Don’t ask others to help you before you try to help yourself – dealing with problems and adversity gives you confidence that will serve you your entire life. Striving to learn different skills – from physical things like learning to do household repairs or gardening to mental things like conflict resolution – will do the same. This card is telling us we have more ability and power than we think.
Blessings!

FIVE OF BOWS – EMPOWERMENT
MEANING: By facing and defeating our greatest fears, we empower ourselves and grow more resilient and effective against adversity. This leads to the individual’s belief that they are no longer simply powerless. The empowered individual ultimately has the capability to influence and affect the outcome of events and change perceptions.
DESCRIPTION: Four unfletched bow staves lie like offerings before the mighty figure of the Cerne Abbas Giant, who holds a fifth bow in his hand. An ancient emblem of fertility, he has long been seen as an opener of the ways.
READING POINTS: The mastery of any skill or discipline enables empowerment for clear and decisive mental processes, and the arrows of one’s desires and wishes can be loosed at destiny with positive effect. The time of self-empowerment by seizing the initiative is here. By channeling primal, fertile, and protective energies, the individual can evolve a grounded and assertive mind-set and utilize this for effective growth and change. This is true not only for the individual but also for society. It is the meaning of achieving one’s destiny as a matter of choice, not chance. The act of observing the particle changes the particle and this raw, dynamic life force can be focused and deployed to influence situations in the practical world. Empowerment enables the individual to overcome negative self-images or destructive emotional addictions and increases confidence by overcoming stigma or social handicaps. Empowerment is the key to the attainment of one’s destiny and the feeling of spiritual fulfillment through a proactive and positive attitude to life.
The Wildwood Tarot by authors Mark Ryan and John Matthews and artist Will Worthington
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