Mary El Tarot - Nine of Swords

missy

I agree with the feeling of danger, too. The goddess does not seem unequivocably benevolent. I wouldn't want to live there.

I'm glad you're doing this Missy. It's helping me feel freer with the cards.

I haven't been referring to the book much. And I try not to look at other people's interpretations before I write here. I just write whatever comes to mind when I look at the images. Stream-of-consciousness mostly. I read intuitively and most of it is not based on any system. I may miss some things, not knowing a system, but that is okay with me. :) I can go back and learn the symbols later if I want to, but like you said, I want to feel free with the cards.
 

cSpaceDiva

With the 9 of Swords, I used a technique of describing out loud everything I see on the card, in detail. Without doing this, I think I may have missed some of the details, like the ride approaching the gate between the towers and the faint outline of the woman's figure in front of the golden fortress. The buildings here remind me of Gondor in The Lord of the Rings. All the different styles of architecture make it feel like it has been built up and added to over time, contributing to the sense of existing through eternity. The closed eyes and the way the woman's head is lowered, combined with her outstretched arms is completely non-threatening to me, it feels peaceful and welcoming.

The bird, either black or in silhouette feels very uplifting. It appears to be a bird of prey, most likely a falcon to represent Horus, but I don't think he is hunting in this image. I feel like he is just soaring and enjoying flight, circling and using thermals to climb higher and higher.

I like the idea of the columns being reversed as a way guiding us back home, reversing our perspective, but I'm not sure that I quite followed everything she said in the book about it. In someways I can see the lighthouses representing the legs of the woman, and this forming a door or gateway. The rider approaching between them is a representation of death, a reverse childbirth almost, just as the sun rises and sets. According to Wikipedia, Hathor personifies motherhood and fertility, helping women in childbirth as well as welcoming the dead into the next life.
 

inanna_tarot

Looking at the 9 of swords in any deck is hard when it does not depict the usual mental anguish and destruction that the 9 of swords can be seen in the RWS. So, seeing a 9 of swords that is so different is a challenge.

However - if we think of ideas like the Law of Attraction, the Secret... any of that stuff, we learn and realise that our thoughts, our beliefs actually make up the world around us. If we have mental anxiety and pain, then we create our own suffering.
Here in the 9 of swords we have the Hermit's seeking of truth in the dark recesses of the mind, the logical, rational and the perfectly irrational and torturous mind. Through the power of our minds we can either have a world of chaos, of the churning tidal waves of the sea, the emotional and somewhat irrational, anxious, worry driven thoughts and beliefs that can manifest our future.... or we can have the House of Gold above, we can have positivity, order, something you can build foundations on, self belief that is unshakable.

Hathor can be a goddess that reflects that - she can be the lion-goddess Sekmet full of anger, worry, fear and so is bloodthirsty and never satisfied (like our anxieties, worry, paranoia) OR she is Hathor the Cow goddess and we can decide to focus on the joys and pleasures of life and change our whole outlook and our reality and future.

The key as always is with ourselves.