Tuesday, July 18, 2017




The Knight of  Swords
Labyrinth Tarot
Original Writing by Kathryn Ravenwood


 
The Knight of Swords is one of my favorite Tarot cards.  He charges into the swirling, chaotic winds of change, sword raised, fearless of obstacles, ready for any challenge. His intention is to create breakthroughs  rather than to calm the storm.  He is a rebel in his own mind, unpredictable, loves to play the wild card, is never boring, a champion of the unconventional, and ever on the quest for  truth. He is fun,  smart, funny, and might be a bit nerve racking with his multiple levels of ideas all seeking expression at once.  He is kind of irresistible.


We all are equipped as the Knight of Swords to cut through the chaos of our lives whether it is externally caused or the ever present internal chaos of our own minds.  The Swords in the Tarot represent the mind, thoughts, and the patterns generated by our thoughts. The mind’s landscape encompasses an unlimited variety of worlds created by perhaps equally unlimited circumstances.  All the facts and fiction, words and voices, the very evaluation of our experiences, are all stored in the great labyrinth of our minds. Some of us categorize and sort these thoughts into order and some live with a constant mental chaos.  Brilliance flashes forth, stupidity erupts at often the worst possible time.  Who is in charge of all of this? Well, we are.


 I often say, “no one lives in your head but you.”  This is true but it takes vigilance on our part to filter out the influences that have wormed their way deep into the folds of our minds.  We find ourselves in rote recital of something we were told as kids that doesn’t even make sense.  We discover the hurtful words spewed at us thirty years ago still ring loudly in our head.  We find we can retrieve obscure facts from some unknown repository of trivia – very useful when solving crossword puzzles but perhaps not relevant to our life.  To become the master of our thoughts and mind is a life-long process and one not achieved without allowing – even encouraging -  the Knight of Swords to gallop through our mental realms.  It is so easy to get stuck in a rut, to allow narrow mindedness to creep in and take hold due to our not paying attention, being tired, or just no longer caring. There is the real danger of allowing or even creating distractions to keep ourselves and everyone around us in constant flux where we can emerge the heroine by solving problems we have deliberately created….  otherwise known as “Chaos Queens.” This is the exact field the Knight loves to run through, churning up the ground (and the grounds of our stagnant or chaotic thinking) brandishing that sword to slice away connections, cut through mediocrity, and challenge us to think about things in new ways, to consider other viewpoints, to see a different version.  We don’t have to choose all the new things but it is very good for us to experience the thoughts of them.


Truth Seeker.  What is this?  The Swords are about Truth – both the Cosmic Truth and our Personal Truth – which seeks to align with the higher Cosmic Truth.  The more that is cut away with the great Sword of Discretion, the more we can eliminate what is not true; we separate fiction from fact, we create an opening for inspiration, clarity, understanding, and liberation.  We develop mastery of our minds and our truth by not allowing the chaos to take hold, to rebuke the old mind tapes and stop them from repeating their same old stories, by being willing to take charge and take responsibility for our thoughts and their subsequent actions.


If you are willing to embrace a quest for truth, to seek visionary clarity and to ruffle up a lot of feathers in the process, then saddle up with the Knight of Swords and ride through the miasma of cluttered thinking.  Raise your sword, raise some eyebrows! Raise some consciousness and raise the bar on your own truth.

...07/18/17



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