Quantum Tarot - 10 Wands

nisaba

We see a shadowy figure bent double, clutching a Wand for support. Behind him and against the darkness of space a fiery explosion is happening, a new of solar flares silhouettes him. With his sacral spine as a horizon the intense core of all the heat and light rises, white-hot and glary. Into that, and into his sacral spine, nine other Wands are stabbing.

The scientific subtitle of this card is "Neutron Star", and the companion-book points out that a Neutron Star is what is left after a massive star collapses as a result of its own mass causing its own gravity to suck the very structure of its atoms apart.

While a Sun-type star is fuelled largely by the burning of hydrogen and somewhat by the burning of helium, nothing like that can be said of a neutron star. When the neutrons, proton and electrons of a whole bunch of atoms have been torn apart, elements no longer exist and words have no meaning. Arguably, even ignition as we know it could not exist. The electrons, the lightest particles involved, would tend to surround the other components of a neutron star, and devoid of their positively-charged partners, would tend to result in the most incredible electrical storm you can imagine as they fight and jostle to seek out and link up with a positively charged particle where none exist. It is this frenzied electrical activity that creates the light, heat and other forms of radiation put out by these anomalies.

The Ten Wands tends to come out when the querent is crushed under the weight of their responsibilities, when their life no longer has the strength to stand up against the gravity and the immense masses of people's expectations. It manifests at those time when one can't go on but doesn't dare stop, knowing they'll never be able to start again if they do stop. Like a Neutron Star, all the weight of the world has descended on one, and gravity has taken an inexorable hold, slowly crushing one into oblivion.
 

swimming in tarot

Not being adept at physics, I tend to think of the neutron star (having just read about them for the first time in the LWB) as all the former atoms torn apart into their components and now rearranging themselves to be one big atom: a neutron glom surrounded by electrons and protons. An "atom" this heavy is surely unstable!

Anyhow, the guy in this 10 of Wands has lower back pain something fierce, reminiscent of the acupuncture job shown in most 10 of Swords. The crushing weight in his back is doubtless causing vertebral compaction and collapse, doing who knows what to the enclosed spinal nerve. If he had a spinal-nervous breakdown, it would be no surprise. This ties in with the given meaning about people who take on too much, and control freaks; martyrs would fit in here too: all of them are people who try to be THE nucleus of their situation, whether actively or passive-aggressively, around whom all else revolve, not being as useful and important as them! The situation tends to be self-correcting in a self-defeating way. A fused, compacted spine becomes rigid, and no more burdens can be carried. An overburdened mind is on the road to nervous breakdown. Are these rods supposed to evoke the spokes on another 10 card, the Wheel of Fortune, as the completion of a cycle, in an unhappy way? It looks like half a wheel. It won't roll any more.

ETA: if you take the stress point to be the lumbar vertebrae and not the sacral (tailbone) vertebrae, you can pun on lumbar/lumber in the British sense, a bunch of old junk that serves no purpose...so why "lumber" clumsily around carrying it?
 

Leo62

swimming in tarot said:
Anyhow, the guy in this 10 of Wands has lower back pain something fierce, reminiscent of the acupuncture job shown in most 10 of Swords. The crushing weight in his back is doubtless causing vertebral compaction and collapse, doing who knows what to the enclosed spinal nerve. If he had a spinal-nervous breakdown, it would be no surprise. This ties in with the given meaning about people who take on too much, and control freaks; martyrs would fit in here too: all of them are people who try to be THE nucleus of their situation, whether actively or passive-aggressively, around whom all else revolve, not being as useful and important as them! The situation tends to be self-correcting in a self-defeating way. A fused, compacted spine becomes rigid, and no more burdens can be carried.
LOL that's genius! :D

I must admit, even looking at this card gives me back ache. The flare of intense light from the neutron star reflects the sudden flaring of pain in the back.

I can't really add that much to these two great posts, except to say that the next stage on from the intensely compacted matter of a neutron star is a black hole (the Devil card in the Quantum). A black hole is created (so the theory goes) when the gravitational forces of a collapsing star are so great, causing the matter to be crushed and compacted so severely, that it creates a massive distortion - perhaps even a rip - in space-time.

This would be the end of the road for the 10 of Wands person I guess - the moment of breakdown, or utter subjugation in the case of the martyr.
 

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