Alta said:
I was watching a movie this afternoon, and there was a scene where a former couple are trying to get back together but one of them feels so destroyed by nature the earlier parting that reconciliation is difficult.
I found myself thinking of the RWS 5 of swords with the smirking victor and round shouldered losers. It made me wonder about reading the card, if there might be an overtone of future regret for the victor.
How often is that true! What seems like a victory can later turn to ashes leaving one desperate to undo one's own actions. I know that I have experienced that, and from both sides at different times.
Like the 6 of wands, the nature of winning is rarely unambiguous or untainted. What seems great at one moment is really defeat (or something less than victory) in disguise.
Anyone else seem that sort nuance in this card? Or another? Any stories of readings to relate?
Alta
Anything to do with the number five is fascinating to me for so many reasons, really it is a polarized number. Five is the first number that truly falls outside the average persons ability to grasp as a "image or grouping" we need to count five items, and actually think about the number five unless laid-out in a known and often seen pattern...like a pentad, the symbol of life. Yet in tarot a dichotomy exists between what five has been and what five is now. Fives ward off evil, make up a hand, pertain to regeneration and Phi, even plants growth: there is a five-fold rhythm to to life ( just look for it) but we see, in tarot, the five as upheaval and problems, disruptive, anxiety and uncertainty...where did the change come it? How did it go so far off its early track?
The RWS Five of swords, to me, is generally a card of present-tense and it can be viewed from two sides, the "smug fellow", or the "losers" (are they?) It is interesting to note that the five swords are actually grouped into two and three, they do total five but broken into their groupings the card suddenly reads as a story, not a "negitive" or "selfish" outcome. Three's are ends and beginnings, and a sort of completion, twos are hot/cold, Yin/yang, as in opposites that balance. Looked at through this idea, you can see more of the perfection of life or Pythagorean idea's in the five, yet the art of the card still works. It is not anxiety or upheaval, it is just life. Life is full of winners and losers, hunted and hunter...Early Christians used Five to represent the five wounds of Christ, a symbol of truth. Hygeia= health, Five represents the senses..
OK I see I am all over the map here and my dots do not seem to join up coherently, I am tired and typing too fast on a subject I enjoy. But I hope you get the thrust of what I am saying..
Papus did at least put fives in the human world..
Yes this card seems to mean loss and defeat or accepting limitations, sort of our "accepted idea" of the card now.. but really it may be about nature, human nature, and our senses That encompasses much more then what we generally give this card credit for. I do use it as accepting limitations, and therefore the win loss does come into play, but is secondary to what you learn.
Find me one piece of literature from before Inquisition that shows the number five in a negative light. We have been counting (or at least one to one pairing) for 1000's of years, the Inquisition is only a few hundred years ago.
I think I did not even come close to answering your original post! LOL...but FIVES are just so misunderstood!
