Card of the Week: Five of Blades

The difference between stumbling blocks and stepping stones is how you use them.  Breakdowns can create breakthroughs.  Things fall apart so that things can fall together.

The Five of Blades can symbolize many aspects of failure, from empty success to a minor setback to utter decimation.  It is a complex card with many historic shades of meaning, including hatred, pity, cowardice, poverty and corruption.  Modern interpretations lean toward defeat by one’s own disunity, disorganization and disarray rather than by superior adversaries.  Focus on communication.

Inverted, this card evokes the dismay that comes from all of its upright meanings.  Whether salvaging what you can from a wreck or trying to put the carnage behind you, you can only do your best.

In “Patterns of Force”, the Enterprise traces the disappearance of Federation historian John Gill to the star system M43-Alpha.  Its formerly primitive planet Ekos now possesses the technology to launch a missile at the Enterprise.  Kirk and Spock investigate, and find a society resembling Earth’s World War II era Nazi Germany, with Gill as its apparent leader, waging an ongoing war against its peaceful neighboring planet, Zeon.  Kirk and Spock are briefly captured but escape, and with help from the Zeon underground resistance, they infiltrate the Ekosian Chancellery headquarters.  They discover that Gill is being kept drugged and used as a puppet by his Deputy, Melakon.  They free Gill long enough for him to speak out publicly, stopping further attacks on Zeon and denouncing Melakon as a traitor.