Two Of Wands

you would open your wings
and draw a line across the sun

you would pull back the curtain
and take all that is yours in your hand
and you'd throw it over the fields
and you'd not know where it was going
but you'd have the faith to see it done


As previously mentioned, I'm doing these in the order the deck wants them done. This is the seventh. The last two were the High Priestess and the Queen of Pentacles - ladies about robes and veils.

Fuck me if this isn't a wide-open curtain.

An Ace is energy at its source; a Two, therefore, is a vector - a moving thing (of fire, this time), but where does it go? It's cheesy, but I see the Two of Wands as being in a state of superposition; sure of its momentum, but what it is is no longer material.

There is something pretty damn phallic about all this. I could more easily draw you a diagram than put it into words; the Two of Wands is a Two of Chokhma, for starters, a first jag of lightning from the source, looking for a shape to hold it. Many decks have it that the Two then faces a forked path, which from that part on the Tree is true enough; down it must go, but it may or may not take the path of least resistance.


Images of the Two of Wands:

Need to scan the Intuitive one. Til then, here's the Osho Zen - flying away from the setting sun.

See also the One World Two: a pip card, but note the corner symbols - Aries (as in zodiac), Mars (as in planet), and another Mars for good measure. This is what tipped me off about the penis thing.

Two Of Pentacles

I stood beside a mirror
and it cut me into two
Two eyes, two hands
two strange-shaped forms
two souls, two flames, two hearts
my crown is an hourglass
an infinite space in my mind
but all outside is an infinite wash of colour
and I am inside the mirror
small, still
frozen.


The Two of Pentacles is that life that happens while you're too busy doing other things. It is when that lovely spiffy earth energy from the Ace gathers momentum and eats every minute you put into it. That sounds bad, but I honestly miss this card; filling your every moment with accomplishments feels wonderful. But it's precarious - every hour, and every penny, will be allocated to something and an unexpected nudge can make it shatter.

The Two of Pentacles often contains a lemniscate (∞); a reminder, perhaps, that the resources which feel so stretched and fragile right now are, in truth, eternal. The Intuitive card shows this just above the head of a distorted silhouette; it's huge, white, swirled and symmetrical. The RWS shows a juggler with two objects wrapped in a ∞-shaped sash. Keeping things balanced, symmetrical, is important to this card; it requires the budgeting of time (and often money and other resources). But the balance includes the rest of the deck, in its infinite extent - it tells you to not neglect the rest of your needs. (Many Major Arcana cards involve balance - notably Justice, the High Priestess and Temperance; you can look to them for guidance when dealing with any Two, this one especially).


Images of the Two of Pentacles

The Marseilles shows two coins, a broken lemniscate that sprouts flowers, and - tellingly - is the card that features the deck's maker's mark, as the Ace of Spades sometimes does in modern 52s.

Did I mention the RWS juggler is doing his thing on the beach with the tide coming in behind him? This image makes me think of Morecambe Bay, which I used to live not far from; a treacherous six-mile stretch of sand which should only be negotiated with the aid of the official guide (who is paid £6 a year by royal decree). The bay is place of myth; it is pitted with quicksand, and it is said that the tide comes in faster than a galloping horse. It was on Morecambe Bay that 23 Chinese cockle-pickers were killed in February 2004. (I will not say they drowned or simply died; they were killed by their piece-of-shit gangmaster. Pentacles know the difference between what is and what is caused to be).

The Osho Zen 'Moment To Moment' card shows a man taking stepping stones over rainbows.

This is probably the only Thoth card I am ever going to link; here we see the balance of yin and yang, within a loop formed by the ouroboros. (This is a 8 rather than a ∞; eh?) As with most Thoth images, it's a very simple blending of symbols, one that emphasises symmetry.

And the Mythic Daedalus, whose work is just begun.

Two Of Cups

When one cup overflows into another
the river runs into the sea
it cannot return to its home in the mountain
purge its heart of salt,
for one and one make two
not indivisible, but altered
and to take the cup and draw out one grape, one vine
to have the oceans and take away one teardrop?

(Everything has happened before
and it will all happen again).


Some people get panicky, fatalistic and/or irritated when they see Death, the Devil or the Tower in a reading. I don't, but I have been known to react that way to the Two of Cups. This is partly because of the relentless heteronormativity, something it shares with the Ten of Cups. But I guess it's mostly because of the irrevocable nature of a meeting between two open hearts. What to do, where water meets water and everything changes? (Build a Thermocline Transducer? Bite me.)

So this is an encounter; this is a strange new current. I'm reminded of a line from Les Miserables (part 4, book 8, ch V): It seemed as if they so mingled their souls, that if they had desired to take them back again, it would have been impossible to identify them. 'This one is mine.' 'No, it is mine.' 'I assure you that you are mistaken. It is really I.' 'What you take for you, is I.' Somehow the vines in the picture made me think of that process of entwining and trying to draw out what there was in the beginning, but with the river that flows into the sea, it's even harder than that. The trick is to not fucking try to unravel it, but to enjoy it, mm?


Images of the Two of Cups

Conway's pictured a couple kissing on a beach; the beach was also the setting for the Page of Cups, while the King was deep under sea. There's the sense of this element drawing you deeper and deeper in.

The Scapini deck has the kissing couple, yes, and it also has a caduceus and a lion. It's the lion that sets me off, with the irreversibility; I can't help but think of Atalanta the Huntress, transformed into a lion for loving the right person in the wrong place, but that's another element entirely.

The Two of Cups from the Roots of Asia, flowing and fragile, is possibly the most beautiful card in any deck ever.

Two Of Swords

life drew you, in the dark
two straight lines, to run forever parallel
or to meet at some far-off place
paths crossed in the onward
steel souls touching
-giving off sparks
-making light
-or facing the light, two swords raised
unwelcoming
unbowed.

and do they have names?
left-hand, right-hand
my fear, my anger
my young ideas, my old soul
or one is me, and one is you
i do not know
but they are absolute
like light and dark
like land and water
all opposites must meet
in some liminal space, some shore

(but he tells me, there are no opposites
only halves.)


This is not the place for the conflict averse.

It's two Airs meeting, forcing a change in the weather. It had to happen sometime; the energy of the Ace splitting in two, meeting itself. Most decks stage this meeting on the edge of the sea, dangerous and inevitable and ever-changing. The Two of Swords is about the pure idea living in a world where there is difference and change, and how the idea adapts to cope with that.

What does that feel like? A lot of decks make the Two of Swords seem defensive - a lone warrior by the sea, warning others away from her, ignoring the tide that comes in from behind. She is caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. The Intuitive Tarot is different; she is the sea, and where the swords meet, there is light. Conway's notes say that it is their meeting that makes the light shine above her, but to me it seemed to be beyond her, like she was warding off the light, or readying to become one with it.

Either way, the Two of Swords is a moment when you would otherwise be alone and at the mercy of the elements - but you have your own inner steel, your ethics, the ideas that never leave you. Even if these things aren't in line with each other - and at the edge of the land, they never are - they'll help you. You've just got to balance them, and open your eyes, and live with the sea.

The RWS-based standard Twos of Swords is a blindfolded woman; this links them to the Eight of Swords, who is also often blindfolded but usually unarmed and lost - and to the Wheel, where the Imperatrix sits still and unseeing at the centre of everything. And then there's Justice, which is blind in many depictions but not in tarot, and who holds a single sword aloft, unconflicted and certain. This is not us. Instead, we're with the spark on the edge of the Wheel. We're struggling, and the tide is coming in.


Images of the Two of Swords

The Aquarian Tarot has a beautiful and fairly classic Two Of Swords. The one unusual element here is the girl's nudity. Rather than just waiting on the shore, she's almost overwhelmed by the sea...which is also the only thing that she's wearing. Disaster as clothing. It's all you've got, sometimes.

There's a predictably innovative image from the Osho Zen deck, Schizophrenia: never has indecision looked more perilous. Most decks see the internal conflict embodied in the Two of Swords as inevitable - like the rising tide - but the Osho Zen regards internal conflict as unnatural, and the accompanying text tells you to let go, and dive.

Here's an odd one from the Roots of Asia: the swords are perpendicular to each other, one pointed to the sky, the other marking the waterline. Perhaps as the waters rise, their point of contact changes.

In the Mythic Tarot, we see Agamemnon picking a fight with Athene. Hands up if you think this is a bad idea. This is an unusual one in that the conflicted figure in the centre, Orestes, is unarmed and helpless to deal with the conflict between the two Big Ideas in front of him. He's covering his eyes and trying to hide from the consequences of what's playing out between them, but, just look at the rest of the suit; that kid is getting fucked here.