I often think of the Tarot deck as a living organism and that the people represented on each card are a set of acquaintances waiting to be activated by a moment’s contemplation. Certain cards fall in our laps from time-to-time, wanting to communicate with us and offer the benefit of their hard-won wisdom. As I was walking in the cold afternoon sun a few days ago, I thought about which card would best represent me at this point in my life.
The archetypes found in some cards particularly resonate when we are younger, while others hold out their meaning until we are in a place of true understanding. The Two of Swords is that card for me right now. It might on the surface seem a strange choice, but when I was looking through my Tarot deck, she was insistent, she demanded attention by placing herself at the very top of the shuffled deck.
She was keen to communicate, to have a conference between us in which I might learn unknown things about myself. She had recently presented as one of my ‘influencer cards’ during a personal reading and when a card clamours for our consideration and reappears with subtle regularity, it is our job as Readers to take note.
About the Two of Swords
The archetype in this card is the Stoic – a woman perched on a stone stool, her eyes covered in a white blindfold, her arms crossed above her breast with two great swords pointing in opposite directions. She is simply dressed in a grey gown and there is a shore behind her – perhaps the sea or just a lake. A waxing crescent moon appears in a sky clear of cloud.
When we cut off one of our senses, in this case sight, we are forced inward, relying upon intuition and gut instinct. With the lapping of the gentle shore, the chill breeze of the oncoming night, the saltiness in the air and the scent of seaweed, the Stoic is both fixed in the present moment and fluid in the timelessness of memory.
To me, the swords are never static – she does not hold them in place for the sake of it. In a moment of clarity and insight, she will bring the swords up together to midnight, the hour of stillness when those awake are often at their most lucid.
This is often how I feel as a writer – holding memory and fiction in a state of grace for a time until the arms lift to the strike of twelve and the pen, as mightier than the sword, begins to write in a perfect state of flow. All that cogitating and deliberating, while being impervious to the world around you, is the vital source of creativity.
What does the Two of Swords mean to me?
It has been a year of writing and sacrifice, putting the creative urge above all others, even when the sun is warm and inviting, or the world tries to seduce with its baubles and lively temptations, whispering to lay down my swords and live a little.
In a more global sense, intuition is severely lacking in the modern world – we have been acculturated into distrusting our instincts, those moments when a sensation within that is only partially conscious makes us think about our next step, not reasoning it out but instead using our gut. It’s what great many leaders use when faced with huge and complex problems, though there is dearth of such leadership.
The Stoic knows this implicitly and I am determined to follow her example and develop my intuition not just to be a better writer, but to trust my instincts when it comes to the creative choices I make. All creativity is risk, so I have to be stoical in the face of failure.
Paull Blakeman is the author of The Moon & The Priestess – Accessing the Creative Unconscious with Tarot’s Archetypes. Pre-order here.
Paull Blakeman 
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