Remember this scene? Anakin fights Count Dooku. In their first battle, Anakin lost his arm, now Count Dooku is no problem. When Anakin gained his advantage over Count Dooku, Senator Palpatine told the Jedi to kill him. There was a moment of hesitation, but he made his decision.

 

He must choose his own path; no one can choose it for him.

–Princess Leia Organa

There are a lot of interpretations of the Two of Swords. The one that I was taught, and it usually comes up in a reading is “make a decision.” Often times there is a stalemate in your life. You have to choose which sword to put down so you could move on with your life. And Anakin’s decision was to kill Count Dooku, listen to Senator Palpatine and take one more step toward the Dark Side.

Anakin Skywalker has the eyes of hate and anger. They burn with rage. When you are burning with rage, you have blinded yourself to reality. In the Rider-Waite deck, the woman in the Two of Swords is blindfolded. She can’t see. And Anakin can’t see, or at least he only sees what he wants. When your anger and hate are uncontrollable, you are obsessed on one thing, like that guy who cut you off in traffic or something stupid your mother said to you thirty years ago. He needs to make a decision. In this case he made the wrong decision.

Later on in his life, when he was told to kill his own son, Darth Vader finally made the right decision. He finally let go of his hate and anger. And at the last moment of his life, Luke Skywalker took off his mask, his blindfold, so Anakin could look at him with his true eyes.

 

Don’t do this. Don’t shut me out, let me help you.

— Padme Amidala

When you make the wrong decisions, you are often denying your true emotions. Anakin shut himself from mercy, love and compassion. He chose to kill… everyone. The thing with decisions is that they are sort of linked with your identity. Criminals, although they might have been raised well, might start off by stealing candy. They think of themselves as a person who steals candy, so stealing money from their mother’s purse isn’t a big step away. After that, pickpocketing someone’s wallet fits into their identity. Why not stop there? What is the difference between pickpocketing a man and taking it by gunpoint?

Anakin killed an entire village of Tuskin Raiders. They killed his mother. That’s the sort of man Anakin Skywalker sees himself as. What’s the difference if he killed the man who cut off his arm? Eventually those actions will lead him to change his identity all together. Eventually, he’ll just become Darth Vader.

May The Force Be With You.