Day Seventeen. October 31st. Three of Wands.
Definition: Sasha Graham says threes represent birth. My tarot friend Lisa on Mastodon says maybe “generation”. Waite says enterprise, trade, commerce. Everything in the temporal world is about money and commerce to Waite. Selling your crops, getting paid for your craft, for your work, building an estate, all up and down the Pentacles, and now riches, fortune, and enterprise, trade, and commerce on the Two and Three of Wands. It makes sense if we’re talking about a temporal world made of the commodification of the mystery of life, but it’s not the vibe most tarot people bring to their interpretations. It’s more like if life-hack, entrepreneurism, crypto and productivity dude bloggers had invented tarot.
Detail: What is the Elsewhere Tarot presenting?
A figure interacting with a large …evidence board? Not a flowchart. A relationship diagram? Words and phrases on it: observe, 10:23, I’m so sorry, Why?, Yes, ?, No, a peace symbol. It’s an effort to understand the world. It’s an effort to see the world’s patterns and rules and take guidance from them. It’s a desire for mastery of the world and its situations through observation, analysis, perception of patterns and connections.
Day: The human brain is a pattern recognition machine. Pattern recognition kept us alive as a species during our early evolution. Are these circumstances safe? Why are the birds so quiet? Should I drink from the water hole with the rotting carcass in it? Nowadays so many of us are all-in on pattern recognition. Day traders trying to eke out a small margin from stock transactions. Hard core board gamers trying to train their brains to juggle resources and recognize opportunities. Few succeed. Some of the most unbeatable board gamers I know aren’t even close to winning in their real world jobs, or with their money. I’m on a different path in recent years, thinking about how the challenges of the temporal world are rigged, constantly shifting, and unbeatable, and the only way to something better for humanity is to make other worlds that make us who we should be instead. I’ve been deep into journaling games that let my unconscious tell me who I truly am.
Discovery: Pamela drew a Three of Wands that’s super similar to what she drew for the Two of Wands. It’s another well-dressed dude gazing off into the ocean, surrounded by a few living wands that aren’t particularly integral to who he is. The figures on both cards seem barely aware of their wands. Hmm. So, what’s different here? Three ships in the water. And is there armor on his right arm? This guy has a…masculinity…authority to him? The circlet on his head. The armor. What is the checkered pattern on his cloak? A sash representing rank, or that he’s from a notable family? He has a military vibe. He’s looking at those ships from vantage. There’s mastery in that. Are they military ships? It is his desires that direct them, and his desires are more military than the guy on Pamela’s Two of Wands. He knows more who he is. The guy on the Two is dreaming of actualization in the world. He wants to be made by the world. He’s more of an Anthony Bourdain. This guy intends to be made by his actions to claim the world for himself.
Neither of them though are as connected to their wands as I want to be. And I don’t think they can be truly actualized if they aren’t. And does Pamela know this? Did she draw them like this intentionally?