The Three of Swords: Today's Tea and Tarot Blog

--By Hyperion Night

Heartbreak. Mind over Emotion. Taking Responsibility for your own Joy.

December in the post office. You know the scene. A line that extends out the door. Customers with packages who haven't filled out forms correctly. A single teller working the desk, and of course it's the red-headed, helpful, Chatty Cathy who cheerfully extends the time you're standing there.

Her elderly customer was having trouble working the touchscreen. A frustrated and equally elderly man shouts from his place in line, "The pen! Use the pen!" And suddenly the full weight of the hilarity of the scene descends on me, and my boredom and impatience flee in the face of mirth. I was in a Christmas comedy, and I couldn't stop grinning at my fellow actors in the piece.

And here's the really weird thing.

It was contagious.

I struck up a conversation with the fascinating old lady in front of me. Other customers began chatting and laughing and smiling. We all still wanted to get the h-- out of there (I was only on time for my lunch date because the person I was meeting was late). But by the time I was near the front of the line, my conversational partner was showing me photos of her grand kids. And I was happy to see them.

And that's the Three of Swords.

I've heard lots of different interpretations of this Tarot card, which shows a heart pierced by three swords. The most obvious one is heartbreak, and I've included it as a definition here, because sometimes the obvious ones are right.

But let's break this Tarot card down. What's going on here? Swords are thoughts. Hearts (or cups) represent emotions. Rain (water, which also represents emotions) is pouring down from clouds (a symbol for thoughts). Thoughts and emotions are tangled together. They influence each other. Think gloomy thoughts? Your emotions will match. But the good news is you have the power to think positive thoughts and feel joyful emotions. YOU HAVE THE POWER. (Say it like a muscular cartoon hero. Seriously.)

In a Tarot reading, the Three of Swords asks us to consider what mental narrative is running through our heads. Are we running ourselves down? Telling ourselves defeatist stories? Imagining awful things other people are thinking? STOP THAT.

Seriously. Stop it.

And the first step in stopping, is to recognize you're doing it, recognize what narratives you're telling yourself, and then changing them. Imagine what your life would be like if you were running positive narratives in your head instead...