No. 18: FOUR OF WANDS
Wake up where you are
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Writing through the TAROT deck, one card at a time. This is number eighteen in a 78-week durational project.
QUICK HITS
Major Move / House Clearing / House Cleaning / Purging Unwanted Objects / Erecting a Structure Within Which Your Creativity Will Thrive / Celebration of New Chapter / Party on the Lawn / Blessed Hearth Where Art Happens / Sturdy Yet Flexible Frame / “Geographic Cure”, But For Real / Optimism of Fresh Start / Shared Joy / Dance / Live Music as Lifestyle / Streaming Ribbons / Flower-Draped Gate / Pretty Electric Portal / Regular Sex / Secured Creativity / Desire Taking Form / Stabilizing Life-Force / Safe Space to Create / Recognition of Passion /
THE IMAGE
This week, I’m looking at two versions of this card: the PAMELA COLMAN SMITH COMMEMORATIVE and the AQUARIAN. Very similar images: four wands arranged to form an “outdoor room” reminiscent of a traditional wedding chuppah (though there is no cloth canopy covering the top of this open-air structure). In both cards, the FOUR OF WANDS are adorned with garlands of flowers strung along ribbons that have been tied at each end into bows. There’s a castle in the background. In the older image, figures with their arms raised in greeting, holding bouquets bursting with yet more flowers, greet us from the other side. In the distance we see a small crowd of people gathered in celebration outside the castle. In contrast, there are no figures at all to be seen in the AQUARIAN version, and the slightly-more-distant castle is protected by either a natural stream or a manufactured moat that snakes around the hill upon which the castle securely rises. In line with the opening made by the wands, however, there is a footbridge. The path forward is at once unmarked and clear.
THE STORY
This is a joyful card. I remember learning very young that FOUR OF WANDS is often associated with a literal move — new apartment, new city, new mansion on the mountain — but what I find most thrilling about this card is the possibilities that arise when the solidity of the FOUR meets the fiery energy of the WANDS. This is where dreams find shape. This is the opportunity to create a tangible new reality, to transform the landscape that surrounds you. This doesn’t have to mean changing your mailing address. American poet Ed Sanders argues in his essay “Creativity and the Fully Developed Bard” that “The shapes, the surfaces, colors / the relation of angles and views, / the lighting, the sounds // of your creativity zones help / shape your poetry.” And these shapes, surfaces, colours, angles, and view are more mutable than we often realize: they can be tuned. In the last few weeks, I have spent untold hours reorganizing the interior contours of my home, gathering up papers, clothes, and books into the appropriate bins, bags, and boxes. This doesn’t come easily to me, I’m not naturally organized and I’m desperately afraid of losing my connection to the past. Even so, a couple weeks ago, I left my grandmother’s chair on the curb and someone took it away. Decades ago, she sat in that chair as she churned out letters to her grandchildren and as she composed “light verse works” on her powder-blue electric typewriter. It feels like a scandal that I pushed that chair out of the house. Part of me can’t believe I’m admitting to it. Three things about that chair: 1. It was broken. 2. It wasn’t comfortable. 3. I didn’t like it. Getting rid of it was one of the best things I’ve done in months. It gave me courage. It made me feel free. FOUR OF WANDS represents the structures that support us in our creative freedom, structures that are sturdy but flexible. FOUR OF WANDS is an invitation to innovate our idea of how we remain rooted. FOUR OF WANDS is not a locked box, FOUR OF WANDS stays open to the elements. This energy is light and agile, improvisational and pleasure-driven. My friend Hoa Nguyen* told me recently that she is focusing on building “rhythms of care” within the structure of her daily activities. I love this model. It helps me see the flower-draped container created by the FOUR OF WANDS as the unit of a day, a day filled with the animating force that flows through all acts of making. “The goal is clarity,” writes Sanders, “and to find those unforeseen / illuminations and connections / such as to help give birth / to your best work.”
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
What structures support your creative energy? How might you warm up yer workstation? Who is suddenly seeing you? What are the containers that have helped you carry your work to stages of successful completion in the past? How can you replicate that shape in a sustainable way within the present moment?
IDEAS FOR PRACTICE
Know the dimensions of your vehicle. Dig into the dustiest corners of your space. Listen to the audio-book version of Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up while you merrily and ruthlessly throw every dead-energy object into a box and give it away with a generous spirit. Change the arrangements. Sleep in a different room. Or on the floor. Move to the other end of the table. Innovate the containers so that they provide both structure and flexibility. Open all the windows. Tear down the walls. Build a portal out of grass clippings. Advance through the gate. Dance for twenty minutes before beginning anything. Fill the house with fresh flowers and ribbons. Paint the door a new colour. Borrow someone else’s drinking glass. Decorate, adorn, celebrate, refresh.
THE READING
Week number eighteen! Holy shit, this might just be peak consistency for me, four and a half months of following my own assignment more or less to the letter. The number eighteen links to THE MOON (XVIII), which is about cycles, rhythms, the psychedelic circling of time. Stable instability, consistent inconsistency, the law of constant change and impermanence, endless renewal as its own reliable weather pattern; this image provides another way to frame the dynamic tension between the number four and the element of fire. And the FOUR connects us back to THE EMPEROR (IV), the architect with a briefcase full of blueprints for what they want to build in the world. Don’t follow someone else’s project: make sure your structures serve your own vision and align with your own values. It’s almost the Super Full Harvest Moon in Pisces, almost the Autumn Equinox when the day and night meet as equals: enjoy the party, prepare your plans.