Writers confer importance simply by bearing witness. As Mary Oliver said, attention is the beginning of devotion. A writer’s task is to consecrate the mundane with this ultimate act of devotion. Nothing is eternal —not even the vast, reaching limbs of the Universe— but writing and other forms of art can approach the limits of eternity. The ultimate hubris of the artist is genesis. To create from the void like a demiurge by imbuing our otherwise ordinary lives with significance. That is why, after more than two thousand years, we still know who Sappho loved and envied. Do not fall in love with a writer: the risk is not death but its opposite, that you could live forever. This is the Magisterium of Fire to resist oblivion (and the gravity of the abyss) to halt the vanishing (the vanishing!) I witnessed (winged oblivion, catching fire)
- The Writer, major Arcana
