6 Swords – Science
This month I picked a card with the intention of “what card do the people on this list need to know about this month” I picked out 6 Swords Science. This card was one of the cards I had difficulty with for a long time, it seemed unintelligible somehow. However I have come to know it well and appreciate its lessons. I will just talk here about the associations that have built up for me over the years and how it has come to show itself to me..
So the basics, as a 6 it is a perfected number and corresponds to the position of Tiphareth on the Qabala and this is the position of beauty and perfection of heaven on earth. So it is the peak of the swords suit here. The place where the intellect is at its highest point. Understanding all the world in an intellectual sense. On the card are the windmills of air showing movement and flux of the winds I feel rapid thought and understanding too . On a personal level it is that feeling when you feel you are suddenly coming to understand things that were once a mystery to you – the click and ah-har moment we experience at various times in our lives.
So this card is associated with science in the general sense of the word – logic, computers, information and communication of these ‘facts’ However this is only one aspect there is a deeper level – the sense of how the universe makes sense and the universal laws of spirit. You can see the cross in the center as a representation of this. This card I feel is about coming to that understanding of how the world ‘really’ works from a spiritual perspective. Understanding the spiritual laws deep in yourself. You may at one time read about concepts of manifestation, magick and the spiritual laws written by mystics and masters throughout the ages, but this is only the beginning, real understanding only comes when these writings are internalised and become a part of your knowing – this card is about that knowing… the sense that you knew the words all along about a concept but that one event or click that has happened means that suddenly you feel the knowledge as part of you, you ‘know’ in the deeper sense of the word. Often it is a place you come to which when you try to describe what you ‘know’ you find yourself using phrases and concepts that seem well-known to both yourself and others, and it is hard to explain what the real difference is when you really understand the concept you have known on the surface for such a long time.
So this card is about learning and about studying – both on the surface knowledge of something – as well as the deeper ‘knowing’ of something. This knowing brings with it a feeling of self-esteem as you understand your own position within the world and knowledge – represented by the yellow surrounding some of the shapes.
There is also a sense that you can step even further along this process – you have the logical understanding of the world and then the click of knowing, to the final stage of creating sometime new. Having original thought and being able to come to a new understanding that perhaps another has not fed you in any way. Something out of your own creative well. Not creativity in the sense of self-expression but more in the sense of creating new concepts and thought forms to describe and explain the world out there or within.
There is balance and harmony of thought here. Taking a step into more mundane readings this card also might indicate a group working well together to create ideas and solutions that are more than a sum of the parts or people who come together. A braintank, brainstorm, to come to group solutions. I would also indicate work with computing, information delivery and data related things in all forms.
The underlying nature of the world can be expressed through geometry, numbers and mathematical concepts, this card can also represent the mathematical ways we express the world around us and on a mundane level this card could indicate a skill with figures and understanding of the science of the world in the usual sense. With science at its edges of exploration becoming as if a spiritual system, or coming as a way to talk of events known by spiritual students for many years, quantum physics, electromagnetics, kirlian photography etc, the boundaries between science and spiritual beliefs merges – I feel this card shows us how the two can be united.
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