Putin and Xi: A Tarot’s Eye Snapshot

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Question: what is the dynamic between President Putin and President Xi as shown in the cards, and what will be the consequences of this recent meeting in Moscow for the outcome of the war in Ukraine and beyond?

Katie-Ellen H.

@truetarottales

Mar 20

#Tarot #Ukraine STANDS. President Xi twitchy, non enthusiastic, doesn’t want China bogged down by Putin. But wants to give P just enough to defy western hegemony yet without alienating western business. Tricky tightrope for Xi. Turkey & Japan tense. Aries season will be LOUD.

2/ But if Xi is careful, canny, Water Rabbit year, carefully does it, he is quids in. He will have Putin/Russia over an (oil and gas) barrel, literally, and even though that particular pipeline is years off completion- Xi is securing others. Hierophant. Taurus Money king. #Tarot

TOP ROW: PUTIN 7 Pentacles- THE LOVERS- 7 Wands

MIDDLE ROW: XI 2 Swords -TOWER – 2 Pentacles

BOTTOM ROW King Wands-Ace Wands-Princess Wands-King Pentacles-4 Swords- comments, short term developments

It is striking to notice the symmetry of the sevens cards either side of the central card The Lovers, especially as it is mirrored by symmetry of the twos cards either side of The Tower on Xi’s row of cards.

7 Pentacles classically signifies great efforts with little to show for it.

The Lovers signifies Putin’s hopes of a partnership with Xi on equal terms. Russia, after all has the gas and oil that China needs. Additionally it may signify discussions that focus on ideas or decisions to be put into action during Gemini season-late May-late June 2023. Gemini can mean intel, surveillance,drones or weapons deployed for air attack.

7 Wands classically indicates defiance, determination, a sense of moral righteousness and can be detecting critical events to occur during the third decan of Leo season. This decan is ruled by active or downright aggressive Mars, and correlates with dates 12-22 August

The 7’s in tarot are laborious. They are slow. Heavy going. The fact that Putin’s row of cards both starts and ends with a 7 card suggests that he will get the minimum support from President Xi, for all the helpful noises Xi may be making as shown by The Lovers card. Empty words. Help may be forthcoming, and it may include military technology or hardware but if so, it doesn’t seem to do much if anything to accelerate Russia’s military progress or advantage in Ukraine.

The clear suggestion here is that the meeting between Putin and Xi will have little direct effect on Russia’s ability to escalate the war against Ukraine. That slow 7 does not speed up. We start with a 7 and we end with a 7. It speeds up a little. The earth suit card, the 7 Pentacles (Taurus) is slow. The 7 Wands (Leo) is fiery, somewhat faster. But this is no real uptick in tempo. Whatever Putin might be hoping for, he seems unlikely to get it from Xi based on this lack of change in pace or scope across the tarot storyboard, for all the friendly words between them, at least in public.

The inference. Xi does not NEED Russia to win in order for China to get what it wants from Russia. Cheapest oil and gas. Whether China helps Russia or not. Whether Russia wins or loses- however victory or defeat is to be defined in this situation- China will have a strong bargaining hand in trade with Russia, and Xi knows it.

Xi can afford to stand by-that 2 Swords and the 2 Pentacles. He is no hurry to see a Russian victory. He reckons that this disastrous war may actually buy China both leverage and a breathing space of time to build back its own economy post- covid, as represented by The Tower card (correlating with Mars=War and the Pandemic )

Does Putin see this? Surely he does. But he sees that he simply does not have the luxury of choice in this partnership, or certainly not at this juncture, to strain this ‘partnership without limits’ by bringing pressure to bear upon Xi.

Others close to Putin will obviously know it, too, and they don’t like it at all.

That final Four of Swords is a card of stalemate and retreat. A knight is in his tomb.

This the card of hospitals, while the 10 Swords (ruin, sometimes sickness) has made countless appearances in readings since February 2022, saying this will not end well for President Putin, personally.

The 10 Swords correlates with the third decan of Gemini. We may find that the dates June 11-June 21 may prove pivotal for Putin, though it might well be late in 2024 before this card manifests in terms of concrete developments in respect of Putin position in power.

The ‘Final’ outcome of this war of Russian territorial conquest : no one can say, and the future is mutable. But the cards have been consistent since February 2022 that Russia fails to take Kyiv. Ukraine survives as a sovereign territory. The territorial integrity of the entire Baltic region is at stake, even if this is a prospect way beyond Russia’s present capability, and is a direct threat only in principle. Finally, Ukraine is receiving the fighter jets it has been asking for- Migs supplied by Poland and Slovakia. Can Ukraine take back Crimea? The cards indicate that this might be possible if it was a question of Ukraine’s will to do it. But they won’t get the support. Ukraine is not only smaller but very angry that promises have been broken and betrayed.

Three decades ago, the newly independent country of Ukraine was briefly the third-largest nuclear power in the world.

Thousands of nuclear arms had been left on Ukrainian soil by Moscow after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. But in the years that followed, Ukraine made the decision to completely denuclearize.

In exchange, the U.S., the U.K. and Russia would guarantee Ukraine’s security in a 1994 agreement known as the Budapest Memorandum.not only by Russia which then broke 2 peace treaties, but by the West, which promised Ukraine protection in exchange for their agreement to surrender of their own nuclear weapons capability.”

The tarot has not shown either an ultimate Russian or a Ukrainian victory. There are only losers here. Except that the signs all point to the survival of Ukraine as an entity in its own right. Russia fails to take Kyiv and for Putin, that means failure- that Ten of Swords.

This is only one reader’s interpretation, and of course, it needs no saying, tarot card readers are not omniscient. But tarot is what I know. And what I see, or do not see, is what I can share.

Thank you for reading. Back soon. In the meantime I’ll leave you with a video demo of the deck that we’ve been looking at today; the Tarot Illuminati.

A Fanfare for Aries the Fiery Sky Ram

Today is the spring equinox in the northern hemisphere. True stories in the Stars. Flourishing a fanfare for the fiery Sky Ram, Aries….

True Tarot Tales

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Today is the day of the spring/vernal equinox in the northern hemisphere and we enter the zodiac sign of Aries the Ram. This is of course also the day of the autumn/fall equinox in the southern hemisphere.

The word ‘zodiac’ comes from the Greek meaning ‘circle of animals.’ The only zodiac sign non-representative of a living creature is Libra, the sign of the scales, but even its scales are borrowed from the stars of Scorpio, the giant scorpion in the heavens next door.

Aries, heavenly sky Ram is a cardinal fire sign; the first sign of the western zodiac, the sign of spring in the northern hemisphere, and with it – lambing time.

Public Domain

Picture the star-ram lying or sitting head downwards. New life is ignited. The planetary ruler of Aries is Mars, the red planet of action, energy, enthusiasm, courage, passion, initiative-…

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Pisces the Heavenly Fishes, the seasons in the stars, the reasons in the signs

Pisces The Fishes, the stories in the stars, the reasons in the seasons…

True Tarot Tales

Chartres cathedral window, early 13 th century, photo by Vassil

Most of us know our zodiac sign but what does it look like in the night sky, and what’s the story behind it? Let’s get better acquainted with Pisces.

Common associations

Symbol:

Zodiac Sign placement: 12th and last sign, completing the wheel of the zodiac year

Date of Birth: 18/19 Feb to 20/21 March. Variable cusp depending on the leap year cycle

Ruling planet:Neptune (before Neptune’s official discovery in 1846 it was Jupiter)

Element: Water

Quality: Mutable – versatile, the ending of one season and the beginning of another

Lucky Days: Monday and Thursday

Energy: Yin -receptive

Key phrase: I believe (as in the ‘Fishers of men’, early Christianity adopted a fish as its symbol)

Body: Feet, eyes, bladder

Birth Stone: Aquamarine especially, but also amethyst, ruby, bloodstone and jasper. Brazil is one of the best…

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That Old Devil! Valentines and Vampires

Valentines and Vampires. That old Devil….

True Tarot Tales

Camasei-lupercales-prado.jpgPainting Andrea Camassei 1635, Museo del Prado

Once upon a time there was a fertility festival called The Lupercalia. Men in wolf masks ran about the streets of Rome, and in honour of the fertility god Lupercus and in memory of the she-wolf who suckled Romulus and Remus, would symbolically thrash (lightly touching) any women they met of child-bearing age. Any woman not wanting to be fertile had better stay indoors. But some would deliberately loiter in the streets, hoping to encounter the wolf men.

Later Christianity claimed the festival, originally held on February 15th, renaming it in memory of poor Valentine, a physician who was cruelly beheaded in Rome after doing many a good turn to other people, including the daughter of his jailer, whom he apparently cured of blindness.

The violent death of a well-disposed person on religious grounds. What could be less romantic?

Valentine’s Day is nowadays…

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The Star of Aquarius 2023

The Star of Aquarius 2023, The Hope of Humanity and the Curse of Rain

True Tarot Tales

Pluto in Aquarius, andIntroducing the Decans

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Do you see him up there, the giant man in the clouds? See what he is carrying before him?

Here he comes. Aquarius.

The Star

Bridging water, land and sky

Cloudy, cool Aquarian eye

Reasons, gauges.

Rain assuages

Pours, refills an empty jar

Learning, thirsty, leads us far

But Hope outshines all other stars.

Katie-Ellen Hazeldine

The Star of Aquarius stands for the Hope of Humankind
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Pluto in Aquarius

This year we entered the zodiac territory of Aquarius with the New Moon in Aquarius 21 January 2023.

Aquarius is even bigger news than usual in 2023, when Pluto enters Aquarius, leaving Capricorn where it has been since 24 November 2008, when Pluto, the lord of wealth, mining, death and the underworld made its ingress into Capricorn, the sign of money and property. This followed hard on the heels of the Stock Market…

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2023: Chinese Year of the Black Water Rabbit…

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In 2023 we leave the year of the Black Water Tiger and enter the Chinese Year of the Rabbit. This is a year of the black rabbit. Black represents the element of water in Chinese astrology. The Year of the Rabbit, as with all the animal signs in the Chinese zodiac, comes round once every twelve years. But then we also have the rotation of the four elements in the Chinese zodiac: Earth, Water, Wood and Metal. The last year of the Water Rabbit was 1963.

2023 Chinese New Year Day is on Sunday, 22 January 2023 and is widely announced as the start of the new Rabbit year. However there is a distinction to be made between New Year and the first day of the New Zodiac Year which in Chinese astrology is based on the lunar calendar.

Technically speaking, the first day of the 2023 Chinese Astrological Year is actually 4 February or the previous day depending on the lunar calendar in any given year.

This date marks Li Chun (立春), the Beginning of Spring.

This means that for a baby born before 4 February 2023, the baby’s Chinese Zodiac sign is still technically the Water Tiger, and not the Water Rabbit. Just be aware, the dates vary depending on the date of the February new moon. If your birthday is in February you need to check the dates in February for that particular year.

You are a Rabbit if you were born in the following years: 1939, 1951, 1963, 1975, 1987, 1999, and 2011

In the astrology of Vietnam the Rabbit is replaced with the Cat, and in Malay astrology, the Rabbit is represented instead by a mouse-deer.

The Year of the Black (Water) Rabbit ends 9 February 2024 when we will enter a new Wood Dragon year. 

The rabbit is traditionally regarded as one of the happiest Chinese zodiac signs. People born in a Rabbit year are known for their extreme patience, and for reliability, kindness, loyalty and also elegance and a certain air of mystery. People born in a year of the Rabbit are quick-witted, sociable, careful and inventive – even ingenious. But they are watchful- cautious just as in Nature the real Rabbit is a prey animal. The rabbit runs. But nothing is ever quite so simple or one dimensional, and the rabbit will also fight. A rabbit will kick or box ….allow me to share an old family story.

Back in the sixties, my parents had a buck rabbit, Arnab, who once offended a Syrian ambassador. His name, Arnab was Arabic for rabbit. We had friends from Damascus and Palestine who lectured in Arabic Studies at the Uni of Durham. Arnab got his name when Hanan and Hussein came round for drinks one night (they were Muslim, officially but they drank alcohol- and they celebrated Christmas too) and Hanan said, ‘oh, you have an ARNAB??’

They were not keen on rabbits- or rodents, ‘oh, Margaret (this to my mother) You have a filthy arnab!”

Cue my mother’s unrepentant screams of laughter.

One day Hussein asked my mother to host a visiting guest to the Department of Arabic Studies at Durham University while he visited Hanan who was in hospital.

This guest was a VIP, a visiting ambassador from Syria, a certain Judge Hoshea (if I have the spelling correct.) This gentleman duly arrived at my mothers house for afternoon tea, and was seated in an armchair by the gas fire, which on this chilly day in early spring was switched on, not least for the greater comfort of a guest from warmer climes.

While my mother was busying herself in the kitchen, Arnab, who had the run of the place- my mother says she should have forestalled this but she had thought Arnab was asleep in his favourite den in the airing cupboard upstairs- came loping down the stairs and into the sitting room.

Arnab had an ongoing feud with the gas fire. Apparently, he had burned his paw on it one time. Now, when he came in and found it switched on, he would establish his dominance and also exact revenge by pissing on it. Possibly he was also trying to put the fire out, who knows. A tiny puff of steam would rise, the hotter the fire, the bigger the puff of steam but this pissing competition, the filthy Arnab would always win, the steam whiffing ever so slightly of a cabbage-like smell.

Mother comes in with the tray, bone china cups and saucers, a dainty plate of cakes and notes the whiff of cabbage and the tiny whiff of steam coming off the fireplace.

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Arnab has the guest at bay, loping round the feet, the elegant shoes of the distinguished guest.

Judge Hoshea is sitting rigidly, clutching the arms of the chair, his face like stone. But impassively correct, exquisitely courteous, he sips his tea, saying not a word as Arnab is unceremoniously shooed from the room and shut out.

He has the most beautiful manners. But it doesn’t need saying. He has now understood and is still processing this terrible truth- horrors- he is truly among the barbarians.

The point of this story is to address that non confrontational Rabbit archetype, and somewhat round out the picture.

A rabbit may indeed be aggressive, at least the buck/jack.

However the rabbit is not usually confrontational, and this may prove welcome news in 2023 in geo-politics. This year is expected to be a little quieter overall than 2022, the year of the Water Tiger which represents outward, expansive – and maritime Yang energy.

The Rabbit is creative. Spring is rime Rabbit power season. March, the month of the Rabbit in the year of the Rabbit is therefore looking like the key window in 2023 for launching new jobs, plans, projects and enterprises.

China’s President Xi has recently been ramping up aggression in Taiwanese air space, but he is being very careful, and he has Covid to contend with and all the attendant economic implications looking likely at least until March, the end of the first quarter of 2023.

The Mars in Cancer transit (war at sea?) could, though not necessarily, be detecting maritime developments or tensions late March-late May-

This could be detecting developments in the Black Sea.

President Erdogan, a Pisces native, turning up in the cards as the King of Cups, will most assuredly not want to see Russia succeed in taking the Ukrainian port of Odessa. This would be a challenge to Turkey’s maritime hegemony in the Black Sea. But President Erdogan does not want to fall out with Moscow,one of Turkey’s key trading partners, and has a tricky balancing act, with a general election coming up June 2023.

When I look at what if any single factor may affect when/how this war ends, I draw The King of Cups reversed. There are two figures here who fit this descriptor; the mutable Piscean ‘water king’ Erdogan-and the fixed Scorpionic ‘water king’ President Biden, and we don’t need cards to know that.

All the same. Readers can only work with the cards they get, or do not get.

Smith Waite/Rider-Waite Tarot

For the rest of us in general, the rabbit is at its prime in the spring, saying March-April 2023 is the optimal time for new opportunities. This is the time to make a push and to persist. “The early bird catches the worm”.

The diplomatic Rabbit again, brings hope of a ceasefire in Ukraine in 2023, or negotiations just possibly late in March-late April, and an easing of tensions in other areas, while astrologers in India are predicting a boom year of economic growth for India.

The last Rabbit year, 2011, signified positive news for the economy after the crash of 2008. 2011 brought a curbing of inflation. But the last Water Rabbit year was in 1963. What events or themes of 1963 may be coming round again then, this year, echoed, recycled or followed up in this new chapter in the Zodiac book of The Rabbit?

The cycles of history do not repeat, but they have a strong tendency to echo.

In the Water Rabbit Year of 1963

  • French president Charles de Gaulle prevents Great Britain’s entry into the Common Market.
  • Nuclear test ban treaty is signed by the U.S., Great Britain, and USSR.
  • Buddhist-led military group overthrows the government of South Vietnam.
  • Kenya becomes an independent republic.
  • Assassination of John F. Kennedy (by LBJ? That is the rumour. Strictly a rumour)

Inventions/Technology

-Instant coffee (freeze dried and generally made with Robusta beans, rather than the highly aromatic Arabica beans traditionally used in coffee.)

-Dr Who and the Daleks. My father comforted us that they could not climb stairs. But then, horrors. They learned to levitate.

-The Smiley Face icon/emoji

-The Computer Mouse and Hypertext, American inventor Douglas Engelbart

-The modern Hang-glider, the flexible wing airfoil concept

-The Lava Lamp, invention by British inventor David George Smith commissioned by British entrepreneur Edward Craven Walker, founder of Lighting Company Mathmos in Poole, Dorset.

-And last but certainly not least, in the field of astrophysics came the discovery of the cosmic microwave background-detected via a previously unexplained background noise via radio signal signifying a low level of radiation throughout the known universe that was interpreted as proof of The Big Bang Theory, in which the Universe is seen as rapidly expanding. More about this discovery HERE

Lucky colours in a Rabbit year

Considered especially lucky in a Rabbit year: green, blue, black, beige, white, and silver, gold.

In western cultures too, the rabbit is imbued with symbolism and superstition. Rabbits represent fertility, but the ancient Europeans also held rabbits numinous and sacred -mysterious creatures of the underworld, because they spent so much time underground. 

Wishing for the best that the Rabbit can bring to you in 2023.

Till next time 🙂

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