The TAROT FOR ARTISTS project began in the spring of 2021. This is number 69 in a series of 78.
QUICK HITS
Apprentice of the Piercing Stare / One Who Is Eager to Execute Ideas / Hocus Focus / Inexperienced Leader / Initiation of Boundaries / Insecure Inner Critic / Increase in Critical Thinking Skills / Warning Against Barbed Words / The Negative Tendency to Neg / Emerging Scribe Vibes / Occasionally Accurate Oracle / Invitation to Develop Inner Vision / Enthusiasm for a New Mission / Excited Investigator of Astral Corridors / Avid Student of Interstellar Systems
THE IMAGE
A youthful would-be hero whose feet, sword, and gaze are not yet aligned in the same direction.
THE STORY
It’s been more than a year since my mother died, and this is only the third newsletter I’ve completed and sent out since. Time is a challenge for PAGE OF SWORDS. Time is an abstract concept, and the PAGE OF SWORDS must fight the temptation to vanish inside every passing puff of abstraction. PAGE OF SWORDS represents a stimulating and experimental state of mind, but if you get lost in the fog of endless possibilities, you’ll eventually exhaust yourself and everyone around you. No one wants to be that guy at a dinner party who won’t shut up about Nietzsche or his mindfulness practice or the difference between the etheric and astral planes. PAGE OF SWORDS gets high on an infinite supply of ideas while monologuing a freeform thesis tentatively titled “Time: Do I Have To?”
Pages reflect a moment of emergence — Alejandro Jodorowsky describes Pages as living in the space between the number two (accumulation) and the number three (dynamic force). When you are the Page, you are in process. Traditionally associated with children or students, Pages are Knights-in-training.
PAGE OF SWORDS is especially keen to learn, skipping from thought to thought to thought. PAGE OF SWORDS loves novelty and beginnings and — wow, look at that spectacular butterfly flying across the azure sky of my imagination! Is it a Monarch? Did you know that Monarch butterflies travel thousands of miles every year from as far north as Trans Canada Highway down to Mexico? The Mexican poet and diplomat Homeros Aridjis has been a long-time advocate for the conservation of these “overwintering” sites, mountainous fir forests that are transformed into dreamscapes when droves of butterflies cling to the trees like strangely shaped flowers. I often think of Aridjis when I think of Monarchs and when I think of Aridjis, I often think of his book Persephone, which I bought in the mid-nineties at a used bookstore in Chicago. I remember standing in front of the shelves with a gentle young man who I associate with hard drugs and underground films.
Ok, I’m back. PAGE OF SWORDS has a weakness for chasing butterflies, memories, will-o’-the-wisps. PAGE OF SWORDS has a list of ideas, though he might not know where it is right now.
In the system of correspondence that I follow, PAGES are associated with earth and SWORDS are associated with air. PAGE OF SWORDS is where earth meets air: the horizon line. The true goal of the PAGE OF SWORDS is to ground into focus and move forward. Your feet and your sword and your face should all be pointed in the same direction, even if that direction leads you on a path that winds its way up a mountain, its peak obscured in clouds. PAGE OF SWORDS challenges you to commit to seeing something through, even if you’re afraid you’re not up to the task.
PAGE OF SWORDS sometimes appears when you don’t stop to process your pain. When my mother died last year, I wasn’t able to take a break. I coached her through her last breaths on Monday, stayed in bed all day on Tuesday, and then taught a creative writing class on Wednesday. The delayed grief didn’t hit me until the fall, when I found myself drifting in the middle of lectures. I couldn’t connect to the world, I was distracted and running on vapours. “And sometimes rambling would begin,” is how one student put it. PAGE OF SWORDS is a gifted improviser, but that talent evaporates if you’ve lost contact with the ground, with where you are and what you’re there to do. Find your footing. Catch your breath.
I’m reading my son Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wind in the Door, her sequel to the more popular A Wrinkle in Time. This is the first time I’ve read it since I was a kid. It was one of my favourite books, though I recognize now that it’s a bit oddly paced. The central crisis is a resistance to maturation, the future health of the universe dependent on a group of microscopic organisms called “farae” that have refused to evolve — “to Deepen” — into their next stage of life. It all comes down to one infinitesimally small being named Sporos, who believes he’s being asked to sacrifice the freedom to move in any direction. Senex, a “Deepened” elder, tries to share with Sporos that, if he commits to his purpose, he will gain much more than he will lose:
“It is true, small offspring. Now that I am rooted I am no longer limited by motion. Now I may move anywhere in the universe. I sing with the stars. I dance with the galaxies. I share in the joy—and in the grief. We farae must have our part in the rhythm…or we cannot be. If we cannot be, then we are not.”
The task in your hands as the PAGE OF SWORDS is to move from thinking into action. You grow into the role of the Knight by fixing the vision of your purpose clearly before you. Gently set aside all distractions. It’s time to get out of your head and onto your horse.
See also PAGE OF WANDS and PAGE OF COINS. PAGE OF CUPS is still ahead of me here, one of the final nine cards in this particular series.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
What are you learning to communicate more clearly? What is the fear holding you back? What obstacle are you attempting to out-think? When you do get lost? What grounds you back into What are you learning to communicate more clearly?
IDEAS FOR PRACTICE
Clear your workspace. Empty your drawers. Get rid of as much as you can stand. Gather your ideas in a beautiful way. Write to the people who inspire you. Shape your thinking carefully. Simplify your strategies. Remove all obstacles from your life. Sift, sort, select. Execute your ideas to completion and without attachment. Surrender to the weather and finish the task at hand. Practice holding boundaries. Speak kindly to yourself. Meditate. Find the point of focus. Hold your vision before you. Contribute.
THE READING
The number sixty-nine reduces to fifteen, which in turn reduces to six. THE LOVERS (VI) is a card of harmony and mature love. This is a card of discernment and commitment to what makes you sing. THE LOVERS merge into a union that embraces and celebrates individual gifts, talents, and purpose. THE LOVERS don’t confuse responsibility with confinement or limitation. THE LOVERS liberate PAGE OF SWORDS from disconnection. When in doubt, remember you’re not alone in this adventure. Be brave enough to risk romanticism. You are here to sing with the stars.