At night I need to stay in the boy’s room for a while to make sure Anthony, the younger one, doesn’t get out of bed. To relieve my boredom & stress, I’ve been listening to these weird brainwave mediation recordings that I found on rhapsody. Most of them are ocean sounds, but one that I really like also has something that sounds like wind blowing with a babbling brook kind of sound. It’s an Astral Trance OBE brainwave thing. It was so relaxing. Love it!!
While I was listen to this the other night, sort of dozing, the image of the Queen of Swords from the DruidCraft Tarot just popped up in my mind.
The image was animated; I could see the wind blowing her hair and clothes. I went with it and put myself in her place and enjoyed it until it was time for me to leave the room. I don’t know if that counts as a full on out-of-body-experience. But it got me thinking about my relationship with the Queen of Swords and how much its changed over the years.
The first tarot deck I really started to learn with was the Thoth Tarot. She’s a pretty intimidating looking Queen. I’ve got another deck that also shows her holding a severed head. She always seemed kind of harsh to me and like she represented someone who’d faced a lot of trials in their life. Wiser for them sure, but still not a pleasant happy life.
At a certain point in my life I began drawing the Queen of Swords often. I was using the Bohemian Gothic Tarot at the time and at first I still didn’t like her. She looked like an old roommate of mine that caused me lots of grief. But she kept showing up in positive positions in my spreads. After a while I began to warm up to her and accept that there may be something more than surviving sorrows and dealing with harsh critics I could learn from this Queen. This card became my favorite one in this deck. Still had some issues with her uncanny resemblance to the roommate from hell though.
When I started working with the Tarot of Trees deck I had a wonderful experience with the Queen of Swords. Since there are no people pictured in this deck it opened me up to make my own, more pleasant associations. There is a strong, intelligent and very regal looking celebrity that came to my mind the first time this card came up in a reading. Nothing about her life or past is heartbreaking either. Hard at times, but hardly tragic. Ironically, this deck added a whole human dimension to this card for me.
Now I’ve got the astral realm to add to my associations with the Queen of Swords.
