Three of Swords Revisited
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Yesterday I shared some thoughts about my Card of the Day — the Three of Swords from the Alchemical Tarot. That blog post generated a lot of comments, such as these:
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That really makes me look at the 3 of Swords in a different way.
I have trouble with this card and really appreciate your post giving a different way to look at it.
Love your added interpretations for this card.
So I thought I would add a few other thoughts about this oft-maligned card, since it seems that a lot of people could use some new perspectives on it.
To heal a wound or be it?
In the comments section of the prior Three of Swords post, some people used the metaphor of a wound to shed light on the Three of Swords. Similarly, a few months ago I came across the following quote (which is from the July 17 entry in The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo) that I had associated with this card: “Ultimately … we are faced with a never-ending choice: to become the wound or [to] heal.” The message here, which perhaps we can see sometimes in the Three of Swords, is that we cannot avoid or disallow the pain of living, but we shouldn’t let it define us.
Heart-killing
I once heard that the Chinese ideogram for the word “busy” is a combination of the ideograms for “heart” and “killing”.[1] This, of course, called to mind the Three of Swords, and inspired me to realize that it can convey a meaning of keeping busy in order to avoid or quell (i.e., kill) your emotions (i.e., heart). For example, the Three of Swords might indicate a workaholic who avoids dealing with an unhappy marriage or home life through keeping busy at work.
Over-intellectualization
A few years ago, while reading The Heart of the Soul: Emotional Awareness by Gary Zukav and Linda Francis, I came across similar thoughts. That book mentioned that indulging in over-intellectualization is another way to avoid feeling our emotions (such as pain and fear) and exploring what those emotions mean. In the case of a workaholic, it is activity that keeps our mind busy and off our feelings. In the case of over-intellectualization, it is a sterilized or clinical view of a concept or situation that allows us to avoid exploring its “feeling” aspects, to keep those aspects at arm’s length. This is not to say that we should approach life emotionally instead. Rather, it suggests that we need to strike a balance — we should be in touch with our emotions, but not enthralled by them.
The Three of Swords is not usually very well-received when it comes up in a reading, so I hope these thoughts about it will expand our set of possible meanings for it and make it a more “well-rounded” card. If you have further insights into this card, I will be happy to hear about them.
[1] I have subsequently heard that this is not exactly true. But regardless of the true structure of this ideogram, this inspiration brought me to some truths about the Three of Swords.
I’ve found the busywork quite useful when dealing with emotions that are overwhelming. I’m a girl from the Midwest, so most emotions are more than we’d maybe like to deal with. The danger is letting things go underground and never actually dealing with them. Maybe the three forces us to remember, even when it’s more convenient to forget.
Kerry, I don’t think that busy work, or immersing yourself in your job either, is necessarily bad or dysfunctional. But this card can be a “heads up” when we are doing that sort of thing in order to avoid our feelings when we should be dealing with them instead.
I missed all the excitement: but I dont view the three of swords positively: I would look at it this way: two people can cross swords and possibly even enjoy the fight, but the third swordfighter, will be asked to leave and is unnecesary. I always read the three of swords as a warning to keep away from couples looking to divorce. Its three swords. A love triangle. Or at least three being a crowd. I use a golden dawn deck though, so my view might be different. Women werent allowed to study alchemy, which is why the sterile science died.
Ah James, your further reflections on the Three of Swords as facing emotional difficulties in a way that is expansive to self growth and self understanding.
I want to address the intellectualization of feelings. In adolescence I entered into a 10 year long course of weekly psychotherapy. During that time I learned to access my feelings by trying to understand them and others by their behavior and words.
I found that trying to understand the feelings I was having, which were not always very clear at the time to me, that trying to understand them, allowed a pause in the urgency to act on them, it created space for reflection, so I felt less necessary to act upon or use the feelings to choose with the feelings I had without some deliberation.
In other words, I learned to separate choice from feelings as promptings, my behavior could be modified using a wide variety of criteria.
In due course, I have been criticized for intellectualizing my feelings. So I tend to be sensitive to the charge of over-intellectualizing my feelings. I think the problem is people hear me explain what I feel rather than just present them as a fait accompli.
I do agree that trying to understand our feelings can be used as a defense against painful or unacceptable feelings.
It is a not very effective way to try to manage or control feelings or to prevent them the full airing of they need in order to be recognized so that they no longer control or manipulate our behaviors beyond one’s own conscious choice.
In the middle of that initial decade of psychotherapy I was introduced to classic meditation. In meditation I learned to find a way of holding, caressing, accepting, without needing to act out promptings of the feelings.
As I progressed in meditation I have become aware of a vast emotional space that allows one to feel into life issues with great nuance again without needing to be reactive.
Another way of seeing this is to say that choice which is a matter of will, wands cannot be ruled by swords, intellectual insight and thinking.
I still discover in due course many blind spots that I only can recognize by conjecture because I cannot see them directly or even feel them in that way. I think it was seeing just how wide some of these blind spots were that Freud discovered the importance of the unconscious.
The Three of Swords represents for me the crisis of synthesis that puts everything together in such a way that it does not allow room for the heart to love.
In that way one can say that this is classically a card that says we are underthinking the matter, that we are attempting to prematurely close, what needs to remain open and alive to greater input.
Somehow the input here seems painful and there is a desire to settle the matter quickly rather than look into it deeply.
One reading I had with this card some years back was literally portending a heart attack.
In that case, the question on the mind of the querent was whether to see the doctor or not. I did not know that at the time of the reading and gave the usual reading for the card as representing difficulties in communicating your own heart desires with others.
As we discussed the issue of this fellow it became obvious that he did have issues about his health. I suggested strongly that he make an appointment to see a doctor. In due course he did, his heart condition was diagnosed, and he had an operation to rectify the problem.
Swords generally are maligned because we are not comfortable with creative thinking in our culture that uses thoughts to persuade and to misguide as in advertising. Critical thinking courses though perhaps popular in college are very rarely carried over into daily life.
Hi Paul,
Thanks for your thoughts on this. I have a few responses:
I do want to clarify something. I think we may be talking about two different things. What I was referring to (in my reference to the book by Gary Zukav and Linda Francis) was not over-intellectualization of our feelings (although that too may be a problem that this card may indicate at times), but rather, over-intellectualization of our situations in order to avoid dealing with the emotional content of our situations.
Second, since I agree that the number 3 can signify “synthesis” I would like to hear your explanation of what you meant by this statement: “The Three of Swords represents for me the crisis of synthesis that puts everything together in such a way that it does not allow room for the heart to love.”
Finally, I liked this statement: “Swords generally are maligned because we are not comfortable with creative thinking in our culture, which uses thoughts to persuade and to misguide as in advertising.” This reminds me of the teaching in “The Law of Attraction,” which I’m reading right now, and I’ve been thinking: wouldn’t it be great to see a new Tarot deck that depicts the suit of swords in that light instead?
Best,
James