The Knight of Cups: Tarot Love at Samhain

This is the Samhain 2013 Tarot Blog Hop.
Joy Vernon's Blog is the one before mine. 
When you finish here please visit Rowan Tarot.
If you find a break in the chain visit the Master List.

Welcome to the Samhain 2013 Tarot Blog Hop. Eight times a year tarotists from all over the world blog together on the same topic. The Blog Hop happens on each spoke of the Pagan Wheel of the Year but is not specifically Pagan-themed. This time around our wrangler, Alison Cross, has asked us to blog on the topic of love and how it relates to tarot for us.

While Alison was clear to make a distinction between the topic and the holiday, for me there is no distinction. I celebrate Samhain as the Witch’s New Year, the Final Harvest and the time of the Thinning Veil. For me, each of these directly relates to love. The New Year is about self-love, offering the opportunity to manifest new things and release those things that no longer serve me. The Final Harvest is about love for the Earth that sustains us. The Thinning Veil is about the love I share with my ancestors who have gone before me and the spirits that guide and guard me every day.

Tarot seems to agree with both Alison and me that it is important to focus on love at this time of year.

All tarotists have the experience of having one card consistently come up over a period of weeks as if saying “pay attention to me, pay attention to me.” For me recently that card has been the Knight of Cups, the bringer of love.

A few weeks ago I made a video about the Knight of Cups in response to a question from a student. This past Sunday on my weekly webcast, Christiana’s Psychic Café, I pulled a card at random for our “Card of the Week.” It was the Knight of Cups. Immediately thereafter my guest Tarot Dactyl pulled the Knight of Cups for the first two on-air readings she did.

Then, while making my weekly newsletter I pulled a card at random for my “One Card Weekly Reading” feature. Can you guess what the card was? That’s right, the Knight of Cups.

That the Knight of Cups has been showing up so often at this Samhain season and that Alison chose “love” as our topic is a synchronicity I cannot ignore.

The Knight of Cups is often seen as a card of romance, but this card, and love itself, is so much more than romance. The early Greeks had four words for the different types of love – agape, storge, philio and eros. In our culture, and often specifically in tarot reading, we tend to think of love only as eros, the romantic kind of love.

When I pulled the Knight of Cups at random for the newsletter all I could think of was that cheesy Burt Bacharach song from my childhood, “What the World Needs Now is Love, Sweet Love.” In fact, that song is now a brainworm entrenched in my head. Maybe that’s not a bad thing.

Here’s what I think is happening. As the veil between the worlds is thinning, Spirit is giving us a clear directive. That directive is heard through tarot, though meditation and in many other ways by those who make a point of tuning in. That directive is love.

The Knight of Cups insists that we bring the energy of love wherever we go, that we nurture love in our hearts and minds. The Knight of Cups directs us to bring love, to seek love and to be love.

Love is the antidote to fear and hatred. Love is the clearest evidence of the existence of Higher Power. Love heals all.

Now, more than ever, love is what the world needs. 

Thanks for joining us on the Samhain 2013 Tarot Blog Hop.
If you are working backwards  Joy Vernon's Blog is the one before mine. 
The next blog in the chain is Rowan Tarot.
If you find a break in the chain visit the Master List.