Kitchen Table Tarot

Death/Rebirth, 3 of Cups, 6 of Swords

Hello friend, and welcome to my kitchen table. It is my sincere hope that you are experiencing peaceful acceptance and loving kindness from those around you, and if not, my wish that you will find this quiet joy in some form or another in the coming year. If this reading resonates with you, I hope that it might bring some clarity and perspective; if it does not, don’t force it to fit your situation, but be open to anything in it that might apply to some other situation either here or down the road. Let’s get to these cards.

The center of this quick spread is the 3 of Cups—usually a card that represents being blessed with a loving community, of friendship and socializing and having a “squad” to call your own. However, placed where it is between Death/Rebirth and the 6 of Swords, to me it resembles its reverse meanings: too many people to deal with, an environment of herd conformity, and something that was once a vital social group or even “found family” souring and turning toxic. Perhaps the reason for gathering or being friends has run its course, or those friends were really acquaintances and you sense that change is necessary, but something is keeping you stuck. If you have given a lot of your time and energy to a particular group or clique, there could be the issue of sunk-cost fallacy, or maybe you’re afraid because they know too much. This can be a frightening situation to work through, one fraught with anxiety and loneliness.

The Death/Rebirth card signifies the end of a cycle and the beginning of a new one, a significant transformation of yourself or your situation that will lead to growth if you can identify how to roll with the changes. Consider deciduous trees—in the fall they go through the process of abscission, the shedding of leaves that have run their life cycle, triggered by the change in temperatures and the shortening of days. From there, the foliage breaks down and nourishes the soil, and the tree is freed up to produce new leaves when the days lengthen and temperatures increase again. Though sometimes leaves do stay on the branches until whisked away by the wind, the vast majority do not hold on, and the tree makes no effort to keep them there. Now of course, we are not trees, and our relationships with the people around us don’t run on general schedules according to the weather or the tilt of the planet’s axis, so it can be hard to tell sometimes if we’re holding on to people or things that have outgrown their time with us. Change is understandably scary, especially if it is prompted by the fizzling of something that was once good and helpful.

The good news is that the 6 of Swords is an optimistic card, though it looks somewhat bleak here. Its presence indicates leaving a place of pain, navigated through choppy waters by one’s own wisdom and strength, to somewhere more suited to you—someplace safe. The decision to deliberately drift away from a crumbling column of social support, in the interest of your own change and growth, might seem daunting at first; search your intuition and listen to it, really listen, to understand what it is that you need. You may have overcome the need or problem that brought you to this particular group, especially if said group was one you fell into during a vulnerable time. It might feel like you’re betraying not just them, but a group credo, to leave. But if the people surrounding you have come to inhibit your personal growth, holding you back and stressing you out, or are in some other way discouraging you from free thought and expression, you are allowed to let go for your own good.

It is important to be kind and gentle when pulling away from any group or situation; I don’t suggest pulling up stakes willy-nilly with zero consideration for how it will affect the people around you (especially if it concerns a family situation with complicated ties). And as has been stated before, sometimes the way I express my interpretation of the cards can seem absolute, but this is simply for consideration. Our freedom to move about this world begins first with thought. Sometimes we are scared even to mull something over, but thought is not immediate action. Especially in matters of family and faith, it can feel like a betrayal to mentally catalogue our options, to even think about changing. If you take nothing else from this reading, even if it doesn’t resonate for you personally, know that you have permission from spirit/the universe to think through any given situation without worrying that you will be “in trouble.” Thinking is free, and you are allowed to do it.

Be at peace, dear one, and know that you are loved, you are worth the life you want, and you are always, always welcome at my kitchen table. -KTT 🌻💛