The Three of Swords is sort of inverse echo of the Three of Cups, in which feelings of fullness and satisfaction are seeded with awareness of the emptiness and loss that will inevitably accompany them. It's a case of runaway brain, dragging the heart behind it like a tin can.
I decided to show this with an apple which has been dealt exactly three cuts. It's been picked apart, vivisected. While it is surely still perfectly edible, something ideal has been lost; the fruit's wholeness can never be restored. The knife lingering nearby distracts us from the deliciousness of the bite, reminding us instead of the violence of the cut.
The two wedges that have been created remind me of the two falling figures in the Tower card, or Adam and Eve discovering their nakedness. They did not exist as independent entities until this moment, their division from each other and from the whole having been wrought upon them by unknowable forces. It may seem like little consolation, but each slice contains seeds from which future expressions of that original wholeness may still spring.
Jazmine Sullivan's single "Bust Your Windows" isn't exactly new -- it debuted a year ago on her album Fearless. But you know, I never really stopped listening to it. Sullivan's a true vocal heavyweight, and it's crushing to hear someone so young sing lines like "I gave you all of me, and you played with it" with utter conviction. So after playing it yet again yesterday morning, I decided I'd do a post about it connected to the perennially miserable Three of Swords.
Unfortunately I can't embed the video, you'll have to click here to listen to Sullivan's version. However, I can embed the version that Amber Riley performed this summer on the show Glee, which is also pretty impressive:
It's funny, I'd already cobbled together the card for this post when I stumbled across Riley's version -- I just happened to watch Ep. 4 last night during my campaign to find out what's up with this Glee show that all the young kids are tweetering about these days. Spooky coincidence!
In my previous posts about the Three of Swords, I mostly focused on self-harm, denial, isolation, and loss of awareness; these are extreme emotional reactions to the bitter truths we'd rather not face head-on. The damage we do isn't constrained to ourselves, however: We often lash out at the people whom we perceive (perhaps inaccurately) to be the source of our pain. Or if we're in a hurry, we'll settle for the convenience of punishing whomever happens to be readily available.
And because of the hell we've been through, we feel completely justified in our actions, no matter how appalling they are. Our emotions are important, but they can also be disorienting -- in a crisis they'll send people right off a cliff, and ourselves off right after them -- but Justice is more satisfying in the long term, and it can't exist without reason and impartiality.
That's what Sullivan touches upon at the end when she wails, "But why am I the one who's still crying?" She's busted those damnable windows, she wrote her initials with a crowbar, and now she's even confessed the whole thing. So why doesn't she feel any better, already?
If you're wise enough to see that revelation coming before you start wrecking, then you're in a better position than most to appreciate and heed this card's warning.
"The fortune teller told me my love with you was through I hope her reading was wrong I hope she was wrong cause you've been gone too long Come home. . ."
Grief is often accompanied by an odd self-awareness. "What a cliche reaction," you might think as you sniffle into your fourth wad of tissue. "How dumb of me to care this much." Other times, your feelings completely blot out all reason until they are all you have. The Shangri-Las' music seems to appeal to either situation. On one hand the girl group, who rose to fame on hits such as "Leader of the Pack", performed some of the most truly melancholy pop music of the '60s.
On the other hand, they were really just a bunch of teenagers from Queens who were making it all up as they went, thrilled simply to be in the public eye -- their tuff-girl posturing and winsome attempts at high drama were eerily successful at keeping them there for a time. They weren't particularly well-equipped to handle the rigors of fame or the cultivation of public personae, however, and ultimately ended up being a pretty tragic team. It may have been woven into the very fabric of their destiny -- Wikipedia claims that "Initially, the girls performed without a name. But when they signed their first deal, they began calling themselves the Shangri-Las, after a Queens restaurant."
There were four of them, but often only three performing at a given time. Washed up by 1968, receiving negligible royalties, the girls went their separate ways. One of the twins, Mary Ann Ganser, died two years later. The other La's went off and made regular livings for themselves, as if all their colossal fame and fortune had merely been the daydreams of four giddy high school kids.
In some ways their music strikes me as amusing because of its melodramatic affectations. Their whole act was a little like kids playing dress-up, trying on adult clothes and feelings. In another way it strikes me as genuinely haunting and sad, especially knowing what realities these sirens would soon be facing in the not-so-distant future.
The Three of Swords articulates that harsh awakening, the sudden and intolerable realization that proves you're playing an unwinnable game -- at least by your previous standards. Ignorance is bliss, they say; it would probably make more sense if the heart in Pamela Coleman-Smith's card was a brain instead, impaled upon the Swords' unrelenting wisdom, but that might be too colorful an image to deal with over a cup of tea. When reality in all its vastness imposes upon your naively limited expectations, what is there to do but grieve? Whether you know what comes next or need time to absorb the shock, it's important to face these new truths, not hide from them. Otherwise you could wind up deep in denial, singing the same old song for an unnecessarily long time. [Via]
I hope her reading was wrong I hope she was wrong cause you've been gone too long Come home.
Nothing about her torment sets McHale apart from L'inconnue de la Seine. And certainly they have both become tragic romantic icons. The most profound difference between them is that one woman chose to settle her matter privately, causing as little unnecessary pain to others as possible. The other woman was so blinded by her own grief that she transformed herself into a missile; it's only by chance that she took no one else with her (the limo driver was in a nearby store), and she forced hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of bystanders to witness her death.
The Three of Swords is perfectly apt here; the card often portrays some form of heartbreak, but this shouldn't be read as a prediction of romantic tragedy per se. Rather, it's about the vicious circle in which immense grief results in the loss of your senses, and vice versa. Sorrow pulls curtains around you; it cuts you off from the world, but it also cuts you off from yourself. What you need in order to heal might be right under your nose, but you can't see it. And meanwhile, you are still moving about in the world, blind to the anything but the pain you feel -- and this can result in even greater misfortunes, the consequences of which only perpetuate that miserable feedback-loop you're caught in.
Drawing this card may sound pretty unpleasant, but consider it an important reminder: if you suddenly find yourself in bad shape, pull yourself over and give yourself adequate time to heal, lest your impaired judgment make things more complicated. Or if you have the opportunity to counsel a friend in need, remember that trying to get them "back to normal" as soon as possible might make you feel more comfortable, but it may not do either of you any actual good at all. The easy way out usually makes life harder for everyone else involved.
