The 7 of Wands tarot card may well show up to give you a reality check. It’s not your imagination, you’re not being overly dramatic, and you are not overreacting. There really are tremendous obstacles in your path. You really have hit a wall. To proceed as you had hoped to proceed may not be possible. You may need to abandon the hopes you had, and find something new to pursue. That’s just life.
Things don’t always go the way we had hoped. We get reality checks that force us to consider alternatives and new ideas. If we can find those alternatives perhaps we will feel liberated. If we cannot, we will likely suffer from frustration. The 7 of wands tarot card reminds us that we all have these setbacks in the quest of our goals. We all have those occasions when he have to face reality and understand what we hope for simply is not possible, so do not take it personally. — Jim Larsen
In tarot, The Hanged Man can scare people. He can anger them. He can even enrage them. He does this by speaking the truth. He sees and he speaks the absolute truth. He is not taken in or fooled by the facades and the projections that so many people use as shields to hide their truths. As he sees through these, he calls people out. He makes them face these truths. He makes them feel naked and vulnerable because the protection that the shield was meant to offer this protection is stripped away and now there is nothing but the ugliness about themselves for them to accept. But they don’t want to accept that. They don’t want to have to deal with this ugly truth. They themselves are bothered by it and are not equipped to face it. This is the reason for the facades and the shields. They feel threatened by the natural flow of nature and want to illusion of control over it. When that illusion of control is stripped away, they get defensive against the one who stripped it away by seeing through it. This often triggers them to go into the offense and lash out against the one who saw through it- the Hanged Man. They then identify the Hanged Man as somebody who will see through their facades and projections, and then fear and despise them for it. – Jim Larsen
The Hanged Man tarot card reminds us that an important life skill is the ability to zoom out and see situations from a broad perspective. When you do this, you can get a sense of just how insignificant and unimportant most things we preoccupy ourselves with really are. Seen from a wide view, just what difference does most everything we obsess over really matter? It’s all very small. Ask yourself when you are obsessing over something: to a person a mile down the road from me, does this make one bit of difference? Probably, it doesn’t. It is so small that it truly is confined to you and your own mind. So, zoom out and see just how stupid most of what you worry about really is. This is a technique that the Hanged Man can teach you. — Jim Larsen
The Four of Wands and Chariot is that yearning for more and something different feeling you get. Then you devise a plan to get it. Imagine your dream as a far away, distant shore. You know that once you get there, you will have a level of satisfaction and contentment that you do not currently have. So you start examining prospects for getting there, and put a plan together. Then you do it. It all starts with the dream, desire, and ambition. Once that is firmly established, take off and go. Nothing can stop you. — Jim Larsen
Be the Fool and Hanged Man combined. Be somebody who is unafraid to enter a new situation and act in that situation in a way that is perfectly logical to your own way of doing things and and see things that perfectly logical to your way of seeing things, but which may be new and novel to others watching you. Be an unconventional person who is hard to figure out. By living life your way, you will thrive. — Jim Larsen
One way to think about the Death card of tarot is to consider it as a signifier that you have hit rock bottom, or if you are not there already, you are on your way there. On the way down, you probably feel like you have no control over your circumstances and that life was spinning out of control. Don’t fret though. Things may seem bad, but keep in mind, once you hit bottom, you can assess where you are and what your options are. Once you get that figured out, you can figure out the best way to get back to where you want to be. Sure, you hit rock bottom, but at least now you have solid ground beneath your feet. And with this solid ground, you can propel your self upward again.
The Death card of tarot is like that. In a broad sense, it carries intonations of a new chapter of life beginning as an old one comes to a close. Sometimes one chapter ends with a low point in life being hit, sometimes a high point being reached, while at other times an even transition to something new. In the case of hitting rock bottom, just know that Death can mean you have the chanced now to bounce back with renewed vigor and strength. Find the solid ground beneath your feet and rebound! — Jim Larsen
To consider this is not an attack on your character
Judgment is the archetype of complete honesty. This cannot be faked. To even try to fake this would to live in denial, which will always be found out. Judgment is about assessing reality and examining strengths and weaknesses. It is about assessing how your actions have added up to create the life you now live, and what you could have, and perhaps should have done differently to affect a different outcome, perhaps a better and more hospitable outcome based on your life’s mission and the goals for personal Enlightenment that you have set for yourself.
In a perfect sense, the assessment from the Judgment archetype will be accepted as it is given- dispassionately and impersonally. In an imperfect sense, it will be met with resistance by the one receiving it. This person will take it personally, as if it is an attack on their character. Their egos will interfere with the wisdom and the growth opportunities inherent to it. They will push it away because it challenges what they have come to believe about their selves. One must take into consideration as an archetype, Judgment is never presented as a personal attack. It is presented as learning opportunities and chances to better one’s self. To let ego get in the way only diminished its power and intention.
Consider your actions as though you must one day answer for them in a court of a much higher power. Can you justify them? This is one message the Judgment card of tarot has for you. — Jim Larsen
Ever find yourself in a 7 of swords mood? It can happen that you feel as though you are in a long, dark tunnel, and the only way you will feel contentment is to reach the end of that tunnel no matter how endless it seems. Sometimes you may feel like you are unworthy of reaching the light at the end of the tunnel and you must fight sensations of helplessness. You may even feel unworthy of friendship or love from somebody because it seems like they already have all they need from others and you just don’t matter to them the way you had hoped you would. You may reflect on how much they mean to you and all you would do for them, and all you have already done, and feel sad at the realization that this is all one-sided as they are so quick to dismiss you when they don’t need anything from you.
It is normal to slip into these moods. We all do it from time to time. When you find yourself in a 7 of Swords mood, give yourself permission to be a little bit self-centered. Push away these negative and haunting thoughts about yourself and do what it takes to lift your spirits. Do it without the need for validation from others, but rather for the improvement of your own mood. Your actions may strike others as stand-offish or maybe a little rude, but let that be their problem. Right now, you need to put yourself first. –Jim Larsen
The Fool is on a journey and will find his way. He has explorations to make and will never stop. Hey may rest, but he will continue on his way once this rest has been accomplished. Obstacles and hindrances will present themselves to him, but he will find a way through, around, over, or under them. The Fool has a destiny to fulfill, and as such, he views any obstacle or hindrance he is presented with as an opportunity to amass strength and wisdom as he finds his way to the other side of them.
Nothing the Fool is presented with is intended to stop him, but rather to test his dedication to the journey and his ability to forge his way ahead. This journey that the Fool is on is not a journey of a single lifetime, but rather an accumulation of journeys throughout his spiritual/karmic existence. Therefore, he has endured uncountable obstacles and the necessity of getting past them is encoded in his karmic DNA.
Each lifetime for the Fool brings its own destinations to enhance the spirit. Each journey of each lifetime is a stretch of the total journey that takes the Fool to Grand Enlightenment. Even then, the journey does not end. As a grandly enlightened spirit, new journeys of understanding open up that are beyond the comprehension of any logical, earth-bound mind. As earthly beings, we are only given access to so much information. This is not to keep us in the dark, but to keep us focused on what we need to focus on for our given lifetime. To be given access to more than that would give way to unnecessary distractions as we would tend to project our attention to the fascination of what is far beyond the scope of current concerns.
We speculate the grand meaning of our karmic existence to a degree already. We do what we can to imagine our lives in a much greater context than what we experience earthly. To have access to validation of the ultimate grand scheme of our life, however, would cause us to live in the future without first catching up to it. This would have the unfortunate effect of not looking for the lessons our lifetime journeys are designed to teach us, thus depriving us of the growth opportunities that actually lead us to that Grand Enlightenment we are working towards.
The Fool, in his ultimate wisdom, accepts the journey ahead of him, not knowing where it will take him, but with faith that it will take him where he needs to be. The Fool knows, that since he is destined to be somewhere, he will get there. Obstacles will not stop him. He knows that in the overcoming of obstacles, strength, wisdom, and strength will be gained. This is true of grand karmic journeys as well as mundane earthly journeys. — Jim Larsen
