Minor — Swords

Six of Swords

The crossing: in a cart driven by a faceless ferryman, the young man leaves one territory for another. He holds the Book, closed, in full awareness — for the first time since his anger, he knows what he is carrying. And the magpie is there, in the cart. Perhaps.

Symbolic reading

The ferryman has no face: he is every ferryman, past and present — those who help us cross boundaries we cannot cross alone. Where tradition sets this scene on water, the DAL places it on the road: the cart rolls over dry land, and the passage is no less a passage. The Book picked up after the fall is no longer either burden or refuse: it is held consciously, truly possessed for the first time. The magpie travels in the cart, a discreet and almost uncertain presence — as though the ferryman's space blurred the boundary between what is seen and what is believed. One does not emerge from a crossing unscathed; one emerges somewhere else.

Reversed reading

The crossing is refused or bogs down: one remains in familiar territory, pays the fare but never gets aboard — or believes one is moving forward while only the wheels spin in place.

• passage
• transition
• awareness
• calming
• elsewhere
• trust