greycats
It looks like the story of Moses in the Bullrushes, but maybe not.
A young woman in a blue gown with her head covered in the biblical manner, holds the lid of a basket with one hand and steadies the basket with the other. Her face expresses neither joy nor surprise. Instead she seems immersed in solemn thought as if she beholds her fate in the open basket. Sleeping in the basket is an infant (but not a newborn) on a cushion of rich, red cloth. A swath of blue cloth covers his/her waist. From between the child’s arms a leaf emerges like a scepter. Tiny fingers touch it lightly. At the base of the basket, the water expands in rippling circles which widen into the circle of rushes that conceals everything within it. The child in the basket is the focal point of this scene. One sees it first, the woman second.
In RWS, the nine of wands depicts a struggle, a desperate endeavor that occupies body, mind and will to the fullest. The arcana has traditionally meant something like “resolve in the face of grave difficulities.” The Maat shows us the moment before the resolve is formed, while one is still making up ones mind. The challenge—the gift or test, whatever it is—has only just appeared. It is the moment of decision: shall one accept the challenge or not? It’s up to you; what will you do? Remember: if you pick it up, then this cause, this job, this child will always be first. It will rule your life. And if you let it pass. . . well, it may have been your great chance.
Thousands of women face this particular challenge everyday: to carry a child or not, to raise it or not. The woman holding the basket lid in the 9 of wands: has she only just opened the basket or is she about to close it? Is she about to accept a beautiful gift or about to give one? There are understandable reasons for doing either. Will she become like the old woman in the 10 of wands and still be weaving her family close after her children have already had children? Or is her path a different one whose sorrows and joys are unfamiliar and whose end is not so easily seen.
A young woman in a blue gown with her head covered in the biblical manner, holds the lid of a basket with one hand and steadies the basket with the other. Her face expresses neither joy nor surprise. Instead she seems immersed in solemn thought as if she beholds her fate in the open basket. Sleeping in the basket is an infant (but not a newborn) on a cushion of rich, red cloth. A swath of blue cloth covers his/her waist. From between the child’s arms a leaf emerges like a scepter. Tiny fingers touch it lightly. At the base of the basket, the water expands in rippling circles which widen into the circle of rushes that conceals everything within it. The child in the basket is the focal point of this scene. One sees it first, the woman second.
In RWS, the nine of wands depicts a struggle, a desperate endeavor that occupies body, mind and will to the fullest. The arcana has traditionally meant something like “resolve in the face of grave difficulities.” The Maat shows us the moment before the resolve is formed, while one is still making up ones mind. The challenge—the gift or test, whatever it is—has only just appeared. It is the moment of decision: shall one accept the challenge or not? It’s up to you; what will you do? Remember: if you pick it up, then this cause, this job, this child will always be first. It will rule your life. And if you let it pass. . . well, it may have been your great chance.
Thousands of women face this particular challenge everyday: to carry a child or not, to raise it or not. The woman holding the basket lid in the 9 of wands: has she only just opened the basket or is she about to close it? Is she about to accept a beautiful gift or about to give one? There are understandable reasons for doing either. Will she become like the old woman in the 10 of wands and still be weaving her family close after her children have already had children? Or is her path a different one whose sorrows and joys are unfamiliar and whose end is not so easily seen.