FEBRUARY 2017 TAROT READING: THE NINE OF WANDS
Were you able to find time last month to meditate on the feeling of wholeness?
Did you give yourself the space to reflect on the vastness of the Universe and how you and me and the sun and the moon and the past and the future are all the same thing?
It’s never too late nor too early to search for and return to this feeling.
As the Nine of Wands – our Universal message for February – suggests, putting conditions on to circumstances and placing them in Time is often what throws us off the path. If something doesn’t happen when and how we want it, have we failed? Are we not yet complete if the tides of life shift us in a new direction or give us different responsibilities?
The figure on the Nine of Wands is close to achieving what he’s set off to do. He’s just overcome a battle, but already he’s anticipating a new crisis on the horizon, holding tightly to his wands.
This card brings with it an external attempt to shake us, to make us prove that we really want what we’re striving for.
Did you think the end was in sight? Think you had it in your grasp? Didn’t we all, sitting nice and cozy in our tightly wound worlds of comfort and day-dreaming.
I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, really I don’t, but our friend on the Nine of Wands has a premonition from the great beyond telling us of last minute hiccups and threats to our well thought out Master Plan.
Lest we forget that it’s February and we’re still in the cold, dead bosom of winter, a full eleven months of 2017 to go, and only hints at what it has in store for us.
The energy of the Nine of Wands ultimately comes from a deep place of self-love. We love and care for ourselves and the people, property, and animals we feel responsible for, and the Universe will never blame us for this. It’s our natural tendency to cling fiercely to our possessions, our ego, our goals, our accomplishments, when anything appears that could threaten our security.
But need we grasp so tightly? Need we anticipate every possible outcome in order to fully prepare our mental stories should the worst-case scenario arrive?
“You moan, But she left me. He left me.
Twenty more will come.
Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought.
Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?
Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.
Flow down and down
in always widening rings of being.”
- Rumi
It is natural to put up walls, to raise barriers against any whiff of a threat. As we go through life, the lessons seem to get harder rather than easier. We can only hope that the sting to our ego eventually lessens and we’re able to more quickly look instead to what we can learn and move forward with.
The Nine of Wands tells of difficulties, of struggles, of being on the defensive. But it also tells of perseverance, overcoming, the tapping into an inner strength we didn’t know we had.
“If you are irritated by every rub,
how will your mirror be polished?”
– Rumi
The gentleman on the Nine of Wands is going to overcome, there is no doubt. He has a laser focus on his dreams, a death-grip on his wands, and the determination to get there, hiccups or not.
The interplay of life’s ups and downs all lead to the same end, it’s how you choose to let them impact your inner world, and for how long you allow them to get you unnaturally down or keep you artificially buoyed up that turns the flow of life into a series of waves that are difficult to navigate, rather than a soft flowing of tides.
Let the energy and the message of the Nine of Wands guide you this month no matter what the Universe throws at you.
Sit down and reflect, readjust and move forward with the fortitude and determination that’s brought you to today. You are worthy. You are enough.