My Morning Tarot: Ace of Cups

Tarot of Mystical Moments by Catrin Welz-Stein

Love deeply. Embodied intimacy. A vessel of divine compassion.

Wake up from the anesthesia. The numbing will not serve you or our world. The Ace of Swords welcomes us back into feeling, love, emotion and compassion. What does it feel like to really love freely? How can you be open to emotional experience without fear of pain? We are meant to be sensitive being, attuned to our own response….even if that is scary.

In the illustration we see a woman holding a teacup overflowing with butterflies close to her heart and near to her ear. She can hear their many wings flapping as they flutter into the sky. Her eyes gaze into the water she sits by, reflecting herself as part of this beautiful moment. There is an awareness of her role, he place in the release of beauty. The Ace of Cups is not just witness to experience here. She is both aware, witnessing and experiencing, enjoying.

Mystery is in that water she looks longingly towards. The great mystery of being. To be initiated into emotional life means a willingness, to return to the dark waters. To enter, naked and feel the warmth or coolness, submerge with acceptance and explore.

In this watery initiation, we are invited to sink in and become a vessel of divine love. Can you submerge yourself and be filled? Or do you enter sealed an unable to accept the emotions that are meant to flow. To know you are a vessel means accepting that you will also pour out freely. As the woman in this card releases the butterflies, we must not hold onto our emotions. We must actually not even hold onto the idea that they are personal. Take in and release.

Photo by Jack Prichett on Unsplash

Emotional awareness pulls us back into flow. To know and release. To hold and pour. In and out. Once in this state of being to know love more fully. Not as something to contain and hold but to experience, feel and release.

It’s that old saying…if you love something let it go, if it comes back it was for you…or however that goes. Love is not just for romance, not just for family. Love is for all and unconditional. When we become the vessel for divine love, we find true bliss.

Traditionally this is the attainment of the holy grail, spiritual union. Embodied divine love that pours into us and we pour out into the world. Out state shifts here. From something that needs love to something that is love. Do not numb yourself anymore. Open.

Be the vessel. Go beyond the surface, dive deep. Be willing to experience the utter joy of emotional awareness, divine love and bliss. Let that flow through you and into our world. We need this.

Side note: A few years ago, when I was in recovery from surgeries and grief, I found myself pulled back to the water. To regain strength I started going to the pool, to aqua fitness classes. It was there I realized how uniting the experience of being in the water with others really is. When we walking through air, we rarely notice how much we effect others, or they effect us. But in the water, it is so obvious. The resistance we feel can be helped or hindered by the movements of those around us. As I started to notice this I started to heal. I started to relish being in the water with other people and to feel our connections. I think that healed me not just physically, but mentally and emotionally as well. My Dad always loved Down to the Water to Pray, so I choose that song for this pull.