Two of Swords

On the Two of Swords a woman in a blindfold sits on a stone bench by the sea, arms crossed over her chest, holding two swords that point to either side. A crescent moon hangs over the water. It's the card of the stalemate: the choice you won't look at, the truce that's really a refusal.

In the live oaks of the southeastern United States lives a tiny gall wasp, Bassettia pallida. It makes the tree grow a little chamber, a crypt, inside a young stem, and its larva lives there in safety. But in 2017 scientists described a second wasp, Euderus set, which lays its own egg in the crypt and lives on the first. When the gall wasp is grown and chews its way toward daylight, the infected one does something odd. It chews a smaller hole than usual, pushes its head into it, and dies there, plugging the door with its own face. The crypt-keeper eats its way out through the head. The scientists called this hypermanipulation, since the parasite that manipulates the tree is manipulated in turn. The plug is worth it: crypt-keepers that have to dig their own way out are about three times as likely to die trapped inside.

The wasp is named for Set, the Egyptian god who, in the myth, trapped his brother Osiris in a crypt to kill him. And it's not loyal to one victim. It attacks and steers at least six other kinds of gall wasp besides Bassettia.

Here's the riddle. The woman's blindfold is the head in the hole. She can't see because her face is the door, and someone else is waiting to use it. The two crossed swords are the two wasps, one inside the other, and the crypt is double because the safe room has a second tenant.

When the Two appears, ask what you're refusing to look at, and whether the refusal is really yours. Some of our stalemates are holding a door shut for something we haven't met yet.