Tales of the heart

The deck I use and the image I will be referring to is from the Waite-Smith deck. This deck of cards was designed by the artist Pamela Colman Smith who was commissioned by Arthur Edward Waite for a pack of 78 tarot cards.

The Three of Swords is firmly billed as being the very image of grief and sorrow, I will not argue with that. I see this, I feel this - the iconography speaks for itself. Yet, I feel this card so deeply that it has taken on a personal meaning, which I will not go in depth with here for personal reasons, but what I would like to explore is why I feel so drawn to this card and how I have adopted a deeper meaning beyond what we see in the card, flipping the script in my own way of reading tarot. Speaking of flipping, I need to mention that at this point I do not read reversed cards - I see the light and dark in the upright position.

The card shows us a heart. It has 3 swords piercing it without a drop of blood in sight.

In a reading, I often see these swords as a weapon of hurt. Violent, but also a somewhat protective symbol, and this is where the card begins to make sense to me. Violent when used, protective when kept at one’s side.

Through our hurt, we are bruised and broken, pierced and aching, yet our swords remain firmly in place without a drop of blood spilled. This is resilience. Through this piercing, we feel that the pain remains, yet we keep on going - reminding ourselves that we are stronger than we think we are.  Pain is inevitable within the human experience, but we will move forward, we will wear our scars with pride.

Our past can teach us many things but to remain there is not helpful. From our past we learn lessons, we change and we re-arrange and the rest should be discarded (easy to say than do I know).

The three of swords teaches us that no matter what wounds we acquire, and however we carry them it we will always feel the heaviness of their presence. This is fine. These are our lessons – we are strong, we are resilient.

The literal meaning of a sword or a knife through the heart is often a metaphor for pain - this is obvious in this card but on a personal level, this card shows me a heart that is broken but still strong, we will not carry that pain but we will wear it and we will own it.