Hello and welcome to My Tiny Tarot Practice.

I'm Amelia Hruby and on this podcast I share my journey through the tarot going

card by card through each suit of the Minor Arcana.

Today's card is the Page of Swords.

In the Rider-Waite-Smith edition of the tarot, the Page of Swords depicts a

person standing on top of what is perhaps a hill or a mountain.

There's the sky in the the background full of clouds with some birds overhead.

And this person is holding a sword with both hands. And the sword is kind of

held aloft over one of their shoulders. And then they're looking back over the

other shoulder to the side or behind them.

When I was preparing for this episode, one of the first things I noticed is

that in the court cards of the swords,

all of the swords are pointing straight

or nearly straight up and there

are actually very few cards in the swords that do that

we see that in the ace of swords certainly this image

of a sword pointing directly up at the sky in the

two of swords we have the swords crossed diagonally in

front of the person in that card so the swords are kind of pointing up

but to the sides as well and in the five

of swords we have the figure in the

forefront of the card holding two of the

swords aloft but many of them are also on the

ground and so it feels a little bit

like with the court cards and these swords pointing up at the sky we've returned

back to the moment of the ace in this suit and we've gone back to the promise

of an idea a new idea a new perspective on an idea a concept you You know, that fresh seed,

the spark of a thought.

I do think of pages as having this youthful initiatory energy around whatever

element or topic that suit represents.

So here with the page of swords, we have a youthful approach to ideas,

to thoughts, to words, to air.

And this page is up in the air to some degree.

I mean, They're standing on top of this high up place.

This only thing behind them is the sky.

And in that sense, Rachel Pollack points out that they actually also seem a

little detached, that they're looking over their shoulder, perhaps to make sure

there's no one following from behind, to make sure that they're keeping their distance from others.

And I think in the context of swords, this can represent the detachment of of

intellectuality, of intellectualizing, of being an intellectual, right?

We have this sense that, you know, even within our world of universities and

academics, you have this concept of the ivory tower.

You have this sense that in order to intellectualize the world,

you need to be detached from it in some way so that you can have the distance

to have perspective, perspective, to have critical thought, to have philosophical thought even.

And I think that the page of swords perhaps finds themselves in that tension,

the tension of needing to pull away from the world in order to think about the world.

But this isn't yet the wise removal from the world of the hermit.

When I think of the hermit, that's a card about wisdom.

And the hermit holds their their own light source and the lantern and looks

toward it. Here we have the page against the bright open sky looking behind them.

The intellectualizing here is not an inner wisdom, but a quickness of thought,

a detached removal from the world in order to intellectualize it.

And sometimes, perhaps, our best, freshest, most exciting ideas come from those moments.

And sometimes, perhaps, the thoughts

that arise in those places and those opportunities lack perspective.

It's almost like by trying to get this particular detached perspective,

we actually lose perspective, the perspective of lived experience.

And so the Page of Swords invites us into all of these questions.

When I pull it in a reading, I try to think about any new realizations I may

have had recently and what directions they've taken me in.

Have they taken me closer to the people and communities I care about or farther from them?

And I don't ask that question with judgment. I ask it with curiosity.

This card certainly brings a spirit of curiosity in the process of big ideas,

new new learnings, intellectualizing.

And when we go a layer deeper, invites us to consider the role and value of

intellectualizing in our current situations, relationships, lived experience, whatever it may be.

Thank you for listening to this episode of My Tiny Tarot Practice.

If you'd like to explore my favorite tarot books and decks, you can head head

to the link in the show notes to check out my bookshop where I have curated

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that helps me keep this podcast going.

As always, I'm so grateful that you're here and I hope that you're finding many

of your own new, fresh, big, exciting ideas.