Today is Thursday, which means it is my day to pray to and worship Aphrodite (though truth be told, I pray to and worship Aphrodite much more often than just on Thursdays). Today I spent time meditating on the birth of the goddess, and then I offered my typical prayers, hymns, and offerings. When I was finished, it occured to me to do a tarot reading about my relationship with the goddess, so I sat down with my cards, I invoked Apollo as the god of oracles and prophecy, and I asked for the cards to reveal to me the nature of my relationship with the goddess, past, present, and future. This was the spread I laid out:
(In case those links ever expire, those are the Ten of Cups reversed, the Page of Wands reversed, and the Nine of Swords).
Honestly, I’m not sure what to make of it. The first card, the reversed Ten of Cups, makes sense. After my initial contact with the goddess, which blew me away and filled me with warmth, light, and love, my continued spiritual floundering has left the fulness of spiritual joy represented by the Ten of Cups, that I feel can be available to me through Aphrodite, has been truncated and stunted. My own hemming and hawing, whatever my reasons, has kept me from having the joy in the goddess that I might otherwise have had. Nothing odd or unexpected there.
Its the reversed Page of Wands and the Nine of Swords that have me troubled. The Page came up ecently in an extremely important reading I did for myself, and at the moment I am sort of getting ready to embark on a path of (spiritual) action: a very definite journey of spiritual work that I think the Page represents. So why is he reversed? Am I doing something wrong?
And the Nine of Swords? What does that mean? That my Page-of-Wands journey is ill-considered and abortive and will lead to regret and hearbreak, at least as far as the goddess is concerned? Or is the whole thing a warning? Could it not be saying that my present quest is in fact corrupted and askew, but that if I do embark on it like I have planned, but then I let it fall by the wayside, if I am lazy about it, then it will end in sorrow and tragedy, and a possible loss of relationship with the goddess altogether?
In other words (because I know I am being cryptic and confusing), is the reading telling me something definite or conditonal? Is it warning me that my present course is distorted and cowardly, and will result in anguish, or is it warning me that if I veer from my present course–reverse the Quest, in other words–that it will lead to anguish? It seems a bit vague about something that is kind of important.
Sailing to Byzantium 