Sketchbook - Six of Cups

I used to be able to enjoy rides like these, but now my vestibular system protests vigorously against them, getting other bodily systems involved if necessary.

This is the first sketch in a while that I've been a little disappointed with, once I saw the final result. Part of it is that I was stuck using a sucky pen and had to fix a lot of mistakes, but in general I see myself compromising left and right here to make up for my lack drawing ability. I don't hate it, it's just not exactly what I envisioned. And the perspective is a little weird -- I think I might have given up on this one too easily purely for the sake of getting it over with already.

Since the Six serves as the midpoint of our journey from Two to Ten (excluding the Ace, which is merely the catalyst that triggers this journey), it occupies a point of near-perfect equilibrium. Perhaps that's why I drew half of the teacups full and half of them empty...

There's been a lot of speculation about Pamela Coleman-Smith's version, apparently people have a hard time grasping what they're seeing. Are the figures children, or tiny adults? It pains me to say so, but it seems that the perspective in PCS's is a little off too.

More than anything the Six of Cups speaks to me about the simple pleasures in life, the ones which require little risk on our part. (There is a sort of gravitas in the Two of Cups, for example, that feels anything but casual.) In the cards that follow the Six, we are closer to the end than we are to the beginning; perhaps that's what's necessitates this last, idealized look back over our shoulder. We are nothing like what we used to be, but it is still possible to search ourselves and discover traces of our origin.

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Six of Cups

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Sketchbook - Six of Wands

Let's add this to the list of things I'd never have heard of it wasn't for my partner. Fasces are an emblem or design motif that you've probably seen everywhere, without knowing they were. "It's like a bundle of sticks," Tex told me. "Wait," I said, "Don't you mean faggot?"

No, it turns out. He patiently went on to explain that this symbol for victory and strength is where we get the term fascism. The core idea is that a bundle is harder to break than a single stick. "AH," I said, "Like that monologue of Richard Farnsworth's in The Straight Story!" Yes, exactly -- only sometimes there's an axe or arrow blade nestled in there too, to show you mean business.


It was good timing -- I just so happened to have drawn the Six of Wands as my next sketching project. I felt like I was cheating, resorting to an actually well-known symbol for success and achievement, but at least I learned something new. Also, while I sat in the park sketching, a butterfly landed on my knee and stayed there for several minutes. I'm pretty sure it was a monarch.

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Six Of Wands

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Sketchbook - Six of Swords

Getting out of an egg is harder than it looks, which is why most birds and reptiles are born with an egg tooth, a sort of biological crowbar that assists in the process and then drops off.

Most Six of Swords cards show a departure of some kind. The inspired mind undergoes a harsh trial-and-error phase, testing its own boundaries and running up against some inescapable realities. The Six indicates your need or ability to leave all that behind, to make a fresh start with the aid of the wisdom you've accumulated during this rocky period. If you can bear to scrutinize the errors of the recent past, you'll see that they actually point the way forward. That's the very definition of "sadder but wiser."


Until it's hatched, everything a creature knows about the world relates to the interior of its shell. Once that shell is broken, the burden of ignorance is ours to do with what we wish, to carry only as far as we choose. Or, to quote Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde's biting social satire, The Importance of Being Earnest:

"I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delecate, exotic fruit. Touch it, and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did it would prove a serious threat to the upper classes, and probably lead ot acts of violence in Grosvenor Square."

Ignore Bracknell's disapproval -- consider the Six of Swords to be a whole mouthful of egg-teeth, and get to work on your own jailbreak. You can only revisit the lessons of the past so many times before they become redundant. A world of brand-new experiments, adventures, and tragedies awaits!

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Six Of Swords

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Sketchbook - Six of Coins

As I sat there trying to figure out what to draw for the Six of Coins, one of the first things I thought of was of the I Ching, and how its hexagrams can be derived from the tossing of coins. I decided to see if I could find a hexagram that I could associate with this card.

The one I chose was Pi, also known as "Holding Together" or "Unity":

"What is required is that we unite with others, in order that all may complement and aid one another through holding together. But such holding together calls for a central figure around whom other persons may unite. To become a center of influence holding people together is a grave matter and fraught with great responsibility. It requires greatness of spirit, consistency, and strength. Therefore let him who wishes to gather others around him ask himself whether he is equal to the undertaking..."

I think that in a perfect world, strength equals generosity. The person you help up is also helping you. That's just my six cents.

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Six Of Coins

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"Standing Directly Over A Forgotten Source Of Joy..."

We depend on photographs to link us to our past, but they are static, dimensionless things and they fail us. In fact, sometimes they make looking back harder instead of easier -- the past they show seems to exist in its own world, curiously remote and emotionally inaccessible. "Now" and "then" seem to exist independently of each other, showing no signs of overlap, regardless of what we remember.

What I like about the Looking Into The Past project's photos is that they force our physical and emotional awarenesses of time and space to intersect. By informing the eyes, heart and mind simultaneously, they are sort of hyper-realistic. The truths they tell are slightly truer because of their complexity, and whatever lies they tell us are no worse than the ones we are already telling ourselves.

The illusory difference between "then" and "now" is an ever-darkening line that we are always struggling to erase. When we find a way to reach back and connect vividly with our own history, it heals us in both directions, giving purpose to our past while also pointing us onward to the future.

Don't get bogged down in the hurts and dead hopes of the past. "Nostalgia," Don Draper reminds us, "literally means 'the pain from an old wound.'" But neither should you refuse to commune with yourself. We bury our happy memories like so many acorns, hoping they'll help us survive the winter. You may be standing directly over a forgotten source of joy, stored just out of sight. Hungry? Cold? Miserable? Find a soft place in your memory and start digging. Explore your room, your desk, your computer, until you turn up an artifact that makes you real to yourself again.

I just did this now. Here's what I turned up:



I remember every inch of that yard; I will probably never see it again, will never be able to hold this photo up against it to see the changes wrought by time. In this picture, my mother is younger than I am now. It pains me to see it.

But underneath it all, somehow: "Wheeee!"

[Via]

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Six of Cups

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"Search Your Heart. Also, Get Over Yourself..."

Since kids are hellbent on using their technological privilege to utterly destroy themselves and each other, it's time to reach out to them with a message of common sense, compassion, and reason. The courier of this message? James Lipton and his magic beard:

I like that the message at the center of these PSA's isn't merely "Don't do this because it's BAD!" Rather, they're saying "Think about this carefully before you make a decision. Ponder the consequences. Search your heart. Also, get over yourself." And the avuncular Lipton is the perfect funny, non-parental, and (apparently) non-judgmental figure to impart this wisdom. He cares about you -- he would take his beard off for you.

I'd like to think of the Six of Swords as a rite of passage, the moment when that Liptonian beard lands on your face and you find yourself examining your situation from all sides. It announces the arrival of a certain maturity, it encourages you to set off in bold new directions and make prudent use of technology, it quiets the lower instincts that keep you embroiled in back-and-forths unworthy of your attention. And afterward, if you still wind up sending someone a picture of your junk, you'll know that it was not an act of impulse, but one of deep consideration -- was, in fact, the only logical choice. [Via]

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Six of Swords

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"Attainment Is Revealed To Be Merely An Opportunity To Give"

During my last trip home to Arizona I paid a visit to Alex Ozers, an artist and friend of mine. His obsession with painting awes me -- I think it's utterly transformed him in the time we've known each other. I perked up when I recently heard that he was planning to offer more of his work for sale, remembering one particular painting that I'd admired when I was in his studio. But then again, who has money to spend on art these days? I figured I'd just have to let this one go.

When I spoke to Alex a while later, he mentioned that he'd actually been considering sending me the painting as a gift, which struck me as incredibly generous -- we don't see each other too often, and shipping such a large piece across the continent seemed like a lot of work to put into such a sweet gesture. We worked out an arrangement: I agreed to accept the painting as a gift, and he agreed that he'd accept a sum of money to offset his costs and hopefully fund whatever he might be working on now. It wound up being one of those rare transactions where everyone involved got to feel that they were giving something instead of spending something, and in the process grew a bit richer.

Having just received and re-stretched the canvas this week, it occurred to me that I ought to keep that ball rolling by posting about the experience and sharing Ozers' work with you. (On his site he says he's currently trying to develop "a method of painting that utilizes traditional methods/philosophies of divination." I don't know about you, but I want to hear more about that!) And what better card to deploy than the Six of Coins, in which attainment is revealed to be merely an opportunity to give?

Before any town-hall tea-baggers show up to say "ZOMG SOCIALISM!!1!" I'd like to point out the prominence of the scale in the Rider Waite card I just linked to. Money creates personal and material imbalances in our lives, and the Six of Coins merely shows a person taking the correction of these imbalances into his or her own hands. The amount given or gotten is less important than the equilibrium that's restored. You could hardly say that the gentleman in the card appears to be enduring any sort of sacrifice -- his pursuit of his own best interest happens to work out in the favor of those in need. (Since I went ahead and done went there already, I don't mind commenting that this is a perspective that's very sorely lacking from America's frenzied discussions about health care. A healthy workforce will make the rich richer!)

You know who understands this concept already? The people who don't have very much to spend or give, who have to be very discriminating in their largess. People like Alex and myself, for example, artists and writers and craftspeople who are constantly weighing the desire to earn a living from their work against the urge to disseminate ideas freely and purely. It has been humbling for me to live in New York City during this recession and see the lengths to which people in arts communities go to give each other a leg up. We barter, we donate, we buy tickets, we promote each other with as much energy as we promote ourselves -- whatever it takes to help each other survive one more week, one more month, and working as hard as we can all the while.

Invest in yourself -- your true self -- by investing in others. It's such a deceptively simple economic principle that at the best of times it hardly bears repeating, but during lean times, the only thing you can't afford to lose is your generous spirit.

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Six of Coins

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"Become The Source Of Your Own Inspiration..."

When musician Glenn Donnellan began hollowing out a Louisville Slugger in hopes of converting it into an electric violin, I doubt he entertained the idea that soon he'd be playing the national anthem on it at baseball games across the country, or that YouTube videos of his performances would be watched by hundreds of thousands:

The pleasure in watching is owed just as much to Donnellan's skill as a musician as to the novelty of his instrument. Expect the bottom to drop out of the handcrafted violin market if anyone with a little patience can craft one out of a $25 piece of sports equipment. And how many other instruments are this handy in situations of self-defense?

The Tarot's four Sixes each represent a very special achievement, the sorts of moments when you feel you have truly realized your potential. Once we experience those moments, we spend most of our lives trying to recreate the situations that produced them -- in this way, you can become the source of your own inspiration instead of counting on occasional thunderstrokes from the Ace of Wands to point the way. The Six of Wands is where faith in yourself -- combined with the faith that others have in you -- creates a sort of vortex of reciprocity. It would be perfectly natural to find yourself taking a position of leadership or authority at a time like this; at the very least, you'll find yourself being appreciated and celebrated for the progress you've made, and the burden of others' hopes for you will be surprisingly light. It's a positive feedback-loop that you should keep spinning for as long as possible -- you can't ride high forever, but while you're up there you'll have a whole lot of influence over what comes next for you and those around you.

It took courage to come this far, and it will take more to proceed. Hopefully, moments like these will prove to you that certain hopes, dreams, and opportunities are worth exploring; like Donnellan's bat, in the right hands they flourish and become worth much more than the sum of their parts, but you'll never know for sure whether you have the magic touch until you actually try. Rather than predict success, the Six of Wands recognizes your vast potential for it -- the rest is up to you. [Via]

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Six of Wands

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"...The Real Pleasure Is In The Searching."

What a beautiful moment between a bride and her maid of honor -- I wonder if they'll wind up becoming friends? The flash-mobbers of Improv Everywhere have really done something special with their latest escapade: the troupe assembled at the park near NYC's City Hall and created an impromptu wedding reception, complete with bridesmaids, groomsmen, cake, gifts, toasts, and dancing. An unsuspecting pair of newlyweds, Raff and Frank, were snatched from the courthouse steps and treated to an unforgettably hilarious and strangely moving event that they'll never forget. Here's the video:



If it seems hard to believe that anyone would put the effort into creating something so unselfish and heartwarming, then you could greatly benefit from spending some time dwelling on the Six of Cups! The card brims with memories and reveries that hearken back to the truly pleasurable and fulfilling moments of your life, offering an opportunity to reflect upon and indulge your emotional whims -- it may seem like a frivolous course of action, but the revelations you stumble upon may have a bigger impact on you in the long run than you could ever imagine. But remember, any sort of indulgence must be handled with care: linger here too long and you risk edging toward the stagnation of the Seven of Cups, finding yourself beset with delusions and unable to tell your fantasies from reality.

Intentionally or otherwise, the ad-hoc wedding reception clearly served this purpose in the lives of everyone involved; I imagine there were plenty of real tears flowing that day on both sides of the aisle as the line between stranger and friend began to blur. The bride commented in her thank you note, "The most important thing for us is that you gave us just about the best wedding story anyone could have to pass on."

Let this anecdote guide you in your search for short-term solutions. The key may be buried in your own history, or it could be hidden among the generosities you have yet to perform. Either way, the real pleasure is in the searching.

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Six of Cups

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"The World Is Your Laboratory..."

John Conway describes paleontography as "a new discipline, made up by me — which largely doesn't exist yet." Finding flat anatomical diagrams to be an inadequate outlet for his love of flying dinosaurs, the artist has fleshed out his fascination with three-dimensional speculative renderings and lush two-dimensional paintings of pterosaurs as they may have appeared in the wild. The image above is from an imagined dissection of Rhamphorhynchus, a long-tailed critter from the Jurassic period.

The Six of Swords points toward a departure from known realms into the unknown. It's the type of journey you embark on when you've learned everything you possibly can from your current environs. Perhaps it's a natural phase in your evolution -- you've become too big a fish for this small pond. Or perhaps you simply haven't found the answers you're seeking and feel compelled to seek them elsewhere. Any such departure requires you to leave a lot of obsolete ideas and articles behind, but as the Waite-Smith version of this card illustrates, your knowledge and wisdom (in the form of the swords) accompany you whether the waters be smooth or rough.

By marrying a scientific endeavor to an artistic one, Conway explores the terrain between those two worlds. If you attempt to mix the perfect cocktail of reason and imagination, you too may transcend the limitations of your immature impressions and discover that the world is your laboratory, fertile with possibilities and primed for experimentation. [Via]

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The Four Sixes

Remember the beautifully strong, seamless unity of the four Twos? Now triple it. The Sixes represent the pinnacle of perfection that each suit strives for -- an intersection of energy and balance that makes anything seem possible. Evolution is messy, painful work, but when a species suddenly finds its niche, it can flourish there for millions of years, like crocodiles have. When it comes to evolution of a personal nature, sometimes circumstances will suddenly favor us, and we fly ahead with the wind under us, doing exactly what we were made to do. Those times can seem to be few and far between, but they don't have to be, especially when you know what to look out for. The Sixes are a veritable sampler platter loaded with different flavors of personal triumph; I recommend tasting them all.

As for my initial statement comparing them to the Twos, you can see this similarity for yourself. Back then we had two points floating in space. Since there are only two of them, they rely completely on each other as points of comparison, sort of like those number-line problems you may have encountered in algebra class. Adding a third point gives their perspective actual depth, and this cluster now functions as an individual point, beginning the replication process all over again in a fractal pattern. And of course, the first step of that is discovering its mirror image.

•
•. .•


•. .•
•

Adding that sixth point makes this image complete; symbolically it's a return to one's origin, but with all the fruits of experience one has gathered along the way. Looking at each of the cards above should remind you of the intimate relationship you once had with the world, before you knew who you were or what you wanted, and that completion and creation needn't always find themselves at odds with each other -- at certain points they are one and the same.

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Six of Cups

I feel like I have some explaining to do here. It's probably best to watch the linked video both before and after you read my justification for it --unless you spend some time soaking up the lyrical stylings of O.H. Napier yourself, you'll probably just think I've been out standing in the creek for too long.

The Six of Cups is one of those soft, malleable cards; it seems that everyone who writes about it leaves their own mark on it, which makes it a beautiful card to draw but a difficult one to read. The Cups themselves are a sensitive, tremulous suit that don't handle upheaval or corruption too gracefully; we understand our own emotions so poorly, especially considering how heavily they weigh on us -- when your heart suffers, life itself becomes utterly impossible (as the Five of Cups illustrated so diabolically).

Balance is restored with the Six, which is basically the apex of the suit. It's been said to portend of a return to innocence, the ability to experience pleasure purely despite all of the desensitizing hardships one has borne; it's been attributed to huge creative breakthroughs, and to rocky relationships finally becoming stable. It's been linked to Christ and his brand of flawless compassion, and to other chalice-wielding masters of resurrection such as the Greek Dionysus or the Nordic Balder. All potent icons who whistle (in their melodramatic way) the same tune, Happy Days Are Here Again.

Based on the sheer amount of overlapping interpretations out there, I think it's clear that this card doesn't point to any sort of event or principle that we can put a finger on. It's a surge of radiant potential that diverts one's attention away from one's own suffering and allows one to rediscover the joy of life. The heart, suddenly (and maybe only briefly) unburdened, floats like a cork to the surface of it all and bobs there effortlessly. Why now, and how long will it last? These questions defeat the purpose of their asking -- you should be singing instead.

Back to the subject of our video, O.H. Napier, a man of indeterminate age who plunks his folding stool in the middle of the creek and rips into a melody with almost fearsome ebulliance (perhaps he has been drinking from the Dionysian cup). He jangles his guitar, he fires his pistol, he implores his long-suffering helper to film every glorious thing he's seeing and experiencing as he sings: "I ain't afraid of no man, and I ain't afraid of dyin / because Lord you know you blessed me in my time..." Except it's impossible to capture, of course. His spirit may be contagious, but the true glory of these moments is incredibly difficult to share -- that requires a truly special bond.

Napier's not just clowinging around, he's a man who's known real suffering; in another video he's overwhelmed with the loss of his son, who died in a fire earlier this year. His "Walk On Water" is a fascinating followup -- the clouds have parted, however briefly, and we see a man grateful for his life. The Six of Cups' effects on you may similarly lead to all sorts of interesting personal developments, but I think it's most important to accept that this feeling is not something that you muster, it's something that's given to you. Are you open enough to recognize providence, and wise enough to accept it? [Via]

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Six of Wands

There are few cards in the Tarot that are as unequivocally positive as the Six of Wands. Suffice to say, whatever you're doing, it's working!

Every victory begins as the germ of an idea that you keep saying "Yes!" to, even when it seems certain that you'll be thwarted. The Six marks a period in which it becomes abundantly clear that success is yours. And while hopefully you'll be recognized by others for what you've accomplished, most importantly this card urges you embrace the idea of yourself as a winner -- you'll need deep reserves of confidence and optimism to take on whatever comes next. Don't worry about being too modest, it's okay to pat yourself on the back and let the praise of others warm you. As long as you don't let yourself become seriously obnoxious about it, the world should be happy to see you thrive.

That's the attitude we seem to be trying to confer to a rare variety of common katydids that's been springing up all across America. They're identical to their kin in every way -- except for their hot pink exterior, which makes them look sort of like miniature six-legged flamingoes. Blending in perfectly around flowering plants, these adorable little mutants have already beat amazing evolutionary odds in proliferating enough to be noticed (with delight) by humans, and if they can continue to keep predators fooled they may become downright commonplace someday. If you've been putting a lot of effort into something that you'd like to see come to fruition, then I think you just found your new mascot! [Via]

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Six of Swords

The meaning of this card can be hard to pin down. For some it means a journey across water, either literally, or as a figurative way of describing how logic sometimes cuts smoothly across the surface of our unconscious mind like the prow of a boat, a period of discovery in which we refine the ideas that inspired us to depart in the first place. In Crowley's Thoth deck the card is renamed Science, representing the pinnacle that the human mind can aspire to, a crystalline intersection where wisdom, logic, compassion, instinct, curiosity, and humility all align, making groundbreaking advances suddenly all-too-possible.

Look at these incredible images of stingrays migrating together. Of all the ocean's creatures, the stingray, with its poisonous 15-inch barb, is an impeccable ambassador from the world of Swords; certainly the grace and single-mindedness of their motion inspires more awe than terror, and their sleek uniformity seems almost supernatural-- a thousand arrows pointed toward a destination that no one can see, but which they have an unfailing innate sense of. It's a rare sight-- a unified front slipping effortlessly through the chaos, temporarily laying their weapons aside in pursuit of new territory. If this kind of travel appeals to you, begin looking at what you've already proven to be true, and simply set it into motion. Don't be scared; not only will you probably arrive safe and sound, you probably won't even find yourself traveling alone. [Via]

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Six of Coins

Do you love your life the way it is? Have enough money to get by on, but not so much that its presence defines you? Comfortable enough in your surroundings to taste real freedom, but not so cozy that you get bogged down in complacency and idleness? Do you have just enough left over to help others reach their own goals too? Then you might be flying under the banner of the Six of Coins, which represents a stable point from which one can finally afford to be generous. Unlike the other cards in the Tarot depicting material wealth, this one illuminates the true pleasure that comes from having just enough, and the powerful possibilities that lie therein.

Our dreams of luxury often omit what we all know about wealth: what kind of person you must turn yourself into to get it (and keep it), and the personal conflicts that arise when people find themselves accidentally or undeservingly on the receiving end of it. Six coins may not seem as enticing as, say, ten-- but by refusing to let your potential be assigned a mere dollar-value, and by perpetuating that idea by helping others less fortunate, you help restore balance to a world that is far too obsessed with who has what.

Ali Alvarez taps into that concept with I Love My Life The Way It Is, an art project that beckons us to entrust Alvarez with all our scratch-off lottery tickets-- unscratched. The goal is to collect at least 8,000 tickets that will never be scratched or redeemed, enough to cover an entire room. It may not be easy to part with a ticket without knowing whether you have a winner in your hands; certainly many of Alvarez' tickets will be winners, but we'll never know whose or how much. While this experiment surely makes those who regularly play the lottery feel justifiably queasy, it's a wonderful opportunity for all of us to explore our feelings about luck, wealth, and art. You just may discover that you're not as superstitious or desperate or selfish as you used to be. If you're teetering on the verge of that Six of Cups spirit, consider participation in this symbolic gesture to be a graduation of sorts! [Via]

Send your tickets to:

Ali Alvarez
PO Box 60460
London E8 9EB
UK

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