The Queen of Wands
I’m so happy to say that on Wednesday, you’ll get the absolute treat of a guest post by Syar S. Alia, whose tarot newsletter Record of a Year you should all follow. I love this guest post so much, I’m psyched for y’all to get to read it.
Now that you're outta my life/ I'm so much better/ You thought that I'd be weak without you/ But I'm stronger/ You thought that I'd be broke without you/ But I'm richer/ You thought that I'd be sad without you/ I love harder. Is there a more universal experience than hating your friend’s partner? And is there a better experience than your friends listing, in graphic detail, everything they hated about your ex after a not so amicable broken up? People are complex, and people make mistakes, and people deserve compassion. The Queen of Wands doesn’t give a shit. A parable: One time, I got dumped and immediately found out, over varying degrees of gin and tears, that my friends had… not been huge fans of my partner, to say the least. The more I shared about the relationship, the more I began to feel like a baby bear being raised by a collective of multi-gendered mama bears. Months later, I took someone new to my friend’s women’s rugby lube wrestling fundraiser, because of course I did. My friends were fucking prepared. One of them even asked their girlfriend to join them in secret judgement. The next day, the reviews were in: I’ve never seen people so mad to like someone. My favorite was a friend who made fifty caveats, literally growled, and said they had a good gut feeling about this person. The Queen of Wands is that mama bear protection, fighting against the tide to keep the people you love safe.
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I'm not ready to make nice/ I’m not ready to back down/ I’m still mad as hell/ And I don't have time/ To go 'round and 'round and ‘round. A lot of cards can masquerade as the Queen of Wands, and a lot of people want to. (The Knight of Cups is particularly at risk for this— this song is on both playlists.) It makes sense to some degree. Who doesn’t want to be seen as fiercely protective of their friends? But when people pretend to be the Queen of Wands, or emulate them without paying attention, they can get the people they’re ostensibly protecting into trouble. The actual Queen of Wands needs to be highly aware of their one track mindedness. It’s not necessarily bad, but if they don’t realize the ways they’re a little one note, no matter how outstanding and creative that note is, they lose track of the fact that their way isn’t the only way. They revert to being a Knight. The Queen of Wands doesn’t inherently have this awareness, but they do have the capacity for it. People who want to be seen as the Queen of Wands don’t care enough to notice that awareness is an option, let alone something to work towards.
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You are young/ Gifted, and Black/ We must begin/ To tell/ Our young/ There’s a world /Waiting for you/ Yours is the quest/ That's just/ Begun. So this has had a lot about how the Queen of Wands is a giant bitch (in an aspirational sense— may we all be bitches as giant as the Queen of Wands). But at the heart of protectiveness is who or what you’re protecting. Community is a word we throw around a lot. It hasn’t become meaningless or anything, but I think that when we talk about it and we don’t define our terms at the outset, everyone’s having a separate conversation. Like all Kings, the King of Wands is responsible for a huge variety of people. They have to answer to (and answer to themselves about) anyone taking action whatsoever. But The Queen is more specified. I used to read them as leading a small, chosen community, the people you’d invite to your birthday party or your wedding. But as time goes on, I’ve begun to think more expansively about personal community. I don’t think the Queen always refers to a large-scale identity community or anything, but I’ve also been thinking about the specific ways I feel protective of trans people and disabled people, and about the ways I feel protective of anyone doing any movement work. It’s different from how I feel about my friends, some of whom share no identities with me, but it’s still a mama bear feeling. The Queen of Wands doesn’t have unlimited tinder— how far can their flames be seen while they still keep people warm as opposed to just light up concepts?
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Survivor, Destiny’s Child
Not Ready To Make Nice, The Chicks
To Be Young, Gifted and Black, Nina Simone (Link is to the Aretha Franklin version bc it is one of my favorite things ever recorded. Like, ever.)
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