I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Saturday Reflections, I take time out to reflect.
When I can’t think of anything to write, I turn to the Tarot. I pulled three cards this morning for a quick reading, hoping for something that would provide the basis for today’s post.
Here’s what I drew:
- Current Situation: Justice
- Course of Action: King of Swords
- Outcome: Two of Pentacles
This reading progresses from very serious (Justice) to a more playful destination (Two of Pentacles) via a reminder to cultivate attention (King of Swords).
I’ll start with the ending, rather than the beginning. The Two of Pentacles shows a man in motion, maybe even dancing, holding two pentacles (coins) within an infinity loop. In the background, ships sail on waves larger than they are. They are managing well and don’t look like they’re about to capsize.
This card generally represents balancing and juggling the activities of life.
In her book Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom, Tarot interpreter Rachel Pollack writes of the Two of Pentacles:
Like the Two of Swords the Two of Pentacles strikes a precarious balance, though in general a happier one. We see, in fact, the very concept of balance in the image of the juggler. At times the card means juggling life itself, keeping everything in the air at once. More simply, it carries the idea of enjoying life, having a good time – similar to the Nine of Cups, but lighter, a dance more than a feast.
Like so many Pentacles, the card implies a hidden magic in its ordinary pleasures. The juggler holds his magic emblem within a loop or ribbon shaped like an infinity sign, the same sign which appears above the head of the Magician, and the woman in Strength. Some people believe that spiritual development occurs only in serious moments. Pleasure and amusement can also teach us a great deal, as long as we pay attention. [emphasis mine]
I’ve written before about the magic of everyday life. In January of 2025, I declared that I might never go back to the traditional workforce, and quoted writer Amie McNee, “I must have magic. I demand a life that I love.” Now, almost eighteen months later, I have achieved what I declared I wanted (actually demanded) in that post: a life that I love, a life that is filled with everyday, ordinary magic.
There is magic in the everyday, if you pay attention.
Cultivating attention as the power of life and death
Since adding foster dog Sally to my household menagerie, I’ve had to work to cultivate better presence and attention. I discovered I cannot walk Sally with my dog Bo. Sally requires too much caution and strength to control. I discovered this through what could have been a disaster, when Sally got away from me to go after another dog on leash. In the process, she hurt my hand, but fortunately didn’t cause any additional injury to anyone.
Now in the morning I walk Bo first, about a mile, which is long enough for him to do his business, and then I take Sally on a slow “sniffari” where she stops to inhale the scents of the neighborhood for lengthy periods of time. It takes us about fifteen minutes to cover the short distance around the block. She shows great attention to the present moment on these walks, but I find myself getting antsy and impatient. I want to finish the walk and get back to my computer, to do whatever I’m doing that day: trading options or writing a newsletter article for example, or working on the garden to make my house beautiful for the graduation party I’m having in a couple weeks.
Jessica Dore, in Tarot for Change, writes of guidance from the King of Swords to direct your attention:
In his Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Arthur Waite writes that the King of Swords is “the power of life and death.” If we consider that each card tells a psychological and spiritual secret in the domain to which it belongs—the swords about the intellectual experience, the cups about the emotional experience, the major arcana about the greater life journey, and so on—the King of the Swords’ instruction is that a person should work to develop concentration and the ability to direct and fix attention at will. If this king carries “the power of life and death,” his message is that developing a level of mastery with our attention endows us with the power to give life to any situation, and also the power to take it away.
This is a very beautiful way of thinking about attention: it is the power of life and death.
When I agreed to foster Sally I brought a new life to her, and a new life to me and the rest of my household. When I allow her to sniff the dew-wet grass in the morning for as long as she wants, I acknowledge her life and its importance.
When I’m distracted and in my head and not paying attention to what I’m doing, it’s like I think that reality is somewhere else. It’s a form of nihilism, of denying the actual reality of my life. When, conversely, I bring my awareness to whatever makes up my life in this moment I am affirming this moment, this life as it is.
The reality of justice
And now back to the first card of the reading: Justice. On first seeing this card, I thought I knew exactly what it meant: the lack of justice in the world, and not just the lack, but the overturning of justice happening far away from me, undertaken by people with power.
Or is it about me, not about other people, is it about owning up to decisions I’ve made in my life and things that have happened? Is it about affirming this life that is rather than the life I wish for, the life that I imagine could have been?
The current actions of the U.S. president and those who support him have made me reflect on the need for truth, decency, kindness, responsibility, and character — all qualities I find missing in the Trump administration.
Have I always acted with those qualities? No.
Pollack writes of the card’s message that you must take responsibility for who you have become through your actions and through what has happened to you, which paradoxically helps you release your past:
On the microcosmic level of personal psychology the Wheel of Fortune represented a vision of a person’s life; the events, who you are, what you’ve made of yourself. Justice indicates an understanding of that vision. The way to understanding lies in responsibility. As long as we believe that our past lives just happen, that we do not bring our own selves into existence through every thing we do, then the past remains a mystery, and the future an endlessly turning wheel, empty of meaning. But when we accept that every event in our lives has helped to form our characters, and that in the future we will continue to create ourselves through our actions, then the sword of wisdom cuts through the mystery.
Further, by accepting responsibility for ourselves we paradoxically free ourselves from the past. Like Buddha remembering all his lives, we can only get loose from the past by becoming conscious of it. Otherwise we constantly repeat past behaviour. This is why Justice belongs in the centre of our lives. The ego may be only a persona, a kind of mask, but that mask can control us as long as we will not admit having forged it ourselves.
When I walk Sally on her morning sniffari with gentle attention, allowing her to take her time, postponing my selfish need to dip myself into the dopamine waters of the Internet, I am acting with the very qualities I judge that other people should act with.
There is magic in attention, and I think maybe there is also magic in those qualities I would like to continuously embody: truth, decency, kindness, responsibility, and character. I have not always been attentive. I have not always been truthful, decent, kind, responsible. I have not always shown good character.
I wonder if my purpose in life now is to embody those things, starting with a foundation of attention to the reality of my life. I wonder if that’s where I will find magic at midlife.