The Metamorphic King: A Tarot Spread for Transformative Empowerment

Hello magickal businessfolk! I’m excited to share my first Tarot spread with you here on Mystical Missives, and a very auspicious pull it was. Let’s examine the cards one by one, and then I’ll dive deeper into how they interact with each other in this simple three-card spread.

Card 1: The King of Swords 🗡

The [Maturity] of [Thought]

I love that the first card drawn for the sake of this new venture is this empowered King. While of course I adore the money-related Venusian cards that represent bounty, like the Empress and the Nine of Pentacles, and the ultra-mystical cards like The High Priestess and the Page of Cups, I have experienced a rapid uptick over the past few years in appreciation for the Tarot cards that represent intellection and strategy… especially when they connote action as well.

I have an Aquarius ascendant and a Gemini moon, after all! My water-element sun sign, Cancer, is buoyed by quite a lot of air in my natal chart, and the Sword suit is ruled by the element of Air. This card gives me serious Saturnian vibes, and you may not know this about me yet, but I am OBSESSED with our solar system's ringed gas giant. Serious get-your-systems-in-place energy.

Let's have a closer look at the card. The King of Swords is Plutonian. He sits on a stone throne that is adorned with carved butterflies, representing the glorious result of a metamorphic process. The journey we embark on as soul-aligned entrepreneurs often takes years of study, training, trial and error, and relentless planning and dreaming. The emotional release we feel as we release these beautiful creations into the world is echoed both in the Capercornian Full Blue Moon that marked the start of the week, as well as in this lovely card.

The King himself is seated calmly but with intention, feet grounded in confident steadiness. He is gripping his sword, not in preparation to strike a blow, but as though he is preparing to issue a command or perform a ceremonial action. His quiet strength and composure speak to a maturity that is reflected in his status as the final card of the Court Card progression from Page (spark, initiation), to Knight (action, momentum), to Queen (achievement, expertise, capability), and finally to King (maturation, release). This guy is chilling, empowered by his wisdom, ready to make calm, composed, and strategic decisions.

I also love the imagery of the birds off in the distance, way up in the bright blue sky, signifying the freedom of taking flight from a firm foundation of experience and gaining altitude, soaring on streams of momentum that propel us, and our businesses, to new heights.

Card 2: The Eight of Pentacles 🔨

The [Ordering] of [Behavior]

I must admit to having mixed feelings when I pull this card. On the one hand, I have always idolized the concept of being someone with their ducks in a row. And look at these ducks—this craftsperson is doing a wonderful job of churning out these lovely pentacles. This is such an industrious card, and also a peaceful one as well. See how we’re staged outside the city? The peace and quiet allow the figure to focus on the task at hand.

However, there is a part of me that shrinks away from the suggestion that I may have some of my least favorite kind of work to do: the monotonous, boring, energy-sapping repetitive tasks that admittedly keep my business moving.

What does it take to make a business run? A commitment, not just to the passion projects (wands) and the strategizing (swords) and the client-work (cups), but to the menial admin-style tasks that, for some of us, can be our ultimate undoing. The roll of the eyes. The exasperated sigh. The whine of “but I don’t waaant toooooo” as we sit down to check off the most boring tasks on our list.

I have a LOT to say on boredom and will rail about it at a future date, but what I’ll share for now is that I find that the concept of boredom is not actually very useful. Doing the same thing over and over, doing all the finicky non-glamorous parts of our jobs, maintaining systems, churning out endless content—whatever it is that makes you feel bored needs to be examined.

Boredom is a catch-all concept for a variety of feelings we may encounter when we don’t want to do something anymore. Boredom in the face of something you have to do is avoidance dressed up in a heavy-lidded mask. What are we trying to avoid?

Understimulation? The agony of doing work outside our Zones of Genius?

Do you have something like that on your plate? What will it take you to get through it?

Card 3: The Ace of Wands 🔥

The [Opportunity to Initiate] a [Project]

Aces can be so wonderful to encounter in a business spread, but they also elicit a little tinge of panic inside me. Aces open a door and gesture to it emphatically, inviting us to initiate something new. They are especially welcome when we feel like we have all these ideas bubbling inside us and no time to work them out. The Ace says hey, take a moment to prioritize that spark and see where it leads you…

But business owners know better than most how difficult it can be to fit in a new project. We’re already so strapped for time, playing elaborate games of Tetris with our calendars (and our limited energy) in order to get it all done.

What do you do with an invitation that you don’t feel like you can afford to take?

One of the most valuable roles the Aces play in the Consulting the Deck style of business Tarot that I practice is as a challenge to the anxious whispers in the back of ours head that tell us, “you don’t have time for that.”

Just like in a regular deck of playing cards, aces are the “1”, a starting point. They carry with them the pure, raw essence of their suit, and in the case of Wands, ruled by the element of Fire, we encounter the raw essence of the passion, excitement, grand plans, audacious projects, and powerful dreams that put us on this journey into the wilds of entrepreneurship in the first place.

Keep dreaming. Find the time, even just 15 minutes, to reconnect with that passion, and see where that seed of a new idea for a product, a new concept for a marketing campaign, or whatever else is starting to form in the creative depths of your mind leads you. This is why we’re here.

Conclusion: The Cards Together 🔮

This spread tells a fascinating story about empowerment and balance. At first glance, the messages of the Eight of Pentacles (focus on heads-down non-glamorous work-work), and the Ace of Wands (make space for initiation of grand schemes) appear to be in direct conflict with each other.

But in the context of the King of Swords, their meaning crystalizes: stepping into the confident leadership of the King requires both the work-work and the dream-work. You need to find a way to get through the tough, menial tasks, while still making space for indulging the passionate plans and excitement that got you here in the first place.

The throne’s butterflies tell us about the freedom that comes from undergoing the metamorphosis from an inexperienced Page to the impassioned Knight to the masterful Queen, and that transformation is not passive—it’s a process, and it requires a combination of hard, committed work, and excited, feverish dreaming to accomplish our transformation into the strategic powerhouse that is the King of Swords.