Orion The Hunter, ‘Man of the Mountains’ or as he was known to the early Sumerians, the Akkadians, The Light of Heaven, returns to the northern hemisphere in late July or early August, once again striding the eastern horizon at sunrise, though he is tilted on his side this time of year facing up.
But when we say return, where has he been, then? The answer is, he has been invisible, hidden in the glare of the sun since May. Yes. Now he is back, and will rise earlier each day until he is visible all evening by early December. As a girl I used to like to go out on cold frosty evenings to fill the coal scuttle from the coal bunker in the back garden. Looking up at him. I knew his name. I knew he was The Hunter but that was all, and I wondered about him, and what he was hunting up there. Those winter evenings still have that same kind of magic.
Orion is only the 26th largest constellation, sitting on the celestial equator, facing the constellation next door, the oncoming, charging, Taurus the Bull. It’s smaller than another Greek hero, Perseus but Orion’s got more brilliant stars.
(The biggest constellation is Hydra, and the biggest Zodiac constellation is Virgo.)
Orion’s brightest stars are the blue-white star Rigel, representing the Hunter’s left foot (where the scorpion bit him, sent by Gaia, and caused his death) and the red super-giant Betelgeuse, his right shoulder,only ten million years old, which makes Betelgeuse young to be a red super-giant, but it’s evolved faster due to its enormous mass. It is expected to go supernova in the next million years, and when it does will be brighter than the Moon and the brightest supernova ever to have been visible from Earth.
Orion’s third brightest star is Bellatrix, his left shoulder, while Orions’s Belt is one of the most easily recognized asterisms with its three stars, nicknamed in Arabic ‘the Golden Nuts’.
Their Arabic names, read east to west or left to right; Alnitak (girdle), Alnilam (string of pearls) and Mintaka (belt) But of course they have many other names across the world; The Magi, the Three Mary’s….
The Mayans called them ‘The Fire Drill’, invoking them in an annual fire ceremony to delay the onset of the end of the world.
‘No other constellation more accurately represents the figure of a man,’ said Germanicus Caesar
Orion has been identified as a human figure in every culture at every latitude, with countless story variations
Orion, aka Nimrod, was the son of Poseidon in Greek myth; the most handsome man ever to walk the earth. He was a great hunting buddy and friend of Artemis.Her twin brother, Apollo glowered, seeing that Artemis fancied Orion something rotten, though she had taken a vow of perpetual chastity.
Orion was a bit of a sex pest, chasing the Pleiades, so that Zeus confiscated them to the sky for their own peace and quiet. And a fat lot of good it did them, because when Orion was killed by a scorpion (THE scorpion) Artemis in her grief, asked Zeus to post Orion upstairs to the heavens, which he did, right next door to the Pleiades, who also represent the celestial bull pen of Taurus.
Thanks Zeus. You didn’t think that one through, did you?
Should Taurus ever break free of his pen, said an ancient Arabic legend, it will be the end of all things, so let’s hope he’s happy up there, and that Orion doesn’t chase the Pleiades away.
Orion bravely strides towards the Bull, but although he killed the scorpion that also killed him, he still fears it, and dreads its appearance fleeing west as the autumn wears on and Scorpius rises (Scorpio)
Orion in his eternal battle with Scorpius
The stand off between Orion and Taurus the Bull, its red eye, Aldebaran glaring at him, daring him to come nearer, does not fit the story of Orion, and a question has been raised in some quarters over the identity of Orion, and whether he has become confused with Herakles/Hercules at any time in his identification with this constellation.
The reasons are likely historical. The constellation as recognized by the Greeks originated with the Sumerians, who saw in it their great hero Gilgamesh fighting the Bull of Heaven whereas, as previously mentioned, the Sumerian name for Orion was URU AN-NA, meaning ‘light of heaven,’ and Taurus was GUD AN-NA, ‘bull of heaven’.
Gilgamesh was the Sumerian equivalent of Heracles, the greatest hero of Greek mythology, and one of the labours of Heracles was to catch the Cretan bull, but Orion was never in a fight with a bull. Heracles, it has been suggested, deserves a magnificent constellation such as this one, but has been consigned to a much more obscure area of sky.
The Sumerian story is older.
Orion and the Tarot
The Golden Tarot by Kat Black
The Tarot card most commonly associated with Orion is The Fool. The most numinous card in the deck, its element is Air and it is ruled by the planet of revolution, Uranus.
It is the portal of the number Zero. The Fool or as some called him, The Jester, is both beginnings and ending.
In a real life reading it may detect or forecast a birth of a child, or a new offer or a launch or opportunity of some kind. And change happens all the time but this is always major or significant in scope. But although is not associated with Death, unlike the famous Death card, it can mean a death too, representing infinity, the ouroboros.
An ouroboros
The Fool lives in the moment. He may be fun, he may be joy, or he may be frightening. There’s every reason a lot of people are scared of clowns as the living embodiment of The Fool. He represents the wisdom of innocence, or mistakes made through impulsiveness or ignorance rather than stupidity. But he may represent a threat, whether direct or existential, clearly sensed but not as yet clearly identifiable. The fear is visceral, not lightly to be dismissed.
He may be a shamanic, gnostic figure; the stranger, the outcast, the wise Fool or the Fool on the Hill. He dances to his own tune. He takes chances, risks, and sometimes these pay off, but sometimes he steps over the edge of the cliff, heedless of his dog’s most urgent warning.
The dog in the card is not biting the Fool, but desperately trying to get his attention. If someone asks the Tarot’s advice and then I draw this card reversed….someone needs to draw back from the precipice and look again before they leap.
I may bark like the Fool’s dog but will they act on this advice? CAN they? Will they even really hear it, let alone find a way to use it? We are who we are, and we do what we do, based on who we are. It is a rare person who can step back and see things anew once they are committed to Opinion A or B or they are emotionally invested in outcome A or B.
Advice, to be heard, must be sufficiently timely, before the paint dries.
Everywhere the Fool goes, his dog follows, just as Orion is followed in the skies by his two hunting dogs, Canis major and Canis minor. Sirius, the Dog Star is in the constellation of Canis Major and is THE brightest star in Earth’s night sky.
The only objects that outshine Sirius in our skies are the sun, moon, Venus, Jupiter, Mars and Mercury – and Sirius will usually outshine Mercury too.
All Mankind is Orion.
We were hunters at the dawn of man (The Fool) And gatherers too, but we were never gorillas, and never herbivores on our ancestral line.
“We were risen not of fallen angels but risen apes, and they were killer apes besides” – Robert Ardrey, in African Genesis.
Hunting was what brought us together in teams, then communities. Co operation meant compassion.
Fatboy Slim tells a version of that story here (except that we were apes but we did not evolve on the gorilla branch).
Watch out for Orion overhead in the final frame of the video.
Today is a New Moon in Leo, a moon phase of endings and beginnings. Kings and empires rise and fall, but to paraphrase Outro M38, ‘we are all the kings in our own land’…Facing tempest of dust/ I’ll fight on till the end/Creatures of my dreams/Raise up and dance with me/ Now and forever, I’m your king.’
No one needs any more doom-saying, but we all understand these are dangerous times. There is something deeply unsettled right now, says this Taurean subject born with a first quarter Moon in Leo. The astrology paints this New Moon in buoyant, passionate, Jupiterian terms, though with a potential for chaos. But a New Moon phase only last two and half days, while a rare and major Mars, Uranus and North Node in Taurus triple conjunction is approaching 31 July/1 August. This is a rare event, historically associated with major political, weather, explosive or seismic events. Such events may not occur precisely on these dates but are set in train by association with such a rare and volatile conjunction. More here from astrologer SJ Anderson
Mars is action, enterprise, initiative- or aggression. Uranus is innovation, revolution, upheaval, technology -and the unpredictable while “The North Node is an astrological point in space found by an axis,” says astrologer Arnus Arraut said. “This axis is found by the crossing of the orbit of the Moon around the Earth and the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. This axis is conformed by the north node and the south node. In this case, the north node is like a gateway, it’s like a door. So, by Mars and Uranus arriving at this astrological point, that acts like a door, and in Vedic astrology is known as the ‘head of the dragon,’ -hungry for knowledge and experiences.
The head of the dragon or snake is also called Rahu. It is ambition without restraint, a head with no body, and has no means to digest what it consumes, and in this conjunction the converging point of Mars, Uranus and this north node/Rahu is in the constellation of Taurus: world finances, agriculture and territory. Countries astrologically ruled by Taurus, just as a matter of incidental curiosity are Australia, Holland, Ireland, Ecuador, Israel, Japan (postwar), Tanzania.
Vedic astrology however correlates the approaching North Node conjunction with Aries, not Taurus- aggression.
Whatever manifests on terra firma, which may take months to become apparent, the only immediate practical takeaway from this rare triple conjunction during this year’s Leo season that is within our direct personal control, is for us to take a little extra care 31 July-1 August, and to be extra risk averse in respect of such activities as travel, speed, climbing or handling power tools.
Tarot cards: Strength, courage, pride, self-discipline, and The Sun, life, vitality, innocence, childhood
The Gilded Tarot Royale, Ciro MarchettiThe Sun card from The Golden Tarot
Minor Arcana cards are the 5,6,7 Wands.
Astronomy
Leo is the 12th largest, and one of the most easily recognizable constellations due to its many bright stars, and a distinctive shape suggesting a crouching lion, apparently facing right.
The bright light beneath Leo as seen in the photo below is planet Jupiter.
In the northern hemisphere, in the Spring is the best time to see the Lion, starting around the March equinox. By June, Leo is descending in the west in the evening, drifting westward, and by late July or early August, the Lion begins to fade into the sunset, returning to the eastern sky and visible before dawn around late September or October.
Look for the Big Dipper then look southwards, Leo is below the Big Dipper.
Leo’s brightest star, Regulus, The Royal Star, representing the heart of the lion; is a sparkling blue-white star at the bottom of the backwards question mark pattern. The star’s name, Regulus, means “little king” or “prince” in Latin and its Greek name, Basiliscos, has the same meaning. The Arabic name is Qalb al-Asad, which means “the heart of the lion.”
Mind boggling fact- Leo’s fifth largest star, Epsilon Leonis, 247 light years from Earth, is 288 times more luminous than the Sun, four times as massive, and with a solar radius 21 times bigger.
A triangle of stars in eastern Leo depict the Lion’s hindquarters and tail, the brightest, Denebola, Arabic, is the Lion’s Tail.
The Perseids
In 2022 the Perseid meteor showers are visible between 17 July and 24 August, the number of meteors increasing every night and peaking in mid-August, after which it will tail off. This year the peak falls on the night of the 12th and before dawn on 13 August. But this year’s full moon will affect the chances of seeing them in their full glory.
See the video below for more on the Perseids 2022, a presentation courtesy of Peter Detterline
The Leonids are the meteor showers associated with the constellation of Leo, coming from that direction around November 17-18 every year, and again in January; with a smaller shower peaking January 1 – 7.
There are 15 stars in Leo with 18 known planets between them, but none are thought to be habitable.
Leo the Lion has since ancient times been associated with the sun, and is ruled by the sun in astrology. Leo is one of the oldest constellations collectively recognized in the sky, with many ancient civilizations agreeing on perceiving it as a lion. Archaeological evidence suggests that Mesopotamians recognized a constellation similar to Leo as early as 4000 BC. The Persians knew the constellation as Shir or Ser. The Babylonians called it UR.GU.LA (“the great lion”), the Syrians knew it as Aryo, and the Turks as Aslan, a name familiar to so many from childhood readings of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.
The story goes that the ancient Egyptians venerated Leo because the sun shone in front of this constellation at the time of the annual flooding of the Nile River, the lifeblood of their agriculture -the lifeblood of the nation entire. Marking the end of drought, this flood shortly followed the arrival of desert lions at the river.
The lions had come to this stretch of the river out of need, driven closer to the city by the drought in the desert. Their appearance meant the worst was nearly over, the rains were on the way at last, and the Egyptians honoured the lion with festivals and today, their statues of these lions are still seen along the course of the Nile River.
It’s thought that the lion-headed fountains commonly designed by Greek and Roman architects equally symbolized the life-giving waters released by the sun’s presence in Leo.
Many stories are associated with Leo the Lion. A well known tale features the first labour of Hercules or Herakles- the killing of the Nemean Lion.
This terrifying lion lived in a cave in Nemea in Corinth. It was killing and eating the locals and several attempts had been made to kill it, but all had failed miserably. This lion had a supernaturally tough hide. No weapon seemed able to pierce it. Hercules surprised the lion in its cave, caught it napping, strangled it, and then rather disrespectfully, if pragmatically, skinned the body of the lion with its own claws, and wore its skin as a cloak, making himself even more ferocious in appearance- and now arrow-proof.
Astrology of Leo
This fixed sign is known for its pride, ambition and determination, warmth and generosity of spirit. But above all, Leo is known for bravery. Leo is represented in the Tarot by the “Strength” card, representing the divine expression of physical, mental, and emotional fortitude, which is a virtue.
Courage takes many forms. There is the courage of proceeding in the face of fear, “feeling the fear and doing it anyway.” Then there is moral courage, the courage to endure, the discipline of damage limitation, and the fortitude that quietly says to itself, “tomorrow I will try again”.
An eternal optimist, tough, the golden Leo can have a dark streak, and can be their own worst enemy; loud, reckless, self-centred, headstrong and careless. For these reasons, unless they can learn patience, consideration and self-control, they are not necessarily always as lucky in life as their promise deserves.
Leo is the sign of childhood- and childhood’s end.
Most of us know our zodiac or sun sign, but what does it look like in the night sky, and what’s the story behind it?
Common associations
The pincers: Zodiac symbol of Cancer
Ruling heavenly body: Moon
Key phrase: I feel
Body: The chest, breast
Birth Stone: Stones and metals fall under the rule of planets, not signs, but through its association with the Moon, Cancer has symbolic affinity with pearls, silver and crystals.
Colour: White, silver
Tree: all trees rich in sap
Flower: Acanthus
Tarot card: The Chariot (see how it is a shell?) Drive, control, progress, self discipline, teamwork, and the harmonizing of different elements. Literally, a car or other vehicle.
The Chariot, Rider-Waite Tarot
Astronomy
Cancer, Latin for crab, is in a dark region of the sky, and is the faintest constellation in the Zodiac, with only two stars above the fourth magnitude of brightness: Acubens (The Claw) and Al Tarf (The Foot)
Cancer is visible in the Northern Hemisphere in early spring, in March at 9 PM and in the Southern Hemisphere is seen during autumn.
Wiki
It’s almost impossible to see Cancer with the naked eye or even binoculars, looking between Leo, the lion, and Gemini, The Twins. And really, it doesn’t look much like a crab, more like a faint, upside-down Y that has been compared with a crayfish or lobster. It was actually called the Crayfish in classical astrology, and in Egyptian astrology they called it The Scarab.
Whatever its name, it’s always been pictured as a creature with an exoskeleton; an arthropod, and it is said that Cancer appears to rise in the zodiac as if with a crab-wise movement, not sideways, but ascending backwards.
The Sun’s entry into Cancer announces the summer solstice. ‘Solstice,’ from the Latin “sol stice” means the Sun seems to be ‘standing still’ as it approaches this point.
However, although Cancer may be faint it’s got one heck of a star cluster glowing at its centre. Praesepe or ‘The Manger’ was identified in 1771 by French astronomer Charles Messier.
Its modern name is M44 or The Beehive Cluster. Through the telescope it looks like a swarm of bees, but to the naked eye it looks like a small, fuzzy patch of light -or a tiny cloud floating through the stars.
As the sign of the Sun’s greatest elevation, Cancer was considered nearest to the highest point of heaven – and in Neo-Platonism was called ‘the Gate of Men’ through which souls descended to Earth to be born. The opposite constellation, Capricorn was the ‘Gate of the Gods’, where souls of the departed rose back to heaven. Image, summer solstice sunrise at Stonehenge.
I knew a soul who descended through the Gate of Men and ascended again through the Gate of The Gods the same day, on the longest day, day of the solstice, 1993. He stayed in this world one hour and twenty five minutes, and then he gave one tiny sigh and left. A baby soul, he will always will be our child as long as light lasts.
Cancer also contains a planetary system; 55 Cancri, containing five known planets, with possibly more awaiting discovery. 55 Cancri is about 40 light-years away, just about visible to the unaided eye, although you need help to find it. The innermost of its planets is a “super Earth,” a few times heavier than Earth – but none of these planets has the right surface conditions for liquid water, and life there is thought not likely.
Mythology
In classical mythology Cancer is associated with the Twelve Labours of Hercules/Herakles after he went mad, mistook his wife and children for monsters and killed them. He undertook the Labours in penance.
The second of his great challenges was to kill the Hydra, a terrible water serpent but his enemy, Hera, who had always hated Herakles as the illegitimate son (yet another one) of her husband Zeus, sent a crab to harass him while he was fighting. The crab faithfully did its very best, nipping Hercules again and again, but he stepped on it and crushed it beneath his heel, or in other versions of the story, killed it with his club.
Look at that crab, getting right stuck in. Go on, crab! Give him a nip. That’ll larn him. Heracles was always a loose cannon. He wounded Chiron most horribly, killed his music teacher in a tantrum and killed his own wife and children in a fit of madness for which Hera got the blame.
Hera rewarded the Crab’s loyalty by placing it in the heavens, but she placed it in a dark portion of the heavens with only faint stars, because crabs need dark, quiet places to feel safe and at home.
This quiet celestial location however, happens to be the highest point in the zodiac, nearest to heaven, and so the unassuming The Crab is the star of the show; the humble herald of the glory of the summer solstice.
The sign of Cancer, ruled by The Moon, is a cardinal sign announcing the arrival of summer in the northern hemisphere and the summer solstice, and winter in the southern hemisphere and the winter solstice.
Cancer is the sign at the zenith of the zodiac, the highest sign in the ecliptic.
Down here back on Earth Cancer is the sign of the shoreline, and the ocean tides. Cancer is uniquely both the moon and the sun.
Astrologically Cancer is the cardinal water sign and the fourth sign of the Zodiac, representing those born between June 20 and July 22.
Cancer likewise rules the Fourth House of the Zodiac, representing the concepts of home and homeland, family, duty, protection, parents and grandparents.
There is of course no such thing in reality as THE Cancer personality. Your zodiac or sun sign is the touchstone in your natal chart but it’s nothing like the whole story. You are a unique personality.
The archetype stands, however, and the Cancer personality is complex, elusive and riddled with contradictions.
Cancer stands for both mother and father. It is the zodiac sign of the nurturing parent. Cancer famously adores babies and small animals, all wild things and does very well with them. The empty nest can be anathema to the Cancer parent. And yet Cancer is tough, make no mistake, not forgetting the crab spends the whole of its life in armour.
Cancer is often musical or artistic, but also has a strong scholarly bent, and many Cancer subjects are drawn into the fields of teaching, counselling, psychology and behaviour sciences.
By Rose Maynard Barton
Cancer is the sign of hearth and home, and expanding this; the wider tribal or national identity, and our ancestral legacy, historical, cultural and genetic.
It is the sign of memory, nostalgia, sometimes regrets, and a longing to return to happy childhood haunts. A garden, a meadow, a walk we used to go. A bucket and spade at the seaside if we were lucky. Maybe a dabble in a rock-pool.
The Decans of Cancer
Each zodiac sign is 30 days long and is divided into three Decans of approximately 10 days each, with slight variations possible year on year.
Decan 121 June-1 July
Cancer-Cancer, ruler The Moon
Tarot card: Two of Cups
From The Legacy of The Divine Tarot, Ciro Marchetti
This is the decan of love or friendship between equals, and the Two of Cups is an especially fortunate and benevolent card. Cancer Decan 1 will fight hard for its loved ones, and will also stick up for the underdog.
They may be a bit of a do-gooder or something of an activist, wanting to pass across that cup as shown in the Tarot.
Cancer decan 1 is also, not only enigmatic and something of a dreamer or even a mystic, but a natural born astronomer, and watcher of the moonlight skies, as are all the decans of Cancer.
Decan 2 2 -11 July
Cancer-Scorpio, ruler Mars (traditional ruler) or Pluto (modern ruler)
Tarot card: Three of Cups
From The Legacy of The Divine Tarot, Ciro Marchetti
They like to be left in peace but not to be left alone. The subjects of this decan get stronger as they get older which may seem obvious but which is not universally true of all people, but they are resilient and of the three decans of Cancer, this is the decan with the reputation for bouncing back most readily. They are generally sensible about money, good with finances, reliable and trustworthy, helpful to their relations, but they expect the same in return, and do not easily forgive or forget a slight. They have a reputation for holding grudges. Feast and famine, exotic blooms, hot house flowers.
Cancer-Pisces, ruler Jupiter (traditional ruler) or Neptune (modern ruler)
Tarot Card: Four of Cups
From The Legacy Tarot, Ciro Marchetti
The figure in the Four of Cups has a rich inner life, and may be something of a visionary, but may from time to time feel restless and dissatisfied, bored by mundane realities yet unsure what to do about it, while haunted by the sense there is somewhere else they should be, something else they should be doing. As with Pisces, physical energy levels can be quite variable, and this too is reflected in the card.
Cancer 3 decan is traditionally understood as the moodiest of the crabs. Dedicated and devoted to their loved ones, they may all the same be unapproachable at times. They need to feel family around them, they really do, but they also need plenty of outlets.
Read HERE about the health and constitutional makeup of Cancer.
Cancer is – well, somewhat crabby at times. But deeply humane, kindly, reliable and trustworthy, and they sparkle in company, attracting admiration- when they choose. Reclusive at times, they are often very private people, and not always easy to get to know- and yet they never lose a certain sense of fun.
Tuesday 11 May, was a New Moon in Taurus. A New moon is the optimal time for new launches, say the lunar calendars, while Taurus is all about beauty, security, and the sensory delights and material comforts of life, also the status quo.
There were plenty of new launches all right, and challenges to a current status quo. Lightning struck more ways than one. A new peak of tragedy in Gaza, seemingly never to be resolved, no peace without an agreement on justice, the skies raining missiles, the death toll rising, children killed inside Gaza, a whole family today,and a little baby.
Locally, close to my own home in Lancashire in the UK, a little boy was tragically killed, struck by lightening, while he was out doing football training. Jordan was only nine, clearly a very nice little boy, and well known locally, and a big Liverpool FC fan, already known for his charity endeavours. RIP, little lamb.
Junior Sprog’s young man meanwhile, had been up to his waist in his fish pond about half an hour before this horribly tragic event, doing a spot of DIY, installing a new filter for his beloved koi carp. I told her, half- joking, he needed to come out of there. He was at risk of being struck by lightning. But the storm’s gone, she said. Well, yes, it had, just about. The hail had stopped but the sky was peculiar, ominous, the conditions ripe.
It looked like that scene from Independence Day, said Il Matrimonio, the scene when the aliens arrive, creating clouds as they hover on their coordinates across the world’s cities, waiting the moment to strike.
I have written about The Tower card more than once before in previous postings here on this blog.
From The Golden Tarot, Kat Black
Well, it’s a biggie, and generally, I am not pleased to see it. The Tower card and I have had direct encounters before, and they were not fun.
But that’s by the by. Keep your friends close, as they say, and your enemies closer. Let’s take another look at it today, The Tower, Major Arcana number 16. Sandwiched -entirely by design between The Devil, Major Arcana 15, and its obsession, dependency, desire, frustration and rage, and The Star, Major Arcana 17, cool, impersonal, harbinger of hope and recovery, humanitarian but oh, so logical at times, prone to abstractions and ideological dogmatism (as today Saturn moves out of Aquarius; an ideologue’s dream and dogmatic stellar combination if ever there was one, but sadly moves back in again during July 2021.)
Countless numbers are living The Tower experience right now.
Some high profile practitioners have made it something of a mission to intellectualize and sanitize the Tarot, and to educate other readers to present its manifold truths in purely metaphorical or psychological, sometimes Jungian terms.
So The Tower card symbolizes a great awakening. Pride comes before a fall and the truth will come out. And ultimately, this is good, they may say, because what is lost can be scrapped as not fit for purpose or rebuilt on better foundations. It is for the spiritual good. Good for one’s soul.
I agree, up to a point. I am all in favour of looking for the silver linings in any cloud, and of the notion of putting myself and others in charge of our own destinies, at least assuming responsibility for our own decisions and the consequences of those decisions.
But readers of the Tarot limit themselves in stipulating HOW the Tarot is to be used. The Tarot is a tool kit. A flying carpet for thinking and feeling beyond the normal personal and social boundaries.
There is no standardization in this field, and it needs to stay that way. There is no such thing as ‘A’ Tarot reader. There is only the particular individual reader and their own service remit and their own way of working.
There is a difference between articulating the professional ethics of reading and promoting an ideological agenda to ditch the Tarot as a futurist or fortune-telling vehicle in favour of its use in counselling, or for ‘spiritual development.’
It needs to be recognized, or else the reader risks being guilty of hubris themselves, not every ‘Tower’ (or Devil) experience, not every destructive event necessarily has a beneficial outcome or valuable Life Lesson attached, or indeed anywhere in prospect. What were the ‘lessons’ for the parents of the child victims of the Moors murderers?
Grace is the sacred Grail in greatest grief that no-one can deliver to another person. No counsellor can do that, no priest and no psychic reader, though a reader may perceive occasional intimations.
Not every question has an answer. This was how I came to study the Tarot, after years wrestling with a seemingly insoluble and relentlessly invasive health problem after my right knee went out from under me one day, and I went down on my face in the road. Sometimes there are no solutions for the cards that Life may deal us. There are only our own, unique responses in coping, which cannot be prescribed by a reader, but may possibly be divined.
The ‘higher truths’ of our existence are not intrinsically more sacred than the bottom line. And, ‘God does not disdain to serve the body’, as Julian of Norwich once said.
People ask about money, work, homes, jobs, travel, studies, prospects, family, other real people they know. They want to know about outcomes, timings, reasons -specifics, if this is possible.
The Tower may also mean:-
–A Tower– literally, as in the Tower of Pisa
–Tuesday- named after Tyr/Tew the Norse god equivalent of Mars which rules Tuesdays. If your question is when and you draw the tower, it maybe a Tuesday or during Aries late March-late April or Scorpio late October-late November because these signs are ruled by Mars. Or it may mean that it will happen very suddenly.
–Rain, wind or storm not only has The Tower card forecast rain or a thunderstorm on more than one occasion, -and once this was very welcome, during a heat-wave. One Friday evening it forecast a storm which turned out to be an actual tiny, typically British tornado, which came screaming down my road next morning at 8.30 and neatly, tidily flattened a neighbours garden wall.
-Bad news, a quarrel, shocks, earthquakes, traffic accidents, the collapse of building or other large structures, bankruptcy, job loss, relations breakups, marriage breakdown, accidents, sudden medical emergencies eg stroke, heart attack.
-Stroke, heart attack, fit, seizure
The Tower might be saying, ‘dognabbit, you need to check your tyre/tire pressures!’
The Origin Story
The Tower card, derivative of the Blasted Tower, the House of God or War, is ruled by the red planet Mars, ruler of the zodiac signs of Aries and Scorpio, with powerful mythic and archetypal associations, not least The Tower of Babel.
Mars is the planet of outward activity, high animal spirits, passion – courage and sometimes -a state of war.
Rider-Waite Tarot Deck
The Tower of Babel or The Tower and the City is an origin myth from Genesis though actually older, that tried to explain why the world’s peoples speak different languages.
According to the story, a united human race in the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating eastward, comes to the land of Shinar, in Northern Mesopotamia.
They build a city, so far so good. But then they decide to build a tower tall enough to reach heaven. God doesn’t like that, and confuses their speech so that they can no longer understand each other, babbling on…and now they are at cross-purposes and can’t complete the building works, and they fall out with one another and go their separate ways, and end up scattered around the world.
God is reacting to an act of hubris. The word Hubris is from Greek, and means “excessive pride, violating the bounds set for humans.”
Greek myth was very big on hubris.
BUT still readers need to face it, working with the full range of possibilities, that The Tower may be speaking, not figuratively, not metaphorically, but entirely literally, whether we are talking past, present or possible future.
If a reader draws The Tower, they carefully examine the surrounding cards, and if they perceive clear and present danger, may not say so in such terms, but may present any advice for risk reduction or risk avoidance in a calm, matter of fact manner, ‘talking in terms of ‘just to be on the extra safe side.’
I once drew The Tower alongside The Knight of Swords reversed, and, based on other cards, including the Four of Wands (home improvements) got a sinking feeling that the client was at risk of a nasty fall. I asked her, was she doing any decorating? She was. And had she been climbing up on a ladder to do so?
Yes, she said, but she had not come to see me to discuss this. She wanted to know about Mr X.
I persisted with a warning to be extra careful if climbing up on anything. I would have felt negligent in my responsibility towards her had I detected this risk and not said anything. She expressed mild impatience. I left it there and we continued with the analysis of the main issue of the day.
About three weeks later, she was painting, standing on a windowsill, and slipped and fell, fracturing her hip, and had to go to hospital as an inpatient. She was many weeks in recovery and months in physio afterwards (she was a lady in her late sixties) How do I know this? She came herself to tell me.
Life is just deeply sad sometimes. When something life changing has just happened to someone, and they have experienced a Tower experience at full blast, they may not be ready to hear that it was for the best, that it will prove to be a liberation, a blessing in disguise, that their previous existence had outworn its purpose.
It may be a time for on the one hand, practicalities, possibly deeply unpleasant, and on the other, well, in such times we reach for comfort, warmth, solace, beauty. Poetry, essentially. The common treasure chest of poetry, music, hymns, prayers, I will lift up mine eyes, The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, a season to every purpose under heaven, and so on, depending on the person’s own cultural background.
When someone dies, they leave behind mourners, living memories and a dead body, to be handled, dealt with, honoured, visited if there is a grave site, but ultimately, to be reclaimed by the earth or the elements, just as we were first made from the elements released from dying stars.
The Tower, like The Death card reminds us that nothing is for ever. Suffering is part of life, and is the price we paid not to live forever as single- celled organisms. Clones. Death was the first ever Faustian pact, the price of evolution and specialization into personal individuality. Suffering was the price of individual consciousness and sensation. Fear was the price of suffering. Hunger was the price of appetite. Grief and anxiety were the price of love.
‘This too shall pass.’ the saying goes. This, from a speech by Abraham Lincoln in 1859, “It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words `And this, too, shall pass away.’ ‘How much it expresses!” Lincoln went on, “How chastening in the hour of pride. How consoling in the depths of affliction!”
Abraham Lincoln, 1853, attrib Alexander Gardner
Lincoln was so right. But it’s not like that at once. Not at first. The bucket must first hit the bottom of the well before it can be drawn back up again.
That is why in a tarot deck, The Tower card is followed by the healing of The Star. But healing and recovery, new Hope, like Truth, like Nature itself, can be as stern in its honesty and its travail as it is a marvel, mysterious and beautiful.
“Retained EU law could cost our shipbuilding industry billions even after transition and MPs have NO plans to fix it.”
I drew a card in response to this tweet, and funnily enough, but then again, this is entirely typical of the Tarot, I drew one of the maritime cards, The Six of Swords. The Tarot will mirror the question or the issue with the very first card. Another maritime card is The Three of Wands (exports.)
The vessel as depicted in the Tarot is a mighty tiny maritime vessel, I grant you. Here in the Rider-Waite deck it is a mere punt or gondola.
The Rider-Waite Deck, A.E Waite
I am partial to this card. It is a solemn card, with a measure of regret or sorrow attached, but it tells a story of acceptance, resilience, endurance and vision.
The Six of Swords is traditionally a card of losses and mourning, but also recovery and convalescence from sickness or other setbacks. It is a card of learning, and in real life readings this has often meant distance learning, online, or with an element of travel to universities, conferences etc.
The Six of Swords is travel, exploration and discovery, charting a new course. It is independence, self reliance. See the figure at the helm. S/he has autonomy, steering east towards the rising sun (The suit of Swords correlates with the compass direction of east.)
In responding to the tweet from Scientists for Britain, it seemed to me The Six of Swords was doing two jobs. Of all the cards I could have drawn from the 78 cards in the Tarot deck, this is THE card at once capable of painting a future in respect of both the global and national pandemic problem, and telling a story of the British maritime simultaneously.
Pandemics historically last 3-4 years, we are in Year 2. But we have vaccines the governments did not have in 1918, when they were not completely certain whether they were dealing with a bacterium or virus.
The Six of Swords is not particular to Britain. Of course not. I don’t mean to suggest anything of the sort. But I am a reader in the UK. This is my home, and the card is drawn within the context of that headline tweet. If you are a reader in another country, of course this card could equally represent your own maritime traditions and industry.
This card, more than any other except for the Nine of Pentacles, has appeared again and again in my own readings to do with the future of Britain, drawn before and since Brexit, and the 2016 Referendum in which Britain voted to leave the EU.
The Gilded Tarot, Ciro Marchetti
But roll on six-seven months, as of today, 6 May 2021 the maritime issue of Fishing is nothing like resolved, post-Brexit.
Talks with Norway recently stalled as the North Sea cod are heading ever further northward in our increasingly warmer waters. UK likes cod (There is a slight north-south division of preference in the UK, cod for the south, haddock for the north )
The Norwegians like blue whiting, which they access in our waters but only in the early months of the year. If I understand this correctly, that window has passed for this year. Once more unto the breach then, but meantime it is not good news for many in the UK fishing industry.
Then France made threats to cut off Jersey’s electricity in a row over French fishing access to Jersey’s waters. A wonderful advertisement for diplomacy, and a shot across the bows, and a timely caution respecting the wisdom of interdependence in matters of essential security and infrastructure.
Jersey imports 95% of its electricity from France via French state utility EDF.
This happening as EDF is working on a mega contract at the UK’s Hinkley Point. And it all looks wonderful. Tickety- boo. But not a few private consumers in the UK might now be wondering if they would be prudent to make changes, or daft not to, reviewing their choice of domestic energy supplier.
Then a fleet of small French fishing boats arrived in Jersey waters last night, threatening to blockade the harbour at St Helier in a protest about the new fishing licence arrangements post-Brexit. And two British naval patrol vessels, HMS Tamar and HMS Severn were ordered to Jersey to monitor the situation.
I drew a card before going to bed, asking about the short term outcome, and was pleased to draw The Ten of Cups, a card of hearth and home. Pleased because, to my relief, this domestic card implied a peaceful outcome rather than escalation.
By the by- a coincidence of serendipity, this card of contentment correlates with the last decan of the zodiac sign of Pisces the Fishes.
The Ten of Cups from The Legacy of The Divine Tarot
The French boats left St Helier late this morning, heading home. There were talks in the meantime, but obviously, notwithstanding the Ten of Cups, they remain deeply discontented, as do all involved parties, and the issue is far from resolved as yet.
It would need more than one card to predict the ultimate outcome, the question is so multi-factorial. From whose perspective would I be asking? I would need to look at Norway and France as separate questions, and may do that at a later date, but though I am primarily writing to demonstrate the Tarot being used in ‘real life,’ people’s livelihoods are at stake, and feel it would not be right to do so at this point. It might look like good news, it might not.
Nor is this to paint the small French fishermen as the ‘bad guys,’ any more than I see Jersey as the bad guy, regulating access to its own waters in protecting the livelihoods of its own fishermen. Our own fishermen don’t tend to go in for protests ….’manif’…but when it comes right down to it, they are all in the same boat.
One has not only sympathy with the French fishermen as with the Jersey and other UK fishermen, but respect is due to them all; extremely brave, tough, hardworking souls.
“It may seem absurd that the Royal Navy is having to defend Jersey from marauding French fishermen. But what’s truly extraordinary is that the French government has supported them. And, with an election on the way, there’s every chance Emmanuel Macron has more nationalist posturing up his sleeve”.
The mayhem and misery of the cross Channel lorry blockades at Christmas, then the row about vaccines, now this. There is surely more to come before things find their new footing, as they will, says the Six of Swords.
This is a card of progress. It is only that progress is not easy. But when is it?
Good News
Those monstrous leviathans, the factory ships are another issue, and here is -hopefully- better news. The European Parliament and EU member states came to an agreement 13 February over new technical conservation measures for fishing, which includes an EU-wide ban on the controversial pulse trawling starting from mid-2021.
“Electric-pulse fishing was originally banned by the E.U. in 1998, but the Netherlands won an exemption in 2006 that allowed it to conduct experimentation and innovation to improve pulse beam trawl systems. As a result, Dutch pulse beam trawlers have been operating on a large scale since 2011. However, in August 2019, electric pulse fishing was permanently banned, with a transition period allowed until July 2021.
Under the terms of the new regulation, new licenses cannot be granted to any vessel during that transition, but the Butendiek BRA 2 was granted a derogation by German authorities for its new rig, and will continue to fish until the end of July 2021″.SOURCE
Other good news
August last year, 2020, the iconic Ship Yard in Appledore in North Devon reopened after it closed in 2019. It was bought by Harland and Wolff owner Infrastrata for £7 million with 350 jobs, and its special angle will be ‘Green’ shipping.
From The Legacy of the Divine Tarot, illustrator Ciro Marchetti
Maritime Britain has a lot of lost ground (water) to make up. It is by no stretch any longer one of the big boys, but greater self-reliance is the bottom line in a volatile world of competing interests, however reliable the bonds of mutual cooperation and friendship
The Six of Swords suggests that slowly, surely we are and WILL be building more again, and hopefully this will mean more new fantastic STEM apprenticeship schemes for young people, while – according to this article about Merseyside the message was diversification.
Maritime will build back with the emphasis on innovation. The innovative specification of the new Sir David Attenborough shows the amazing things that can now be done.
It is a very special place on the seabed, The Dogger Bank and every living thing it supports. Not to be chewed up and churned to bits by factory ships.
I don’t care if it means I have to pay more for fish n chips. Not because I’m filthy rich. I ain’t. But. Fair dos. Count the price of everything, respect the value of nothing.
Read here re the discovery of what could just possibly be the oldest boat-building yard in the world…a platform 8,000 years old off the Isle of Wight.
The Six of Swords correlates with the element of Fixed Air- Intellect -and the Second Decan of Aquarius, dates 30 January- 8 February
Solemnly she takes the helm, standing alone, fixing her gaze ahead, symbolizing here not only the spirit of the melded, mingled, much-invaded Britannia, but spirits and legends originating with the Akkadians, Sumerians, Babylonians, the Greeks and the Star goddess Astraea, and Dike, Roman goddess of Justice.
The Six of Swords is both Air and Water (possibly fog, too cool for steam)
It is associated with Mercury, governing Intelligence, communications and trade (Think Hermes)
And it talks about Science and R & D. This means UK Space Tech too. Ships of the air.
Till next time. I’ll leave you with this ship launch- very Six of Swords.
That massive welding jobbie is nothing to worry about- apparently.
Comments:
“I must have skipped ship building in school but surely making it in two halves like that makes it weaker?”
“No, modern welding tech means the joins are not weak (the rest of the ship is welded sections – they just did the final one outdoors).
BUILT IN BRITAIN: HMS Glasgow, the Royal Navy's first City Class Type 26 frigate, has rolled out of BAE's Govan shipyard for the first time. The Type 26 programme supports more than 4,000 jobs across the UK. #UKmfg🇬🇧 pic.twitter.com/5UfWBKo48m
The Tarot’s Emperor flags up the spirit of Aries, the Ram of spring, cardinal fire sign, and with it the eternal archetype and image of the Emperor or Patriarch
Our queen is in mourning, and many, many mourn with her. On this day in the season of Aries the Ram, a nation witnesses the passing of Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh, first prince of the realm . He has died at a very good age, peacefully in his own home, but it is suspected he had had cancer, had been ill for longer than we, the public, were told, and in this case could not have escaped considerable discomfort or even suffering.
A long and eventful life, high achievements, gifts, talents and endeavours, also great troubles and sorrows.
Early upheavals, displacement, his family scattered, and further close family losses before he was sixteen. A royal castaway, adrift in Europe, a schoolboy who had to be sent to Britain from Germany, his sister afraid he would get into trouble for goosestepping in the street, a schoolboy, mocking the Nazi salute. An athlete, a naval officer who saw active service against Nazi Germany, who directly saved many lives at sea through his own quick thinking, who held naval rank for 82 years.
Aged 18 Philip passed out from Dartmouth Naval college, and in January 1940 he joined his first posting onboard the veteran, not to say venerable royal Sovereign class battleship, the HMS Ramillies had served in the Great War, and was built 1916.
Prince Philip served four months as a midshipman patrolling the Indian Ocean, escorting troops from Australia to Egypt.
My maternal grandfather later served as a Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve officer on this same ship in 1944, with my mother, his first child, a baby daughter, born December 1939.
Philip was the real deal, a true Renaissance man of many interests; science, space exploration, even UFO’s, wildlife and adventures for the young of the inner cities. One of my own daughters did The Duke of Edinburgh Award and went camping, much to my happiness because I was becoming too disabled to do these sorts of things with her, to walk with her up on the mountains, as I had done in my teens with my family.
He was a horseman, expert carriage driver, author and artist, painter of landscapes, a husband, father and paterfamilias to three younger generations.
All this, we are being told, if we didn’t know about it before.
Less commonly reported, is that Prince Philip was a Gemini sun sign subject; hence his curiosity, intellectual agility, humour and restlessness (also perhaps, mischief) His Moon was in Leo (regal, family man, and there is a certain star quality and charisma with this placement.) The Moon sign is an indicator of the emotional temperament.
His Ascending or Rising sign was in Capricorn, and this represents the outer face of the person…duty, dignity and discipline with a red hot bullsh*t detector, and a firm grasp, always, of the reality of the bottom line.
It is the passing of an era.
The Emperor card and Timing
If you ask ‘when?’ and I draw The Emperor, the event in question is likely to occur during the zodiac sign of Aries, late March-late April.
Did I think it would be today, 9 April, the passing of HRH Prince Philip?
Did I look in my Tarot?
No. I did not look in my cards about this. Given the age and recent health issues of the Prince, this news is not unexpected. All the same, I woke one night while he was in the hospital, and thought of him and the thought flashed through my mind, ‘it won;t be now, while he is in the hospital, but before May.’
We had seen the sadness on the face of Prince Charles on his way to visit his father.
The Emperor, ruled by Mars, is in many ways, the opposite number of another classically masculine archetype, The Hermit, whose planetary ruler is Mercury. Both walk alone. The Hermit has learned many things, understands many things, and will shine a light for others. But the Hermit walks the quieter paths in life, and has to be sought out, while The Emperor feels perhaps even more alone in the eye of the storm in the midst of the machinery of power.
From The Legacy of The Divine Tarot
The Emperor as an Archetype
For all he was a technocrat, Prince Philip had a poet’s perception, and once said that to change hearts and minds on any great matter, one could do nothing without the arts and religion, and we needed to get all the religions of the world on board to protect endangered wildlife.
This aspect in particular, calls forth the vision of the Tarot’s Hermit card. The Emperor commands, enshrines in law, while The Hermit walks the wild places, in communion with the laws of Nature.
But in zodiac terms, The Emperor marks the rule of Aries, fiery sign of spring, and Philip has passed away under the banner of Aries, the royal warrior Ram.
Life is fierce, getting itself born. The unborn must attack or stay unborn. The fields are full of lambs, but lambing is not gentle.
And a ram may attack anyone entering his field, no less than a bull, and people are still killed by rams. If ever a ram knocks you down, you must stay down. Do not try and get up, or it will keep coming at you.
The Ram at this time of year is driven by the fiercest Life imperative, to defend his patch, his ewes, his lambs.
The Ram of Aries is charging at spring full tilt, the fields, the woods, the hills, the rivers and ponds. Spring has sprung out on the pond here, and you can believe it really is ‘Nature red in tooth and claw’. The coots have already lost their first clutch to the depredations of the gulls. The heron lurks almost invisible in the reeds, so perfect is its camouflage against their winter grey, and the reeds have not yet grown back green. That will not happen till the watch of Taurus.
Video courtesy of Major (ret’d) D P Hazeldine
The Emperor in a personal Tarot reading
The Legacy of The Divine Tarot
The appearance of The Emperor card is likely to be turning the conversation to a senior male figure in your life; a father or grandfather, a husband, and often he is older than you, maybe an employer.
This is the ultimate card of masculinity but of course a woman can also be represented by The Emperor card. Male or female, you could be the Emperor yourself, for example, in your role as a business owner, or as a manager, soldier, officer, police officer or in many other roles.
In a more abstract sense, this is a card of ‘rendering unto Caesar.’
We all owe dues somewhere, sometime. We all must pay our dues. We can only take out what has been put in the pot.
But Emperors, though they may wield power, are not free. They themselves owe duty. They are not free and they can be brought down. The regalia of power is in token of service. There is no loyalty without reciprocity.
The Emperor may be a worker in the Civil Service or judiciary. The appearance of this card has several times alerted me to the fact I am sitting with an off-duty police officer, whether male or female.
Once it showed me a judge in the United States.
A client’s son was due in court in the United States. A non-violent offence, a woman had accused him of sexual assault, with potentially very serious consequences for him if found guilty. Not prison, but the client wanted to know the worst, to help herself prepare to support her son and his family, whatever the outcome.
The son had become very depressed waiting for the hearing, had been suspended from his job, a teacher, as was routine in such cases, and banned from seeing his children pending the hearing, and had self-harmed, so the client told me.
I drew three cards in answer to her question. These were Judgement, The Emperor and Justice.
Based on these cards I felt she would would be greatly relieved by the outcome. I told her so and then something very odd happened.
At the very moment I drew the final card, three greetings cards displayed on the top shelf of a tall bookcase suddenly flew out mid-air, almost horizontally into the middle of the room, and fluttered to the floor. No open doors, no open windows. Still there was a draught, presumably, but the client was extremely startled. I was a little startled myself, it is fair to say. The movement of the cards in the air flying off the shelves looked so unnatural.
I could not discount the possibility that we had witnessed a manifestation of psychokinesis given the tension attached to the question, the client’s acutely worried state.
It was many months later before I learned the outcome. The judge had thrown out the case, saying – and these were his actual words apparently, ‘what a crock of sh*t.’
Impersonally, the card signifies government and large corporations organisations, the Armed Forces, the Law, and global or government organisations.
If you are job-hunting and this card comes up, you are likely to find work before long, no matter who the prospective employer may be, while if you have specifically applied to an organisation of this kind, your application looks likely to succeed.
English: Modern bronze statue of Julius Caesar, Rimini, Italy. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Emperor in real life gets many a bad rap. Many a drubbing. Often well deserved.
The Emperor in his negative aspect is a tyrant or a coward, a bully or a petty pedant. A human monster even.
The ongoing events in Myanmar, a military junta killing its own people, its own children, is a real life demonstration of the worst of The Emperor card drawn reversed.
The ambition of Emperors have over and over again been catastrophic for the peace and happiness of their fellow humans.
Marcus Antonius: And Caesar’s spirit, raging for revenge, With Ate by his side come hot from hell, Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war, That this foul deed shall smell above the earth With carrion men, groaning for burial.
The Emperor is but frail and mortal. He has feet of clay. But today, let us think of The Emperor at his very best, in his highest, greatest guise. He is a chevalier, a sheltering tree. Rule with compassion, defender of the small and weak. He is the ardent lover.
He is the one who will fight and die, if that is what it takes, to defend his home and his people. Children and animals are drawn to him, and he is ready to run with them, play like a child.
He represents the path of reason and justice and is ready to uphold it by word and deed. He is active in creating order, fixing, mending, making, inventing, reining in his strength at times, exercising it at others so that order prevails, and not everyone gets splattered with the filth of chaos.
Compassion in action, and not just fine words demands courage, nerve and know-how. For compassion of deed and not just words, you have to look to the strong man or woman. In all the light and shade of his complexity, The Emperor represents ‘our’ own menfolk, those we live with, those we work with. Those we love, befriend, honour, love, respect and appreciate.
Even though sometimes we might feel like giving them a ding round the head with a saucepan. The Empress, after all, has her own dominion.
Red earth of Adam, The Emperor may be self sufficient, but at times, there is a certain loneliness. Born to strive, to quest, to see and not to say all that he sees, trusting few with his thoughts or his deepest fears. Throneless Emperors, every one.
RIP, Prince Philip, the once upon a time baby with not even a bed, never mind a home to call his own. He once described himself as a minor Balkan prince of no importance, and he admired so many other lands, yet made his homeland here, joining that company of other, ancient, but never to be forgotten princes, the conquering and the conquered, of these isles, so many times embattled and invaded.
The use of astrology and other forms of divination is nothing new in politics. Over many centuries leaders and politicians, both in the West and East, the most highly educated people of their times, and, notwithstanding progress and all the discoveries of science since, they would still be regarded as more generally and highly educated than many people even today, have used the services of astrologers in an advisory capacity.
This brings us to the question, why do people in general use such services?
Well, why do they watch weather forecasts, or conduct polls, buy Lottery tickets, play guessing games, or follow the Stock Exchange?
Forecasting in an activity as old as humankind. It is about coping, control, risk assessment and preparation, and ultimately, survival. The human race has always exercised its wits in trying to sense the future, preparing to meet opportunities, challenges, or even downright threats.
But sometimes decisions need to be taken when we don’t have all the facts we ideally need. This is where an astrological or other divinatory perspective may offer a fresh view of the situation, and a sense of the options, the stakes and the odds.
“Astrology is like a weather report; it tells you what conditions you’re likely to face in the future. If the weatherman says it’s probably going to rain, you bring an umbrella. If you follow that advice, you won’t get wet.”– Lee Goldberg, Meteorologist
“Beware the Ides of March,” is a famous line from Shakespeare’s play ‘Julius Caesar,’ and is associated with 15 March, the date on which Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC.
Below, The Emperor from the Legacy of the Divine Tarot deck. Looking very Julius Caesar, though Julius was never actually Emperor, despite lending his name to the later titles of Czar and Kaiser. The Emperor is the card of Aries the Ram, cardinal sign of spring and lambing season, authority, organizations, rulership, fire, daring, and fatherhood and all things masculine.
The truth: there was a bit more to it, but Shakespeare relied solely on Plutarch for his sources. A seer called Spurinna, a haruspex who read animal entrails as a system of divination, had examined the entrails of a bull on 15 February, and had read a bad omen there; some problem with the heart of the bull, we don’t know what exactly, whether it was malformed, or not quite where it should have been.
Spurinna, alarmed at the condition or ‘absence’ of the bull’s heart and possibly also by a few things he had heard, joined these dots and warned Caesar of a serious threat to his life during the coming 30 days, by or on The Ides (15 March)
Caesar heeded the warning and mostly stayed home for the next few weeks, partly because his wife Calpurnia was very worried. Spurinna had a good reputation for accuracy. Not only was he from Etruria, and Etruscan seers were highly regarded for their skill in divination, he was well connected with the elite of Rome, and had no doubt read the mood there.
Caesar was due to depart Rome again on the 18 March, on military campaign in Spain. The conspirators were running out of time.
But on the 15 March, he disregarded Calpurnia’s fears after a bad dream she had the previous night, and was persuaded to go to the Senate by a friend, Decimus, his closest friend or so he thought, but Decimus had aligned himself with the conspirators. Any betrayal by Brutus, with whom he had quite a mixed history, was nothing compared to the betrayal by Decimus.
On his way to the Portico of Pompey (Caesar’s former friend, ally, one time son in law and later enemy) where the assassins waited forewarned and ready, every eventuality planned for, Caesar passed the seer and joked, “The Ides of March are come,” and Spurinna is said to have replied “Aye, Caesar; but they are not gone.” Caesar here was referring back to the fact that on 15 February, Spurinna had warned him of a threat to his life during the next 30 days on or by the Ideas of March.
Caesar was no lamb to the slaughter. He was a soldier. He defended himself. Tried to escape. Tried to fight back and when he finally went down, touchingly, he covered his face with his robe, in an effort, it is thought, to preserve his privacy and dignity at the very end,or in the hope of avoiding facial mutilation.
The political consequences of this assassination were profound. Caesar’s death backfired on the conspirators, largely for big money reasons, and actually brought about the end of the Roman Republic, and the rise of the Emperors, the tragic irony here being, the assassins killed Caesar because they were afraid he was planning to overthrow the republic and become Emperor.
But could Caesar have avoided this fate?
This is the big question, one of those eternal questions, and of course we can never know. Astrologers today would argue our fate is not fixed, and that Caesar might have escaped, and thereby proven the seer wrong, if he had chosen to act on the warning, or “astrological intel,” as some astrologers describe it – astrological intelligence.
John Dee was a 16th century British mathematician, astronomer, geographer, and astrologer to Queen Elizabeth 1. He was briefly imprisoned at one time, on charges of sorcery during the reign of Mary 1 (“Bloody Mary”) but luckily for him, he had powerful friends and was released. and once Elizabeth became queen, he became her trusted astrological advisor and was appointed to choose an auspicious date for her coronation – an application of what is termed today event astrology electional astrology.
John Dee, in the Ashmolean, Wikimedia
What ended the use of astrology as an accepted practice close to the centres of political power?
The Enlightenment during the 17th century brought new discoveries in astronomy, chiefly and most significantly that Copernicus was right, and the Earth went round the sun, and not the other way round, and they had imprisoned Galileo and burned Giordano Bruno for stating a fact, though in Bruno’s case he had gone rather further than this.
But this threw a new light on astrology, and brought its basis into question.
The German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler, famed for his improvements to the telescope and his work on the laws of interplanetary motion, was also a renownedastrologer, and he urged fellow scientists not to ‘throw out any baby with the bathwater.’
They were forgetting or overlooking a key point; that western astrology is an arithmetic symbol system based on a vast, ancient collection of psychological and natural observations and data. Discoveries in astronomy changed the science, expanded its range but did not render this arithmetic model invalid.
But his warnings were not heeded. Astrology was now relegated by mainstream academia to the realm of mere superstition, where it largely languishes to this day, yet while thriving as a Humanities subject, with an MA in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology currently taught at the University of Wales
Meanwhile in China too, the disciplines of astrology and astronomy had drifted ever further apart, and the use of astrology in the Imperial courts was in decline by the end of Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 AD).
Astrology and Politics Today
Politicians today are unlikely to admit employing the services of an astrologer, especially after the excitement of 1998 when the former White House Chief of Staff, Donald Regan, stated that Nancy Reagan used astrologers to help plan the president’s schedule of activities.
“Donald Regan, Reagan’s chief of staff until he was ousted amid the Iran-Contra scandal, spilled in his 1988 book, For The Record, what he viewed as “the most closely guarded domestic secret of the Reagan White House.” He wrote that “Virtually every major move and decision the Reagans made during my time as White House Chief of Staff was cleared in advance with a woman in San Francisco who drew up horoscopes to make certain that the planets were in a favorable alignment for the enterprise.”
Before long, the astrologer who was advising the White House was identified as Joan Quigley.
The New York Post ran a story with the headline, “Astrologer Runs The White House” and the disclosure became fodder for jokes in Washington. On Capitol Hill, Representative Tony Coelho, the Democratic whip from California, blamed astrology for Republicans backing out of a revised trade bill. “Maybe an astrologer is telling them to object today.” Speaker of the House Jim Wright shot back, “It’s all right with me. I’m glad he consults somebody.”
The Reagans denied this but Joan Quigley herself later wrote that she had been actively involved in activities involving the President’s international relations.
Perhaps they still do. Perhaps they don’t. Astrologers are publicly at least, consigned to the realms of entertainment, but at least they are free to practice their skills and publicly discuss their findings without fear of persecution, imprisonment or execution for heresy or sorcery, while politicians, like anyone else, can consult in private or access free astrological commentary and forecasts via a thriving online and other publishing market.
But politics aside, some might still be surprised to learn who today uses astrology, Tarot and other such services, not for entertainment, not for fortune telling, but for analysis and forecasting, for an extra inside track, using such readings as a sounding board, weighing the odds, exploring the most likely outcomes in respect of a choice from their range of available options.
Black cats are lucky.
Lucky.
But sometimes even luck can use a little help, if only to warn where the cracks are, or potholes on the road ahead.
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 sources for this stone. Aquamarine (meaning ‘the water of the sea’) is a blue variety of beryl where Emerald is a green beryl. The aquamarine is a hexagonal crystal structure, sometimes confused with blue topaz, and was traditionally believed to enhance foresight and clairvoyance, and a sense of happiness, with the power to repel evil – or help you talk to the Devil (I wouldn’t give the bugger the time of day, personally)
Aquamarine-Wiki
Tarot card: The Moon
Meanings: The Moon, literally, Mondays, tides, cycles, ebb and flow, feminine cycles, fertility, instinct, wildlife, walking on the wild side, hunting, fishing, visionary capabilities, psychics, ghosts, visions, dreams, delusions, madness, contamination, fever, food poisoning, uncertainty, danger, confusions with documentation, risks in travel.
The Gilded Tarot Royale, artist Ciro Marchetti
Note the wolves, hunting and howling by the light of the full moon, and the spawning crab, though this is often depicted as a crayfish instead, as in the Rider -Waite decks.
The minor arcana cards associated with Pisces are the 8, 9 and 10 Cups, ranging in interpretation from the melancholy to the sublime.
The 8 of Cups says you were ready to offer devotion. A door stayed shut, but you have learned something of value, not least about where you belong. Do not wait overlong outside any door that fails to open. The world is wide, new horizons beckon. Walk away, not looking back in anger.
The 9 of Cups is truth, grace, happiness-the Grail, and heart-felt wishes may be granted
The 10 of Cups is home sweet home, arrival.
The Astronomy
There are 88 constellations registered with NASA. The 12 of these that have given their names to the zodiac signs in Western ( Tropical astrology) have their earliest known origins in the ancient Indo-European civilizations located at the latitude 36 degrees north and 30 minutes.
Other constellations were named later, many of these later ones by Greek navigators.
Pisces, the Latin plural of fish, is a large but rather faint constellation, the 14th largest constellation overall, covering a large V shaped region in the part of the sky known as The Sea or The Water, possibly named by the Mesopotamians because they had learned to associate the appearance overhead of these heavenly bodies with their rainy seasons; Aquarius, Capricornus (the Mer-Goat).
Capricorn signifies the ibex and its mating season which starts in December, but it also has an ancient Sumerian origin story associated with it, where the goats came out of the sea to climb to the mountains, leaving behind the father of all the goats, a solitary mer-goat who was promoted to the skies.
So these three zodiac signs, Capricorn Aquarius and Pisces may have come to represent predictive seasonal co-ordinates for the rainy months at the thirty sixth Parallel, 36 and half degrees north.
The vernal equinox currently occurs during Pisces, 19-21 March, the astronomical marker of the start of spring.
Pisces is represented as two fish swimming at right angles to each other, one to the north and one to the west and attached by a cord and are usually depicted as koi.
Its stars are faint — none brighter than fourth magnitude — and hard to see with the naked eye. But its brightest star, Eta Piscium, also known as Alpherg or Kullat Nunu, is a bright giant star (G class) 294 light-years from Earth and has a luminosity 316 times greater that of the sun.
Kullat Nunu is its Babylonian name. ‘Nunu’ means ‘fish’ and ‘kullat’ is a bucket.
Pisces second brightest star is a yellow giant about 130 light-years from Earth, Gamma Piscium. Alpha Piscium is the third brightest star in Pisces, and is made up of a pair of white dwarf stars in close proximity. Its other name is Alrescha (“the cord.”) and marks the spot where it appears that the tails of the two fish are joined or tied together.
The best time to see Pisces in the Northern Hemisphere is 9 PM between 6-9 November looking below the Square of Pegasus.
History and Mythology
The first spawning of most freshwater fish starts in the spring, from late March onward, but, depending on latitude and therefore temperature, some species may spawn from as soon as late February onward, and in the warmer Indus, this surely played its part in the rationale for the astronomical calendar slot historically allocated to Pisces the heavenly fish.
Pisces represents the principle of THE THAW, THE MELT. Fish may rise again to the top to feed. Frogs and Toads will spawn.
If you want to insult a Pisces subject, call them a MELT (but first, ask yourself if you are really sure about this.)
The fish of Pisces are attached by a cord of stars, just as life and death are conjoined and cannot be separated. Pisces is not only the last sign of winter, moving into spring; it is the last sign of the whole zodiac year, the culmination of all the signs that came before it.
The western signs of the zodiac are thought to origin from about 2900-2700 BC, emerging among the peoples living at 36 and a half degrees latitude. The 36th Parallel.
This latitude was the cradle of Indo-European civilization (you will also see that the 36 Parallel was of key symbolic significance to the American Civil War) Younger, later constellations that were not adopted as zodiac signs were often named for maritime navigational purposes, many of them by the Greeks.
The Egyptians
“It (Pisces) is one of the earliest zodiac signs on record, with the two fish appearing as far back as c. 2300 BC on an Egyptian coffin lid ” -(Wiki)
The two fish of the constellation Pisces were the offspring of the Great Fish. In Egyptian mythology, this fish saved the life of the Egyptian goddess Isis and she placed this fish and its descendants into the heavens as a star constellation.
India
In Hindu mythology Matsya is an manifestation or avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu the Preserver who rescued the first man, Manu from a great deluge. (…and here we are again, back to the great flood stories of Aquarius) The Matsya may be depicted as a giant golden fish or as a merman, half- fish half humanoid Lord Vishnu.
Vishnu is the second god in the Hindu holy trinity (Trimurti) This triumvirate consists of three gods who are responsible for the creation, upkeep and destruction of the world, Brahma was the Maker,god of creation and passion, Vishnu, the face of light and preservation, and Shiva, the face of the dark, and destruction.
Wiki
Greece
Pisces is often represented as a pair of koi carp. and the reason for this comes from Greek mythology. To the ancient Greeks, the fish were the goddess Aphrodite and her son, Eros, who were out walking by the Euphrates one day when a terrible monster, Typhon, suddenly rose up out of the water.
This monster had been terrorizing the gods of Olympus ever since the war with the Titans. Typhon was a Titan, a son of Gaia, and he hated the gods of Olympus as invaders and upstarts, the new kids of the block who had overthrown and dispossessed his own, more ancient race of Titans. He was as tall as the heavens and his eyes shot flames. Instead of fingers, he had 100 dragon’s heads sprouting from his hands -for which one could read ‘flames’ or magma.
None of the Olympians had the power to destroy Typhon, or confront him, not alone. For a time, all they could do was avoid him or flee for their lives, which they often did by transforming themselves into animals, and Aphrodite and Eros, in this case, transformed themselves into two fish (koi) and swam away.
The work of John Flamsteed the first Astronomer Royal. Image from the Atlas Coelestis, posthumously published by John Flamsteed, 1729, illustrator John Thornhill.
Ultimately, Zeus imprisoned the terrible Typhon beneath Mount Etna…but Zeus didn’t deal with him for good. He couldn’t, not even Zeus, and Typhon is still very alive down there and pretty disgruntled. A deeply alarming spectacle, as we have seen on the news these last few days, as of 16 February 2021 and there have been a number of related astrological and psychic prognostications, talking about such seismic activity as a potentially major global influence in 2021.
Rome and Early Christianity
Early Christians used the Fish as a symbol of their faith…and called the TWELVE apostles of Christ the Fishers of Men (Pisces as the twelfth sign.
The secret code name for Jesus- Yeshua Ben Joseph- was Ichthys
The so- called Age of Pisces began 1 AD and- depending on your source, will end in 2150 when we enter the so-called Age of Aquarius, though some astrologers say we are already in that Age. The Age of Pisces saw the rise of the Monotheistic religions, Christianity and Islam. The Age of Aquarius is supposedly a secular age, all about technology and collectivism.
But religion shows no sign of going away. Islam is currently on the rise in the west, Christianity on the wane, with vacuums filled by socio-political ideological transmutations of the religious instinct, and in another two thousand or so years, it will be succeeded by another ‘earthy’ chapter – a new Age of Capricorn. (This thing works ‘retrograde’, working backwards through the zodiac signs)
Pisces: The Astrological Personality
From The Golden Tarot, by Kat Black
In Tarot, whether the subject is male of female, Pisces is embodied as The Knight of Cups. In Arthurian legend this would be Sir Percival or in later versions of the legend, Sir Galahad. This knight is a champion of the underdog, a protector, a lover, a bearer of grace and the healing chalice.
In a Tarot reading this generally translates as a happy situation, a new friend, an admirer, possibly a marriage proposal, news of a baby on the way, or a job offer or other good news is coming soon, and your cup ‘runneth over’.
Of course there is no such thing in reality as THE Pisces personality and the same goes for all the zodiac sun signs. Your sun sign is an archetype, a keynote, but of course it is not, and never could be the whole story, least of all in astrology. There is far more than just the sun sign in your own personal chart. You can find this out for yourself by looking up your own chart free online (obviously just be careful re spam etc).
Pisces combines imagination with the determination of a salmon fighting upriver, although, depending on the decanate, there may a certain quite marked passivity, even inertia. This may actually serve them very well at times, but could in some cases degenerate into darkness involving depression, alcohol or other substance misuse.
These individuals are talented natural artists, writers or musicians. They are famously loyal once committed, compassionate and sensitive. They adapt with ease, are spontaneous and full of surprises, but while their steel may be hidden, all the same, it is there. Not much is said about this scaly Pisces steel. They can be tough, even hard in a quiet way. They may not say much but watch the face harden, and cross the line once too often, you are gone, and that is it.
Where they demonstrate a lack of proper consideration for others, or undue stubbornness, it is not due to lack of goodwill, but they are not paying attention, too focused on their inner preoccupations.
Pisces needs variety, and structure must allow them room for a degree of autonomy. Desk based work, although Pisces can certainly do it, is not really their thing.
Pisces can make excellent and approachable team leaders with a reputation for loyalty to their staff. Passing the buck is not their style. They will take on injustice, take on those senior in status, but Pisces, unlike, say Aquarius, acts on an individual basis. Group actions, campaigns or crusades do not sit with their temperament, except just possibly for early Pisces, born on the Aquarius cusp. Later subjects, born close to the Aries cusp 20/21 April, are very much the ‘doers’ of Pisces.
Pisces is as brave as it is kind but these water sign denizens need to guard their physical energy. It can be erratic, and once depleted, is not always easily restored. If they are prone to headaches at the back of the head, there may be related bladder infections or other issues.
The Decans of Pisces
Each zodiac sign contains three decans, blocks of ten days or so, each with a different planetary ruler.
Pisces Decan 1 February 19 to February 28 (approximately) is ruled by Neptune. Those born within this decan will present as typical Pisces. Seldom aggressive or offensive, they conduct themselves with kindness and courtesy and very reasonably expect the same in return. Neptune, planet of illusion, is both their ruler and sub-ruler, emphasizing their imaginative capabilities. Pisces-Pisces readily connects with other people on an unconscious level, almost as if hearing what they are thinking, and able to anticipate their next moves, but they are likely to take a lot of detours before finding their own sense of direction. Tarot card: The Eight of Cups
Pisces Decan 2 March 1 to March 10 (approximately) The sub-influences for this decan are Cancer/MOON. Cancer – natural ruler of the fourth house of home base, family, and security – may keep them very close to family members, whether this is a positive or negative influence. They often bear a striking physical resemblance to a parent and may struggle to loosen break parental ties and become independent, but they must, if they are to develop their own potential, and often they are warm, well- balanced emotionally, cultured, artistically gifted, with charm and a keen sense of humour, from the zany to the dark or possible ingenious. They need plenty of quiet time alone. Tarot card: The Nine of Cups
Pisces Decan 3 March 11-March 20. A thinker, possibly even a visionary, the very last decan of all in the wheel of the zodiac year is a FINISHER. They are energetic, symbolized by the Mars influence on Scorpio.Pisces-Scorpio has an intensely practical side and often well-developed technical or scientific skills. They need activities, outlets for their physical energy and it matters a lot to them helping other people. This decan is considered fated to an unusual degree, and one day a calling may come to them in the form of a great challenge. Tarot card: The Ten of Cups
Famous Pisces in history
Michelangelo, Amerigo Vespucci, Copernicus, Vivaldi, Handel, George Washington, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Albert Einstein, Nat King Cole, Elizabeth Taylor, Nina Simone, Harold Wilson, Yuri Gagarin, Sidney Poitier, Steve Irwin.
