Hello, and welcome to My Tiny Tarot Practice.

I'm Amelia Hruby, and on this show, I share my tiny tarot practice,

exploring the tarot card by card, starting with each suit of the minor arcana.

I do my best to keep the episodes under five minutes.

I don't always succeed, but we're typically under 10. And today,

we are exploring the Eight of Swords.

In the Rider-Waite-Smith edition of the tarot, the Eight of Swords depicts a

person cloaked in orange and bound with ropes or ties around their arms and hips,

as well as a blindfold around their eyes.

They're standing on a sort of watery landscape, and there are eight swords surrounding them.

And behind, in the distance, we see a castle on a hill.

Rachel pollack suggests that this is a card about oppression

that the castle signifies power structures

and that it's a card about the ways in which we are embedded in and oppressed

by those structures and then she also is quick to point out that the person

in this card quite likely can can remove these binds,

can take off their blindfold,

that we don't see anyone keeping them there, holding them there,

holding them back from their own liberation.

And so with this card, we have a sort of suggestion of the very real experience

of oppression and also the ways that we can be complicit in our own constriction.

And perhaps we actually can change the frame, remove the binds,

let go of what has us feeling that way, and move forward on our own terms.

In that way, this card reminds me a lot of the Two of Swords,

in which we also saw a blindfolded figure.

In that instance, holding the cross of the swords, the swords crossed over their

chest, and they simply needed to put the swords down, and take the blindfold off.

Here, we're at a new layer or level of the bind. We've moved from the two to the eight.

The arms are completely bound down by the sides, but still, I think there's

this invitation to free ourselves.

Jessa Crispin in the Creative Tarot suggests that with the eight of swords,

we might have reached a place where we feel lost or we feel like the victim of some some situation.

And she suggests that the medicine of this card in those instances is as follows. I'm quoting here.

Sometimes we want someone to tell us what to do so that we don't have to take

responsibility for our own decisions.

It's an understandable response to failure, but that doesn't mean it's a good place to stay stuck.

The only thing to do when you have the eight of swords is to save yourself.

No one else is coming for you. You only have yourself to rely on.

So it's either save yourself or quit entirely. Which is it going to be?

I must admit, I feel pretty called out by that reading. Like,

oof, that's harsh. I don't want to hear that wisdom.

And I do think it's one interpretation of the Eight of Swords.

But for me, I will say this card feels a little more like what happens when

we're kind of lulled into the comfort of our current situation.

And perhaps we can't even see the ways that it's constricting us anymore.

And I think that in this way, that's actually similar to the manifestation of privilege.

The ways that when we experience privilege, we actually can't see the systemic

and societal oppressions upon which it might be or is built.

And we get kind of lulled into the comfort of the privilege that we have and

may stop fighting for liberation for all.

So once again, in the the swords. I'm finding this sort of invitation into liberation.

I'm seeing the ways that our minds and our thoughts can be seduced by systems

and structures of oppression.

And I think that we have both, again, the two-sided blade of the sword where

our thoughts are powerful,

but they can also be misled because they can be disconnected from our experiences, our emotions,

our fieriness, our spiritual practice, all of the other elements of the other suits of tarot.

So with the Eight of Swords, there are many ways to interpret this.

If you pull it in a reading, I invite you to consider where you may be willingly

or unwillingly victim of or complicit it in, oppressive power structures,

or perhaps where you may be avoiding liberating yourself in your own life or

choosing to believe that it's not possible when if you were to do something

uncomfortable or challenging or even really, really easy,

everything might be able to change.

Thank you so much for tuning in to my tiny tarot practice.

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that helps me keep this podcast going.

I hope this Eight of Swords wisdom helps you get more free. Have a wonderful day.