The Six of Swords
Words ARE Spells: a conscious journey through the mind
The Six of Swords is a Gate. Looking at it with sensitivity and then entering the picture will produce first a quieting effect on the mind and then later, slowly, a sense of movement within in the self.
-Rachel Pollack, Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom
Jan 30th-February 8th is the second decan of Aquarius (10-20 degrees Aquarius). This decan corresponds with the Six of Swords and Mercury in Aquarius.
“Six… represents the six senses, the sixth sense being clear vision and the ability to function on the plane of the astral world, which is the next of our many latent faculties to be unfolded. The sense will have much to do in assisting man to gain mastery over his emotional nature.”
-Manly P. Hall, Sacred Magic
“Science”
Someone with Mercury in Aquarius in their natal horoscope is said to have a keen, analytical mind and an extraordinary ability to concentrate. He or she is also intensely curious and enjoys examining both sides of a question.
-Lon Milo DuQuette, Understading Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot
By seeing the opposites, you will understand the inherent duality of life, which is really created through the relativity of the mind. Knowing that everything is relative to one’s viewpoint, you can see the truth as transcending the thinking mind and comprising the opposites.
-James Wanless, Way of the Great Oracle
[Six] is the seat of the Ego and of the image-making power in man. [Swords - the element of Air] relates directly to humanity, it is our delegated world, the World of Formation, the link between the planes above and the physical world of matter, of manifestation, below.
-Yolanda Robinson, The New Art Tarot
[The Six of Swords is] the wild expanse between the previous shore and the next one, when you’re not where you were but not yet where you want to be. It’s the messy, confusing, painful, magical territory of transition, of becoming.
-Charlie Claire Burgess, Radical Tarot
How do we think clearly in a hyper-intense world? This is something I’ve been discussing with my friend Amrita, the founder of Groundwork, after she lent me her copy of Stolen Focus, a book about reclaiming our ability to think deeply.
In the first chapter author Johann Hari shares that “if you are focusing on something and you get interrupted, on average it will take twenty-three minutes for you to get back to the same state of focus.”
He follows up this startling fact with another one: “A study of office workers in the U.S. found most of them never get an hour of uninterrupted work in a typical day. If this goes on for months and years, it scrambles your ability to figure out who you are and what you want. You become lost in your own life.”
If your flow is constantly interrupted, you can become lost in your own life.
The Six of Swords is about reclaiming our focus as much as it is about getting out of our own way—something that is difficult to do in a world full of distractions.
If our thoughts contribute to the creation of our reality (which I believe they do), how do we choose the thoughts that serve us—and the world—best? How do we stay focused in an economy that wants, more than anything else, our attention?
How do we stay engaged in the world without becoming enraged?
Can we let our emotions move through us without attaching stories to them?
And what would it look like to bring the energy of the Six of Swords into your life, allowing your mind to become quiet enough to let a greater intelligence come through?