Two of Swords

The Plate

Her back is to the sea. That is the first decision the picture records: the water, the rocky islets, the thin crescent moon all lie behind the seated woman, and she has taken the blindfold instead of them. Two long swords cross above her chest, one balanced on each shoulder, and her arms fold so evenly that neither blade could come down without the other. She sits on a plain stone bench at the tide line, grey dress, bare ground. Waite (1911) reads equipoise here, concord in a state of arms — but look at the length of those blades and how still she has to sit under them. This is not peace. It is a truce with herself, maintained by muscle.

The Reading

A decision deferred is not a decision escaped; it is a posture held, and the card is honest about the effort. Sometimes the deferral is right — the moon behind her belongs to the tides and to feeling, and feeling may not have finished speaking. The school lets the card mean that. But the hinge of the plate is the blindfold, and the question that comes with it: what is not being looked at, and who tied the cloth. She did. Both hands were free when she started.

Reversed, the arms tire. The swords come down, the cloth comes off, the sea gets seen. What was suspended lands — usually less catastrophically than the stillness predicted, and always less evenly.

In the School

Second of the suit of Air in the elements table of Foundations of Astrology: thought divided against itself, the severing suit turned edgewise so that, for a while, nothing is cut. The school treats the card as the price sheet of neutrality.