Hard Card: Nine of Swords
There is nothing worse than feeling at utter loss and not see the light at the end of the tunnel. The 9 of Swords is a card that represents all the fears, doubts, and insecurities we have about ourselves, the world around us, and well, everything.
Storms Clouds & Self-Care
With life comes a stream of things we either feel we need to do or want to do. Whether this is bills, friendships, work, school, working out, eating better, learning a new skill, traveling, etc etc; each of these things can cause other things to happen. For example, not having enough to pay a bill and then we stress about it. I've talked to a lot of people while I was in school about how little sleep they had gotten because they had to meet rent so they work full time, full time class schedule, bills, and maybe 4 hours of sleep a night.
The 9 of Swords will point to that and communicate the seemingly endless supply of frustration and negative energy. The good news is self-care comes in and gives us tools to combat this feeling. We work hard but we must remember to take a moment for ourselves, even if small, so that we can mentally/emotionally/literally take a breath. This comes in many forms and I may speak to them later on a witchier note, but for now let's take a look at some numbers for this oh, so fun card.
As a nine, I tie this card to the other '9' cards in the tarot deck to further find specific meaning in this card. In numerology the number nine is associated with many things, some of them are: spiritual awakening, responsibility, and inner strength. There are many more and can be easily viewed online.
These traits are associated with the nine and in thinking on this, it makes sense. The nines all share an element of realization. The nine of swords is represented, I feel, in the numerological association with learning to say 'no'. There can be a beautiful moment of awakening when we begin to say no to things that do not serve our highest good. We begin to see that we wield more power over our reality and are llowed to say no because we inherently have this power, it is inalienable from our humanity.
Obviously, that doesn't make life roses and rainbows but it does give us something—hope. It's definitely a Pandora's Box moment and if we run screaming from the open lid as it spills negativity all over, we may never see the hope that we need to get through the bad things.
This leads directly into the 10 of Swords and another pattern—cycles. We don't have to end up in the hellish looking 10 of Swords and there are ways to redirect oneself. I think the key turning point comes in the 9 of Swords and hinges on a person's ability to stare at their realizations and act on them appropriately.
