Four images, four stories of hurt. Choose the one that stops you first.
If the person who hurt you stood in front of you right now and said, “Come on, it’s been so long, do you still remember that?”, what would you want to say back? Maybe you already have a speech prepared. Several versions, even, depending on how politely you decide to answer. Or maybe you would fall silent, because the most painful part is exactly this: for them it is time long gone, and for you something is still left unsaid.
Tell me, what hurt you most back then? The act itself, or the fact that it came from someone you were sure would “never do that to me”? Sometimes we return to one event so many times because we keep trying to fit together the person we loved and the thing they did. We go through the memories, look for the moment when everything changed, and ask ourselves how we failed to see it.
Or perhaps something quite different weighs on you. That nobody defended you back then. That you had to show understanding to everyone, while your own bitterness was left for later. That you heard “you’re too sensitive” at the very moment you were gathering the courage to say how much it hurt. And now, when you remember, you still wish someone would finally admit: “Yes, that was unfair. I understand why it hurt you.”
Does this waiting sound familiar? To have gone on with your life and still, somewhere inside, to carry a quiet “I hope one day they’ll understand.” To imagine them calling you, apologising, finally saying exactly the words you have been waiting for. Meanwhile the days go by, and you are still keeping a place for that conversation. A little like a reservation for someone who for years has never confirmed whether they are coming.
And how do you let go of a hurt when it feels as though what happened will then go without consequence? Who will acknowledge what you went through? What will become of everything you swallowed? These questions deserve attention. Especially if, every time someone says “just let it go”, you feel like asking: “Fine, will you show me how?”
With this spread I invite you to look for exactly your own “how”. It is for you if an old story can still spoil a good day, if you catch yourself expecting a new person to act like the last one, or if a certain name instantly takes you back to a conversation you remember word for word. You can return to such a conversation once more in “The Scene” and write it a different ending. It may be about love, friendship, your family, or someone you helped who later disappointed you. Or perhaps the hardest conversation is with yourself: “Why did I allow this? Why did I stay? Why did I believe again?”
If you recognise yourself, stay here for a while. As you read the variant you choose, you can ask yourself what you keep protecting through this hurt and what you are trying to shield yourself from. Whether you are still waiting for an apology, for justice, for an explanation, or for permission to stop blaming yourself. We will also pay attention to what you feel when the memory returns: the tightening, the tension, the urge to close up or to say everything at once. For these sensations the Game has “The Tapping”: you give them your own words and watch them ease after each round.
The cards will offer you another view of the story and a direction for the first step, the one that depends on you. It may lie in words you will finally allow yourself to say, in a boundary you will set, or in a decision you keep putting off while waiting for the other person to change. At the end a message awaits you, along with a small symbolic ritual to mark this step. And when you are ready to leave the story behind, in “Letting Go” you will name what you are releasing and hear what the cards say about it. Give yourself time to feel which part of what you read is close to you and what you want to do with it.
Now think of the person or the event that surfaced first while you were reading. Perhaps you already know which story you have brought here. Look at the four images and choose the one your eyes landed on first. Go by the image alone, without reading the meanings beforehand or looking for the variant that will give you the nicest answer. If one is already pulling you, trust that choice, before your mind asks to look through the other three just in case.
Ready? Choose your image, and let’s see where you can begin.
The hurt from someone close who was not there for you.
CardsThe Hermit, Five of Pentacles, Seven of Cups, Two of Swords, The Devil
RunesNauthiz, Isa, Perthro, Eihwaz, Hagalaz
Your hurt goes much deeper than one word or one particular event. The cards show a story that began much earlier and grew for a long time beneath the surface, until one day something happened and everything you had been carrying rose up all at once. I look at the Hermit beside the Five of Pentacles and I see a person who for a long time believed they had to cope with their difficulties alone. There was probably a period in your life when you expected support from someone you trusted, and instead you received distance, silence or indifference. The pain came from more than the event itself. It came from realising that someone you considered close was not there in the way you needed.
Nauthiz and Isa show a long period of inner freezing. This is the situation in which a person keeps moving forward on the outside while inside they remain locked in one old moment. Perthro speaks of a hidden truth that has gradually begun to reveal itself. It is very likely that for some time you believed one version of events, and then life showed you a completely different picture. This is exactly where the Seven of Cups and the Devil appear. They show how long you tried to understand what was actually real and what was only hope, wishful thinking or a promise that was never meant to be kept.
Eihwaz shows a passage between two periods of your life. When this hurt happened, something in you came to an end. Perhaps it was your trust in a particular person. Perhaps it was a certain idea of love, friendship or family. Hagalaz shows a destruction that at first looked like a loss but later became the beginning of something new.
As I look at this combination, the feeling is of someone who waited far too long for recognition, understanding or an explanation from a place it was never going to come from. That is exactly why this hurt runs so deep. It is about what the other person did, and it is also about what you lost within yourself after it happened.
And yet there is one important detail here. The cards show someone who is gradually beginning to understand why all of this had to happen. Life used this wound to show you something very important about your own boundaries. Before, you gave too much. Before, you waited too long. Before, you trusted other people’s promises more than your own feelings. This hurt came as a harsh teacher, but teachers rarely ask whether we are ready for the lesson. They simply arrive when the time for learning has come.
CardsNine of Swords, Queen of Pentacles, Three of Swords, Ten of Wands, The Moon
RunesNauthiz, Uruz, Laguz, Isa, Berkana
Once a hurt has stayed long enough in a person’s life, it stops living only in their memories. Little by little it settles into the body as well. First comes tension. Then tiredness. Then come those days when a person wakes up exhausted even though they slept, or feels a heaviness inside without being able to explain where it comes from.
This combination shows exactly such a period. A period in which the old pain has stopped being just an experience from the past and has started to become part of everyday life. The Nine of Swords and the Moon speak of nights when thoughts refuse to fall silent. Of moments when a chance word, a place or a memory can take a person years back. On the outside everything looks calm, but inside a conversation goes on that never got its ending.
Nauthiz and Isa show stopped feelings and, with them, whole layers of life frozen in one place. As if part of you remained locked in the moment when it all happened. You moved on, life moved on, the people around you moved on, but one part of your soul stayed there, waiting for something that never came.
The Ten of Wands tells of a person who for a long time carried more than they were obliged to carry. They carried their own pain, and they carried the pain of others. They carried the disappointments, the unspoken words and all those questions that never received an answer. After years, this begins to weigh on them like a constant exhaustion that builds up slowly and unnoticed.
The Three of Swords is at the centre of this position, the heart of the story. Here it is about a disappointment that changed something inside you. About a moment after which you began to see people, trust or yourself differently. Some people grow stronger after a wound like this. Others grow more cautious. Others build walls behind which they feel protected. But they all pay the same price: part of their lightness disappears.
Uruz shows that you have been through much more than those around you suspect. This is the rune of survivors. Of people who keep going even when they have no strength left. Laguz, however, reminds you that not everything needs to be controlled. Part of this pain simply wants to be lived through. And this is exactly where Berkana appears, the rune of recovery. It shows that you have reached a point where healing is already possible.
Your body is not at war with you. It is simply carrying the story your heart has not yet finished. And the more you begin to release the old pain, the more you will feel calm, strength and that sense of lightness returning, the lightness that has been missing from your life for so long.
CardsFour of Cups, Justice, The Tower, The Lovers, The Hierophant
RunesGebo, Isa, Nauthiz, Mannaz, Othala
The heaviest consequence of an old hurt is something other than the pain itself. Pain comes and goes in waves. There are days when a person hardly thinks about it, and then something quite small appears and everything comes back again. The real change happens much later. It happens quietly and gradually, when the heart begins to change so as never to live through the same thing again.
This is exactly what these cards show.
I look at the Four of Cups and I see someone who no longer reacts the way they used to. Once, you trusted more easily. Once, you rejoiced more easily. Once, you let people into your life without so many questions and so much caution. After what happened, though, something began to change. Gradually you started to observe more, doubt more and expect less. Your ability to love is still there; you were simply trying to protect yourself.
Justice and the Tower show an event that shook your sense of right and wrong. There are situations a person finds hard to accept precisely because they consider them unjust. They lose their belief that certain people would never hurt them. When that belief collapses, more than one relationship collapses. Part of the inner security we have lived with until then collapses too.
Gebo shows that there is a theme here of broken exchange. Of a relationship in which you gave more than you received. Of a bond into which you put trust, time, care or love, while on the other side you did not receive what you expected. It is this feeling of imbalance that still lives in you today.
The Lovers and the Hierophant show something very important. Despite everything that happened, your heart has never stopped looking for closeness. It has never stopped dreaming of a real connection, of honesty, of trust and of that peaceful feeling that you can be yourself beside someone. The difficulty is that before the heart reaches this dream, it has to pass through a whole layer of old fears.
Isa and Nauthiz show exactly these fears. They speak of a frozen pain that keeps part of your heart guarded in the past. Sometimes it shows up as mistrust. Sometimes as excessive caution. Sometimes as the habit of pulling away first, before anyone else has the chance to hurt you.
Mannaz shows that the greatest battle here is inside you. Between the part that wants to open up to life again and the part that still guards the memory of the old wound. The more time passes, the clearer it becomes that the key to this door is yours alone.
Othala shows something more. Part of this hurt is probably connected with a very old story. The theme may be linked with family, ancestral patterns or situations you have watched repeat for years. That is why this wound seems deeper than the event itself. It touches something much older.
As I look at this position, the feeling is of someone who for a long time guarded their heart the way one guards a precious object after a theft. They locked it away, checked the locks and looked carefully at whom they let inside. But the heart is made to love, to connect and to trust. That is the lesson of this position: how to keep your future for yourself, out of the reach of the old pain.
CardsFive of Wands, Knight of Swords, King of Wands, Eight of Cups, Seven of Pentacles
RunesTiwaz, Nauthiz, Thurisaz, Jera, Isa
Some people carry their hurt like a wound. The pain visits them from time to time, reminds them of itself and gradually fades. Your story is different. Here the hurt long ago became more than pain. It has become part of the way you see what happened, part of the explanation you give yourself for a story that was left without a real ending.
Enough time has passed for you to understand what happened. Enough time has passed for you to realise who acted how, and why. And yet there is something that keeps leaving the door open. Something makes you go back from time to time and look over the same memories again, as if an answer you have not yet found were still hidden among them.
The Five of Wands tells of a battle that is fought inside you. One part of your heart is ready to move on. Another keeps insisting that not everything is over. It still remembers the words that were said, the promises that were never kept and the moments when you were left alone with the feeling that you had given more than you received.
This is exactly where Tiwaz appears. It is the rune of honour, of justice and of the inner code by which a person lives. This hurt is about more than loss or disappointment. It is about a broken sense of justice. Somewhere along the way you believed that if you were honest, you would meet honesty. That if you were loyal, you would meet loyalty. That if you stood by someone in a hard moment, they would stand by you too. Life, however, does not always follow the rules we would like it to have.
The Knight of Swords continues this story. After what happened, you searched for answers. Sometimes you searched for them in conversations. Other times in your own thoughts. There were periods when you replayed the same story again and again, trying to find the moment when everything changed. But some stories have no single moment of falling apart. They crumble slowly, day after day, until one day a person realises they are already among the ruins of something they believed in.
The King of Wands shows something more. Behind the hurt there is dignity. There is a person who finds it hard to accept defeat and even harder to accept being underestimated. This person has always put their heart into the things that mattered to them. That is exactly why this wound has never fully healed. It touched a place that has always been sacred to you.
Nauthiz and Isa show the years during which part of this story remained frozen. Life went on. New people, new tasks, new hopes appeared. But deep inside you there remained a room in which time seems to have stopped. A room in which the question still lives of why it all had to happen in exactly this way.
Then come the Eight of Cups and Thurisaz. They do not speak of running away. They do not speak of giving up. They speak of the moment when a person understands that they can no longer remain in one and the same place. They understand that even if they received every answer they ever looked for, it would not bring back the lost time. It would not change the past. It would not make the pain any less real.
The Seven of Pentacles and Jera bring the wisdom of maturity. They show that through all these years you have gained something you could not see back then. You have gained knowledge of people. You have gained knowledge of your own boundaries. You have gained the ability to recognise more quickly what deserves a place in your life and what should stay outside.
The truth is that what holds you back is the thought that if you let go of the hurt, you will lose something important. And time has quietly shown something else. The most important thing was never in the pain itself. The most important thing is the person you became while you were going through it. And that person is ready for the next step.
CardsThe Star, Nine of Pentacles, The Sun, Wheel of Fortune, The Empress
RunesUruz, Wunjo, Jera, Berkana, Dagaz
For too long this hurt has taken up space between you and part of the life you were meant to live. Part of your attention, strength and time has been occupied by a story that kept looking for its place. While a person carries a weight like this, they often fail to notice how many opportunities pass them by. Sometimes they turn down an invitation because they don’t feel like being around people. Sometimes they don’t trust a well-meaning person because they expect disappointment. Sometimes they put off a decision that would change their life, because an old insecurity still lives inside them.
After the release, very real changes begin to happen. For some people they come first through a conversation. Someone with whom the relationship has been distant suddenly takes a step forward. An old conflict starts to lose its importance. A conversation that has been postponed for a long time finally takes place. The reason is simple: you no longer carry the same inner resistance.
For others the change comes through a new person. Someone appears in your life who has nothing to do with the old story, and it is precisely through them that you realise how differently you can feel. If it is about love, you will begin to compare less and to be more present in the here and now. If it is about friendship or work, you will feel how different it is when communication does not demand constant defence and proving yourself.
The Star shows something more. In the coming period you will begin to look at your future differently. Something you have long considered impossible or out of reach will gradually begin to look completely realistic. For some this will be connected with a move, for others with a new job, for others with a relationship they had thought impossible until now. What matters is that for the first time in a long while you will begin to make plans without the old pain having a say in them.
The Nine of Pentacles and the Empress speak of a period of stabilisation. Finances begin to fall into place more easily. Decisions that once seemed difficult are made more calmly. For some people an opportunity appears for extra income, a project of their own or an offer from someone they have never worked with before. For others the theme of home, family, renovation, a new place to live or a more comfortable living space is activated.
Uruz shows the return of strength. You will begin to feel more energy for things you have long put off. Something unfinished will be completed. A plan that has been waiting on the side for months will begin to take shape. There will be a moment when you yourself will be surprised at how little something that once seemed enormous matters now.
The Sun brings a period of more active communication and more movement. I see meetings, invitations, gatherings and new contacts. For some people this will be connected with travel. For others with taking part in an event, a course or a group of people among whom they will feel they belong. There will be at least one situation in which you realise that if you had stayed in the old hurt, you would never have reached that moment.
The Wheel of Fortune, Jera and Dagaz speak of a cycle that is closing for good. Something will close on its own, without you having to push it. Someone will disappear from your life or remain in it in a completely different way. An old problem will find a solution. You will receive information that helps you understand something about the past. You may even hear news about a person connected with the old hurt and discover, for the first time, that it no longer causes the same reaction in you.
Berkana brings the most beautiful part of this change. Once you release this story, space will begin to open up for a new one. A new relationship, a new project, a new dream, a new goal or a new direction. Each person will experience it differently, but one thing will be shared: your attention will no longer be turned towards what you have lost. You will begin to take an interest in what you are about to create.
And that is when you will understand why this hurt had to stay in the past. It mattered. Your future simply turns out to be much bigger than it.
CardsPage of Cups, The Magician, Ace of Wands, Three of Pentacles, Temperance
RunesAnsuz, Raido, Kenaz, Laguz, Sowilo
The first step towards release will not come at a moment when you feel prepared for it. It will appear on a perfectly ordinary day, when you least expect it. It may be a conversation with someone you haven’t seen for a long time. It may be a message that makes you stop and think. It may be a meeting at which someone says a single sentence and touches exactly the place you have kept hidden for so long.
At first it will not seem important. It will feel like just another conversation, another incident, another day. But afterwards you will begin to think about what was said. You will come back to it in the evening. Then again the next day. And gradually you will begin to understand that all this time you have been carrying something that no longer has a place in your life.
Ansuz and Kenaz bring a truth that rises to the surface. For some people it comes through a confession. For others through information learned by chance. For others through a conversation that casts a completely new light on the old events. It doesn’t matter where it comes from. What matters is that for the first time you will look at the story from a different angle and see things that have stayed hidden until now.
After that, something else will happen. You will begin to set boundaries where before you stayed silent. I see a situation in which someone asks something of you and this time you will not agree just to avoid conflict. I see a conversation in which you say what you really think. I see a moment in which you choose yourself instead of rescuing someone else’s expectations.
Raido shows movement. For some this will be a journey. For others a change of work environment, a new project or a new circle of people. An opportunity will appear to leave a space in which you have felt limited for too long. If you accept it, a whole series of changes will begin, unfolding over the coming months.
The Ace of Wands brings a new beginning. I see an idea that starts as something small and gradually grows into something much more significant. I see a new interest, a new course of study or a new person who will bring back your curiosity about life. After a long period in which your attention was turned towards the past, you will begin to feel excited about things that are still to come.
The Three of Pentacles shows a helper along the way. This will not be someone who solves your problems for you. It will be someone who shows you that there is another way of looking at life. Meeting them will not seem fateful at first, but in time you will realise how important it was.
Laguz and Sowilo bring release from the power the memory has over you. The memory stays, its power leaves. One day you will hear that person’s name or remember the situation and notice that you no longer react the same way. Then you will understand that the process began much earlier, on that ordinary day when you took the first step towards yourself.
CardsThe World, Ten of Cups, Knight of Pentacles, Strength, The High Priestess
RunesMannaz, Othala, Sowilo, Ingwaz, Algiz
All this time you believed the most important question was why it all happened. Why someone acted the way they did. Why some relationships fell apart while others never got the chance to grow. Why you stayed longer than you should have, or why you left later than was necessary. While you were looking for these answers, life kept moving forward and gradually prepared a completely different outcome. The outcome that was meant to happen.
A period is beginning around you in which you will close more old stories than you expect. Some will end through a conversation. Others will end without any conversation at all. There will be someone you long believed still mattered in your life, and a chance meeting, a message or even news reaching you through other people will show you how far you have actually come. There will be no great upheaval. There will be no stormy emotions. There will be a quiet realisation that something which once took up an enormous place in your heart has already been left behind.
After that your attention will gradually turn to the people who have stayed beside you. I see more time with family, more conversations with people close to you, and a situation in which an old tension between you and someone from your lineage begins to dissolve. For some this will be connected with a parent, a brother, a sister or a child. For others it will be someone with whom you have long disagreed in your opinions and expectations. It will not happen in one day, but there will be a moment when you feel that between you there is now more understanding than conflict.
Alongside this, a theme that has long been stuck in one place begins to move. For some it will be work. For others a personal project. For others an idea that has been postponed many times for lack of time, money or confidence. I see a conversation with someone who will open the door to a new opportunity. At first it will not look like anything big. You may even hesitate over whether it is worth the effort. A few months later, however, you will realise that this is exactly where a change began that affected far more than you expected.
A journey or a step outside your usual surroundings also appears. For some it will be connected with a holiday. For others with work, study or a meeting. It is there that a conversation will happen that leaves a mark on you. It may be a perfectly ordinary person whom you won’t even know well. Sometimes fate sends its important messages through the most unexpected people. You will hear words that somehow clarify things that have long seemed confused.
If love is an important theme for you, a period is ahead in which you will begin to see relationships differently. You will no longer look for people to fill empty spaces. You will no longer look for people to fix the past. You will begin to choose people with whom you can move forward. For some of you this will lead to a new acquaintance. For others to strengthening an existing relationship. For others it will lead to the final decision to close a door that has stayed half open for too long.
The most important thing, however, is something other than the person who will arrive, the job that will begin or the event that is coming. The most important thing is that you will gradually begin to live your life without constantly going back to the old story. You will make plans without thinking about the past. You will make decisions without being swayed by old fears. You will let people come close without constantly expecting old disappointments to repeat themselves.
Then you will understand why everything had to happen exactly as it did. The path you walked was leading to a person who now knows their own worth, knows how to guard their boundaries and is not afraid to choose themselves. It is exactly this person who stands today on the threshold of the next chapter of their life, and it will be far more interesting than everything left behind.
Sometimes a person reaches a point where they have already said everything to themselves. The story is clear. The memories are clear. They know who acted how, they know what they lost and they know what they will never get back. And still they keep returning there, because for years part of their life was bound up with this story.
This ritual is for exactly such moments.
Choose a quiet evening when no one will disturb you. Light a white candle and place a sheet of paper beside you. Before you start writing, allow yourself a few minutes of silence. Remember the person, the situation or the period of your life that keeps appearing in your thoughts. Remember the conversations. Remember the promises. Remember everything that was left unfinished between you and this story.
Then start writing.
Write what this situation took from you. Write what you were waiting for and what never happened. Write what you would say today if you could have one more conversation. Write the words just as they come. Don’t think about whether they are right. Simply write everything down as it comes.
When you have finished, read what you have written slowly. Imagine that this is the last time you hold this story in your hands.
Then say:
“I take the lesson with me. I leave the pain here. I take back my time. I take back my strength. I take back my future.”
Burn the sheet in a fireproof dish and watch the words disappear one by one. Don’t hurry to get up straight away. Sit a few more minutes beside the candle.
Over the following days, notice what begins to happen around you. You may receive a call you have long been waiting for. Someone from the past may appear in an unexpected way. You may have a conversation that closes a topic left open for too long. For some people a new work opportunity will appear, for others a new acquaintance, and for others a solution to a problem that has been stuck in one place for months.
Then you will understand that true release begins at the moment life finally gets room to move forward.
Every step of this image has its own room in the Game of the Soul:
The hurt that comes from your lineage.
CardsThe Chariot, Six of Pentacles, The Emperor, Death, Eight of Swords
RunesOthala, Nauthiz, Hagalaz, Isa, Mannaz
The story begins long before the moment you decided you were hurt. It begins back when you first understood that in a family not everyone receives the same. One child gets more attention. Another gets more responsibilities. One person is defended whatever they do, while another constantly has to prove their worth. When you were small, you probably couldn’t name this feeling. You simply sensed that something wasn’t quite fair.
Over the years this feeling began to take on different faces. For some of you it is connected with a father who was physically present in the family but emotionally absent. For others it is connected with someone who made all the decisions and expected everyone else to fall in line. For others this story leads to a grandfather, a grandmother or an older relative around whom there was always fear, silence or words left unspoken.
Othala shows that the root of this hurt does not begin with you. It is part of an older story. In your lineage there was someone who carried enormous responsibility and very little recognition. There was someone who gave more than they received. There was someone who was left alone at a hard moment and never spoke about it. The story was left unfinished and over the years began to be passed on in a way no one noticed.
As you grew up, you probably often found yourself in situations where you had to be wiser than your age. To understand more. To take on more. To keep quiet more. Someone around you expected this as completely natural. No one saw how much effort it cost you. That is exactly when the hurt began to be born, as something that quietly builds up year after year.
Later, life begins to repeat the same story through different people. A relationship appears in which you give more than you receive. A job appears in which you take on more responsibility than the others. A friendship appears in which you are always the one who takes the first step. Each time the situation looks different, but the feeling remains the same.
Nauthiz carries exactly this sense of constant lack. A lack of support. A lack of recognition. A lack of that feeling that someone is beside you simply because they want to be beside you.
I see an event that has already begun or is coming very soon. A conversation with a family member, news about an older relative, or a situation connected with an inheritance, family property or an old family conflict. The theme may look purely practical, but behind it a much deeper emotion will surface. Someone will say something quite ordinary, and suddenly you will understand that this feeling has lived in your family far longer than you thought.
Hagalaz shows that this old structure is already beginning to shake. Truths that were kept silent are gradually coming to the surface. You may learn something about the relationships between parents, grandparents or people from earlier generations. You may hear a story that was never told to you. It will help you see your own pain from a completely different angle.
The Emperor and the Chariot speak of power and control. Somewhere in this ancestral line there is a person who decided for everyone else. A person who set the rules. A person whose opinion was law. Some of their decisions went on influencing the generations long after they themselves were no longer part of their lives.
Isa shows how long this story has remained frozen. People lived with it. They adapted to it. They learned to accept it as normal. But you did not come here to continue it.
Mannaz brings the most important part of this position. Over the coming months you will begin to see more clearly which of your pains truly belong to you and which you have carried out of loyalty to people who lived before you. This will not happen through one big event. It will happen through a series of conversations, memories, family situations and small insights that gradually begin to connect the separate pieces of the puzzle.
And when this picture begins to become clear, you will understand something very important. Your deepest hurt was towards an old story that lived in your family for too long, waiting for someone to finally bring it to an end.
CardsTen of Swords, The High Priestess, Seven of Pentacles, Three of Cups, Nine of Wands
RunesUruz, Perthro, Eihwaz, Jera, Algiz
This hurt lives in more than your memories. It found a place in your body long before you realised where it comes from. Even when you were younger, there were probably periods when you felt tired for no clear reason. There were days when you got up in the morning and, before the day had even begun, already felt a heaviness. The reason was that part of you was constantly on guard.
This story began to show itself through the body much earlier than through thoughts. While the mind was searching for explanations, the body simply carried the load. Some of you will recognise this as tension in the shoulders and neck. Others as constant tiredness in the legs. Others as the feeling that they can never truly rest, even when they have no obligations at all.
The Ten of Swords shows accumulation: years in which new burdens were added to the old ones. Every time you swallowed something. Every time you kept silent. Every time you took on more than you should have. Little by little, this began to be recorded in the body.
I see periods when you felt exhausted after meetings with certain people. As if one conversation was enough to drain your strength for a whole day. I also see situations in which you carried responsibilities for family, loved ones or work, without anyone even suspecting how heavy they sometimes felt to you.
The High Priestess brings a very interesting theme. There are unspoken things in your lineage. There are stories no one talks about openly. Secrets, separations kept quiet, grief never lived through, or conflicts that were never truly resolved. Part of this silence has reached you too. You may not even know the details, but the consequences have already left a mark.
Perthro strengthens this feeling. Over the coming months, information that has been hidden until now will begin to come out around you. You may hear a story about a relative you never knew about. An older member of the family may begin to tell things they used to keep to themselves. These conversations will not be accidental. They will help you understand why you have carried certain fears and tensions for so long.
The Nine of Wands shows a person who is used to being strong. Even when there is no need. Even when there is no real danger around them. Part of you is constantly watching for what might go wrong. Constantly preparing for the next problem. This is far more exhausting than most people realise.
Eihwaz speaks of a deep inner transformation. A period is coming in which you will begin to notice these patterns much more clearly. There will be situations in which you catch yourself once again taking on someone else’s load. There will be conversations in which you feel the old urge to rescue everyone around you. The difference is that this time you will begin to stop in time.
The Seven of Pentacles shows something else too. Your tiredness comes from more than the present. It also comes from long waiting. From all the years in which you hoped certain relationships would improve, certain people would change or certain situations would finally find a solution. When a person waits too long, the waiting itself begins to turn into a burden.
The Three of Cups brings change through people. In the coming period more conversations, more meetings and more reasons to step out of the old patterns will appear around you. I see a gathering with people close to you, a meeting with a friend or the renewal of a contact that had been broken. It is through such ordinary moments that you will begin to regain the sense of lightness.
Jera shows that the process will not be quick. What has built up over years cannot disappear in a few days. But every small change will begin to bear fruit. You will sleep better. You will tire less. You will react more calmly in situations that used to wear you out.
Algiz completes this story with an important change. Gradually you will begin to understand that you are not obliged to protect everyone. You are not obliged to carry everyone. You are not obliged to repair old family stories. Your body will begin to relax precisely when you stop doing work that was never yours. And this will be one of the first signs that the release has already begun.
CardsFive of Cups, Justice, Nine of Cups, Page of Swords, Wheel of Fortune
RunesGebo, Raido, Thurisaz, Laguz, Berkana
The hardest part of this story is something other than the hurt itself. The hardest part is that it has gradually begun to determine what you expect from people. It happened by itself. After enough disappointments, a person begins to enter every new situation with a small inner warning. Someone likes you, but you are waiting for the moment they pull away. Someone promises something, and you are already preparing for them not to keep it. Someone reaches out a hand to you, and one part of you stays on guard.
This did not begin yesterday. I see a story that has been repeating since the earlier years of your life. There were people from whom you expected support and received criticism. There were moments when you needed someone to stand by you, and you remained alone. There were situations in which you believed your efforts would be noticed, but the attention went elsewhere. All these small stories gradually began to pile up one on top of another.
For some of you this showed itself in love. I see a person who gave more than they received. I see a relationship in which you waited a long time for something to change. I also see a period in which you tried to save a relationship that was already heading towards its end. For others this story played out in the family. Where there should have been acceptance, there were comparisons. Where there should have been support, there were expectations.
The Five of Cups shows exactly these losses that were never fully mourned. This is about people, and also about unfulfilled expectations, missed opportunities and that version of life you thought you would live. Sometimes a person suffers for more than what they have lost. Sometimes they suffer for what never happened.
Justice is beside this card like an old accountant who keeps on keeping the books. Somewhere inside you the question still exists of why some people receive more and others less. Why some are loved easily while others must constantly prove their worth. Why some stories end happily while others remain open. It is this expectation of justice that keeps part of your heart locked.
Raido and Thurisaz show that in the coming period several situations lie ahead that will make you see this pattern very clearly. Someone from the past may appear again. You may hear news about someone who played an important role in your life. You may find yourself in a situation that is astonishingly similar to something you have already lived through. The difference will be that this time you react differently.
I also see a conversation that has long been postponed. A conversation in which you will finally hear something you did not know. For some this will be a confession. For others an explanation. For others simply information that will help the puzzle come together.
The Nine of Cups brings a very important change. For a long time you looked for fulfilment where it could not be found. You expected someone else to fix something in you. You expected recognition that would heal an old wound. You expected justice that would bring back what was lost. Gradually you are beginning to understand that life works differently.
Laguz and Berkana show the heart opening. Gradually, at its own pace for each person. For some it will happen through a new acquaintance. For others through a child, someone close or a friendship that gradually takes on greater meaning. For others it will be connected with rebuilding trust in themselves.
The Wheel of Fortune begins to move things that have long been motionless. I see a change in relationships. I see a new person around you. I see a situation in which, for the first time, you will not have to fight for someone’s attention. You will not have to persuade. You will not have to prove. Someone will choose to be beside you of their own free will, and that is exactly what will show you how different relationships can look when you are not repeating the old family stories.
Gebo closes this chapter with the most important lesson. Love, support and respect were never something you had to earn through suffering. In the coming period life will begin to show you this through people who come without conditions, without accounts and without old debts. And that is exactly when you will begin to understand how long your heart has really been waiting for peace.
CardsThe Tower, Ace of Pentacles, Queen of Swords, Five of Cups, Knight of Wands
RunesNauthiz, Othala, Tiwaz, Hagalaz, Isa
The problem was never forgiveness itself. If everything were connected with just one person and one event, you would probably have moved on long ago. Here, however, the story is much longer. As you grew up, you watched certain pains being passed between people almost like a family inheritance. Someone was hurt and never spoke about it. Someone was betrayed and spent the rest of their life in mistrust. Someone was left alone and turned loneliness into their protection. For years these stories lived in the home, in the conversations and sometimes even in the silence between people.
Without realising it, part of you began to believe that if you let go of your own pain, you would abandon theirs too. As if you would be saying that what they went through doesn’t matter. As if you would be closing a page that other people never managed to close. It is exactly this that keeps the hurt alive much longer than it should be.
Othala shows the strong connection with the lineage. I see a person who still carries loyalty to a family story. Sometimes it is a story of deprivation. Sometimes a story of injustice. Sometimes a story of people who fought all their lives for a place, for recognition or for security. This loyalty is noble, but at a certain point it begins to demand too high a price.
In the coming period several events will happen that will make you look at all of this differently. I see a conversation with an older member of the family, or information that reaches you through a relative. Something that has long been hidden or kept quiet begins to come out. It is something quite everyday. Rather a detail that will suddenly help you understand why certain people were the way they were.
The Queen of Swords shows another obstacle. A very strict judge lives inside you. It constantly watches whether you are allowing weakness, whether you are giving in too easily and whether you are forgiving too quickly. This inner voice often sounds like someone you have known in your life. Sometimes it resembles a parent. Sometimes a grandmother or grandfather. Sometimes someone who always believed that a strong person must bear everything.
Nauthiz shows that for a long time you have lived with the feeling that you are obliged to carry more than others. Obliged to understand. Obliged to endure. Obliged to keep going. It is exactly this inner necessity that keeps the old wound alive.
The Five of Cups shows how often you return to what was lost. Part of you is still looking for a fair ending to the story. But life does not always give such endings. Some people never admit their fault. Some never apologise. Some never understand what they caused. While you wait for that to happen, you remain bound to the same story.
Hagalaz begins to shake this structure. There will be a situation in which you clearly see how much strength it costs you to keep up this old loyalty to pain. It may happen at a family gathering, in a conversation or at an event connected with relatives. Someone will say something that makes you wonder whether you really want to pass this story on.
Tiwaz shows a moment of inner choice. You will have to decide what matters more to you: to remain the guardian of the old wound, or to become the person who ends its journey through the generations.
The Knight of Wands brings movement. After this choice, real changes begin. I see a person who makes a decision for themselves despite the disapproval of those around them. I see the leaving of an old situation, a new direction in life, or an action that no one in the lineage before them dared to take. For some this will be a new job. For others a new home. For others a relationship they choose despite other people’s expectations.
Isa is the last rune here, and it shows something very important. For a long time you have been inwardly in one and the same place, because you believed that this way you were guarding something precious. Now the ice is beginning to crack. Slowly, gradually, without noise. And that is what frightens most of all. Because when the old story begins to fall apart, an empty space remains in front of you. And in that space you have to begin building a life of your own.
This is the real reason forgiveness seems so hard. It asks for more than letting go of the past. It asks you to take responsibility for your future. And that is a much bigger step than most people realise.
CardsThe Empress, The Sun, Two of Cups, Six of Wands, The Magician
RunesSowilo, Wunjo, Uruz, Jera, Ingwaz
While you carry this ancestral hurt, a large part of your life remains occupied by other people’s stories. Part of your attention is turned towards old injustices, part of your strength goes into battles that began long before you were born, and part of your decisions are influenced by fears that are not even yours. That is exactly why releasing this hurt changes far more than you imagine. It brings more than peace. It begins to change the events around you.
The first changes will come through people. I see conversations that unfold differently from before. People who used to be distant begin to behave more openly. Tension in a family relationship begins to ease. For some of you, someone from the family will take a step no one expected. You may hear words you have waited years for. You may receive a recognition that was never spoken. It will not repair the past, but it will close a door that has been open for too long.
The Empress brings the restoration of the natural flow in your life. For women this often shows itself as more confidence, more ease in relationships and the feeling that they no longer have to keep proving their worth. For men it comes as a calmer relationship with success and authority. Instead of fighting for a place in the sun, you begin to attract people and opportunities naturally.
The Sun shows a period in which more good things begin to happen around you at the same time. The reason is that you no longer pour a huge amount of energy into old conflicts. I see more meetings, more invitations, more movement. For some a family gathering, a celebration or an occasion is ahead that will bring back the feeling of closeness between people who have long been divided by hurt and pride.
The Two of Cups brings one of the most interesting changes. If love is an important theme for you, a new development is ahead. For those who are single, I see an acquaintance that begins calmly and naturally. It will be unlike the old stories. There will be no feeling that you have to rescue someone or earn attention. For those in a relationship, things begin to take shape in a new way. More trust, more openness and more desire for two people to look in the same direction appear.
Wunjo and Sowilo bring a joy that gradually begins to return to everyday life. It will come through a series of small moments. A conversation that makes you smile. A meeting that brings back hope. News that opens new possibilities. You will begin to notice how different life looks when you are not carrying the weight of several generations on your shoulders.
The Six of Wands also shows a theme of recognition. For some of you this will be connected with work. I see a project, an offer or a situation in which your efforts finally receive the appreciation they deserve. For others it will be connected with personal life. Someone who has not seen your true worth until now begins to notice it. For others it will be an inner recognition: the moment you begin to respect yourself more.
Jera shows that all this will not happen at once. Some events will begin in the coming weeks. Others will unfold over months. But once started, the process can hardly be stopped. As if a wheel that has long been blocked is finally beginning to turn.
The Magician is at the end of this position as a symbol of the new story. For the first time in a long while you will begin to create something that is not a continuation of the old ancestral pain. I see a new project, a new idea, a new undertaking or a new direction to which you will turn your attention. Some will begin studying. Others will change jobs. Others will make a change they have been putting off for years.
Ingwaz completes this chapter with the promise of a new beginning: the one that appears after release. When you let go of the hurt, you will not lose your connection with your lineage. Quite the opposite. You will keep its strength, its wisdom and its gifts. The only thing left behind you will be the wounds that were never meant to be carried for your whole life.
CardsTemperance, Six of Swords, Two of Pentacles, Ace of Cups, The Hermit
RunesAnsuz, Raido, Kenaz, Berkana, Mannaz
The first step towards release begins at a moment when life places you before a choice that at first glance has nothing to do with the hurt. Everything looks like an ordinary life situation. A family conversation. A decision about work. Your attitude towards someone close. Yet another case in which someone expects you to do what you have always done. Only this time something inside you begins to resist the old script.
I see a situation in which a familiar pattern appears around you again. Someone who needs help. A relative who expects understanding. Someone close who assumes you will once again take on their load. Before, you would probably have done it without many questions. You would have found a way to help, to fix the situation or to adapt to other people’s needs. Now, however, you begin to see something that has stayed hidden until now. You realise how often your life has been organised around other people’s problems and how rarely anyone has asked what you yourself want.
Ansuz brings a conversation that will matter more than it seems at first. It may be with a parent, a brother, a sister or someone else from your lineage. It may be with someone outside the family who simply says words that stay in your mind for days. After this conversation you will begin to look differently at some events from the past. You will not change the story. You will change the place from which you look at it.
The Six of Swords and Raido show movement. For some this will be a real journey. For others a change of job, a new home or entering a new environment. It is far from the familiar people and the familiar rules that you will begin to see how different life can be. You will meet people who do not carry the same fears. People who do not live by the old family stories. These meetings will show you that many of the limitations you accepted as natural were never actually yours.
The Two of Pentacles shows a period of hesitation. Several times you will find yourself between the old and the new. One part of you will want to go back to the familiar. The other will want to move forward. There will be a day when you ask yourself whether it wouldn’t be easier simply to do what everyone expects. Soon after, an event will happen that shows you why you started on this path. I see a situation in which an old conflict repeats almost word for word, but this time you react differently. That is exactly when you will feel that something in you has already changed.
Kenaz brings clarity. Truths begin to come to the surface. Some will be connected with people from your lineage. Others with decisions made long before you were born. Gradually you will begin to understand why certain patterns repeat from generation to generation. Why the same conflicts appear in different forms. Why different people arrive at the same pains.
The Ace of Cups brings a new chapter. For some this will be a new person. For others a new friendship or a new love. For others the renewal of relationships that had long grown cold. The difference is that this time you will not enter relationships as someone who has to earn their place. You will not fight for attention. You will not prove your worth. You will begin to let in people who come with respect.
Berkana shows growth that begins right after this. A new idea will begin to take the place of the old pain. A new project will call for your attention. A new desire will begin to take shape. Something you have long put off will become a real goal. And the more you move towards it, the less room will remain for the old family stories.
The Hermit is at the end of this position as a person who has finally stopped seeking permission from outside. There will be no single great moment of enlightenment. There will be a series of days, conversations, meetings and decisions that gradually lead you to one simple understanding. You came into this world to live your own life. And the first step towards release begins exactly when, for the first time, you choose your own direction over the expectations of your lineage.
CardsStrength, King of Cups, The Hierophant, Eight of Wands, The Sun
RunesSowilo, Algiz, Ingwaz, Othala, Dagaz
After everything you have lived through, the biggest change will be somewhere other than in the people around you. It will be somewhere other than in your lineage or in the past that for so long shaped part of your decisions. The change will be in the way you begin to live afterwards. Because a moment comes when a person stops looking back and begins to look ahead. They remember what happened, only now things begin to appear in front of them that demand their full attention.
In the coming period you will begin to notice how some situations unfold much faster than expected. Something that has long been blocked begins to move. I see news, calls, messages and conversations arriving one after another. For some this will be connected with work or a project that finally moves forward. For others it will be connected with a family theme that has been stuck in one place for years. For others it will be a person who enters their life just when they have stopped waiting for them.
The Eight of Wands shows exactly this acceleration. After a period of stagnation, movement begins. If you have long been waiting for a decision on an important matter, it begins to appear. If you have been putting off an action, circumstances will push you to take it. If you have been hesitating between two paths, events themselves will begin to show which is the right one.
The Hierophant brings a very strong theme of lineage. I see a situation in which you will understand something important about your family or about someone from a previous generation. This will not be a heavy story. Quite the opposite. It will be a moment in which you realise that besides pain and hardship your lineage has left you something far more precious. Endurance. The ability to survive. The ability to begin again. The strength to keep going even when the road looks hard.
Othala and Algiz show that the connection with your lineage is not broken. Only the way you carry it changes. Until now you have carried the burdens. From now on you begin to carry the gifts. Some of you will feel this through a new sense of security. Others through improved relationships in the family. Others will notice that they are beginning to resemble the strongest people in their lineage.
The King of Cups shows a maturity that comes after much has been lived through. I see a person who no longer reacts as impulsively as before. Someone will try to drag you into an old conflict, and this time they will not succeed. Someone will provoke you and be surprised by your calm. Someone will expect your old reaction and meet a completely different person.
Then comes a period in which you begin to build something of your own. For some it will be a home. For others a relationship. For others a new job, a business or an idea that will gradually grow into something significant. Ingwaz shows exactly this creation. Something new begins to grow in your life, and the more attention you give it, the less the old stories matter.
Strength is at the beginning of this position for a reason. The real victory comes on the day you stop living under the influence of the people who hurt you. I see a situation in which you will receive news about someone from the past or find yourself in a place connected with an old story. For the first time you will not feel the old weight. Only the memory will remain, and the understanding of how long a road you have walked.
Sowilo and Dagaz bring the finale of this chapter. A period of new beginning opens before you, one that comes after release. You will begin to make choices that no one in your lineage before you has made. You will create relationships that do not repeat the old patterns. You will build a life in which there is no need to pay for other people’s mistakes and other people’s wounds.
This is the true message of your soul. You came here to begin the story that comes after the pain. And that story is already beginning to unfold before you.
In the life of almost every family there are stories that never got their ending. Someone remained hurt. Someone lived with a sense of injustice. Someone went through a loss they never spoke about. The years went by, people passed away, but part of this pain went on living in the lineage. Sometimes it appears as fear. Sometimes as guilt. Sometimes as an unexplained heaviness a person carries all their life without knowing where it comes from.
This ritual is made for the moment you decide to stop carrying what does not belong to your story.
Choose a day when you can be alone with yourself. Find a small stone. It can be any stone at all, as long as it feels comfortable in your palm. Sit calmly and take it in your hands. Close your eyes and remember all the burdens you feel did not begin with you. Family conflicts. Old hurts. Fears repeated through the generations. Stories of abandonment, lack of love, unrecognised labour or a life spent in constant struggle.
There is no need to think of particular people. It is enough to feel that old thread connecting these events.
Hold the stone for a few minutes and imagine everything that does not belong to your life gradually passing into it. All the burdens that are not yours. All the old pains. All the grief never lived through. All the family stories you have carried out of loyalty to the people before you.
Then go to running water. If there is a river, a stream or a seashore nearby, use them. If that isn’t possible, you can use a fountain or running water out in nature.
Stand by the water and say:
“I honour the people before me. I honour the life that has reached me through them. Thank you for the strength they passed on to me. Thank you for the lessons they left behind. Today I return what does not belong to my path. I return the pain. I return the hurts. I return the fear. I keep the love. I keep the wisdom. I keep the strength.”
After these words, throw the stone into the water and watch the circles that form. Don’t think about the past. Don’t look for signs. Don’t expect an instant miracle. Simply stay in that place for a few minutes.
Over the following weeks, pay attention to the events around you. You may hear a family story you never knew. An old family conflict may begin to lose its importance. You may have a conversation that closes a topic left open for years. For some people an opportunity will appear to change their job, home or way of life. For others a new relationship will begin or relations with someone close will improve.
These are the first signs that you are no longer walking the same path as the generations before you.
Because the aim of this ritual is to break your connection with the wounds of your lineage while keeping your connection with the lineage itself. And when that happens, you begin to carry with you only what truly deserves to be passed on: strength, wisdom and life.
The ancestral hurt has its own rooms in the Game of the Soul:
The hurt from a love.
CardsThe Lovers, Five of Cups, Queen of Cups, Knight of Wands, Two of Pentacles
RunesGebo, Laguz, Nauthiz, Thurisaz, Perthro
This story begins with a love that seemed real. With someone beside whom you gradually began to see your future. At first everything unfolded naturally. There were conversations late into the night, messages you waited for impatiently, plans that perhaps were never said out loud but lived in your mind. Day after day this person took up more and more space in your life, and without noticing it you began to build part of your dreams around them.
The Queen of Cups and Laguz show how deeply you lived this relationship. While the other person lived day to day, you were already thinking about what came next. While they were in the present, you were seeing a possible future. That is exactly why the events that followed left such a strong mark.
At some point something begins to change. For some of you it was a sudden distancing. For others the person stayed close but became different. The conversations grew fewer. Meetings began to be postponed. Hesitations, excuses or the feeling that you were no longer looking in the same direction appeared. For some of you another person appears around them as well. For others it is the interference of family, distance, work or circumstances that gradually begin to destroy the relationship.
The Knight of Wands and Thurisaz speak of a moment you still remember. A conversation, a message, a break-up or a decision after which nothing was the same again. Some people remember the date. Others remember the place. Others remember only the feeling of the world suddenly becoming different.
Then begins the period that left the deepest imprint: the time after the break-up. The time in which you go on living, working, meeting people and doing your daily duties, while one part of you still keeps going back. I see periods when you checked whether there was a message. Periods when you heard this person’s name and your heart reacted instantly. I also see moments when you tried to start something new but inevitably compared the new people with the one who stayed in the past.
The Five of Cups and Nauthiz show exactly this absence: the absence of a story that never got its natural ending. Questions remained. Unspoken words remained. Conversations remained that never took place.
Perthro shows that there is still something hidden around this relationship. In the coming months it is very likely that information you did not know will reach you. For some this will happen through mutual acquaintances. For others through a chance meeting. For others through the person themselves. It will not change the past, but it will shed light on a part of the story that has long remained unclear.
The Two of Pentacles also shows the present. Part of you has long wanted to move on. Another part still keeps a little space for this story. That is exactly where the hurt lives: in that unfinished feeling that keeps appearing from time to time, even when you are convinced it is all over.
In the coming period you will begin to see this story differently. The memories will stay, while new events begin to appear around you. I see a new acquaintance or someone who gradually begins to draw your attention. I see a conversation that will make you compare the past with the present. And then, for the first time, you will realise how long you have carried a love after its end, and how close the moment is when you will finally close this chapter.
CardsEight of Wands, Seven of Swords, Ten of Pentacles, Ace of Cups, Five of Pentacles
RunesUruz, Isa, Eihwaz, Laguz, Algiz
After this story ends, life goes on the same way, at least at first glance. Mornings come as before. Work is waiting. The people around you go on talking about their everyday problems. Only something inside is no longer the same. And that is exactly when the body begins to do what the heart cannot: it begins to keep the memory.
At first you probably didn’t even connect the two. A period of insomnia. A few weeks of constant tiredness. Days when you don’t feel like talking to anyone. Then a tension that appears for no visible reason. Some people feel this as heaviness in the chest. Others as a tightening in the stomach. Others begin to live with a constant feeling that something is missing, even though they can’t explain exactly what.
The Five of Pentacles shows exactly this absence. After the break-up, more than the person’s place was left empty. The place of all the plans you had connected with them was left empty too. I see evenings when you came home and suddenly realised there was no one to tell how your day had gone. I see moments when you came across couples and, without wanting to, began comparing yourself with them. I see holidays, birthdays or family gatherings at which one part of you felt the absence much more strongly than usual.
The Seven of Swords brings the feeling of betrayal that the body keeps remembering long after the mind has decided it must move on. For some of you there was a lie. For others a broken promise. For others the person simply disappeared from their life without explanation. The body, however, does not work with logic. It works with memories. And once it has linked love with pain, it begins to protect itself.
Laguz shows how strongly emotions keep moving beneath the surface. On the outside you may look calm, but inside there are still waves that rise in certain situations. Sometimes a song is enough. Sometimes a place. Sometimes a name someone happens to say. And suddenly the body reacts as if part of the story were happening again.
In women this hurt often settles where trust, closeness and the sense of femininity live. After a love like this, some women begin to doubt their own worth. They begin to ask themselves whether they did something wrong, whether they gave too much or too little. In men the pain more often turns into silence. Instead of talking about it, they begin to work more, close up more or avoid conversations about feelings.
The Eight of Wands shows that in the coming period events will begin to happen that will stir this stagnant energy. I see a trip that at first seems insignificant. I see an invitation to a meeting, a gathering or an event you almost decided to skip. It is exactly there that a conversation or an acquaintance may happen that will make you look at life differently.
The Ten of Pentacles shows another important theme. Beneath this love hurt there is a much deeper longing. A longing for security. For a home. For someone to share your life with. That is exactly why this story has left such a large mark. For a while you believed you had found the place where you belong.
Eihwaz brings change. Gradually you begin to leave this old period behind through new experiences. There will be people who enter your life differently from those before. There will be conversations that bring back your confidence. There will be moments when you feel that you no longer react so painfully to the memories.
The Ace of Cups is at the end of this position as a promise. Your heart is not closed for ever. Quite the opposite. It has simply been waiting long enough to feel safe again. I see a new emotional story that begins much more calmly than the previous one. Without hurry. Without extremes. Without that feeling that you have to win someone’s love.
Algiz shows protection. This time you will not enter a relationship as someone afraid of being abandoned. You will enter as someone who already knows their own worth. And that is exactly when the body will begin to free itself of the load it has carried for you for so long.
CardsThree of Swords, Four of Cups, The High Priestess, The Chariot, King of Swords
RunesNauthiz, Thurisaz, Isa, Mannaz, Raido
After that story, life did not stop. There were new people. There were new conversations. There were moments when you thought you had already moved on. But every time someone tried to come truly close to you, something inside took a step back. You wanted love and you had feelings. The heart had simply learned how dearly trust can cost.
The Three of Swords shows an event that changed the way you look at relationships. For some it was a betrayal. For others a sudden break-up. For others promises that were never kept. After that you gradually begin to build defences. Small habits that look reasonable. You don’t let people in too quickly. You don’t tell everything about yourself. You don’t show your feelings straight away. You always leave a little distance between yourself and the other person.
The Four of Cups shows how this begins to affect new opportunities. I see at least one situation in recent years when someone showed interest in you, but you didn’t give them a real chance. The person was suitable and there was attraction. Part of you was simply already tired of starting over. It was easier to stay in familiar territory than to risk a new disappointment.
For some of you another story appears. Someone who enters your life, but you inevitably begin to compare them with someone from the past. You compare the way they speak. The way they write. The way they behave. Without realising it, the new person begins to pay for the mistakes of the old one.
The High Priestess shows how many feelings remain hidden. On the outside you may look calm, even unapproachable at times. Inside, however, there are far more emotions than people suspect. I see words that were never spoken. I see confessions that remained only in your thoughts. I see conversations you have had many times in your head but never in reality.
Nauthiz and Isa show a period of stagnation in love. The heart has been between the past and the future. Part of it wanted a new beginning, while another part was still guarding the old wounds.
The Chariot and the King of Swords show the way you have dealt with this. In women it often shows itself as strong independence. You begin to handle everything on your own. You get used to relying on no one. Gradually people begin to see a confident person who needs no help. In men, closing off appears more often. More work. More control. More distance. Fewer conversations about feelings.
In the coming months, however, an interesting change begins. Raido shows movement where there has long been stagnation. I see a trip, an event, a course or a new environment in which you will meet someone different from the people you have attracted until now. They will be unlike the old love. They will not repeat the old patterns. At first this may even confuse you.
Mannaz shows something more. You will begin to see yourself differently. For a long time you have looked at this story through the pain. Now you will gradually begin to see everything you have learned from it too. You will realise how much you have changed. How much you have grown. How much more clearly you understand what you want and what you are no longer prepared to accept.
Thurisaz brings the last important event in this position. I see a conversation or a meeting connected with the past. For some it will be a meeting with a former partner. For some it will be news about them. For others a piece of chance information. For others simply a moment when you look back and see the story as it really was.
Then you will understand how long your heart has been in one place. And that is exactly when it will begin to move again. Towards what is still to come.
CardsThe Hanged Man, King of Pentacles, Death, Six of Cups, Eight of Swords
RunesPerthro, Isa, Eihwaz, Othala, Nauthiz
What holds you most in this story is something other than the person themselves. If it were only them, life would probably have closed this page long ago. It is much harder to part with the memories of what was good. Of the moments when you were happy. Of the conversations that went on late into the night. Of the plans you made. Of the feeling that you had finally found someone with whom you could walk in the same direction.
The Six of Cups shows exactly the place your thoughts return to again and again. The time before everything changed. I see how over the years certain memories have gradually become more beautiful than they probably were in reality. Memory often does exactly this. It brings the bright moments to the front and tucks the difficulties away somewhere at the back.
There were periods when you were convinced you had moved on. Then a chance message, a photo on social media, news from a mutual acquaintance or a mentioned name was enough to bring the whole story back into your mind. Not for days as at the beginning. Not for months. But long enough for you to understand that this door is not yet fully closed.
The Hanged Man shows exactly this state. Part of your life moves forward, while another part keeps remaining in one and the same place. While you work, meet people and plan your future, a question still exists inside you that has not received its answer. For some it is the question of why it all ended. For others why the person acted the way they did. For others why fate brought this love if it was going to take it away so quickly.
Perthro shows that there is still something hidden around this story. In the coming period information will reach you that casts a new light on what happened. I see a quiet revelation. A detail you didn’t know until now. Something that will explain a behaviour, a decision or an event from the past. After that many of the questions that have remained unanswered will begin to find their own place.
The King of Pentacles shows another reason why forgiveness is hard. Beneath the love there has always lived the desire for security. You were looking for someone to build with. Someone with whom to create something stable. That is exactly why the loss has left such a large emptiness. More than the person disappeared. A whole direction you were walking towards disappeared too.
Nauthiz shows that for a long time you have lived with the feeling that something is missing. Sometimes this feeling appeared at the most unexpected moments. During a holiday. At a family gathering. While watching other couples. While making plans for the future. And each time part of you felt the same thing: that life should have looked different.
Death is at the centre of this position as an event that is already approaching. It is about the end of waiting. I see a moment when you will realise that you no longer expect anything from this story. Neither an explanation. Nor a return. Nor an apology. That is exactly when true release begins.
Eihwaz shows the inner change that has already begun. A new person or a new chance for love will appear. At first you may not even take it seriously. Part of you will hesitate. Part of you will compare. But gradually you will begin to notice how differently you feel in this new story.
Isa shows the last fear. The fear of living through the same thing again. It is exactly this fear that has kept the heart still for so long. But the ice is beginning to crack. Slowly. Gradually. Through new people, new conversations and new experiences.
Othala shows that this love has become part of your story. It will always remain there, as a place you have passed through. And when you finally accept this, you will understand that forgiveness was never about the other person. It was about your right to move on.
CardsThe Star, Wheel of Fortune, Ace of Wands, Nine of Pentacles, The Sun
RunesSowilo, Wunjo, Ingwaz, Jera, Berkana
Right now it may seem that if you let go of this hurt, you will lose something important. Part of the memories. Part of the connection. Part of the person who was once so significant to you. The truth is that when this story finally stays behind you, life will take nothing from you. Quite the opposite. It will begin to give back things that have long been blocked.
The first thing that will change is the way you see yourself. I see someone who for years tied their own worth to someone else’s choice. If someone left, you looked for the reason in yourself. If someone didn’t stay, you asked yourself what had been missing. If a love failed, you went back again and again to your own mistakes. The Nine of Pentacles shows a period in which this begins to end. Gradually you will stop measuring yourself through the eyes of the people who did not stay.
After that your love life also begins to change. I am talking about a series of events that begin to change your fate. The Wheel of Fortune shows that a new cycle is coming. I see a new acquaintance, or a renewed interest in someone who has until now been somewhere on the edge of your life. I also see a situation in which, for the first time in a long while, you will not compare the person in front of you with the love from the past.
For some of you this will happen through work, study or travel. For others through friends or a chance meeting. It will begin as something quite ordinary. A conversation. A smile. An invitation for coffee. A message you don’t attach much importance to. After that, however, the story will gradually begin to unfold.
The Ace of Wands and Ingwaz show the birth of something new, in love and beyond it. I see a new project, a new undertaking or an idea that will begin to take the place that has long been occupied by memories. Where before you invested energy in the past, now you begin to invest it in the future. That is exactly when you will feel how much strength you have actually been freeing all this time.
The Sun brings one of the most beautiful promises in this spread. Joy begins to return: that inner lightness which comes when a person no longer lives in waiting. I see more laughter. More meetings. More desire to go out, to talk, to make plans. I see a period in which you will begin to feel alive again.
Sowilo and Wunjo show that people with a different energy will begin to appear around you. People who will not make you doubt yourself. People who will not disappear every time a relationship becomes more serious. One of these people will have a bigger role in your life than you suspect at first.
Jera shows that everything comes gradually. You will not wake up one morning completely healed. But there will be a day when you hear the name of this person from the past and find that it no longer hurts. There will be a day when you see an old photo and feel calm instead of sadness. There will be a day when you realise that a few hours, then a few days, and then whole weeks have passed without you thinking about this story at all.
Then you will understand what you have actually received by letting go of the hurt. You will have got yourself back. And when a person gets themselves back, love, joy and new opportunities always find their way back to them.
CardsThe Magician, Temperance, Page of Cups, Three of Pentacles, Queen of Pentacles
RunesAnsuz, Kenaz, Raido, Mannaz, Gebo
For a long time you believed that something big had to happen for this story to end. One last conversation. One explanation. One apology. One return. Instead, the change begins in a completely different way. Life gradually begins to fill the space that has for so long been occupied by the past.
First comes a period in which more people and more movement appear around you. You receive an invitation you at first think of turning down. You find yourself in a place you otherwise wouldn’t go to. You meet someone with whom the conversation begins quite ordinarily and without any expectations. There is calm, which gradually begins to feel more and more missed whenever this person is not around.
Then comes a moment when the phone rings or a message arrives, and for the first time in a long while you are not hoping it is from the person from the past. You are expecting someone else. You smile at a different name. A different conversation interests you. That is exactly when you begin to understand how long your heart was turned backwards, and how naturally it is beginning to look ahead.
A little later something interesting happens. The person who for so long occupied a place in your thoughts appears again in some way. Sometimes it is news. Sometimes a chance meeting. Sometimes a name mentioned in conversation. Before, something like this could turn your whole day upside down. Now the reaction is different. You pause for a moment, think, and move on. In that very instant you understand how much you have changed.
Next comes a trip, an event or a meeting outside your usual everyday life. A conversation happens there that stays with you long after it ends. Someone asks a question or says a few simple words, and suddenly you realise how much time you have spent trying to save a story that ended long ago. You feel no anger. You feel no sadness. You simply begin to accept the facts as they are.
Alongside all this, your attitude towards yourself begins to change too. You buy yourself something you have long wanted. You make a plan you have long put off. You change something in your home. You begin to go out more. You accept invitations you would have turned down before. Day after day life begins to become bigger than one old love story.
The most important moment comes unexpectedly. One evening you are talking with someone who is part of your present, and suddenly you realise that for several days you haven’t thought about the past. Then you realise that weeks have gone by. After that you understand that you no longer compare every new person with the old one. Your heart has finally begun to live in the present.
This is exactly the first step towards release: to allow new people, new conversations, new feelings and new opportunities to take the place that for so long was locked in the past. And when this happens, you will understand that love never left your life. It was simply waiting for you to open the door again.
CardsThe World, Ten of Cups, Knight of Cups, The Sun, The High Priestess
RunesDagaz, Sowilo, Algiz, Ingwaz, Wunjo
Your soul speaks of the life after the lost love. Because however long you have looked back, a moment comes when life itself begins to pull you forward. Gradually events begin to happen around you that have nothing to do with the old story but everything to do with the person you are becoming.
In the coming period you will notice that people begin to react to you differently. The reason is that you no longer carry the same weight. There will be more lightness in conversations. There will be more calm in your gaze. You will stop looking for proof that you are good enough for someone’s love, because gradually you will begin to understand that you never needed to look for it.
The Knight of Cups shows someone approaching your life. For some this will be a new love. For others someone who has long been nearby but only now begins to be seen differently. The relationship will begin with interest. With a wish to talk. With the feeling that someone truly wants to get to know you.
Meanwhile something else will happen. You will hear news about someone from the past or learn how their life has turned out. Before, information like this would have reopened old wounds. Now you will take it calmly. You will understand that your destinies are already walking different roads and that you no longer need to carry responsibility for a story that ended long ago.
The Ten of Cups speaks of restoring faith in closeness. After a period in which you guarded your heart behind various defences, you gradually begin to let people come closer. One conversation leads to the next. One meeting leads to another. One person stays long enough for you to begin to trust them. That is exactly where the real change begins.
For some of you the coming months bring a family coming together, a shared home, more serious conversations about the future or a decision that changes the direction of the relationship. For others someone appears who will stay beside them much longer than they expect at first. For others love will begin with friendship and only later show its true face.
Sowilo and Wunjo bring a joy that has long been absent: the calm joy of a person who finally feels they are in their place. There will be more meetings, more laughter, more plans. You will begin to look ahead with curiosity instead of fear.
The World comes here as the completion of an old chapter. The past remains part of your story. It remains as a place you have passed through, as a lesson you have learned, as a person you have loved. But it will no longer be the place where you live.
Dagaz and Ingwaz show a new stage that begins to unfold before you. New relationships. New decisions. New dreams. Something that has long been only a possibility gradually begins to turn into reality. And the further you enter this new period, the more clearly you understand why the previous story had to end exactly as it did.
Your soul wants you to know something very simple. The love that did not stay was only a chapter of your story. The most beautiful pages are still unwritten, and the person who will read them with you is already on the way to your life.
A moment comes when you understand that you are carrying more than the memory of one person. You are also carrying all the conversations that never happened. You are carrying the questions that never got an answer. You are carrying the plans that once seemed so real that even after the end they went on living somewhere inside you. Perhaps for a long time you believed that time alone would sort everything out. Then months or years passed and you found that some stories do not leave by themselves. They simply wait for the day a person decides to leave them behind.
Choose a quiet evening. Light a candle and stay alone with yourself. Place an empty sheet of paper in front of you. Don’t hurry to write. First let all those moments that have returned again and again for so long pass through your mind. The first meeting. The last conversation. The words that made you happy. The words that hurt you. Then write the person’s name, or just the words: “The story that ends today.”
Keep writing until you feel there is nothing more to add. Write everything. Write what you kept silent about. Write what you wanted to say. Write what you were waiting to hear. Let all the hopes, disappointments, questions and memories that have lived in you for so long stay on the paper.
When you have finished, read what you wrote once. Then fold the sheet and place it beside the candle.
Say:
“Thank you for everything I lived through in this love. Thank you for the happiness. Thank you for the lessons. Thank you for the person this story made me into. Today I leave the past in its place. I bring my heart back to myself. I make room for the life that awaits me.”
Let the candle burn down.
The next morning, take the sheet and tear it into small pieces. Throw them away far from your home or let them go into running water. After that, don’t go back to what you wrote. Don’t reread old conversations. Don’t look for signs. Don’t check whether someone has reappeared.
Over the following weeks life itself will begin to show what has changed. One day you will receive a message that makes you smile. There will be a meeting at which you stay longer than you planned. There will be someone with whom conversations become easier and easier. There will be an evening when you catch yourself thinking about the future without going back to the past even once.
Then one more moment will come. Someone will mention the name of the person who once took up such a large place in your heart. Or you will come across a photo, a memory or news about them by chance. This time you will not feel the old pain. There will be no tightening in the chest. Only the memory of a chapter will remain, one that was important but no longer shapes your life.
And then you will understand that your heart has long wanted exactly this: to come back to you.
Because the love that is coming cannot enter through a door still occupied by yesterday’s stories.
The hurt from love has its own rooms in the Game of the Soul:
The hurt of the one who carries everything.
CardsKing of Wands, Ten of Wands, The Tower, Five of Swords, Nine of Pentacles
RunesTiwaz, Uruz, Nauthiz, Hagalaz, Sowilo
Your hurt begins in a period when you were carrying more than anyone suspected. From the outside, people saw someone who copes. Someone who always finds a solution. Someone who can be relied on. Few, however, saw how much effort lay behind all of this and how often you put your own needs last so that other people could move forward.
For years life kept adding more and more to your shoulders. New responsibilities appeared, new obligations and new people who relied on you in particular to take on the heavy part. At work you were the one who stayed until the end when the others had already gone home. In the family you were the person who solved the problems. In relationships you were the one who compromised when everyone else insisted on their own way. Little by little you got used to the idea that this is what strength looks like: to take on more, to endure more, to give more.
Then comes an event that changes the way you see all of this.
For some, a situation appears at work. After a long period of effort, time and dedication comes a moment when the recognition goes to someone else. A decision is made without you. Someone else gets the promotion. Someone collects the results of the work you put in. For others the story is connected with family. For years you were a support to the people around you, and when you needed support, it turned surprisingly quiet around you. For others it is about a relationship in which you gave more and more, until one day you realised that the other side had taken all of it as completely natural.
That is exactly where the hurt is born.
One day you look back at everything you have done and see how much of your own time, strength and hope you left along the way. You remember the situations in which you took on other people’s tasks, other people’s worries and other people’s problems because you believed that was the right thing to do. Then comes the bitter realisation that the people around you have grown used to receiving this strength as something natural. Few of them ever stopped to think what price you pay to go on being the person everyone relies on.
After that a period begins in which something inside you changes. You keep doing the same things. You keep working, helping and carrying responsibilities. Only now you do it with a different feeling. A tiredness appears that rest doesn’t cure. Irritation appears when once again you are expected to save the situation. And a question appears that returns to your mind more and more often: “And who will think about me?”
In the coming period life will once again place a similar situation in front of you. Someone will ask for help, time, effort or responsibility that actually belongs to them. The difference is that this time the story will not unfold as before. There will be a conversation you have long put off. There will be a boundary you have long failed to set. There will be a decision that will surprise those around you at first, because they are used to you always saying “yes”.
After that moment you will begin to see how people react differently when you stop doing everything for them. Some will pull away. Some will take offence. Some will learn to carry their own responsibilities. Then you will gradually understand how long you have lived in the role of someone who constantly has to earn respect through effort, work and self-sacrifice.
Tiwaz and Uruz bring the beginning of a new stage. A confidence appears that does not depend on other people’s approval. Opportunities appear in which you won’t have to keep proving yourself. A conversation, an offer or a new direction at work will show you that people can value your presence without demanding that you constantly carry the weight of everything.
The Nine of Pentacles and Sowilo are at the end of this story as a reminder of something you are gradually taking back. Your worth was part of you even before you began proving to the world how strong you are. And that is the real wound behind this hurt: for years you looked outside for confirmation of something that has always existed within you.
CardsTen of Swords, Seven of Wands, Knight of Pentacles, Page of Swords, Ace of Pentacles
RunesUruz, Nauthiz, Isa, Tiwaz, Jera
Once this hurt settles into your life, it gradually stops being just a memory of a particular situation. It begins to become a way of life. In the morning you get up and keep going. You do your tasks. You take care of the people around you. You take on new commitments. From the outside everything looks normal. Only the body begins to tell a story you rarely show to others.
At some point you notice that the tiredness no longer disappears after a day off. Then come periods when you wake up exhausted before the day has even begun. You work, move, carry out your duties, but inside you there is a constant sense of carrying something heavy. The weight of years in which you were the support for everyone else.
For many people this hurt begins to live in the shoulders and back. A tension appears that comes and goes but never fully disappears. For others it builds up around the neck and jaw. The more you keep silent, the more the body tightens. For others a constant inner anxiety appears. Even when everything is calm, part of you stays on guard, as if any moment a new problem will appear that you will once again have to solve.
The Seven of Wands shows someone who has long been used to being on the defensive against life as a whole. Even when there is no conflict around you, you stay ready for the next blow. You check. You control. You anticipate. You prepare. This is an exhausting state, because it never lets the body truly rest.
The Knight of Pentacles brings the other side of the story. You keep doing everything that needs doing. You keep working. You keep carrying out your duties. Only the joy gradually begins to disappear from the process. Things that used to inspire you begin to look like just another task on the list. Habit appears in place of satisfaction. A sense of duty appears in place of desire.
In the coming months several situations will happen that show you how strongly this old hurt still affects you. One of them is connected with someone who will once again ask for more than they are prepared to give. Another is connected with work or a commitment where you will automatically reach out to take everything on yourself. The third will come in the form of a conversation in which, for the first time, you hear your own words from the outside and realise how often you put other people’s needs before your own.
Nauthiz and Isa show that for a long time you have lived in survival mode. You have got used to gritting your teeth and carrying on. You have got used to postponing rest until later. You have got used to believing that a little more effort will fix everything. But your body is already beginning to send a different message. It is asking for space.
Tiwaz shows an important change. A moment is coming when you will refuse something you would previously have accepted automatically. It may be a job. It may be a favour. It may be a responsibility someone is trying to shift onto you. This refusal will look small, but it is exactly what will begin to bring your strength back.
Jera speaks of gradual recovery. It will not happen in a day. It will not happen in a week. But little by little you will begin to feel the difference. There will be more energy. More desire for things you enjoy. More moments when you wake up with the feeling that the day belongs to you.
Your body has never been at war with you. All this time it has simply been trying to show you how long you have carried a load that was never meant for one person. And that is exactly where the change begins: at the moment you stop carrying other people’s burdens as your own.
CardsThree of Wands, Six of Wands, Knight of Swords, The Hanged Man, Five of Pentacles
RunesRaido, Tiwaz, Nauthiz, Mannaz, Isa
After everything you have lived through, you gradually began to link your own worth with how much you achieve. Without even realising it, a belief appeared inside you that you must constantly move forward, prove, achieve and deliver results. Every success brought a brief satisfaction, but very soon after it the next goal appeared. The next task. The next proof that you deserve respect, attention or love.
Over time this begins to affect your heart too. When someone tries to come close to you, you often show your strong side. You talk about what you do, what you are planning, what you have achieved. Few, however, see the tiredness behind all of this. Few see the person who sometimes simply wants to be accepted without having to earn their place.
The Six of Wands shows how often you have sought recognition. Sometimes at work. Sometimes in the family. Sometimes in love. In your life there were probably moments when you achieved exactly what you were striving for. You received praise, success or respect. But the satisfaction lasted only briefly. After it, the feeling returned that you had to do something more.
This is one of the reasons your heart stays in the background. While you chase the next goal, there is rarely time left to ask yourself what you actually feel. There is rarely time left to stop and enjoy what you already have.
For some people this hurt shows itself in love. Someone appears who sincerely wants to be close to you, but you keep living as if you must first sort out your life, solve every problem and only then allow yourself happiness. For others it shows itself through friendships or family relationships. There is always something more important that needs to be done. Always one more task before rest, one more commitment before joy.
The Hanged Man shows that this is how stagnation gradually appears. Outwardly life moves forward, but inwardly you seem to be in one and the same place. The years pass. Circumstances change. New people and new opportunities appear, but part of you keeps waiting for the moment when it will finally be good enough, successful enough or secure enough to allow itself peace.
The Five of Pentacles shows the fear behind all of this. The fear that if you stop proving yourself, people will stop valuing you. The fear that if you don’t carry everything on your back, you will go unnoticed. It is exactly this fear that has kept your heart closed for so long.
In the coming period several events will happen that will gradually shake this pattern. There will be a situation in which someone values your presence without expecting anything from you. There will be a conversation in which someone shows you respect for who you are. And there will be a moment when you refuse to take part in yet another battle for someone else’s approval.
Raido shows movement towards a new stage. Mannaz brings awareness. You will begin to see how often you have lived through other people’s eyes and how rarely you have asked what your own heart wants.
Isa shows the end of a long period of inner freezing. Slowly but surely you begin to allow yourself things you used to put off. Meetings. Rest. Love. Joy. They have always been your right.
And that is exactly where true release begins. On the day you stop measuring your worth by your achievements and begin to live as someone who already knows what they are worth.
CardsThe Devil, Eight of Pentacles, Page of Wands, Death, Four of Swords
RunesThurisaz, Nauthiz, Isa, Eihwaz, Tiwaz
The hardest thing in this story is that over the years the pain began to look like part of your strength. While you worked, struggled and kept going despite everything, you gradually got used to living with the thought that you must carry the load alone. Even when life offered a chance to rest, to step back or to put down part of the weight, something inside you insisted that you keep going.
There were moments when you were one step away from leaving it all behind. Then a memory appeared. An old conversation. An injustice you have not forgotten. Someone who got the place you felt you deserved. A situation in which you gave far more than you received. And instead of closing the page, you went back to it once again.
The Eight of Pentacles shows how long you believed that a little more effort could fix the past. That if you worked more, you would receive the recognition that was once missing. That if you proved yourself once more, you would feel valuable enough. But the years went by, and the inner satisfaction always stayed somewhere ahead, in the next goal, the next success or the next round of proving yourself.
For some of you this turned into constant work. For others into an inability to say no. For others into the habit of always being the strong one, the sensible one, the responsible one. The people around you gradually began to take this for granted, because they rarely saw how much it all cost from the inside.
The Devil shows the connection with this old role: with the image of the person who must always bear everything. Who has no right to get tired. Who has no right to fail. Who has no right to say that things are hard. It is exactly this role that keeps the hurt alive.
In the coming period there will be a situation that confronts you with an old choice. Someone will once again ask for more than they are prepared to give. Someone will expect you to take on a responsibility that isn’t yours. Someone will count on you, as always, to cope on everyone else’s behalf. The difference is that this time a different decision is already beginning to appear inside you.
The Page of Wands brings the beginning of the change. At first it will look quite small. One refusal. One boundary. One sentence you would not have said before. After it will come another. Then another. Little by little you will begin to build a life in which not every burden automatically becomes your task.
Death shows the end of an old pattern and room for new possibilities. Something in you is already tired of living the same way. Something in you already knows that you don’t have to win every battle to be a valuable person.
The Four of Swords shows something you have long avoided: rest. The inner permission to stop fighting. To prove nothing. To persuade no one. To carry no one else’s expectations.
Thurisaz and Tiwaz show that a period is ahead in which you will begin to choose your battles much more carefully. Some people will be surprised. Others will try to pull you back into the old pattern. But the more time passes, the more clearly you will see the difference between strength and self-sacrifice.
Isa shows the end of a long inner tension. Not all at once. Not overnight. Gradually you will begin to feel part of the weight withdrawing. There will be more calm. More time for yourself. More decisions made for your own good.
Then you will understand what has actually stood in the way of forgiveness for so long: the fear that if you let go of the pain, you will lose your strength. And the truth is that your strength has lived in you all along.
CardsThe Empress, The Star, Ace of Cups, Six of Pentacles, King of Cups
RunesBerkana, Sowilo, Wunjo, Gebo, Jera
For years you lived with the feeling that everything good has to be earned. That first you must give enough, do enough, bear enough, and only then will it be the turn of calm, respect or happiness. This hurt gradually turned life into constant forward motion. One goal was followed by the next. One problem by a new one. One round of proving yourself by another.
When you begin to let go of this weight, the first thing to change will be the way you see yourself, before anything in the world around you. Gradually you will stop measuring yourself by how useful you are to others. You will stop defining your worth by how many people rely on you. You will begin to give more attention to your own wishes, your own plans and the things that truly bring you joy.
The Empress and Berkana show a period of recovery. For some this will show itself through the home. You will begin to change the space around you and make improvements you have long put off. For others a desire will appear for creativity, a new hobby or an activity that has nothing to do with duties and responsibilities. For the first time in a long while you will do something because you want to.
After that your relationships with people begin to change too. The Six of Pentacles and Gebo show a fairer exchange. Gradually the people who remain in your life will be those who give as well as take. There will be someone who offers help without expecting anything in return. There will be a situation in which you receive support exactly when you least expect it. And there will be a conversation after which you realise how different it feels when you are not carrying everything alone.
For some of you this change will show itself in love as well. If for a long time you have attracted people who want care, attention and support without giving the same back, a different period is now beginning. Someone will appear who is not looking for a rescuer. They will not be looking for someone to run their life. They will be looking for a partner. An equal. That is exactly what will make the relationship so different from everything you have lived through until now.
The Star and Sowilo bring the restoration of faith. After a period in which you felt undervalued, you gradually begin to meet people and situations that remind you who you really are. You will receive recognition you did not seek. You will hear words you did not expect. There will be a moment when someone values exactly those qualities for which you used to feel used.
Jera shows that this will not happen all at once. It will be a process. Little by little you will begin to notice how much more energy you have. How much less often you get angry. How much less often you feel obliged to fix the problems of everyone around you.
The King of Cups shows the maturity that comes after this change. You will remain a strong person. You will remain someone who can be relied on. The difference is that you will no longer live as if you were carrying the world on your shoulders. You will help when you want to. You will give when you feel like it. You will choose the people for whom you invest your time and energy.
Wunjo is at the end of this position as the promise of something that has long been missing from your life: lightness. You will finally stop living as if you had to keep earning your place in the world.
Then you will begin to receive what you have looked for outside for so long: respect, recognition, support and love. Only this time they will come naturally, because you have come to believe in your own worth.
CardsThe Hermit, The Hierophant, The Magician, Ace of Wands, Justice
RunesAnsuz, Kenaz, Raido, Mannaz, Tiwaz
The change begins during a period in which everyday life looks the same as ever. Work goes on. Duties go on. The people around you go on relying on you. Only gradually you begin to notice things you used to pass by. How often you cancel your own plans because of other people’s problems. How often you take on tasks nobody explicitly asked you to do. How often you carry responsibilities that actually belong to other people.
Very soon a situation will appear that you have already lived through dozens of times. Someone will get stuck with time, work, money or a decision and look to you. For a long time such situations ended the same way. This time, however, the conversation will take a different direction. Instead of immediately taking on the load, you will leave the person in front of you to find part of the solution themselves. For them this will be a surprise. For you it will be a beginning.
After this conversation several similar situations will follow. One person will take offence. Another will try to convince you that you are being selfish. A third will begin to cope on their own with things they left to you for years. That is exactly when you will begin to see how much of your life has been built on the expectation that you will always be available.
Meanwhile, time begins to free up. At first only a few hours. Then whole days. An idea appears that you have long left on the back burner. A desire appears to learn something new. To start a project. To change something in your work. To go somewhere you never seemed to have time to reach.
Next comes a trip or an event outside your usual everyday life. There you will have a conversation that stays with you for a long time. Someone will tell you a story very similar to yours. You will hear words that make you wonder how many years you have lived as if you had to keep earning your right to peace.
After this period your relationships with people begin to change too. Some bonds will grow stronger. Others will gradually fade. Those who respect your boundaries and can be beside you without constantly demanding something will remain.
You will notice the most interesting change in yourself. One day you will find yourself in a situation that would once have made you angry, drained you or weighed on you for weeks. This time you will simply look at it calmly and move on. Without arguing. Without proving. Without carrying more than is necessary.
Then you will understand that the first step towards release begins with many small choices that gradually put your life back into your own hands. And the more such choices you make, the more room is freed for your own wishes, plans and dreams.
CardsStrength, Wheel of Fortune, Queen of Cups, Temperance, The World
RunesSowilo, Dagaz, Algiz, Wunjo, Jera
Over the next year you will begin to notice something unusual. Situations that used to exhaust you gradually lose their power over you. People who could make you feel guilty with just a few words no longer get the same reaction. Conversations after which you used to stay upset for days end calmly, and you move on.
The change will not come all at once. It will happen through a series of events. One person will leave your life or step back when they realise they can no longer rely on the old pattern. Another relationship will become closer precisely because you begin to be more honest about your own needs. And there will be relationships that change completely, because for the first time you will not agree to carry more than your share.
The Wheel of Fortune shows movement in several directions at once. For some this will be a change of job or a new project. For others a change in family relationships. For others the end of a long conflict that for years took up time and energy. Something that has long been blocked begins to move.
In this period people will also appear around you who think differently from those you are used to. Instead of asking for help, they will offer it. Instead of asking you for solutions, they will share the responsibility. One such person will have a bigger role in your life than it seems at first. First will come the conversations. Then trust. After that you will understand how different it feels when relationships are built on mutuality.
The Queen of Cups and Wunjo bring a period in which you begin to allow yourself more joy. The small things will make the difference. An evening spent calmly. A meeting with pleasant people. A trip you have long put off. A decision made without fear of what the others will say.
At the same time an opportunity will appear that you would probably have missed before. The reason would have been the habit of always putting others before yourself. This time the choice will be different. You will put your own plans first, and it is exactly this decision that will open the door to the next stage of your life.
Jera and Dagaz show that the changes will build up gradually. One day you will look back and see how much has changed. The people around you will be different. Part of the old burdens will have stayed in the past. You will have more time, more energy and more clarity about where you want to go.
The World is at the end of this path as a sign that a very long cycle is closing. Something that began years ago is finally reaching its natural end. After it comes a period in which life no longer revolves around what others expect of you. It begins to revolve around what you yourself want to experience, create and leave behind.
That is exactly where the new chapter of your story begins.
After everything that has happened so far, you begin to notice how much of your life has been taken up by other people’s tasks, other people’s expectations and other people’s problems. For a long time you accepted this as normal. If someone needs help, you help. If something needs doing, you do it. If the situation gets complicated, you find a solution. So years have passed in which you gradually got used to being the person everyone can rely on. Only somewhere along the way you left your own plans waiting, your own wishes postponed and your own dreams always coming after someone else’s needs.
In the coming period life will begin to show you this in different ways. There will be people who come to you again with their old problems. There will be situations in which you automatically want to step in and fix everything. There will be conversations that remind you how easy it is to slip back into the role you have played for so long. The difference is that this time you already see the whole picture. You see how often you carried responsibilities that were not yours. You see how often you paid with your own time for other people’s decisions. You see how much energy disappeared into battles that were never yours to fight.
Choose a quiet evening. Light a candle and place a sheet of paper in front of you. At the very top write: “The contracts I am ending.” Then begin to write down everything you have carried for years. Only the roles. The role of the person who always saves the day. The role of the person who always understands. The role of the person who always bears everything. The role of the person who always finds a solution. Write until you feel there is nothing more to add.
When you have finished, stay in silence for a few minutes. Read what you have written and remember how long you have lived by these rules. Then write one sentence at the very bottom: “From today I choose to live my own life.” Fold the sheet and leave it beside the candle until the next morning. Then tear it up and throw it away.
The real part of this ritual begins after that. You will not complete it in one evening. It will happen over the following weeks and months. It will happen on the day you refuse something you would once have accepted without hesitation. It will happen in the conversation in which you leave someone to solve their own problem. It will happen at the moment you choose your own plans over other people’s expectations. Little by little space will begin to free up around you. There will be more time. There will be more energy. Ideas will begin to appear for which there has never been room in your life until now.
Somewhere in this period an opportunity will open that you would have missed before. For some it will be work or a project. For others study. For others a trip or a new undertaking. In the past you would probably have postponed something like this because someone else needed you. Now the story will unfold differently. You will choose yourself, and it is exactly from this decision that the next chapter will begin.
In time you will look back and see how much your relationships with people have changed. Some will stay beside you. Others will move away. Others will begin to carry their own responsibilities. And you will gradually discover something that has long been missing from your life: the free space to live according to your own wishes.
Then it will become clear why this hurt was present for so long. It came to bring you to the moment when you finally stop living everyone else’s life and begin to live your own.
For the one who carries everything, the Game of the Soul has these rooms:
This spread goes together with the article on resentment and health: where an old hurt lives, and seven days to let it go.
How Resentment Affects Your Health: What the Body Remembers
This spread is about the inner world. When the body hurts, a conversation with a doctor goes hand in hand with the inner work.
Everything you do from the heart — a word, an action, a donation — comes back. Not tomorrow, not next week, but at the moment when enough has gathered. If these words have reached you, if something in them has recognised something in you, it is no coincidence. And if you feel like giving a little of this energy back, any amount is received with gratitude and turns into new content, new spreads, new words that will reach someone who needs them right on time. That is how the circle keeps turning.
Written by
tarot reader and palmist, creator of FatedWays
How Resentment Affects Your Health: What the Body RemembersA hurt we have never let go of settles in the body: in the chest, the throat and the stomach. How to recognise it, and seven days to let it go.
Tarot Spread “Who Crosses My Boundaries and Why”Four images, four stories about boundaries. Choose yours and see where your boundaries blur, what makes you stay and how to protect them.
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Tarot Spread “The Six Realities of the Self” with RunesSix images and six possible realities of your life: fear, courage, soul, pain, the present path and the return to yourself. Choose your image.