Discerning Fact from Fiction

From the Prisma Visions Tarot, the Queen of Swords; from the Secret Language of Color, Coral:

          Oh ho, look what the Queen has done to the big, scary bird! The booklet encourages us to use our intelligence and love of truth to conquer what plagues us. This Queen demands that we examine our thoughts for any fluff, sensationalism or manipulative untruths (she has an excellent bullshit detector). We discover them when we realize they have no concrete evidence, only "what ifs" and exaggerated claims as their foundation. Coral's message is to "allow the flow." What blocks this flow is our rigid ideas, a singular viewpoint that sorts everything into right or wrong categories. This rigidity is the opposite extreme of believing everything (what the Queen warned against); such a perspective only believes what is comfortable and reassuring. The 'flow' asks us to stand on the riverbank and observe; we don't have to pick up every stick and leaf that floats by, but we do get a much wider view than if we cling tightly to only what we wish to be real.

They ran their heads very hard against wrong ideas, and persisted in trying to fit the circumstances to the ideas instead of trying to extract ideas from the circumstances.

― Charles Dickens