Ace of Swords
In the beginning, so they say, was the (s)Word. The Logos. In the beginning, there was chaos, a void, a depth and its face. And it would have been this for all time if there were not a mechanism, a patterning logic—though that word has its blasphemies. Think like this, though it’s so crude to be almost meaningless: there was chaos and then a notion seeped in, began to crystallize, simple as this: one plus one equals two. So, two plus two must equal four. And four sets of four, that’s sixteen in all. And if there is more there must be less. And if more is valued then less is less so. And if there is a value of any kind it must exist here and not exist there. And if there are differences between one coordinate and another there must be some traversal—time and space—and if there is time and space and they are not the same there must be some means to describe each. And if…
---
A sword is the fold-forged, sharpened shape of the Truth. An instantiation of a truth anyway—the kind one may arrive at through rationality and logic, through Descartes’ number and measure, through the faultless expertise of trial-and-error. Fair and due that its symbol in the tarot is a weapon that can defend with righteous ferocity, or cut down great swathes of the weak for their treasure or blood. That it is a tool which can scythe a path through the most prehensile of jungle. To master its heft and swing, its parry and feint, is to master yourself and another. And to have it sheathed beside you knowing well how to use it...that’s a word unspoken until it needs to be.
---
She would beat me and claw at me and smash my belongings when she lost her mind. Once, long after the first time I saw a demon in her eyes, we made it thirteen days without attacks. And on the fourteenth I had to trap her in a closet so that she would not break a bottle over my head and gouge out my eyeballs with the edge. Or I had to press her face into the couch and sit on her back. It’s all one screaming, bleeding night in my memory now.
---
And yet she was a therapist, a smart one, and so her sharpest weapon was her words. She might ask one night, sweetly and concerned: “what are you afraid of in this world?” and when I said, say, “becoming my father” that was filed away until the bugs captured her brain again and she screamed across the shattered glass that I was just like him. That there was nothing I could do except to be the son in his image, let me count the ways. And so, in words, I became many things: a rapist and a liar and a con-man—imagine what you might be if the truth did not matter. I towered over her, I could squeeze her into stillness—but you have no idea how immense and monstrous a few words can be until you’ve wrestled them in open water, battered by winds on the deck of your tiny ship.
---
In the beginning was a hunk of iron pried from mother Earth with the blunt end of a stick. That Word ensconced like a meteorite. Pretend with me a moment that this ore—craggy now, a patina of rust—will be the Ace of Swords. That it represents the primordial ability to solve a problem, to put one next to another and see not a one and a one but a two.
And how is a sword made? The oldest and best way is to heat the iron molten, into a glob orange-hot and then white. Stir in a bit of soot to give it the subtlest flex, a paradoxical hardness, to make it workable. And then you plunge the steel into water to cool it. A great and mystical upwell of steam. And then you heat again, fold it and hammer it flat and plunge it once again. And again. Each fold adds to the final sword’s strength. Introduces a complexity, an atom-thin structure. Two and then four and then sixteen and soon in the thousands.
---
I know why the abused stay—a dark secret for another card. But here’s how they escape: see, there is no way out through the heart, that organ in your chest is a labyrinth you may get lost in. And no pentacular weighing of options will break one free. And though the intuition may scream for freedom, it will scream too for return. So, I needed the hard cryptography and cutting edge of the sword. I needed the irrefutable computation, a one sentence result that I could carry with me, derived from much heating and hammering and plunging. “This situation will never change.” It was, as it turned out, quite a sharp blade. Once honed, it would not let me feel anything until I’d cut my way out of that clinging jungle and found a new creek to bivouac beside.
Train all you want, my friend, the lesson is in battle. And if you’ve paid attention, only one notch on the hilt is needed to trust what happens when you draw that blade.