RLR010: The Suit of Swords

You're listening to Root Lock Radio. Hello and welcome to Root Lock Radio, a podcast for uncloging learning and exploring the tarot cards. My name is Weston, I live in New York City and I'm your host. If you haven't listened before, Root Lock Radio is designed to be a course in tarot, so you might want to start at the beginning, with episode one. In this episode, we'll conclude our exploration of the four suits of the minor orcana by looking in depth at the suit of swords. And we'll see how the suit of swords corresponds to one of the biggest lessons that the tarot tries to teach us about living our lives. Then I'll try to make some connections between the minor suits in the major cards that we explored in earlier episodes. And show us how the minor cards focus on our day-to-day experiences actually provides a manageable entry point and pathway for us to approach the bigger lessons and archetypal steps towards enlightenment that the major cards represent. Thank you so much for listening and I hope you enjoy this episode of Root Lock Radio. [Music] The final suit of the minor orcana that we will explore is the suit of swords, which is affiliated with the element of air, as well as the major orcana card the emperor, and rules the realm of our life that has to do with ideas, thoughts, memories, wisdom, knowledge, and words. When you look through these cards, the first thing you may notice is how intense they are. It is by far the most intense suit of the minor orcana. And while some of the other suits contain cards that are a bit unpleasant, some of these cards are downright frightening or scary. And it's interesting before we delve into this to kind of explore why that is. We've seen as we've explored each suit that each suit works both as a motivation and as a warning for how we're supposed to approach and use the particular energy of that suit. So with the suit of wands, for instance, we learn through the fire energy that it's right for us to pursue our passions, but we want to be careful not to become narcissistic. With the suit of cups and the water energy, we learn that we want to open up and grow into emotional maturity, and we don't want to become rigid or stuck in the past. And then with the suit of pentacles and the earth energy, we learn that we want to work hard to gain this long-term vision of stability and material comforts, but we don't want to hoard all of this to ourself. So in each suit we see both a motivation and a warning of how to best utilize that energy. With the swords, we're dealing with human wisdom. And this is tied up to one of the biggest lessons that we learned in the fool's journey, right? That human knowledge is inherently limited, or even an illusion when it comes down to it. And virtually all conflict between people arises from people trying to impose their values, beliefs, or ideas on other people. So this is both at an interpersonal level and a macro level up to like international relations, where we see different value systems and different belief systems causing conflict and even wars. In addition to this, most human suffering actually takes place in our minds. Though we can experience raw emotions or physical pain, the way we tell the story of what happened to ourselves in our mental processes determines just how deeply we will suffer over that situation. Now this idea is fundamental to Buddhism and you may recognize it for that. And it's another example of how tarot can draw on and overlap with religions or other belief systems while maintaining its autonomy and a flexibility that many religions just don't have. But that's another conversation for another time. So the suit of swords focuses more on the warning about the misuse of this air energy than any thing else because ultimately what we need to know is that we can't ultimately actually know anything and that our human knowledge is really just a limited illusion. And this is a bit more difficult to wrap your head around than the lessons from the other suits. But the takeaway is that any way that we become too stuck on our own ideas and beliefs will ultimately lead to conflict which leads to suffering both for other people and for ourselves. And the best thing for us to do is to allow other people to think different things and believe different things because all knowledge is rooted in human experience and human thinking which is limited in that it cannot be checked against or account for the greater machinations of the universe that are beyond the scope of our experience and understanding. Only when we admit that we cannot answer the unanswerable questions, can we truly be enlightened as humans? And this is a struggle that happens in our minds which is the realm of the suit of swords. So that said let's move into looking at these often intense cards of the suit of swords. On the ace of swords we have the initiation or conception of this air energy. And like all the ace cards what we see is a hand from the clouds wielding the symbol of that suit which in this case is a sword. And as I've mentioned before the swords energy has sort of a double edginess to it which we see very clearly on that particular sword that's drawn here. There's a shadow side and there's a light side. And this is also well represented in the imagery of the card. So intellect can bring clarity and we see that in the sort of valiance represented in this crown on the top of the sword. But it can also bring about isolation which we see in that arid mountain landscape and it can also cause a lot of conflict and we see this in the stormy nature of the clouds holding the hand as well as the way that the hand is very tightly gripping that sword. And what this is trying to tell us is that the tighter of a grip we have on our own beliefs and ideas the more possibility they have to bring about emotional storms or conflict. And the more likely they are to hurt not only other people but ourselves. You may have heard my cat merman frow in the background there. She's got some pretty strong ideas of her own that she holds on to pretty tightly but I usually give in to those. So anyway if you draw the ace of swords card in a tarot reading it's a dose of fresh swords or air energy and this is sort of a fresh idea in the purest sense. So pure swords energy is potential knowledge that could either be used for the light side of clarity and goodness or the dark side of conflict and potential self-defeat depending on how you pursue it. So when you draw this ace of swords card it's saying you've got an idea you're at a starting point for some fresh ways of thinking about something but you need to be sure to not cling to it too tightly so develop it but don't become rigidly attached to it because rigid attachment to ideas and beliefs and particularly trying to push those ideas and beliefs onto other people is most likely to lead to a conflict and self-defeat as we will see in the subsequent cards. Moving on to card number two again we remember number two is associated with that keyword of gestation and you may see a bit of an echo of the high priest discard in this card but there are some ways that this is a corruption of the energy of the high priest discard. The figure is blindfolded and crossing her arms over her chest so while the high priest discard is turning inward you know she's not necessarily looking outward she has a very openness and a interest in exploring truth and deeper meaning whereas here we see a sort of willful or intentional blindness as well as a cutoffness of those hands over the chest. These hands are holding two swords up in a balance but it doesn't seem like an easy balance to achieve so again we're seeing a lot of willfulness in this particular card and this teaches us that the sword's energy takes a lot of willfulness to push it into either the positive or the negative realm we have to be very intentional in pursuing one way or the other. Behind this figure we see the sea of the subconscious just like we did in the high priest discard and as we know this is the source of deep feeling so what we have again is blocking that off with these two swords a representation of willfully closing yourself off from your heart or your feelings those arms crossed in front of the chest as well as your deeper subconscious understanding of situations with those swords. cutting off access to that body of water. And you're doing this in pursuit of a logical approach. So while we see that high priestess being in touch with the deep emotional and subconscious realm, this card is willfully cut off or out of touch with that realm, highlighting the inherent detachment of air from water or intellect and logic from emotion. In the sky on this card, we also see a waxing moon. And this implies a movement away from the emotional or meditative new moon toward the full-blown illusions of the full moon. So this image of the waxing moon is further enforcing this idea of closing ourselves off from emotion and meditation and deep feeling in favor of a more logical and thinking-based approach. And this is highlighting how it can be challenging to try to make these two things compatible or work in tandem. So if you draw this card into tarot reading, it may be pointing out that you're somehow cutting yourself off from your intuition or emotion in pursuit of logic. And it may be speaking of some kind of willful ignorance, ignoring or guarding yourself against emotions of your own or of other people. So depending, of course, on where this card comes up in a tarot reading, this could be speaking to you or speaking about someone around you. And it often can work as a bit of a suggestion for you to try to open yourself up and not be so cut off and try to be more of a high priestess figure than a two of sorts figure. In card three, we see a development of what happens if we continue this cutoffness. On this card, it's at once one of the most straightforward and one of the most confounding images in the tarot. We see a heart being pierced by three swords in front of a stormy sky. Now a lot of people wonder, well, why is this in the suit of swords? Shouldn't something as deeply feeling as heartbreak be based in the suit of cups? And the answer to that is that the opposition of logic and emotion that we saw developing in card two pretty quickly develops into pure heartbreak. Deep feelings cannot be understood or approached logically and attempting to do so will result in heartbreak. And heartbreak pretty much always is the result of opposing ideas, right? So as we said, if you cling too much to your particular way of seeing things, conflict arises. So if you do that in the case of a deep feeling relationship, heartbreak may be the results. And that is because everyone's experience, especially of things as deeply feeling as love, is completely subjective and cannot be turned into something logical. So when you try to apply logic to love, you're likely to end in a pretty painful situation. So if you draw this card in a tarot reading, it may speak to heartbreak. And the idea that even a deep connection or feeling shared with someone can result in deep pain if one or both parties cuts off emotion in favor of logic. It could also be potentially a cheating scenario. And this scenario would contrast that welcome third person in the three of cups in a romantic reading. Whereas in this situation, we see that cheating pretty much always requires willful ignorance on the part of the cheater, right? You have to kind of ignore your deeper feelings that would be emerging out of the body of water that you see in the two card. You have to cut yourself off from your guilty conscious and your heart and make a more logical case to yourself for why willfully deceiving someone for your own pleasure is an okay thing for you to do. And depending on how this particular card comes up, it's probably acting as some kind of reminder about how heart skip broken and possibly urging you to not let yourself or others resort to deceit or overrelines on logic in any deep feeling relationship, whether or not it's romantic. Because let's remember that anyone from our lover to our father to our best friend or boss, anyone with whom we have a deep relationship can break our heart in one way or another. The number four is associated with this idea of structuring and we have one of the more positive cards in the suit of swords here. We see a figure lying in a church-like building and anytime we see a church-like building in a minor card, we know we are dealing with the spiritual facet of that minor suit. The figure on this card is in a very serene and meditative state bathed in yellow light which suggests the kind of enlightenment that we see in the sun card. It's almost as if they're laying an array of sunshine in this otherwise dark and serene church-like atmosphere. And this enlightenment here is achieved through structuring your mind through meditation. So the other edge of the sword is represented here. So while the other edge represents deceit and conflict, this edge represents clarity. This idea that you can achieve clarity and peace if you work on structuring your mind. So this idea that meditation and working towards mental stillness brings about deep personal serenity. But what is happening here is a different aspect of meditation than that which we see in the high priestess card or the cubs cards. While that embodiment of meditation attempts to tune into the signals of the subconscious and our deeper emotional being, the sword side of meditation strives for silencing thoughts and pursuit of a pure state of mental stillness. But these two types of meditation aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, meditation holds the key to how air and water energy or logic and emotion can be used in tandem. The idea that through mental stillness we allow the deep feelings of the subconscious to emerge and can finally receive the signals that are being sent from that symbolic body of water that we see in both the high priestess and the two of cubs cards. So if you draw this card in a terror reading, it's speaking of meditation. And particularly the type of meditation or the approach to meditation in which you attempt to completely clear out your mind of thoughts and achieve pure mental stillness. And how this can help us in our pursuit of enlightenment. And it also speaks of the serene and spiritual state of mental control. There are ways that spirituality works its way into all four suits. And this is the way it does in this suit is by clearing out your mind completely. You're able to find the spiritual serenity. So in opposition to the number two and three cards where we saw a person trying to cut themselves off from their emotions, here we just find this serenity in stillness. This person is not really trying to do anything and just living and existing in a very quiet still serene moment. So a fitting keyword for this card could be mindfulness. That state of being so tuned into the moment that you aren't actively thinking of or doing anything at all. And since the swords and the element of air rule the realm of our minds, the idea of mindfulness fits well. It is one key to how this energy can be used to achieve the clarity that is the air energy at its highest and best form. And is represented in that light side of the sword that we saw on the ace card. And furthermore, it's interesting to note that in a state of mindfulness we aren't attached to any particular idea or belief as we are in other cards in the sword suit. During mindfulness we sort of transcend our day-to-day attachment to our belief system and ideas and just allow everything to exist without judgment. But as we move into the number five which is the number of transition we again see some pretty difficult energy in the card. So we're back on the same platform that we saw on the number two card which suggests a return of the cutoffness that that card so strongly represents. If you look up at the sky in this card it looks like there may be a storm developing, the clouds are kind of crazy and perhaps fast moving. And this represents that restlessness or shiftiness of the air energy. And for the first time in the sword's cards we see other people. And this figure in the foreground seems to have defeated them or disarmed them in some way. And so this is speaking very much to that conflict that can arise in the sword's suit. In the idea that when we grip our swords very rigidly and tightly we will have conflict with others that arises from our need to be right or to impose our will or our ideas or our beliefs on other people. And this will lead to those problems that we've been talking about. So if you draw the number five of swords card in a tarot reading it speaks of strife arising from conflicting ideas, beliefs or values. And the sort of inter-personal defeat that are rises when someone has to win in that particular type of conflict. It speaks of this idea of being cut off emotionally from others in order to win, in order to be right, and there's an idea of heartlessness permeating this card, so that might be a keyword that you think of with this card as heartlessness. And then moving into the number 6 where we always see the rebalancing in the suit, we have another what I consider very positive card, even though there's a fair amount of pain present in this card as well. So what we see on this card are two figures, it looks like an adult and a child, who are cloaked, right, and cloaks seem to speak of something of grief. The other place that we've seen a cloaked figure in the tarot is the 5 of Cups card, which is the card of grief or mourning. And we also see these swords in front of them, and in this case the swords seem to represent painful memories, the things that you have to carry with you, even if you don't really want to. Now let's not forget that in the previous card we saw two figures who had been defeated, and again we see two figures here who seem to be in the state of grief. But these two people are being rode across a body of water by this other person who's ushering them to the other side or the other shore. So when the logic of the swords card combines with the balance and the beauty of the 6th card, we see how logic and clarity and systems can work to help other people. And so we see this sort of assisting refugees in their escape type of situation on this card. But this also takes some emotionlessness, right? When you think about it, a person who is assisting refugees or assisting people who are trying to escape a terrible situation has to have no fear. And they also have to kind of stay detached from the people they are assisting in a certain way. They consider themselves to be sort of only a cog wheel in the machine of the rescue. So though they are essential, they're only a part of the system that is trying to help these people. So when you think of something like the Underground Railroad, which was a system of people helping slaves escape in the United States, no one person was single handedly saving all these people escaping slavery. But each person that assisted played an essential role. But it was also essential that each individual who was assisting along the way not become too attached to any of the individual people they are assisting. And this is a characteristic that we see in all kinds of rescue workers and is a positive use of that emotionally detached aspect of the swords energy. We imagine the figure on this card doesn't continue to move on the journey with the people that he's assisting, but rather turns around, goes back to the other shore and helps another group of people cross the river. So though there is a beauty and kindness to the way the logic is being applied in this particular card, we still do have that detachiveness from emotion. And though it is still a willful detachiveness in this card, it is being used for the greater good rather than for personal gain. So if you draw this card in a tarot reading, it can be something like giving refuge or assisting refugees or being assisted yourself, someone helping you through a time when you just need to escape something. And this idea of using logic to help others in a way that could be related to some sort of rescue work where you play a specific role in assisting other people. And it also speaks of this necessity of logic over emotion to properly and effectively do this job. So if this card comes up, it might be asking you to turn off your emotions a little bit in order to best approach the situation as long as you were doing it for the greater good. So sometimes we need someone who is not overly emotional to bring clarity and decisiveness into situations that are rather difficult. Number 7 is the number of raw power. And on this card we see a figure stealthing away with some swords. We see tents set up in the background and possibly even some sort of battle going on. So this person is really only pursuing personal gain. They're not assisting in the battle. They might even be taking weapons that are necessary for the battle. So what we're seeing is this sneaky deceitfulness. And what's interesting is that the sky is bright yellow, which is a very joyous color. And what this suggests to me is that there's this rush of joy that this person is getting from getting away with something. So what this means is that the sword's energy, which we've seen is having a tendency to cut oneself off from emotional attachments in pursuit of logic, and has corrupted this individual to the point that they find a rush of joy in the act of deceiving, manipulating, taking from, or otherwise compromising other people in the pursuit of personal gain. And what's changed from the five card where we also saw this idea of defeating or compromising others is that here it is sneakier and done stealthily. And part of the rush comes from the idea of getting away with it without being found out or caught. So there's more of a manipulativeness or underhanded deceit that's going on in this card. So if you draw this card in a tarot reading, it's very much a card of deceit or deception. Any sort of situation where someone is stealing or otherwise compromising their morals for personal gain. So you've got a very Machiavellian aspect to this card in which personal gain is put above morality. And it speaks of that rush of getting away with something uncought. So if you draw this card it could be speaking of you doing this or it could be telling you that someone's doing this to you. And you should carefully examine if you're somehow being deceived or perhaps being deceitful in some way. So number eight is an energized number and represents a sort of moving forward energy from the previous card. So a lot of people look at this card and would say this person looks very trapped. How are they moving forward? And the answer to that lies a lot in the fact that you see this figures toe dipped into the water. So what's happening is emotion is starting to come back. And we'll see that building up over the course of the next few cards. And over the course of these next few cards. We are seeing how the sword suit teaches us that our own heartlessness, deception and oppression of others inevitably turns the sword back on us. And we can see this in countless examples of people who have wielded power in nasty ways, eventually falling into a painful and emotional isolation. So while the nastier work of the sword's energy has been cutting one self off from one's emotions, we see sort of the inevitable return of that emotion happening in this particular card. Now on this card, we see a figure who is bound and blindfolded and sort of held captive amongst these swords. And if you'll remember, sometimes swords can represent regrets or memories that we are haunted by. And that is the type of sword that we are seeing in this card. So while this person has spent a lot of time closing themselves off from their emotions and trying to work in ways that are increasingly deceitful and self-serving. What's happening now is a bit of a moment where they've set their own trap, sort of that make your own bed and lie in its situation. And the inevitable return of the emotion is ringing up a very difficult scenario for this person. We see that this person is isolated from other people. They're quite far away from that castle up on the hill. And we do see that it seems like this person isn't really imprisoned necessarily. They could probably escape if they tried to, but it doesn't seem like they're trying to. So what we're really seeing represented here is a self-made mental trap. And this is the inevitable result of clinging to tightly to your ideas and pushing away, oppressing, deceiving, manipulating, or otherwise harming other people in pursuit of your own personal gain, as well as that idea of thinking that you know everything. If you push everyone else away, you'll inevitably find yourself just stuck with your own thoughts. And that's kind of what's being represented here. Is that idea of just being stuck, isolated, and trapped within your own thoughts. So if you draw this card in a tarot reading, it's really speaking of this idea of a self-made mental trap. And this idea that being blind to other people's ideas and perspectives will eventually get you to a point where you are isolated and cut off from other people, and you are trapped by the limitations of your own beliefs. And when a motion starts to return as we see in this card and we'll really see over the next couple of cards, you find yourself in a very painful situation. And the reason these last three swords cards are so intense is that they follow up actions that are antithetical to the lessons we learned in the tarot, particularly toward the end of the major arcana fool's journey. While that taught us that at the end of life we are not able to see the end of the story. We may have a clear realization about how temporary and ultimately unimportant our ideas are when they are rooted in human life. The last three swords cards serve as a warning of how not striving to understand this earlier can lead us to a miserable end where we are full of regret about our selfish and harmful actions to others during our lives. Because now we realize they've truly gotten us nowhere with lasting value. The swords we wielded at the expense of others now inevitably turn back on us. So at this point, drawing this card would maybe be urging you to try to figure out what mental traps you've created for yourself, what ways are you limiting yourself by trying to be right or trying to know everything? And what at this point can you do about it to try to get out of this situation? Now number nine is the number of reflection and we see this pretty strongly in what we see on the card, which is a figure in bed sitting up with their head in their hands. And this idea of sleeplessness of not being able to sleep and being so disturbed that you can't sleep is what we immediately see in this card. Now the swords on the wall almost seem like trophies or achievements in some way. But look where it's gotten us, right? We may have collected all these swords and put them all in order and in a sense won all of our battles. But here we are alone and unable to sleep and haunted by the memories of what's happened and the regrets that we have about it. And we see a lot of suffering in this card. And that's because this is the most clear representation of regret in the tarot. And regret is the greatest form of suffering we can have. Anytime something has kept you up at night, the part you are probably obsessing over is what you could have done differently, right? And so the tarot is urging us to reflect on our own actions and what part we have played in creating a situation that is painful for us. And this is often the most difficult work you can do when assessing a difficult situation in something like therapy. But it's also crucial to understand what ways you've been the designer of your own painfully racing mind, which is what we see represented in this card. So if you pull this card in a tarot reading, the first word I would think of is regret and waking up to your own ignorance, nastiness or other bad behavior and the sleeplessness that this can cause you. So this idea of what are the things that keep you up at night? Probably there are things that you have done or ways that you wish that you had handled something differently. So this card is also permeated by this idea of wishing you had acted in a way that is different from the way that you did. And again it urges you to try to use this knowledge and use this realization to make amends and make good on what you have learned before you bring about your own demise. And this is exactly what we see and what is easily the most intense card in all of the tarot. And that is the 10 of swords. So on this very intense card we see a figure face down on the ground with 10 swords sticking out of their back. The sky is black. But we do see the sun's illumination rising over the horizon. Which may remind you of the glimmer of rebirth that we see in the death card. And it's important that the sun is rising over this body of water, right? Because the sword's energy has been very much about being cut off from those deep feelings. But it's almost as if here those deep feelings are being illuminated, but only through this rock bottom energy that we see in the foreground of the card. And if you'll remember, 10 is the number in which we reckon with the universe. So what this is telling us is that the universe does not reward the belief that you know it all. Or the act of cutting yourself off from deep emotions or oppressing other people for self-serving purposes. And this can only result from ignoring the big lesson that we learned toward the end of the major arcana cards that our knowledge is limited and we can't cling to it as strongly as we may want to. So what happens is if we ignore this lesson, the universe punishes us and we find ourselves in this rock bottom total defeat scenario in which we've designed our own defeat through pushing other people down. It's that classic story of one's hubris being the very thing that takes him down. But the thing is that the universe also gives us another chance, right? That sun rising over the horizon is the symbol of rebirth. So anytime you hit rock bottom, it's a chance or an opportunity to change the trajectory of your life and change the way you see things. And a lot of people who have been there will tell you that that's true. So if you draw this card in a terror reading, it speaks of total defeat and hitting rock bottom. Potentially your enemies, everyone that you've kept away from you were turned against you, has ganged up on you and taken you down. Or maybe you've been brought down by your own hubris or belief that you know everything. You've kind of created your own defeat and it urges you to really look and take an understanding of the role you have played in isolating yourself and turning others against you. If you think you're always right or more right than others, then it really wants you to consider this and think about things from other people's perspectives. And to try to work with the bright side of the sword's energy, that can bring about clarity, decisiveness and valiance, not only for our own benefit, but for the greater good of everyone in society. At this point we've covered the 40 Ace through 10 cards in the 4 suits of the Minor Arcana, as well as all the cards in the Major Arcana. And all that we have left to cover is the court cards, which we'll do in the next episode. Having now covered the Minor Arcana cards, I want to take a moment to unpack them a little bit and to try to understand how they relate to the Major cards. Now that we've taken the time to go through them, of course you'll remember that the Fool's Journey of the Major Arcana cards shows us this archetypal journey from the start to end of human life and how we can reach enlightenment along this journey. Though very few and probably none of us will actually follow the Fool's Journey exactly, it does overall point us towards the lessons that Tarot believes we need to learn in order to be enlightened humans. Now you'll also remember that I framed the Minor Arcana cards as making up something called a grid of daily experiences. So when we're dealing with the Minor cards we're thinking much more about the day today. And rather than the path to greater enlightenment that the Fool's Journey shows us, they really show us just how to live a healthy and well-balanced day to day life. And they also show us the storylines and narrative arcs that help us to understand how each elemental energy and their corresponding realms and situations can morph and change on its own or based on our actions. So the way situations can kind of unfold if we just let them unfold on their own or if we try to do something to change it. There's a lot of little lessons about that within the Minor Arcana. But another thing the Minor Arcana does is it kind of gives us this very manageable pathway to the big lessons of the major cards. By showing us the day-to-day steps we can take to try to achieve that balance and acceptance and understanding that is so important to reaching the end of the Fool's Journey. And one of the best examples of this is the suit of swords because it correlates with one of those big lessons of the Fool's Journey very directly. And that lesson is the necessity of knowing the limits of humanity and human understanding. And nothing really seems to be able to clearly and convincingly answer our big existential questions but we keep on asking them, right? Things like why are we here? How did we get here? Is there a god or a greater force in the universe? No science or religion or anything can really provide anything near a satisfactory answer to these questions. And the nice alternative approach that Tarot provides is it asks us to stop looking so hard for an answer to those questions. Going back to the suit of swords where we have a lot of conflict we should understand that a lot of conflict in humanity at all levels from interpersonal to international relations throughout history has been rooted in people believing they have the answers to these existential questions and trying to impose them on other people. But maybe we should understand that the value to these questions lies in their mystery and their inability to be answered. And if we can agree on that then maybe we can stop fighting about it so much and trying to figure out what we as a society are supposed to be doing. So though there's a lot of conflict in the suit of swords, swords don't just point the way to conflict. They also show us how not to achieve harmony. And if we want our day to day lives and our lives within society to be good, a good place the start is to see. strive to live harmoniously with other people. And in order to do that, we cannot tell other people how to live their lives or try to impose our belief systems on them or use them to control them. We must truly embrace the values of live and let live and focus instead on our own path, our own journey. And Tarot happens to be an excellent tool for this. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) Rute Lock Radio is a podcast for unclogging, learning and exploring the Tarot cards. It's written and produced by me, Weston. Music for today's show was provided by Shenandoah Davis, Jereh, and a Thunderstorm I recorded. You can find information about both those artists in the show notes. For details about the cards covered in today's episode, see the notes on the Rute Lock Tarot website. You can find those at www.rutelocktarot.com/podcast. While you're there, check out my Tarot services. I provide in-person and online lessons and tarot readings. I've recently added an affordable 30 minute tarot reading option. And if you'd like to save $20 on a Tarot lesson as a Rute Lock Radio listener, just use the offer code podcast. If you have any questions, comments, or feedback for me, I'd love to hear from you. You can reach me at [email protected]. Thank you so much for listening. And I hope you'll join me next time for Rute Lock Radio. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)