Returning to Connection when Signs are Unclear

Like the Page of Swords, I’m looking out at a windy sky. I wanted to wait until it felt like the right time to write this forecast for you all; I don’t think I’m alone in feeling “over” words. Filling up on thoughts and opinions - often laced with fear and anxiety - hasn’t felt nourishing, and as the days get shorter and colder, I’m feeling a distinct need for wordless sustenance in all forms: physical, mental, spiritual, emotional.

It just so happened that I’d booked a last-minute trip to visit family before the election. The day afer the results rolled in, I found myself on a plane with my child, heading to Cape Cod. Something about the neutral, in-between space of the airport felt fitting - transitioning through a place that holds transitions - and I feel this as I look at the Page of Swords; that we’re getting distance from past events and holding up our swords in practice, knowing we’ll need to use them to make sense of it all, just not quite yet.

In the following days I’ve been drawn to silence, gentle companionship, and nature. When I talk with friends or sit at the dinner table with family we don’t go into the details, engaging in complex theoretical analysis (that would be more Knight of Swords, for sure). There’s a tenderness, trepidation, and innate wisdom I feel coming from so many people around me that captures the youthful instinct of the Page: that we need to be curious, energized, ready. And that, while we’re holding a sword - our power to discern, learn, analyze, and ultimately choose - we don’t quite know how to use it yet. Our task is to gain our footing, look back to better understand where we are, and practice caring for ourselves and others so that we can be as grounded as possible knowing that we can only see clearly when standing still, on our own two feet.

So, oddly, I’m heartened to see this Page along with our central card, the Wheel of Fortune. This powerful archetype instructs us to expect change and upheaval as a central feature of life rather than an aberration. Pairing the Page of Swords with The Wheel invites us to be gentle with ourselves and others; we’re still getting our footing, the winds are still blowing, but the winds are formidable and part of a larger weather system.

I’ve been taking lots of walks in the past few days in a way that reminds me of the Page, too. On the off-season, the Cape empties out. Without lines of tourists filling up the single road leading to Provincetown - the final town on the peninsula - the whole place is shockingly navigable. With empty roads and cold winds blowing, the dunes and scrubby forests towards the tip of the Cape take on a lunar quality. Without people, there’s space to imagine bigger cycles, turnings of The Wheel. And, like the Page, I feel both humbled and comforted knowing that I am such a small part of it all, seeking to understand something that, ultimately, is unknowable in its totality.

My adventures on the off-season out here have lead me to lots of new trails and sights. I’ve built a new ritual during this visit of sneaking off in the afternoon alone to ramble, finding spots on the national seashore I’d been too overwhelmed to visit during the summer’s tourist churn. A few days ago, as I was exploring the tip of the Cape, I remarked to my friend on the phone that “it’s confusing at the end of the world!” I couldn’t find the signs to the turn-offs I wanted; I kept driving in circles, but was too tired to be genuinely frustrated.

We may feel the same way this week. The Wheel of Fortune is a powerful card that mixes everything up. The usual guideposts get replaced by a confusing, esoteric swirl. We have to rely on our wits, be curious and creative like the Page of Swords. But when we come in from our wanderings, we enter into our final card, the beautiful and tender Six of Cups. All sixes in tarot deal with themes of balance, so while the cloudy tumult in the Page of Swords and Wheel of Fortune may feel destabilizing, we can always return from the larger circle of change - the wheel - and into the smaller circle of connection, the Six of Cups.

What wisdom and insight can we bring into our families, relationships, and communities? How can we integrate our individual Page of Swords questing with the collective knowledge of our groups? This reading shows a huge change in how we conceptualize the world around us, yet in upheaval there are immense moments of opportunity, stubborn doors that strong winds of change can blow wide open and steady ground when we re-enter our chosen homes.