Save your arrows

Wildwood Tarot 

I hardly ever use the Wildwood Tarot. It is not a favourite, and one reason is the suit of Arrows and the suit of Bows. I find it really hard to keep them straight. As the Arrows suit is associated with Air and Bows with Fire, I try to treat them as Swords and Wands respectively, but to be honest that doesn't work terribly well. And when a deck departs too much from tradition, I find myself reaching for it less and less. That's why, despite my affection for them, I don't often use decks like this one's predecessor, the Greenwood, or Rachel Pollack's Shining Tribe.

Anyway, here a red-eyed goat, apparently framed by the corona of the sun, leaps down a hill to escape the hapless hunter, who fires away at him and misses every time. The key word given is Frustration.

In the traditional Five of Swords, we see the aftermath of the battle, as the victors congratulate themselves and the losers skulk away. The victor here appears to be the goat; the defeated hunter here isn't giving up, but we can see he's unlikely to strike his prey.

I suppose he has been stalking this goat for a while, so it must be frustrating to have it unexpectedly spring in the wrong direction (straight down the hill at him!), and in his panic and surprise, the hunter just starts shooting.

The question is, what have we been stalking lately? And what will we do if suddenly our goal springs the wrong way? Things go in unplanned, unexpected directions? How will we express our frustration? Should we express it? Or should we just accept it? The hunter here has shot all his arrows, now he either has to go find them or go off and make more. Maybe if he'd crouched down and let the goat spring past, he could have continued the hunt.

The lesson I'm seeing here is not to be too reactive when things go awry. It doesn't help. It might feel right or good in the moment, but the aftermath will probably be more than it was worth.