Five and Six of Swords

Hello! It’s time once again for Izzy and Booze Explain the Tarot, the only vaguely-occult blog entries I know of that feature this much swearing.

Five of Swords

Here we see a light-haired person in masculine medieval attire who has All The Swords: two in his right hand, one in his left, and two on the ground facing him. He seems pretty pleased with the state of things. In the background, two other people have turned their backs on him. They might be pissed, or resigned to defeat, or just sad, but the foreground guy doesn’t care, because he has All The Swords. They’re his. So there.

Systematically, this means dark luck in matters of air, which leads to the conclusion that either the person being read for is not, in fact, Mr. Excessive Arsenal Or Possibly Profitable Resale Business, but the folks in the back, or that what the querent thinks of as triumph is actually not great. Fives and sevens are generally pretty complicated, because all dark luck has a silver lining and all bright luck has a rake waiting in the grass. So on the one hand, dude has all the swords, but swords are pretty heavy to carry, and those other people probably hate him now: power/knowledge/freedom comes at a price, and they might not be worth it. On the other hand, those people in the back are disarmed and defeated, but they’re alive. The swords aren’t actually in them.

Complicating things more: the guy left his foes alive, which is not the smartest thing to do to your enemies on a short-term level. Is he more honorable or humanitarian than his smirk makes him out to be? Are they former friends, which makes this situation more emotionally painful but maybe means they won’t come back with an army of trees or dudes disguised as trees? Is he doing the Evil Overlord thing where he lets them go so he can gloat and then they come back and, y’know, trees and beheadings and so on?

Fucked if I know.

That’s kind of a theme there. The more specific meanings of this card include conflict, discord, treachery (either for or against you) and generally being a dick. These are all situations where it’s tough for at least one party involved to know what’s going on—treachery sort of depends on it, otherwise it’s just aggro—and this card says that even if that guy thinks he knows, he doesn’t. You can win temporarily by thinking only of yourself, but you leave a lot of people thinking you’re an asshole (maybe those two are alive to represent the fact that you really can’t get rid of them all, as Thulsa Doom could tell you), some of them are going to act on that, and at least a few of them stand a pretty good chance of being effective.

This card can say that you’re going to get fucked over, and it won’t be fair, but you’ll survive and can regroup. Or it can say that if you’re going to act without thinking about other people, you might do pretty well for a time, but it probably won’t be as great as you think. You should be prepared for that if you go ahead, and definitely don’t turn into a snake.

Six of Swords

One to three people are taking a boat full of swords across a body of water. When there are two people, one is rowing while the other sits huddled in a cloak, sometimes with a kid by them. The solo traveler is usually rowing, but once in a while just sits there hanging out with their sharp objects, as you do. There’s often land visible, more often than not in front or to the side of the boat—which is, by the way, definitely more canoe than luxury yacht.

The meaning of this card, ninety percent of the time, comes down to Fuck This Noise—or, to go with the swords and be gratuitously British, Bugger This For a Game of Soldiers.

Sixes are the journey-slash-training montage cards, as I’ve mentioned, and swords, for reasons I’ve gone into elsewhere, tend to be the least happy about it—partly for stupid Victorian reasons, but partly because power, freedom, and knowledge generally take some struggle to get and are heavy things. (Also because sixes are usually good, overall, but they’re not trivial.) Even when this is an easy choice, like going off to a college you really like—well, as Homestar says, you’re gonna have to share a bathroom with some kid from Alabama who kinda sucks, and eat dubious cafeteria food, and deal with classes where you might be over your head.  Or you might decide to learn a new subject, or skill, but find that comes with giving up a fair amount of your energy and free time. (Just picking up a new thing casually is more of an Ace/Two situation.)

Those are the best-case scenarios. Sometimes, the card just gets super basic and means travel. Most of the specific meanings, though, have to do with getting away from a bad situation—leaving the old and familiar behind, even if it hurts. The excessive damn number of swords in the boat represents rationality, and the water is emotions. Whatever the journey here is, you’re probably at least a little bit conflicted about it, with the possibility of feeling like absolute shit, but you know damn well it’s the right thing to do.

I’ve mentioned elsewhere that I support Marie Kondo’s approach to housecleaning—“if it doesn’t spark joy or you don’t actively need it, throw it out”—but with interpersonal relationships. If contact with a particular person, group, or situation doesn’t make you feel something better than obligation at least half the time, fucking ditch them. Dump the motherfucker already; single life is great, and you probably shouldn’t be in a relationship until you can enjoy it. Stop calling your toxic family member, and stop taking their calls. Find friends who aren’t using you as an unpaid therapist or a human wailing wall, and ankle the ones who are—they’ll either shape up or find another sap to put up with them, and either way it’s not your problem. If you can’t leave your shitty job or your horrible roommate yet, start thinking of what would let you do that and see if you can start working on it.

Knowledge, power and freedom come from knowing that you’re not obligated to sacrifice your own happiness for someone else’s bullshit ideal, from pushing through when other people or society or your own mortal uncertainty about the future threaten to manipulate you back into a bad situation, and from being willing to strike out into uncharted territory because, to paraphrase Giles, it has to be better than what you’re leaving.

It probably will be, and this is the card that says so.