10:31:21
queen of swords
its been six months since i did one of these! how silly. now its halloween. not samhain yet for another hour 40 or so by my count - i consider halloween to be the whole calendar day of the 31st, but samhain to be from the sunset on the 31st until the sunset on the 1st of november. but thats just my style (pedantic) ! anyway .
so the queen of swords . this is one of those ones where i get like nothing off the bat from the waite entry. here it is anyway:
"Her right hand raises the weapon vertically and the hilt rests on an arm of her royal chair the left hand is extended, the arm raised her countenance is severe but chastened; it suggests familiarity with sorrow. It does not represent mercy, and, her sword notwithstanding, she is scarcely a symbol of power. Divinatory Meanings: Widowhood, female sadness and embarrassment, absence, sterility, mourning, privation, separation. Reversed: Malice, bigotry, artifice, prudery, bale, deceit."
i remember jessica dore getting pissed about how misogynist this is in an instagram story i think. unless it was the queen of cups. (edit: i found the screenshot, it was this one) i thought i screenshotted it but i cant find it. anyway just reading this by itself i dont get it, personally. so then i checked 78 degrees of wisdom, rachel pollacks book, and let me pull a big quote out of that too.
"As the yin aspect of the suit, the Queen of Swords symbolizes experiences of both sorrow and wisdom, and especially the connection between them. Having experienced pain (the card sometimes signifies widowhood), and having faced it with courage, acceptance, and honesty, she has found wisdom."
that makes way more sense to me! she even kind of addresses the smack of gender later with this:
"In the sense that powerless women will often suffer from the actions of men, the card refers specifically to women. In its character, it can represent someone of either sex, for neither sorrow nor courage are restricted by gender."
thats great. so the receptive part of the mastery of swords (air, intellect) ... the connection between wisdom and sorrow. thats heavy and cool. you know what, theres only one more paragraph to that entry, actually the middle paragraph .. lets have it too. theres just too much good stuff in there.
"The tassel hanging from her left wrist (the side of experience) resembles a cut rope (compare the Eight of Swords). She has used the sword of her intellect to free herself from confusion, doubt, and fear; now, although she frowns at the world, she opens her hand to it. Though clouds gather around her, her head remains above them in the clear air of truth. One bird, a symbol of hte purity of her wisdom, flies high above her. Her sword, like that of Justice and the Ace, stands straight up."
just ... so much good stuff , thing on her wrist being the remains of the sword-cut ropes that had bound the figure in the 8 ... "although she frowns at the world, she opens her hand to it" ... what a killer line !
side note, i always liked her butterfly crown. just a cool piece. i like that butterflies appear as a counter symbol to the swords in the higher court cards ... emerging from their cocoons ... here's the queen literally crowned with the final stage of realized transition , yet the thing itself is so fragile and delicate , in foil to the sword .. just nice . going back to the waite entry i can ALMOST see how hes trying to say some of this . not enough that i really wanna talk about it tho .
this ones pretty freeform huh ! i wonder if im gonna publish it like this. 40 min to sundown . so the queen of swords embodies this kind of wisdom that comes from an acceptance of sorrow. at first just there i wrote "existential ennui that comes with a mastery of intellect." but weirdly i think thats kind of reversed from whats actually on the card. cause its coming from the other direction, like sorrow is the thing thats showing you the truth, not the truth bringing you sorrow.
she's got the sword like Justice and but she's in profile instead of head on. a specific side of justice ... the sword side, namely ! here's the whole entire entry from "next world tarot" by cristy c. road. this is fun it's like a little reading list with inline gloss.
"Fairness and survival are universal. The Queen of Swords believes they can exist in the absence of an emotional response. They enable life, family and community to happen—even the times our hearts are closed. Neither are a construct, and both are essential to co-existing in humanity. Respecting others, eating, breathing, drinking water, being accountable— this enables us to think, live, seek purpose, and grow from moments of both turmoil and enlightenment. The Queen of Swords reminds us that the harshest of these experiences fortify us in order to eventually open our hearts.
The Queen accepts the challenge and asks you to do the same. The Queen of Swords is devoted to her method of thought, as it mirrors the grounded and unchangeable qualities of fairness and science. If a situation deserves objective focus, intent, and wisdom, the Queen asks to set your heart aside and make a just decision.
The Queen of Swords asks you to investigate what is truly healing. She asks you to evade unwarranted sentiments, and empathetic responses that erase your truth."
so some common ground ... harsh experiences fortifying us in order to eventually open our hearts ... and then some more focus on the "justice-related" side, the objectivity of fairness stuff .. i like "they enable life family and community to happen even the times our hearts are closed" line a lot. because sometimes thats what it takes ! sometimes you have to use your head and not your heart in order to get along with people, and its not a failure its just the nature of relationship. frowning with an open hand ... feet in the clouds, head in the clear blue sky.
the wisdom gained in sorrow ... fairness as an objective truth. whats the synthesis? road's entry seems to connect them via "harsh experiences" of ineterpersonal turmoil teaching us where we have to use our heads to get along. generalizing the archetype further, any time we accept a harsh reality in a way we complete a metamorphosis, and we are crowned with the wisdom gained in sorrow. acceptance as the final stage of grief, of course. we are freed from bondage and we face the world frowning and with an open hand, with a soaring bird above.
=====
4:1:21
the fool
ha . ok so what happened here was . i had been drawing the next card like , a day or two after writing a given entry , and then giving it a little while to sit out on my desk so i could absently ruminate on it before writing the next entry . and then i didnt write one for a couple months because its covid and i cant keep track of anything , and honestly im kind of fine with just doing this particular project whenever the mood strikes me . but the one i had drawn thats been out on my desk this whole time is the fool . which also might have something to do with why its taken me a minute to get in here . its intimidating ! i feel like this entry is supposed to sum everything up or something . you only get one shot at this one ... although i suppose thats true for every other card , too . they all contain the total in their own way , from their own perspective .
so it came about that it's april fool's day and i thought well i ought to do this on april fool's day . i always considered this a tarot holiday , perhaps *the* tarot holiday , in that the fool as card 0 is at the beginning / end of the cycle just like the spring equinox , and sets the calendar in motion like easter . and its a kind of springy looking card , our hero gayly traipsing about the cliffsides with a pup , sun shining ... end of one cycle , beginning of another . the moment between , infintessimally small , of absolute stillness when the last has ended but the next has not begun . 0 the completed circle , swingset airtime , the apex of a breath .
so this is what im saying like how do you write this up ??? it would either have to sum up everything in the world or just be nothing , like , a joke entry , april fools , there's nothing here ... ! just upload a blank page . but here i am doing it despite the paradox .
so its like , the cipher card , right ? its not even really part of the major arcana ... theres this thing called "the fool's journey" that a lot of people talk about , where you look at the major arcana as a series of encounters being had by the fool , like , first the fool meets the magician , then the fool continues on down the road and meets the high priestess , and so on . and this is like , a metaphor you can read a bunch of ways , like it's the process of the fool's life from birth to death , for one example . or like a spiritual kind of progress that a soul is making over the course of a spiritual practice . or any number of other kinds of practices and things ... its a very deep well , you could just go on coming up with ways to apply the metaphor to different situations . its like a really rich way of looking at the cards as a way of seeing how all kinds of different things go through these seasons , little births and deaths and rebirths .
but here when you meet the fool on this card , none of that stuff has happened yet . its just a person who nothing has happened to ! [sidebar: i sorta love that the baseline platonic solid of a "person" in this system is kind of a bumbling romantic . because thats so what we are . humans are just built to vibe ... change my mind.] so anyway you can use it like that in readings , like , something new is about to happen , or if it comes up that you're at this apex still-point between the end of one cycle and the beginning of another . ive heard that the fool's bag in the colman-smith drawing has all the experiences from the last cycle in it , like all the lessons from a past life ... i thought that was a nice reading . and it's like an applicable metaphor to points in a life when you feel really between two different lifetimes , like our friend on the precipice here . it can get to feeling like you have to let go of so much sometimes , when the future is unknown , and things don't stay the same even if we want them to . but there's also those things we carry with us ... ready for us when we need them .
in a really lovely imagining of the fool as a person at this kind of precipice in life , cristy c. road writes in the "next world tarot," "understand that the cost of starting new is growing up , but the cost of growing up is not your wayward magic." more than even the precious bagthings , the very spirit of the fool is with us throughout the journey . the dreamer looking off the edge into the big sky , unafraid , unprepared , at one with the unknown ... this is the very dreamer living through each mundane moment . through cycles on cycles , the spirit remains . april fools !
=====
1:5:21
ten wands
YET another card thats just , comically appropriate to have been sitting out on my desk over the holiday over which it sat there ... one thing the tarot is constantly trying to show me is you gotta have kind of a sense of humor about this stuff . you set em up and the tarot is gonna knock em down . anyway
ten of wands ... the Colman Smith drawing has a guy with a bent back , carrying a big unweildy bundle of sticks toward a town on the horizon . side note , i always kind of wondered about the specific shape of the bundle ... like it doesnt really look like a bunch of sticks , it looks like a weird ... fan shape , with this really small point near the bottom where they all cross over each other ... what the heck is that shape ? is it like , a known signifier to her that means something in context ? its one of the cards that really makes me wonder how much stuff is in her drawings thats not in waite's book . so but this dude is schlepping his sticks home , and it sucks , theyre really heavy and stuff , and so basically "youre the dude and you have too many sticks," and the sticks are responsibilities , or a mature creative project , or whatever you want . stuff you're carrying . often its read like ... youre carrying enough , or too much even , or that its time to put down some stuff . its the end of the journey of the wands , the suit of elemental fire , the "spark of life," starting with inspiration , creative impulse , and moving through the whole life cycle of the art process to here , the "its done" moment , when its time to let go , quit tweaking , drop the brush , let the piece live on its own .
all the tens are kind of "ending/beginning" cards - a combination of a 1 and a 0 , the end of one cycle and the pause before the next . the X card in the major arcana is the wheel of fortune , with mirrored echoes on either side at XX (the last judgement) and 0 (the fool) . finality , liminality , cyclic nature ... now we're getting to why this was such a funny card to have out for new years . its a bit on the nose , to be honest , but thats kinda tarot ... it can be pretty blunt , which is one of the things i like so much about it . i like how it applies to the year digits too , like 2020 was a "zero in the ones place" year , just like all the cards we just mentioned , technically the last year in the "decade" starting with 2011 (a unit i'll call the "pedant's decade.") another side note , i was just talking with a friend about this - remember how around this time year ago everyone was talking about the new decade so much ? like for a couple months "2020" had this whole other significance ... and it feels so forgotten and distant now . in a way i kind of feel like the pedants were on to something , like , i definitely feel more like im in tune with what the next decade has in store now than i did this time last year . altho i also know im still carrying some of that stuff from last year , plans and expectations and hopes , hurriedly tucked away in early springtime , just until things blow over ...
i think a lot of us can relate to the idea of leaving this year with a burden ... some heavier than others . its funny the way this comes around again and again ... like researching this post one of the things i found was a blog post from around new years 2016 , of somebody being like "woof, what a year, am i right ???" the same way im doing right now . i dont know , i wanna be clear here that im absolutely not trying to say anybody is "responsible for their own suffering" at the hands of a violent state , in a collapsing climate , in a global pandemic leveraged to kill . the ten of wands is about burdens you take upon yourself , and thats fully insufficient to describe what many are leaving this year with . but still , improbably , we're standing at the beginning of a new year ... kind of , in that weird arbitrary disembodied way of the gregorian calendar . if that can be some kind of opportunity , to put a button on anything that might need buttoning , to put some sticks down ... idunno , i'll take it . here's looking forward , finally , to a new decade
=====
12:28:20
the emperor
this fuckin guy, am i right? this one was a challenge for me to be honest - mostly in figuring out how to start it , the best angle to make an approach . for this and the one before it , i drew the card a few days before making the entry and left it out on my desk , so i could kind of passively ruminate on it , and this one has been out for a good couple weeks . i think it's funny that it was there over christmas , because the guy in the Colman Smith drawing kind of looks like santa claus .
anywho , a charged card to be sure ... i think for a lot of us trying to practice tarot in now thru a radical lens , informed by anti racist , anti colonial , feminist thought , this and some cards like it beg a question like ... what do we do with this ? if we rightly align ourselves against all empires , it naturally follows that any emperor is a villain - does the tarot have villains ? certainly in the Waite-Smith system he seems to be held in high esteem - "the power of this world, clothed with the highest of its natural attributes," "the higher kingship, occupying the intellectual throne" and so on . he's taken to represent a kind of self-mastery and internal power , something like an ability to not be controlled by one's own emotions - to put the best possible light on it . so the question becomes what's lost to the overall system of archetypes , which is "complete" in a sense , if this one part is cut out , or renounced ? can the good be extricated from the bad by a careful untangling process ? should it , or should the bad be simply acknowledged and integrated , and the man held in lower esteem ? or both , to some degree , and then to what degree ??
it seems possibly a straightforward enough procedure to cut away the undesirable aspects of this card upon encounter , and read only that which the figure represents - the "lordship of thought" as Waite calls it . but i wonder what's lost to consideration in turning a blind eye to his more obviously distasteful aspects . like , to what extent is this guy the cop in my head , that i am sworn to kill ? internal mastery sounds good in the sense that , if you're ruling over your emotions , they can't rule over you ... but is it possible to have that second one without the first , by some other means besides domination ? can the logic of the empire be separated from the philosophy of empiricism at all ? is there an archetypal energy , deep at the core of this card , that may look nearly unrecognizable expressed with a different relation to the cultural project threaded from aristotle to "x destroyed with facts and logic" youtube ? i never really thought about the potential potency of that phrase outside a jokey context before , and im still kind of shitposting here , but is that what facts and logic do , destroy , inherently ? memes really out here revealing the collective unconscious ...
alright , thats quite enough of that . so here i turn to the work of others who have grappled with this - first thing to come to my mind was Cristy C. Road's Next World Tarot , a beautiful 2017 pack and tarot system focused on themes of revolution and justice , in the authors words "an illustrated oracle articulating the end of the world as we know it." here the emperor has been replaced by the teacher , a kind of researcher figure , openly depicting more of the intellectualism supposedly represented by the emperor . (represented where, btw? just his masculinity?) "Having learned from experience, failed from obstacles, and regrouped through experimenting with right and wrong, the Teacher gathers her reasearch and separates it into control and variable positions." while Roads' teacher still embodies some of those positive qualities from Waite's system ("she asks you to isolate your mind from the noise and shut down the voices that challenge your intellect,") she does indeed attempt (meeting quite some success i think) to shed some of the attending colonial and patriarchal values . i especially love this line: "She wants us to be able to choose between self-reflection and action - righteous control or an abuse of power." because of how it problematizes the figure , but ultimately leaves the choice in the hands of the reader .
so ok , there's at least one concrete example of another way it could be done , in another system . i think the continuous work of adding new systems for tarot is a really important way of interacting with it through time - the Smith-Waite itself of course being a system devised as an update and substantial re-working of the available packs and guidebooks in 1909 . and yet i also think that , for me , it's important too to look back and engage with the histories of the stories and symbolism at play . not to say it has to be for everyone - i could see using one or many modern systems that broadly align with ones values , being reasonably critical , and just like , going to town , telling fortunes , learning all kinds of stuff . but for me , partly because thats just how i am , partly because of this project , where (surprise) im gearing up to make a booklet for YATD by doing these blog entries , i feel drawn to working from material thats held widely in common , that forms a kind of foundation , i guess to form my own interpretations . anyway . for reading: mastery , of the self , of or by another may be called for , or a master may appear . there is power in this which may be harnessed , even to righteous ends - but beware power's tendency to corrupt , especially as it grows . jeesh , didnt expect this one to turn so big ... but here it is !!
=====
12:17:20
queen of pentacles
you know, i picked this card a few days ago, and since then it's been just sitting on my desk, demanding a sort of quiet contemplation. and i think that actually speaks somewhat to the character of the card. it'll be said that the court cards sit kind of between the suits, after the cycle of pips of their own symbol is concluded, but before the next suit begins - not quite trumps, but named personages nonetheless - liminal cards, in more than one way. and in this framework where they're understood as a kind of transition or transformation, that transition can be taken to play out over the course of the four cards in order, through a successive picking-up, mastery, and use of their symbol enacted by our four players.
all of which to say, the queen's part in this particular play is the "mastery" of her symbol, the total embodiment. our queen sits in a blooming field, wreathed in flowers, attended by a rabbit, and gazing in to her pentacle. unlike the page, caught enraptured by the sight of his pent while walking, starry eyed and in perpetual danger of tripping, the queen considers hers seated on a throne with a sober, nearly stern look - "the serious cast of intelligence," waite calls it. so here in the queens might be some of whatever we find lacking in our pages - in this case, a mastery of earth, of groundedness, of that quiet contemplation ... that steady sureness that allows her to gaze into the crystal ball without losing her footing.
as for taking a read on it, well, that all depends - if the page could be taken as a caution, i guess this could be a corresponding reassurance - that you'll have the fortitude to read the stars - or represent a person with that abiilty. great conjunctions coming up, and i know a lot of people just started their whole sign saturn returns, myself included. maybe this is too cohort-specific, or even just-me-specific, but ive been finding the need and want to take a lot of time to just contemplate, lately ... big big changes happened this year and are keeping happening, and big decisions take time. it makes sense to take like, as long as one could even need to just sit and contemplate right now. and we can handle what we see.
=====
9:28:20
knight of swords
well ! here's our first entry in the new format - settling in, getting used to typing it up this way. and we're for sure off with a bang here! i get kind of a "and they're off!" starting-line feel from pulling this card at the outset of a project like this. but i feel i should note, this isn't a race horse, it's a war horse. let's check in with waite:
"He is riding in full course, as if scattering his enemies. In the design he is really a prototypical hero of romantic chivalry. He might almost be Galahad, whose sword is swift and sure because he is clean of heart. Divinatory Meanings: Skill, bravery, capacity, defence, address, enmity, wrath, war, destruction, opposition, resistance, ruin. There is therefore a sense in which the card signifies death, but it carries this meaning only in its proximity to other cards of fatality. Reversed: Imprudence, incapacity, extravagance."
a prototypical hero of romantic chivalry ... the galahad reference is interesting. galahad is a knight from aruthurian legend, a chosen one destined to attain the holy grail ... doesn't get much more romantic than that. the swords in tarot are often referred to as "double edged" in this way where they represent weapons, but also the "cutting edge" of the intellect, noetic discernment, and the like. im thinking lately about how this perception of the sword must have evolved over time alongside the tarot itself, from the first medieval decks to the waite-smith (first published in 1909) to today - from the de-facto deadly weapon of war and conflict to an image of a romantic past. like, not to do that super corny thing where brad pitt has a pistol called "broadsword" in romeo plus juliet, but what if this guy was driving a car holding a gun? its a very different image, less romantic but more potent in other ways - somewhat more immediate, and scary!
i ask about the gun because im curious to strip some of that accumulated romance away from this image and see what's left. for me it kind of drives home the "sword is swift and sure because he is clean of heart" bit. the image is an action shot, a real short exposure, possibly a "moment of truth." and it's easy to romanticize that moment in the abstract, placed some time in the future. but when it comes, there's no time to think - we'll act as we've prepared ourselves to act. my read for the week is this: we're called to make those preparations now which will make our actions swift and sure when the wave does crest, to assess our capacity with honesty and discernment, and build it up from there. big stuff, but delivered i think with big love. see ya next week!
=====
9:19:20
hello and welcome to the first entry in the aloe lonely tarot blog ! this is just a short introduction , the first post post is gonna be next week . so sometime in like spring 2020 i started doing a daily pull on my instagram , and it was kinda cool ... then i stopped for a little , then started again ... but it didnt feel the same , so i'm shaking up the format . now i'm gonna do one per week instead of one per day , and write them out here , instead of in instagram stories . this way it's easier to read , zoom in and stuff , screen readers can read it . and it's archived ! i'll still share it out over insta too . ok ! real one next week ! <3 &~*
=====