Tiny Tarot Story
Read a short story inspired by the King of Wands.
He woke up sweating, fingers tingling, feeling like he’d returned from a long trip instead of a single sleep.
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The memory of the dream came two hours later, when a colleague asked what he’d been up to the night before. Instead of small talk came a series of images: A tissue box bursting in flames before him. A curtain turned red-in-motion. Fire snaking up a wall. And him, making it all happen.
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Every night after that he dreamed he could light things on fire simply by staring at them hard enough. And every day he wondered what he wanted to burn down.
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The answers were mostly metaphorical: Add some light and heat to his grey job, his grey decor, grey brain. Except sometimes, the sight of the office chair that had been sitting in his living room since March of 2020 inspired a sense of literal destruction. If he couldn’t burn it with his eyes, he wanted to take a bat to it, at the very least.
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He started with small rebellions. Taking two hours to make home-cooked meals, even though he was the only one eating them. Saying no to assignments so he could have time to make miniature furniture—that was his passion, furnishing dollhouses. Then he started bigger: Looking at his savings, seeing how long they’d last.
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He couldn’t start a fire with his mind, but he could do something close. And since he hardly was in his office chair anymore, he didn’t need to burn it down.
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King of Wands Reflections
Musings
Once I spent five weeks wondering whether the leader of a writing program was charming or a charlatan. The line blurred like the horizon in the desert. During one lunch, his ability to speak Greek fluently seemed impressive, even admirable. In another, it seemed like a grab for authority over a culture that wasn’t his. He strutted with like someone who wasn’t popular in high school but became so later in life. Everywhere, he wanted to show us magic. And if we didn’t see it the same way he did, he’d say, “Open your eyes!” Or something to that effect. If you didn’t see it his way, essentially, you were the problem.
Now I realize that he was neither charming nor a charlatan. He was a King of Wands.
In tarot, each of the deck’s 12 court cards in tarot is assigned a personality or a set of powers—I wrote about the Queen of Swords’s empowering sense of discernment in another post. Most tarot books will describe the King of Wands as a person who is passionate, fiery, dynamic. A leader whose compelling charm drips with performative machismo.
Like many of the tarot court cards, the King of Wands is burdened by gender roles. So here is how I define the King of Wands: Someone who makes things happen—man, woman, or however you identify. And the way the King of Wands makes things is happen is believing they can. He has confidence.
Confidence is a repellant and an attractor at the same time. It’s as if people who have it are up on a stage. On the one hand, you can’t look away from them—they’re towering over you, a spectacle. You want to be like them, glowing under the lights. Whether said lights are of divine origin, or whether they installed the lights themselves for dramatic effect, is something you debate.
But for those who lack it, confidence can be a taunt and a rebuke. You begin to wonder why you are stuck on the ground. You see there are no stairs to join them up on that stage. In order to ascend, you have to build your own stage. And how does that happen? You wonder where they got the building materials and audacity to start construction. Who were they to think they deserved those inches? To stand tall?
This discomfort with other people’s confidence is completely founded. Those without confidence feel like frauds. Those with it often are frauds. I have no empirical data to back this up, but I’ve frequently found that the most confident people I encounter are the most delusional. And yet: They get stuff done! If I had a salt and pepper shaker full of confidence, I’d go give a boost to my brilliant friends, who doubt their brilliance.
The King of Wands stopped worrying about questions of merit a while ago, for whatever reason. He accepts that he has confidence and doesn’t worry about whether he deserves it. Believing in himself is the lubricant that makes his life smoothly. From his perch, he’s able to see how things fit together, and make them happen.
It can feel like an actual crazy impossible leap to go from telling yourself good things to actually believing those good things. Trust me! I haven’t mastered it. When I try to be confident, I often feel like Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean on a gang plank, waiting for something to save me from falling but not quite sure it will come. I might end up in the water, looking like a fool, being proven I am one.
To this day, I struggle with King of Wands types when I encounter them in real life. I still feel the push and pull of revulsion and magnetism. Ultimately, though, the King of Wands has a lesson for me, and it’s contained in the picture on the Rider Waite Smith deck. There, the King of Wands looks out to the horizon. You can tell he’s thinking of the way forward. He’s a trailblazer who trusts his own perspective to guide the way. True North is your north.
Looking back on that summer, I was irked at much that man believed in himself. That’s because I didn’t believe in myself at all. I was annoyed by his presumption that everyone would want to be enriched by his presence, enlightened by what he had to say. That’s because I was scared to share my voice.
Or, hey, maybe he was just annoying. If I were the King of Wands, I might’ve just said that—and the essay would have ended at the first sentence.
Journaling Prompts
What about you makes you feel confident?
How do you react to confidence in others? Do you admire it or are you suspicious of it? Jealous, even?
What do you think of boosting your confidence?
Start a Story of Your Own
Write a story of your own inspired by the dynamics present in the King of Wands card, starting with this sentence. If you email me your story, I’ll share it in the next newsletter.
Everyone told him he was the best. Then he got to college.
Extra Credit
The next time you walk into a room, tell yourself that you are very beautiful. Repeat this until you believe it.
Go to Sephora. Buy something to make you glow.
Find a positive affirmation that you believe in. Incorporate it into your daily routine.
Do a tarot reading for yourself. Believe that you are gifted with the powers of intuition (because you are!).
Sit in front of a fireplace and be hypnotized by the flames.