Swords · Air
Nine of Swordsfor Aries · Self and Identity
"Anxiety isn't the question. What you do next is."
Six quick picks first, then your reading
One seated on her couch in lamentation, with the swords over her. She is as one who knows no sorrow which is like unto hers. It is a card of utter desolation. Swords represents thoughts and nine represents isolation. Together this card represents the doubts and fears that come with being alive and alone in the world. Obsessing over perceived flaws (or real mistakes) is not how you enact change in your life.
You are beset with worries and anxieties-- did you make the right choices, did you end a relationship with the love of your life, did you say the right thing to your boss, etc. These anxious thoughts are keeping you up at night and affecting your health. Reliving a situation over and over can give it more power over you. It feeds your anxiety. Acceptance of who you are (and what you did) are key
You are so overwhelmed with your anxieties it's hard to move through the world with any lightness. Perhaps a period of intense anxiety or melancholia. Fueled by shame, you feel something about the way you are is unlikeable. This is deeply untrue. Have faith that things will change and this intense feeling will pass. Ground yourself by spending time outside and be protective of yourself and your inner child. Seek support from friends, family or professionals as you do not have to bear these feelings by yourself.
Its place in the deck.
Where it shows up.
Nine of Swords for Aries in Self and Identity
The Initiator
Swords are the air suit, so the Nine of Swords sits in Libra. Libra sits directly opposite Aries, so this card describes the half of the situation Aries habitually hands to someone else. What it wants is this: write the sentence down and stop rewriting it. Handing that to another person is exactly the habit. Upright, it is nearly finished, and the last stretch of it is mostly solitary.
When reading about yourself through an Aries lens, the Nine of Swords says that you feel like your body is a machine to prove something with, a problem to outrun (or overcome), and the only thing you trust because it does what you tell it to. This has either made you physically strong and brave enough to try what others won't, or left you injured and angry at your own body for not cooperating with your will. You have been so focused on who you think you should be that you haven't checked in with who you actually are. The Aries blind spot in it is the feeling that nothing you do makes any difference, that you are not the center of the story.
In practice that can look like a loop that finally breaks, or seeing your own pattern in writing. Whatever form it takes, it is close to done and mostly solitary.
Somewhere else?
Keep the thread
Artemis remembers what you asked, and tells you when something comes back around.
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