Sunday belongs to the Sun. In a weekly reading, it sets the tone – the light by which the whole week is seen. On this first Sunday of January 2026, the card drawn for the week is the Nine of Swords.
This is not a gentle card, but it is an honest one.
The Nine of Swords: When the Mind Won’t Rest
The Nine of Swords is the classic image of mental distress: wakefulness in the night, looping thoughts, imagined conversations replayed again and again. It is rarely about an external threat. Instead, it points to suffering generated by the mind itself – worry, guilt, anticipation, regret.
Unlike many of the more dynamic cards in the deck, the Nine of Swords is quiet. Nothing is happening on the outside. All the noise is internal.
Because this card has appeared on a Sunday – the Sun’s day – it becomes the weekly theme rather than a passing mood. It asks us to notice how much of our energy is being consumed not by events, but by unprocessed experiences.
Venus in Gemini: Why This Card Thinks Too Much
In the sidereal astrological mapping used here at Perennial Tarot, the Nine of Swords is associated with Venus in Gemini.
At first glance, this may seem counter-intuitive. Venus is the planet of harmony, pleasure, and connection. Gemini is curious, articulate, and light on its feet. Neither is inherently dark.
But together, they describe something very specific: emotional attachment filtered entirely through thought.
Venus in Gemini does not feel first and think later. It thinks its feelings. It analyses relationships, replays conversations, imagines alternative outcomes. It wants connection, reassurance, and understanding – but it seeks them through words, ideas, and mental comparisons.
When this energy becomes excessive, the result is exactly what the Nine of Swords depicts:
- emotional concern turning into mental loops
- care becoming worry
- attentiveness becoming anxiety
Importantly, Venus is not debilitated in Gemini. This is not weakness. It is restlessness. A mind that never quite lands in a place of peace.
A Modern Antidote to an Ancient Problem
Coincidentally, this weekend I watched a video discussing a simple but surprisingly effective approach to mental stress: walking while talking out loud to yourself.
The idea is deceptively simple. Experiences are like meals. If they are not digested, they sit heavy. Unprocessed thoughts return as loops. Emotions linger without resolution. Over time, mental noise increases and clarity fades.
According to research by psychologist Dr Francine Shapiro, the act of walking – with the natural left-right movement of the eyes – reduces activity in the brain’s fear circuits. This discovery eventually led to EMDR therapy. But the key insight is that you do not need a clinical setting to benefit from the mechanism.
When you walk, your eyes move naturally. When you speak out loud, you give those experiences expression instead of suppression.
Movement plus expression.
This is remarkably Gemini-Venus in its healthiest form:
air moving, words flowing, thoughts finally allowed to leave the closed circuit of the skull.
Here is the video:
Why Silence Is Not Always Golden
One of the more interesting points made in the video is that thinking in silence can sometimes make things worse. Many of us have experienced this. Sitting still, trying to “calm down”, only to spiral further.
The explanation offered uses the “chimp and human” model of the brain. The emotional, reactive part needs expression before it can settle. Logic alone does not calm it. Suppression only amplifies it.
Walking in silence helps a little. Walking and talking out loud often finishes the job.
This aligns uncannily well with the Nine of Swords. The card does not say: “Think harder.” It says: the mind is stuck. What it needs is movement, air, and release.
A Practice for a Nine of Swords Week
If the Nine of Swords is the theme of the week, the remedy does not need to be elaborate.
- Go for a short walk
- Leave your phone behind
- Speak quietly but audibly to yourself as you walk
- Let the thoughts come out awkwardly, unfinished, even irrational
There is no need to be eloquent. Venus in Gemini does not need poetry here. It needs circulation.
Stop when you feel lighter. That change in state is the signal. The rucksack of burdonsome thoughts has been lightened.
The Sun’s Gift
It may seem strange that such a card appears on a Sunday. But the Sun does not only illuminate joy. It illuminates truth.
This week’s truth is that mental suffering often comes not from what happens to us, but from what we carry without digestion.
The Nine of Swords does not ask us to eliminate thought. It asks us to let thought move – out of the night, into the air, into the body, and into the light.
Sometimes, clarity really is only a walk and a conversation away.
A Wider Horizon: Gemini vs Sagittarius
This week’s sky sharpens the Nine of Swords theme through a strong opposition across the Gemini-Sagittarius axis.
- Gemini breaks experience into fragments: words, thoughts, alternatives, “what ifs”.
- Sagittarius seeks the larger arc: meaning, direction, truth, perspective.
This week, a stellium of the Sun, Venus, and Mars in Sagittarius faces Jupiter in Gemini. Jupiter in Gemini amplifies thoughts, explanations, and inner narratives, which can intensify worry by multiplying meanings rather than resolving them. The Sagittarius planets respond not by arguing with those thoughts, but by questioning their ultimate relevance, asking instead about direction, purpose, and the larger truth a life is moving toward.
Under this opposition, the pressure of mental anxiety reaches a peak, but so does the possibility of relief – not through perfect understanding, but through distance, perspective, and reorientation. What eases the Nine of Swords now is allowing a wider horizon to make some thoughts smaller, and some fears no longer central.
The Nine of Swords shows what happens when Venus stays trapped on the Gemini side of the axis – endlessly turning things over without resolution. But with both Venus and the Sun in Sagittarius, the sky is offering a way out while Mars encourages us to take bold action towards that end.
While the Nine of Swords shows what happens when the mind turns in on itself, Sagittarius reminds us that we are not meant to stay there.
Sagittarius is the sign of movement, expanded horizons, and meaning that emerges when experience is placed within a broader narrative. It asks us to lift our gaze from the detail and remember the larger story we are living. Under this light, the Nine of Swords is not a sentence, but a signal. The anxiety it reveals is something to be moved through, not analysed endlessly.
Venus in Sagittarius, in particular, encourages honesty over rumination. Not every thought needs to be resolved. Some only need to be outgrown.
So if this week brings restless nights or looping thoughts, the sky itself suggests a simple response: step outside, move your body, speak what needs to be spoken, and let perspective do its quiet work. The Sun is not shining to expose our worries, but to show us the way beyond them. Lift up your eyes unto that divine light and let it lead you out of the mental veil of shrieks and shadows.
