King of Swords

“Blame it all on my roots, I showed up in boots
And ruined your black tie affair
The last one to know, the last one to show
I was the last one you thought you'd see there.” -Garth Brooks, Friends in Low Places

Yesterday at my dad’s steakhouse birthday party this song came on and my dad started whistling to it, and I thought, this song is such a good example of an anthem for the King of Swords. It’s a very “fuck you, I’m gonna do it my way, and they’ll love me for it,” kind of vibe that is timeless to the human spirit. And no, before you start assuming that I’m an Americana country fried two-stepper, I’d ask you to take a deep breath and recognize that I was the only goth in the steakhouse, but I can appreciate a country hit when I hear one. If I was from the northeast I’d probably be quoting Frank Sinatra, but I’m from Kansas.

I learned how to appreciate the country music that called out abusers, capitalist pigs, systemic violence and heartbreak. I was in middle school when my beloved band, The Chicks, were getting eviscerated by the public for taking a stance against our government. And wouldn’t you know it, a couple of years later I had to stand in front of our high school football crowd while they violently screamed Toby Keith’s rancid rebuttal of a song about The Chicks. I was a cheerleader in small town America, and though I was very unpopular in my leftist beliefs, I still did my best to stay true to myself and I never stopped. If I can deal with the town screaming those god awful lyrics, I can deal with anything.

And yes, I was a cheerleader. I said I lived in a small town, we didn’t have a dance team. Our options were cheerleading or colorguard, and I didn’t like the flags, I liked mini skirts and tossing girls in the air.

For me, expression is fluid and not meant to be categorized, put in a box, dissected and catalogued. I don’t want to be forced to be one thing, have one look, have one opinion, I am not static like my pink stripper pole, but I am dynamic and so are you dear reader. In particular I love to change, change is my aesthetic and I’m going to blame that on my Venus being in the sign of Gemini and my Sun sign also being Gemini. I need variety! Like Air! Oh, yes, air. Let me get back on point.

The King of Swords is associated with the element Air. Swords swing through the air thwacking off the heads of an enemy the same as a tongue slashes through oxygen, lambasting a hearty insult at the person that burns them with a cigarette at a crowded cross walk. The suit of swords is all about expression, words, linguistics, and thought forms. I think a perfect example of this card in action is Myrtle Snow from American Horror Story Coven season. Myrtle’s power is in wordsmithing and linguistics. No doubt she has impeccable style, she goes out screaming “Balenciaga!” as her last words. This character is very King of Swords coded, she is always reading between the lines and finds corruption in the coven.

And when no one believes her, she enchants the villain’s quasi familiar’s tongue so that he MUST tell the truth about the villain’s evil deeds, and if you’ve seen the show you know that Myrtle does not get the justice she seeks. But her pathos seeks to illuminate corruption and the solution. It’s not easy being the truth teller in a world built on cooperation, truth isn’t cooperative in nature, it disrupts. We’ve seen empires rise and fall since the beginning of time, and every one of those empires contained leadership, and those leaders all declared divinity! “Make me King, the gods have chosen me! You wouldn’t want the gods to punish you for not crowning me your leader, would you?” And eventually as everyone knows, poor leadership eventually results in downfall from your empires all the way down to your corrupt bake sale organizers.

In a reading you may pull the Tower card and the King of Swords, this could be that an authority in your life is getting the rug pulled out and it will affect your daily life because authority makes systems, when that system is exposed and destroyed we have to pivot. Draw a card to ask advice on what to do to manage the big changes in your life.

Change is hard, uncertainty is painful, but our ancestors continued to live and dream despite the world being an ever-changing, ever-evolving miracle. And you my friend can also keep going. Even if you have to go a little mad to get through it, you can get through it. If you’re going to drink one too many hot toddies and paint your body and then go running naked through your neighborhood, I suggest using non-toxic, washable paint and not acrylic.