it’s the third day in a row I’ve pulled the Three of Swords in some manner or other; in a full Celtic cross on Wednesday, it occupied the future position, reversed, and again it came up reversed yesterday. here it is unreversed. something needs me to pay attention to this.

Three swords piercing a heart; cloud and rain behind. Divinatory Meanings: Removal, absence, delay, division, rupture, dispersion, and all that the design signifies naturally, being too simple and obvious to call for specific enumeration. Reversed: Mental alienation, error, loss, distraction, disorder, confusion.

The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, A.E. Waite

The vital aspect of the Threes achieves transformation by the birth of the new….A popular expression describing a state of mental confusion is “losing one’s bearings.” This card, like all the Threes, has an adolescent tone. Here, every problem that can arise comes up; there is confusion between believing and knowing, and we think without being united to the world, motivated by the energy of an ideal that could just as easily be fallacious as true. The energy of the Three of Swords is closely connected to the sexual energy of the Wands….

This Arcanum refers to the fanatic bursting forth of primary ideas and first opinions. It is a sign of intellectual enthusiasm that can easily combine with a passion for studying and reading. The still-immature intellect acts purely spontaneously and discerns no difference between believing and knowing. We also can see a desire for intellectual development in this card—for example, a student’s desire to pass an exam. The negative connotations fall under the heading of all kinds of fanaticism, obstinacy, refusal to push deeper, and dispersal. The Three can also point to a lack of follow-through on ideas.

The Way of Tarot, Alejandro Jodorowsky

Swordplay in the hands of a master has been compared to…the sharpening of the ‘psychic power of seeing in order to act immediately in accordance with what it sees”….[The] sword’s essence is to carve, thrust, divide, whether as a deathblow that slays an opponent, a decisive separation from worldly attachment or the separating out of consciousness from psyche’s deep, unconscious recesses….Beyond technical brilliance, the best swordsman is the one who attains the capacity to engage the subtleties of the animating spirit of the sword, so that subject and object, mind and body are one, single-minded, resolute.

The Book of Symbols: Reflections on Archetypal Images

[The sword’s] primary symbolic meaning…is of a wound and the power to wound, and hence of liberty and strength….There can be no doubt that there is a sociological factor in sword-symbolism, since the sword is an instrument proper to the knight, who is the defender of the forces of light against the forces of darkness. But the fact is that in rites at the dawning of history and in folklore even today, the sword plays a similar spiritual rôle, with the magic power to fight off the dark powers personified in the “malevolent dead”….The sword, because of its implication of “physical extermination,” must be a symbol of spiritual evolution….

A Dictionary of Symbols, Juan Eduardo Cirlot

recent things:

William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, Baz Luhrmann: gotta give the Aussie auteur credit, very few major filmmakers have it in them to bring this much excess to the screen. unfortunately this take on R+J is a mess. the modern acting he has the actors doing makes it nearly impossible at times to hear the Bard’s poetry. I forgot Jamie Kennedy is in this. don’t get me wrong, it’s a fun flick, and there’s lot’s of great scenes—the famous first meeting between Romeo and Juliet, from opposite sides of the fish tank, deserves its iconic status, and Peter Postlethwaite brings enough conviction to his portrayal of Friar Laurence to overshadow some of the sillier choices made by Luhrmann.

also, hold on, just some quick math here…yep, I won’t be saying what I thought about Claire Danes in this movie.

miscellany:

Carbyne is an Israeli surveillance company that sells software granting access to 911 callers’ GPS, camera, and other identifying data to emergency dispatch services. on Carbyne’s advisory board is Michael Chertoff, former Secretary of Homeland Security and co-author of the Patriot Act. Carbyne has received investments from figures no less luminary than former Israeli Prime Minsiter Ehud Barak, who got the funds from one Jeffrey Epstein. also among Carbyne’s investors is Erik Prince, of Blackwater fame, as well as the godfather of the PayPal mafia, Peter Thiel. Peter Thiel has been linked to those semi-public intellectuals who provide the philosophical framework of what’s known as the Dark Enlightenment, most notably Nick Land. In Nick Land’s view, capitalism is a program sent back from the future by a transhistorical artificial intelligence directing events such that its eventual takeover of the planet is guaranteed, ushering in a post-human epoch. In this view, those like Prince, Thiel, and Barak/Epstein are merely agents who throw their lot in with the fait accompli of technosoteriology for a chance at merging with the apocalyptic esoteric forces struggling to immanentize themselves. and anyone who doesn’t get with the program will be punished for their impudence. (source)