Compare and Contrast Eight of Cups and Six of Swords

An important exercise to learn and to understand tarot is to compare and contrast two cards which have something in common.

Two important things are true about the language of tarot. One is that each card carries unique energies and interpretations. The second is that each card will have some things in common with a few other cards.

Even beyond obvious associations like elements and numbers, some cards will bear similarities one to another. When cards that have similarities appear in a reading together, their collective meaning can become a theme of the reading.

For newer tarotists, however, these similarities can make it hard to understand the significant differences between the cards.

I’ve discussed this before, most recently in a post that suggests using venn diagrams to figure out similarities and differences between two or more cards.

The Eight of Cups and the Six of Swords are a good pair to try this exercise with. In terms of numbers and elements, they have little in common. Swords are masculine, Cups are feminine. Six and Eight are both even numbers, but not particularly similar in their energy.

Yet, we see enough similarity in these two cards that sometimes newer readers have a difficult time distinguishing their unique energies.

What are the similarities between the Six of Swords and the Eight of Cups?

In the Waite-Smith tradition, both images show motion. Both these cards can convey a sense of travel, either literally or metaphorically. They are usually less about the beginning of an important journey, as the Fool or the Chariot might depict. Instead, both of these cards are about moving away from something, toward something better.

In both of these cards, there can be a sense of needing to move away from emotional difficulty, toward a greater sense of calm.

Both these cards relate to water. The Six of Swords, though an Air card, is in a boat. The Eight of Cups is at a beach.

Both of these cards suggest that there has been some trauma or difficulty in the past.

Both of these cards suggest that it will take some time to move toward something better.

What is unique about the Six of Swords?

Traditional fortune tellers often see this card as predicting a ‘journey over water’. Aleister Crowley called the Six of Swords the card of ‘Science’. Even in the Waite image, we see how the swords of logical thought float over the water of emotion.

The Six of Swords can discuss science and technology.

In the Six of Swords, we are sailing toward smoother waters. This card includes an inherent prediction that things are getting better.

What is unique about the Eight of Cups?

While the Six of Swords seems to be sailing toward something, the Eight of Cups seems to be walking away from something. In this card we see abandonment. The Eight of Cups may refer to the damage done by childhood abandonment. It might suggest that we feel abandoned in a relationship. Or, it might suggest that it is time to abandon an unsuccessful undertaking.

Aleister Crowley called the Eight of Cups ‘Indolence’. From this perspective, we can see that the Eight of Cups might involve a desire to avoid a situation, or something that we don’t have the will or energy to complete.

Often in this card I see the emotional process of healing that comes when we stop trying to fix something that can’t be fixed.

The next time you are stuck trying to understand how two or more similar cards differ from one another, try this simple exercise and see how much you learn about each card’s distinct qualities, as well as their similarities.

Finding the Theme: A Tarot Exercise

Finding the Theme: A Tarot Exercise

I host a lot of free tarot workshops, both online and local meetups. This gives me an opportunity to see what tarot students are learning and doing, and to offer exercises that can enhance their development.

I’ve been hosting free in-person tarot groups for twenty years in different locations. Over the years I’ve seen a lot of trends in tarot practices come and go.

One thing that seems more prevalent since the modern Lenormand renaissance is a tendency for tarotists to read cards in the particular order they were pulled, paying close attention to the placement of the cards and how the cards interact with each other based on that placement. I wrote something about this in another recent post entitled “Reading Tarot Out of Order.”

It’s an imperative skill to be able to construct a story with the cards that appear in a reading. Over the past twenty years many of us tarot teachers and authors have made a priority of teaching tarot storytelling. I see the results of our labor in most of the tarot students I meet.

Yet, it takes proficiency at multiple skills to create a great tarot reading.

I’ve noticed recently that if you ask a group of tarot students to pull three cards with no position and read them, they will almost always make either a past-present-future story, or an action-outcome story. Those are two wonderful ways to work with a non-positioned three-card spread. If you, as a tarot student, don’t have experience with this method of reading, this is definitely a skill you want to practice and add to your toolbox.

Along with storytelling skills, the skill of finding themes and messages in groups and combinations of cards is important. With this skill, the order of placement of the cards isn’t important, unlike reading with Lenormand cards.

For example, if you see Justice and the Chariot together in a spread, it doesn’t matter which positions they are in or which card was pulled first. Those two cards in a spread together could always be read as the possibility of a traffic ticket.

It’s important to remember, too, that each card in that combination will give other information as well. In a good tarot reading, we will interpret the cards that appear multiple times in a variety of ways.

Some small groups of cards, like my traffic ticket example, provide easy themes, meanings and predictions. Further examples might include the Wheel of Fortune coupled with the Devil to present a gambling addiction, or the Empress coupled with an Ace to present a pregnancy.

The larger trick is to find themes, or a combined meaning, in cards that don’t necessarily go together so naturally.

Here is an exercise to help you learn to do that. We tried this exercise in two in-person tarot groups recently. It seemed helpful to get readers to think about the cards in different ways.

I will share the exercise by doing an example here, step by step. Please do it along with me! If you like, you can share your results in the comments.

First, pull three cards at random.

This is not to be a reading for or about anything, so no need to ask a question or focus on anything in particular. For this exercise, you can ignore reversals and turn all cards upright.

The cards I pulled at random are the Five of Swords, the Queen of Swords and the Six of Cups.

Do not react to the cards as you might in a reading.

Your first task is to make a list of every keyword and key phrase you can think of for each card.

Here are mine.

For the Five of Swords, I have the following: battle, conflict, the need to fight to win, the possibility of loss, mental indecision, a war of wits, lack of internal peace, girding your loins, preparing for battle.

For the Queen of Swords, I have these: adult woman born under an Air sign, widow, widowhood, infertility, woman who tells the truth, woman who is difficult to deal with, nurturing truth, nurturing communication, telling the hard truth, female writer, nurturing technical prowess, nurturing intelligence.

I have these keywords and phrases for the Six of Cups: a return to childhood, reunion, happy memories, childhood home, shared history, a sense of familiarity, a sense of spiritual connection, nostalgia, living in the past, remembering the past, honoring the past.

Clearly, the first part of this exercise is to list all the possible keywords and phrases you can associate with these cards. If you want to Google or consult books, that is fine.

The practice of listing all possible keywords is a good strength-building exercise for two reasons. First, it keeps you from limiting your understanding of each card to a single concept. Second, if you find yourself stuck in a tarot reading and not sure how to interpret a card, listing all the possible keywords will usually get you unstuck when one of those keywords strikes you as obvious and accurate.

Once you have your lists, look to see if there are any keywords that are common or similar between your lists. Then, look to see if there are any keywords that are obvious opposites.

Now, look at the three cards and think about what they have in common in terms of correspondences and images.

When I look at my three cards (I am used the Hanson Roberts Tarot for this exercise) the first thing I notice is that two of the cards are Swords cards. They are all Minor Arcana. There is a Five and a Six so the two numbered cards are in an adjacent place in their journey.

I think about the numerology of Five and Six, going from a place of expansion and difficulty to a place of victory. I think about the nurturing nature of the Queen, but also that the Queen of Swords has suffered, much as the Five of Swords can speak of suffering.

I think of the Six of Cups as dealing with the past, and, and that the Queen of Swords is reputed to have suffering in her own past.

Now, look at your three cards and think about the things that are dissimilar, or in contrast, amongst them.

When I look at mine, I immediately contrast the stark Swords images with the warm, floral Cups image. I think about Swords being masculine and Cups being feminine. I think about Swords as mind, and Cups as heart. When I look at the two Swords cards, I think about the Five as war, and the Queen as peace.

As you can see, this part of the exercise works to create a stream-of-consciousness flow as you consider the cards. This can often lead to significant insights in a tarot reading.

The next step is to consider all the things you have pondered about these three cards, and derive a cohesive theme, question, or message from them.

Once you have derived one theme, work to find at least two more.

Here are mine. First, I landed on ‘The need to heal from the past’. The two others I thought about were ‘fertility issues’ and ‘mother issues.’ Had I confronted these cards in a reading, intuition and context would have determined which of these themes made sense.

Of course, the themes we derive from multiple cards in a reading don’t give us the whole story. We still need to interpret the individual cards to get all the information. Yet, these themes can help us know what further questions to ask. These themes can help us give our client an overall understanding of what they are dealing with. These themes can help us tie the reading up at the end. They can also help provide a context as we interpret the cards individually.

The more techniques we have for understanding and working with the cards, the better our tarot skills will be.

Performance Tarot: Three Exercises to Help the Tarot Pro Nail it on Stage

Not every professional tarotist considers themself an entertainer. Tarot work can happen in a variety of venues, and with many different goals.

Over the past two and a half decades I have kept my own tarot career as varied as possible. I love deep, personal, introspective readings. I also love entertaining with tarot.

What’s amazing is that, even when the goal of your particular tarot gig is entertainment, there can still be enlightenment and insight each time you pull a card.

What is tarot performance, versus tarot reading? Tarot performance can include stage-work, that is, doing readings on a stage in a gallery setting. Tarot performance can include doing quick live readings for callers on radio and television. Street readers and festival readers are always “on stage”. Tarot performance can also include working the cattle call at a corporate party with enough attitude that people gather around your table to watch, and be part of, the show.

I am sure that some tarotists reading this are already cringing. Because there is so much fraud and chicanery associated with tarot and psychic work, many readers avoid thinking about their showmanship. They are afraid that developing a good stage presence might be too similar to those who use cheap tricks to take advantage of gullible people, or those who simply don a spectacular costume and give obviously fake readings in a party setting.

I’ve had some occasion to mull over this topic of tarot performance recently. I started 2016 with a very special Psychic Gallery performance in a Unity Church. Unlike tarot stage shows I’ve done in nightclubs, this required a very delicate balance. On one hand, I had to be entertaining enough to keep people’s attention for the two-hour performance. On the other hand, these were spiritual people who were there, not for an entertaining evening out, but in hope of receiving life-changing oracular information.

Let’s contrast that with the gig I did Wednesday night. Like most tarot performers, I occasionally work with talent agencies and event production companies to provide entertainment at corporate functions and large family parties.

This was an employee party as part of a sales seminar. The party had a circus theme. There were jugglers, carnival music, a strong man, and three tarot readers. The other two readers seemed a bit bewildered at the gig. Our clients for the evening were primarily men who had no interest in divination, tarot reading or spirituality. These are people who would never typically have readings, or find value in the process.

My fellow readers certainly gave their share of readings over the evening, but a crowd of people gathered around my table. What was the difference? In the corporate party setting, I do quick, hard-hitting readings, but I do them with a great deal of showmanship. I turn those who try to heckle me into my biggest supporters. I say true things about my sitter loudly enough that his colleagues can hear. It’s all in good fun, and it is fun.

At the same time, I am able to give real advice and insight to those who might not have been able to hear it before I developed that rapport with them.

I think, among some tarotists, there is erroneous belief that tarot reading can’t be both entertaining and deep, or that a reader with showmanship is likely to lack substance.

I encourage my students to develop their stage presence as well as their intuition and card understanding. Here are three simple exercises that can help you find your inner star for the next time you find an opportunity to take tarot to a stage.

1. Practice giving deep, involved one-card readings.  The more information you can quickly pull from one card, the more easily you will be able to read in performance mode.

2. Learn ways to interpret the cards in the context of personality. Nothing is more entertaining than having one’s personality accurately described by a stranger in front of one’s friends.

3. Learn to pick out the most important points. Practice by using a large spread, but giving your interpretation of that spread in under three minutes.

Whether performance tarot is happening on a stage, on a street corner or festival, on an FM radio morning show or at a party, it will always have a few things in common. Performance tarot will highlight your personality, and your ability to immediately connect with people. Performance tarot will utilize your ability to read the cards quickly and accurately. Performance tarot will call in your intuition, and allow Spirit to speak through you in ways you might not have expected. Finally, performance tarot will disarm your audience with entertainment, and then astound them with your ability to speak their truth.

Performance tarot isn’t for every reader, but if you think it may be for you, don’t be afraid to use these exercises to help develop your performance tarot skills.

Tarot by Numbers: Seven, Eight, Nine

Here are more Minor Arcana pip card numerology exercises, this time with a twist! I’ve included the Major Arcana cards, and posed some thought-provoking questions about the cards and their numbers.

These exercises are great for journaling, study, and group work. I’d love to hear your results!

To begin, sort out the Sevens, Eights, and Nines from your Minor Arcana, and the Chariot, Strength and Hermit from your Major Arcana.  Take these fifteen cards and sort them by number.

Sevens: Introspection, Valor, Self-Reliance

Are there Key Words that you would include for Seven?

What Key Words would you use for each of these four cards?

Look at the images of the Minor Arcana Sevens. Are there things these four images have in common? How do those things reflect the energy/meaning of Seven?

How does Major Arcana Seven, the Chariot, reflect the Key Words of Seven?

How does Major Arcana Seven, the Chariot, compare and contrast with the Minor Arcana Sevens?

Shuffle the five Sevens, and pull one at random to give insight into your personal challenges.

Eights: Motion, Balance and Power

Are there Key Words that you would include for Eight?

What Key Words would you use for each of these four cards?

Look at the images of the Minor Arcana Eights. Are there things these four images have in common? How do those things reflect the energy/meaning of Eight?

How does Major Arcana Eight, Strength, reflect the Key Words of Eight?

How does Major Arcana Eight, Strength, compare and contrast with the Minor Arcana Eights?

Shuffle the five Eights, and pull one at random to give insight into your personal power.

Nines: Completion, Success, Almost There

Are there Key Words that you would include for Nine?

What Key Words would you use for each of these four cards?

Look at the images of the Minor Arcana Nines. Are there things these four images have in common? How do those things reflect the energy/meaning of Nine?

How does Major Arcana Nine, the Hermit, reflect the Key Words of Nine?

How does Major Arcana Nine, the Hermit, compare and contrast with the Minor Arcana Nines?

Shuffle the five Nines, and pull one at random to give insight into your personal achievements.

What stories do you see in the sequence of Seven, Eight, Nine within the specific suits?