6 of Swords: Aquarius II
Hermetic Title: Science / Earned Success
Decan ruler (Chaldean): Mercury
Corresponding majors: The Magician (Mercury) and The Star (Aquarius)
Dates: January 30 - February 8
Ah, the 6 of Swords - an oasis in a suit commonly believed to be full of rancor, fear, grief, and conflict. Why? Because swords are the suit of the mind, and the mind creates suffering. (Indeed, we can say it creates all reality, though that's beyond the scope of what I'm attempting to get at here.) Have you noticed that in the minor sword cards, no one's eyes are open? With the possible exception of the 5, they're blindfolded, or shut, or covered. The mind misperceives things. But in the 6, someone is seeing clearly and navigating right for the destination. His back is to us, so we can't tell, but he follows the guiding star.
Risk, refugees, and resourcefulness
In last decan's whopper of a post, I talked about the risk that drives the 5 of Swords. In its desperate game, winners take all and losers go home - except now they have no home, because that's part of what got taken. There is no choice except to leave if you can - but at least you have the Star to guide you. Hope is our last treasure, preserved in Pandora's box.
Moreso than other sword cards, the 5 and 6 are relational, focusing on small groups rather than single actors. If inhumanity suffered at the hands of others was the theme of the 5, then the kindness of strangers might be the theme of the 6. If we're lucky, someone - a navigator, a federal safety-net program, an Oskar Schindler - will help us amend our plight and make a new start with our children. The 6 shows our passage, accompanied by the hope of freedom. In the 7, we will scrabble for a living any which way we can, finding within ourselves reserves and resources we never suspected we had - or would need - in our previous comfortable lives.
In esoteric tarot, the Ace of Swords is called "invoked force" - as opposed to the "natural force" of the Ace of Wands, the very life force within us. "Invoked force" is the concentrated will we apply to when we wish to change our fate. What happens when we add 5 + 1? when we take Defeat and add to it the Will to change our fate? We arrive at the 6, Lord of Science, which can solve the seemingly impossible through awesome feats of the mind. With celestial navigation, pre-industrial cultures could sail vast oceans. With flight instruments, today's airplane pilots can travel the night skies over invisible terrain.
The Waters Above, the Waters Below.
Since the Golden Dawn, swords have been assigned to the element of air, cups to the element of water in tarot; swords, the intellect, cups, the emotions. In the Genesis myth, "God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so." (KJV Genesis 1:2) Here we have a first division of sky from sea, suggesting that the dark starry realm of space and the dark salty realm of the ocean were once as one. And according to Aristotle's theory of the elements, water and air have something in common: air is "hot and moist" where water is "cold and moist"; fire and earth, on the other hand, are both dry. And we've already spoken of Aquarius as the air sign mistaken for a water sign. If you look closely at the tarot minors, you'll note that water motifs run consistently throughout the swords and cups, while barely surfacing at all in the wands and pentacles.
So when we speak of mind and heart, intellect and emotion, sea and sky, Above and Below, we are speaking of elements that once were joined and at some level still are. Do changes to one affect the other? Does a causal mechanism exist between the two? It's an eternal dispute. According to William Lilly's famous formulation, "the stars incline, they do not compel". Perhaps we can assume that each reflects the other; that patterns and events co-arise in both; that change is fundamental, but "cause" as we know it does not exist. Above and Below may be distinct, but what separates them also joins them. In that interface is the work of the human mind, its meaning-making, and its magic.
The original 6 of Swords…?
Nearly every cosmology in the world has a Great Flood narrative, where the distinction between the waters above and the waters below is eradicated through divine intervention. It is catastrophic, it is renewing, or both; in all cases, there is a mythic Before and After. Viewed archetypally, flooding is a kind of re-set, a rejoining of the Creator with the Created. As the waters merge, they delete all traces of human interference in that relationship, preparing the way for a fresh start.
Mercury the Ferryman
Who is the mysterious ferryman poling his charges to safety, from turbid waters (looking eerily like repeating Aquarius glyphs) to smoother ones? I don't know about you, but I can easily imagine the Magician as the same figure as the 6 of Swords' boatman. The Magician, as we know, is Mercury - he who knows all roads and passages, he to whom no way is barred, he who guides lost souls from one realm to another. I like to think he's disguised himself as a civilian to help out here. One of my favorite epithets for Hermes is φίλε θνητοῖς ἐν ἀνάγκαις - friend to mortals in need! (Orphic Hymn 28)
Another avatar of Hermes, Hermes Chthonios, is said to live by the Cocytus, one of the five rivers of Hades (Orphic Hymn 57). The Cocytus is the river of "lamentation"; the other four are "woe," "fire," "oblivion," "hatred". It's interesting that the river ascribed to Hermes - for whatever reason - is the one that gives voice to suffering. Cocytus is also said to be a shallow, sluggish estuarial branch of either Acheron or the Styx; in an odd synchronicity, the boat of the 6 of Swords is a flat-bottomed punt, meant to navigate shallow waters where one's pushpole can easily touch bottom.
“From one psychopomp to another…” Hermes greets Charon.
In modern times, there's been a bit of confusion about Mercury and Aquarius, where some have suggested that Mercury's exaltation occurs in Aquarius rather than in Virgo. That may have to do with the modern theory of "higher octave" planets and their dignity. In modern astrology, Pluto is the "higher octave" of Mars, and Mars is in domicile in Scorpio, Pluto's sign; Neptune is the "higher octave" of Venus, and Venus is exalted in Pisces, Neptune's sign. Uranus is the "higher octave" of Mercury, so why shouldn't Mercury be exalted in Aquarius, Uranus' sign? I'm no astrologer, but this strikes me as fallacious. It seems fitting that changeable Mercury should prosper in mutable Virgo, as the traditional astrologers have had it for nearly 2000 years.
Still, I'm sympathetic to the idea that Mercury seems qualitatively well-suited to the peculiar electric genius of Aquarius. There is something going on here having to do with the exile's acquisition of unfamiliar tongues, and the re-fashioning of the rules through wordplay, and that's what I'd like to explore next.
The Green Language
In the distant background to the right, on the Star image, there appears a shrub or low tree; on it perches a rough shape with just enough coherence for us to distinguish as a bird, though what kind is hard to say. The bird has been appearing on Star cards since 1700 or so. We'll probably never know why for sure, but there's a number of ways you can look at it that tie into themes we've already considered. Given the Star's connections to flood mythology, it could be the dove of Genesis, emblem of truce between humans and God. Given the Star's connections to Venus archetypes, it could be the swallow of Venus.
Crepuscolo della mattina, by Cesare Ripa - thought to be an early inspiration for the Star card. Note the bird.
But I like to imagine that it's the "bird of Thoth" (and therefore a bird of Hermes or Mercury). With its longish beak and its proximity to a very attractive wading pool, we could - at a stretch - call it an ibis. This mercurial reading of the bird seems particularly apt in a 6 of Swords context. It is the only minor card where airy Mercury rules an airy decan.
When I think about what Mercury might be doing here in the breezy kingdom of Aquarius, I look at the Star's creature and I think of the "language of the birds" - otherwise known to alchemists as the "green language" or the "living language". They believed that in birdsong were encoded the secrets of creation, expressed in its own inscrutable tongue. The birds ascribed to Mercury, Agrippa tells us, are those known for their voices: "birds which are naturally witty, melodious, and inconstant." (Lunary, solary, venereal, martial, jovial and saturnine birds he characterizes by their appearance or dwelling place or temperament, not by their manner of communication.)
More generally, this Hermetic notion suggests to us that all words have life, power, and magical agency. Words are symbols, and we operate as magicians by manipulating symbol. By equating one thing with another - as above, so below - we leverage the power to affect reality. We manipulate the world in miniature or in metaphor, and the world we perceive changes, even if we cannot perceive the cause (see above).
“Creación de las Aves,” by Remedios Varos. One of my all-time favorite depictions of alchemy by a Surrealist painter.
A decades-old memory comes to mind - if you'll indulge me. When I was about 15 years old, I went for a walk in my neighborhood at night - I think it was with my step-siblings and some friends. I had recently learned to whistle after about two years of trying (then, as now, I could be very persistent in pursuing my personal passions), and I was proud of my skill: I had a 2.5-octave range, and on the top end it was as clear as birdsong. Anyway, as we strolled around the suburban streets, I heard a songbird very close by, and I paused to listen. The bird sang a short phrase, and when it quieted, I whistled it back. Then it sang again, and I whistled again. We continued on like that for some time, as my friends disappeared down the road, their voices fading from earshot. I never saw the bird, invisible as it was in its nocturnal foliage, and I never forgot that night. It's not that anything happened; nor did it need to. Sometimes magic is nothing more than just being there, and one spirit recognizing another.
These days, I often converse with the chickadees while gardening - their pure two-note call is easy for me to replicate, and I'm happy to say howdy all day long if they feel like it, which they often do. But that's a faint, daylight echo of the scene that always rises in my mind when I draw the Star - a balmy spring night, an unknown future, a song to share.
The Everyday 6 of Swords
The 6 of Swords turns up for me most of all when I'm working with words - which, granted, I do most days, but it does seem to show up on particularly technical word-intensive occasions. I've had it when teaching about metaphor, explaining sound editing (air waves!), and when testing out a new mantra. I had it once when I watched a season finale involving the entire cast leaving on a boat. And - in a story I've re-told many times in many interviews - I got it one Wednesday when, at Mercury hour, I found myself in a library randomly trouble-shooting an Excel spreadsheet for a stranger I’d just met. Sometimes you don't just encounter the planets in action. Sometimes the planets are you.
The Takeaway
The 6 of Swords is a friend without equal when it comes to problem-solving. It is excellent for symbol manipulation and masterful at metaphor. It is good for writing your way out of a paper bag and thinking outside of the box. Because it never loses sight of its guiding star, it will help you navigate smoothly from point A to point B. It excels at errands, priority setting, and disambiguation. And if you are struggling in turbulent waters, take heart, for the 6 of Swords will help you find your way to calmer currents and peaceful resolution.
It is, furthermore, an excellent corrective for many sword-related afflictions. You can use this Tree of Life map to see how, and by what route you can chart your course to get there.
illustration by Gervasio Gallardo.