Tarot Discussion Group, Card of the Week.

To Start With, I took a long moment to gaze upon the cards side by each. I have created a popup, that will allow you to look upon them yourself. I think its quite interesting to look at them this way. Robin and Melanie have created two distinctly different images of the same card.

Robins young page races across the frame at full stride. Her sword held high. Her long hair flowing out behind her. It is a wonderful card full of energy and love of life. Melanies card depicts a young prince, sitting in a traditionally meditative pose his sword across his lap. Etherial Butterfly wings behind him. A column of light reaches from the crown of his head to the top of the card capped by a butterfly. Behind that butterfly, the shape of a butterfly is echo'ed in the clouds. The clouds themselves reach from the top of the card, to near the bottom of frame, where the Sun is getting ready to rise deep in the background.

So you understand my challange, where is the commonality, what do these two have in common that the card is communicating to us, through two such different voices. I think this card is mostly about transformations, and oppertunities. In this way, I think the two cards compliment each other and seen together are greater than the some of the parts.

Ted Andrews: "Probably no animal or insect has come to represent the process of transformation and shapeshifting more than that of the butterfly." Melanie has chosen to underline this aspect of the card, by echoing the butterfly through the image of the butterfly at least 3 times in the card. Ted also notes how Native Americans saw the butterly as a totem of "Change, Joy and Color." I think Robin has underlined this aspect the better. The young page just crackles with the joy of life. She is a messenger, but she is a joyful messenger. She brings word of re/birth into our lives. She offers us an oppertunity to pause, to take a moment and perhaps to see something important in a new light.

Allow me to share a story with you from, Dr Eve Bruces :Shaman Md. Dr Bruce is a plastic surgeon in Baltimore. More or less at the same time she was consulting two patients. One was a very shy young woman, who felt quite self conscious, she was about 19 with vitually no bosum. The other was a middle ages woman, well to do, but quite unhappy. Who came to Dr Bruce, for a face lift in the hope of looking younger.

After the surgery, the younger woman came out of her shell. Embraced her life, and a year later she was just bubbling with life and oppertunity. Not unlike a grown up vision of Robins page. While the older woman, had gone on with her unhappy life unchanged, and after a year she simply looked like a sad person with a tight face. The lesson being, of course, that the younger woman embraced the surgery as an oppertunity to change. While the older woman had expected the surgery to produce the change for her, without engaging in any inner work, or giving up perhaps the comfortable aspects of her life, in order to shed those aspects that where making her miserable.

A makeover, a new look, and new job. These outward expressions of change can be wonderful experiances for people. They are not however the end in themselves. They are instead thresholds to doorways leading down paths that may require all our discipline and courage to see the change we feel we want through. So to lean on Ted on last time today. When you see the Page of Swords, take a moment to consider this butterfly of the deck. Ask yourself, if you have the oppertunity to change something. To shapeshift life from with-in. In this way the swords is the perfect suit for this card of transformation. For the truest and deepest change comes not from changing our skins, but from changing our vision of ourselves.

Dr Bruce is part of www.dreamchange.org an organization dedicated to changing our larger dream. Our vision of the world, and creating a sustainable, earth centered dream.

Divination: Transformation. Mental Agility, Dexterity, Grace, Insight, Subtlety.

Reversed: Cunning, Devious, Imposter, Lack of preparation, Powerlessness.