Sword, Cup & Chariot

[qos]

One of the cautionary aspects of the Queen of Swords is the tendency to use the sword of discernment to divide things into binary, mutually-exclusive elements, to reduce complex situations or choices to an either/or condition. The world isn't that simple, nor are our own gifts and talents.

Longtime readers know all about my Cups and Swords dilemma. My primary way of dealing with things, of understanding things, is to use my rational mind to gain insight, to process with logic and rationality. Over the years I've grown to understand the importance of my feelings, of my gut, to understand, but they have less value to me than my intellect. Those are in the realm of Cups, and I don't entirely trust them.


At root, I have a far greater fear of falling prey to excessive, irrational emotion than I do to overcompensating with rationality, logic, and self-control. Yes, me and Spock: it's not that we don't have strong emotions, it's that we have an extreme distaste for the faults and flaws of emotional excess. (southernselkie can tell you: this goes way back in me, even to elementary school.)

The problem is that somewhere beneath/behind/beyond my highly developed intellect, I have an honest-to-goddess intuition. I have depths and talents I've scarcely dared to touch, because I've been both afraid that they will betray me and afraid that they will not, but that they will show me things that I don't want to see. Or that I won't be able to discern the authentic messages from the fantasies.

Conversations back in June with _storyteller_ and vsmallgoddess prompted me to think beyond my usual tarot associations and venture into the Major Arcana. My favorite of the Majors is the World, which I call "The Dancer in the Void." It's what I feel I am on the road to becoming, the glorious climax of 'the rounding voyage' that begins with the Descent into darkness.

But right now I'm focusing on the Chariot. I'm used to thinking of the Chariot as signifying strong, intense energy charging toward goals: both powerful and potentially dangerously reckless (someone once described it as "The Captain Kirk card" -- and how in the world did two Trek comparisons get into this entry?). But I've come to see it as the healing energy that counters the weakness of the Queen of Swords: what the sword divides, the Charioteer brings back together in complementary harmony and power/potency.

Tarot artists show many different kinds of creatures pulling the chariot, but there are always two of them. And I'm coming to understand that they represent differing but complementary powers: yin and yang, intellect and emotion, rationality and intuition, and etc. You could ride either beast and get where you're going -- but if you can harness them, drive both together in a skillful manner, you'll go much faster, much farther.

But it's a challenge, because the two beasts don't always get along. The charioteer has to be not just skilled, but fair, not favoring one over the other, nor letting one bully the other.

And that's where I need to focus my energy right now: on harness the Cups and Swords elements together within me, not privileging one over the other.

And I find it fascinating that the union of Cup and Sword is the symbol for the hieros gamos, the sacred marriage of complementary opposites that is the source of all creation.

If I can create that sacred marriage within myself, what marvelous things might come into being?