Day Twenty Two. November 5th. Eight of Wands.

Definition: Sasha Graham says eights represent equilibrium. My friend Lisa Kalayji says maybe “navigation/wayfinding”. Waite says the Eight of Wands represents “motion through the immovable” and “speed towards an end”.

Detail: What is the Elsewhere Eight of Wands presenting?

Bunk beds. The person above is sound asleep. The one below is manifesting a threat to the one above. It feels like they’re transforming bodily into a threat to the one above. It feels like they are coursing with threatening energy. Like, you don’t go to sleep in a room with someone who’s coursing with threatening energy. So it must have risen in them after the person above has fallen asleep. Hmm. This is the “Elsewhere” Tarot. What does this mean? We’re vulnerable. There are people in our lives with inimical potential in them.

Day: Hmm. What does the Elsewhere Eight of Wands say to my life right today? I think it’s pretty clear. I think lots of people in our lives that seem harmless, seem normal, are inimical in metaphysical ways…are barriers to us living a life we deserve…being who we should be. They hold us back. Inflict traumas on us.

Detail: Pamela’s Eight of Wands is eight living wands flying through the air. Waite also says it’s “arrows of love”. Desire. Purpose. There’s no figure. It’s basically a dick pic. But it has super good energy. It’s the dick pic that doesn’t creep you out, coursing with purpose and desire. It sweeps you up in its energy. You feel it in your body. The wands are angling toward the end of their journey, because…they have found you.

It’s really the opposite of the Elsewhere Eight of Wands. Its energy is so good.

What was Pamela’s Eight of Pentacles? The artist trading his talents to the act of commodification. Eights are the direct human purveyance of the energy of the suit. The Eight of Wands is how embodiment of desire and purpose enliven others. It is who we are when we’re pure wand-ness. There’s no figure in it. The Eight of Pentacles is the act of commodification. Time and talent directly into coins.

#tarot #dropm78 #ElsewhereTarot #EightOfWands #Wands

Still plugging away at the #dropm78. I’m only twelve days behind.

Day Twenty One. November 4th. Seven of Wands.

Definition: Sasha Graham says sevens represent mystery. Yeah, I think it’s pretty clear at this point her numerological themes were not ones that were guiding Pamela when she was drawing the cards. Waite says the Seven of Wands represents valor, being assailed and outnumbered, and positional advantage.

Detail: What is the Elsewhere Tarot presenting?

A top-down view of a desk, with a loose manuscript on it, seven pens arrayed, and a cup of coffee. No computer. Hmm. Pens as wands. Writing as the medium of purpose and desire. This is the “Elsewhere” tarot. It’s about worlds. Pens as a tool of making worlds. The loose manuscript isn’t something being read. It’s something being worked on. Words as a tool of making worlds.

Day: I very much resonate with the idea of words as the essence of what makes worlds. The words as I play journaling games make the real imaginal worlds of the experiences I have in them and things I do.

Discovery: What’s on Pamela’s Seven of Wands? A dude backed against the edge of a precipice, defending himself with his living wand against six living wands with unseen wielders coming at him. Pamela’s Seven of Pentacles shows a farmer with a bumper crop, and I wrote about his body language and facial expression showing his weariness and self-doubt about how he’d traded his time and work for the crop. Does the guy here on the Seven of Wands also look doubtful? He certainly looks concerned, and defensive. Is the guy on the Seven of Pentacles right to doubt? Yes. Is this guy on the Seven of Wands right to doubt? Yes. He’s up against a precipice, and outnumbered.

I really don’t see how the RWS Seven of Pentacles means valor, vantage, and success like Waite says. I don’t get that vibe from it at all. Card after card it feels like he’s imposing some meaning that suits him on something Pamela drew with a different assertion.

I am coming to think of the cards as barriers. The self-doubt of the farmer on the Seven of Pentacles is a barrier. It’s keeping him trapped in the activity of farming and selling, the commodification of his time, rather than the pursuit of his truer purpose (whatever it might be) that he feels. The situation of the dude on the Seven of Wands is a barrier. He is on his own, and opposed by a cohort with their own living wands.

Is this the progression of the Minor Arcana? The suits are things we need to cohere in ourselves to attain who we should be, and the cards are barriers that may oppose us on the way. It’s brilliant by Pamela, if so. I’m eager to see how it plays out.

There are no barriers outside of the temporal world. Time. Death. Cycles. Cohering the suits in ourselves is attaining who we should be and transcending the barriers.

#tarot #dropm78 #ElsewhereTarot #SevenOfWands #Wands

Day Twenty. November 3rd. Six of Wands.

Definition: Sasha Graham says sixes represent harmony. Pamela’s Six of Pentacles was alms for the needy, with a strong vibe of a stratified social order of haves and have-nots. Inequity. Waite says the Six of Wands represents victory, and also the bringing of good news.

Detail: What is the Elsewhere Tarot presenting?

A horrific card. Sketchy shadow figures. One resting casually under a mushroom cloud. Others burned into a wall or fence like the nuclear shadows of victims in Hiroshima after the atomic bomb. Other figures on the other side of the fence. It’s about barriers between worlds. It’s about the visibility of horrors of a world to those outside it. It’s about the callousness of those who ignore horrors. You can live in hell and be unaware you’re living in hell.

Day: Hmm. I wrote for the King of Pentacles about my occasional recurring dream of realizing I’m in Hell. But that dream I know I’m in Hell. Does the casual dude on the Elsewhere Six of Wands know he’s in Hell? Is he callous, or unaware? I’ve been thinking that Sasha Graham’s theme of “desire” for the Wands is a little off. I’ve been thinking a more accurate word is “purpose”. The living wand-ness of purpose of being who you should be. The purpose represented by the holy spirit as not halos but flames in classical religious art by El Greco and Giotto and others.

Discovery: Pamela’s Six of Wands is a dude on a horse who’s claimed a wreath with his living wand. And he has a wreath on his head too, so the meaning is clear. He has won the contest. All the victories are his. There are other people in the background with wands, but the main figure on the horse is the celebrated winner.

So, like Waite says, it does represent victory. Historically, laurels are the trophy for victors in athletics, music, and poetry. Later in Rome they were for martial victory. When one person wins, others lose. A laurel is a zero-sum game. The same as the Six of Pentacles. Inequity. Stratification. Though is one figure in the background also wearing a laurel? Maybe?

And I don’t believe the world is truly a zero-sum game. I believe we can create mutual victory. Are the sixes about stratification in a zero-sum world, and then that dude in the back with a laurel himself is Pamela saying she doesn’t believe it either? Hmm.

I don’t see much connection between the Elsewhere card and Pamela’s card. Perhaps the connection is that both zero-sum thinking and callousness are barriers to worlds we truly want.

#tarot #dropm78 #ElsewhereTarot #SixOfWands #Wands

Day Nineteen. November 2nd. Five of Wands.

Definition: Sasha Graham says fives represent “challenge”. Waite says, “gold, gain, opulence.” Seriously…it’s always about money with him. The Four of Wands was about “prosperity”. He says it’s about “disputes” when reversed.

Detail: What is the Elsewhere Tarot presenting?

It’s a space probe in space, with some unconventional antennas. One looks like a rooftop TV antenna from prior to digital TV. One looks like a ship’s mast and a cloth sail. One looks like it comes to a point, like it ends in a knife. One looks like it ends in a sickle blade or a crescent moon. At first I thought it was a satellite, because of how it looks, but it’s too far from Earth, so it’s a space probe.

I can see Sasha Graham’s “challenge”. The exploration of space has long been a great challenge humanity has set itself to. And hmm. Our space probes go out alone. Voyager is nearly one light day out from Earth with dwindling battery power. I loved the plot of the first Star Trek movie as a kid; Voyager 6 went off into space and became more than we ever imagined it could. That’s the essence of the Two of Wands Pamela drew. Hmm. Contending alone with the world to become who you can be? But why does Pamela’s Three come first then. Determination? Taking? Consumption comes before being shaped by your contentions? The Elsewhere thematic progression doesn’t match Pamela’s thematic progression?

Day: What does it mean to me in my life today? I do feel I’m on a path with journaling games, exploring otherworlds, a journey of my own, becoming something completely different than I could be in the temporal world from my contentions within them.

Discovery: I don’t see how Waite gets “gold, gain, opulence” from Pamela’s Five of Wands. She drew a card that’s about disputes. Ten years ago I actually gave Pamela’s Five of Wands to Nate Marcel as a reference for an illustration in The Clay That Woke.

Is Pamela’s card similarly a game? Or is it a real dispute? Boys brandishing and competing with their living wands? It’s certainly a thing boys do. Pamela’s Five of Pentacles was about poverty and separation from possible help. And the Elsewhere Five of Wands is a probe alone in space, separated from its origin. Is Pamela’s Five of Wands also about separation? It doesn’t vibe like team game. It feels like every boy for himself. They all have desires. No one is aiding anyone else in their pursuits.

Twos are about not having the energy — being able to see and want it, but not being in a position to have it. Threes are about control. Fours are about being affected by the essential energy of the suit. Fives are about how it separates us from each other.

#tarot #dropm78 #ElsewhereTarot #FiveOfWands #Wands

So, I’ve been writing about the cards in my journal, but I’m behind in that a few days, and further behind in typing them up and posting them. I’ll try to catch up. You wouldn’t read five of them if I posted them today though, I don’t think.

Day Eighteen. November 1st. Four of Wands.

Definition: Sasha Graham says fours represent “stability”. But she says eights are “equilibrium,” so what’s the distinction? Waite says country life, repose, concord, harmony, prosperity, peace.

Detail: What is the Elsewhere Tarot presenting?

It’s two figures out in the sea watching the sunset (or sunrise) and a great…sand castle in the foreground that they must have made. It has shells and stones and sticks used in its construction. What does this represent? Creativity for its own sake. And the fact they’re looking at the sun, acknowledging how it enlivens them, and how it did during their beach day, it’s almost anti- of Pamela’s The Sun, which always feels to me like taking for granted its intentional gift to you that enlivens you. These two figures on the Elsewhere Four of Wands, one with a dark head and white body and one with a white head and dark body, had a great day, and have a relationship with the sun, and are connected despite their differences, capable of free making together. It’s ultimately frivolous. A sand castle. It’s play. But it’s still great. I have long felt the Sun as my significator, representing my capacity to be enlivening to others, and recognizing that my doings are consumed without awareness or gratitude. The figures on this card recognize and have an appreciation and relationship with the sun. I kind of love it.

Day: Hmm. A day of free creativity. I don’t really ever get a full day of that, but I get hours of it at times. Gratitude and a relationship with the enlivening forces in my life? I do my best to have that too. Mostly my creativity is pretty culturally purposeful, in contrast to the card, but not entirely so. It’s a great card. And maybe it’s a reminder that creativity is the basis of an affinity we need with others who might seem different otherwise.

Discovery: So…Pamela’s Four of Wands. A living garland strung between wands. Two women holding raised bouquets of flowers.There’s a moat with a bridge to an archway into a lovely medieval city with conical rooftops in the background. It’s a lovely, cloudless, sunny day. I’m not getting “stability” from it in a significant way. So if Pamela was following numerological themes with her cards, what could fours mean? The Four of Pentacles was a dude hoarding his coins, separated from others. Is the Four of Wands also a kind of separation? A joyful one? Celebration that others can’t partake in? I don’t feel that. The city in the background is pretty great too.I think this is just a card about what wands do to your emotional state. The women are alive with…desire? Why are the early wands so meh for Pamela and this one so free? How can it be the same essential energy? It’s pretty much the most joyful card so far across all the pentacles and the early wands. And there’s definitely a vibe affinity with the Elsewhere Four of Wands. But what’s the energy of the wands? Is desire the wrong word? The dude on Pamela’s Two of Wands wants to submit to the world and be made, but it’s not a particularly alive and embodied act. The dude on her Three of Wands wants to be made by mastering the world.

So…

Threes are about control. Fours are about being affected by the essential energy of the suit. Twos are about not having the energy — being able to see and want it, but not being in a position to have it.

#tarot #dropm78 #ElsewhereTarot #FourOfWands #Wands

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?

#tarot #dropm78 #ElsewhereTarot #ThreeOfWands #Wands

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.

#tarot #dropm78 #ElsewhereTarot #TwoOfWands #Wands

We’re into the Wands! I’m excited.

Day Fifteen. October 29th. Ace of Wands.

Definition: The traditional interpretation is creation, enterprise, and the virility behind them. Also, according to Waite, money and inheritance. It’s always about money and heritance isn’t it? If you have money, you can do things in the world. Sasha Graham says wands are about desire. I want to write about desire. I want to write about metaphysical power and how to wield it. But for Pamela, like the pentacles were about the challenges of money, I sense the wands will be about the challenges of desire.

Detail: What is the Elsewhere Tarot presenting?

A figure in a robe, at a table from which waves of power are spreading outward, driving back large, shadowy, menacing creatures with sharp claws and sharp beaks. The figure feels to me like the Magician from Pamela’s deck at his table outside. But Aces are about beginnings. How is this an Ace? It’s light into the darkness. In the beginning there was light. “Then God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. And God saw that light was good. Then he separated the light from darkness.”

The shadow creatures though, what’s up with the five stars above that they’re connected to by a long tendril? They’re not just a threatening darkness. They’re cosmic in some way. They are a cosmic resistance to the figure’s metaphysical power.

Day: Hmm. How does this relate to me today? A world that’s inherently, metaphysically inimical. That’s bleak. I’ve had a recurring dream in my life, maybe a half dozen times I remember since I was a tween, of being in the house where I grew up and seeing through the picture window that the world is all tinted a sickly orange, like the orange lens effect they use in cop shows to tell you a flashback scene is happening in Mexico, or Miami, and realizing the outer world was actually Hell. Somehow through no action of mine, no particular sin, I was in Hell. Is that what the Elsewhere wands are about? Being in an inherently, cosmically, inimical world and finding a path of metaphysical power against it? It’s not exactly writing about desire, but I’ll take it. It’s not bad.

Discovery: So, Pamela’s Ace of Wands? A glowing hand from a cloud, like the glowing hand on the Ace of Swords, but this time holding a living wand with stems of green leaves on it and green leaves falling from it. And the landscape below is a castle on a far hill above a river, with a purple mountain range on the horizon. The landscape doesn’t seem as telling as the path and gate on the Ace of Pentacles.

Does the wand represent desire? It’s fairly phallic, with a knobbed head. It’s not a thin switch, or slim black-and-white stage magician’s wand. It’s more of a living and natural thing. Metaphysical power is natural. Desire is natural. I can see how this wand represents virility.

And I do get a feeling it has some relation to the landscape. Did it give rise to the hills? Give rise to the castle? Make the river flow? Maybe that’s reading too much into it. But I don’t get a sense that Pamela’s landscape is inimical, so if her wands are about some challenge it’s a different sphere of challenge than what the Elsewhere wands are concerned with.

#tarot #dropm78 #ElsewhereTarot #AceOfWands #Wands