A woman of strong economic or social presence stands at a battlement or parapet surveying her world and its boundaries from a commanding vantage, holding a longstaff and an orbed scepter. A more gnarled staff stands alone. The battlements might be regarded as a defining wall, between what we are and what we are not. The territory already claimed goes up to here, where the other, with its possibilities, begins.
Human is as human does. Poets will say something different, philosophers too, but they largely describe their own fantasies. We adapt or fail to adapt by our actions, and this is how we become what we are. Such a definition denies us our greatest human hypocrisy. The Two of Wands is about knowing who we are, what we want, and how we enact our choices. It’s the development of our identity and purpose, and then about how we take responsibility or ownership of the world around us, however big or small that world may be. Given the clarity of direction that the wisdom of the Two can develop, a deeply personal path or calling, we can claim the right to create the world we live in, sometimes on a grand scale, but easily on our own. This takes the courage to change the things we can. Of course the platitude says we should try to change only ourselves. But this is our choice: “If I were not Kamala Harris, I would be Fran Lebowitz.“ It is knowing who we are that tells us what to do. The rules are simple then: be true.
Dominion is probably the best single word for this card, and it is commonly used here. It comes from the Latin domus, meaning home. It refers to our own domain, what we claim as our own turf and purview, what we are ultimately responsible for, what we are queen or madame of, what we are able to dominate, and what is within our rights to domesticate. We are not required to take charge of anything, not even ourselves. This helps to explain why the world is run by a hive mind. Some of us would change this. And some of us who would, will only make things worse. But the character of this card is to apply directed energy to further the good, to make the world a more habitable place, and perhaps to give something back to the world. The counterpart in the Yijing is Gua 14, Big Domain or Possession in Great Measure, enrichment, treasuring, which needs little explanation. The Chinese speak of wu wei, not doing or inaction, as a value for living, but the kind of doing (wei) that is not being done means ‘acting’ in the sense of playing a specified role that is far too frequently sideways to our original nature. And this, in its turn, tends to emerge from inferior wisdom about what we need and want, and what it means to have. The truly noble can ‘have’ as much just holding a pilgrim’s staff: the greatest power is in the power to assign a value to things, and a high value to evaluation and revaluation themselves. It’s the appreciative and the grateful who are rich. This is knowing what you have and what you want or need, all sorted by their value to your life. Of course, the truly noble will also own their mistakes, or own the consequences of their actions.
As we search for our identity, the empowerment of knowing ourselves, we look first for a continuity in time. We prioritize around this identity. We try for a binding alliance of the many parts of ourselves, a unity that is our integrity, an integer or an undivided wholeness. We compile a self out of the sum of our values, starting with likes and dislikes. We seek to own ourselves, and to own up to our errors, then responsibly alter who made them. So continuity is one thing and discontinuing error, another. We are not just the line we like to draw between only our shiniest moments. Delegating tasks and influencing others will do little outside of the world we can manage, and what we cannot demonstrate or exemplify will not be adopted. We can manage this only by walking the talk. In short: be excellent.
Reverse
arrogance, blind ambition, conflicted sense of identity, disappointing success, domination, domineering, greed, haste, ingratitude, indirect purpose, loss of will, mismanaged claims, obstinacy, opposition from others, excessive ambition and pride, recklessness, shamelessness.