In mind’s eaves and on pronounced tongue.
Come, come, tarot come
The night has just begun.
I.
Ace of Wands is a sign of auspicious beginnings as shown by a quiet white hot burning flame that consumes the top of a wooden staff. Tonight, the symbol of fire alludes to origin. As a result, what I am mindful of is the eminent heat resulting from conception and subsequent birth. In the beginning, my parents defended everything I did. From speaking with reticence to family and shying away from friends, they gave me latitude to explore my solitude and quiet. Even when my mind collided with the outer world, they stood fast and helped me stake out my independence. In my reserve and passivity, I may have been precocious, still, I was fully aware of the boundaries in conversation and presence that would cause a disturbances in everyone’s reality.
For me in consideration of my parents, the Ace of Wands becomes a supportive sign to walk my own path. In general, each staff is a marker of accomplishment and self-actualization. Staves are mile markers of symbolizing the ability to use the mind, as focused through the physical, to effect and navigate the environment. The wooden staff enflamed is a sign of putting that knowledge to work. My parents encouraged discovery and independence from the beginning. Home and the surrounding neighborhood were both sanctuaries for independent experiential learning.
Permissions to explore came early in life. Without those years proving my reach and ingenuity to myself, I never would have taken risks that have established who I am. These days I ground in the truth of those skills daily. From personal character to wisdom’s tools, for every mastered skill I have garnered a staff to work with and use for eternity.
II.
As a mile marker, the Ace of Wands signifies that the beginning of a concept and the energy manifested are able to be applied to any pursuit. Wands imply both origins and action applied. Therefore interpretation must follow the where of fire created and fire sustained. The wand is a proof of personal accomplishment, transferrable skills, and the will of an able-minded workman. With wands we understand Solomon’s postulate, “He who does not work, does not eat”. In the right hands wands manage work and creative flow for more than one. For the spiritually minded, wands may show that an in-depth intuitive comprehension of business structures is bound to occur with an earnest effort and concrete path working. Here we deal in the tools that manifest concrete reality. Remember that every part of life requires work. Fear not, when you love it enough work becomes all day play.
When I met my biological father, I could tell he had a talent for bending ears in both directions. While I dwelled quiet for the first few days of the first visit, his insistence to teach me the realities of street life made the looming twelve years of estrangement a small matter of conversation. The one advisement that riveted me to the couch in an impregnated silence began with his description of how I was conceived from the air and fire in God’s mind. In retrospect I know to him I was born of wands.(My consumed abstract mind begins with his arms as a staff stealing fire from God’s temple by digging for ember in the fire pit. ) After Dad’s regale, tempered by long draws on cigarettes, he continued on by telling me that tonight was a test to find out where my head and beliefs were set. In the stillness of a snowy night deep in the labyrinth of the city, he said, “Your brothers failed.” I quickly made excuses for people I never knew existed up to then. I offered that their falling short of his expectations was because they just where not as interested in his shaded psychological and profoundly tribal edge. As he continued speaking, I drew back, but stayed engaged despite my fear of the unfamiliar. In retrospect, I can muse that the disconnect between the four of them occurred because my brothers believed my father was a tad removed from common reality. His wisdom has never sourced itself in Western culture. My brothers knew long before me that Dad’s fascination with mathematics, science, religion, alternative histrionics, and secret societies is overwhelming for anyone.
What I remember foremost about being in his presence is that, over the hours he talks, breathing becomes difficult in the smoke. In his presence, I tend to choke in the ashes settling around my fomenting ignorance. Fresh air always finds the room in the quiet of the next morning. That morning the sun released my ears from servitude and I slowly regained the drive to comprehend what began the night before. Despite the good will and ever apparent wisdom, Dad can be too much to take whether or not his reality is shared. Maybe, just maybe I am not old enough to understand his knowledge pursuits. He explains the strips and staves he’s earned over the years. I listen. The act is not just out of respect, but out of fascination. Truly, men live different lives than women. I can only keep note as my experiences in the same suit prove a world of difference.
As for the rough components of fire and wood, from Dad’s fire pit and wind, there lies a lesson of fire and fuels. Despite divorce and the ugliness and distance that ensue, from his stories I know I was loved before and after conception. Dad, testing his beliefs, almost likened to Prometheus, stole fire from the altar of God. Flesh encased and given a name to grown into, thus and so I became. As I live and walk, I was not consumed by my conception’s conflagration. Instead, in the work and tenants I live by, I know where my fire originally burned. Resolving the madness and sense in the studio leads to long afternoons and longer nights. I am that man’s child. I do not prove it by the presence of lingering relations. It is the blind habits, the birth mark, smell of blood, and mental rot. Images have driven us both to madness to draw. It is the light cast in the dark places that we both have walked. We see and cannot turn away until we committed the fire to paper. We make marks in the vein of blind wisdom blown in ears ticklish and rinsed with water droplets. No doubt Dad is a fire breathing dragon. His drive foments in his chest and channels wind up and out from deep within his bowels. The white smoke pouring from his lips is not blinding. It is not the wafting scent of Cuba that I find alarming. It is not the refinement of ecru rings lingering around fingertips. It is his disarming laughter that tells me Zeus watched those almond colored hands reach for God’s sanctuary while he lay next to my mother in the cold night. Dad grasped for coals and embers and pulled down to earth in glee.
“Ha.ha.ha.he.he.he. Put it on my tab, Lord.”
“Another time perhaps,” resounds around the corners of the temple.
Who owes what I do not know. As for my devotions, I know where they sit.
Over the years I developed a heavy chip on my right shoulder. It is engraved with the words that “I have a right to remain asleep and ignorant”. In Dad’s regard, I may stem from the drive and mind of God, but I choose not to burn out on forgotten and hidden knowledge. No matter my partiality to meditative states, a present mind as symbolized by the Ace of Wands need hold its authority in my wake at all times. For now, staying the observant sentinent is not a comfortable state, even when all motion is absent. Dad’s explanation of the whys and wherefores of the universe cause me to blink incessantly or implode after we retire to separate rooms. The hour after, the pressure inside and outside of my skull cease to meet. Sometimes I live in memories that mind me as a respectful and quiet child. I still ponder the day when I will take advantage of being an adult and walk away in my tearful tired state. Still, I stay longer and I listen. I want to hear what he has learned over the past week. I need to be reminded of old lessons. The small voice in my chest knows that I am addicted to his retelling of African American history, Moorish, and the life of black nationalists in the 1970’s. I try hard to remember the details that he speaks with precision, especially those of his own life. In all honesty? Do I really want him to shut up? No, I do not. It is a dispossessed childhood, teenage angst, and young adult anger that resolves itself in the pacing of his words and the tap-tap-tap of ashing into an empty coffee cup. Instinct has me take the position at his feet and anchor my head up to fix my eyes at his mouth. I look at his eyes and I expect to be slapped. I’m older than that I would like to think. Still, he is the repository of knowledge and awareness from that side of the family. To know who I am physically, intellectually, and emotionally, means to sit still, be quiet, and listen. I may not say it, but I want this. It’s a gateway that still stands, I need pass through. For that wisdom, says my patient need, expand and my emotions will adjust. I hate to succumb to ugliness and allow an expectation of senility to give me that emotional leeway to switch between being a faithful doting child and a selfish adult.
III.
At a later age, I acknowledged the Ace of Wands’ influence as the beginning of a flame that burns without pattern or remorse. No matter how we carry a torch, we must understand the nature of fire will be destructive if not contained. Just as the passions we carry can easily consume us, I try to take careful responsibility for my actions. Though I have not vetted the journey beyond the first year of conscious choice, heeding wisdom means reflecting on my life path as a vocation and mission. As a result, inspiration engendered by Ace’s fire begins to shed light on my chosen path as an artist. For the sake of the casting light, I need not fear stumbling over stones and grasping mindlessly for anchors in the dark. The torch signifies coming to clarity with direct intent. With this card, muse is not lost at two o’clock in the morning when I am on the edge of sleep. Whatever the inspiration, the image will not leave in the fog of morning recall. Ace of Wands is a tool that calls for wisdom applied in its service. Whatever the call that the card answers to, I will not be lost in lack of preparation, unfamiliarity of scope, or archaic language. Like Lord Carnarvon on his arrival to the Valley of Kings, with the Ace of Wands, I am driven to explore and find resolution.
IV.
Manifestation and creation seem the only words that need exploring when speaking of this card. The ace, in terms of the Kabala, is the card that starts the quest to trace what caused a spark to burgeon into physical reality. Knowing what actions caused a collision of matter and force will help me to learn how to create with better intent instead of rendering from happenstance and folly.
Tracking creative intent to the source means I have to ask when I began thinking for myself. It is a talent for figuring out where I begin and end before the work takes on an existence of its own. In the middle of work I have a tendency to reflect on a story about Michelangelo. He was asked how he can consider himself an artist when God is the first Creator. Responding, he gave all glory to God and assured the man that he is but a conduit for manifesting God’s mind. For me, tracking creative intent allows me some authority in the work. Still, in opposition, I am not a complete intuitive when it comes to art. My training speaks otherwise. I can say that by minding that the muse arrives not of my own will or desire. His arrival is pure, simple, and all a matter of grace.
Taking responsibility for my involvement with the work may also mean I am developing into a professional. Knowing where I begin and end is a subtle encouragement that I am ready to commit to copyright protections and stake ownership of concepts in the drafting of works as well as their creation. In the madness of credit and the call of the fin de siècle, “derivative” is not a place I want to solely source. This rallying call is also not to forget that my fascination with the word “original” may be my suicide watch word for recognition. Reigning in this self-inflicted torture for singular status reflects creativity as not only a matter of selfish pride, but also a matter of secretly possessing the source of joy. It is a place where inspiration, drive, and energy reside. Working with pure energy from an endless source is a situation that proves overwhelming for one. Harness nature by stemming and directing may only happen by the sake of technical training and emotional circumcision. Understanding how the physical becomes as the result of following a path from the spark of creation, look at how ideas are formed in the mind and melded with drive. Capping the springs of my visual imagery to bring the waters into calmer logic are the goals of a younger year. Presumably, elementary school through graduate school should have educated me to contain and direct the rush. Like my dad, I still have not learned to direct the fire that consumes and harness its energy. Obsessions to write or draw burn through me some nights. My physical body is not yet able to withstand the white flame. I learn to let it go and when it clings I try to let it pass through. Despite the torment and exhaustion I still wade and wash in rushing fires some cusps of the moon. Now I know the fault is in expecting to form an architectural wonder of contained heat as a sound form of infrastructure. I need let the fire wander fluid while running, pooling, and burning wild.
V.
In the past, I have carried torches for my epiphanies, revelations, and their research. Where the drive to pursue these ephemerals began I do not know, but I am positive that someone’s fervor existed before mine. Just like my Dad, the fire that sparked those ideas has never burned out. Despite losing over ten years of research in various places through the north and south United States, I keep going to the library. I do not know if I will recreate what I lost, but the conviction sits with me most days staring at my bookshelf in the middle of the night. This borrowed case sits with new and old finds. My last bookshelf I sold out to ½ price books in desperation to use the money to eat something, anything. At first the good tomes of information were sold off piecemeal. The final yield proffered less than $10 and the food lasted less than two days. Despite my tone, know the feast was excellent and the memories of those books are now double-bladed and sharp.
For this bookcase in my room, I anchor it with memories of college and early years of poverty. A handful of magazines are slotted tightly between colored binders. I hold on to them expecting to excavate recipes and articles from a time before the recession and the onset of an elusive depression that frequents like arthritis in my fingers. Since the beginning of collecting conversational rags, I learned to comb through my bound attachments with clean hands and careful eyes. I see them all as the cinders and ashes of burned out torches. Those pieces comprise nothing but the damp cold of former excitements. Each containing the gateways that lead to older notions of time and manners. I hold on to them hoping I can set the flame ablaze again. The days I emit flame, the spark manifests to direct research. The spark of that heat engenders feelings that can only be expressed as “I have to” and “I need to”. The drive is exactly as they spoke of it in graduate school. The spark starts as a deep seeded feeling of being uncomfortable. The feeling forms no words let alone questions what would produce a resolveto the pain in my mind. Over the years, I learned to court those uncomfortable feelings by nursing them to fruition like a mother culling out the first syllables of a baby speaking. For me, the sound frequently forms a “Da”. When the question finally forms, I follow on to journaling and eventually research. No doubt I will always have an intimate relationship with libraries.
Instead of pondering impossibilities, I have to reset my sights to know that the passion will return. I can pursue old fascinations with renewed drive and new tools. Knowing that I love to learn gives me hope to find all the mystery that hypnotized me since elementary school. Keeping the books is like keeping all the staves that mark the passage of life’s accomplishments in a neat bundle. A branch aflame that never burns out is like activating all the classroom time, research, and personal discovery to lead the way into other realms. Here the Ace of wands is a tool for the eye not of the hand. Branch aflame, the fire burns eternal in the mind.
The questions and images formed over such a fire hint just at that, as being part of an eternal flame. I feel more than blessed to pursue my own work instead of being shackled to someone else’s business, sacrificing my ideas to a seeming eventual demise. However the Ace of Wands signifying manifestation’s bottom line is formed in producing money these days; still, having my own work is not a complete matter of coin and bill. Play and purity hold the integrity of my work ethic more with each turn of the seasons.
As ever, stay hungry and curious.