Knight of Swords: I Am Not the Storm
When I was training in ecotherapy, I remember a particularly cold and windy day down in Leicestershire. A group of us were working in the outdoor spaces near the old Buddhist House (where the weekend sessions used to be held). We worked together in the meadows and parks in all weathers, and my strongest memories of those weekends are that they were often cold and windy. Very cold, in fact!
One day, when a strong wind was whipping everyone’s hair from left to right like medusa’s snakes, one of my fellow students said, ‘Ugh, I’ve always hated the wind!’
Above: Knight of Swords from Anima Tarot de Marseille.
I don’t know why the comment stuck with me, or why it felt strange at the time. It’s a pretty normal response to wind, and yet Britain is such a windy island: it’s an inconvenient thing to dislike so much! I think I must have recognised that I used to feel the same way when I was younger, especially when I was a child. I’m not sure why that was the case but I recall a tenseness happening in my muscles when the wild air lapped at my ears, and I longed for the cosy protection of home. But I think the comment struck me most because I realised, at that moment, that I feel so differently now: in fact, wind and stormy weather (not dangerously stormy, obviously) is probably one of my favourite conditions. Why that change has shifted in me since childhood is hard to say, except that we change as much as the weather ourselves.
For me, the Knight of Swords has one of the wildest energies in the Tarot. In the Tarot of Marseille, the knight’s horse leans back, galloping with a speed that is not seen in any other knight/cavalier cards. There are 10 circles on his helmet (in the Jodorowsky/Camoin version), representing the Wheel of Fortune, (number 10 in the Major Arcana): the wheel of life that brings change. He points his red sword forward as if on the attack, or defending. There is battle in the air.
In Nature, the Knight of Swords represents a storm. Air energy at its speediest, elements at war. Extreme storms can be terrifying things, where lives are lost and landscapes are transformed. (Just like our rage, which the card can also sometimes represent.) But when storms are not so extreme or dangerous, they are exhilarating.
Above: Knight of Swords from Nicoletta Ceccoli Tarot.
Have you ever meditated in a safe, quiet room whilst winds are raging outside? Or even just sat quietly and tuned into the pure wildness of it? I’m not talking about a dangerous storm here – just the sort of wild winds that whip the hair from the face and have you gasping for breath without causing major damage. There is something that I find strangely humbling about it. Somehow it draws attention to my own stillness, the stillness that we all carry beneath the chaos of our wild thoughts and the changing outer conditions. Maybe in those moments of a storm, my mind can’t help but latch on the swishing movement, the whistling sounds, the mild rattling of the windows and doors, and when doing so, it lets go of the internal activity, the mental storms that torment our human minds. (Our minds are constant storms really, endless thoughts and noise.)
The living room in our tiny cottage used to be a conservatory before it was upgraded into a proper living space, and it doubled up as my meditation room. (This sounds posh, but really, the conservatory was almost the same size as the rest of our one-bedroom cottage!) The glass rattled in the storms of the darker seasons as I sat quietly, and a smile would break out on my face as my body settled into stillness. The trees outside grabbed wildly at the air, the shrubs danced like frizzy hair under static balloons. I revelled in the wildness of the conditions: muscles relaxing, body finding stillness. The contrast was amazing.
Some of the wilder storms here in recent years have taken down large sections of the local forest, including giant redwoods, and left some areas unrecognisable. The more unpredictable that climate change becomes, the more I am aware that these sorts of conditions are not remotely cosy for a lot of people all over the world, and it must be utterly terrifying to be in the midst of what seems like Nature’s fury, especially when you know that it might take lives or even just tear roofs from building.
Above: Knight of Swords from the Osho Zen Tarot.
The Osho Zen version of the Knight of Swords is the only knight in the deck that shows an actual knight: a figure in armour, holding up his fists. When stormy conditions are present in the mind, this is how it feels to me, that my mind is fighting itself. It only takes the tiniest of conflicts for it to begin, for a stream of defensive thoughts and imaginary heated conversations to whip up anxious emotions like fragile trees dancing in the wind.
When this happens, sometimes I call to mind those moments of meditation in the old conservatory, where I would sit in stillness as the winter storms rattled the glass around me. I try my best to watch the internal conditions from a place of stillness. I constantly get pulled back into the storm – human anxiety is hard to resist – but if I try, really try, I can find glimpses of that quiet place that we all have beneath the noise.
I know that I am not the storm itself. We are only ever the Knight of Swords fleetingly. There is something beneath the speediness of our thoughts, plans and activity (which can, of course, be very useful – the Knight’s rage and energy is needed at times). I can observe the conditions without being so affected by them, if I focus hard enough. I am not the storm.
That’s all for now, friends. Thank you for being here – and please check out my Therapeutic Tarot Sessions and my courses embracing Tarot and Nature if you’d like us to work together. You can also sign up for the Tarot Blog newsletter (different to my main newsletter) below to receive occasional email updates (roughly monthly) with the latest posts.
Smiles from Scotland,
Stephen
