“I can’t tell you how long you have to live because, accoring to this, you should already be dead.”
“Wow… I find out I’m rich and basically a zombie all in one day.”
The cards we’re working with today are the Father (King) of Swords from the Wild Unknown Tarot and The Tower from the Light Seer’s tarot.
The King of Swords is known for being intelligent, analytical, and just. This archetype doesn’t mince words or allow emotion to be a determining factor in any decision. They want the facts and figures to get at the heart of the matter. So, as I looked at the owl on the card, staring straight at me, wisdom oozing off the image, I thought of a medical doctor.
I mean, what other profession regularly requires people to use the minds to figure out what the truth of a situation is, and then deliver that information without getting emotional, even though it’s often life-changing?
The life-changing bit had me wondering what the doctor would be doing in this imaginary scenario. Is the doctor going to have their life drastically altered? Will they be delivering news that tears the patient’s world apart, like the sudden upheaval indicated by The Tower?
Those were fun to consider, but it felt a little too cliche and played. Dramatic medical news can definitely be part of an awesome story, but – because it’s so commonplace – I wanted to stretch the prompt a little bit further. What if the patient just took the news in stride? Why might that be the case? Could they already have learned something that turned their world upside down, and are too numb to react to the diagnosis?
That really got the wheels in my head turning. And the idea came for a story about someone winning the lottery, receiving an unexpected inheritance, or a windfall of some kind, and then having to face their mortality immediately after it seemed life was looking way up. I liked the contrast in that idea and the depths to which the human condition can be explored within that frame.
What would you do with this prompt? How would you change it? What do you like or dislike about it? What do you see in the cards? Let me know in the comments!
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