The Tarot of Eli, LLC: Minor Arcana: The Starman Tarot- 3 of Swords & The Thoth Tarot- 3 of Swords-Sorrow.

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I see life as cruel and meaningless.

The Starman Tarot- 3 of Swords, depicts a young artist with head held down in sorrow. It seems that he sees a world that is cruel and uncompromising and his art shows his despair. Be hind him is painted the Divine Feminine, wearing a medieval mask of shame and humiliation. This "iron mask" is a medieval torture device use for the purpose of shaming, humiliating and showing the rule's rejection of this person. The old Celtic swords, stand against the wall of shame, seem to be rejected by their owner's , as objects they show the art of metallurgy, but in the hands of man, they are devices of death, intense suffering and torture.

Even in the face of despair, the Hawk and Feather remind us of the freedom of an unfettered mind. For the both the Hawk and the golden fetus represent the Expanded and Liberated Solar- Mind of the enlightened person, know as Horus, who in Egyptian philosophy was resurrected from the Patriarch Osiris and therefore transformed . What seems to be almost and after though, we see a freshly painted and dripping heart. This implies that only through love- the heart (soul)- can we expand beyond and be liberate from the burdens of sorrow and despair. Therefore, there is hope even in the darkest depths of sorrow and despair.

The crudely painted question mark, painted on the cardboard square, gives us a clue on how to go about transforming our reality. For all is mind, and the transformational part of mind, is imagination, the intuitive muse. We can imagine another reality, since all reality is is observation, one see's only what they want to see.

In the Western Qabalah the 3's of Tarot belong to Binah the 3rd Sephiroth who is called Understanding,she is also named the Sanctifying Intelligence and the Parent of Faith. Here is the implication that any religion of any sect, could not have a "church" without this underlying structure of Sanctifying Intelligence.

As Mary is the Church, in Catholic doctrine, so is Binah the Parent of Faith, in Western Qabalah; Not the faith itself, but its parental intelligence that is the foundation of organization, structure and sanctity. She is the Will to Form, and your body is the "church" of your spirit; a "church if the intimate god", that you wouldn't have without the essence of the Creatrix-Binah, within you.

You may ask, "What has this to do with sorrow?" To make this simple, she is the Crone of the Triple Creatrix in this card, and the Crone is the death of the “you”-the you that you think you are.

As the concept of Virgin, we have Binah as High Priestess, as concept of Mother we have Binah as Empress and here She is as the beginning of Crone which forms in Geburah.

Let me explain: 

Many of us think that “freedom of choice" is happiness, but we forget that in order to have "freedom of choice", freedom can be terminal as we must have a beginning and an end. As Spirit, we just Are a Photonic Psyche, there is no up, no down, no in and no out; we just are photon energy that is both "Here and There; Suns/Sons of the Divine Creative. But as a Spirit who runs a material body, we have the freedom to choose up, down, in or out,i.e., information. This freedom of psyche is really free-doom (Anglo-Saxon root word of freedom meaning,” I choose my own death”) for we also get to choose not only our body -life but also our body-death. Be it ignorant or intelligent choice, it is still our psyche’s choice. Therefore, freedom of choice also brings great sorrow and great joy, love and sadness etc. With the Divine Creative's Mind of Imagination, this freedom also contains the burden of insanity.

As Master Jahaladine Rumi, the twelfth century Sufi master and poet said about sorrow; "Sorrow prepares you for joy, it violently sweeps everything out of your house, so new joy can find a space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place."

What many of us forget, to be the Only One Mind, creates a process of awareness that One is all there is and One is alone, unable to share, to express to itself as “another”, or in any way able to define existence. The “I” needs the “Am” and the resulting marriage creates a "Me". Therefore, a great sorrow of loneliness was realized before the WILL TO FORM - the“Am”-Binah, who is Understanding was thought of and changing data of  EXISTENCE to the in-form-ation that is ALIVE. Just have the data is not enough, for it must be understood in order to become information. Information is Form.

As this card is a 3, the number of the major arcana--key 3- The Empress and All Mother, to her the great Sorrow of the Mother is felt. For she has given birth to Beautiful Children who often think themselves into acting as Monsters. This hurts a loving mother. Also the fact that those beautiful children must end because to begin is to end and therefore, to love is to loose. Because of the need to transform we know that sorrow arrives with every loving attachment in this world of matter. To receive is to lose. To begin is to end. To love is to expand and liberate the mind from the body, yet needing a body to be felt; the mind must return to sensuality in order to develop discriminating thought and intimacy with its lover. Many of us know that to love is to end in loss...but because we are of the All Mother, we will love after loss anyway. Love is our nature and loss, is the beginning of a new gain. This understanding, doesn't lessen sorrow, it just helps us move forward with tears running down our face. Thus, there is strength gained in understanding sorrow, whereas, fear of sorrow weakens us.

Is also called the Lord of Sorrow, so once again we get confused by sexual connotations. But energy is male in expression and female in reception. The Planet attributed to the 3 of Swords is Saturn in the sign of Libra. The Angels of the Decan are Hayayel and Hoquiam.

Here we have the influence of Binah, as Saturn, in the Astral Formative World of Yetzirah. The Power of Saturn is destructive and initiatory bringing a presence of pain and hardship as Saturn is also Chronos, “Grandfather Time”. But as we may know, hardship and suffering are often where we learn life's greatest lessons. So the Dark Sterile Mother, is not evil, she is a Sanctifying Intelligence. In the 3 of Swords, it is implied that Saturn unbalances the Scales of Libra, in order that they may be re-balanced in an improved way. So the Crone is the perpetrator of "Tough Love, "and for a Mother having to use tough love to teach her beautiful , valuable and vulnerable children, brings a sorrow as well. This is implied as the Rose of 5 Petals illustrated in the Thoth Card. Her heart, (5 is the number of man) if you will, is torn apart by the piercing of the 3 swords. This card suggests the Dark Sea of Binah, a Womb of chaos, where things are deconstructed to be reconstructed. Where Souls go to cleanse the

Personality they have built to operate the Homo Sapiens Sapiens body. A soul made self-consciousness we often call ourselves. The Enlightened know themselves to be the Spirit that operates a form as information of I AM.

Therefore, one can see that the 3 of Swords, goes deeper than a sorrowful loss of a loved one, or a loss of relationship between 3 parties. Although that can be the mundane meaning, However, the 3 of Sword goes into the Abyssal Womb of the Creatrix, who must destroy all that she loves into being. She is the lover of the Alive and must Kill her Most beloved. More often than not, the Psyche, the Golden Soul, is not destroyed, it can be made ill and She then is the one that heals it. If Evil (live spelled backwards) has darkened the Sun that is Soul, she can clean it with the steel wool pad of despair and the detergent of sorrow, only if there is something left of the Child within that she gave birth to. If nothing is left but shadow, she can destroy that as well for all Soul's are Her "golden children". One may be in touch with the Universal Melancholy that occurs as an inheritance of all of Her Creative Children. For to Transform, proceeds from order to disorder and the understanding of disorder, enables order again. Life,Death, Inhale-Exhale, gain/loss, end and beginning, are the cycles of spiraling frequencies of light that we all are created from.

When the 3 of Swords- Sorrow-is thrown in divination:

• The querent is experiencing thoughts of sorrow.
• Reoccurring thoughts of sorrowful past events.
• The sorrow of a triangular relationship that is out of balance.
• Disappointment and heartbreak.
•  A type of recognition where one must give up one thing to gain another.
• Releasing; a gift of sorrow, allowing the querent to release and let out the pent up stress of feared emotions.
• Here difficulty precedes power.
• Also, for initiates, who travel to the abyss, this sorrow is soul deep, for it is of the Sorrow of the Creatrix, who has to destroy her precious forms to rebuild, which will also happen to the personality that succeeds in traversing the Abyss.

If ill defined:

• False happiness.
• Inflicting  misery on others.
• Avoiding and/or running from the feelings of despair and sadness.

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