3 of Swords

Gazel

balenciaga said:
You know, I do not disagree that there is a lesson to be learned,ultimately, from the 3 of SW, but first I can feeeel the pain in this card! The swords pierce the heart - it is a visual image of what it feels like when someone tells you the truth that you do not want to know. The pain of betrayal (ugh, that is the worst!) Maybe the lesson comes later, after you have rested in the 4's and gotten the last word in the 5, but the 3 HURTS now!

Well, I think it can be both - both the hurting now, and the enduring knowledge and experience of the heart. I do think these two understandings applies to the card regarding the circumstances for and other cards in the actual reading.
 

balenciaga

Well, yes, anyone can sit and stew in the pain if they so choose. But anyone can move on, it is in anyone's control to move on.
 

moderndayruth

new insights...

I am working with Karen Mahony's Fairytale Tarot (i know everyone is into her new deck now, but i obviously have an issue with timing :( ), and i had new thoghts on three of swords.
The story that goes with the card is The Nightingale and the Rose by Oscar Wilde, one of those stories that breaks your heart...
The student in the story says at the end "What a silly thing love is - it's not half as useful as logic", he trows to the street the red rose the bird died for, pulls out a dusty book and begans to read...
Well, in this way or another, it happened to all of us at some point of time, hasn't it? As i drew this card today as my daily drowing i contemplated over it for a while...
You know me, i tend to percieve everything as an aspect of my own self, so i came to the conclusion that the bird would be the romantic, emotional and irrational me that doesn't end well, at least today... :(
The studend would be the rational and practical me who does pull the books and "escapes" from the emotional pain to the intellectual rationalisation.
Hope this makes sense :D
Love,
mdr
 

Lula Jing

Gazel said:
I think we can come to terms with the sorrow and grieving "and get on" and accept it, but I dont think that true, deep heart ache (I'm not talking kiss and tell heart ache here) will ever really leave the heart. The swords will make scars. And transform us.
The way you say this makes such perfect sense to me and is pretty much how I see it too. :)
 

memries

When I fell and broke my shoulder (recovered now) I kept getting the 3 of Swords. Exactly as you explained in your first post Gazel. I was physically in pain for sure but my mind was alert and my independence was gone for however many weeks ahead of me. I found that part very painful as well.
So it was mind, heart and body involved.

It is the same with a broken love affair.. all parts of you are involved and that is the 3 of Swords.
 

Wisp Wings

Oh my, I am very late with just having read all of this. LOVE the thread and fanstic insights! Thanks Gazel for this and I so agree with your thoughts on this.

Oddity, your post...Wow! I have to say to this, you know threes are expansion and you just stated the how on this suit of the minors can show the expansion. The latter portion of your posting summed up my Mom and she made the daily choice to stay right there constant reliving and re-piercing the heart daily. She has since past away, but she lived close to a decade reliving certain painful and sorrowful events she endured. She dearly loved the misery of it and so continued the endurance of it for her duration of life. The effects on me rehashing her 3oS broken record so often was migranes after long conversations and heartache and the heartache that I lived with that she chose to stay within these bounds and not move on.

Memries, thank you for adding about your shoulder situation. That is a post to remember. Other than the love triangle, and heartache card usually portrayed assigned as meanings for 3oS, I have read and known of a few to get this in readings meaning heart attack or heart problems that will result as heart attack if not addressed, also the actual heart surgery. So again as said, "mind, heart and body involved". The body how we've treated it (diet/physical use), the mind thinking too heavily and the heart working the relational aspects and spiritaul as well, trying to cope with too many stress, the body absorbing these thoughts and stress' internalizing them to bursting... a heart attack.

Again with "mind, heart, body", my intellect with one on one encounters with my Mom and her repeatative talk of living her 3oS .... effected my body with massive migraines.

I love gaining new ways to see and view the cards and having that filed away deep in memory for the right reading for those bingo moments. Thanks all. I learnt from everyone's posting on this.
 

WalesWoman

I am late to this too, but had some thoughts from another conversation earlier, about feelings and inabilities by some to face them... using things like constant noise, music, TV, something to keep them from hearing the voices inside them, of feeling their pain and avoidance of all emotional issues.

That in a way psychology and counseling are the swords, the intellect and knowledge to reach those damaged parts and release them, so that healing can occur in mind, body and soul.

The swords could be giving a voice to emotion, to express it in a more healthy and productive way... poetry and song, speaking out heartfelt truths, those things that pierce us to the heart and get to us... movies that make us cry, the things we see on the news, the inability to absorb and prevent a child's pain, or even some sweet gift, something that touches us on a deep level... it's not about hardening the heart but allowing it to be open and expose it.

One cannot love or be loved without being vulnerable and open to pain or deny life's truths, that pain and pleasure sometimes are indistinguishable. We cry from joy and can laugh in sorrow and it all comes from the same place in our hearts and minds.
 

Wisp Wings

Waleswoman, I love what you said and I am going to write this is my journal. It is so true. Thanks for writing that!
 

Seafra

Was reading a (rather awful) novel the other day and a line in it went something like this: "She had been living with a comfortable lie and now had to live with the uncomfortable truth" and I immediately thought of the Three of Swords. I believe that term will stick with me now.
 

moderndayruth

Seafra said:
Was reading a (rather awful) novel the other day and a line in it went something like this: "She had been living with a comfortable lie and now had to live with the uncomfortable truth" and I immediately thought of the Three of Swords. I believe that term will stick with me now.

I believe this line will stick with everione who reads this thread :D
Anyway, for me it makes the long story short...Thank you, Seafra! :love:
*mdr is off to grab her journal*