The Four of Swords: Staying Inside and Going Inside to Face Your Fears in the Days of COVID-19

I wanted to share some of the wisdom that the Four of Swords may have for you in these difficult days. In January I did a Tree of Life reading for the year ahead. And the Four of Swords showed up in the Yesod position.   

First, a little bit about the way I read the Tree of Life spread. I lay out the cards following the classic positions of the ten Sephirot on the diagram of the tree.

A diagram is flat—2 dimensional. But the thing to keep in mind about the Tree of Life is that it’s multi-dimensional and fractal. There are the four Kabbalistic worlds. And within each Sephira, this is a complete Tree of Life enfolded in a kind of implicate ordering of reality. In fact, in each Sephira in that implicate Tree there is another whole tree. This means each position has multiple layers of meaning. The first of these layers is revealed in the relationship of the Kabbalistic meaning of the card to the meaning of the Sephirotic position it lands on.

The Four of Swords, like the fours in all the suits, are cards the express one of the many meanings of Chesed, either positive or negative. So when a Chesed card shows up in a Yesod position, we’re considering how Chesed is expressed and mediated by Yesod. The Four of Swords in this position is an opportunity to explore the relationship of Chesed and Yesod.

Now Chesed is the unending flow of love from the Divine that sustains the world. It is a love so powerful it obliterates the personal ego. It is unconditional love that doesn’t discriminate—a veritable tsunami of Divine love that washes over and through everything in its path. This level of Chesed is not something that’s part of our everyday experience, though we do have everyday experiences of this Sephirotic energy. So looking at the Four of Swords, what does this kind of Chesed have to do with the image of a knight on a sepulcher?

Some people see the knight as a carving on a coffin, not as a living person. But this is not a card of death; it’s a card of initiation into starting the inward journey. This knight is very much alive, and at the start of a ritual. And if there’s anything the people of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn knew it was ritual—and in England this ritual was known as the Night Vigil.

It was the initiation into knighthood. The evening before the title of knight is bestowed on a squire, he prepared himself with a ritual bath of purification. He wore a white robe and entered the chapel with his sword and shield. In some places, the sword and shield are placed on a coffin. In some versions of the ritual, the knight-to-be would lay down in the open coffin, or rest atop it. He was not to fall asleep, but to spend the night in prayer and meditation.

The suit of Swords (and, in Hermetic Qabalah, the world of Yetzirah) corresponds to the intellectual and mental faculties—the ability to distinguish reality from illusion. The knight-to-be in the Four of Swords is not dead or sleeping. He is ever vigilant—Swords being the suit of the mind that makes distinctions. He is ready to face the awe and terror that an experience of Chesed can bring to the unstable ego. This is the test of the knight-to-be: not unlike the temptation of Christ in the desert or the temptation of Guatama Buddha by Mara, he must face his fears in order to undergo a spiritual transformation. Of course, when we look at this card, the first thought is that the fear is of death. And this is true, since the job of a knight, a warrior for Christ, is to face death: it’s just not the whole truth.

Remember that Chesed is both Boundless and “Boundary-less” and that to face this is to face the obliteration of the ego, a kind of death, which is a pretty terrifying prospect. The task of the knight-to-be is to face this fear and come away with an experience that is beyond duality—that he is both a separate being and an egoless expression of Divine Love.

The best expression of this idea that I know of comes from outside the Judeo-Christian tradition. It is in the words of Krishna to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita. In this story, Arjuna hesitates before battle; he does not want to kill anyone (least of all his cousins with whom he is at war). But Krishna tells him that the Spirit that pervades the universe cannot kill or be killed:

“He who takes the Self to be the slayer, he who takes It to be the slain, neither of these knows. It does not slay, nor is It slain.
This is never born, nor does It die. It is not that not having been It again comes into being. This is unborn, eternal, changeless, ever-Itself. It is not killed when the body is killed.
He that knows This to be indestructible, changeless, without birth, and immutable, how is he, O son of Prithâ, to slay or cause another to slay?”

In both the Hindu tradition and the Zen tradition in Japan, this was the philosophy of the warrior’s path. Only once you have purified your mind with this understanding are you fit to enter battle. And as you can guess, the misappropriation of the warrior’s path has been used to justify a lot of bloodshed by every religion. Remember, the image on the card is of a medieval knight—a warrior for Christ. Many such knights were Crusaders, which means some of my Jewish ancestors likely died at their hands.

Just because the historical reality of knighthood isn’t very pretty doesn’t mean the ideal of knighthood is any less spiritual. The ideal knight was a protector of the poor and weak. He was a protector of the faith by embodying its values. For when one is attuned to the Flow of Chesed within, it naturally flows out in ways that lead one to help everyone. When Chesed is experienced within, when you can face your fears of such a force and let go of them, you become a vessel for this force in the world. It flows through you and gives you strength.

In this time when we are being asked to stay inside, despite all the fear, for those of us fortunate enough to have the security of a home, this is an opportunity to not only stay inside, but to go inside. We are being the terrible gift of the enforced retreat. And rather than struggle against it, we have an opportunity to watch our mind react with all its fear, we can watch the ego with all its rage to be in control. And we can let these emotions pass through us and let them go. We may have these feelings, but they will not have us.

When this card showed up in the Yesod position in my reading, it presented an interesting challenge. You see, Yesod is not about going on retreat like a monk. It’s all about connection, bonding, generativity, and this includes sexual connection with spiritual intention.

In its healthiest expression it is about a spiritual bond, between a teacher and student or between lovers, that takes both of them to a higher plane.

There is an urgency to connecting in Yesod—all the power of the Sephirot above flow through it to Malchut below. On the body, Yesod maps to the genitals—the phallus or the birth canal.

When Yesod is expressed negatively, it is the Sephira of addiction—someone who can’t hold all this energy, and who doesn’t have a practice or a container in which to express it in a healthy way may find themselves expressing it, to use the Buddhist description, unskillfully. Those unskillful expressions can include substance abuse, sex addiction and other compulsive behaviors like gambling for example.  

When the Four of Swords showed up in the Yesod position for me in January I found myself reflecting on the year that had just passed. My six-year relationship had ended, and I found myself avoiding feelings of hurt and anger by seeking out sexual connection. I was trying to avoid looking at my own responsibility for the problems in the relationship by satisfying physical urges that had gone unmet in that last year.

So when I saw the Four of Swords in Yesod, I realized it was time to stop this avoidance. It was time to stop seeking the empty comfort of the physical in order to go on an inner retreat. It was time to face my responsibilities and how I used the relationship as a way of avoiding deeper inner reflection. So in January I made the decision to stop dating and to step away from hook-up culture for at least a 3-month period. And I made the decision to be a little less social—to take more time for my inner connection.

And now, here I am in enforced isolation due to the pandemic. Looking at the message of this Sephirotic combination I see a call for me to make greater connection with others based in Chesed. And today, an expression of Chesed is a phone call to my elders. Checking on neighbors. Giving to charities that provide for those who are suffering the economic consequences of this plague. And I see the opportunity to step up my inner practice with daily meditation and contemplation so that my fears of a healthy, deep connection of Chesed in Yesod within and with another will be revealed for the illusions that they are.

While I did this reading for myself, it feels that this Sephirotic combiation has meaning for everyone in some way right now. We’re all being called to stay inside and go inside. We’re being called to recognize bonds and connections in deeper ways. I hope you can see in the Four of Swords the inspiration to go through the dark nights ahead with Chesed and courage.

In just two weeks the practice of Counting the Omer will begin. My book is about using tarot cards for this Kabbalistic practice that lasts for 49 days. I’ve done this practice for years. If you’re looking for a daily practice that can help stay strong through the trials ahead, a practice that can take you deep within to face your fears and experience a stronger connection with the Divine, consider Counting the Omer.

While you can do it anytime—and many of my readers have already started—traditionally the practice will start this year on the evening of April 9th. Get a copy of my book, Tarot and the Gates of Light and read the introduction the week before and join me and millions of others around the globe on this inner journey.

My wish is that it brings you deep peace, a heart of compassion, spiritual strength, and the blessing of experiencing the Divine light that always surrounds and supports us. So that no matter how many days we have ahead of us, we know how to make every day count.