Day Sixteen. October 30th. Two of Wands.
Definition: Sasha Graham says wands are about desire. My Mastodon tarot friend Lisa Kalayji says maybe “motion/movement” instead. I want to write about desire. Waite says riches, fortune, magnificence.
Detail: What is the Elsewhere Tarot presenting?
What is this thing? An exploding grain silo? Antennas on the ground? Is that a vortex in the clouds? Is it some kind of rocket being launched? Why the explosion at the mid-point? It certainly has a grain silo quality to me, and the openings feel like the features of a scarecrow, but I don’t want to over-interpret aspects of the Elsewhere cards that I can’t be sure about. What I’m sure about is the explosion feels designed and intentional, maybe controlled by technology represented by the antennas. It doesn’t feel like the tower/silo structure is being destroyed. It feels like the explosion is causing a separation between head and body, and maybe like the head is being launched.
And this is the “Elsewhere” Tarot!. Is the vortex in the sky a portal to another world? And this is the ignition/separation of a launch into it?
Day: What does it mean to me in my life today? I’ve been entering world after world playing journaling games. Each experience begins with desire that overcomes inertia, separates me cognitively from my body, and launches me into a life in an otherworld for a time. Except I don’t think it does separate me. I think entering otherworlds is a bodily experience. But maybe the creator of the Elsewhere Tarot thinks otherwise, that it’s a cognitive separation to enter imaginal otherworlds.
Discovery: What did Pamela draw? A merchant? An explorer? Gazing onto a globe he’s holding. It’s an aspiring explorer envisioning what he will do. Is it desire? It’s not a sexual desire. It’s knowing that we are made by worlds and aspiring to find oneself, to be made in the world. Both the Two of Pentacles are about wanting to find one’s self in the world. The question here is, are your desire, your advantages, your resources, your capacities, equal to the vastness, the challenges, the unknowns of the world? Well, look at that rose + cross + lily on the stone block of the wall near the figure’s feet. Roses represent heart, crosses represent spirit and belief, and lilies represent mind. Waite told Pamela to represent the heart, spirit, and mind needed by the man desiring to be made by the world as roses, lilies, and a cross.
So the idea of launching oneself into a world feels like the theme of both Pamela’s and the Elsewhere Two of Pentacles.