Don't Go Breakin' My Heart....

April 12: Three Of Swords, Daniel's Bootstrap Tarot

Three true-love knots tie the broken pieces of our shattered heart together in this compelling illustration...and it is around the left wrist of the betrayer that these knots have been tied. The left hand, the one where the wedding ring is placed, supposedly because the veins in this hand lead straight to the heart--and yet it is this hand that bears the signs of betrayal and loss signified by the three of swords, and it is this hand that is thrust right through the heart, shattering it into pieces. I seem to envision that a certain finger on the end of this hand might be raised in a characteristic gesture....

And so what do you get when your card-of-the-day is literally saying "Eff you"? How can anyone expect to make anything helpful or positive out of a message that basically says "You're screwed"? Well--that's not the whole story in this card. Let's take a look...

Notice that the hand isn't showing. So---maybe that finger isn't doing what I thought it was in the first place. Because--here's the thing--maybe that hand isn't the hand of the breaker-of-hearts at all. Maybe it's YOUR hand, lifting itself triumphantly out of the wreckage of the shattered heart, and showing that your three true-love knots--love of Self, love of Truth, love of Spirit--are still securely tied around your life-stream. Maybe the gesture we can't see, the gesture your own hand is making, is the clenched fist of "Power to the People". Maybe there is triumph here, after all....

The fact is, not one person in the Universe gets through life without heartbreak. It comes with humanity. We love, and we live, so sometimes we misplace our trust, and sometimes we get hurt. What's important is--what do we do afterwards? What do we do to make beauty out of destruction? How do we let betrayal affect us--or how do we refuse to let betrayal affect us, in any substantive way? This card is an avatar of hope, looked at in that fashion--you may hurt me, you may lie to me, you may betray me. But my true-love knots will remain securely tied around my heart-vein, and I will triumph, and I will move forward, and I will go on. When you look at the background of this card, the shattered red and white stones...it's really a pretty mosaic, isn't it? I bet that triumphant hand raised in exultation in the middle of the card is the one that built it....