🎴 Bear Bones Tarot: Thursday, April 16, 2026

Nine of Swords — The Floor at 3am

On the swords that haven’t moved, the weight that took you down, and why sitting on the floor might be the most honest thing you’ve done all week.

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🖊️ Part 1: For the Writers

The Nine of Swords is not the card of disaster.

It is the card of anticipating disaster so vividly, so completely, so physically — that your body responds as though the disaster is already here.

In the Bear Bones Tarot, this card doesn’t show a figure bolting upright in bed, hands dramatically covering their eyes. It shows something quieter and more true: a bear in purple robes, almost on the floor beside the bed. One paw pressed against their head, holding it together. Nine swords behind them on the wall — crimson bleeding into icy blue bleeding into rose — the full spectrum of 3am. Hot anxiety on one end. Cold dread on the other.

The bear didn’t make it back to bed. The weight just... took them down. And there they are.

If you’ve ever ended up on the floor — literally or metaphorically — you know exactly what this card is saying.

The swords are on the wall. Not in you. But your body doesn’t know the difference.

Here’s what I want writers to understand about the Nine of Swords, because we are particularly susceptible to it:

We live in our minds. That is both our gift and our particular flavor of suffering. We build entire worlds from imagination — which means we are also exceptionally skilled at building catastrophes from it. We can draft, in extraordinary detail, every possible way something could go wrong. We can feel the failure before it arrives. We can grieve outcomes that haven’t happened. We can sit on the floor at 3am holding our own head, exhausted by a disaster that exists, so far, only in the stories we’re telling ourselves.

The Nine of Swords doesn’t show up to shame you for that. It shows up to hand you a very important question:

Is this happening right now — or are you anticipating it?

Quick side note: I’m not a doctor, therapist, or anything remotely resembling one — I haven’t even played one in my books (LOL) — but that one single question right there ☝️ has helped me more than countless hours in a therapist’s office when it comes to managing my cPTSD anxiety. No promises, no prescriptions. Just... give it a try if you live with anxiety like I do. It might genuinely help.

That’s the whole card, really. That one question.

Because anxiety is a time-traveler. It refuses to stay in the present moment. It sprints ahead into futures that may never arrive, or drags you backward into wounds that already happened, and it reports back with the full physical weight of current reality. Your nervous system cannot tell the difference between a real threat and a vividly imagined one. Which means you have been carrying weight that hasn’t landed yet — and possibly never will.

The swords on the wall in this card are not falling. They are hanging there, glowing their red and blue light, absolutely present and absolutely not moving. The threat feels total. The threat is not yet real.

So, what do you do with that? What do you do when you’re already on the floor?

You don’t have to stand up immediately. You don’t have to be fine. But you can do this one small thing:

Name what’s real right now, in this moment, in this room.

Not what might happen. Not what hasn’t arrived. Not the invoice that’s pending or the chapter that isn’t written or the week that felt like it slipped. What is actually, physically, presently true — right now, in the room you’re sitting in?

That is the Nine of Swords medicine. Not toxic positivity. Not “it’ll all work out!” Not bypassing the hard thing. Just the quiet, radical act of separating what is from what you’re anticipating.

The bear on the floor is not broken. The bear is being honest about the weight. And honesty, even when it puts you on the floor, is always the beginning of something.

Questions for the writers:

• What are you anticipating right now that hasn’t actually happened yet?

• If you removed everything that might go wrong, what would be true about your situation in this exact moment?

• What is one real, present, solid thing you can put your hand on — literally or figuratively — to anchor yourself back to now?

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🌿 Today’s Practical Magick

When the 3am brain starts its spiral — whether it’s actually 3am or 3pm or Thursday morning with coffee — try this:

Press one hand flat against a solid surface. A desk. A wall. The floor you’re sitting on. Feel the temperature of it. The texture. Press gently and notice the resistance pushing back.

Say quietly: “This is real. I am here. The swords are on the wall.”

That’s the spell. Sensation over story. Present over anticipated. Ground under paw. 🐾

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🔒 The personal pull is below — for paid subscribers.

This is where The Mojo Mama Bear gets bear-bones honest about what the card stirred up this morning, and what it looks like in a real, unglamorous, unsexy Thursday in the life of a working author.

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