Duality & the Writing Process

Whenever I lay out the tarot cards to do a reading on myself, two identifier cards, or court cards, consistently come up: the Queen of Swords and the Queen of Cups. These two cards are representative of the two dual parts of my thought processes.

The Queen of Swords keeps her emotions in check, relying on logic to make decisions. She is apt to be intelligent, organized, and adept at noticing and expressing sarcasm and irony.

The Queen of Cups, in contrast, is focused on the world of emotions, prone to discounting logic in favor of her romantic ideals. She tends to specialize in poetry and caring gestures in social contexts.

These two seemingly incongruous aspects of myself work in symphony to aid me in my main pursuit: writing.

The Queen of Cups gathers material. Through her, I observe people and the emotions they inspire in each other and in me. She notes the lovers standing on the street corner and the soft way they don't look at each other, but allow the backs of their hands to brush. She takes in the scent of mint and rhapsodizes on the symbolic representation of virtue. She heeds the wistful slant of light on the lawn and connects it to the fading nature of love. The Queen of Cups is the portion of my though processes where my stories are conceived.

The Queen of Swords spins the material. She notes the irony in the romance, breaks down the scenes that the Queen of Cups produces and finds the crucial fissure that makes them shiny, new, significant. She finds it hilarious that the lovers have seen each other in the most intimate way, but cannot look at each other in public. She laughs at the inconsistent definitions of virtue that society offers us. She cynically observes that although love may fade like the light, there's always a new day, and always a new love. The Queen of Swords is the portion of my thought processes where my stories are articulated.

I could not write without this duality. It can be maddening, to see life from two such disparate perspectives, but where the different points of view intersect, I can produce beautiful works of art.

Personality/Soul Card

Over the past couple days, I've been reading Mary Greer's Who Are You in the Tarot?, a fun exploration of the major themes and factors in our lives through a numerological analysis of birth dates and card relations, or constellations.

So, last night, I ran the calculations that gave me what Mary Greer calls my "Personality" card, or the card that represents the lessons I will be driven to learn throughout my life, my "Soul" card, or the card that represents the qualities that I will use throughout my life, and my "Hidden Factor" card, or the challenges I will face, or even the "shadow self" that I do not wish to face.

I'll show you how I arrived at the numbers I did using a different birth date before telling you the numbers I actually got.

Month:        4
Day:          28
+ Year:  1986
               2018

2 + 0 + 1 + 8 = 11   (Personality card = Justice)
1 + 1 = 2                  (Soul Card = The High Priestess)
 What other card's number adds up to 2?  20, Judgment. (Hidden Factor = Judgment)




Anyhoo, I followed this process, and the following is the result:

Personality Card - The Lovers
Soul Card - The Lovers
Hidden Factor - The Devil

The Lovers card is representative of both the lessons I will face in my life and the qualities I will use to face them. How apt-tastic. As for what this actually means, I will write later.

Card Dialogue with the Lovers (Addressed to the Serpent)

My dialogue is bolded. 
The Serpent's dialogue is not.
Got it? 
Yep.
Well, let's go.


Q: What is the significance of the arrow symbol in the card? 
 A: It's what you aim for. Mr. Marchetti claims that it's Cupid's arrow, but I do not find this is so. This is the path you need to take, aiming to find knowledge (the apple) through the relationships of people and ideas. Your path to knowledge is through contrast, duality, and dichotomies.

Q: How can I use this symbol in my life right now?
A: Figure out what you want to aim for. You know you want knowledge. Hell, you want knowledge of many different things, some of which conflict with each other. In that way, you are an NT personality. You crave to know. But do you crave to know how to do, or do you crave to know who you are?
Both. I will learn who I am by what I know how to do.
Ah, except that you can learn to do anything. You've said it yourself. If you want it and choose to work for it, you can achieve it. Your path to knowledge is through relationships. Do you want to know how things relate, or do you want to know how to change and manipulate the relationships between people and ideas, or do you aim simply to understand the relationships?
All things connect. All things relate. Understanding the relationships between various people and ideas would be powerful - it would be the equivalent of understanding the world. However, I'm not sure that would be fulfilling. It is not enough to simply have knowledge, one must make use of it. So, I suppose I want to understand the relationships between things, but I also need to know how to manipulate those relationships to my advantage.

Q: Why am I so attracted by this card?
A: Because, at your heart, you are about relationships. You are about people, and the junction between opposing ideas. Male/Female, Darkness/Light, knowledge/ignorance, virtue/evil.... the duality fascinates you. At the same time, all you've ever wanted was love. Okay, not all. You also crave knowledge. If you were Eve in the garden, you might not have waited for me to offer you the apple. You'd have plucked it down as soon as he told you that it was the Fruit, and that it would grant you awareness. Maybe the fact that the fruit was forbidden would have given you momentary pause, but only for a moment. But think. One has to have knowledge before one can truly experience love. Otherwise, the relationship means next to nothing. You are attracted to The Lovers because it encompasses your thought processes, your inner conflicts, your ambitions, and your means, all at once. And all in the perfect, neat little symbols that are emblematic of the religion that you have so violently rejected. Apt little bit of dualistic irony, that.

Q: How can I best face the problem or challenge shown here? 
A: Is there a problem in this card?
Well, the lovers are disconnected. 
No, they only appear to be. They are two halves of a whole, a choice that is not really a choice. You have neither lover without the other, neither half of the heart without the other half, even if sometimes you don't see the whole. The whole is always there. You just have to figure out where the connection is. Hint: In this depiction, it's in their kiss, or through the arrow, aiming for knowledge. Knowledge will show you how anything connects, because all is, ultimately, one.

Q: How can I triumph through the qualities depicted in this card?
A: Explore everything. Think critically. Love to the fullest. Yes, I know you're an incorrigible flirt - that means nothing in this case. Don't be afraid to build relationships, darling. Relationships are how you find meaning in your life. They are how you acquire knowledge, that which you most desire.

Q: Why did I choose to dialogue with you, Mr. Serpent, and what do you have to teach me?
A: Well, I'd think what I have to teach you would be pretty obvious by now. Or haven't I taught you anything already?
Of course you have. Nothing I didn't already know on some level, but you've taught me something.
Well, duh, you already knew it. You know everything on some level, even if you don't want to know it. There's the knowledge/ignorance dichotomy I mentioned earlier. I have to teach you about the whole of who you are, and that you can't hold yourself back. You cannot be alone, SD. You need to engage the world and build relationships.
So, why you? Why not the wings, or the apple, or the arrow, or Adam or Eve?
Because you identify with me, of course. In some ways, you see yourself as the Serpent. "The Serpent winds on...." I am the only sentient symbol in this card that happens to be in motion. I am the third party, offering knowledge to you as I offered the Fruit to Eve. At the same time you yearn to acquire knowledge, you yearn to be in motion, to use the knowledge to change yourself, and furthermore, to change others. You chose to talk to me because I am at once your greatest enemy and your greatest mentor - a dynamic that you have noted in yourself. You are not simply Eve, more caught up in Adam than in the apple. You are not the arrow, aimed by someone else. You are definitely not Adam, blindly accepting what Eve hands you. And you are not the apple, knowledge itself. No, I am the orchestrator of this particular scene, using knowledge and relationships to make things happen, and then moving on. And you, my dear, are a control freak.

Q: What do I need to share openly about myself?
A: All of yourself. You need to learn to show all sides of yourself. Not alternating, as you are prone to do. Simply be. Show your quirks to the world, and build those relationships, that holistic network that you know exists. You can be more than a happy memory, SD. You can forge connections between people, between ideas, and you can make things happen.

Q: What choice(s) do I have to make?
A: Whether or not you're going to get off your duff and join the world. Whether you are brave enough to be yourself. I think you are. I think you will choose to make connections, and to make a place for yourself in the midst of the web of relationships. You have to. You want the knowledge too much. You want to offer that knowledge to others too much.

Q: How can I accept others for whom and what they are?
A: By remembering that they are not one-dimensional. I said earlier that neither half of the heart exists without the other half, even if you can't always see the connection. If you want to know people, and accept them, then you have to remember that you aren't seeing everything, and then you have to look for what isn't readily visible. Find the other half of the heart.

Q: What do I want and need from relationships?
A: Well, screw, darling. That's a change of topic. You need balance, obviously, someone to keep you from assuming that you understand everything about the world and him. Someone who will make you continuously search for the connection. Not saying you have to work at it all the time - you just can't get lazy. If you get lazy, you're not learning anything. I suppose what I'm saying is that relationships need to be challenging for you. They need to embody the dichotomies that you are so fascinated with. Your current fellow's pretty good in that respect - he is a man of contrasts, and you're almost always going to be trying to find the threads that connect him. Shout out from the Serpent: Keep this one around.
Gee, thanks for the unsolicited commentary on my boyfriend.
It was really more a commentary on you. I have no clue if you're good for him, or if you fulfill his needs. I'm just saying that you can learn a lot from him, if you can just keep building the relationship.

Q: What opposites can I embrace?
A: All opposites. Remember, keep looking for the other halves of hearts. They are frequently dualistic in nature, simultaneously opposite and the same. You cannot learn anything from one-sided relationships, SD. The beauty is less in the parts and more in the whole.

Well, that was enlightening and far too verbose. Thank you for your time, Mr. Serpent.
No problem. After all, I'm just hanging out on a card in a tarot deck, hoping that the arrow gets stuck in the apple and doesn't scrape any skin off me. Although, I suppose I am due to shed my skin....
Ah, more references to change, knowledge, and progress.
What can I say? I'm all symbolic and stuff. *winks*

Gateway to the Divine Tarot

Legacy of the Divine Tarot came today.

Up to that point, my day had not been going well. I'd gotten little sleep the night before, my migraine had ramped back up from a low five to a high seven, and I'd spent most of the morning discovering that the academic hoops I will have to jump through to maintain my standing at my university to be far more numerous than I'd originally anticipated.

I was fighting panic with virtual retail therapy when my mother called up the stairs.

"Your package from Amazon is here!"

I perked up, immediately abandoning my computer on my bedspread to scramble down the stairs and out the front door, ignoring my lack of attire suited to being in public at 3 PM. The brown box was, indeed, on the stoop, small and inconspicuous and the most exciting thing to happen to me in the past week.

More exciting than I knew.

The package contained a book, in addition to the cards I expected: Gateway to the Divine Tarot. I didn't think much of it at first; it is not unusual for decks to come with companion books beyond the traditional LWB.

I set the book on a shelf as I returned to my room, tearing the deck free from its plastic wrapping and settling onto the bed to examine the cards in all their tangible detail.

The deck was larger than I remembered, the colors darker, and the artwork more ominous. But the energy was still there. If nothing else, the connection was as I remembered it.

The artwork, I realized, was almost steampunk in design. There was a rationalized romanticism to the deck - all sleek gleaming metal, sharp lines softened by jewel-tones and unmistakably pagan markings. Each card contained the arcane symbols that have come to denote my life in the past few years - the runes, the colors, the serpents, the apples, the crystals, the wings, the elements, the zodiac, the planets, the angels, the deities, and so many more. I was drawn in.

Hours later, after I had contented myself with the feel of the new deck, I picked up the book.

I was surprised to discover that it started off with what appeared to be a story, as opposed to the standard droning introduction about the history of tarot and the system of symbolism the author chose for the deck. Barely interested, I started reading, skimming through the first chapter regarding a dream that actually occurred. When the author began to delineate a sketch of an advanced civilization in its final years, taking steps to preserve itself, I slowed, enjoying what seemed to be a fanciful construction. It was not until he began to reveal how he discovered this "fanciful construction" that I began to take the story seriously.

With a notion that what I was about to read was going to change my life, I stopped. I set down the book. I went downstairs and prepared chai tea, adding sugar, milk, and, on a whim, cinnamon, nutmeg, and a tiny drop of peppermint extract.

I settled back on the bed, my carnelian heart on one knee, my cup of tea on the other, and let a history, a series of truths simultaneously alien and familiar, unspool from the pages into my conscious.

What is now, has been before, and will be again. We invent nothing - we discover everything. We change as we have changed before, using our pasts to propel us into our futures. We learn nothing that we are not yet ready to learn, and we will be confronted again and again with lessons until we have internalized them. These are the fundamental truths of tarot, magick, and life.

I suspect that I have far more to learn from the Legacy of the Divine Tarot than I ever had reason to believe.

The Fool, The Emperor, and The Hanged Man

One of my major vices is fan-fiction, particularly the Dramione ship from Harry Potter.  Upon occasion, I stumble across a fic that is as compelling as the original work by JK Rowling, or incorporates elements of tarot.

The Fool, The Emperor, and the Hanged Man, by ianthe_waiting, is both. If you're over the age of 18, appreciative of good fanfiction, and wish to see a well-written and compelling use of tarot in pop-culture, check it out here. Be warned however - this is not a fluffy, happy fic. It's dark, disturbing, and dynamic, definitely not for those who aren't prepared to face the more diabolic elements of the world.

New Deck!

I just ordered the Legacy of the Divine Tarot off of Amazon. I'm verra excited.

I first saw Legacy of the Divine last Halloween, at the Bag Lady's Tarot Night. I don't remember whose deck it was - I just remember seeing the lovely colors and daring lines and feeling compelled by them. The cards were bright, bold, strong - the owner called them "masculine." Personally, I prefer to think of them as powerfully feminine. Regardless, the cards shall be mine! (*insert Ben-style evil laugh here*)

My hands practically itch for them.

Of course, it helps that I'm currently stranded at my parent's house, without a tarot deck. That makes the $20 for a long-time temptation much easier to swallow.

Now the deck just has to get here.

An Interpretation of the Lovers for BGS

The Lovers. From the Divine Tarot.

When talking about my life, I frequently use a deck of tarot cards as a point of reference. As rich repositories of symbols, both mundane and arcane in nature, the cards supply an abundance of ideas for anyone to relate to. Love, vengeance, solitude, socialization, sin, redemption, obstacles, victories.... All of these concepts and more are in the cards. I identify with various cards, depending on my mood and what's on my mind. My general personality? That's the Queen of Swords. My best quality? Strength.  Something I shouldn't do? The Tower. A reminder to stay strong, be social, and try new things? The Knight of Wands. My main interests in life? The Lovers.

Many people with so much as a passing familiarity with the tradition of tarot recognize the Lovers card when it appears. Lay it out on the table, whether on television or in a real life reading, and the conclusions are instant: Love! Marriage! Happiness! These conclusions aren't necessarily incorrect; there is simply far more to the Lovers than popular culture implies.

Most often, the Lovers represents relationships and communication. The implication is usually romantic, but not always. The relationship can be friendly or familial, and the communication can be taking place between any given set of people. From a young age, I have been fascinated with the way people relate to each other - or fail to relate to each other. I struggled to divine the reasons for social dynamics in my writing, with stories about love, friendship, and social hierarchies. I strove not only to understand interpersonal relationships, but also to communicate that understanding to others, a drive that has informed my career goals.

The Lovers also represents opposition. To cite a cliche, "opposites attract;" to clarify a cliche, "opposites interact." Male and female, yin and yang, light and dark, reason and romance, yes and no - all these dichotomies and others beside are suggested by the Lovers. This card notes the co-existence of opposites, the attraction opposites hold to each other, and the way opposites rely on each other to create a harmonic whole. Frequently, I find myself thinking in such terms, turning my experiences and knowledge to resolving (or at least acknowledging) the conflicts and compliments inherent in both relationships and human nature. "Duality," "balance," and "choice" are all words I am fascinated with.

One of the most frequently overlooked facets of the Lovers is the emphasis on learning through experience and the corresponding ascendence to a higher plane of awareness (or, alternately, the corresponding fall from grace). The mythos of Adam and Eve is heavily linked to this card, and it is almost entirely up to interpretation how that Biblical tradition bears on the meaning of this particular facet. I acknowledge this duality, not only for the sake of the interpretation of the card, but for the sake of the interpretation of my interests. I believe that knowledge and experience (listening to the snake or biting the apple, if you will) lead to progress and betterment of myself as a human being, a concept in which I firmly believe. I am interested primarily in positive growth, both for myself and for the world. However, simultaneously, the very things that I believe to lend themselves to upward motion, to ascendence, can be interpreted by others as contributing to a downward spiral, to a fall.

My interests lay in the Lovers: in the dynamics of relationships, in the act of communication, in the concepts of duality, choice, and balance, and in knowledge, learning, and upward motion - and in the controversies inherent in all of the above.