Tarot card for the day: Three of wands
We only see his back and what he’s looking toward. He stands on a cliff facing away, a staff grasped in his hand. The staff is blooming red roses. Two other staffs are to his right, and though they have leaves sprouting, they don’t have flowers. In the distance are three ships at sea. Is he imagining the possible? A potential future? Is he watching someone come or go? Whatever he’s doing, whatever expression he holds on his face that we can only imagine, there’s a lack of balance because of the three. Something is about to change or is changing. When there were only two, balance was struck; but balance is constantly shifting and finding orientation and two is never quite complete because when there are two, a third is formed in the very existence of two interacting. Kierkegaard speaks of the third in The Sickness Unto Death:
“Such a relation that relates itself to itself, a self, must either have established itself or have been established by another. If the relation that relates itself to itself has been established by another, then the relation is indeed the third, but this relation, the third, is yet again a relation and relates itself to that which established the entire relation.” (225)
What will the third become, in relation to the two? The story depicted is not before a plan has formed; the plan has already begun and he’s in the process of change happening. The two’s are in place, the plan has begun; what will the third bring?
In this time of waiting and contemplation, the three of wands may suggest a certain element of action. I think this is particularly poignant given day 8 is the first time a card was drawn in its upright position. So, a return to the external world, a rebalancing of all that internal work, a reprieve of sorts, to maintain one’s momentum. The three of wands on the 8th day of “coming and going” tells the story of the importance of needing both yin and yang energy.
Bibliography:
Kierkegaard, Soren. The Sickness Unto Death. Human Nature, ed. by Joel J. Kupperman. Hackett, Indianapolis, 2012.
(My Tarot deck is Llewellyn’s Classic Tarot by Barbara Moore and illustrated by Eugene Smith.)