Choices

Today I am drawing a card from the Sol Invictus Tarot, a lovely set that uses multicultural gods, myths, legends, and even real historical figures to represent the tarot through images of the Divine Masculine.

My card today is Two of Swords, Papa Legba. Two of Swords often depicts a blindfolded figure holding crossed swords in front of the chest, or someone sitting at a crossroads, or both! The card is associated with facing choices, having a decision to make, and usually a decision that once you've made it, it's difficult to turn back and retrace your steps for a startover--might even be impossible. You can see in the card, Papa Legba holds two keys to the gate and seems to be keeping watch or standing guard over the crossroads. You've got to pick one or the other, and the gate implies no simple way of turning back once you make your choice.

Papa Legba is a figure in the New Orleans voodoo tradition, who is seen as a keeper of the gateway between the worlds, who can remove obstacles and provide opportunities. What an interesting and appropriate figure for the Two of Swords.

I am facing lots of choices in my life right now, but today in particular I will need to use powers of discernment and decision-making, because we are going to test drive a few cars. And of course it is the case that buying a car is a decision that is not easily backtracked from! Once you've bought it, it's your baby, you can't just give it back. The card also suggests wariness in today's thinking...Papa Legba can be a trickster, so I must be wary of having my head turned by pretty colours, extra features, or the talk of sales people.

Papa Legba, open the way,
that we may see the truth
about the cars we test drive today! :)

It's now 6.42 pm. It was certainly a long day. We test drove 4 cars today. The first place we went was a Honda dealership, where the salesperson was lovely, low key and a pleasure to work with. The atmosphere was completely different in the Volkswagen place we visited in the afternoon, where we were served by a young salesperson who gave us the most high-pressure, most deeply flawed sales pitch in the history of car buying. It was a surreal experience during which he tried to demonstrate that a year's petrol if you drive 13,000 miles a year would cost £18,000. Things were pretty much down hill from there. The only good thing about the VW experience was we found that we loved driving both the Golf and the Polo. But I don't think we'll be going back to that particular VW dealership, even if we decide to buy a VW. Thank you, Papa Legba, for the warning and the discernment!