Blogging the Tarot: Three of Swords
Hi, welcome – we’re going on a journey.
A few years ago, I began a love affair with The Tarot. It started out as a spicy little secret – something me and The Tarot enjoyed behind closed doors and in the presence of a few trusted friends. It was never intended to be out in the open. Merely an exercise in curiosity. I wasn’t a psychic or a witch or an occultist or anything. Just an observer, that’s all… an admirer at the very most.
As it goes, though, my feelings got away from me. The more curious I got, the more I learned, the more our connection grew, me and The Tarot. I started feeling like we had an understanding, like The Tarot saw me for who I was, spoke to me in my language.
Being seen is scary, so I tried to quit The Tarot, break up with it a couple of times. It never would take, though. Over the years, I kept finding my way back. No matter how many times it told me something I didn’t want to hear or exposed me to parts of myself I was desperately trying to keep hidden – I kept finding my way back.
And now we’re here: The Tarot central to my life. It’s foundational to my business, to my belief system, to my network. It tethers my connection to my Self (which in fact IS psychic and witchy, who knew). It paints pictures of the world in the way that makes sense to me, and the most magical part is that it paints pictures that make sense to others as well. It’s become a means of connection between me and my community. It’s a tool that enables me to be useful, helpful to those looking for answers and who find their way to me and The Tarot.
And so, I decided to write my love letters to The Tarot.
To each individual card, in fact.
And I’m going to share them with you here.
There are 78 cards in a traditional deck. We’re going to pen an ode to each of them – part stream-of-consciousness, part personal essay, part education – one blog a week for 78 weeks, in no particular order, following only a loose structure of content. Good luck to all of us.
There are literally hundreds of resources out there that’ll offer an interpretation of the cards; this will be similar in some ways, and in some ways very different. I’m trusting new depths will reveal themselves and that whatever messages arise will find exactly who they’re meant to reach when they’re meant to find them.
Thus begins our tarot journey.
Three of Swords, from the Rider-Waite tarot deck with artwork by Pamela Colman Smith
The first card off the top of the deck is the Three of Swords… traditionally referred to as "the heartbreak card.” So, the tone has been set.
The swords are pretty rough from top to bottom (as will become evident soon enough), and this card is very on-brand for the suit. I love that we’re starting here though, with one of the cards that anyone that knows anything about tarot learns to dread. Hang in there, I promise we’ll make it make sense – and maybe even learn to appreciate what the emergence of this card can signal for our path.
We associate the heart with feelings, with emotion, with the feminine; yet the suit of swords has everything to do with the mind, with thoughts, the masculine. So, what's this card doing here in the thinking suit rather than over in watery Cups with the other feelings? To be sure, there are plenty of Cups cards that signal heartbreak and sadness and grief (wait ‘til we meet the four and five), yet the quintessential heartbreak card is in the suit of the mind. And well, isn't that just the point: the Three of Swords represents the heartbreak we suffer as a consequence of our thoughts. It’s the pain of our illusions finally shattering, and the picture of What Might Have Been consuming all our energy.
I am no stranger to illusions and heartbreak, for I am a Pisces.
And is it not in the oscillation of the two that we Pisces break our own hearts over and over again? I’ll be the first to admit, I can lean hard into the agony of heartbreak – so hard, in fact, that I have this particular tarot card tattooed on my body. Not as a tribute to pain and suffering, but as a reminder to what pain and suffering activates in me.
And now, a story.
Six years ago, I gave birth to my daughter.
She was very lovingly and intentionally created by her mom and me. We were meticulous in selecting the other half of her DNA from a bank of eligible swimmers; we found the best doctors in the region to perform an IUI procedure; I delivered at a fantastic hospital with a worldclass staff. Pregnancy was uneventful, labor and delivery were standard, and by all physical accounts, my daughter and I were totally healthy leaving the hospital. Yet in the months that followed, I had what I would consider a true existential meltdown.
Women carry pregnancies and usher in new life all day every day – it happens so much that we as a society have come to think of it is trivial. It is not.
[Aside: I recognize I steer the conversation to motherhood often; I’ve become one of those parents that can’t stop talking about parenting. The thing is, though, I don’t think we talk about motherhood honestly enough, particularly the parts that are downright awful and also wildly common. So unfortunately, I’m just going to have to keep bringing it up ad nauseum until I feel like we are collectively painting a more well-rounded picture of the experience. It’s insufferable, I know, yet necessary. Thank you for understanding.]
While I was pregnant, everyone prepared me for how my body would change postpartum.
They were adamant in their unsolicited warnings about the widening of my hips and the sagging of my tummy and the bulging of my breasts and the thinning of my hair. Yet no one warned me about the grief I would feel over having to separate her from myself. About the feeling of loss and emptiness with her gone from my belly. About the vulnerability of having the purest and most innocent expression of myself exposed out in the world. I made myself sick with worry for her safety and well-being, afraid of the wolves that were everywhere just waiting for me to drop my vigilance.
Even bigger than the pain of the physical separation was the guilt of creating her in the first place.
tattoo by Maggie Sun (IG: @suntatooer) at 𝒎𝒊𝒅𝒏𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒈𝒂𝒓𝒅𝒆𝒏 𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒍𝒊𝒆𝒓, Toronto
I was convinced I had ruined her life by bringing her into existence. This was my existential meltdown: I imagined her flawless little soul plucked from the ether and imprisoned in this new little baby body I had created. She was boundless and formless and perfect until I divided myself and created a life form that demanded animation – and not only that, but a life form in a world that I knew to be un-fun and unsafe and general inhospitable, especially for children. I felt so incredibly guilty for making such a choice and therefore personally responsible for every moment of suffering this child was experiencing. When she cried, my heart shattered. From the very start, I was in pieces.
"So, Lou, about your tattoo," you might say.
"It seems strange and maybe a little morbid to etch a monument on your body for something as heavy as postpartum depression." Right you are, Dear Reader, which brings me to the next layer of meaning in our Three of Swords. When something happens that breaks my heart into a million pieces, it activates my favorite part of my Self…
Enter: Divine Feminine Energy
Three of Swords moments awaken the nurturer in me.
Giving birth upleveled my internal nurturer to a whole new stratosphere. All at once I had patience for my daughter that I'd never had for anyone else, least of all myself. I had grace for both of us, gratitude for my life-giving body, gentleness with my steady recovery. The body changes everyone warned me about seemed immaterial when I considered the fact that my body had just spent the better part of a year rearranging itself for new life, then another year rearranging back once my daughter had vacated. We are a wonder for that monumental act of magic.
In a time where I thought grief would swallow me whole, feminine energy saved me.
My internal nurturer loved on me when I didn't know how to put myself back together. She taught me patience with myself, she fed me when I needed to eat. She said nice things to me when I was struggling, she gave me chances to rest when I was tired. She wrapped me in my favorite blankets, she distracted me when sitting still was too cumbersome, she put on my favorite movies to keep me calm and make me laugh. She knew when I needed to talk to someone and when I needed to be left alone, she gave me permission to cry my tears and have my pity parties. She gave me permission to get curious about those things that happened a long time ago that shouldn't matter now but still actually really, really matter. She nursed me through the half a dozen new heartbreaks that sprang up while I was still piecing together the shrapnel from the last one, and every time a new person came in and did their damage and left, she stayed and helped make sense of the lessons they forced us to learn.
Through all of that, Divine Feminine Energy introduced me to my Authentic Self – the Self that can tell stories about the future, then watch them play out in reality. The Self that can meet someone for the first time and, upon hearing their name, see and feel the truest expression of them. The Self that can tap into the wavelength of another person, that can see life through their lens, that can offer language for an experience that maybe no one has come up with before. The Self that's a helper and a lover and a solver and a healer, and that's also a protector and a warrior.
For some of us, those Three of Swords moments activate the purest expression of our Divine Feminine – and it's for that reason I have those swords piercing a heart forever emblazoned on my skin. It's not the heartbreak, but the resilience in healing that deserves the monument.
“That’s great, Lou,” you might say, “but back to that thing about an existential meltdown…”
Yes, thank you, allow me to close that loop: the emergence of the nurturer and the connection to my Authentic Self unlocked an entirely new understanding of this whole human experience. I believed when I created new life that the soul set to occupy it was an unwitting victim of chance – I no longer think that’s the case. In fact, I have it on good authority that kids actually choose their parents. When a soul is set to begin a new lifetime, it conspires with its team of Guides to select the setting in which that lifetime will unfold – we choose the trials and tribulations we will face, we choose the lessons we want to learn, and we choose the key players for the whole adventure, beginning with our parents. The guilt I felt for bringing her here is now gratitude for the front row seat she’s allowed me to occupy in her existence.
The Three of Swords and you
Returning to the card itself, we can think of the swords as representing mental attacks, ruminations, thought processes that are stabbing us in the feels. For you, those mental projections could be of the partner you wanted to have, the partner you thought you had, the future you intended to build. Maybe it's the picture-perfect life you were in the process of building, the freedom a career was going to give you, the status you would finally attain. Whatever concept the swords represent, the realization that that concept was an illusion is now causing immense pain and sadness. We're playing our loss on a loop, the failed fantasy solidified as a monument in your mind – a heavy stone thing that’s been fashioned into a blade and driven deep into your chest.
When the Three of Swords comes up in a reading, let it be a reminder of the nurturer.
Take it as permission to pull out all the stops to nurse your heartbreak. Have your pity party, eat your comfort food, rot in your bed for a few days. Take care of yourself, and notice with gratitude the nurturer that shows up. Know that this signals the Denial and Bargaining stages of grief, the phase of resisting and thrashing against the pain of loss. Let the nurturer make you feel safe to turn towards your heartbreak, to see the situation for what it is, even when that’s not what we wanted it to be.
And now, you tell me things.
What Three of Swords moment stands out in your life? How have you seen your Divine Feminine Energy come to the rescue? How does this interpretation of the card compare to others you’ve seen?
I’d love your input in the comments or by email; thanks for engaging. I’ll see you next week.
