Archetype and The Tarot: The Witness and Three of Swords
For the week of September 3, 2023
For an overview of what I’m doing here, please check out this post all about it.
Just a reminder, there’s an easy, mini-ritual to download at the end of this post to help deepen your relationship with this week’s archetype and tarot card. This week’s ritual offers a practice for co-regulating with a spirit helper. Enjoy!
The Witness Archetype
We’re going to be facing some wounds this week, so let’s step into a mindset of being very kind and tender with ourselves. If you are feeling particularly raw or overwhelmed, it might be best to tuck this week’s wisdom into your pocket and revisit it at a later time.
If you’ve been following these posts, you’ve heard me say many times that archetypes are neutral patterns. None of them are bad nor good. None of them are better than any others. Well, now I’m going to contradict that. (Just a little bit.) The Witness is, in my very humble opinion, one of the most sacred archetypes there is.
We all need our lives and stories witnessed just to know that we exist. And we need our wounds witnessed too. There are many reasons for this. For one thing, The Witness becomes a container—a vessel—where we can put our story. When we, ourselves, are no longer the container, we can see our stories from a different perspective. We can better see how to disentangle our spirit, our power, from them.
On the light side, The Witness holds space for, and observes, all of that. Ideally, The Witness listens on a profound level, but does not advise, nor even express an opinion. The Witness becomes that container where we can put our stories. And when the witnessing is complete, The Witness does not fix anything. Rather, The Witness helps us reclaim our power by simply asking, “What do you feel called to do now, (if anything)?”
In the shadow, however, The Witness can become an enabler or a shadow Rescuer. The Witness can be willing to hold the same story over and over again, more than is helpful, out of a fear of being disliked. The shadow Witness can also misuse the story they’ve received by repeating it to others or using it to have power over the storyteller.
Here’s the thing about The Witness this week…it’s a call to be The Witness for ourselves, to witness our own stories and woundings in a healthy way.
Again, practice kindness this week and go easy on yourself.
If you feel that you have the capacity, try asking yourself some of the following questions:
Do I have a tendency to repress or ignore my own hurt feelings?
Do I play down my wounds in order to not make others uncomfortable?
Do I find myself repeating the story of my wounds over and over again?
Do I tend to rush into fixing or repairing the cause of the wound?
Three of Swords
This is one of the cards in the tarot that people usually dread. The traditional interpretations are all about betrayal and heartbreak. It’s an image of a heart being pierced through by three swords, which is a pretty clear depiction of pain. The thing is, though, I don’t believe that messages from Spirit are ever going to carry the intent of causing fear or terror. Sometimes, Spirit might give us a gentle warning of a possible outcome, but not so that we’ll be afraid, rather so that we can empower ourselves.
That being said, I don’t think the Three of Swords is even a gentle warning. I think it is a call or an invitation to look at our own wounded heart; to look at the wounds that are already there. Because communication is one of the the attributes of the suit of swords, The Three of Swords is asking us to communicate with these wounds, primarily in the form of listening, or WITNESSING.
How do The Witness and Three of Swords work together?
Perfectly. I can’t think of a more apt tarot card to pair with The Witness.
How do we witness our own wounds?
We’re going to have to dig deep.
First we need to know what the wounds are. We need to tell ourselves the story. But only once or twice. We need to get to the wound. And we do that by not focusing the story on anyone else. Instead of saying that she did this, or he said that, we want to try to keep the focus on our own internal experience. It really is about getting clear on what, exactly, is the wound.
What is that super tender place that’s been pierced? What’s the underlying hurt?
Name the wound, say it out loud.
I feel alone. I feel unvalued. I feel rejected or like I don’t matter.
And, holy hell, that hurts.
We know when we’ve touched the wound.
Now, we just witness it. We don’t fix it. We don’t put a bandage over it. We don’t think about what we’re going to say or do to the person who caused it. This is not the time for demanding an apology or a reckoning, because those activities only take our focus away from the witnessing. And this week, we need to be witnessed.
Imagine holding your tender heart in your hands. You see the sword piercing it. You pull out the sword and engraved upon it is the name of the wound. Now simply hold your heart and listen to it tell you how much it hurts.
Remember that we can always reach out to our Divinity, our helping spirits, and our ancestors to hold us in loving support. They can be our witnesses in times when we are unable to witness ourselves. The mini-ritual below includes a short process for connecting with Spirit this way.
I would love to hear about your experience with The Witness. If it feels good for you to share, please leave a comment below.
I value the content of your post, but I want to focus on just one sentence. "We all need our lives and stories witnessed just to know that we exist." Being alone so much, I've wondered if being witnessed changes anything. Of course we exist when we're alone and richly so. However, there's an advantage to speaking about what matters to someone else. Nuances of understanding emerge, expanding it.
Jenna, this is just exquisite. There is more I am wont to say, but a paucity of words here says more than more words would add!