Sequential Exercise 5-7 Wands

Sophie

yet another alternative view of the 5-7 wands sequence

I've been thinking about these three cards since Michael posted them, and looking at them in several ways. I can see your graduation up, Michael, and Dave's graduation down, following Rachel Pollack's 10-Ace study.

If I remember rightly, it is the 6 of Wands that was your starting point, so I want to look at it first. Taking a leaf out of Robert Place's 3 card reading, I'm now seeing the Fey ambassador on his tortoise as the choice we have in developing relationships with the unknown, with strangers.

I've been reading Bruce Chatwin's Songlines - a fantastic book. I want to quote a passage because it is relevant:
The Middle Latin wargus - i.e. 'expulsion' or 'stranger' - is also the same as the wolf: and thus the two conceptions - that of the wild beast to be hunted down, and that of the man to be treated as a wild beast - are intimately connected.
Later in the book, Chatwin describes conversations he had with the two South African paleoanthropologists who first postulated the theory (which has become accepted now) that early man was the prey of wild beasts, and developed all his fighting habits, but also all his social and religious rituals, as a result of having been a prey long before s/he became a hunter. We live with that early instinct still in us (nb: for the curious, that subject has been wonderfully explored in Barbara Ehrenreich's Blood Rites).

In that light those three cards take on a different hue altogether. In the centre we have the stranger, the foreign fey - the "wargus", the wolf, the one to be feared and if necessary fought and expelled. But he comes as ambassador, bearing a gift - and therefore an uneasy truce is forced upon the people, who subdue their instincts of fight or flight while they watch the stranger. The social ritual of exchange of gifts and ambassadors has also grown out of our prey/defensive past.

They have a choice, next.

They can act like the 7 of Wands fey, and fight off the wild beast, the stranger, the one who threatens them. They can defend kith and kin (and golden plant - who might well be the kith and kin of that fey!) instinctively, and see strangers as so many monsters. Defence is a powerful human instinct - it kept us alive in the African savannahs when the hunting hyenas and other prehistoric big cats were making us their dinner of choice. It kept us alive when the big cats became predatory neighbouring tribes, raiders and dictators.

Or they can act like the 5 of Wands fey - playfully competitive, enjoying a tug of war, turning aggressive defensive action into vigorous sport, just as war becomes football.

Are these really either-or alternatives? Or are they, as Dave suggests, a progression? I think perhaps now they can be alternatives, but we can never underestimate the strength of instinct, especially where Wands energy is concerned.

Or perhaps the 5 of Wands shows another version of the defensive instinct of the prey: that of cooperation in order to become strong...and that of adoption of the wargus to make him "one of us" - no longer a potential predator.

~Sophie
 

tarobones

Awesome

How wonderful, Helvetica! I love your insights on these three cards. I'm amazed continuously on how much this deck evokes. Thank you for your posts. I'll not look on these three in the same way again. BB, Michael