Hello and welcome to My Tiny Tarot Practice.

I'm Amelia Hruby and on this podcast I share my tiny tarot practice where I'm

exploring the tarot card by card starting with each suit of the Minor Arcana.

So far on the show we have explored the wands, the pentacles,

the cups, and we are currently moving through the suit of swords.

Today's card is the Five of Swords.

In the Rider-Waite-Smith version of the tarot, this card perhaps is one of the

most challenging images.

It depicts a person in the foreground holding two swords, which point up at

the sky, and one that points down at the ground.

This person is facing us, the viewer, but looking back over their shoulder toward

two people who have dropped all their swords.

There are two two swords lying on the ground, and they face away from us,

looking out to the water.

One of them seems to have a jacket or a cloak slung over their shoulder as they

walk away, and the other has their head in their hands, seemingly weeping.

And this card really conjures images of defeat.

Now, we have the figure in the foreground who appears to be the victor of some

battle, and the two losers walking away.

Winning and losing, winners and losers, victory and defeat certainly seems to

be the tenor of this card.

I appreciate that Jessica Dorr in Tarot for Change invites us to consider which

figure in the card we identify with, because conflict.

Always a story that has many sides. And all stories we would tell about a conflict,

she says, are incomplete.

I think this is such an important reminder that this image that we see in the

Five of Swords is just one image.

It's an incomplete story of whatever conflict happened here.

And each person in this card will have their own experience and their own story of that that conflict.

And I think I agree with her that when we pull this card, we're invited to consider

what figure we identify with here.

Are we the victor holding the swords?

Have we dropped the sword and walked away? Are we weeping at this loss?

This card also sits firmly in that entanglement complement between the swords

as the suit of intellect and swords as the tools of battle.

It also makes me think of the ways that our words can be battle-worthy,

that sharp tongues can create conflict, that we can use fighting words, as some people say.

I also find it interesting how the Five of Swords shows up in the journey of the Suit of Swords.

Because the Four of Swords you might remember from the last episode is a suit of rest.

And we've gone right from rest to the end of the conflict in the Five.

We have skipped the battle. We don't see that in the suit.

And when we go on to the Six, we're going to have another card that's a sort of rest.

And so I think that this can be a really interesting pathway into understanding how ideas develop.

If we take a step back from the battle metaphors for a moment,

I've often found in my own intellectual practice that ideas come in these sorts

of like stop and start momentums, where I'll have an idea, I'll start to think

through it, and I'll get really stuck.

I'll have a moment of conflict. And then what I need is rest.

And so I think the journey through the swords so far really plays this out because

we have the ace of swords, the seed of an idea, the two of swords where we get

the swords crossed in front of the blindfolded person.

We get the seed and we start thinking and it gets stuck.

The three of swords is a heartbreak, grief, loss because we can't figure it out.

The four of swords, a moment of rest, of relief, of stepping back,

of not trying so hard to think it through. the five of swords,

finding ourselves on the other side of these questions all of a sudden.

That rest yielded us this relief.

In fact, rest can at times allow us to, as I just said, skip over the conflict

altogether and take us right to the resolution.

Maybe not the full resolution, we're only at the five after all, but the first moment.

Whatever problems were arising in the two and three of swords,

through rest, we have been able to move to their resolution.

And then in the six, we'll go on a journey to what comes after that.

I'm realizing as I record this episode that the five of swords holds so much

more wisdom than perhaps I have ever realized.

And that I think this card is yet another invitation to lean into to the tarot

cards that perhaps don't resonate or make sense or feel good when we first encounter them.

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

As always, if you'd like to learn more about the books that I've referenced

in this episode, you can head to the show notes where you'll find a link to my bookshop.

That's where you can purchase my favorite tarot books and decks.

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 listening to this episode has helped you connect with where you

might be in your journey of thoughts and words, and I wish you a wonderful day.