Swords and Wands As “Present” and “Future”
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Here’s another unusual twist from Alejandro Jodorowsky. Although I certainly don’t love everything he’s written since so much of it is mystically obtuse (when it isn’t merely peculiar), he does come up with some thought-provoking notions.
In comparing the Ace of Swords to the Ace of Wands in The Way of Tarot, Jodorowsky notes that the former brings its influence to bear on the present in order to “overcome the past by surpassing it” through liberation of the mind from its constraints, which is essentially a rational response; the latter represents a “call from the future” to direct creative energy toward the achievement of our ambitions, a largely visceral reaction to a utopian stimulus. The Swords are reflective and retentive (a function of cognitive memory) and the Wands are expressive and propulsive. I find that this rationale could be applied to all of the cards of each suit: the Swords express a mental orientation to the “here-and-now” while the Wands are more forward-looking in their spontaneous urge to develop present circumstances into future reality. These are assumptions that can inform our interpretation of the two suits in meaningful and useful ways.
But if I intend to use it I will have to reconsider the timing conventions for the suits. Wands are generally viewed as fast-acting and “in-the-moment” due to the ardent, animating intensity of elemental Fire (which doubles as “spirit” in some esoteric models), while Swords as elemental Air are slightly more attenuated and prone to think before acting. Wands are susceptible to the heedless “knee-jerk” reaction while Swords offer at least a trace of forethought (one of my “tarot euphemisms” for the Ace of Wands is the “”Just do it!” card, while the Ace of Swords is the “bright idea” card). I don’t disagree with Jodorowsky’s functional attributes for the two suits but I also don’t think they will behave according to his temporal playbook in my own practice. He is resolutely non-esoteric in his approach, and his assumptions here may be due more to the fact that he sees Swords as the inaugural suit in the “pip” card sequence and thus more of an immediate, “in-your-face” reflex than the “take everything in stride and deal with it in due time” Wands. On the other hand, we could say that in his worldview Swords represent “what is or can be known” and Wands reflect “what is projected or desired,” but thought doesn’t always precede action when it comes to satisfying our perceived needs.
Jodorowsky uses the Tarot de Marseille, which doesn’t carry the narrative “baggage” of decks with more scenic minor cards, so there is little tendency to draw anecdotal inferences from free-association. The Waite-Smith deck and its ubiquitous “clones” are the least amenable to his ideas since the RWS Wands are generally more restive than the Swords, which are almost universally subdued. With the Thoth deck it’s the artist’s palette that tells the tale: the Wands are typically “warmer” in color scheme and therefore more precipitous in their action while the Swords are significantly “cooler” and less abrupt. Any new “scenic” deck that proposes to follow Jodorowsky’s lead would have to be repositioned to reverse these common themes. I’m not convinced it’s worth the effort and it would probably come off no better than those decks that attempt to swap the elemental assignments for the suits. As I always say about tarot revisionism, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on January 1, 2023.
