Five of Swords

The Five of Swords shows a smirking young man gathering up swords on a windy shore, while two defeated figures walk away with their backs to him. Two swords lie on the ground. It's the card of the hollow victory: you won the fight and lost the friends, or somebody else won and you're the one walking away.

In Costa Rica a small wasp hunts an orb-weaving spider. She stings it at the hub of its own web, which paralyzes it for ten or fifteen minutes, and glues one egg to its abdomen. Then she leaves. The spider wakes and goes on with its life. For a week or two it builds normal webs and catches normal flies, while the larva rides on its back and sips its blood through tiny holes.

On the last night, everything changes. The spider builds a web it has never built before. It repeats the first steps of one routine over and over, and leaves out the rest, until it has made a small, tough platform instead of a web for catching food. Then the larva kills it, eats it, and spins its cocoon hanging from the structure the spider just made. That web is stronger than an ordinary one and less likely to be torn by falling debris. The spider, in its last hours, built its killer a nursery. If the larva is removed shortly before, the spider sometimes builds the cocoon web anyway, and over the following days partly recovers.

Here's the riddle. Look at who's holding the swords on the card. The winner is carrying weapons the losers made. In the forest, the victory is built entirely out of the spider's own skill. The larva never spins a thread until it's done.

When the Five appears, ask whose web you're building. It isn't just about conflict. The card asks whether your talents are serving your life or someone else's cocoon. The good news, for spiders and people, is that some of it wears off once the rider is gone.