Queen of Swords

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As soon as I read the question I felt rage surging through me, and could feel my body coil to attack the people standing around me.

Wolfling and uncrowned_king not real?

All the struggles and triumphs of 46 years nothing more than a dream?

Would I be 46 years old with no actual experience of life, just a mirage?


I have to think that if I were much younger it wouldn't affect me quite as intensely. If I were a teen, or perhaps into my early twenties, it wouldn't be so bad. But I've worked too hard to get where I am today -- and there are too many years behind me to make up for if it turns out to all have been a lie.

I just finished reading The Amateur: An Independent Life of Letters, a collection of personal essays by Wendy Lesser.

I had picked it up hoping, even expecting, to find inspiration for my own efforts to build an "independent life" -- but although several of the essays were engaging in their own right, my ultimate reaction to the book was one of alienation rather than inspiration.

Lesser lives in the kind of world I had expected to grow up to inhabit: one of academia, literary readings and publications, frequent visits to the theater, opera, dance stage and concert hall. She writes of Berkeley professors, London theatrical directors, MacArthur grant winning poets.

What was most interesting to me was that I felt no envy of her life. It would be nice to have her level of affluence, yes. It would be nice to partake more in the life of academia than I do. But overall: no. That's not the life I want.

Like her, I want to publish. I want to teach. But I want to live a life that has more rawness and passion than her neat, civilized essays express. I want to engage with people whose spiritual lives have urgency behind them. I would rather spend a weekend with ordeal masters than literary critics. I would rather publish the raw anguish of my grieving, the Void, and my descents than her observations of literary life and folk in Berkeley and New York.

It can be frustrating to find myself expressing insights in negative terms (ie: I don't want that), but this is an important confirmation. In one sense, the life I thought I would have has escaped me; but it's also true that the life I thought I would have is no longer the life I want.

Honestly -- and have I ever thought about this way before? -- if I had ever truly wanted that life, wouldn't I have put more focused energy and effort into actually achieving it? Goodness knows I have invested heart and soul into those few things I've truly and deeply wanted.

The 8 of Swords card is one which has haunted me for a long time. The traditional image is that of a blindfolded woman with bound hands standing within a thicket of swords. At first glance, it looks like she's a helpless prisoner. . . but in most traditionally drawn decks, the Robin Wood included, it becomes clear that the bonds are not tight. At the very least, she is surrounded by swords which could easily cut through them. There would be some risk, as she is blindfolded, but her remaining a prisoner is largely a consequence of her own choice.

The Ancestral Tarot (which I discovered through queenofhalves) puts an interesting slant on the usual imagery. In that card, a Japanese woman stands in a doorway at one end of a bridge with swords on each side, her face half-hidden by a fan. The way out is clear -- but the swords are a warning of the consequences she will face if she ventures beyond her assigned boundaries.





I've been living with these images -- and those of other 8's of Swords -- for the past week, as I take a closer and closer look at the ways I have been my own greatest opponent, my own persistent oppressor. Whenever I feel myself cringing back from a step I know I should take in order to advance my goals and dreams, I think of this card and try to be very, very clear with myself about what exactly I am afraid will happen if I go forward.

Most of the time the fears are phantoms, and facing them is enough to make them dissolve. Sometimes it takes a bit more work, but I have yet to find a situation in which the "threat" some part of my mind is afraid of has its roots anywhere but in my own issues.

My mind is both what holds me back and my tool for escape. It all depends on whether or not I'm willing to take responsibility for cutting through the bonds of illusion.

In addition to simply being a gorgeous piece of artwork, the 6 of Swords in the Gilded Tarot differs in a very important way from the 6 of Swords of the Robin Wood tarot.






The Robin Wood card shows a person as a passenger in a boat being moved forward by a spiritual guide of some kind. The Gilded Tarot shows a person poling her own boat. The large moon in the background suggests openness to intuition and spirit, but she is still making an effort and taking responsibility for getting where she needs to be.

Both cards speak of journeys and progress under the influence of spirit. Only one shows the person doing something to advance the journey.

I've always loved the RW 6 of Swords. It spoke to me of my own Journeys -- but it's also a vivid image of how I've let myself be moved by outside forces (not always Spirit!) more often than by my own will.

[x-posted]

My post about death led to a long and tough conversation with my teacher about my need to embrace the upper world as well as the underworld. (Tough for me because all my grief came up, not because she was in any way harsh with me.)

I've never been a goth, never someone who romanticized death, never someone who was morbid. But it's been more than a year now since Lohain's death, more than a year since I started working the Underworld path as a priestess -- and that time has not been balanced by very much joy or satisfaction in my daily life.

( Ascending Is Hard )
There is a part of me that does wish I was in the otherworld with Lohain. That's the bald truth of it. But that's not an option, and I need to be at peace with that, not simply resigned. There is much Work for me yet to do, much richness to still enjoy in this world. I need to embrace that, embrace the duality, not pine for what I can not have here and now.

I can not be a "dead woman walking".

I am a priestess, not a zombie.

If I hadn't faced the Void previously, I would have had to do so now. I suppose it's a blessing that I'm not having to wrestle with existential questions during these seasons of grief.

The last time I felt this isolated it was twenty years ago and I was in an abusive relationship, cut off from everyone else by a man who claimed to love me but did nothing but hurt me.

Thankfully that pain, that drama, is not present now, but I feel like there are huge empty spaces between me and everyone else, and I'm at a loss for how to bridge that space.

A good deal of it is my own fault. I've done a lot of withdrawing, like a snail pulling into my shell. I have little energy, little interest in anything, and so find it hard to make conversation, to comment, to engage. I feel like there's nothing within myself to share, and that if I am too close to others I'll simply be overwhelmed by their energy, like a cup thrust under a waterfall.

More than anything else, I want to relax into a strong, loving embrace, to be gently nurtured back to myself -- but, of course, it is that absence which is at the root of all my emptiness.

I feel hollow, as if once the extremes of grief washed through me there wasn't anything to take its place. My heart is hollow, my mind empty.

Maybe it was yesterday's realization about how time is slowly healing -- or at least changing -- my grief about uncrowned_king. Maybe it was the realization that I haven't had much to contribute to my own community feral_holiness for a very long time. But yesterday I was contemplating that there are some things in our lives that have their season and then pass.

My recently rediscovered old friend asked me if I ever thought about doing theater again. Yes, I think of it sometimes -- usually after I've seen a really satisfying performance -- but then I realize that I have no desire to spend weeks of my time invested in someone else's project, and there's no show I want to direct right now. So no matter how wistful I may get from time to time, theater is a closed door to me now. There was a time when it was the center of my life, and it was a rich, fun, fulfilling time. That time is over.

This morning, stiobhanrune posted a wise and beautiful description of what a courtesan is, and as I read it I remembered a time fifteen to twenty years ago when I might have walked that path with integrity. That time is over.

Fresh out of graduate school, I had a book in me about sacred prostitution, but I was distracted by the dissolution of my marriage, the need to find a full time job, and being the mother of a three year old. The book never got written, and I'm not sure it ever will. Ditto my unfinished novel that I released two new years ago. There was a time when those projects had life and energy in them. My energy goes other places now.

Last year at this time I was all about the love I shared with my two partners. They, and that magical, wondrous time, are now gone.

So what is this time of my life about? Continuing to build a solid foundation of career and home for myself and my daughter. Taking my spiritual life and priestess studies to ever-deepening levels. Finding new ways to connect with my daughter and be a good mother for her as she matures and faces new challenges and joys.

Time will pass, and things will change. . . But I'm getting a new appreciation of the need to act when I am energized about something. I never did as much as I could have with the times I mention above. There are no books out there with my name on them, and fewer shows than there could have been. I could have explored my sacred, joyous sexuality in an entirely different way than the string of less-than-satisfying relationships I had in my twenties. Granted there could have been other pains, but there's something to be said for having dared.

I haven't dared enough in my life, and because of that some opportunities have been lost forever.

As I continue on, I need to remember that the possibilities before me are probably not permanent invitations by the universe. Eventually they expire, grow stale. Others will come, yes -- but for some things there may only be a single season to grasp them and make something of them.

I was sifting through some not-in-file-folders miscellany a few minutes ago and found this magazine image. Something about it caught and held my attention, and I studied it for a long time, sifting through and analyzing my feelings. Finally a realization hit home harder than it ever has before.

I didn't tear this page from the magazine because I could imagine myself looking or dressing like this woman someday, or embodying the less obvious qualities she and her star pendant expressed to me. I tore it out because I thought she looked like my heroine alter ego.

I never had any expectation that I would -- or could -- be any part of the life my alter ego lived. I didn't even try, because the context of that fantasy was so far removed from real life there was no point.

And so I grew up without the slightest genuine investment in my own future. I looked out for my immediate needs: getting the expected education, holding jobs that would keep me in food and shelter and books, and never thought about what the consequences of those choices (and non-choices) would be in the years ahead.

I never tore pictures from magazines because they looked like how *I* wanted to look, or to give me ideas about what *I* could do or be in this life. It was always about her, the other me who had the life I wanted -- but which was so safely removed from reality I never had to risk anything to try to achieve it.

Maybe that's too hard on myself. Maybe I truly did not see any options before me that ignited my passions, and so I imagined a passionate life in a place where those options did exist. The end result is the same: my current life, which is only just beginning to become something that I can be proud of, someplace where my true self is beginning to be expressed outwardly instead of hidden in code in secret notebooks.

I realized recently that one of the things I need to surrender is my heroine alter ego. I don't think about her much anymore, but she is the product of my fundamental belief that I could not do or be who I truly wanted to be in this lifetime. She has to go, to make room for the authentic self which I am finally daring to express.

I hit an important milestone of personal growth recently.

Another LJ member is teaching a class at Pantheacon on a topic very similar to mine. I've read her journal once or twice, but had decided that I wasn't going to read the book she's published until after the conference, because otherwise I'd end up second-guessing myself and worrying about being too close or too different from what she has to say.

But then I thought, Wait a minute! Why am I allowing her to be the standard? Why would I let myself see her that way?

Owning my own authority has been a long struggle -- one still not complete -- but this is a huge step forward.

The worth of what I have to say is in no way dependent on what other people have to say on the same topic. If all I can do is look to others for validation for my ideas, I don't have anything original to contribute, and so there's no point to my stepping forward. If I do have something original, then I shouldn't worry about making sure I'm in line with the thoughts of others. I should be clear about where I need to make a case for my opinions based on how well my ideas follow generally accepted wisdom, and about where I'm staking new territory.

It should be the new territory that's exciting and what makes me worth paying attention to, not how well I can rehash the safe ground that someone else is covering.

This morning, during a conversation with my mother, a family dynamic I've never been able to describe adequately came into sharp focus.

One of the things Wolfling's father and I have worked hard to teach her is that she has boundaries that deserve to be respected, that empathy and compassion and kindness toward others doesn't mean she has to allow herself to be hurt or run over by the desires of others. Both her father and I were taught as children that other peoples' feelings were of paramount importance, and we were to "be nice" in all but the most extreme situations.

The silver lining of having the twins living upstairs in The Old Place was that Wolfling learned about borders. She learned that being nice sometimes didn't guarantee harmony, and that she was not obligated to buy peace by letting others take advantage of her good nature. It was okay to say she didn't want to play, even if the twins got angry or hurt or cried. It was okay to not want to share her toys. It was okay to say so when someone did something that hurt or upset her, and she was justified in removing herself when that happened, and/or seek adult intervention.

I've never been satisifed with my previous attempts to explain how my socialization was different, but this morning my mother described a conflict situation with these words: If I expressed how upset I was, that would cause a break, so I just try to see it from the other person's side.

I sat there for a moment, running her words again in my mind, then said: Did you hear what you just said? You equated speaking up and saying you'd been hurt with automatically causing a break in the relationship. It's break the relationship or be silent. There's no middle ground to express your feelings and have the relationship survive.

That's the programming that's kept me silent too often in my life: the assumption that defending myself will cause escalation and end the relationship. I wasn't taught to express my feelings in a way that allowed room for discussion, clarification, apologies, or healing.

I think my father had more skill in this area, but he was The Father so he virtually always won any conflict in our family anyway. So we didn't really learn good conflict resolution skills from him, not in terms of family or friends situations.

It all makes so much sense now.