Hello, I'm Amelia Hruby, and this is my tiny tarot practice,

where I share my journeys through the tarot, starting with each suit of the Minor Arcana.

Today's card is the Ace of Swords.

In the Rider-Waite-Smith edition of the tarot, the Ace of Swords pictures a

single sword held by a hand that is coming out of the clouds.

The sword is pointed straight up directly at the sky and it is piercing a crown

that is covered in vines.

As the first card in the suit of swords, the ace represents perhaps most specifically the intellect.

I think of the ace of swords as the clarity of a new idea.

And I love how Jessa Crispin puts it in the creative tarot where she She says,

the Ace of Swords moment is one idea, one philosophy, one thought that cuts

through the haze and acts as a kind of guiding light.

Once you have that idea, it feels like Excalibur. You can wield it to get results,

and it gives you a kind of unlimited power to face down uncertainty.

There's something in that description that really resonates for me.

I feel like I never feel more clear and purposeful than when I have a single

idea guiding me forward.

It's like that clarity of purpose. When I know exactly what I'm doing and why

I'm doing it, that is an ace of swords moment, that clarity.

And of course, the clarity doesn't last forever. We don't stay in the moment

of the ace forever. Anytime I have a very clear idea, quickly other ideas arise,

feelings arise, it gets clouded, unsure, uncertain, I lose my path.

But I love this moment of the Ace of Swords, that clarity, that Excalibur moment.

How powerful. powerful. Rachel

Pollack in 78 Degrees of Wisdom reminds us that the swords and the cups,

the intellect and the emotions here also have a unique relationship because in the emotions,

we find the immediacy of our knowing.

We find ourselves responsive to the present, but in the intellect,

we're able to abstract from our singular experience, from our immediate present

moment, and we can pierce the veil to some degree.

We can reach beyond the material world into the spiritual through that abstraction,

through that enlightenment.

Now, as Rachel Pollack also says in that book, and I'm quoting here,

intellect alone, divorced from intuition, will only lead to more illusion.

We need the ace of cups to find the truth, yet only intellect can take us beyond immediate experience.

And again, I think of this on a sort of continuum of our experience,

that we can relate to the continuum of the suits of the minor arcana.

We have the swords abstracting toward the world above and beyond us.

We have the cups seating us in our heart, in our responsiveness to the world,

the present moment that we live in.

We have the pentacles grounding our feet on the earth, rooting us in not only

to the present, but also the past.

And we have the wands, the fire that creates something from nothing,

that touches the spirit world, that draws down that creative force that we see in the magician,

but I think in a different way than the swords do. do.

With the wands, we have a sort of alchemical creation merging that which is

beyond and that which is present.

But with the swords, we have this sort of reach toward clarity of the intellect,

that is an act of abstraction, not an act of alchemy.

So again, with the ace of swords, I think we find the clarity of a new idea.

It often to me feels like a strike of lightning, different than the spark of

flame that we find with the ace of wands, but similar to it,

different but not dissimilar.

As I've shared in every other episode about an ace, I also think of the aces

as being a seed for the suit.

So it contains the very first moment of the suit, but also the suit in its entirety,

the way that a seed is what comes before the plant and yet holds the entire

life cycle of the plant that will grow from it.

And so with the ace of swords, we have this first moment of the clarity of a new idea.

We have the moment of the lightning strike.

But within that, we also will see that we have a whole journey of that development

of the intellect, the way that it both frees and binds us through logic,

through rational thought, through thinking itself.

That's the journey that will be going on as we step toward the two,

the three, the four, and beyond of sorts.

Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of of My Tiny Tarot Practice.

If you'd like to explore any of the books that I referenced here today,

please head to the show notes where you'll find a link to my bookshop.

If you make a purchase through that link, I'll receive a small affiliate payment

that helps me keep this podcast going.

I hope that you are struck by the clarity of a new idea in your own time.

And until then, I will be here with more episodes of My Tiny Tarot Practice.