Four of Swords Energy

Nightowl Time Misery

At the start of the year, I drew 12 Tarot cards during a workshop hosted by my magical friend and author

Sabrina Scott

. This draw was meant to be fun but also presented an opportunity for education on the Tarot, something I knew very little about, yet trusted relatively as much as an Instagram cryptobro.

To my surprise, I learned from Sabrina that the Tarot is not exactly a fortune-telling method, as I’d once assumed, but rather an ancient and mythological language interface for communicating with your inner voices. Something I really need, because my inner voices often won’t shut up.

The Knight of Swords vs the Four of Swords, a joke

Tarot is more akin to a wise sage or a therapist than a crystal ball; you converse with it.

The filmmaker Jodorowsky described the Tarot as “a visual language… a great encyclopedia of symbols.”¹

Likewise, writer and Jewish mystic Eliphas Levi said of the Tarot, it’s “a monumental and singular work, strong and simple as the architecture of the pyramids and consequently enduring like those… that can resolve every problem by its infinite combinations…a truly philosophical machine…”

In Sabrina’s Tarot workshop², we drew one card for each month and arranged them in rows. I snapped a quick photo of my spread on the bedspread so I could return to it later when I had more time to figure out what each card meant.

As you can see, even in this photo, before I knew anything, the March card pick is obscured by a glare, which seems quite fitting now as I write this.

My 12-month spread using a limited edition “Naga” deck painted by my artist friend Robert Pepper, and gifted to me long before I knew anything about Tarot.

My January card: The Ace of Cups (a full heart is the meaning I took away with me)

February: The Star Card, perfect because I’d already planned a trip in February with the explicit purpose of looking at stars. This I accomplished in a remote location in Death Valley and it was glorious.

Then comes March, home of spring, Spring Breakers, Persian New Year, swarming termites, increased humidity, and rain.

For March, I drew the Four of Swords.

I had no idea what the Four of Swords card meant, so I researched it a bit. In summary, this card calls for intellectual rest.

And as we crawl through March, I hear this call.