Tarot Card Comparisons: The Thoth Tarot-9 of Swords: CRUELTY & The B.O.T.A. Tarot- 9 of Swords

The Thoth Tarot- 9 of Swords, is called  THE LORD OF DESPAIR AND CRUELTY, or Cruelty in short. This is Mars in Gemini; here Yesod, the 9th Sephira/Foundation is influencing Yetzirah in the Astral World.

With a smattering of astrological data, one knows that the fiery energy of Mars, does little good in a sign of dualities. In-fact, it is the power behind "Divide and conquer".

This"little good" is shown by the nine rusty swords, dripping blood and poison on Crowley's card. One may shudder at the despair, meanings of psychosomatic illness, suffering and cruelty this card represents but each of us, who are paying attention to our brain, know this to be a "self-conscious cruelty"; a personality of our consciousness that cuts us with the emotionally poisoned blades of embarrassment, low-self esteem, humiliation, self-condemnation, and/or inner disgust. It is the internal Slave Master software, that is installed in our personality by our culture, before our Soul can totally install the "Real Personality" that it has already prepared to operate the body in the Name of I AM. This is a natural problem of caused by the brain not being fully developed until one is 7 years old. The ruler's of definition, those who wish to dominate, know this and often it is said, "Give me a child at an early age, and they are mine for life after 7 years of age."

The Few Who Rule the Many, our enslaving rulers of identity, by controlling definition through force, make sure this internal-mental slaver virus is installed in your wetware before you even reach seven years old. Like rusty hooks of poisonous self futility, this is a hard one to remove from your self-conscious! Media and Peer pressure, just drives this poison deeper into self identity. The media, keeps slashing at your self value...."you need this....you need that....to lack them is poverty". "You are nothing " is at the very least implied, or blatantly rubbed in your face, daily, if not hour by hour. "Resistance is futile", blare the horns of the pusillanimous invertebrates who enforce "their masters will" on others. Faust never new such hell as this, for it never dawned on Faust that one needs a $25,000 Rolex to be self-valuable!

 Life is indeed a mental thing, a psychosomatic presence (Psyche is Soul and Soma is body) and indeed, our software can be our own worst enemy. Hence, just by doubting our own value in"The World", we cause self impoverishment.  To see yourself as lack (lackey), is the necessary software to continue the panicked consumerism that multinational mind programmers and/or definition peddlers, want! However, before any human judgement, you were already approved into being by your Higher Self: A subjective Self-Awareness of the Universal Divine Collective Unconscious that builds object selves (consciousness), as identity! Something we call a "Soul". So once again, the Qabalistic axiom reads true,"Above all things, know thyself"! 

It's simple really; you had to be approved by all that is Whole Mind, to be made alive! You presence is your Judgment....and obviously you are good enough for Divinity!

You are an Divine answer, to a Divine question; in-fact, that is what Creation is! For questions are lack of knowledge, whereas answers are knowledge made objective and/or "made manifest". Therefore, stop questioning yourself value, and become valued answers instead! Action is the Fiery Spirit that moves you; reaction is usually run by the uncertain mortal-animal who is self absorbed in its mortality, thinking the whole universe is out to eat it!  "I Am" dares ask, "What am I"? and you are the answer to that question, "I AM ME"!

The Nine of Swords, cruelty, is about you being your own worst enemy, divided against yourself, mentally and emotionally. Always nay-saying before you can ever start a motion. This is  a moment of doubt drawn out as a life-time of reaction. Sure we doubt our selves! After all every new motion is a risk to our mortal being! But if the infinite Child of Wonder, that innocent curiosity, still  has "I's" in you, you're are going to "do it" anyway; for the body may doubt but the Soul knows. 

We are always striving forward, we are being Pushed along by the Inner Spiritual Self Psyche, just like Dark Energy pushes the Universe of Matter forever outwards. Life also has a Driving/Pushing Force...and the Body is the vehicle driven...by severity and death!

So what this Cruel Nine of Swords implies, is that"a house divide must fall", we are not a division of Life who fears the onslaught of Death. We are the Spiritual Soul who owns the body and therefore, the life and death of the Body!  Even our own Anglo-Saxon based language knows this to be true, for the word Freedom comes from the Anglo-Saxon- Free Doom: meaning "I Choose my own Death"!  So, get together with your-Soul-self and over throw the slaver program that is in your brain, for it is based on the false assumption that Death is something other than creation. Software can be erased when one owns their own "brain", even when its garbage. (G.I.G.O). All software programmers know of G.I.G.O., for when software is garbage and programed in the hardware or wetware, all is operational garbage. Garbage in, Garbage out!

The Nine of Swords implies that you must get off your suffering butt and strive beyond your miserable fear based perspective and rethink the programing! It's easy to fail, all you have to do is stop doing. Success, requires a stubborn optimist; your Soul is such and optimist. For even if it kills "itself" (destroys the hardware) trying to accomplish a goal, it just reincarnates and keeps at it! Hence, the Soul may make many lifetimes of form, to accomplish one purpose. 

As Children of the Divine Creative, we all will pound out the bugs of our software (definitions), some sooner than others; but we all will do it eventually; that is the purpose of sensuality after all! Often, the Soul will allow the body to suffer disease, so that it will stop doing the self-cruelty programs of the Ruler defined world, and/or allow psychosomatic illness, in order to get one to stop and rethink themselves. This isn't punishment for being "bad".  Rather The human power-tool, is also a personal learning tool that teaches us to discriminate and/or discern, by experiencing success and failure!

Your soul, will just "reabsorb" the software garbage, and try another revision of it in "Hardware" performance that we know as "alive" and/or "life-times".

So, "get over yourself and get on with you! Impeccability is what we do''! Is a correctional software loop, that I run in my self doubting brain. It just overrides the "pity pot" of self defeating thought every time it comes on line. But this wasn't easy, for installing that software loop, took determination, and plane old fashion "jack Ass " stubbornness and constant repetition of a meditation of seconds, done most minutes, until it becomes automatic. Don't you think its time, we programed our own Hard Ware! That is the real message of the Nine of Swords.

ABOVE ALL THINGS, KNOW THYSELF!

As stated before, the number nine brings back the energy of a Suit to the middle pillar in the area of Yesod-The Foundation.

So the balance to the Suit of Air/Swords would seem to be restored and the previous disorder rectified. However, the Suit of Swords itself has been following the 2nd law of Thermodynamics [...All things proceed from order to disorder.] and the general idea of the suit has constantly degenerated until it has reached a "perfect disorder".

Instead of Pure Intellect, the Nine of Swords represents the automatic stirring of heartless passions that belong to the Survival Mind of the Lizard brain. This is the world of the unconscious primitive instincts, of the psychopath, of the fanatic and zealotry.

 To reiterate: Mars rules Gemini celestially here, producing a crude raging hunger that has no restraint; a greed of the eternally fearful. This seems odd, since the temperament of Swords is intellectual but as A. Crowley states in his Book of Thoth...." it is the temper of the inquisitor.". 

Deeply buried in our subconscious is the Tyrant Virus program who degrades us, criticizes our Personality's actions if we dare leave the boundaries of our "Slave training" , i.e. indoctrination of identity.

This Tyrant Virus lies awake awaiting our very attempt at expanding our perspective with the barbed whips of enforced "emotional" fear unfolded and ready to strike! This Inquisitor is the result of "pleasure-Pain training" which is commonly called Pavlovian conditioning. Named after a Dr. Pavlov who electrically tortured dogs into compliance. Needless to say this is not a healthy mental state for the individual--- but to those in Authority (  Ruler --Means, "Those who control definition") having you whip yourself into compliance whenever you are tempted to defy your definition of  "Self"... is most economical.

The Thoth Tarot 9 of Swords shows nine swords of varying lengths, all jagged and rusty and all striking downwards with points dripping poisoned blood. i.e. poisonous thoughts.

The very imagery of this card causes one to shudder in resignation. However, there is a way of dealing with this card: the way of passive resistance is most positive; least positive ways to resist are resignation, and martyrdom. Some may even seek implacable revenge by causing great pain to "others";"Others" being the enemy's common name, but this is self destructive denial asThe Survival Mind must always have an enemy, which it now observes to be the very body it resides in, to keep its Authority of Fear over the Personality and therefore "blocking" the authority of the Soul by the simple process of "distraction". By the process of observation, this "enemy" is a silly delusion, because the Soul/Psyche is both Life and Death of the body and the body will never survive the Will of the Soul! Stopping this "misdirection" of your identity, is as simple as to say," I AM the Soul who is the Life and Death of this body and I Am the Creator of Free-doom [Anglo Saxon word from which freedom was derived and means" I choose my own death"] , I Am the Alpha and the Omega of my own Life Form"; is stating the original Divinely Given authority you as a soul have over the body. This is a statement of an inner knowledge that comes fromknowing Thyself. This Knowledge of Free-doom, lays the Pavlovian-Tyrant to rest, and reestablishes the Soul's Authority over the body. The Fear of Pain, fades away and the Joy of the Moment is firmly established as a life journey.

9 is a number of completion, and is also the number of the Sephira Yesod-Foundation, on the Tree of Life. Yesod is on the middle pillar of the Tree of Life, and has rectified the imbalances of the past energy disorders of Air. This, however, dose not rectify the degeneration of the energy as it continues down the Tree. Here, the Foundation of Self-Identity, is made of sand.

 As previously state, but never overstated; Swords, usually depict the pure intellect, that acts like air as its energy in motion continually heats up with passion and cools down with rationale. In the case of the Nine of Swords, consciousness has fallen into an unenlightened  void of rational thought, stirring heartless animal passions; passions that are of the psychopath and the fanatic. Hence this is the character of the inquisitor; it seems intellectual but is operating in a hidden rage that is without restraint, and one only the enslaved have.  All this sounds just awful and terribly gloomy, yet, it is the cultural foundation of "Divide and Conquer" indoctrination technique.Divide the Soul form the body, by installing a "fear based authority" in its place.

Our consumerism society is based on "fanning the flames" of that primitive raging hunger of survival thinking that fears loss, in order to produce the "fanatical shopper"whose world is always lacking self-fulfillment. It is the realm of the Neti-Neti (Sanskrit for,"Not this-Not that") consciousness, that consumes unrelentingly, hoping for and in the pursuit of happiness; a futile seeking of happiness because happiness isn't in accumulation nor resides in glutinous bellies nor can  it be caught by pursuit. There is only one result in the completion of such thought and that is insanity.

Thankfully, many of us have enough strength in our character to know that mental happiness, is not a thing, but rather a "state of Self-Identity" and have found out that by treating other people with respect, ("...do unto another as you would have done to you") we have a happier presence on this earth.

Therefore, the Nine of Swords is the state of self- consciousness that I  call "wanna-be", were one is not alive/happy until they achieve some future possession or goal. This person is a mental-corpse; a zombie, who lives only in yesterdays emotions and uncertain futures, leaving the moment of  Nowvacant of their presence. This phenomena of  "walking corpse" is not a new thing that some Hollywood director dreamt- up as the latest horror thriller. Rather, you'll find this "living dead" concept in the two thousand year old Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, that is part of the Nag Hammadi Library.

"Whoever has come to understand the World has found only a corpse, and whoever has found a corpse is superior to the world. "

If you dare to understand this Gnostic statement, you can understand the Nine of Swords-Cruelty. Because the practice of "Self inflicted cruelty" is going on in most human brains right now, most of us constantly belittle ourselves, in order to appease our dogma; i.e. our inner-slaver. Just by treating others as you would be treated, deprives the Cultural- Tyrant of any power over your body!

Shows nothing to depict the meaning of the card. This is usual for this Tarot series, that doesn't place much meaning to the "small cards" of tarot.

However, the swords are the color of the air element, and arranged in a pattern of upper and lower triangles of the Qabalistic Tree of Life. Leaving out the realm of Malkuth, for that would be the number 10. Therefore, the Foundation, is depicted, leaving out the "creation" that is the kingdom of the realm of earth. Thus, in its own way, the B.O.T.A. Tarot illustrates the "foundation" of subjective perspectives that make up the "living objective world". The Thoth knowledge applies here.

When the Nine of Swords is thrown during a reading, the Querent will be or has been experiencing:

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