Three of Swords (Tarot Triptych)
Name: Sorrow, the Three of Swords
Number: 3
Astrology: Saturn in Libra
Qabalah: Binah of Vau
Chris Gabriel October 19, 2024
The Three of Swords is the beginning of intellectual development and the origin of understanding. This materializes as, of course, pain. It is the card of primordial heartbreak and separation that necessitates thought.
In Rider, we have a simple, brilliant, iconic image: a heart pierced by three swords on a rainy background.
In Thoth, a flower falls apart as three swords pierce its center on a dark organic background. The card relates to Saturn in Libra, the little flower crushed by leaden weight.
In Marseille, we have two bent swords and one central sword atop two flowering stalks, upon which there are 22 leaves and berries, the number of Hebrew letters. As the card has the number 3, it relates to Binah, Understanding.As Swords it is the Prince. Thus, sorrow is the understanding of the Prince.
This is a deeply Buddhist card. We can take the Prince in question to be Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, and see the realization of his truth that Life is Suffering. Freud, perhaps offers a clearer view of this: sorrow is separation from the Mother. It is only when the child is not fully one with the mother, when their needs are not met perpetually, that sorrow begins. Tears start, tears that mean “give me what I want”.
The Buddha recognizes that this sorrow is simply a fundamental part of ourselves. We desire, and so we sorrow. Without wants and needs, there would be no sorrow. Without love, there would be no heartbreak. This sort of pain is the source of our knowledge, and our need to develop knowledge. If we never burnt ourselves, we would not know to beware of fire, if we had not been stung, or bitten, we wouldn’t know the dangers around us. If we had not fallen, we wouldn’t know how to stand. These endless sorrows develop our understanding.
To wish for an unbroken heart, an uncrushed flower, is to wish for an empty mind. This is what meditation allows us to do. It forms the ability to return to the unbroken, the whole. One may wish to spend their whole life meditating, to be untouched and unharmed by the world, but this is only one small step on our journey through the tarot.
When we pull this card, we may come to understand something which has been troubling us, we may realize what the problem is, but not how to deal with it. Knowledge is not curative. This is a start to a strategy. This is a problem that needs fixing.
By bringing our attention to this issue, we can move toward greatness.
