The VIII of Swords Wants You to Snap Out of It!
VIII of Swords from the Rider Waite Smith tarot deck.
The VIII of Swords is my favorite tarot card. Maybe. I mean, can a person really have a favorite tarot card of all time?
My other favorite is Strength, but that is a topic for another day. Today, I want to tell you about why I love the VIII of Swords, even if I won’t get it tattooed on my bicep.
The VIII of Swords reminds me that: “all the walls I hit my head against are inside my head.” This is a quote that was written on a journal I bought once. It was a handmade-looking book of blank pages that was beautifully unique and caught my eye in a bookstore in Prague. I’m not sure if this is a quote that the artist of the journal made up or what. Nothing comes up when I Google it.
Anyway, this saying resonates with my very deeply, all the way down to my essence. I bought the journal without a second thought. The Swords of the tarot represent the mental realm, they are our thoughts and ways of thinking. There are many ways to think. There are endless paths our thoughts can take. And we can choose those paths.
The act of choice is the important thing here. We can choose to lead our thoughts into a wall, and bang out heads against that wall over and over again. It’s an option, granted a not very attractive option, but an option all the same.
But think about how many times you do choose that option! You decide to lead your thoughts in a vicious loop or a repetitive pattern, ruminating obsessively about something that has happened in the past, could happen in the future, and how you perceive that. Nothing productive is happening in the repetition, but you choose not to stop. You keep hitting your head against that wall.
The VIII of Swords is your wake up call. When it shows up in a reading, it’s a moment for mindfulness. It draws your attention to where your thoughts are leading you into a wall. It asks you to choose something else, to look at the situation differently, to let it go, or to move on. It’s telling you that you’ve created this situation, this mental trap, and it’s within your control and it’s actually your responsibility to choose something else.
No one is coming along fix this for you. You need to take control and make an adjustment. You need to focus and change your mindset. This card is your slap in the face that says, “Snap out it!” Hopefully it doesn’t give you any whiplash, but sometimes the tarot needs to be forceful and in your face for you to recognize where you mind is stuck in a rut.
I’ve considered getting the Pamela Coleman Smith drawing of the VIII of Swords tattooed on my bicep to remind me to care for and develop the mindset that I want to have. It takes work to cultivate a desired mindset and having a physical focal point to bring me back to that work could be a productive thing. But ya know what, I don’t think I’m a tattoo person! I don’t have any yet at 42.
But that too is a mindset, calling myself a non-tattoo person and saying I’m too old to change. Anything could happen, folks! I’m not going to rule out a change of mind about tattoos in the future. What tarot card would you get tattooed if you were a tattoo person with some extra cash for body art?