . . getting back to reality . . . as Hay said, all relationships eventually end, except for the one that we have with ourselves. If we can get our heads around that reality and honestly say to ourselves, “I’m going to be with this person for a while,” then love gets a lot easier and relationships, paradoxically, become a lot more meaningful.

Because then we begin to really focus on why we’re with this person for this limited period of time and we don’t take it for granted that we’ve got forever to get it right.

It also changes the meaning of what it means, “to get it right.” Getting it right no longer means simple longevity. It no longer means that our relationship with that person was somehow, “good,” just because we managed to hang in there through decades of not being heard or not being seen or not being loved back or putting up with a rotten sex life.

It shifts the focus to, “why are we here?” We’re here, as two autonomous, strong, healthy human beings sharing our space, energy and love for this period of time – and that can be a month or sixty years – for a reason. What lessons are we here to teach each other? In what ways can we help each other grow? In what ways can we support each other to evolve?

In other words, the relationship becomes a life lesson. And when we’ve learned that lesson, class is over, we graduated, time to move on to another lesson.

There’s nothing inherently sad about that. We’ve just been taught that it’s sad. If we view the relationship as a life lesson, then we can be grateful to our ex-partners for what they taught us and for allowing us to teach them, and move on with gratitude and love in our hearts.

It ain’t easy. The beliefs that love relationships are supposed to be permanent, that we’ve somehow failed if they aren’t, and that we should just go right back out and do the same stupid thing again, are so deeply ingrained in our culture that it takes a lot of conscious effort to pull out of them.

As Hay says, though, relationships ending is NORMAL AND NATURAL. We don’t need to put up with a worn out relationship just to avoid the pain of the parting. We’ve learned what we were supposed to learn.

I love her affirmation for ending relationships, which I shall keep near me in the future: I bless you with love and I release you – you are free and I am free.

Yes.

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The Ace of Cups, Heart Chakras, and Flounders in Rayon Golf Shirts

Opening our heart chakras to find love when our relationships aren’t working out.

I’ve been thinking a lot about broken hearts. LOL – Again.

At one point or another, whether it was the result of an adolescent crush gone awry or a mid-life divorce, most of us have gone through the experience that we tag as, “a broken heart.” We fall deeply in love with someone and they don’t love us back. Or they love us and leave us. Or they, “love us,” in such destructive ways that we end up in shreds.

It hurts like hell. Jeeeeezus, it hurts.

The 3 of Swords shows the classic broken heart scenario where two people were in love and one of them fell in love (or lust) with someone else. The heart is pierced with swords and the person who was betrayed is so deeply wounded that he feels that he may never heal from the pain.

So what do we do with our poor broken hearts after someone stomped them into a jelly with their hobnail boots?

One popular solution is to just jump right back into another relationship. “There are lots of fish in the sea,” we tell ourselves, “and I’m gonna hook me a big old flounder.”

Sometimes that works but a lot of times it doesn’t. The divorce rate in the U.S. regularly hovers between 45 and 50 percent, which means that an awful lot of serious relationships end up as flaming disasters.

One of the big problems with just catching another fish is that, “life is a mirror,” as Louise Hay says in You Can Heal Your Life, and we tend to catch the same damned flounder over and over and over. Whatever energy we’re radiating out into the Universe is the energy that’s going to come right back at us, in this case in the form of a lover.

If we’re really emotionally needy, clinging people, then we’ll probably attract other emotionally needy, clinging people and then – JOY OF JOYS – we can be needy and clinging together! Or, if you really hate yourself and you’re constantly treating yourself like shit, you’ll probably attract an abuser to do the job FOR you.

So, basically, unless we change our energy patterns, unless we change what we’re radiating out to others, we’re going to continue to attract the same kinds of people, the same lovers who broke our hearts, only in different clothing. (Hopefully stylish clothing, at least. It’s doubly tragic when your new flounder shows up in a rayon golf shirt.)

That can even happen to kind, loving people who’ve gotten therapy, who’ve done the spiritual work, and are really, sincerely looking for a healthy, compassionate partner. In some ways, people who are truly loving and on a sincere quest for genuine love may be even more vulnerable. Just take a moment or two to listen to this video from the wonderful Doctor Ramani about malignant narcissists and, “love bombing.”

Remember what it’s like when you’re really, really, REALLY in love with someone? You feel like – to use an old Southern expression – they hung the moon. Everything they do is perfect, everything they say is a glittering gem of wisdom, and just being around them makes you ecstatic.

The malignant narcissist gets to us because they can perfectly mimic that feeling of being in love. They praise us, they flatter us, they tell us that we’re smart and sexy and funny. Just like someone who really loved us would do. And then they destroy us.

Oops. Another goddamned flounder.

Hopefully, we go BACK to our therapist and he or she teaches us about malignant narcissists and how to spot them and how to build healthy boundaries. It’s all very complicated and it can take a lot of time along with a lot of emotional work and commitment.

In the meantime, in between time, we’re just hanging there with no love in our lives. I mean, we KNOW that if we just go back out fishing without cleaning up our own emotional messes, we’re just going to get the same fish again. And that’s not a good thing. Living without love is NOT a good idea. We NEED love. It nurtures us. It heals us. It grows us. So what do we do?

We can find at least a partial answer in the Ace of Cups. It shows love – pure, undifferentiated, unattached, unconditional love – pouring into the world.

Believe it or not, we can manifest that love in our hearts and in our lives without a relationship and without a mate. We all have a very special place in our energy systems called, “the heart chakra.” This is the place where we receive, store, and generate love.

We can sit down at any time that we choose, do a heart chakra meditation, and, “grow,” the love that is in our hearts. It’s not hard, it’s not complicated, and we don’t have to be spiritual masters to do it. There are heart chakra meditations all over the internet, so you can start loving TODAY, if you want to. (Here’s a nice one to get you started.)

The thing we frequently miss is that love exists. It’s a force in the Universe that’s out there, independent of people, and we can let it into our lives and our being anytime that we want to. Hell, we can set aside an afternoon for meditation and just BATHE in that energy if we want to. All we have to do is open our heart chakras.

That’s not to put down loving another person at all. Being in love can be one of the most magical, wonder-FULL things that ever happens to us. It’s really hard to beat snuggling up against your partners back on a cold, snowy night, right? (Well . . . neck kisses. Neck kisses might beat it. Of course, you could do both.)

Until that happens, though, until we can untie all of the weird, dysfunctional emotional knots that keep us from finding that relationship, we can remember that our lovers aren’t love itself. They are vehicles that get us to love, but we can still experience love without a relationship.

It’s right there in our hearts.

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The Three of Swords and Healing a Broken Heart

Did you know that having a broken heart can actually . . . well . . . break your heart?

There is a medically recognized condition called, “broken heart syndrome,” that can cause all of the symptoms of a heart attack and lead to hospitalization. Although it’s most commonly associated with middle aged women it can strike anyone and it’s brought on by intense grief such as the death of a loved one, a divorce, or breaking up with a lover. One side of the heart actually enlarges for a period of time and fails to beat normally causing chest pains and shortness of breath.

The Three of Swords is a perfect illustration of that pain. Most of us have been there: being deeply, completely in love with someone who betrays our trust, or falls out of love with us, or, sometimes, dies. It literally feels as if we’ve been stabbed in the heart, wounded to our very core.

The question then becomes, how do we recover from that? Or do we? One strategy, of course, is to just swear off falling in love and vow that we’ll never be suckers like that again. Oh, sure, maybe we’ll have sex every once in a while – maybe a LOT – but we’ll never fall in love with or completely trust another human being again. Ever!

Probably not the best plan. In one of her always excellent podcasts called, “The Courage to Love,” Tara Brach asserts that moving away from love is actually moving away from the best and most authentic part of ourselves. Which is not hard to recognize when we stop and think about it. When do we feel best about ourselves? When we’re loving and kind. When do we feel best about the world? When we’re receiving love and kindness. It really IS hard wired into us: even a baby happily recognizes a smile and is frightened by a scowl.

As Brach points out, though, it can be difficult to remember that. We are right now JUST starting to evolve out of that fight, flight or freeze response that’s always lurking in our amygdalas. When someone shuts us down, when someone breaks our hearts, it feels like danger, like a terrible threat to our very being and we want to fight back against them, run away, or become emotionally frozen in place. (Never again! Ever!)

We do have a couple of assets that we’ve evolved into, though, that can help: consciousness and intentionality. We can consciously recognize our emotions and just sit with them. “Okay, I hurt like hell. I feel betrayed. I feel like I can’t trust anyone.” And that’s okay.

And we can intentionally move toward love. “Okay, I really hurt but I recognize that I’m a loving, caring person and I’m not going to let someone else remove love from my heart. I claim my autonomy and I choose love.”

We can also remember that the Heart Chakra just feels love and it doesn’t discriminate about where it’s coming from. It’s wonderful to receive love from another human being but it’s not the only source.

When we’re broken hearted we can bring in a lot of self-love. We can write out affirmations about what good, loving and deserving people we are. We can visualize ourselves bathed in love and compassion and we can be especially nourishing and kind to ourselves.

Divine love can be another source for many people. In Red Tara practice meditators will visualize Tara hovering before them, sending golden beams of love into their bodies and hearts. We can do the same practice and replace Tara with the deity, spirit guide, or angel of our choice.

And, of course, we can just love. Love generates love. The more we act with loving kindness and compassion toward our fellow travelers on the earth plane, the more the heart chakra opens and heals. The more it opens, the more love we attract and receive.

“Neither be cynical about love;

for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment

it is as perennial as the grass.” – The Desiderata

The Sex Cards in the Tarot

Everyone likes sex! Well, nearly everyone. I actually read an article recently about people who don’t like sex in any way shape or form and don’t feel any sexual desires. They’re calling themselves, “asexuals,” and actually have their own organization. How about that? What an interesting world.

Anyway, nearly everyone likes sex and there are certain Tarot cards which definitely indicate its’ presence in a persons life. It can be handy to know when it’s likely to pop up in a relationship, whether you’re interested in the other person or not. Come to think of it, it could even be handy for people who are official Asexuals because they’d know who to avoid. Nearly everyone, right?

FOUR OF WANDS

Two people dancing beneath what looks very much like a wedding gazebo. There is an element of sex here but in the more traditional sense of marriage and an on going union. A happy card that includes the idea of sex without actually signifying it outright.

TWO OF CUPS

A man and a woman hold chalices and gaze into each others eyes. This is a card of profound bonding and love, the start of a serious relationship. While it can often indicate something as mundane as a good business partner or a best friend, it can also indicate a deep romantic and sexual relationship.

THREE OF CUPS

Three women dance together, chalices raised in mutual salute. Sex is not necessarily a central theme in this card but it’s a possibility because the central theme is PARTY!!!! This is a card of joyous celebrations so why not sneak a little whoopee into the celebration? May also indicate a happy three way relationship.

THREE OF SWORDS

A heart pierced by three swords. This can often indicate a monogamous relationship in which one of the partners has decided to be not so monogamous. He or she may be screwing around and it’s breaking the partners heart.

THE EMPRESS

An Earth Mother type of woman reclines on a couch holding a sceptre loosely in one hand. Again, The Empress is not exclusively about sex but it’s definitely included in her vibrations. Unlike her sister card, The High Priestess, who appears to be a little prim and proper, The Empress is openly sensual. She reclines comfortably on her couch, legs slightly spread with a definite, “come hither,” look on her face. If you’re involved with The Empress, expect a good time. On ALL levels.

THE HIEROPHANT

An individual who looks like a pope sits stiffly on a throne between two pillars while two monks bow down to him. The Hierophant is mainly about organized religion and dogma, so it may seem strange to include it in this post. The point, though, is that The HIerophant is about CONVENTIONAL religion rather than spirituality. In that sense, if this card shows up in a reading about a relationship you can expect it to be a very CONVENTIONAL relationship with very CONVENTIONAL sex. In other words, always the missionary position, probably with the lights turned out and only when the kids are fast asleep. If you’re into sex toys and trapezes in your boudoir, RUN AWAY, RUN AWAY . . .

THE LOVERS

A nude man and woman stand in a Garden of Eden setting while a snake climbs a tree next to the woman and an angel hovers over them. As the name indicates, this card is about love and not JUST love but triple whammie hit in the head with a sledge hammer love. These two people are absolutely thunder struck and there WILL be sex. Really good sex.

THE DEVIL

This is obviously the same couple from The Lovers, only they’ve been driven out of the Garden of Eden and are now sporting horns and tails while a demon hovers over them instead of an angel. There is a very strong element of sexuality here but it’s not what you’d describe as happy sex. Instead of joy we find pain and enslavement. It can indicate sexual addiction, BDSM games that have gone WAY too far into pain and humiliation, or the sexual element of a physically or emotionally abusive relationship. And, to me at least, it’s a sad card: it’s taking one of life’s greatest joys and turning into something sick and twisted.

So there you have it. When you see these cards in a reading think about sex. Or think about it anyway – it’s always fun.

There is a heart pierced by three swords and rain is falling from dark gray clouds in the background.

On the most obvious level this may indicate a relationship which has failed because one of the parties is screwing around. Someone’s heart is broken and there is deep grief, tears, confusion and a sense of profound betrayal. Trauma of any sort.

REVERSED

The swords are falling out and the heart is beginning to heal. This usually shows that period after a bad break up when a person is beginning to put the pieces of her life back together and starting to move on. It is a card of recovery and coping with reality.

EXAMPLES: That period after a break up, divorce, or even the death of a life mate, when your heart is so broken with grief that you can’t think straight, can’t sleep, and can’t eat. Deep, profound grief.

Discovering that your lover has been going to bed with your best friend and lying to both of you.