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?
Our Queen Elizabeth has died at a good old age. She has been taken away in Virgo season under the watch of the stars of The Virgin, under the planets of Neptune and Jupiter. She, a queen of fixed Earth, a Taurus sun sign subject born 21 April, has been gathered up in harvest time and given back into the keeping of the mutable Earth of Demeter.
Now Elizabeth becomes a different kind of star in the firmament, a chapter between chapters, linking her father George and her son Charles, in a story and in a chain 1000 years long, broken only by the years of the Protectorate 1653-1959, forging the dramatic, complex and sometimes violent history of kingship in these islands.
George never expected or wanted to be king. Elizabeth did not ask or expect to be Queen, or to become Queen so soon and so young. Charles? Now he must change his life, and do it late in life, to assume that added weight of kingship.
Lady Colin Campbell tells us that the Queen died at 14:37 PM on Thursday 8 September.
The State Funeral will be in Westminster Abbey 14 September at 11 AM but then she will be taken to Windsor to lie in the Chapel there.
Elizabeth was crowned Queen of the United Kingdom of England, Scotland,Wales and Northern Ireland and was the Head of The Commonwealth, her unique world legacy after the end of Empire. No other former Empire has created its equivalent.
Much has been made over the years of the Queen’s German blood. But she died in Balmoral, in her beloved Scotland, and was descended on her mother’s side from the beautiful and tragic Lady Glamis, Janet Douglas Lyon.
Lady Glamis was judicially murdered, burned at the stake in Edinburgh Castle in 1537 on charges of treason and witchcraft, cooked up by James v for reasons of personal hatred of her brother, the king’s former regent, Archibald Douglas.
Balmoral 1800-1900 Unknown Author Public Domain
I was watching the live television as the Queen’s body was being driven from Balmoral down to Edinburgh, where it will lie in state tomorrow in Holyrood House.
It brought back personal memories too, of happy times up in Scotland when my own children were small and I was still physically mobile, and eager to show them some of the beautiful places I had been taken by my own parents.
There was something immensely poignant at the sight of the coffin, draped in its red and golden yellow flag, the Royal Standard, leaving the place of Queen Elizabeth’s last happiness. The ghosts there were powerful for her, and now she will be leaving her own ghost.
Princess ‘Lilibet’ 1929
We know Balmoral was a place of many happy memories for the Queen. Being there reminded her, she said, of her childhood, playing in the garden at her mother’s home in Glamis, where the sun always seemed to shine. This is the human experience encapsulated in the The Six of Cups, old family times, old friends, says in the sun. Simpler times, and the timeless moments when we were small and the world seemed full of marvellous mysteries. Well, it was.
The Six of Cups: The Gilded Tarot: By Kind Permission of Ciro Marchetti
But as for happiness:-
“Happiness we can only find in ourselves, it is a waste of time to seek for it from others, few have any to spare. Sorrow we have to bear alone as best we can, it is not fair to try to shift it on others, be they men or women. We have to fight our own battles and strike as hard as we can, born fighters as we are.” -Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele
Harvest Moon in Pisces
Harvest Moon by Samuel Palmer 1835
The Harvest moon 9 September was brilliant in the zodiac sign of Pisces, the sign of visions, ghosts and dreams, in the Twelfth House of Unknown Destinies.
Pisces is associated in the Tarot with- well, The Moon card.
From The Legacy of The Divine Tarot
This card talks about the cycles of Nature, the power of the wild and the wild creatures, fertility, contagion, danger, high tides, a hunter’s moon. Hear the barking of the dogs and the howling of the wolves.
We are experiencing a Twelfth House event. This is something more than the death of an old lady, however grand, at a good age. It is also the death of something in her people, a link to the past and Britain as it was after World War 11.
As an omen for the Accession of Charles, it is a benign, potentially visionary Full Moon. His vision may outstrip his means or freedom to execute. But at least he has vision.
In The Season of Virgo
The Queen Elizabeth has died in the second decan of Virgo, associated in the Tarot with the Nine of Pentacles, ‘The Lord and Lady of Material Gain’.
This card describes a life that has every appearance of luxury but it has come at great hidden cost. There has been untold personal sacrifice behind the scenes. Personal wishes denied. What has here been sacrificed has been a normal personal freedom, symbolized in the Tarot by the falcon sitting on the lady’s wrist.
The ‘Gilded cage?’ Balmoral was this bird’s escape.
From the Rider-Smith-Waite
Many of us had been inwardly preparing for this news, while hoping that the Queen would get to celebrate her Platinum Jubilee. Hoping that her last months, now that she was living this strange new life without Philip, her husband, ally, friend and companion of 73 years, would not be too greatly darkened by two particular family troubles involving scandals and rifts.
Tarot Predictions December 2021
It is not OK to issue predictions of death. And once upon a time, and for reasons of state security, it was an act of treason, punishable by death, to issue a prediction concerning the death of a monarch.
However I had been expecting we would lose the Queen this year, 2022, based partly on feeling and observation. Many of us will have felt the same. The feelng was also based on what I had seen in the Tarot, and I dropped a broad hint, based on a Tarot reading written up in mid December 2021, which was later published at AskAstrology.com
The cards had indicated it would happen anytime between July 2022 and the end of the year. This was based on the appearance of the Three of Swords drawn against the position I had allocated to the month of July/zodiac sign/House of Leo. The Three of Swords is severance. Leo is the sign of Royalty and also corresponds with high summer-late summer. So this was not quite right, though it was close in respect of the actual timing.
I was working with The Gilded Tarot, and as you’ll probably notice, this deck is pretty well used but I had felt drawn to use it on this occasion.
Extract from the article published December 2021:
Leo:5th House (July-August 2022)
Heartland, creativity, passion, romance, royalty, children
Tarot card~ 3 Swords Reversed
The Gilded Tarot
This is always a challenging card, but is one of those cards that are actually better news, being drawn reversed or upside down. The Three of Swords is about grief, loss, bereavement, arguments, Drawn in the Fifth House, it suggests that tensions between certain countries may ease. On a personal level, we are coming to terms with a family loss, or quarrels may be settling down.
Loss, sadness or disappointment. No-one escapes these experiences. How we deal with them determines whether we learn something new, and grow bigger and stronger, or whether take things personally, and see ourselves as victims and dwell on our grievances, thereby adding to the damage.
Leo is the zodiac House of royalty. There could be national mourning in 2022 for a much loved figurehead.
Public Domain
Other Comments, December 2021
This was a very general reading for the year ahead in 2022, using just 12 cards, in which I was looking for the tone and feel of the coming year 2022, looking out for anything that jumped out as a recurring theme or a spike.
I saw a turbulent year in general in 2022. I sensed deepest waters, seismic levels of trouble. It looked and felt like Moby Dick.
‘Canst thou draw forth Leviathan with a hook?’ -Book of Job
I did not like it. It looked both Neptunian and Plutonian. It still feels like that and I still don’t like it. America too, is in a strange place. But it will start to feel different March- May 2023, and not just because we have come through winter.
I did not, back in December 2021, see the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022. I may do divination but I am not Nostradamus. I commented on risks of invasion, but I was mainly thinking of the Strait of Taiwan. I mentioned a possible breaching of boundaries in February 2022 as signified by The Hanged Man. This card is ruled by Neptune in Pisces and it shows a lack of boundaries. So it was this card, The Hanged Man, that was the clue to Russia’s invasion.
I further commented on likely problems to do with energy and specifically NordStream2.
Like many other people I am anxious about Ukraine, especially with winter coming. But I remain reasonably sure, as I have been since the invasion, that Putin will not succeed in annexing Ukraine. If he does manage it, we will be on a clear road to a pan-European conflagration and another World War.
But the Tarot has consistently shown me a nemesis for Putin, in the shape of the Ten of Swords. Failure. Ruin. A possible Night of The Long Knives.
Illuminati Tarot
Ukraine is right now fighting a fierce counter-offensive in Kherson and Kharkiv. There is much hopeful talk on social media tonight that Putin’s demise is well nigh imminent, people mightily encouraged by events such as this footage of a fleeing Russian tank in Kharkiv Oblast.
Putin is taking a pasting. Municipal councillors in 18 municipal districts in Russia are calling for his resignation,and putting their signatures to it. The Ten of Swords could be coming over the horizon now. But theirs is no longer a functioning democracy. What kind of leader would they get next?
However, for now, Putin is sure to push back hard, says the Four of Swords followed by The Eight of Wands. If the counteroffensive should falter, not for lack of will, but for lack of support, and Putin hangs on and launches back, then we hit winter and then, should Europe bail on Ukraine, then for all the courage of the Ukrainians, Russia COULD still get Ukraine under its hammer. Confronted with certain failure, Putin could decide to try and send us all to Kingdom Come if only to spite everyone. He’s not mad. But he is shameless, and he dare not, and cannot be seen to lose at home, which makes him exceedingly dangerous. And Biden is not strong.
It still looks most likely that it is Putin who will fail, and Lukashenko with him, but I don’t expect it’s going to happen quite yet. Some astrologers however, suggest his collapse is imminent.
The dates that correlate with the cards do not necessarily match up with the card meanings. President Putin is in trouble. But if he gets through this patch, then the Ten of Swords may be seeing that he will be in heap big trouble by or before late Gemini time, 2023, 11- 20 June.
For now, although the Ukrainians are giving the Russians a richly deserved kicking, while unearthing new horrors all the while, Putin is still looking confident that he knows who he is dealing with. That ‘we’ softies, we self-indulgent pampered degenerates in Europe are the real antagonist, and that we won’t take the pain required to defeat him. That we’re soft, that we’ll fold, and leave Ukraine naked unto his vengeance, and he has shown himself utterly bestial. ‘All’ he has to do is take a financial hit himself, and keep turning off the gas taps.
The Pisces Full Moon said that we are living in a Twelfth House moment. A Destiny moment. It clearly is.
The ghosts in these lands are louder than usual right now, and not just in these lands, while we reckon with our memories, ancestral, shared, and deeply personal.
“We know that we are going to die, in fact it is the only thing we know of what is in store for us. All the rest is mere guesswork, and most of the time we guess wrong. Like children in the trackless forest we grope our way through our lives in blissful ignorance of what is going to happen to us from one day to another, what hardships we may have to face, what more or less thrilling adventures we may encounter before the great adventure, the most thrilling of all, the Adventure of Death.”
The Premonitions Bureau Non-fiction by Sam Knight a staff writer at The New Yorker, based in London. “The Premonitions Bureau” is his first book.
Tagline: “Premonitions are impossible –and they come true all the time.”
What do we mean by a premonition? The Cambridge Dictionary defines a premonition as “a feeling that something, especially something unpleasant, is going to happen.”
What’s the difference between premonition and precognition?
Precognition is a sense of foreknowledge arrived at by “paranormal” means; e.g., via card reading, or a psychic dream or clairvoyance. On the other hand, a premonition is simply a feeling, however powerful, that something is about to happen – usually this means something bad.
The Premonitions Bureau tells a story that started with a tragedy.
Background: Aberfan 21 October 1966
Aberfan is a mining village near Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales. There was a huge colliery tip on a mountain slope above the village, Tip Number 7, and this tip had a natural spring rising up underneath it, bubbling out in a stream that flowed down into the village below.
Heavy rain had led to a build-up of water inside the tip, until one morning it suddenly collapsed and went sliding down the hill. A thirty foot wave of coal slurry hit not only a row of houses but Pantglas Junior School, and killed 116 children and 28 adults, of whom 5 were the children’s teachers.
The following inquiry firmly placed the blame on the National Coal Board, who had received multiple previous warnings about the instability of this particular colliery tip, Number 7 after it was created in 1958 against regulations which said no coal tip was to be raised on top of a spring, but the NCB, although they knew this, had taken only sporadic maintenance action.
After this tragedy a high profile psychiatrist and psychologist called John Barker went to Aberfan to try and support the bereaved. Then he started receiving reports of people who had had premonitions of this disaster. Most tragic of all was a premonition experienced by one of the children who had died in the school and who had been worried, telling her mother about a dream she had had the previous night.
“Mummy, let me tell you about my dream last night.” Her mother answered gently, “Darling, I’ve no time. Tell me again later.” The child replied, “No Mummy, you must listen. I dreamt I went to school and there was no school there. Something black had come down all over it.”
Two other children had done drawings of the avalanche before it happened.
Aberfan -Wikipedia, licence Fair Use
John Barker, who was the resident senior psychiatrist at a sadly run down mental hospital which he was working hard but with mixed success to modernize, went to Aberfan to offer counselling support and was deeply struck by some extraordinary reports received in the aftermath. He decided, with assistance from a newspaper, The Evening Standard, to make it his mission to collect and collate other premonitions. How common were they? How did they manifest? Could they be logged and used to give an early warning of impending disaster?
“A more predictable existence is, in theory anyway, a less frightening one,” writes Sam Knight of Barker’s motivation. “Societies have always craved prophets, or people who claim to see round the next corner.”
But unless we can do something about it, maybe sometimes we would really rather not know. One day, John Barker received two premonitions which were about him, himself, and which seemed to suggest that his own death was imminent…
I won’t provide spoilers, except to say that these premonitions were proven correct.
“It is a story both elegant and eccentric, cleanly capturing that brief moment in the 1960s when extrasensory perception verged on mainstream acceptance. It is also quietly terrifying, a reminder that even those who can see the future have no hope of getting out of its way.”
Coming back to the question of preferring not to know, as a useless burden, the so- called gift of prophecy- assuming we accept there is such a potential, is likely to feel more like a curse. It is not known as The Curse of Cassandra for nothing.
Cassandra (or Kassandra) was a tragic figure in Greek mythology; a Trojan princess, a daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba and a priestess of the sun god Apollo. Apollo had given her the gift of prophesy but when she subsequently rejected his sexual advances, he could not withdraw the gift but he turned it into a curse, such that Cassandra would see and speak the truth, only never to be believed.
Cassandra warned the Trojans to send Helen straight home again after Paris eloped with her and brought her to Troy, taking her away from her husband Menelaus in Sparta. Cassandra had warned the Trojans it would bring disaster down upon them all. They didn’t listen. Then the Greeks came and laid siege for ten long years.
Cassandra then warned them not to bring the giant wooden horse into the city. Again, they didn’t listen. There were Greek warriors hiding inside it, and in the night they crept out and opened the gates and let in all the other Greeks. A massacre followed; the Sack of Troy. The city fell. Cassandra was first raped in the temple of Athena by Ajax, then dragged away to become the slave of Agamemnon, and together with him, was later murdered by his queen Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus on returning to his kingdom of Mycenae.
The takeaway here is that while Cassandra knew her own fate, she could do nothing to save herself. Helen meanwhile, was forgiven by her husband Menelaus, and, restored as his queen, led on board his ship, passing the wretched lines of the other surviving women, now homeless, stateless and bereaved, all slaves and captives now.
It could be said that it was Helen who was really the Trojan horse.
The name of Cassandra has therefore come to mean a person whose accurate prophecies, generally of impending disaster, are not believed.
Cassandra by Evelyn de Morgan: Public Domain
This ancient story, like this new book highlights a big problem with prediction. If the future exists, what can be done about it? If the future doesn’t exist, how is prediction possible?
But prediction is rarer and premonitions are common. Barker reckoned that it was at least as common in the population as being left handed, the experience of premonition, suggesting we are all more connected than we understand or can logically explain.
The Premonitions Bureau is an intelligent, understated, quietly absorbing read. It raises big questions with many fascinating, if often deeply sad anecdotes.
It has been criticized by some reviewers for failing to provide clear conclusions. But this is in the nature of the subject, as it is in life, and there is at least one conclusion to be drawn from this story that is self-evident.
What is that conclusion? John Barker had hoped that a Premonitions Bureau might help save the countless lives through the interventions of a centralized psychic early warning system. But this was never a practical possibility. Why not? A premonition may be an intensely powerful feeling, but it lacks detailed information sufficient for anyone to act on it in any meaningful practical way.
A True Story
June 2016 I was staying away from home in Carlisle when I had a presentiment of a terrible accident or impact that was about to happen. I was shown in my Tarot cards that it would be involve a vehicle, anger and a fiery impact.
My first worry was that we were about to have an accident in the car. Then I decided no, I didn’t feel that was it. I said to my husband, “We will soon find out what this is. It will be on the news soon”.
Two hour later, we saw on the television, the news of the terrorist truck attack in Nice.
“On the evening of 14 July 2016, a 19-tonne cargo truck was deliberately driven into crowds of people celebrating Bastille Day on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France, resulting in the deaths of 86 people and the injury of 458 others.[4][5] The driver was Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a Tunisian living in France.[6] [7] The attack ended following an exchange of gunfire, during which Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was shot and killed by police”- Wikipedia.
This experience was neither a premonition nor a precognition. It was somewhere between the two. My feeling of unease did not hit me out of the blue. It came to me while I was looking, initially rather casually in my Tarot cards. I drew The Devil, The Chariot and The Tower cards all together in a row and knew I did not like it one bit.
But of what possible potential use was this to anybody? It lacked actionable specifics, and even had there been a whole ton of specifics, there was no outlet, no mechanism or avenue of action or follow-up, such as John Barker had once envisaged in creating The Premonitions Bureau.
Uvalde
May 24, 2022, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos fatally shot nineteen students and two teachers and wounded seventeen other people at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, United States. Earlier in the day, he shot his grandmother in the forehead at home, severely wounding her. Wikipedia
Date: 24 May 2022 at 7:27 pm BST
The night before, I was sitting up late in bed, reading. It was after midnight when I turned off the light and noticed a peculiar sensation, a fizzing, buzzing, tingling sensation that affected my head and shoulders, but only my head and shoulders. I first wondered whether it was a new physical symptom that was possibly affecting my ears or balance. I have severe rheumatoid arthritis which can affect organs as well as joints and muscles. But then the thought came to me, “what is this? Who is it? What bad news is this now, that is coming down the track?”
Was it a family member? I didn’t think so, but I had no idea was it was. All I knew was, and I said this to myself before turning over to go to sleep was, “there will be bad news tomorrow.”
How do any parents bear such a thing as this and it happened for what? One unhappy creature, empty of purpose and full of ugliness, grudge and spite, a loser in the true meaning of the word, was handed the means to indulge himself to the full, unleashing the grotesque horror of the Id, for mere dollars.
On May 24, 2022, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos fatally shot nineteen students and two teachers and wounded seventeen other people at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, United States. Earlier in the day, he shot his grandmother in the forehead at home, severely wounding her. Wikipedia
I’ve been jittery for some weeks one way and another, and possibly so have you. Leo season, I feel, is going to be extra dramatic in world events this August, both the beauty and the beast.
“Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy,” said. F. Scott Fitzgerald.
“Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely”, wrote Edna St Vincent Millay
A Dirge Without MusicEdna St. Vincent Millay
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
But if there is hope for us all- and there is, then it is exactly this. That we have this shared, mysterious but entirely natural human potential to sense what may be happening to others, even over great distances, and to sense, to feel -to work for, care for, or even fight for people we have never met and never will.
It’s a natural magic but it’s not unique to us. Baboons have it. South African naturalist and poet Eugène Marais witnessed it in action. A group of male baboons attacked a stalking leopard in order to defend their group, and succeeded in killing it, but only one of them survived.
Eugène N. Marais – 1871-1935 writer, lawyer and naturalist, Wiki
Marais also observed soldier ants racing up a tree and attacking and killing a praying mantis many times their own size, that was preying on their column,helping itself as the marching column passing under its tree. A lot of soldier ants died in the process but they stuck fast, swarmed on it and finally managed to bite off its head.
What we call courage or duty might be vainglory. It might be the Ego or the tribal Id. But what we call heroism is the readiness to put ourselves last in the service of some quest undertaken for some greater purpose, no fear or favour, no guarantee of success, reward, recognition or memorial.
An esteemed astrologer friend Patrick Arundell messaged me this morning to say had I seen this article by John Varga via The Daily Express online?
Xi loses patience with Putin as China pulls plug on £380m deal in blow to Russian economy
The decision will come as a huge blow to the Russian President, who had been counting on Beijing’s assistance in overcoming Western sanctions. China’s president has up until now been a staunch supporter and key ally of the Russian strongman in his fight to take on the West. Prior to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the two leaders met in Beijing ahead of the Winter Olympics, where they reaffirmed their commitment to one another.
In a joint statement both Xi and Putin declared there were “no limits” between Moscow and Beijing.
However, there are signs that Beijing may be re-evaluating its relationship with Moscow.
China’s state-run Sinopec Group has pulled out of a $500million (£380million) deal to market Russian gas for Sibur in China due to fears of being targeted with sanctions.
One of Sibur’s directors and investors is Gennady Timchenko, a long-term ally of Putin.
Mr Timchenko has already been sanctioned by the West in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014…...
Patrick was following up on a conversation we had online a few days ago discussing an astrological chart he had posted, President Putin’s own natal chart.
Patrick is one of the few astrologers who publicly forecast the invasion in the days before it happened, while Putin was still assuring the world these were purely mass military exercises, and many very seasoned political commentators did not believe he would actually go ahead and do it. I didn’t either. I felt in January I had a bad feeling about 2022. I did not like this Jupiter in Pisces business one bit. I didn’t like that astrological vision of Jupiter expanding in a fathomless ocean, and I still don’t, and I wrote that I expected tsunamis and a number of other things besides. But Patrick expressed an explicit concern that Putin was about to attack Mariupol.
Patrick later tweeted Putin’s natal chart 25 February: commenting (Patrick has kindly given me permission to quote):
“Putin’s Mercury conjunct Neptune in the 12th and with Saturn close by, despite its exaltation in Libra, shameless cold detached lies. Classic smoke-n-mirrors. Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s PR’s Sun is exactly conjunct Putin’s Mercury”.
Here we are, only a few weeks later, so much destruction and death has happened since, sadly hideous beyond belief.
19 March I drew the card spread below asking to be shown “Putin’s thinking at this present moment in respect of the situation in Ukraine.”
Tweeted 23 March
Cards 19 March, see that 10 Swords central, then top far right, the 9 Swords. China bottom right, 9 Pentacles. Lovers. P(utin) gone too far to withdraw and pretend he is ready to settle for less but is constantly recalculating options (Lovers, Gemini) World reversed up ahead. Non completion.
Card meanings in summary:
Putin looking very unhappy (central 10 Swords)
Putin frustrated with slow progress re Mariupol and Kyiv (top card 8 Swords) He has to get that control of the sea of Azov (Queen of Cups reversed, at the bottom =seaside/port)and he has to have it by the summer (Queen of Cups = the zodiac sign of Cancer, late June-late July.)
Putin had a major decision coming up (strategy) Awkward choices (The Lovers means unequal or conflicted decisions and choices, not just romance.)
The least Putin might settle for (?) will be that Zelenskyy concedes the territory of the 2 republics of Donetsk and Luhansk (2 Pentacles)
Putin is having sleepless nights (9 Swords)
A decision or agreement may possibly materialize in Gemini time, late May- late June (Lovers again plus the 9 Swords can correlate with second decan Gemini.)
Putin frustrated with slow progress re Mariupol and Kyiv (top card 8 Swords- a city by the sea under siege.)
Putin wants this signed, sealed, done and dusted before the end of this year (3 Pentacles = job done + it correlates with Capricorn, December) The World card reversed shows the end of the year and suggests a task enterprise or cycle has that not been completed. On occasion, the World reversed can indicate a death, as in, someone leaves this world. ( Reminder: the focus here is on Putin individually, his own situation and surroundings.)
Putin is worried about China and money…that 8 of Pentacles card at the bottom right reflects a pressing concern or preoccupation.
Here is that same card again in close up.
Nine of Pentacles, Illuminati Tarot
You can see this is a money card, and the China connection is suggested by virtue of the artwork itself. Had I been using a different deck, I would not have drawn such an obviously relevant image, but that’s how it goes. I did choose this deck and not one of the several others I might have used instead. The lady, ‘China’, holds her hawk on her wrist. She controls the hawk of her own wild impulses. She is watchful, she keeps her house in order, she will delay gratification if need be. She has many beautiful things but she has known what it is to do without. China is playing it cool here.
As for the article, one supposes it is possible that £380 million is still only chickenfeed to President Putin.
But what if it is a straw on a changing wind now blowing in from Beijing?
China’s business heart: the city of Shanghai is now contending with a whole new and massive wave of covid with millions locked down again and oil prices falling within the last 9 hours at the time of writing..
Things are moving so fast.
What if we look at President Putin today?
Illuminati Tarot 28 March 2022
These cards suggest that Mr Putin is feeling less fraught than last time we looked but still, he is seriously not happy on a number of points.
Putin’s war could be in serious trouble by late October. The 5 of Cups is Scorpio 23 October-2 November. The Crowley meaning of the card is ‘Lord Of Loss in Pleasure’.
Closer in time The Four of Wands is showing me the Turkish government. Four = building/place of work/business/government. See the Crescent moon on top. I feel Putin is not pleased with Erdogan. Why not? Perhaps he thinks Erdogan is using him to try and cozy up with the West for his own gains.
The Nine of Wands reversed. This central card drawn upside down, means someone loses their nerve or strength, backs down or bottles out. Perhaps Putin feels that Turkey is trying to cozy up with the US at his expense?
Reminder: the reader doesn’t claim to know anything we don’t all know. This is an exercise with the Tarot, a demonstration of divination in modern usage, illustrating a process that readers generally don’t tend to discuss with non-readers.
The Chariot Reversed is the third card in the row. Card meanings: progress is slow, halted, lack of unity, problems of communication. Two horses not working as a team, loss of control.
The Charioteer here is Mr Putin himself. Not fully in control. He really does not like it. He fears a ‘car crash.’ This is likely purely metaphorical, but may also refer literally to tank regiments -or more.
What else?
We have The King of Pentacles drawn reversed. Taurus time is coming soon – this card is ruled by Taurus. It will likely bring even more money troubles for Putin. In addition, this card is President Xi himself….drawn upside down because ….Putin has had/will have some further bad news from that quarter?
See the card when it is drawn the right way up. China + Mr Moneybags.
Yes, this card is clearly meant to be saying Japan and this king looks Samurai and does not look remotely like President Xi personally, but the Tarot is doing its best and we can’t ask for everything. Notice he wears the horns of Taurus, the heavenly Bull, 20 April-20 May approx, and with a partial solar eclipse on Saturday 30 April. In astrology eclipses, even partial ones, are always, but always considered significant trigger points or turning points in world events, even if the consequences are a while coming. Taurus is at about 10 degrees in that forthcoming eclipse. (I was born 30 April at 9 degrees of Taurus. Oo-err, I had better beware of the bull.)
In practical terms it can mean big world banking woes for Putin in addition to whatever is happening with China.
From The Illuminati Tarot
What next for President Putin?
That last card on the right, the 5 Cups is about reckoning with losses, seeing what can still be achieved. recovered or retained. This figure has lost 3 precious cups, but 2 remain to him. Here is the hope that a ceasefire may happen soon, possibly in April soonest has been previously suggested by multiple appearances of the Queen of Wands (Aries season, 20 March-20 April)
President Putin still confidently expects to acquire the 2 breakaway republics, Donetsk and Luhansk – Mariupol too, once he has battered Ukraine and Zelenskyy into a frame of mind more amenable to his demands, but which is taking a whole lot of doing as they are defending their own, and there is no more powerful human motivation.
These are not predictions but are purely the Tarot’s impressions in respect of President Putin himself, as seen in the cards between 19 March and today, 28 March.
Dark days, troubled times. Every day in some corner of the world, someone’s crying in this ‘vale of tears’.
We are all walking the winding road. But spring is coming, and something good is never impossible. The best news indicated at this point in the cards, is the indication that this old-new former Russian territory state Ukraine, survives as an autonomous sovereign entity. The worst, well it is happening, and Putin may still get what he ought not to get- the Donbass -and all its potentially lucrative minerals.
Oh no. Oh yes, we’re talking about Brexit. This blog is about divination, not politics or social commentary, and many practitioners of divination, besides conducting personal readings, are bound to look through their lens at affairs of public life.
Everyone does forecasting or predicting. Humanity is hard-wired that way for survival. Everyone. If you feel you know which way this is all going, you are speculating which is to say, predicting. Knowing what is your prescience and what may instead be wishful thinking, may be harder to judge. The same for readers too, who must beware a) their own fallibility and b) their personal biases in interpretation. For the most honest answer possible, the reader needs to stay like stone while shuffling and drawing their cards.
What are the bookies saying? Hardly surprisingly, it’s a shifting picture. Some think the UK will remain in the EU after 2019. But then again, the bookies did not predict the Leave result in the Referendum. This from The Guardian, Patrick Collinson, 24 June 2016:
In a candid statement, Ladbrokes’ head of political betting, Matthew Shaddick, said: “The truth is that bookies do not offer markets on political events to help people forecast the results. We do it to turn a profit (or at least not lose too much) and in that respect, this vote worked out very well for us.
“Nobody at Ladbrokes’ HQ will be criticising the predictive powers of our odds, they’ll be looking at the money we made.”
More than £40m was gambled in the biggest political betting event in British history.
William Hill said one woman in central London placed her first ever bet by putting £100,000 on the UK voting to stay, while another woman, from Kingston, south-west London, gambled for the first time by staking £10,000 on leave.
Here are the playing cards I drew around this question 12 August 2018.
The cards are shuffled and drawn blind. The most basic rule of interpretation is:-
Red suit cards indicate a yes answer
Black suit cards indicate a no answer….particularly if these are spades.
Will UK leave the EU with an agreed deal?
It is looking highly likely that it will not. Let’s read it as a story-line, left to right.
3 Clubs. Lively discussions, confrontations, a 3- way deal.
Ace Spades. Endings. New beginnings. Lines drawn.
10 Spades. Nadir. Betrayal. Despondency. Despair. A large body of water.
6 Clubs. Back in the saddle. Teamwork. Negotiation. Achievement.
4 Diamonds. This last red card on the line could still turn it into a last minute deal. Financial stability. a strongbox. A cheque book. This is financial conservatism…either UK pays out for the sake of diplomacy in the event of a non-deal so as to minimise the rocking of the boat or else decides to hang on to more of its own money.
What is the likelihood of a No Deal?
At first glance this is looking highly likely; 1 black suit card (no) and 4 red suit cards (yes).
Let’s look at the story-line.
Page Swords, spies, secret communications, legal advice, bad news, dark thoughts, skulduggery, espionage (No! Really?)
6 Diamonds, Research, technology, diagnostics, shyness. The PM is very clever, some fear deceitful, but she is rather shy. This may have added to a few problems in the face of the various manifestations of the ‘page of swords’ – in-house opposition to her stated brief.
6 Hearts, courage, trust, armed forces, all things regarded as ‘typically masculine’
8 Diamonds, utmost caution, balancing books, taxation matters, influential person wearing glasses (several come to mind both sides of the table)
Ace Diamonds, Fresh start, important document, life force, fire, new lease of life.
BUT, for utmost impartiality, at risk of fudging the system, let’s just zoom the lens out, reading both lines as a single story, paragraph one and paragraph two.
Now we have a total of 5 black no cards and 5 red yes cards, and we end up with a row of reds.
Bluffs are being called on both sides. The UK perhaps is doing less calling of bluffs and a deal takes two. There was a reason a referendum came to be called in the first place, after David Cameron’s bluff was called.
Read this way a deal could still happen, and if it does it will be almost last minute, viewing the cards as a kind of graph line where the black cards are succeeded by a row of red cards…look at it as a rising graph line. There is something here that does not line up clearly. There may be a delay or a last minute offer by either side.
Whichever way it goes in the end, for all the rage and worry on both sides, UK and EU, Leave voters and Remain voters, and the undoubtedly dirty machinations and toxicity of this process, and however I look at my cards, as separate lines or as a sequence of continuation, the ‘end’ card, the Ace of Spades appeared early on, representing severance and separation while the Ace of Diamonds is the ultimate final card in this spread. Fresh start, important document, life force, fire, new lease of life
It will not be business as before, whichever way it goes. I think we’re out, no second referendum, but I’m not sure that even if it is a hard Brexit, leaving on WTO rules, that it will happen on the 29 March. There is a strong suggestion that this is not a finality.
I feel the cards were also foreshadowing the recent events of Salzburg. This is a card of betrayal and assassination. Character assassination, political assassination, M Macron may prove to have overplayed his hand.
For the UK the Ace of Diamonds of a No Deal outcome is being shown to me as a far higher, therefore more desirable card of prosperity than the Four of Diamonds of the Deal outcome scenario. Mr Carney’s fears will not prove justified, bar an inevitable period of disturbance and re-adjustment.
Any Ace trumps any other card any time. There is plenty wrong in the UK, and plenty that needs to be done better. But I am not seeing that if the UK does go the way of the open seas, via a ‘hard Brexit’, that it is then on a heading to…
Image: Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Viktor Vasnetsov, 1887
There will be turbulence but a fairly early recovery. Until next time 🙂
There are many weightier matters I find myself investigating with cartomancy; the use of ordinary playing cards for divination, using these instead of, or alongside my tarot cards.
I may find myself investigating business questions. Will this merger go ahead, and when? etc etc
I could be surveilling what seems likely to happen next vis-= a- vis Brexit etc.
I do look of course. Wouldn’t you? I occasional post readings on public matters, but heck, Life is also made of little things, and who needs pointless hate from total strangers on social meejia in this overheated alt-climate.
I don’t see Yellowstone blowing any time soon, or World War 3, and they’re rather weighty matters. Earth will endure it’s natural span, I feel it will be longer than currently predicted, you know, give or take a few hundred million years, but we will be long gone from here and so will everything else by then.
We have recently been on our travels, an undertaking by car and ferry, and for me, by wheelchair, touring in France: The D-day beaches, Pornic in Brittany, Rocamadour in Lot in the Dordogne, a night in Nantes, and north again to Bayeaux before catching the ferry home again next day – a 5 hour crossing to Portsmouth.
Rocamadour is spectacular in the extreme. We stayed in a small hotel, Les Esclargies– at the top of the great cliff above the famous sanctuary with the old main street below it. You can go down in a funicular.
The hotel is in an oak clearing or glade and after a stormy 6 hour drive from Pornic, we arrived after heavy rain to see a red squirrel robbing a hanging bird feeder. We had a downstairs room with a good sized bathroom and wet room. We stayed a few days and late one afternoon, I sat outside with my cards while inside with the patio door open, Il Matrimonio snoozed.
Simply heavenly.
I shuffled my playing cards asking, what is Il Matrimonio doing right now?
Why would I bother to ask when I already knew the answer?
That is precisely the reason for doing it. To see if I draw the cards I expect to draw when I already know the answer, and to see if those cards are an accurate or meaningful reflection of those facts already known, harnessing that benefit of hindsight in order to challenge my accuracy rates in randomly drawing a relevant card.
I expected to draw the Four of Spades in its most benign aspects.
Traditional Meanings: Bed, rest, illness, recuperation, the need for caution, the sick bed, hospital room, coffin, a jail cell, rest, confinement, exhaustion, need to take it easy, move at a slower pace, bed-ridden, feeling fenced in, staying at home, an unhealthy situation, feeling trapped, feeling sick and tired.
Gentle snorting noises proceeded to issue from the open door behind me.
But no…I didn’t draw the Four. I drew the Three of Spades.
Traditionally: loss and deception, lies, misunderstanding, confusion, a growing problem, a worsening condition, deterioration, disease, infection, third-party interference, a third wheel, meddling, a love triangle, what goes on behind the scenes, trials and tribulations, a test, an exam.
I associate it with the Tarot’s Three of Swords; heartache, separation, quarrels, mourning and sometimes literally, cardiac or respiratory symptoms.
Il Matrimonio is somewhat prone to indigestion. I found that if he avoids gluten, he doesn’t seem to get it, but travelling, on holiday, avoiding gluten was not such a practical proposition for him, and besides, the croissants and pastries at breakfast were rather too delish.
Uh oh, I thought, contemplating the Three of Swords, what’s this? I hope everyone’s all right at home, and as for him, I wonder if he’s got a bit of heartburn.
And no sooner had I articulated this thought, there came a burp from inside and Il Matrimonio sat up muttering something about wanting the bicarb.
I think that counts as validation.
So, to add to the vocabulary of the Three of Swords, let us add, indigestion, heartburn, bicarbonate…and burps.
Here’s a kicker though.
Here’s the sting in this tale.
Something strange happened our last night there, a Friday night or Saturday small hours. I had the distinct and quite startling impression that someone pulled twice, quite sharply at my bed covers, trying to drag away the small cushion supporting my knees (pain management of rheumatoid disease)
I mentioned it immediately. We had only just switched the lights out when I felt the first sharp tug, but Il Matrimonio hadn’t noticed anything odd, not the first time nor the second time, but a bad night followed, for the first part of the night. Frightening dreams involving being pushed in a bed, a malevolent coven and the fear of imminent death.
I have had such experiences before, not often, and at the time they have made no sense, – one might as well have put it down to booze or something, although I do not drink or use substances likely to tamper with my view of reality. But days later, and on one occasion, eighteen months later, these dreams or whatever they were revealed themselves to have been a foreshadowing. I once dreamed of an earthquake at the end of my road, I was trying to jump a widening crack in the pavement, and a week later to the day, and after an odd, jittery day, the real one arrived at one in the morning. An actual earthquake…in Lytham St Anne’s in the small hours, and it made the national papers
The epicentre was in Market Rasen in Lancashire, and it was teeny, but the experience when it actually happened, was eerie as hell. I don’t want even to imagine the terror of a big one.
I reckon we can sense these things in the same way that birds and animals are known to do…given sufficient absence of distraction.
And the Three of Spades, like the Tarot’s Three of Swords, can mean mourning.
We returned to shortly receive news of a death, a phone call and it was an uncle of Il Matrimonio’s. This was a quiet death in hospital after a short illness and at the age of 82. It happened on the Friday following our last night in Rocamadour and apparently, some tube got pulled out of his uncle’s arm as he lay in his hospital bed, with fatal results although perhaps it would not have made any difference either way.
Poor Il Matrimonio nurses kind memories of his uncle … tears were shed.
Painting Andrea Camassei 1635, Museo del Prado
True Tarot Tales 