This Week's Writerly Tarot: The Queen of Swords

Straighten those shoulders — you're in the company of a queen. And as the emissary of the suit of rationality and logic — all that is spare and clean and straight — this queen will appreciate your good posture most especially.

Court cards are often tricky to interpret. They can be symbolic of the attributes of their respective suits. They can be personifications, either of the querent (the person asking questions of the tarot) or people in the querent's life. Or they can operate as representations of states of being.

The latter is my favorite way of looking at court cards. This method reveals energies swirling and present — some represented by the people around us, some attributes we could take on ourselves if we wish. According to this approach, queens are the experts of being. They rule by one decree — they are what they are, and they don't need to do a thing to prove it. Especially not this queen, who rules the realm of thought.

This week, the Queen of Swords wants to remind you who you are.  You are, after all, exactly who you think you are. And she would like you to remember that you are a creature of both mind and brain, that your intellect serves you and not vice versa. You'll figure it out, she would tell you, it's not that hard.

You are who you think you are.

So...who are you going to be?