Queen of Swords
A month ago I found out my mothers skeleton was riddled with holes caused by multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer. As her medical POA, I had to decide if she would fight this terminal disease for a few extra years of painful existence or die with comfort care. So, I decided. As of today my mother is at her own home, almost a month into hospice care. Existence has been a whirlwind of emotion and logistics, hard decisions and adjustment.
When I first started on this journey of learning the tarot by painting the tarot I didn't know I'd be writing a personal letter for the process that went through each card: the symbolism or the rough personal edges I bumped into in my life along the way. I started with the Fool. Of course. As one does. But then I decided to let my new RWS tarot deck tell me the next card to paint. The second card I ever pulled, researched, and painted was the queen of swords. After the queen I asked for and got only major arcana for about 6 paintings (thinking I would, like many art decks makers, paint only the major arcana). That was three years ago. A month ago, having almost finished the five of wands painting, I pulled from my dedicated tarot deck the next card to research and contemplate on this journey. I re-pulled the queen of swords. I've done 38 pieces in this 78 painting project and only once before did I pull a card I'd already painted. At that time I pulled almost every card I'd painted and then a bunch of minor arcana. I realized I needed to commit to the entire 78 cards and start painting the minor arcana. So what was the reason for the re-pull this time? Was it a fluke? Had I just tipped the odds over and ruptured my statistical impossibilities? I should say that when I pulled the queen of swords two weeks ago, I tried a second pull and got the seven of coins (which, as you know, Kind Reader, I have also already painted). It was time to pause, step back, contemplate. And then I immediately went ahead and, using my daily deck, I pulled my two focus cards: revealing Death and the Queen of Swords. I listened to the seven of coins and waited in contemplation. I had no idea what it meant. My intuition was crickets. Then my mother went into hospice care and the queen of swords, in hindsight, was so clear. I realized I needed to finally write the Queen of Swords story before I can move on, to focus on my mother.
My mother IS this queen. She is all intellect, and always leads with good straight forward advice. Never a hugger, not very physical, her warmth was diminished by an abusive older brother when she was a child. She was a loving mother but distant, looking desperately for love and spirituality. She was the first in her family to get an advanced degree. She wanted to study environmental science but since it wasn't a 'real' science yet in the sixties, her family persuaded her to get a PhD in child psychology. In college she marched with Martin Luther King, a skinny red haired waif raised in segregated Baltimore, speaking up against what she knew was wrong. It's in that march that she met my father, and went for a cup of coffee. She ran a ranch, worked part time, got her PhD, and raised two children in the early 70s. What a lot to live up to! My mom helped invent sandbox play during therapy sessions with children, helping other children play out their traumas so they wouldn't have to speak the words. She worked as a mediator, helping divorcing people make custody plans, leading them to realize their children are more important than their disappointment and anger. She was Justice- she saw such hardship and abuse in those home visits, and cut through to the truth, finding the safest way for the child to continue with or without their family. The queen of swords is often a widow, and her second husband died of a heart attack in her arms. Yes, she is the queen of swords, and now she is dying. Her brain has long been broken by a brain tumor she's carried for at least twenty years, and now her body will fall apart until she is free, free to be the nature spirit she always was, to rejoin the Self that is not herself but is herself. Free to be ash cast on the ocean, to be part of the nature that she loved. And after she is gone she will be my mother again, in memory. Not 'dementia mother', as she has been for the last ten years.
In The Way of Tarot, Jodorowsky writes the voice for this queen, " I wear a shield over my belly.There is a scar on this shield. Might I have sacrificed my entrails? I do not allow needs, desires, Or emotions to invade me. I live in my mind....Transcendence is my ideal outside of flesh, outside of matter, toward the androgenous state in which I will be capable of negotiating the snares of thought to reach this impersonal center that is Cosmic Consciousness." That was my mother.
The RWS court cards don’t give readers of the tarot a whole lot to go on. Of course, tarot has gone mainstream and there are so many amazing decks now, many of which have handed our queens and kings, knights, and pages, really fabulous symbols they didn’t have back when they were derived from Mamluk Turkish playing cards. When the King of coins was just a coin with doo-li-dads and royal what-nots. So being that I adore a good transformation symbol, I hung a cocoon off the pummel of her sword. And the moth raises up to see, and then become, the moon, released by the sword and the hand. Our queen speaks of the cycles of the moon and the cycles of your life. Her beak is a sword as well you know, good for stabbing words. And the landscape is a photo taken through the windshield at sunset as we drove through the Canadian Rockies. I almost painted her as a human, with her tongue as a sword. Maybe for my next deck (insane laughter inserted here). My mom loved birds and the mountains and this bird lady wears a mountain-scape dress. She is above the clouds. She is cold and a bit lonely. She is independent and wise.
That was my mother. And in the future when I pull the queen of swords I will think of her. I will speak from intelligence and experience, saying what needs to be said.
“Acknowledging Our Cycles” Oil on wood in upcycled frame.
17.5x48”
