Queering the Tarot, page 10
THE SIX AND EIGHT OF WANDS
The most common keywords for the Six are progress, victory, and triumph. When I hear the words victory and triumph though, I don't just think of the success or win that comes with them. These words bring battle, rough terrain, and hard-fought success to my mind, and that's important to note for this card. This isn't just a good thing happening—it's something you've fought long and hard for finally turning in your favor. It's triumph over adversity, specifically.
The Eight is associated with progress too, although much more speedily. It's not that you haven't been working tirelessly for the win that comes in the Eight, it's that there's no steady or slow growth. Things aren't going in your favor, or they've stagnated, and then all of a sudden, BOOM. Quick action, quick decisions on your part, and quick changes to the energy surrounding a situation bring this triumph.
Because a queer perspective of the Wands suit is often connected to the passion for social justice many queer people share, we'll start with the obvious to queer these two cards.
Social justice is hard—fighting for our own rights and sticking up for marginalized groups we're allied with seems overwhelming and insurmountable more often than not. These cards bring welcome news to our activist lives, with the Six promising that a rough campaign or project will succeed, while the Eight most often brings a fresh burst of energy to an ongoing battle, allowing you to push through the last bit of work and turn the tide. In short, both promise victories over oppression, particularly if you've been fighting for a specific piece of liberation or legislation.
However, many believe that social justice and the key to equality or liberation (depending on your goals) start with the deeply personal. As such, I have seen the Six of Wands show up when someone's transphobic or otherwise bigoted relative realizes they've been wrong to isolate a queer seeker or continue to push a harmful political or personal agenda on them. A joyful, earnest conversation or show of support from such a loved one certainly did not come easy. It came after years of arguments and in-depth conversation. I have seen the Eight do the opposite-seekers who get this card are promised a sudden burst of passionate advocacy from others. This is likely when the seeker decides to move on beyond those who have hurt them and stumbles into a queer chosen family almost by accident. Finding your people always amounts to a flurry of emotion and activity, and this is often what this Eight of Wands indicates.
When we talk about the deeply personal, though, we are not just talking about how the oppression marginalized people face shows up in close interpersonal relationships. It's most important to look at how it shows up within ourselves. We hear about internalized misogyny and internalized homophobia all the time, and I know for a fact that other isms and hatred also get turned within. This is something LGBTQQIP2SA+ seekers deal with so often that we almost dismiss that part of our story and our struggle—the part where everything is going right but we still feel wrong or fight who we are. The number one way I see the Six of Wands show up is when an LGBTQQIP2SA+ querent finally begins accepting and embracing their queerness, instead of just going through the motions of living it. And, as with stumbling into a queer squad of our own, this can often happen quickly, following a series of chance encounters with supportive people or life itself quickly doing a one-eighty and showering us with generosity. This is when the Eight of Wands shows up. The Eight would also come up in instances where we're still working to truly embrace our full selves, perhaps suggesting we follow our gut into a series of self discovery-provoking events that help us fall in love with ourselves all over again.
In the mundane, the Six and Eight of Wands don't necessarily warrant queering—victory or action and quick changes in our jobs, relationships, diets, and so on, are still just that. When we look at these cards through a queer lens though, we see something else entirely—victory against societal ick, activity and gain in our personal lives, and eventually, triumph over those parts of ourselves that don't actually want us to triumph.
THE NINE OF WANDS
I originally wrote about the Nine of Wands shortly after the 2016 American election that devastated so many in our community. It was comforting and reinvigorating to me to be writing about the Nine of Wands then, and as a response to the drain and stress so many of us feel right now, this card deserves its own standalone piece. However, this card deals a lot with negative cycles, and two years into a cycle filled with the ugliest parts of humanity in my country, I am feeling frustrated again, even as I work on this generally hopeful book. I am also feeling terrified, anxious, and stressed out daily because of what the past couple of years have looked like for queer people, POC, the disabled, women, and other marginalized people.
Yet I know that the Wands are a suit full of ups and downs and filled with conflict. I also know that very often the suit indicates that a resolution of those conflicts is coming. It's a suit that shows up to represent our gut instinct and that source of intuition, and is heavy on communication and creativity. It's also the suit that correlates with fire and, as such, represents all of those things that make life worth living: sex, intensity, and the things we personally are most passionate about. We've been talking about how, for queer people, those passions lie in queer activism and even our very identities. We've discussed how those affect the personal in the Two through Four, the hard activist fights of the Five and Seven, and the joyous triumphs of the Six and Eight. I also know that the Nine of Wands is tied to keywords like persistence, bravery, tenacity, and even the phrase “test of faith.” It represents those moments when we've come through hell and all of a sudden it feels . . . pointless. There's been a setback of any size, and that hard work we've been putting in seems to dissipate right before our eyes.
It is a frustrating card to get in a prophetic placement, because it says, “Oh, hey, a speed bump is coming and it's a big one.” But it's a great card to get elsewhere, because it shows how far you've come, and it promises that though this may feel like your toughest battle yet, it's not the war itself, and the war itself is winnable. In fact, you've actually already won the battle in question. It's just a matter of sticking it out and pushing through, allowing yourself to admit you've grown exponentially from previous experiences, and this time, you're ready. This is a card that idealizes standing up for your beliefs, and so it often shows up simply to tell us the fight is worth it. It's a card of resilience. It's a card of resistance. As advice, the Nine of Wands is almost tough love, telling us to just be resilient—to resist. Letting someone or something else win at this point is nonsense. Keep going. It's necessary to hold on to the message of this card, as hard as it may be and as angry or hurt as you may be. It doesn't take much imagination to apply the above to our current struggles for queer equity and liberation.
In case you need to straight up hear it anyway: the fight for LGBTQQIP2SA+ rights isn't over. We have been dealt a harsh blow, but the progress we have made over the past decade isn't disappearing, at least not right now. We are stronger and better as individuals and as a community, and we will continue to fight to protect our existing rights and push for the plethora of rights and dignities we still do not have. This would be true if the Nine of Wands showed up in a reading, but it's also a card that wants to hold our attention all the time. These lessons translate to our own microcosms too, as many of us feel down after dealing with racist or queerphobic family. The Nine of Wands tells you to keep working with your family (or whoever is causing the pain), and going with those conversations and that hyperpersonal activism. If you take nothing else away from this book, take that—keep going. But take this too: you are strong enough to do so.
While I am speaking directly to current events and issues, the same queering I've talked about can apply anytime, in any year or month that the Nine of Wands shows up for you, about any setback or struggle on your path of advocacy or even when fighting to be heard in your family or personal life. It's also true for the internal conflicts that the suit of Wands seeks to address. The LGBTQQIP2SA+ community is imbued pretty deeply with issues of mental health, sobriety, and self-worth for understandable reasons. We are marginalized people, and we're going to have some reactions to that. As we think about taking control of ourselves, and taking our lives back from even internal sources, the Nine of Wands shows up to confirm that we've got this. Maybe we didn't a year or two or seven ago, but here in this moment, a temporary self-esteem slip or return to self-destructive behavior isn't going to throw us totally off course. This card shows up to say that in this moment, we are able to pull ourselves up and continue on our path of healing.
The Nine of Wands can apply to slightly lighter situations too. If your identity has fallen more into questioning than any firm letter in even the expanded acronym, or if you are fairly fluid, you are reaching a point where those cases of fluidity no longer throw you off track or make you question everything about who you are. Though it's always a little strange to find yourself feeling or identifying outside of your wheel-house, the Nine of Wands shows that you can still retain your sense of self as you either wade through this new territory or begin incorporating it into your life.
The Nine of Wands can show up in our personal or romantic lives, too. We are all sometimes tempted off track by a cute femme just slightly too young for us who doesn't want the same things out of life but sure is sweet when she shows up at your work with coffee. (Okay, maybe this is a really specific piece of personal testimony, but we all have those weaknesses, whether it's a specific ex, type of relationship, or, yes, type of person). If the Nine of Wands shows up in a future placement, this is a warning to hold on to your hat because that situation is likely arising soon. In this and any other placement, this card also reminds us of how far we've come in our personal growth since our last merry-go-round. As a Wands card (which does prioritize passion and therefore sometimes carnal desires), in this type of reading the message may not be to stand your ground and say no no matter what. Rather, it's saying if we choose to walk through the flames this time, and there are times when we just really need our flames nurtured, it will not crush us when it inevitably falls apart or when we have to be the ones to pull the plug. Don't lose sight of who you are in the process, or in the aftermath, and your personal and domestic goals will still be met on time with your self-worth intact. There are times when the Wands firmly say to stand up to the person and refuse relationships that are actually unhealthy, or when we know we aren't sexually compatible with someone, for example. But there is an alternate way to read this card, and that does include embracing our sexual side.
As we move forward in this new world, we are wrapping up a lot of terrifying battles. Some we've even won. Many more were unfortunately lost. I'm going to break from format a little by ending with a suggestion for a reading to guide whatever is hurting your queer heart right now. If you read, great, if not, find a friend or professional who does, and ask for this:
First, pull the Nine of Wands out, and let it oversee the whole reading. Think about the things that have you feeling defeated, be they personal or societal.
Lay out three more cards in any order. These are steps you can take to put this time behind you and feel triumphant by year's end.
Pull one more card as a final message, and let that message be your mantra over the next six to eight weeks. If it's Death, for example, the mantra would be “Everything that ends makes room for something new,” or if it's something like the Five of Wands, it's a basic reminder that walking away from what's causing you pain is an option right now.
The Nine of Wands promises we're ready to start anew—it's just a matter of planting our feet, summoning our strength, and looking ahead (which many of us admittedly haven't been great at lately). The number one message of the Nine of Wands is a defiant, confident “You got this,” and I can't think about a stronger, more important message for marginalized communities to receive right now.
THE TEN OF WANDS
Oh, friends, if there's ever a time to assess the Ten of Wands in all of its potential queer glory, it's now. The past few years have been completely overwhelming and exhausting regardless of where you land on the political or social spectrum. For many of us concerned with collective liberation and freedom, each New Year hasn't exactly reset things the way we hoped. As a result, many of us are running around trying to fix it all at once, feeling defeated and losing steam every step of the way. Appropriately then, the Ten of Wands is a card of complete and utter exhaustion. It indicates burnout; it indicates feeling burdened; and it indicates that if you aren't there now, you are about to fall apart if one more thing lands on your plate.
This is also a card warning us that no matter what our intentions were going into a situation, we are now knee-deep in unfair or codependent burdens that shouldn't belong to us in the first place. As a person, this is someone who either takes on others' problems as their own or who expects others to do that for them. As an event, this is the moment you're just done with a situation that has been ordeal after ordeal. You have officially reached burnout. As advice, this card lets us know it is time to take a huge step back from such a person or situation and take a long, deep look at the habits that regularly put us here.
Queering the Ten of Wands is somewhat uncomfortable for me as so much of my work on this series is geared toward building up community and building up individual LGBTQQIP2SA+ seekers. Sometimes, though, to become empowered, we have to reach a dark rock bottom first. And sometimes we have to acknowledge that for all of our radical power, we too are human and flawed. Queering the Ten of Wands often means addressing the frequently codependent need to fix everything for fellow queer people and our penchant for working too hard in relationships that we know aren't worth it, and acknowledging that we are prone to take on as many activist, advocate, and community roles as we think we can handle without much thought to our basic human needs like sleep and proper meals.
I see this card come up disproportionately with queer seekers because we are so on fire to create change that we often cannot see we are headed into dangerous territory. You can't give thirsty people water when your own cup is empty, and I see so many cases of overload where every card I lay out is about self-care and adequate rest when reading for my community. When the Ten of Wands shows up you have to take a step back, no matter how much you love your projects, or you will end up so frazzled and spent you will be unable to help anyone, including yourself. This card often addresses compassion fatigue, a type of anxiety faced by those who do a lot of helping work and community organizing that comes from taking on all of the problems you're trying to resolve as your own. It's exhausting to be someone who gives a damn about marginalized people, let alone the fact that that involvement often reinforces the trauma that comes from being marginalized oneself. This means facing the hard realities of putting up boundaries when we really don't want to, and having to shut off part of our empathy to the very real suffering those we care about are facing so that we can continue to do the hard work of creating change and offering direct support to those who need it.
Finally on this note, while a codependent need to take on a partner's problems as our own is by far not a specifically LGBTQQIP2SA+ phenomenon, it does manifest a little differently and a little more often. I mentioned before how taking on someone else's trauma can reinforce our own, and that's certainly true in these cases as well. I want to emphasize that most people who get the Ten of Wands in situations like this are compassionate people in positive relationships. The problems are that we haven't learned to put up emotional and spiritual boundaries to protect ourselves, and that we've been so focused on these other problems that technically aren't even ours that we have abandoned our own needs. In short, this card often shows a problem that exists in us, not the other people involved. When this card shows up over and over again, it can mean we've developed a habit of taking on other people's issues as our own, and its appearance requires self-assessment and honesty to figure out why that's happening and how we can prevent it in the future. The Ten of Wands wants us to figure out how we can start healing that part of us that chooses to do that. How this shows up uniquely for LGBTQQIP2SA+ people is that the need at hand comes from a place where we identify with the problem or pain, and think subconsciously, for example, that if we somehow fix a close friend's relationship with their transphobic parent, our own tenuous relationship with casually homophobic high school friends will somehow also reach a peaceable conclusion. This causes us to focus on these other problems instead of our own, but we also take on so many that it inevitably leads here, to the Ten of Wands, to a place of feeling broken, not better.
The of Ten of Wands can also show up to represent the radical collective or queer community as a whole when a traumatic event happens that takes the wind out of our normally energetic sails. This is when a querent is generally good about boundaries and self-care but something unprecedented happens that just knocks us completely off our feet. The 2016 American presidential election and everything that has happened after are perfect examples. Each innocent black person murdered by police is another example. The shooting at Pulse nightclub in 2016 is yet another. In these times we think the solution is to immediately hop back up and into action. We deprive ourselves of the time to grieve, but in the end, the human need to rest and mourn always wins. It's okay to feel defeated, and though the Ten of Wands often shows up to give us advice or steer us a certain way, in these cases it shows up to say, “I hear you. I see you. I love you. Please give yourself the same love I am giving you.”
