Hi everyone,
Thank you for being here and, yes, this looks like a terrible card to talk about.
But with tarot all is never as it seems and just like every other card in the deck each has a positive and negative to it. It is always about searching for what is the right fit for you at this point in time. So if this has meaning for you today, take it on board.
If not, save it in your memory banks for another day as it will surely surface somewhere in the future.
The Three of Swords is one of those cards nobody particularly wants to see. Three bloody great swords through a heart. Pamela Colman Smith wasn't exactly being subtle.
Traditionally, this card speaks about heartbreak, grief, painful truths, rejection, separation, betrayal and emotional wounds. But after years of reading tarot, I think there's another side to it that doesn't get talked about enough.
Sometimes the original heartbreak isn't what fucks up your life.
It's what you do afterwards.
You get hurt, and somewhere along the way you build an entire operating system around never being hurt like that again. Unfortunately, that operating system can become a bigger problem than the original bastard who caused it.
You assume the next person will do what the last person did
Someone cheated on you. Lied to you. Abandoned you. Manipulated you. Whatever happened, it hurt like hell.
Then someone decent comes along and you watch them like a security guard at a Jewelry store.
Why haven't they replied? Why did they say it like that? Who's that person commenting on their post? Why are they being so nice? What do they want?
The Three of Swords can become hyper vigilance disguised as intuition.
And yes, sometimes your intuition genuinely is telling you something. But sometimes it's an old wound yelling, LOOK OUT, HERE WE GO AGAIN.
What to do: Before reacting, ask yourself: What evidence do I have about THIS person and THIS situation? Don't make somebody new serve a prison sentence for somebody else's crime.
You keep reopening something that has already ended
We've all done this one.
Re-reading old messages. Looking at their social media. Replaying conversations from 2019 while you're trying to fall asleep. Imagining the magnificent speech you'll give if you ever bump into them in the Supermarket.
Meanwhile, they're probably buying milk completely unaware they're still starring in a six-season psychological drama inside your head.
The Three of Swords can show where pain has become a habit.
What to do: Stop feeding it. Healing doesn't mean pretending it didn't matter. It means deciding it no longer gets unlimited access to your attention.
You make rejection mean something about your worth
You didn't get the job.
Someone didn't choose you.
The friendship ended.
Your business idea flopped.
Suddenly your brain turns one disappointing event into: Obviously I'm useless and everything I've ever done has been a complete fraud.
Calm down, Karen.
Rejection hurts, but rejection is information. It is not a character reference.
What to do: Separate the event from the story you've attached to it. This didn't work is very different from I don't work.
You become so frightened of disappointment that you stop trying
This is where the Three of Swords quietly does some serious damage.
You've been disappointed before, so you don't apply for the job. Don't start the business. Don't date. Don't tell somebody how you feel. Don't put your work out there.
You call it being sensible.
Sometimes it is.
Sometimes you're simply scared shitless.
What to do: Ask yourself whether you're making a decision based on what is actually happening now, or based on something painful that happened before. There is a considerable difference.
You turn pain into bitterness
This is perhaps the ugliest version of the Three of Swords.
Someone hurt you, therefore nobody can be trusted.
A relationship failed, therefore love is bullshit.
A friend betrayed you, therefore women are bitchy.
You got screwed financially, therefore everyone is trying to rip you off.
Pain loves sweeping generalisations because they make us feel protected. Unfortunately, they can also make our world very bloody small.
What to do: Let the experience make you wiser without allowing it to make you harder than you actually want to be.
The real lesson of the Three of Swords
The Three of Swords doesn't promise that you'll never get hurt again.
You probably will.
Welcome to being human. Terrible system. No refunds.
What it does teach is that pain needs to be acknowledged, processed and eventually put somewhere appropriate. You don't have to forgive everyone. You don't have to find some magnificent spiritual lesson in every betrayal. And you certainly don't have to send gratitude to the arsehole who broke your heart because apparently they were your "greatest teacher."
Sometimes an arsehole is simply an arsehole.
But eventually you have to decide whether the swords are still being held by the person who hurt you...
or whether you've taken over the job yourself.
And THAT is where the Three of Swords becomes one hell of a useful tarot card.
Much Love - Tarotqueen