9 of Soul

2038-01-19T03:14:07Z

Description

The 9 of Soul is not a reassuring card to draw. It is a picture of a bound man, both arms tied at the wrists, with a giant spearhead at his neck. You cannot see the mans eyes; most of his face is obscured in shadow. He is a Black man, likely of African descent. His hands are raised next to his head, perhaps in a gesture of surrender. He wears only a fur loin cloth and earrings. His hair is bound up in a top-knot, and his legs disappear into a miasma of dark blue underbrush. The spearhead divides the frame visually, being at least the size of the mans body. It is impossible to tell if the spear is real, and merely in perspective, real and actually gigantic or metaphorical, perhaps because the bound man has entered some kind of trance or dream.

Interpretation

It's hard to separate this card visually from XII The Sacrifice, Toppi's interpretation of The Hanged Man. Both images involve men with open arms confront giant spears. The real differences for me are the composition and attitudes. In 9 of soul the spear comes up out of the ground, or perhaps from behind the frame of the card, as if someone we can't see were holding it up, for me implying that the spear, and the question it implies, is coming from a human source. The spear in XII The Sacrifice seems implicitly divine (though I have questions about even that, given the Hanged Man's precarious relationship with what's up and down), reminding me of the giant spearhead in XX The Prey.

The attitudes, though, are what really separates these cards. In 9 of Soul the man is bound, his hands raised in a gesture of surrender. In XII The Sacrifice the man's arms are free and open, as though he is embracing the spear (or diving onto it, depending on which direction you see the card coming from). Both 9 of Soul and VII The Sacrifice represent transformation, similar to the way that XIII Death does, but 9 of Soul shows a struggle against transformation, where XII The Sacrifice shows a man embracing it.

The man in 9 of Soul seems to have finally surrendered, though not before he had to be apparently captured and bound. He stands at the point of decision, though; he has not been gored as the man in VIII Death has. And it's hard to say what that decision will bring. Perhaps like Abraham and Isaac the spear will not pierce the heart of the bound man, but instead flick right and left and set him free of the bonds that hold him. From where we stand we cannot tell, and I believe that the answer lies in the decision that lays before the querent, who I suppose in this case is me.

This card reminds me of an exercise we do in Feri called Walking the Blade. Thorn Coyle talks about it in her book Evolutionary Witchcraft. We visualize in our minds eye a blade of some kind, a sword, a knife, a spear perhaps. We choose a situation where we have a choice and on one side of the blade we place one decision and its possible out come, and on the other side the other decision and possible outcome. Then we visualize ourselves walking the blade. First on the flat side, out to the point of the blade and back, feeling each of the decisions as we do so. Then we flip the blade and walk the razor edge out to the point, and we pause at the point where the decisions meet and flow together to see if there's a third road we can choose that is something different than we had been able to see when we framed the decision originally. Then, if we can, we choose. Perhaps for the man in 9 of Soul, and certainly for the man in XII the Sacrifice, there is a third option he hasn't realized yet, but that will come to him as he balances at the point of the spear.

Application

Hard to say this doesn't or won't apply to me at some point today. I have felt bound these last few days, closed in, captured, trapped. I don't know that there's been a knife at my throat, but I certainly haven't felt free, and I've been struggling with that. I think perhaps another meaning of this card is that the tool for my freedom is right in front of me, all I have to do is use it. Sometimes it's hard to figure out how.

Traditional Meanings

Aeclectic Tarot

ATA Tarot

Ms. Midwest Midnight Check-out Queen

9 of Soul