Notes on: The Nine of Swords
(The Mind’s Torment)
Artist’s Notes
The Golem was brought to life only to be experimented on by having his brain invaded by fresh steel. Even born into service, he suffers the pain of knowing that it will not end by his plan anyway. Call it a metaphor for what many call the Dark Night of the Soul where we are faced with what appears to be our own inadequacies in achieving our goals and ideas as yet another avenue did not work.
There are three laws of Thermodynamics. The first is the law of Conservation of Energy. This states that energy cannot be created or destroyed but merely transformed. In other words, you never end up with more than you started with, or in other words, you can’t win.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics is the Law of Entropy. That is that in a closed system, things will eventually wind down and decay. In other words, you can’t break even.
The Third law is the Conservation of Motion. This states that an object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion. In other words, you can’t get out of the game.
When facing the Dark Night of the Soul or Nine of Swords, your mind closes in on itself and you feel these three principles acutely. You can’t win. You can’t break even. and You can’t get out of the game. The only way through is by realizing that our minds are not closed systems. We are not our minds and we can always die to our present mindset and open ourselves up to start again.
This card is the culmination of the Swords as in the Ten of Swords there is a release that is denied to the golem here
About the Archetype:
The suit of Swords represents thoughts, ideas, plans, and conflicts. The Nines represent a coming to completion of the energy involved if not the completion itself. These energies come together in that dark night of fear and anxiety. The night that many of us experience when we lay awake with every doubt, fear, and recrimination that we can muster. During these nights we tear apart every event in the past and milk it for shame. We look at tomorrow and see every possible misstep that we can make, every disaster that can happen, and every way in which we feel unsafe. We clutch at straws looking for temporary safety, fully realizing that that is what we do.
Eventually, we give up even trying to do that. It seems that the only way through this dark night is eventual resignation to whatever is to come.
Astrological Correspondence:
Mars in Gemini – This energy loves to keep busy. As long as there is a lot to do, Mars in Gemini will run around getting the job done, and figuring out the next step on the fly all while engaging in vigorous debate on any subject with anyone they encounter. It is when it is in rest that the difficulties come. The same mental acuity that is used to get the job done turns inward and enervates itself in downtime. The same rapier that it uses to win discussions and debates becomes poniards with which it stabs itself.
In a Reading:
When the Nine of Swords turns up in a reading it often points to a lot of anxiety and sleepless nights. It can possibly be pointing to unresolved guilt from the past or a feeling that we deserve whatever abuse has come our way in the past. It can mean that we are going through what is known as the “dark night of the soul” where we are facing our shadow selves the most intensely. It may mean that we are torturing ourselves for the problems that caused a recent relationship to break apart. When this energy comes up for us, the best course of action is to let these feelings flow through because the more we feed them and try to argue against them, the longer and more intense the conflict may become.
The Nine of Swords reversed or badly aspected can mean that our inner conflicts have come to an end and we can now give ourselves a bit of a break. It may also mean however that we have been acting cruelly towards others perhaps without even realizing it. The Nine of Swords reversed may also mean that someone with cruel intentions is acting uncharacteristically nice to us to catch us off our guard.
–GAR
Fate’s Whisper:
Bestowed with senses of the highest form the Spider was fraught with visions of his web when he would be away from it to ensure his works went smoothly. How would you cope if the world around you were nothing but endless visions of events that are to come? Always sceptical of his surroundings it is rare to see the spider truly relax as that only happens when he is home on the Web of Fate.
Like fate, we are bombarded with lots of stimuli. When this occurs it is important to know your refuge from those thoughts, even if that means doing some serious shadow work to get it, otherwise, they will consume you in the worst way possible. Wake up from your paranoia before it is too late.
–NF