Ten Of Wands

and it started with a skeleton
a structure made of code
an architecture, a paper destination
and the dark clouds are gathering
and the city is so far.

no one else lifts for you
and you're tired but you're still lifting
still not there
you never will be
there is no time to stop and stare
because it's out there, it's real, and all you do
is try to pad the words around it
try to put flesh on the skeleton
seventy-eight bones
and the words are never perfect
can't be exhausted
you're never right
you'll never say it all
you'll never reach the end

and your words will rot
will be forgotten
your lifting lost, yet those bones will last
and centuries hence, a girl will take her deck
her seventy-eight shards of information
will shuffle, will draw the ten of wands
and she'll nod her head
and feel tired of words,
and you and she
will have the same old bones.


This is a great card for being irritatingly close to finished with your tarot project, for srs. I have, idk, maybe 18 more to go after this one and at the pace I started off at I'd've been done in under a week but now I'm out of focus and only adding one every so often and I planned to be done before this time last year and and oh come on we've all felt like this and that's why there's a goddamn card for it. Hello. I am Thene, and this is the Ten of Wands. It's heavy, but that's the point - some things are, especially things that are very close to payoff. Drawing it is like a promise. Just think of what you can do, how free you'll be, if you can just lug it around the next corner.

I really like the Intuitive Tarot version of it, too - it's a person building the frame of a house, far from the city, and so the burden is also going to give them lasting shelter - but it's a huge and lonely burden, and the clouds are coming. It's still seemingly less pointless than the RWS et al. It's more than just firewood. Some things we labour over can last longer than our lifetimes - our words are still there even if they have no more readers, our homes will last on even if they stand abandoned and empty - and I've posted scans here of the Visconti tarot, drawn hundreds of years ago. Whatever time you put into anything becomes part of the landscape of the world - doesn't matter how little or how much it means, because its presence is enough for the Wands. You dreamed and you did and you're tired and they're done with numbers, they're happy.

And you put down your deck, and tarot goes on.


Images of the Ten of Wands

The Osho Zen deck is going with a Freudian word, 'Suppression', and its character is roped-up and weighed down by a box full of cloudy nothing. It's showing the illusory nature of the Ten of Wands; you really can just up sticks and leave at any time. Nothing's stopping you from freeing yourself from the burden. But sometimes, you want to keep holding them up until you're through.

Scapini's is a long road with many people on it. I'm not up enough on the whole Catholic thing to really know, but I think it might be reflecting one of the Stations of the Cross. Not that Wands are into hyperbole or anything like that.

The Roots of Asia is a sky blotted out by wings, and the feeling I have about what's going on there is that they've built their own trap and fallen into it.