I went back to my Haindl Tarot
today, and threw The Lovers and the Eight of Wands reversed. Hmmm . . . again with the Eight of
Wands reversed.
The Lovers
(Air, hot/separates and wet/adapts, quick and animated, intellectual, problems
or challenges; Gemini, “I think,” curious, talkative, sociable, dual; Zayin,
double-edged sword; and the Path between Tiphareth, the hub of the creation
process where energies harmonize and focus to illuminate and clarify, and
Binah, female receptive energy and the origin of form and structure) tells of
duality, union, and personal choices.
This card is about love, but it is also about our personal values and
how they affect our choices, and the promises we make to others. The traditional image on The Lovers
offers three people: a man, and two women (one representing virtue and one
representing sensuality). The
Lovers presents the two halves that when united with balance are greater than
the sum of their parts; in other words, The Lovers is about a unity that is
necessary for fertility and creativity to have an effect.
The Haindl
Lovers card is chock full of symbolism: a red rose (love) superimposed with the
Star of David (as above, so below and the four elements), with each point of
the star adorned with a leaf (element of Earth, fertility, Nature); a spear
(Wands, element of Fire) pointed down (ownership), and a unicorn (purity,
innocence and enchantment). There
is a tree on either side of the couple, reminding us of the Garden of Eden and
the Trees of Life and Knowledge found there. The most important symbol in my opinion is the fact that the
two Lovers hold each other’s hands behind a golden Cup, telling us that while
we have many important personal choices in our lives, choices that can affect
our physical environment as well as our emotional and mental selves, love is in
front of it all.
The Eight of Wands (Mercury, reason,
intelligence, education, skill, communication, in Sagittarius, “I seek,”
philosophic, fun-loving, adventurous, blundering) is a card of action, of quick
developments, and of pulling it all together so things can be completed. The energies of this card are fast and
strong and sudden, and while the dust will surely fly, the end result should be
balance. This one is kind of a
Minor Arcana version of The Wheel, and its sudden eruption of energies that we
can’t control; all we can control is our reaction to the manifestation of those
energies.
The Haindl
Eight of Wands shows eight arrows tipped with flames, shooting upward out of
red fire (or blood!) at the lower left corner of the image and upward toward a
blue sky. The Haindle Eight
of Wands presents the concept of many smaller energies moving in unison toward
a particular goal or more pure level, an interesting take on this card!
Choices and lover are important
today, and neither of them may be easy to manifest. I do need to remember that my personal choices will have
power, and they will attempt to manifest once I make them. The difficulty lies in that reversed
Eight of Wands, which tells me that there may be chaotic effects buffeting
those choices as they manifest. I
won’t be able to direct that chaos, or erase it (or increase its power in order
to control it), so I should stay alert.
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