Time Travel: Swallow Street

There was me thinking that this would be a relatively simple time travel post, and you wouldn't believe the difficulty I have had getting to the bottom of this historical mystery. I have even had to resort to a hand job in the library to get to the bottom of Swallow Street - but enough with the innuendo, on with the mystery. My interest was first aroused by Brunel Street, which runs at an angle between Navigation Street and Suffolk Street Queensway; you won't discover a time travel post about that one because I've discovered that it is actually a relatively new street which appeared while Manzoni's boys were joyously going round the city centre with a bulldozer. And what started my interest in Brunel Street was that I remember it from trips to the city centre with my parents. I remember going to Allegro Music and also I remember Gino's, which I thought terribly sophisticated at the time. Anyway, I hadn't noticed then that Brunel Street intersects with a street called Swallow Street which runs between Suffolk Street Queensway and Hill Street. It is not an unsubstantial street by any means; in fact I think I had always assumed that it was one of those empty patches of land left over in the post-war rebuilding of the city, but it is only recently that I noticed it has a proper street name.
Swallow Street on the surface seemed to have gone back a long time without leaving any trace of itself, for some reason. It appears on the 1913 Ordnance Survey map of the city centre, where the characteristic pictures of buildings show that there were some at each end, but it didn't look like one of those tiny passages of higgledy-piggledy slums which formerly marked the city centre, so it must have left some trace of itself. First I looked on the internet. There was no history whatsoever. Nothing. Not even someone whose family emigrated to Nova Scotia (or wherever) in 1904 and whose great great grandmother was born above above a nailmaker's in Swallow Street. Literally the only historical reference was the picture from the 1960s which illustrates this post, and which made me think that really there should have been some history for the street, since it looked as if businesses were operated from the houses.
I turned to my 1967-68 Kelly's Directory and found only two entries for Swallow Street:
Here is entrance to Queen's College ch[a]mbers
Stanford & Mann Ltd. st[a]t[io]n[e]rs
I didn't see this almost complete lack of information as discouraging. I joined up the pieces by assuming that everything in the road except the stationers and Queen's College Chambers had been demolished in between the photo being taken and my Kelly's being published. Of course Queen's College Chambers is still there although its address is given as Paradise Street and it is prestigious apartments; it started off as a medical school in 1828 and was one of the colleges which made up the University of Birmingham. The present theological college called the Queen's Foundation was near there too.
I naively thought that it would be simple to find out the historical residents of Swallow Street. I naively thought that some trace of them would have been left in previous Kelly's Directories. I was naturally surprised on arbitrarily choosing the 1930 one in the library to find there was no record of Swallow Street at all. Nothing. It was bizarre that the street was there on the map of 1913, had houses standing in the early 1960s, apparently inhabited by at least one business in 1968 and yet had left no trace in Kelly's at all. I really began to think that I had imagined the street's existence as I went through successive Kelly's and still found absolutely nothing.
The earliest reference in a Kelly's Directory I could find was in 1962, where there were at least a couple of businesses:
12 O'Higgins and Secondini, tailors.
12 Docker F. dance studio
28 Cutler Bob Ltd. turf comm[i]ss[io]n[ing] ag[en]ts
All three of these businesses had vanished in the succeeding six years. There was no indication what was happening at numbers 13 - 27. Swallow Street looked as if it was determined to retain its mystery.
Then I started going through books of the city centre's history by hand (the Hound is not easily deflected when he wants to get to the bottom of a mystery), and finally found the reason for Swallow Street's elusiveness. The simple fact was that nobody noticed it or was bothered about it:
'Some of Birmingham's byways were built as access roads and had nothing more important in them than the back doors of buildings whose frontages were on more prestigious avenues. SWALLOW STREET first appears on Hanson's map of Birmingham in 1778, having been cut around 1750. It linked Hill Street with Suffolk Street and runs parallel to and to the north of Navigation Street, which it slightly pre-dates. The building of the cuttings into New Street Station divided Swallow Street in half, and steam and smoke can be seen rising [referencing the black and white picture of the street] above the bridge parapet on this bitterly cold Friday, 1 February 1963, as a train passes through the last, short, 20-yard cutting before the railway line disappears into the tunnel built by the London & North Western Railway (LNWR) and out beyond Monument Lane locomotive shed into the Black Country. Opposite the bridge, beyond the covered timber yard on the left and the elderly gentleman struggling along the snow-covered footpath, is Summer Street, which was on the same line as the present-day Brunel Street. On the right, behind the Morris LD 1-ton van, are buildings that had originally been the offices of the Inland Revenue, while Scruton's the tailor's, founded in 1931, occupies part of the rear of Queen's College Chambers. A 10hp Ford Prefect E493A of about 1952, one of Ford's last 'sit-up-and-beg' motors, which was phased out during the following year, is parked on the left. The winter of 1962-63 was particularly bad, and the snow lay from the end of December until early March. Behind the car is the West End Ballroom on the corner of Suffolk Street and Holliday Street, while coming out of Holliday Street is a Corporation Daimler CVD6 double-decker fitted with a locally-manufactured Metro-Cammell body, leaving its city terminus on the 95 service to Ladywood.' (David Harvey: Birmingham Past and Present, the City Centre Volume 1, 2002, p.16, which is also the source for the black and white picture of Swallow Street, taken facing the other way from the colour picture.)
So, mystery solved. The simple reason Swallow Street didn't appear in the directories was that nothing happened there which would have made an appearance. If it had it would have been a collection of rear entrances. Of course the situation may well have been different before the advent of the railway, but Swallow Street by the twentieth century was already a relic of a vanished past.
There remained one mystery. The colour picture shows the back of the Golden Eagle public house (in fact the 1913 map shows a P.H. on that site). The address of the Golden Eagle was actually in Hill Street, and it turns out that in the twentieth century it was an art deco 1930s rebuilding of whatever was there before. It was one of the buildings over which the conservationists tussled with the demolitionists and the demolitionists won (I believe in the 1980s) because there were apparently unrepairable structural faults with it. It turns out that the Golden Eagle was a pub known for its music and many famous bands of the time played there, but that isn't really a part of Swallow Street. Certainly, looking at the remaining pictures it looks as if it would have been a sexy art deco building, which it is a great pity is lost.

Update 21/2/23 Very very gratified that some twat has flagged this post to Blogger as containing adult content. I hope they're really offended.

Image sources include http://www.jlb2011.co.uk/iob/slides03/index.htm and one I didn't make a note of. Sorry.

Tarot: Three of Cups

My daily tarot card for today is the three of cups, whose Golden Dawn title is Lord of Abundance, and abundance is also the keyword used on the Crowley Thoth tarot. Perhaps it tells you all that you could ever want to know about me that I get this card and tend to find I can't read what it means. When I say can't read it, I can see that it is three female figures (for some reason I want to call them maidens - whether I think this is because of their youth or because for some reason i think they are virgins I can't tell you - holding cups up and dancing. The picture is plainly a joyous one, and this is borne out by the usual interpretations of this card:
'Description: The Three of Cups represents groups coming together to focus on a common emotional goal. People reach out emotionally to one another. It speaks of a sense of community, and can indicate the time to get more involved by helping. An inner passion for caring may be discovered, and energy put forth toward a goal will be positive and nurturing. It can also signal that this is the time to reach out if things have been particularly rough in the past. This card stands for all forms of support including formal organizations such as counseling or other social services. It's important that when the need for support is recognized that action is taken. This is the best time to do that. Reversed, the Three of Cups suggests that isolation from others is occurring. It is the time to take charge of the situation and to get out into the community. Consider joining a group or organization, and if the need for support is present, seek out the necessary resources.' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_of_Cups)
I am indebted to http://www.tarotteachings.com/three-of-cups.html for making me realise that the cultural image which this card most draws on for Europeans would be Botticelli's Three Graces, who individually represent Spendour, Joviality and Good Cheer, a connection I hadn't made before, although aware that this card clearly referenced something deep inside the psyche. In fact the three thing is an even deeper one for Europeans, going far back into Indo-European culture, where gods and things tend to move between threes and ones. Did the Christians seriously think they'd invented their three in one thing without help? The three graces reference means that I am not inclined to criticise Pam's depiction of three female figures without a male one, since she is clearly drawing on an artistic model which would be intended to press buttons in anyone artistically educated in the European tradition. That said, I will draw on a different reference for the three cups further on in this post.
Pam also borrows the greenery and fruit of the Botticelli picture: in hers they are somewhat decoratively lying around on the ground while the three dance over them. If I wanted to be flippant about this card (and you can tell I do, can't you) I would say that what we were seeing here was the end of a wild party where the decorations have been pulled down onto the floor. The pumpkin is something which has always leapt to my notice in this card - again in European culture the pumpkin comes into season in the autumn and thus indicates the dark side of the year, giving this card a somewhat shadowy and magical implication. If you don't want this card to be witchy, you could of course see the pumpkin as referencing Cinderella riding off in her chariot made from the pumpkin. You may say that that is just as witchy, but hey, this is the Hound's blog, and you can only expect you favourite pantomimes to be deconstructed as far as they will go.
Yet I don't like this orgy of happiness and celebration which the three of cups is often depicted as. The Hound's suspicious mind is suspecting that we are not being told All, and since I don't do reversals, preferring to see the 'upright' and 'reversed' meanings as polar extremes of the spectrum of meanings of one card, I don't mean that there is a reversed meaning which will turn the party on its head.
And here is where I ditch the Three Graces and start looking at the actual three cups. For a start, three cups means something. If you literally only have one cup you are not expecting company and in fact company is unwelcome, since you obviously don't even intend to offer any visitors a cup of tea. If you have two cups, company is expected and catered for. If there are two of you and you have two cups (as in the card preceding this one) you are in the position of not welcoming company, only with two of you. This is the early days of a romantic relationship when anyone who visits feels like a spare dinner: the two figures in the two of cups are focused on each other to the exclusion of everyone else. For a couple to own three cups, they are ready for a visitor and are prepared to make the visitor welcome. I suppose I am making the sociable point in a rather laboured way, but I think I want to refer to the stage of life where people are just getting together as couples and have not yet set up home to any great extent, and their friends may or may not be in couples yet. This is not the card of the dinner party on fine china; this is the card of the Chinese takeaway eaten out of the box on the floor. It is young, there is a comparative lack of resources, but it refers to a time of life which many people look back on fondly as Sex plays its tricks on people, they have children, wonder why they ever went there, get empty nest syndrome, and so on. All of that is in the future in this card.
I think probably Crowley/Harris actually got the closest to the Golden Dawn's description of this card in Book T (which I here cut and paste from a pdf copy I downloaded from somewhere on the internet and have lost the reference to):
'A WHITE Radiating Hand, as before, holds a group of lotuses or water-lilies, from which two flowers rise on either side of, and overhanging the top cup; pouring into it the white water. Flowers in the same way pour white water into the lower cups. All the cups overflow; the topmost into the two others, and these upon the lower part of the card. Cups are arranged in an erect equilateral triangle. Mercury and Cancer above and below.'
No mention of a pumpkin, you notice, but it does seem very much as if the greenery is the point here, and it is definitely greenery rather than the sort of flowers you see on RWS-derived cards. Just the chalices really. In fact the deck I picked the card from last night is the tarot del fuego, which I reviewed recently, and which has the three chalices one above another, which reminds me of nothing more than a champagne fountain, of the sort I use to illustrate this post.
There is also a complete absence of figures in the Thoth, Golden Dawn, and Tarot del Fuego decks, and the figures are what give me my ultimate difficulty with the RWS depiction of the energy underlying this card. I spoke above about how the three of cups for me represents the couple energy moving into the hospitality energy (I have avoided the baby energy because I would personally tend to see that coming later in the Cups suit, although I wouldn't argue if anyone wanted to see 2 + 1 = 3 utlimately referring to something new being born).
The trouble for me is that the RWS card dpeicts quite a different energy. If you look at the postures of the figures and the way they are holding their cups, it seems to me that they are not united at all. In fact the other two figures seem to be confronting the figure on the left, who to my mind is turning away from the other two, although again that is not an interpretation I would be willing to go to the stake for. The way they are holding the cups implies that the other two are almost confronting the one on the left with their cups, and this is catually depicting an argument. Although, possibly not quite an argument. Perhaps it is the position of a single person going out for a meal with a couple and feeling that the three thing feels awkward... Again, I wouldn't actually go to the stake for that interpretation but it seems to me that this card is depicting an uncomfortable, confrontative, argumentative, unbalanced energy. The other two are making in-jokes which are unintelligible to the third character, who frankly can't wait to go home at the end of the evening.

Freedom (Again)

The theme of being free from slavery of all sorts has been recurring repeatedly for me over the past year. Yesterday I went to see a solicitor to enquire about the possibility of claiming for constructive dismissal from my previous employers at the tribunal. I am delighted to say that of course the Hound was right, and by repeated acts of ridiculousness my employers broke the contract between us, and I have a claim that is provable.
You can only imagine how pleasing it was to be right about this. You will also be surprised though to know that I am not actually going to take it to the tribunal mainly for reasons of the costs outweighing whatever I would get financially out of it. You will be equally surprised to know that that is a relief to me and I am not disappointed at all.
What happened was that the instant the solicitor told me I had a valid claim, while not exactly losing all interest, I knew that it was over. I don't need to take it further. I don't have anything to prove. I don't need or want the money I would get. My previous employers are so incompetent that being proved wrong at a tribunal would not make them actually perform properly in future. So there is stays.
Of course if they try to mess up my life in terms of references and what have you I won't hesitate to take legal action, but that hasn't happened.
Uncharacteristically I feel that I have to leave it there. The reason is that I have to be free from them. I know that in leaving them I have done the right thing for myself, and that is what really matters here. To continue to give my old employers psychic house room is to give them an importance in my life that they shouldn't have. So the paperwork is archived in the back of my wardrobe, even with my diary of events. It's over.
Well, to be strictly honest, and to reassure anyone who thought that I was becoming uncharacteristically fluffy, it is almost over for me. The solicitor made the very good point that Zippy's incredible incompetence could well be a matter our registration body would take an interest in so I think I should probably have a word with them and see if they want to take her to a fitness to practice hearing (pause for hysterical laughter).
And then it will be over for me. I say over for me, because of course I have left a web of retributive magic hanging over them. One of my magical altar sisters has said all along that there is going to be a death and that hasn't happened yet. People who have crossed me have had accidents and illness happen to significant others, in proportion as they have been absolute c!nts to me. So while it is over for me and I am free, I doubt very much that there isn't worse to come yet for them. Shame that. It also means that honour has been served, and repayment has been made in a coin other than actual money.

Tarot: By the Light of the Moon Spread

The Moon. Now there's a tarot card which gets a bad press. I feel the Tarot Community have largely overcome the Hollywood approach to the Death card to the extent that it is difficult to see it as referring to actual death these days, but because the Moon doesn't get such a bad press from the outside world, there hasn't been any reputation to 'reclaim'. My own Goddess mother refers to it as the anus card and sees it as referring to all the sh*t coming out and going down the drain. Here, however, is what Waite has to say about this card:
'The distinction between this card and some of the conventional types is that the moon is increasing on what is called the side of mercy, to the right of the observer. It has sixteen chief and sixteen secondary rays. The card represents life of the imagination apart from life of the spirit. The path between the towers is the issue into the unknown. The dog and wolf are the fears of the natural mind in the presence of that place of exit, when there is only reflected light to guide it.
'The last reference is a key to another form of symbolism. The intellectual light is a reflection and beyond it is the unknown mystery which it cannot shew forth. It illuminates our animal nature, types of which are represented below--the dog, the wolf and that which comes up out of the deeps, the nameless and hideous tendency which is lower than the savage beast. It strives to attain manifestation, symbolized by crawling from the abyss of water to the land, but as a rule it sinks back whence it came. The face of the mind directs a calm gaze upon the unrest below; the dew of thought falls; the message is: Peace, be still; and it may be that there shall come a calm upon the animal nature, while the abyss beneath shall cease from giving up a form.' (http://www.sacred-texts.com/tarot/pkt/pktar18.htm)
The life of the imagination. Tendencies lower than the beast. Our animal nature. So far so creepy, but Waite's interpretation leaves me thinking that the tendency tends to be to interpret this card in a 'reversed' meaning. I think a valid interpretation of this card is that the querent is imagining things not quite as they are, but I would not like that interpretation to be the only thing this card means. Personally, I have written before about how I don't usually do reversals in tarot, preferring the two extremes of meaning to refer to a dynamic tension within the meaning of the card. What tends to be overlooked in interpreting the Moon card is that the mind calms the animal nature here, and the light of mercy is shed on our base tendencies.
A more detailed dealing with the symbolism is given by Eden Gray, a classic tarot author whose writing I have only just discovered for myself:
'"The moon in three phases watches over the landscape. From the pool of Cosmic Mind stuff in the foreground, a crayfish appears, symbolizing the early stages of conscious unfoldment. The wolf is nature's untamed creation; the dog is the result of adaptation to life with man. In the back-ground, halfway up the path, are the twin towers Man has erected to protect himself from his hostile environment. The Moon will lead him along the rugged path, past the towers, to the final heights of attainment, if he will be guided by her reflected light and listen to the voice of the subconscious. Once again, the falling drops are yods, representing the,descent of the Life-force from above into the material existence. This is the key of sleep and dreams. The Moon's three phases of intuition concern body, mind and spirit. The Moon Mother watches over the birth of Spirit into material manifestation. The number 18 consists of the digits 1 and 8, which add up to 9, thus becoming the second 9 and indicating the second initiation, The Hermit was the first 9 on the path. The Fool is still on his journey - learning, falling back, and then again advancing." (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_(Tarot_card)
For Gray the point is much more the journey, and she makes the Moon a true counterpart of The Hermit. Unusually for me I have devised a tarot spread (I tend to be more free form as a rule, and merely throw some cards down and see how they relate to each other) based on Gray's interpretations of the elements of this card, to capitalise on the appearance of this card in your life and turn it into a means of transformation. If you only wanted to know some elements of this card as they manifest in your life, say the defences you have put up, you can reduce the number of cards. Needless to say this is a spread which you wouldn't want to do too often, and perhaps only at times of great difficulty, where you don't feel like anything surrounding you is real. The cards should be shuffled, and cut or selected according to your own method and should be laid out in the pattern indicated on the illustration to represent elements of the moon card. The various positions represent:
1. The Moon itself. This refers to what is watching over your transformation. It can mean a divinity or if the card is one with a particular resonance for the querent it could mean a particular person, alive or dead, or it could even be an attribute or a situation. This is what will preside over the transformation and journey.
2. The yods. How the entity or situation in position 1 will help you on your journey. If it is a court card, as so often it may refer to a real person or a particular attitude to your situation.
3 and 4. The pillars. In the RWS deck the towers on this card are first seen on the Death card, indicating that we are nearing the end of the journey. In this reading, these cards represent the things we do to protect ourselves from our own vulnerability to the hostile environment about us. These cards will refer to the social constructs we use which prevent us reaching our destination at the end of the path. They may be thought patterns or expectations.
5. The path. This is the way we must go. It refers to the action we must take, despite not being able to see the end of the journey, to get to clarity and the next step. There is an irony in the Moon card, which may underlie the dislike many people feel for it, in that the end of the journey is death, and so is inescapable. This card therefore accesses both people's greatest fears and also ontological beliefs about what happens after death.
6. The dog. This card refers to the socially acceptable ways we stop ourselves progressing along the path. For example it may refer to one of those repeated ways of behaving we find ourselves slipping into with significant others, but which drive us up the wall and which we really want to change.
7. The wolf. This card will almost certainly be embarrassing, as revealing the querent's animal nature. This is what your instincts want you to do rather than your consciousness. This isn't even what you want to do, it refers to the fight or flight reaction at its most instinctual.
8. The crayfish. The card here shows the earliest stage of our understanding of what we are imagining. It may refer to the initial thing which has made the querent realise that there is something wrong with the situation or that all is not what it seems.
9. The waters, representing Cosmic Mind Stuff. The card in this position indicates the background to the situation and will reveal the sort of things going on which we may not be aware of. (If you want you could add another card or cards here to represent the rocks, which for Sandra Thomson represent the ways society keeps unconscious material walled in. These would represent the *really* basic thoughts and desires which you wouldn't want to own up to!)
My advice would be to read the cards in the order 9-1, even though I have numbered them the other way round and would suggest laying them out in that order so that you start with what the moon represents. I deliberately haven't put in a position for the destaination at the end of the path, although I suppose you could do if you wanted to. Personally I like not to know too much of what is on the horizon. And what I personally have learned from doing this is that this card can be intensely transformative and also that devising tarot spreads can be a good way of getting to know the elements of a card and how they manifest in our lives! And I won't be publishing the spread I did for myself, I wouldn't like to be that embarrassed...

The Tarot is Everything

"It's said that the shuffling of the cards is the earth, and the pattering of the cards is the rain, and the beating of the cards is the wind, and the pointing of the cards is the fire. That's of the four suits. But the Greater Trumps, it's said, are the meaning of all process and the measure of the everlasting dance."
From Charles Williams: The Greater Trumps

Tarot: Wands Where There Aren't Any

As I commented in my last post, my daily tarot draw today is the Fool, and that card just keeps on giving and giving. In addition to the question of belongings, I can't believe that I have never noticed that the Fool is holding a great big Wand. It was actually in the Morgan-Greer tarot that I first noticed it, since in addition to the wand his pack is strung on he is also using another wand as a walking stick, and I took from that the idea that the Fool has a sense of dominion just as is implied in the the 2 of Wands, as well as being supported by Will in some way. Interestingly there aren't the symbols of other suits present in the same way in the Fool, so for the first time I suspected that the Fool is somehow slightly biased elementally.
This discovery of course set me off on a voyage of exploration in the rest of the decks I have in the flat (fewer at the moment than there have been at times in the past), both to see how the Fool is depicted and also to discover further non-Wands suit cards which depict wands.
Since the Tarot del Fuego is biased towards fire there are of course a lot of flames and wandy stuff going on, as I was fully expecting in that deck. The Morgan-Greer tarot in which I first noticed the Fool's wand was the one with the most. I was disappointed to discover that the Aquarian tarot didn't have many Wands outside of the suit at all, perhaps because of the particular perspective the artist has used. I was disappointed because for me the Wands of the Aquarian tarot are the most suggestive of those of any deck, and not to beat about the bush, what I see in them is the head of an erect penis emerging from a foreskin. Have a look at the deck and I defy you not to see that now. Of course it represents potency, virility, strength, ambition, fertility, and so on. While the Hound in no way shies away from grown up subjects, you will no doubt be relieved to hear that I will not be following through and showing my own erect penis here. If you particularly want to see one I've heard a rumour the internet is full of pictures of them.
Anyway, despite the differences between decks the one I have chosen for this post is the Rider-Waite-Smith, since it is the original of a whole raft of tarot decks. If you really want to see wands in a tarot card it can be very tempting to see them potentially wherever there is a tree in the card. The artistic style can make things look more like wands (as they do in the Morgan-Greer) so I have restricted myself to the RWS cards which prominently feature things which look like the wands of the suit of Wands.
I have made an exception for two cards only, since the wands are described in the deck as wands and there are two cards where the characters are holding actualy magic wands, even though they don't look like the wands of the suit symbol. These cards are the Magician and the World, interestingly at the beginning and end of the Major Arcana. I wouldn't go to the stake (ha! another wand) for this connection, but this is what one of my favourite tarot authors has to say about wands generally:
'Wands represent power or authority. They can indicate a high or special level of training, or special skills and abilities, as in a magic wand. In fairy tales wands - magic objects which can transform or redeem people - are symbols of the Self. In ancient Celtic mythology, wands were the symbols of the Druids' power over the elements and other material things. Mythologically related to straight lines and sticks (one of humankind's simplest and oldest instruments), wands embody the symbology of power and intensity. Sticks appearing in fairy tales often symbolically extend a character's will power and purposeiveness "beyond mere momentary impulses."' (Sandra A Thomson: Pictures from the Heart, St Martin's Griffin, New York, 2003, p. 377)
The wands held by the characters who open the Major Arcana and 'close' it to allow another cycle, therefore both hold the magical instrument of transformation. The wands they hold are a more 'magical' version of the rough sticks held by the other major arcana cards who have wands, and no doubt if Waite was alive and had a blogger account he could make some comment on that. I have also selected the wands held by the three other Major card figures, the Fool, the Hanged Man and the Hermit, because they look like the wands of the suit cards, although obviously they have a different purpose in these cards, and have struck me as being as it were wands that are hidden in the cards. This is what Thomson says about the suit of Wands:
'Also called clubs, staves, rods, or batons, Wands cards depict experiences related to creative ideas, inner vision, and the necessary passion for the development of enterprise. They are associated with Jung's intuitive function and usually with the element of fire, the most energetic and transforming of the four "energies" and a symbol of the human will or willpower.
'The ancients believed the fire element or principle to be present in persons who possessed sharp, active actions or reactions. Fire energy definitely is not passive, but exists in reactions that propel or push something, or someone, forward. Wands cards often emphasize the future, although fire energy is usually what we need more of to help us get out of bed on Monday mornings. Fire reactions or activities take on a dynamic leadership role, never waiting for the "mood to strike" before getting down to creative work. They have the qualities of dramatic intensity and inspiration, which can also be unstable in situations or relationships. Wands cards speak of getting things going, or energizing and transforming, not because of logic or thinking but because our inner being tells us to.' (Ibid, p. 378)
In the case of the Fool, the Wand energy is brought into service to suspend his possessions; Thomson says that the most common of interpretations of the pack's contents is that it contains unused or unavailable knowledge, since it is behind him and he is not looking towards it. The fact that it is suspended from a wand suggests that an effort of willpower is the key to opening up that unused knowledge.
The Hermit leans on his 'wand' as he walks along. There is a strange connection between the light in his lamp and the connection with the fire energy of his wand, and yet a lot of the commentary on this card focuses on the light rather than the staff/wand. The Hermit's wand appears at another turning point in the Major Arcana; as Thomson puts it: 'Coming ninth in the Major Arcana, The Hermit likely does not signal the end of a journey, but rather indicates that there are times when we/he reach some pinnacle of enlightenment or insight that is complete within itself or, perhaps, inspires further introspective exploration (ibid, p. 187). That is exactly the kind of exploration that the Fool needs to do by means of his Will to access the unavailable knowledge stored in his pack.
The connection between the Hermit's hand and the earth via the wand is brought to its fulness by the fact that the Hanged Man is connected to the earth and completely supported by 'wands'. The continued inner transformational work is indicated by the way his body is in the shape of the alchemical symbol for sulphur. Thomson tells us that there is a connection between this card and the wand-bearing figure in The World, whose body makes the same shape, only the other way up, and that for members of the Golden Dawn this card would have evoked the Adeptus Minor Ritual in which the candidate was bound to a cross. The themes of transformation by means of introspection (which may seem to be far from the fiery significance of the wands cards indicated above) continue through these Major Arcana cards showing 'wands'.
I referred above to the connection I made between the Fool in the Morgan-Greer tarot and the 2 of Wands with its suggestion of dominion; the RWS tarot could be seen to make a similar connection to the 2 of Wands with the 5 of Pentacles, not usually a card which is seen to refer to dominion. One of the two figures is fully supported by Wands, and I am very interested to see that that is a possible alternative reading for this card, or an undercurrent to its Golden Dawn meaning of 'material trouble'. Perhaps the card is subtly suggesting that the people could do with seeing their material trouble as an opportunity for transformation, since the means of transformation, the will, is what is actually supporting one of the characters.
The final card I have identified with a 'wand' in it is very interesting since it is a sword card, which in the RWS deck refers to the element of air and of course that element would interact with the element of fire by heightening it! The boat is additionally passing through waters (a pool of emotions?) towards the earth on the opposite bank so this card actually indicates all four elements. Of course we can easily draw on the symbolism of the other cards discussed here to suggest that the water represents exactly the sort of introspection necessary by will (the punt is actually in the pool. Perfect!) required to access the unusable knowledge of the Fool.
I have found this exercise of looking for one suit symbol in cards not belonging to the suit, an interesting way of making unexpected connections between cards and coming to some alternative readings. This technique is probably used more often to make connections because of a particular symbol (a pillar, for example) recurring in different cards. In this case it is about the Will as accessing the unseen knowledge in the Fool's pack as a way to introspection and transformation. In the case of my particular daily draw and the theme of reversing the confusions which have gone before, which I am interpreting as referring to life as well as to a tarot reading, this deeper insight creates a milieu of initiation and transformation, confirming that I am in a turning point of my life and the gunk of the past has passed.

Not Minimal and Not Simple

There is a movement afoot in the world which I have tried to avoid writing about for fear of seemingly to be uncharacteristically bitchy (shut up). It is the movement towards simpliclity of living, which is paired with a desire to use the earth's resources responsibly or minimally, and morphs at one extreme into a desire to live as minimally as possible. I am not going to reference it because I do actually like the woman who writes the blog which spurred me on to writing this post. I was re-reading one of the woman's posts, in which she talks about her long-standing desire to live as simply as possible, with as little as possible and she describes what her ideal possessions and living space would be like. She says that she wants to be able to live so that all her possessions fit into one medium-sized suitcase. She calmly avoids the fact that she lives in a shared household and eats shared meals off shared plates, because she believes that they don't belong to her, they belong to the house. Where I really lost sympathy for her position is when she said that in her ideal world scenario she wouldn't need to have plates and bowls at all because she could buy a salad from Marks and Spencer and reuse the bowl it came in.
It was the specificity of the salad from Marks and Spencer which did it. You see, the simple life, or minimal life comes horrendously expensive, and that is the first thing which is wrong with this world view. The people who talk about ethics in their consumption are the ones with th money to make choices and choose the relatively more expensive options of organic and so on. The option to live like that is also a privilege of the rich: the poor, the really poor, the people caught in poverty traps which they can't get out of, want more, would dearly love more, and their lifestyle choices tend to be characterised by choosing more over choosing quality. Of course this is a huge generalisation but my gander is up and I think it is a generalisation which in general terms will stand.
The quest for simplicity and being 'right-sized' sounds like a highly moral one, but it also has its dangers, and these are inherent in the relentless pursuit of smallness. I may be overstating it, but the pursuit of smallness leads as its natural conclusion to anorexia. I mean that quite seriously. I don't want to lead a life where I spend my time taking up as little as possible, I want to lead a life where my place is the right size for me and I can enjoy abundance without it infringing on anyone else. I mean that word abundance in deadly earnest, incidentally. What doesn't impress me about contrived minimalism is that it is another ridiculously expensive and consuming way of life. In my own situation it makes good economic sense to have enough clothes so that I can run the washing machine only when it is full and enough plates and pots that I can run the dishwasher only when it is full. To do otherwise is ridiculous.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want a life of conspicuous over-consumption: in fact a considerable number of my possessions are second-hand and a lot of my clothes have holes in. I periodically have a clear out and get rid of stuff which no longer serves me. My motivation in that is purely so as not to go through life encumbered with lots of stuff I am keeping just in case, which was very much my mother's modus vivandi. Magically, having a clean out is a great tradition, a wonderful way of clearing up ones space, and recently I have even thrown out The List and my collection of newspaper articles about rapists and what have you, which used to reside on the altar. I instinctively felt that it was time to change and move on to a new phase. In case you're wondering what I did with the cuttings was simply put them in the bin. This may seem somewhat unmagical but that was what felt right, so that the Goddess can continue to attend to these people in the rubbish dump. I just don't want a load of clutter in my life and have got rid of a lot more things which don't serve me.
My daily tarot card today is the Fool. I am intrigued by the way that that card just keeps on giving no matter how often I draw it. One of the things about him is of course that he is carrying a staff with a kerchief thingy containing, presumably his few belongings. I drew this card using my old faithful Morgan-Greer deck, which despite being my second copy of that deck is beginning to look a bit elderly, not least because I have written on it; Etteilla's keywords on the card front, and Liber T keywords and comments from Waite on the back. I was especially intrigued to see that Waite's comment on the Fool is that this card reverses all the confusions which have preceded it, exactly a statement of what I want my life to be at the moment. I was trying to think about a word to describe how I would like that life to be, especially in the light of the Golden Dawn's design of the Fool, a child holding a wolf's leash between a yellow rose bush. I thought first of the clarity with which children can think, without the confusing layers of interpretation and convention we adults develop. The word I thought of was simplicity, but I don't like that word for what I want in my life, because for me it has too many connotations of a contrived decorative simplicity. Minimalism is out for the same reason. Intentionality is another word with too many existing connotations, although frankly I have given up the attempt to find a word which hasn't been used by the rest of the English-speaking world before I can get to it.
Regular readers will know that I have a great admiration for the concept of plainness: plain speaking, thinking, dressing, living, although this word tends to be co-opted by the Quakers and while I find individual Quakers admiral I find I tend to dislike the actual culture of Quakerism which has its own politics and grows disproportionately powerful 'heavy Friends'. Regular readers will know that I detest the very concept of 'spirituality', no matter how well meant as implying a divorce from the embodied world, which is where I want my 'spirituality' to manifest. Thus I don't want a word for my approach which implies that it is a spiritual thing alone. And then the word 'singleness' struck me.
It chimes with the monastic tradition, and yet this singleness is about as magical a word as you can get. In all magical traditions there is a sense of focusing on your will, and this failure to think singly is the cause of a lot of failure in magic. For the hedge-witch the word has a special significance as implying the venerable tradition of the witch living alone, working alone, being singled out, and all that jazz.
I am very gratified to have found a word to describe how I want my life to be. Of course finding my one true will and doing it and nothing else will require more work. I feel I am edging towards it by the way so much dross is being cast out of my life, and when I find out what it is no doubt I will post it here...