Competing energies between the Cups and Swords

All year I’ve felt like I’m competing between two identities:

There is the part of me that reads and teaches tarot, and the part of me that is an artist.

I used to feel like these two things co-existed to a certain extent, though of course they are distinct and pull from different parts of me.

The part of me that is an artist needs long stretches of time to write. This means being offline and undisturbed. It means being free to be with my own thoughts and feelings. And it requires a certain level of privacy, as writing takes time to develop and is often only revealed when it’s ready for an audience.

The tarot part of me is present, visible and social. It requires that I’m available, responsive, and openly sharing.

These two things sound like an ideal balance on paper. One allows for quiet and solitude, and the other allows for service and community. And both can trade places, with tarot being a gentle ritual and writing eventually being for public consumption.

But where the friction sits these days is in how so many of us – myself included – have to fit ourselves into the boxes of online culture.

Over the last few years, it seems to have become harder to be a multi-passionate person when you’re online. The norm these days is to build a platform around one topic or niche and keep at it.

Don’t get me wrong: I love talking about tarot and have so much I still want to say and share about it.

But some days I wonder…where does the rest of ME fit into it all?

It feels hard to stay inspired in the current culture where so much of our imagination seems to have wired itself around social media and what the algorithm will or won’t reward us for sharing.

It also feels hard to navigate if you feel like you’ve built a community around one area of focus, and you’re not sure if your people will be interested in your other passions or ideas.

This is something I’ve been diving on with some of my creative clients this year. If you’re into pottery but you do tarot readings on the side, is there room for both in a world that wants us to be just one thing?

It feels so limiting as a human. We are meant to be curious, creative, and diverse in our interests and personalities.

The image it strikes for me is like a tug of war between the Seven of Cups and the Ace of Swords.

The Seven of Cups is happy to gaze up at all of its fantasies out in the ether. This is our experience as we tap into our imagination and seek out new inspiration: Why choose just one thing when there are so many dreams to live out?

But the Ace of Swords sees the multi-passionate person as someone who lacks clarity and commit. “Choose one thing and build from there,” it says.

And yet we are meant to be so much more than just one thing at a time.

I’m reflecting a lot on how to reconcile these two energies right now. One thing that I always find helpful is to just work on the things that I feel are important and that keep me inspired.

We have to keep moving forward on our own terms, regardless of how the larger culture might want to steer us. I get the sense that our digital world is going to continue to shift and change, and how we use it individually is going to become more and more important to our own creative and spiritual well-being.

Until next time,

Liz

 p.s. Are you looking for more tarot tips? You might want to check out my Free Tarot Resources!