The Tarot Suites and Writing

i think that writing and magic are pretty much synonymous what I am trying to say is that there are certain things which are given as advice to magicians which I would also think would be useful advice for somebody who is aspiring to be a writer these are the four suits of the tarot deck starting from the lowest um that would be discs they represent your ability to deal with the material world the hard physical world that we all exist in so for a writer that means yes pay attention to your physical circumstances you don't want to starve in a garrett also try and obtain a knowledge of the physical world try and find out how situations work how people work how all of these things that make up the material world about us how they all fit together find out about history find out about physical science find out about all of these things until you understand the physical world now

the next weapon in ascending order is the sword specifically the sword is the discriminatory intellect it's the intellect that has got a sharp cutting edge that enables you to discriminate between a good idea and a bad idea to discriminate between one thing and another this will be very very useful to you in your career as a writer and also the pursuit of intellect itself but to expand your intellect will be to expand your capacity to write about things

moving on to the next most important of the four magical weapons that would be the cup and thus represent human emotion and particularly human compassion now in creating characters you need to feel compassionate towards them even if they are the most hateful villain possible you need to understand them if you're going to write about them if you're maybe going to put words in their mouth you need to understand them as a human being so the key to that is compassion to be able to think yourself into somebody else's shoes

the most important of the four weapons is the wand it represents the human spirit which is to say the human will now this is the most important of the four weapons because it is the weapon that should be directing the other three it is the center of the human self that has an intellect that has an emotion that has physical circumstances and is directing all of those things now to a writer will is the single most important element because if you do not have will then you might have the best ideas in the world you might have a wonderful idea for a novel and you will get perhaps two chapters in before you have an even better idea for another story so you abandon the novel perhaps you'll get back to it perhaps you won't but you move on to your next great idea you perhaps get a chapter into that you can very easily without the application of will you can end up after 30 years as a writer having nothing but a stack of uncompleted manuscripts that you never finished the important thing about will is if you focus that upon your imagination you can actually bring things into materialization where they exist in the real world where the rest of us exist and where the rest of us can read them

i think it's important to stress that anybody can write anybody is allowed to write that this is not some divine calling that only settles upon a few special individuals if you can actually write in the language of that you've grown up with then you are a writer

This progression applies not only to writing, but to life and other subjects as well. I can see it with my exploration of ludology. At first I consumed every possible game, then I became more discriminatory, I found compassion for the community, and eventually the willpower to maintain productivity.