IN SHORT:
UPRIGHT: Conflict & contention. Feeling defeated, and the need for vindication. Walk away.
REVERSED: Managing past resentments, and old grudges. Reconcile to the present conditions as a means towards strategizing an improved future. ‘It is what is.’
KEEP SCROLLING FOR IN DEPTH EXPLANATION
IN DEPTH:
In the Five of Swords, a focuses looking woman takes the megaphone from a supportive friend, and is readying herself to read a long list of grievances against the landlord, who is in the process of evicting her and her family. She has been locked in a protracted war with the owners of her home for years now. She has spent winters with little to no heat, boiled water to bathe her children, she struggled through infestations, and rot build-up in the bathroom and kitchen. She has lost money attempting to fix that which was neglected by the owner, time spent in an effort to clean rot that cannot be fully cleaned, she has lost sleep to anxiety inducing pestilence, she lost her spouse after a year of arguing who’s was to blame for the decay. A lot of strife and neglect and guilt piled up in this home—so much so that it felt impossible to leave without resolving the problems at issue.
Behind her a police officer surveys: five toy swords, a bicycle, mattresses, drawers all of her worldly possessions strewn across the front lawn. The presence of the officer indicates that this is going to be a loosing fight, the owner of the home has already gained permission from the city to eject her and her children from the premise, so that the house can be slightly re-modeled and go back on the market for the next tenant.
At some level she knows this, she has been told for a long time that she is disposable in this world. She is often anticipating to be thrown aside, and so she keeps a bag of belongings and documents of utmost importance ready at all times. And although she is aware that she ought to prepare herself for the aftermath of this situation. If you encounter this card in reverse it may be time to make consolations or reconcile to the present failed conditions in order focus your attention on making peace and strategize how to fully disconnect from this situation.
However where we find the Five of Swords upright, no peace can be made. Feelings will not be likely to subside until HEARD—if only by the ambivalent cops and the neighbors. The Five of Swords is a grim warning that some fights cannot be won, some situations cannot be improved, sometime the cards are simply stacked against us. It is precisely when we feel trapped and overwhelmed that by the need to resolve a conflict, that instead of it a DIY solution or continuing to hammer at the same problem, it’s instead time to walk away, or you might get taken down with the ship that you were try to fix.
……………………………………………………………………..
“Housing is a human right. There can be no fairness or justice in a society in which some live in homelessness, or in the shadow of that risk, while others cannot even imagine it.”
― Jordan Flaherty, Floodlines: Community and Resistance from Katrina
“Ontological security is a subjective state, but it depends upon a number of structural conditions. It presupposes stable access to dwelling space that is under the residents own control.”
Peter Marcuse & David Madden, In Defense of Housing
“Through their organic connection to life, houses reveal the continuous interplay between the personal world and society.”
monthlysmokeandmirrors.com 