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Radiant: Rider-Waite-Smith - Three of Swords
Again, the Rider-Waite-Smith Three of Swords card chooses to represent a more mundane approach as Waite didn't wish to expose arcane lodge secrets. The cloudy and crying sky, (Air is the element of this card) supports a Heart (Psyche/Soul) pierced by Three Swords. This implies the sorrow is deeply felt in the three states of mind. The Psyche, the unconscious and the consciousness. It is also the ternary goddess of Maid, Mother and Crone. In past blogs on the subject of the Qabalistic Binah- the Great Mother Womb of consciousness, you may remember that Binah is the Third Sephiroth who is the intelligence behind the 3's, and is called: Understanding. She is also named the Sanctifying Intelligence and the Parent of Faith. Here is the implication that any religion of any sect, could not have a "church" without this underlying structure of Sanctifying Intelligence. As Mary is the Church, in Catholic doctrine, so is Binah the Parent of Faith...not the faith itself, but its intelligent parental creatrix in the Universal Collective Unconscious, that is the foundation of organization, structure and sanctity.
The B.O.T.A. 3 of Swords, is as minimalistic in its art as ever. Here, the Trinity of the Divine Feminine is shown as three golden swords (gold-yellow is the color of the element of Air-intelligence) forming a plane. Thereby, creating a Plane of the Divine Feminine of Maid-Mother-Crone. Dr. Paul Foster Case, the founder of the Builders of The Adytum (B.O.T.A.) named the 3 of Swords, the Sanctifying Intelligence.
You may ask what a sanctifying intelligence, has to do with sorrow? To make this simple, she is the Crone in this card, whose symbol is traditionally an Owl. The Crone represents Wisdom and is the death of the false you that you think you are; and the Crone is all sorrowful for the destruction she must make on those creations she Loves into being. She Knows you into Manifestation, and what you think you are, is all words and confusion, i.e., falsehood. Also, in your bright and beautiful celestial soul, resides this great sorrow of having to be both the life and death of your physical body. To have, to take or lose the life of one you love is a deeply sorrowful experience; for even the most evil/perverted of us Loves their body. Therefore all that Creates, is full of sorrow as well as love. The shadow image of love is sorrow. In the universe of things, you can't have one with out the other.
Let me explain: many of us think that "freedom of choice" is happiness, but we forget that in order to have "freedom of choice", we must have a beginning and an end, for form requires measurement. As Spirit, we just Are; infinite willed-energy without measurement! In the One Energy there is no up, no down, no in and no out; We just are as timeless frequency, everywhere and nowhere at the same time. But as a Spiritual Soul who runs a material body, we are both Transmitter and the Transmitted giving us the freedom to choose up, down, in or out and/or our own identity. What few of us choose to remember is that freedom is really free-doom (Anglo-Saxon for "I choose my own death"), not only do we get to choose our own definitions of self, we also get to choose our body's death. Be it ignorant or intelligent choice it is still the Soul's choice that we often call "fate". Freedom of choice also brings great sorrow and great joy, love and sadness etc. Again, we have bodies so that we may form the necessary "soft ware" to operate the "Wet Ware" of the Living Measurement of I AM; in other words, a discriminating operational personality called "Me". Spirit doesn't discriminate as all is of it, in it and as it and what is experienced through "in- form- action" becomes Knowledge which is neither good nor bad. Hence, Spirit's Self- Measurement begins as I AM, which denotes existence, but as what "I AM", hasn't been decided yet. Therefore, all "Me's" are and assumption. Only after much Wisdom (Chokmah) and Understanding (Binah) can "I Am Me" be decided. Then Chessed, the 4th Sephiroth-Mercy, is the architect who designs "what" and Geburah, the 5th Sephiroth-Severity , who is ruling planet is Saturn, adds "Time".
When thrown in divination, the 3 of Swords implies:
- Removal.
- Absence.
- Delay.
- Division.
- Rupture.
- Dispersion.
- Heart break.
If reversed:
- Mental alienation.
- Error.
- Loss.
- Distraction.
- Disorder.
- Confusion.
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