four of swords
Cardinal air: chaos magic, willpower, telepathy.
FOUR OF SWORDS
The Four of Swords is a loss-of-innocence romance.
The lamb sits quietly waiting for the sky to fall, waiting to feel the salty taste of blood on her tongue, the raw lanolin stink of shearing.
She can prevent this only with her mind, so she needs to fill it with glitter and rain, with arctic shimmer. If she is still, and silent, if she doses right, she can stay safe.
If you can exist in the eye of the storm, you can control the swords with the wild crystals in your mind.
LIBRA III + FOUR OF SWORDS
This card correlates with the third decan of Libra. You can learn more about the decans here. And you can find out how I am working with these micro-zodiacal containers here.
This decan is ruled by Jupiter and Mercury, and there is a feeling of extremity here – there is an excess of scale, pace, and movement – but this creates the conditions for magic out of chaos, for telepathy, endurance, and willpower as we surrender to the storm.
Austin Coppock says of this decan that success ‘requires gyroscopic stability, for the center of balance is always moving, and those who would walk this face must follow the center, however erratic its motion may seem.’
T. Susan Chang, quoting a line from W. B. Yeats’ poem ‘The Second Coming’ describes this decan, and the Four of Swords, as ‘The Widening Gyre’. She invokes the near-miraculous feats of aerialists as belonging to this card.
The bigger the mass of the thing being shifted, the more resistance. And from a tightrope artist's point of view, less shifting is obviously good. The artist's balancing pole effectively increases the artist's mass, so he has more resistance to spinning around the wire. He is using physics to trick gravity into thinking he's ever so much larger than he actually is, thereby making it ever so much easier for him to balance. (Sound like a massive friendly giant planet you know?)
The aerialist reminds us of the possibilities of this card, just as the telepathic lamb controlling the swords above her head: it is possible to wield mass, force, and energies that feel chaotic in the service of a singular goal.
Finally, Maeg Keane, talking about Jupiter, says that:
When a potted plant grows, it may outgrow its container. That doesn’t mean the plant is “too much.” It means it needs a bigger pot. The transfer to the new container is stressful for the plant. Its roots are exposed. It has to get re-acclimated. The plant has to find its place in its new context. But if the plant stayed in the smaller pot, it wouldn’t have been stable at all. Growth is stabilizing even if we don’t feel secure while we’re doing it. It’s a vulnerable moment to be as big as you are. It’s vulnerable to move from one container to another.
Storm Clouds, the name I have chosen for this atmosphere, is about growing into a bigger pot, achieving miraculous feats, and wielding chaos for magic.
TAROT PROMPTS
Which part of your current creative project needs a bigger pot?
How can you protect the roots as you transfer it?
What does the new container feel like?
How can you feel stable as you grow?