A card of contradictions, the Ten of Wands begs us to parse purpose from undue burdens, the pursuit of our personal truths versus our obligations to society.
A sky burial, an exhumation of a corpse from carrion birds, illustrates this dichotomy. A life reaches death, and the death pours into life. This person once carried fire and placed it above the deceased. Now it is their turn to rest under the fire that others have brought. This static and uninhabited shell of a person will be carried on wings far above the rest of the human world.
In the pursuit of a genuine existence, you are the only person who can truly know your own limits. When should you take on more responsibilities, and when should you place limits in advocating for your own needs? Deciding what can and cannot be asked of you is to deconstruct the social scripting you inherited long ago. No matter what, the journey you're on is far bigger than you are. Any convictions followed can end certain journeys and begin others.
This past year, I was invited to participate in a collaborative tarot project, the Chromatic Fates tarot deck. The Kickstarter was a huge success, and you can now preorder the deck itself here!
The Ten of Wands in particular is a difficult card to execute, but I was excited to leap into the challenge of it. Here are some of my thoughts on the meaning of the card itself:
Despite my best intentions, I do not expect to affect positive change in places where I do not belong. As a black sheep in a culture unkind to others, my earlier efforts included meticulously cultivating my friendships, physical appearance, and social interactions in hopes of being validated by those who respected the idea of me more than the truth of me. Ironically, these earlier years also included my being unsympathetic to those outside of my worldview.
Living my truest life ultimately destroyed certain dreams of mine: old friends, family members, and certain communities no longer have room for me. As an outlier, my truths are an inconvenience to those from my past. The person I am not and the dreams that no longer fit me, they rest on the podium. Whatever leaves that stone podium is my true self. In this life and the next, I will fly far beyond where that effigy could ever have hoped to walk.
-J