The Pages represent young, energetic, and curious people or energies who are often growing an interest in intellectual, educational, or communicative pursuits. They are messengers who carry a new opportunity or an invitation into the next stage of life.
The Suit of Swords deals in the realm of the mind/intellect, thoughts/consciousness, and belief systems, often possessing the connotation of being innately “double-edged.” In the Dark Days deck, swords are associated with the element of fire, personal will, creative power, and change.
The Page of Swords is a card of motion oriented around the querent’s use of language, frequently indicating a funneling into a new, exploratory communicative stage. The message it brings: watch your words. The language you employ—externally and internally—has powerful resonance. It is a key component in exterior and self-interaction, and the effects of it are broad and lasting.
~~~
Dear tongue,
You are a curious, cunning organ.
Your eight intertwining tiny muscles are the only ones that can wag independently of the skeleton. You need no spine, but oh do you have backbone. Your stamina is astounding.
You quick-witted sway of spit and lick and kiss. Of sentence.
Sometimes you spin yourself ahead of me, your rogue wheels in turbulent motion;
sometimes I have to snatch you right out of the air, furl you back behind closed teeth.
When you’re in a mood, you are one loose cannon.
An ever-daring double-edge. A dagger. All sword sheathed and gleaming.
You have a real knack for cutting through the bullshit.
But tongue, I am weary, having been tricked by your taunt, your allure.
I am weary of your All Talk. I am weary of your un-kept promise, your recoil, your haste.
I am weary of your carelessness, of where your sweetness, your syrup coo has led me—astray,
into the gloom, an emptiness. I am weary of your overuse—have learned the cold lesson
of falling into a mouth which could grab no spine for steadiness.
I am weary of the wistfulness, persuasion, forgery.
And yet when you are vigilant, methodical, attentive,
when you are blending of a word with an action, of a sentence with an energy to follow,
you are a fervent force of nature, a skilled mind to mouth messenger.
You gifted manifestor. I trust the tinge to your meticulous, the cadence of your conjuring.
I trust even the entice, the captivating lure
when you know that I know
that all words are spells.
Emily Mundy is the Co-Author of the Dark Days Tarot Guidebook.