“A calm, stately personage, with his back turned, looking from a cliff's edge at ships passing over the sea. Three staves are planted in the ground, and he leans slightly on one of them. Divinatory Meanings: He symbolizes established strength, enterprise, effort, trade, commerce, discovery; those are his ships, bearing his merchandise, which are sailing over the sea. The card also signifies able co-operation in business, as if the successful merchant prince were looking from his side towards yours with a view to help you.”
-A. E. Waite
With Ace of Wands, you established your “deep” background in terms of culture, place in society, familial history and values, etc. In that context you developed several goals, some things/events/actions you want to create in your life. Two of Wands has helped you distinguish which of this goals are actually necessary (as opposed to desirable) and also determine their feasibility. If you came to the conclusion that your goals are neither necessary nor feasible, it’s more likely that they need to be tweaked than abandoned. It’s good to give your plans a great deal of thought before embarking upon them. You also performed gratitude exercises to put your self-help goals in perspective, and to foster your own mental health and well-being, which is also critical to achieving your dreams.
Now it’s time to get down to brass tacks. How do you intend to achieve these goals? How will you create something beautiful/wonderful/startling/beneficial with your life?
Waite describes this card rather poetically: not only does the card describe enterprise, effort, and discovery, but the meaning is personified in the character of “the successful merchant prince.” This merchant prince appears to be “looking from his side towards yours with a view to help you.”
As vividly and realistically as you can, imagine the merchant prince before you now. Endow him with any characteristics you like, but be sure he is both kind and shrewd—not someone who will take advantage of you, but not a person who will let himself be cheated. If you like, to help foster the illusion, you may wish to pour the merchant prince his own cup of tea (or something stiffer!), light an atmospheric candle or two, and sit down together for a little business chat.*
Whatever your goal may be—anything from weight loss to starting a business to improving your spiritual well-being—the merchant prince is interested in a joint venture. He wants you to present him with a detailed business plan. He expects you to convince him that not only is the goal a worthy one, but it’s practical, doable, and can withstand any kind of cost-benefit analysis.
So on a piece of paper, jot down your answers to the following questions:
You need to convince the merchant prince of two things: your plan’s feasibility, and your own personal commitment. If neither of those look good on your “business plan”—your ideas are too vague, you don’t know how to adapt, too many habits require change—then you’ll need to keep working on it.
When you feel that your “business plan” is not only convincing to you, but convincing to any other reasonable and intelligent person, that’s when you know you’re ready to get started. Next week, we’ll look at Four of Wands, and how you can begin work on your goals in the best, most harmonious way.
*Or not, if this sort of role-playing feels uncomfortably silly. If you’re at all intrigued, though, give it go—acting out our desires in this fashion can have powerful psychological effects.