nisaba
from http://grannyjonestarot.blogspot.com/2012/01/nine-swords.html
Today I pulled the Nine Swords from the Granny Jones deck. This was not a personal divinatory pull for myself, it was specifically for this blog. The area I live in has had a cool, wet summer so far, and today is the first really sunny day I have experienced for a long time. Trust the deck to give me a bit of balance! For out of this usually sunny, happy deck, I pulled a rainy card.
On a dingy, grey background, a black thunder-cloud is featured. Below it, a character with bloodshot eyes in a bed whose bedstead is made up of a row of black swords with red hilts, with a dark-green counterpane. A spider descending from a dark web in the top-left of the image gives a feeling of both menace (in the spider) and stagnation (in the web). The alarm clock shows us three o'clock and the universal circle/slash symbol contains the universal symbol for snoring, three Zs. A picture on the wall of three pointy, snow-covered mountains and three flying birds contains the two symbols that recur throughout the deck: the pointy mountains in the distance reflect hardship to come, and the flying birds I see as a gesture of blessing.
And yes, when do you need blessings more than when you are feeling at your worst?
The keywords on this card are "nightmares - despair - self-pity - illness", but as always with cards from this deck, I find that in practice the card can mean so much more. It often comes up for clinical or near-clinical depression, or for an inability or unwillingness to take necessary steps to change one's circumstances for the better. Insomnia and night-sweats accompany this card, and on occasion where I particularly notice the blue - er - container under the bed, incontinence or urinary tract infections are often present.
This card often indicates the professional worrier, too: someone whose circumstances are not so dire, but who is always looking for the catch, the faint possibility of failure in the future, and so fritters away their potentially happy resent in worry or avoids doing anything at all just in case it might fail instead of succeed, missing every opportunity life throws at them.
When faced with clients like that, I always refer them to the sunny, happy yellow sky in the painting, and the birds swirling happily over the Mountains of Difficulty, meet their eyes, and ask them just how much of their happiness can they afford to erode into misery, how many opportunities can they afford to miss, and why would they prefer a life of misery to one of contentment.
And perhaps I should say that every time the card comes out in a reading, because so many of us blind ourselves to the hope in our life by looking for the risks that may or may not ever develop into problems. Even in her most grim card, Granny offers us a glimmer of hope, that by our own choice we can improve our inner lives and live with a greater contentment.
Today I pulled the Nine Swords from the Granny Jones deck. This was not a personal divinatory pull for myself, it was specifically for this blog. The area I live in has had a cool, wet summer so far, and today is the first really sunny day I have experienced for a long time. Trust the deck to give me a bit of balance! For out of this usually sunny, happy deck, I pulled a rainy card.
On a dingy, grey background, a black thunder-cloud is featured. Below it, a character with bloodshot eyes in a bed whose bedstead is made up of a row of black swords with red hilts, with a dark-green counterpane. A spider descending from a dark web in the top-left of the image gives a feeling of both menace (in the spider) and stagnation (in the web). The alarm clock shows us three o'clock and the universal circle/slash symbol contains the universal symbol for snoring, three Zs. A picture on the wall of three pointy, snow-covered mountains and three flying birds contains the two symbols that recur throughout the deck: the pointy mountains in the distance reflect hardship to come, and the flying birds I see as a gesture of blessing.
And yes, when do you need blessings more than when you are feeling at your worst?
The keywords on this card are "nightmares - despair - self-pity - illness", but as always with cards from this deck, I find that in practice the card can mean so much more. It often comes up for clinical or near-clinical depression, or for an inability or unwillingness to take necessary steps to change one's circumstances for the better. Insomnia and night-sweats accompany this card, and on occasion where I particularly notice the blue - er - container under the bed, incontinence or urinary tract infections are often present.
This card often indicates the professional worrier, too: someone whose circumstances are not so dire, but who is always looking for the catch, the faint possibility of failure in the future, and so fritters away their potentially happy resent in worry or avoids doing anything at all just in case it might fail instead of succeed, missing every opportunity life throws at them.
When faced with clients like that, I always refer them to the sunny, happy yellow sky in the painting, and the birds swirling happily over the Mountains of Difficulty, meet their eyes, and ask them just how much of their happiness can they afford to erode into misery, how many opportunities can they afford to miss, and why would they prefer a life of misery to one of contentment.
And perhaps I should say that every time the card comes out in a reading, because so many of us blind ourselves to the hope in our life by looking for the risks that may or may not ever develop into problems. Even in her most grim card, Granny offers us a glimmer of hope, that by our own choice we can improve our inner lives and live with a greater contentment.
