Hello and welcome to My Tiny Tarot Practice.

I'm Amelia Hruby, and on this podcast, I share my journey exploring the tarot

card by card, starting with each suit of the Minor Arcana.

Today's episode is about the Four of Swords.

In the Rider-Waite-Smith version of the tarot, this card depicts a person lying

on what honestly appears to be like a tomb of some sort,

they're lying on their back their hands are

folded across their chest seemingly perhaps

in like a prayer position there are

three swords hanging above them particularly one

above the center of their head their heart and

then their torso lower down and then beneath them there's also a sword on the

side of the tomb and in the upper left of the card we can see a stained glass

window which makes this whole scene appear to take place in a church.

The fours in tarot often symbolize foundations, as they do in many other interpretations of numerology.

We have four corners that make a square that set the foundation for what might become our home.

And so with the swords, the four of swords, the foundation of the suit of the the intellect.

Here is rest and retreat.

While many of the swords exhibit activity and even battle, this is one of the

ones that is more about putting our swords down and lying down and making way for a pause.

Jessica Crispin in the Creative Tarot reminds us that in the long term,

rest is necessary for a sustainable practice of any kind.

And this is true neurologically as well. Sleep is necessary for our brains.

We can't think as well if we're not sleeping.

In fact, we can't think at all if we don't sleep. And a long-term lack of sleep

is very harmful for the brain and thus for the a thinking mind.

Our intellect is harmed if we don't rest, and the Four of Swords is an invitation into that practice.

To record this episode, I took up the spirit of this card and retreated to my bed, mic in hand,

books surrounding me, to reflect on rest and what importance it plays in my

own creative practice and in creating this podcast.

And Chica Lee, what this card always reminds me of is that children's book called Go the Fuck to Sleep.

Because I often pull this card in a moment of overthinking or overexertion of

my mind, when I am just running, running, running through my thoughts when my mind is spinning.

And this card always reminds me to, as that children's book put it,

go the fuck to sleep, put my mind to bed, rest, so that I can return to those

thoughts, but perhaps with new clarity or perhaps in a more sustainable way.

Now, I've never noticed this before when looking at this card,

but for some reason today, I was really struck by the image in the stained glass

window in the Rider-Waite-Smith version of this deck.

And something about it really reminds me of the image on the Six of Cups.

In this window, we see a figure on the left side passing something,

it seems, or putting their hands over a smaller figure, perhaps even a child on the right.

And it reminds me of that scene in The Six of Cups where we have this similar

gift of a cup full of beautiful flowers being passed from left to right toward a child.

And I think what this reminds me of is that rest is something that we often have to give ourselves.

We can only receive it if we allow ourselves to rest.

And I think that with rest with

this card being in the suit of swords which

as I've already talked about is the suit of the intellect but swords

are also culturally about battle and

so this card also reminds me of the

ways that rest is a tool of resistance that's

a lesson I've learned many times from the nap ministry and that we need to give

ourselves rest in order to return to the battle to take up our swords again

for the issues and causes and liberations that we want to fight for.

Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of My Tiny Tarot Practice.

If you'd like to learn more about any of the books I referenced here,

or to purchase a tarot deck of

your own, I hope that you'll head to my bookshop link in the show notes.

That's where I curate a growing list of my favorite tarot books and decks.

If you make a purchase there, I'll receive a small affiliate payment,

and that helps me keep this podcast going.

I'm so grateful that you tuned in. I would always appreciate if you could leave

the podcast a five-star rating and review on Apple or Spotify so that more people

might learn about us and decide to listen.

And after that, I hope, of course, that you'll take a moment to rest.