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Doing human incarnation well requires playing many roles and accepting multiple identities. A woman’s life may require her to play daughter, sister, lover, mother, grandmother, crone, student, professional, retiree, etc. Even in the course of a single day, you may be required to play several roles and work from multiple identities. Often, we may experience a larger archetypal identity within — hero, sage, prophet, etc., while we are perceived as something much smaller in the outer world. I may be a legend in my own mind, but to the outer world, I may present as a weird old guy working on an eccentric website.
We’re the star of our movie, but since other people tend to be the stars of their movies, we may show up in their movie as an extra helping to fill in a crowd scene. Mutants are likely to feel a painful tension between their sense of themselves and the roles they have to play in the world. We live in a society that celebrates and rewards certain things — the ability to skillfully manipulate a stock portfolio or chuck a football, for example — but is notoriously deficient in recognizing other abilities such as empathy, individuation, and many creative talents. For example, most people can give you the names of several famous quarterbacks but would be hard-pressed to think of the name of even a single online oracle creator, even though the fate of the species depends on their tireless and humbling labors.
Consider the occurrence of this card an auspicious time to accept and work skillfully with your many roles and identities.
“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;
Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”
As You Like It Act 2, scene 7, 139–143 — William Shakespeare
See: Wounded Invisibility
