Eight Wands and the Twisties

It’s been a minute since I did a blog involving Tarot so I knew one would be coming up, but I have to say, even I was amazed at the timing and connections that this blog has made for me. I hope it has a similar effect for you and opens up a new way of thinking. 

Today I’m coming at you with the 8 of wands, a numeric card from the minor arcana of the Tarot deck…. …Did I lose you? Let me break it down.

The Tarot deck is really two decks of cards, the major and minor arcana. In my blog post Nimbility, I spoke about two major arcana cards, Temperance and The Fool. The minor arcana work a little differently, but you may be more familiar with the pattern because it is the basis for playing cards: Ace-10 and court cards in four different suits. Wands are the suit of action, creativity, intuitive ambition, and most other things associated with moving life forward; their element representation is Fire. See? Broke it down. 

Eights are a whole other ball of wax. The history of numerology is dense and involves a lot of understanding with your gut rather than your head so bear with me as I try to convey this point. 4 is an extremely balanced and stable number, right? So 8 being two 4s is also very sturdy but it lacks the stagnation of a 4 and in fact, has an intense undercurrent of motion. This movement we feel is from the tension of the two 4s interacting and pulling apart from each other. There are a whole slew of examples of this in Chinese symbolism as well as ancient Egyptian cosmology. They both believe that the number 8 is the pattern that life is created under. We also can see this in our day to day lives i.e. if life was created in 7 days, it is on the 8th day that the creation truly begins to move forward. Following?

The Eight of Wands is a card of creation, construction and healing. It is the feeling of beginning a new without having a full completion of the old and that can make you feel like everything is moving too fast, or happening without your control. And that’s because... it is! My favorite example of this ending and beginning simultaneously is to think of a scale on a piano, the eighth note of the octave is beginning the next scale while ending the last. 

Take a look at the picture examples, this card shows eight wands hurtling through the air with no end or beginning in sight. Notice how you can’t see exactly where the wands are coming from, and they definitely haven’t landed yet - now, that’s a scary feeling! And to me, it’s exactly how Covid-19 has felt. We’re definitely not done with it, and now with the Delta variant, we feel like the landing spot we thought we saw is suddenly moved away again. 

So what the heck am I getting at here? I’m almost there. The phenomenon of The Twisites has taken up a good chunk of my brain as I throw my support behind the courage and immense self love that Simone Biles displayed earlier this week at the Tokyo Olympics. If you’ve been under a rock, The Twisties happen when a gymnast loses their body awareness while they’re doing flips and twists in the air. And the acrobats they do are incredibly dangerous, not to mention when you’re at the elite level and even one wrong move could literally end your life. The way out of this mind/body disconnect is to trust your instincts rather than your head, take the time you need, and focus on how you want to land. 

And it hit me, as I got my 3rd eight of wands this week in my own readings, that’s exactly how to get through the fast moving and slightly unpredictable state we’re all in. 

So my advice this week is this -  Yes, we are moving through the air and it feels out of our control and yes, that is very uncomfortable. So, do your best to focus on who you want to be when you touch down again and not just where you’re going to land. The trouble is to not get distracted by everything happening while you’re flying because that’s when you lose sight of where you are in the air. Trust your instincts. Don’t let your impatience allow for hasty decisions. If you focus on your long term goals, it doesn’t matter if things don’t feel finished while the next chapter begins. Just trust. Because, if you spend your time focusing on that “up in the air” feeling you’ll be more likely to muck it up, overthink it, and stumble.

<3 Reb

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