Four of Wands
Whether you were able to see the eclipse yesterday, or feel its presence in the atmosphere, I hope it helped you find your sacred space to pause, and just be.
The solar eclipse reminds us that the sun’s presence is intensified by the moon’s transit, creating a ring of fire more brilliant because of the darkness that obscures it. We too can burn through our reserves of energy more quickly if we don’t allow the contrast of darkness to support us, to let our light shine.
This week’s card, the Four of Wands, is about portals, thresholds, and contrasts, but it is also about leisure as a counterpoint to work, and rest as a necessity for creation.
Four of Wands
Fours tend to represent stability and support, in the Modern Witch deck, the four wands have been made into a shelter, gateway, or portal decked with festive foliage. In the Wild Unknown deck, the wands are criss-crossed in a pattern that suggest structural integrity, without rigidity. Wands are associated with the element of fire. This combustible energy is there when we have the first spark of an idea for a project that lights us up, it is what drives us on with writing when we are tired, or ill, or dispirited.
The Four of Wands appears when a project is reaching an internal stage of completion, when it is time to take a pause, celebrate with food and rest, to recharge for the journey ahead. This card might also appear when a project has reached a false ending, where we feel resistant to the work of sculpting, reshaping, and changing what we have written, because of how much of ourselves we have given to the work.
Conversely, this card might find us when we need to take a break, to stop adding more layers to a project. In psychoanalysis, this week, I began to imagine my work-in-progress as a fossil; a record of the layers of pain, shame, and wild emotions that I have experienced while trying to turn it into a book. It has been with me for so many years now that it has become crystallised, an archive of my experience that is illegible to others.
The Four of Wands asks us to find a balance between these points, to find flexibility instead of rigidity, and openness to change instead of resistance. Where can you build flexible rituals and structures in your writing life to support you and your work, rather than the external demands that often shape what we do?
Psychedelics, Portals & Cosmic Messaging
The Four of Wands in the Modern Witch deck makes me think of the Wizard of Oz, with its yellow foreground, and its emerald green-blue city in the background. The figures are leaving the certainty of the city for the fluidity of the natural world. There is a sudden blossoming of vegetation and flowers, but also a yellowish-brown cast to the grass that speaks of decay, and perhaps even the spark for a wildfire. In the Wild Unknown deck by Kim Krans, the psychedelic nature of this card is made even more explicit as the wands create a glowing portal, its glassy blue beckoning us inside.
This card asks us to sit with contrasts, to live with decay as well as blossoming, to acknowledge our mortality while we rest and eat and recharge. It’s not easy to live with that knowledge, with us all the time, and yet we do. We can still enjoy the simple pleasures of the Four of Wands: clean clothes, a basket of food, shelter, care. The figures in this card have all they need: resources, companionship, and nourishment, and they can live in this moment of contrast, aware of the beauty of decay as well as luscious foliage, breathing in the knowledge that transformation can only ever come from rot.
I’m reminded of the structure in the film Melancholia, a shelter made of wands that the characters create to provide shelter from the eclipse-like disaster of planets colliding. Though it serves no practical purpose, the ritual offers spiritual and psychic protection.
Writing Prompts
Light a candle, burn incense, or create a (responsible) outdoor fire. Pay close attention to the colours, light, smell, and sound of the flame, or embers. Write a description of the fire in as much detail as you can.
Write a scene, reflection, or poem about a portal. This can be realist or fantastic, from a memory or an imagined world.
Where can you find contrast in your work? Take a scene, a chapter, an analysis, a paragraph, a poem, or a situation, a character, or any aspect of your work that is bothering you because it feels flat on the page, it won’t come alive, it doesn’t have depth or resonance. Think about the contrasts of the city and the country in the Four of Wands, the power of the card lies in the co-existence of the two worlds, and the effect of this on the characters: their journey is primal, meaningful because it represents the movement from one state to another. Is there a way to introduce deeper contrasts in your writing by adding an element of a seemingly oppositional state? This might be as simple as adding a delicious flaw to a too-good hero, or a redeeming feature to a loathsome antagonist (this is something that might be particularly useful in work that draws heavily on personal experience), but it could also be something like adding humour to a deathbed scene or imbuing a domestic moment with dread.
Writing Rituals
Burn clean wood or incense to cleanse your space, and to honour the element of fire.
Create a transformative space of rot, decay, and renewal in the garden, or in a pot: compost and watch the cycle of deep renewal that emerges even from the most unpromising soil.
Take yourself on a picnic, alone or with others, and pack yourself some delicious fruit and other treats. Cross the boundary between the buildings of the city and green space, however tiny, feeling that contrast as you settle into the space. Charge your body and breathe in the sunlight.
Create a cosy den out of chairs, blankets, and bedding inside, or if you can find outdoor space and some branches, twigs, or wood, create a portal. Entwine it with flowers, leaves, and strands of your hair. Spend an hour inside the portal or the den and see what cosmic messaging emerges as you inhabit the boundary between worlds.
Tarot Spread or Journalling Prompts
Please use these questions however you find most supportive. You can as these questions of the tarot deck, or you can use them as prompts for journalling.
Where do I feel the spark of fire in my current or imagined projects?
If I follow this spark, where will it led me?
If I follow this spark, is there anything I will lose?
I wish you summer fires, and fragrant smoke this week.