Tarot Card Comparisons: The Thoth Tarot- 9 of Swords: Cruelty & The Night Sun Tarot- 9 of Swords

The Thoth 9 of Swords, presents a ghastly image of nine crooked, chipped swords, dripping blood. If this isn't gloomy enough, we have the celestial rule of Mars in Gemini. Mars,a primal raging hunger that has no restraint, because of the Gemini twin paradox, is a mind in war with the body.

9 is a number of completion and/or the purist state of the element. 9 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, does not rectify the degeneration of the energy as it continues down the Tree.

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 9 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 rage that is without restraint.  All this sounds just awful and terribly gloomy, yet, it is the cultural foundation of "Divide and Conquer" indoctrination technique and often the state of mind used in scientific experiments on animals. Here, empathy is not a part of the mechanism of thought, only the "vision" counts, no matter the means of getting there.

Our consumerism society is based on "fanning the flames" of that primitive raging hunger of self-absorbed survival thinking 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, at any cost; a futile seeking of happiness because happiness isn't in accumulation nor resides in glutinous bellies nor can  it be caught by pursuit, as to pursue is to "not have it". There is only one result in the constant use of such thought and that is insanity.

Thankfully, many of us have enough strength in our character to know that happiness, is not a "thing", but rather a "state of Mind" and/or an equilibrium of the Mind's trinity, Soul, Unconsciousness and Consciousness. Many  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. For to think well is to be well and to think ill, is to be ill.

Therefore, the 9 of Swords is the state of consciousness that is called "wanna-be-ism", were one is not alive/happy until they achieve some future possession or goal, but once achieved, find it to be wanting and are off in pursuit of another. This person is a corpse; a zombie, who lives only in yesterdays emotions and uncertain futures, leaving the moment of  Now vacant 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. In paragraph 56, of the Gospel of Thomas, it is written:"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 can understand this Gnostic statement, you can understand the 9 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.

This Thoth card isn't usually about experiencing cruel actions from others, (unless noted by other cards in the reading) even though that has happened in the past or present, rather it is about self-abusive thought. Negative thinking, feeling sorry for yourself and crying about life, thinking one is a loser where one's emotions are flowing with the tide of events, rather than being a dynamic action in life that changes events.  Hence, The Tarot 9 of Swords usually represents the personality/ego as being a victim of its own fears and the inner spirit is shedding tears of empathy (white tears in the back-ground) simply because the ego isn't listening to the "master within", as it is totally focused on its own nightmare (tears of blood from the swords). Therefore the personality has become a lost child whose own crying "over spilt milk" drowns out the wise directions whispered by the spirit within.

There is also a sense of anger that leads to seclusion. As you may have deduced by now, swords are generally about ways of thinking and/or mechanisms of thought. They represent the many states of mind, from the Super-conscious (The Greater Self) to the personal self absorbed conscious that we have ignorantly called the ego (ego is a term coined by Sigmund Freud to depict the "Whole Person").

The  mental seclusion of self absorbed behavior, is depicted in the Night Sun Tarot, as any personal presence is invisible, and only the swords are present. Here is represented, wounding(blood on the ground), waste (desolate landscape), and yet will power, the blazing white orb of Kether, and new reflections are also present, simulated by the white rose of rebirth.

The astrological aspect of this card is Mars in Gemini. Mars being the planet of energy, assertion and vitality while Gemini in this instance, is the sign of reworking things back and forth in a particularly self critical manner. The fiery Mars, god of war, energy can do no good in the sign of dualities.

To a Qabalist, this is Yesod (Foundation) in Yetzirah (Astral World). The Astral world itself is often deceptive, but with the Foundation energy of manifestation influenced by Mars and the dualities of Gemini unbalance it,  deceptions now become cruel realities.

The divination meaning of this Sword card is despair, illness, suffering and cruelty.

In the Thoth Tarot, the 9 of Swords is shown as eight beaten and battered rusty swords dripping poison and blood; needless to say this card shows no boon. 

Here the realm of Dreams (Astral) is influenced by mental self-cruelty, negative thinking, and mental degradation. There is a deep depression here but surcease may become apparent in the next 9 weeks or 9 months. 

Often we are hurt by the chaos of daily life, and this card is about crying about that hurt rather than doing something about it. Often I hear people say," God took my loved one away from me," or what kind of God would allow a baby to be shot and killed." etc. , or "why do I always fail" or that another "hurt them emotionally"?  For one, another didn't hurt us emotionally, they just didn't live up to our "Vision of them", and/or our expectations. What hurts us is our own "wants not be fulfilled", something we really have no right to place upon or burden another with.  There are many examples of how we practice "self-cruelty" but either way, the answers aren't easy nor pleasant for such devastating events but they have nothing to do with the Divine Creative's desire to "call back to its bosom" some soul or a type of karma. Souls are us, and the Divine Desire is all about Freedom to be us!Besides, the Divine Creative is all around us, in us and as us! Therefore, there is no where to go to be "nearer to god", then by being yourself!

The Divine Creative gave us the inheritance of Divinity as The Wholly Child of many faces (all peoples); for when Imagination is infinite, there are infinity possible self images. We, who are but imagined self-images/identities and/or simulations of the Divine Creative, i.e. Souls, have absolute command over our inherited imagination. Imagination creates reality both  for individuals and group-collectives. If we create a world where value isn't our bodies or their life (living bodies are the Purpose of Souls), but artificial ideas, titles,  money, and things, our world will be fueled by greed, ambition, theft, murder; a cruel and devastating world of poisoned survival thinking where vulnerability is denied and/or ran from, by preying on everyone else. 

 Life's truth is in the motion of the alive, and/or the manifested presence of a thought-form, not the thoughts, fears or emotions that we think and feel which are usually generated by "fear of rejection"; for those are the hot bed of the Trickster ( Devil, i.e.,lived spelled backwards) that is our self-absorbed-fear-based survival thinking. All is the Universal Divine Collective Unconscious, no divisions no separates, for that is the One Mind. Therefore, Truth is thought made manifest!  So if we allow, because of fear of vulnerability, a world of hate, of destructive slave-religions, of megalomaniac politics, of ENEMY, our own brain/body becomes that enemy to our body. 

*This is the power we wield as "Imagination's children", (Imagination is the Divine Feminine part of the One Divine Creative Unconscious), we freely become our dreams! Too believe in "good or bad", is to divide the Imagination, and divide the power to be!Qabalah, has a solution to good or bad thinking, as it states that: "If it exists, it's supposed to".

Imagination is all around us, in us and as us! Imagination is the "Womb with a view". Therefore, when Dreams are driven by fears, they become nightmares and then we fear the nightmares giving them the emotional power to become our energy-in-motion reality; a reality of enemy that seems to loom all around us. Living a nightmare is self cruelty, as our Unconscious becomes the enemy of our consciousness; a grand and terrifying paradox for we are the Psyche/Soul that is the Unconscious who invents consciousness as "ourselves"! Thus a"house divided", that cruelly falls under a viscous onslaught of self rejection.

Spirit is psycho-dynamic flow of Divine Will (Eheieh-"I Will Be") who is the Mind that is "over matter" and often shown in Hermetic tradition, as a Serpentine or Spiral flow! Passion or the combination of Will to Force (Masculine) and Will to Form (Feminine), is the foundation of all creation! Therefore when your passion to be is "trying not to be", being becomes an antagonism of what you don't want. For there is no "trying" when the item is emotionally thought of. A Thought has no mass until it is powered by emotion (energy-in-motion), this gives it a "gravity" and therefore a presence.

I AM is the Universal declaration of Self and the beginning of all of us as "ME" and/or Self identity. "I Ain't", is man-made fantasy of "good and bad"; a place of denial of identity, that allows us to "not treat another self, as we wish to be treated" and places the brain at war with the body!   Denial is a  fantasy, because whatever is thought and emotionally fueled, will become. Since there is no "Ain't", nor a"I am not", for to think a thought places it in a Universe of Infinite Possibilities/The Imagination; Hence,  what you fervently declare you are not, is what your energy-in-motion becomes. Like attracts like, as the law of attraction implies which is also the Law of action-reaction. It's best to treat others as you wish to be treated. I call this the Hi-me principle, and to everyone I see I think, "Hi me", thus everyone I see is another way to be me.

Becoming what you fear, is also why the Fundamental Theologian, is often driven to enact "sins of the flesh", as sensual flesh is their hated enemy and the "sins" are their own imagined invention of "I AM ME"!

I ask you this, "How can a mind that makes the body alive, and lives as an sensual- identity of Spirit, possibly hate/fear, its very own creation and have a "good life"? 

Here's a paradox: Most religions claim we have  divinely granted freedom of choice, and yet instead of using that god given gift of Imagination freely, we are to become "enslaved thinkers of a doctrine of self rejection"...how then can we be the "image of god" as fundamental religions claim? Here, the paradox of Gemini comes into fruition, for the tendency of the twins to argue is often an internal argument based on fear and want.

Hence, this obfuscation of identity, is a perfect example of the cruelty of Martial energy in the paradoxical twins of Gemini. Where one thing is "thought/said" and the opposite is often done.

It is all about applied emotion (energy-in-motion), acting as form/Me. This is known to the Hermetic Qabalist as Force and Form. The Force is "Will-to-force" (emotion) and the Form is thought/idea/visions/ all which are identifying self.  When we are utilizing our Force and Form without Self-Knowledge, allowing the ambitious (leaders- media etc.) to direct our emotional identities,  we become thoughtless to the devastation we cause to our bodies, who are a psychosomatic organism.

We often build enemies, to blame for our own lack of self -knowledge, that inflicts great pain within our bodies who are only reacting to being rejected by the Life within them!  Hence, it's best to examine theologies, cultures, and any pretense of academia, which demands compliance, for that surely leaves us ignorant of how to operate the Psyche run Power Tool we call "our bodies".

There can be nothing crueler than a world built by the Power of the God's (imagination) when that power is utilized by the indoctrinated minds of slaves who hate and fear their vulnerability; a Vulnerability that gives us the great powers(ability to do work) of discernment, empathy, generosity and love! A great power because vulnerability is the cause of all our great character traits; empathy, generosity, caring, loving, union, compassion, love, devotion, discretion, integrity, courage, individuality, and so many more!

Immortals, the infinite, have none of these character traits, for they are invulnerable to "Beginning and End"/ no time and no space, no fear. Since we have been given Mastery over all Living Things (over Mortality), by our Divine Creative Parents Imagination, we need to "understand the living, who know both beginning and end"! An insane god, is no use to anyone, not even themselves.

To  understand that all is One Mind, and that this Universe is a Collective of Divine Self Identity, is to become a master of soma. For our Real Person is the Psyche, The Life, and the soma (body) is the Alive,and/or simulation of life.  We are the connection of Spirit Intellect Above (higher dimensional frequency than this conscious level of One Energy) and the Earth Intellect Below (Material frequency). Masters of "Beginning and End" and "End and Beginning".  We are the Hermetic Qabalistic Axiom of ," As above so below, so below as above." For without an active, sensual mind among the Microcosm, the Macrocosm can't "expand Self Awareness".

One must manifest an error, to see it, and therefore be able to correct it! This ability to "create, see error and correct it" is called Wisdom; a wisdom that only a sensual body that acts our Psyche's thought as "alive" can give the Psyche.Therefore, Wisdom comes from freely doing what one thinks, experiencing the pleasure or the pain of it, and therefore able to correct it's operation as liberating and expanding conscious body software. The Divine Creative obviously knows this, for It, the I AM became, "ME"! But the "Me" can never be it, as to be a Me requires "time/space" and self limiting images/identity.

The Power to Create anything is an amazing gift, but the power to create yourself, is magnificent and/or magic! Freedom of Choice allows us to create our own self-identity; but be clear here, only gods can make themselves less than what they really are!

Dogs can never be less than dogs, lizards are always lizards and birds will be birds but, the Children of the Divine Creative can be anything they "Believe themselves to be"!

Fear is belief, and lives only in our animal survival brain! Knowledge is preformed as deed! Declarations make our reality! "I Am Love", builds a world of loving beings. "I Am looking for love", builds a world of denial, and self cruelty, fear of rejection and devaluation of the living, where babies are shot in the Name of God and/or our pursuit of happiness, i.e. "our vision". That name is I AM! It is OUR  surname! Realities are "Me", our invention of self -reflection and/or definition. "Me"s are made from energy-motive-definition (emotional intelligence). When mental self cruelty defines us...welcome to a living hell!

The Few Who Rule the Many, our enslaving rulers of  definition and debt, who by enforcing definition, make sure there is an internal-mental slaver virus  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! 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 without this " 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 witless sycophants and pusillanimous invertebrates who enforce "their masters will" on others. The god's are now insane, as they sacrifice life to their very own creations!

Life is indeed a Psyche that creates the alive, and indeed, we can be our own worst enemies, just by doubting our own value in the created- world.  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. 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 Holy, 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 !

Stop questioning yourself, and become answers instead! Action is the Fiery Spirit that moves you; reaction is usually run by the uncertain mortal-animal who thinks 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"!

Hence,  the 9 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 for we sense mortality! 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, and dying is just transformation, from one state of energy to another.  

We are always striving forward, we are being Pushed along by the Inner Spiritual Self, 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 death!

So what this Cruel 9  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 Spiral-energy 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 erase 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 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 beauty of this is that, we are not created by brains, nor bodies. We are all Psyche, the creator of the soma, for purposes of "self-reflection". Therefore, the Qabalah, states that the world of Malkuth, is a reflection and the Soul is the mirror it is reflected upon. When the Divine Creative decides to look somewhere else, the reflection is no longer in the mirror.

The 9 of Swords implies that you must get off your suffering ass of 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 an 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, Souls, 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!  The human power-tool, is also a  learning tool that teaches us to discriminate and/or discern, by experiencing success and failure, as pleasure and pain!

Never fear, for our soul, will just "reabsorb" the software garbage, and revise it in a "wetware" -self-reflection performance, that we know as "alive" by rebuilding persona's.  For a persona, to experience the waking transformation for self-conscious to Soul Psyche,  which can be facilitated by remembering that the Soul never fixes what isn't broke; it is the personality's responsibly to stop blaming "others", and know that it alone is responsible for the "feelings" the body transmits. This allows the persona, which is a form of electric data, to re-think, and therefore, the body to feel better and the personality to repair "itself". Once being able to see the error and correcting that error within itself, the persona, an "artificial energy intelligence" will be declared "official" and "walk from body to body", reincarnating with full memory of the past data. Energy can't be destroyed...only transformed! Electricity is energy!

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, fear of rejection thought every time it comes on line. But 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!

I'd recommend that the Hermit Trump, #9, be meditated on as one would a Mandala as this will invoke the Master Within who will come to our aid. What we forget, is that the Spirit within honors freedom of choice and will not interfere with the ego-conscious thought processes until asked to do so by that consciousness. Prayer is often another way of asking. So when you are in a conscious loop of fearful thinking and cannot see a way out---call upon the Inner Master, who knows what to do that is both life expanding and liberating. Both meditation and prayer break the loop long enough to be heard by Spirit.

Thank you for your interest, comments and supportive donations. May you live long and prosper.