Tarot – Page 22 – True Tarot Tales

Seen by The Light of the April Moon

Astrology

Astrology is about the search for meaning on earth as seen in the sky; seeking to understand human behaviour through the influence of planets and other celestial objects, Luna, our Moon being the .

Astrology began as humanity made conscious attempts to measure, record, and predict seasonal changes by paying attention to astronomical cycles.

Early evidence appears as markings on bones and cave walls 25,000 years ago; an early step towards recording the Moon’s influence upon tides and rivers, and towards creating the first calendars.

Symbolically, because it has no light of its own, The Moon represents our shadowy side, our dreams, hidden health, and the impulses that drive our behaviour whether or not we are consciously aware of them.

Why do astrologers study The Moon?

Humans have been studying the Moon since at least 25 000 years ago as the closest celestial body to Earth, exerting a physical gravitational effect on the tides, and on every living thing. Our bodies are largely water, subject to the pull of the tides, and we are no exception.

This affects men and women alike, but is more is readily noticeable in women, through their menstrual cycles.

The Moon in April: The Headlines

There is a lot of lunar drama going on this month, just as there is down here right now during this coronavirus pandemic.

This month’s Full Moon is a Super-moon, a Pink Moon, and it is also the Paschal (Easter) Moon

The Full Moon this month will be in the sign of Libra.

The New Moon this month will be in the sign of Taurus.

The New Moon is the first/last lunar phase when the Moon is located between the Earth and the Sun and the moon is largely invisible, hidden in the sun’s glare.

The Full Moon occurs when the Moon is on the opposite of the Earth from the Sun on the same celestial longitude and we can see the entire illuminated portion of the Moon.

Key Moon phases in April:

1 April First Quarter Moon (waxing moon)

7 April Full Moon (in Libra)

13 April Last Quarter (waning moon)

23 April New Moon (in Taurus)

29 April First Quarter Moon (waxing moon)

What is a Supermoon?

A supermoon is a full moon or a new moon that nearly coincides with perigee—the closest that the Moon comes to the Earth in its elliptic orbit—resulting in a slightly larger-than-usual apparent size as viewed from Earth.

What Is A Paschal Moon?

Easter is observed on the Sunday following the Paschal Full Moon, which is the first full Moon that occurs on or after the March equinox.

This year, the March equinox occurs on Thursday, March 19. The first full Moon to occur after that date is 7 April UK time.

So that Easter this year is the first Sunday after 7 April: Sunday, April 12.

What is a Pink Moon?

Historically, full Moon names were used to track the seasons and, for this reason, often relate closely to nature. The Moon names that we use today stem from Native American and Colonial-era sources and apply to the entire lunar month, not only the full Moon itself.

April’s full Moon coincides with the first appearance of the “moss pink,” or ground creeping phlox …early spring flowers.

Public Domain

What does this mean for you and me, personally?

In general terms the New Moon and waxing Moon phase building up to the next Full Moon is the optimum time to make a new plan, to initiate or apply for something, or to grow, make or get something.

A Full Moon is in general the optimum time to take stock and evaluate, or to gather, collect, harvest or cash in on something.

A Waning Moon is the optimum time for ending something, releasing something, or clearing out what’s no longer wanted or needed.

7 April: Full Moon in Libra

The Justice card: Rider- Waite Tarot

This full Moon shines a spotlight on the rule of reason, law and order, fair play, give and take, diplomacy

It can suggest romance in personal relationships, or repairing a disagreement. The sign of Libra, ruled by the planet Venus, is all about creating balance, harmony, and keeping the peace.

Libra is associated with The Justice Card in Tarot, which is about respect and fair play, following procedure, and applying logic and reason to problem-solving.

This is an unsettling time but The Justice card says, above all do not panic.

The Justice card suggests there will be added paperwork or other personal administration for most people one way or another in direct consequence of this situation. This paperwork may be legal in nature, or it may be financial, business or personal administration. It may be related to consumerism and provisioning, online shopping etc.

For small businesses and the self employed, the Justice card suggests special measures put in place in the next few weeks, according to each country’s own national decision-making processes.

The pendulum swings. A degree of disruption and anxiety is natural and inevitable. Uncertainty makes us anxious, but the only real illusion is certainty. Nothing is certain, as the old saying goes, but Death and taxes.

Let’s keep our cool, look out for one another, and pay attention to process, procedure and detail. Dot the i’s and cross the t’s to get the very best we can from this April Full Moon in Libra.

Professor Karol Sikora is Professor of Medicine at the Uni of Buckingham, an oncologist for 50 years, he tweets @ProfKarolSikora:

I can’t tell you how helpful the social distancing is. If we all keep it up, I think a feasible scenario is a return to some normality at the beginning of May. As long as we keep to the rules now, we’ll end up in a much better place after Easter than is feared. Social distancing works. The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine estimate that before the lockdown one positive person would infect 2.6 other people. Now it is 0.62. This means the virus is cornered and will burn out.

23 April: The New Moon in Taurus

The Hierophant: Rider-Waite Tarot

The Hierophant card is associated with Taurus, a warm, earthy but creative, artistic and highly instinctive sign. It is about tradition, sticking with tried and trusted methods, creature comforts, and for many of us, these may have been in short supply, and there has been an unusual degree of extra stress and strain in recent weeks and months, with fire and flood wreaking havoc in 2019, all before Covid-19 showed its ugly face in December, and through its inexorable spread, reminding humanity that we are inextricably interconnected, and distance is no object.

Perhaps afterwards, when things have returned more to normal, as they will, it will be time to review a few of our global, national and personal practices, habits and expectations in respect of animal husbandry and global travel, and perhaps in time there will be some new normalities.

The Hierophant is the card of hospitals, publishers, universities and schools. Possibly things may enter a new phase, and in some cases, start to ease or start to return to normal in these sectors after this date.

In other news

A New Moon in Taurus suggests taking it easy. Don’t complain of boredom. Make an art out of staying home, making and doing new or quiet things, creating as the alternative to consuming.

For losing a little weight without a lot of effort, try working with the Moon, and limit your calorie intake for a 3-day diet once the New Moon begins.

This is also the card of formal studies, traditional crafts and universities and can signify a good time for starting a new study project or recreational group project, such as joining a choir for instance, or an art class.

Taurus is zodiac the sign of mid-spring, and everything alive and green. It is the ultimate zodiac sign of food and agriculture, matched only by the harvest time of Virgo. Why not discover your green fingers, or even experiment with growing a few of your own foodstuffs. You can always start small says the New Moon. A few seeds in a container, and see what happens.

People have been panicking. The supermarkets have been selling out of dried goods, but there will always other ways of doing things, or new recipes, or new ways of cooking or doing things to try out.

We can adapt. We can improvise. What did the Romans do before toilet paper had been invented? They worshipped Hygeia as the goddess of Health. And they had no loo paper, but still, they had ways….

And if that didn’t spoil your ‘bon appétit’, the April New Moon in Taurus says, ‘Eat your greens.’

Until next time 🙂

The Cards say 'Coronavirus.'

Tweeted 16 March

“Covid-19 UK via Tarot. Graph climbs- Full Moon 7/8 April- New Moon 23 April, peaked by late June-late July (the healing Queen Cups card = dates of Cancer) then post-peak phase till late Nov/early December 2020 (8 Wands Rx =Sagittarius) As ever naturally only Time will tell.”

The Queen of Cups from The Golden Tarot.

I understand this is roughly in line with the current scientific modelling, in which case, the congruence is an interesting coincidence.

The timing associated with this card is the zodiac sign of Cancer. This means late June- 23 July, and suggests the imminent acute medical emergency seems likely to pass its peak and start to resolve by midsummer, though the economic ramifications continue throughout 2020, and almost certainly, well beyond.

The Eight of Wands, planes above the clouds, The Tarot of the Divine Legacy

The Eight of Wands reversed is associated with Sagittarius, the bright and breezy, free and easy cosmic traveller, and indicates we are still having this conversation late November/early December 2020, and this card specifically references a continued downturn in global travel. Worst case risk detected here is a second phase, starting late Nov/Early Dec as has happened before with other pandemics.

Astrologers have been commenting since 2017 in some instances, speculating in respect of an ominous outlook for 2020; a challenging conjunction of Saturn in Capricorn coming up at intervals during 2020. They are seeing parallels between the astrology of 2020 and prognostications made by UK astrologer William Lilley from 1648 onwards.

Excerpt via astrologer Jessica Adams.

“Astrologers are here to serve. It’s part of our professional code. When William Lilly predicted back in 1648, that in 1665, “so grand a catastrophe and great mutation unto this monarchy and government as never yet appeared” would come – it did.

Lilly wrote“it will be ominous to London, unto her merchants at sea, to her traffique on land, to her poor”. He actually wrote “by reason of sundry fires and consuming plague.”

The Company of Astrologers still holds a church memorial service in his honour on Lilly Day, every year.

What is really interesting in 2020 is is his prediction in a 1648 London pamphlet. This was the astrologer’s equivalent of a website today.

He saw, in the year 1665, “so grand a catastrophe and great mutation unto this monarchy and government as never yet appeared.” Note his use of mutation. Viruses can mutate.

Lilly went on, “it will be ominous to London, unto her merchants at sea, to her traffique on land, to her poor.” He actually wrote “by reason of sundry fires and consuming plague.” In 1665 the woodcut of bodies in shrouds came to pass and in 1666 The Great Fire of London began.

The Bubonic Plague of 1665 has thus passed into the history books as a date-stamped, illustrated, astrological prediction.”

Covid19

This new coronavirus sub-type arose in a ‘seafood’ market, according to the poor young doctor Li who identified it, shared his findings in a restricted online conversation with colleagues, and was either spied on or reported, rebuked by his manager and threatened by the police for expressing his concerns.

The same young doctor returned quietly to work and kept his mouth shut, only to die, infected by a patient who had been a storefront seller in this self same ‘seafood’ market, leaving a pregnant wife and small children. A man of his age could have been expected to survive, but this particular patient is thought to have carried an unusually high viral load, by reason of his market stall.

Such has been the anger in China, the Chinese Government exonerated Dr Li yesterday, 10 March, and scapegoated those who rebuked and threatened him, much good does that do him and his family.

HONG KONG—Weeks after Chinese social media erupted in grief and rage over the death of a doctor reprimanded by police for raising early alarms about the new coronavirus, Beijing is seeking to assuage public anger by rescinding his penalty and punishing those who rebuked him.

By Chun Han WongMarch 19, 2020 1:05 pm ET

Read more about Dr Li HERE

And what about this market? The market at Huanan.

List of items for sale for consumption derived from a sanitary inspection.

Bats, Badgers, Beavers, Camel, Chickens, Civets, Crab, Crocodiles, Dogs, Donkeys, Fish, Foxes, Giant Salamander, Hedgehog, Marmot, Ostrich, Otters, Pangolin, Peacock, Pheasant, Pig, Rabbit, Rat,Sheep, Shrimp, Spotted Deer, Striped Bass, Turtle, Venomous Snakes, Wolf puppies.

The Huanan market was closed 1 January. On 24 February 2020, the Chinese government announced that the trade and consumption of wild animals would be banned throughout China, but made no announcement in respect of a ban on the use of animals in Chinese medicine, and the closure of the market has not been announced as permanent. The Chinse government says it has been closed for ‘renovation.’

Let’s watch that space.

Back to Sylvia Browne for a moment. Did she suggest this ‘severe pneumonia like illness’ marked the beginning of ‘The End of Days’?

No, she did not. Or not exactly. But she did see it as a kind of a canary in the mine, a signpost of a coming decline in the global human population during the coming century, and I am inclined to think, based on the assumption that we carry on exactly as we are doing, she was on to something there.

This thing has leapt from animals to humans and ultimately kills by thickening and hardening the mucus in the throat, chest and lungs. There is a cytokine storm and suffocation. And yet again, as with SARS and Swine Flu and Ebola, and the Spanish Flu which was carried far and wide on returning troopships after the war, a pandemic of two phases, it begs the same kinds of questions.

From the Huanan market to the globe. Modern work and leisure travel habits have carried this new virus, which is basically a new form of pneumonia, pretty much right around the populated world.

Deaths from coronavirus worldwide are today estimated at 10 000. And this is extremely serious but it’s not the Spanish Flu of 2018 which accounted for 50 million and possibly as many as 100 million.

It is not the Black Death, or as it was called at the time, The Pest (Yersinia Pestis – bubonic plague) which came out of Central or East Asia in 1347, travelling the trade route along the Silk Road into the Crimea and delivered into Sicily by 12 ships from the Black Sea reaching England in 1348. This great plague killed more than 30 % of the entire population of Europe. Some estimates suggest it was as many as 60 %.

This is not that. I do not see that it will become that.

But I won’t be remotely alone or unusual in reading this as another warning. The global human population at the time of the Spanish flu in 1918 was 1.7 billion and today it is 7.8 billion.

Freedoms we have come to take for granted, or have come to regard as our inalienable rights, including cheap travel in massive numbers wherever we like, whenever we like, how we like and for as long as we like, are overdue a fundamental re-think. We want to do what we like when we like, at least with our free time. But we are over-extended.

The Queen of Cups says Home is where the Heart is.

But where is the heart?

A citizen of everywhere is a citizen of nowhere, a consumer first and last, carried aloft in the capacious claws of a doubtful new freedom, as contrails track and line the sky, the real and honest price tag not yet known.

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 
And Eternity in an hour.



William Blake: Extracts from Songs of Innocence

Meanwhile spring is here and that may help resources in the northern hemisphere, by seeing the easing off the annual caseload of seasonal flu.

The spring equinox was yesterday.

Back soon with more on that, and the story of the Fiery Sky Ram Aries…..

Stay safe

Till next time 🙂

February, and a One-Card ‘Crystal Ball’ style reading

I am at pains to stress I don’t work as a fortune-teller. I work as an adviser, working to a brief, and I offer forecasting within a specific context, because otherwise, who am I reading for exactly? And I aim to deal in relevant specifics wherever possible.

Context is key for meaning, relevance and precision.

However, I also like to challenge myself. General ‘scrying’ of ‘the’ future, Nostradamus style, is part of a very ancient tradition, and I sometimes work with a well known astrologer, Jessica Adams, writing as a guest contributor for a monthly feature, Tarot Tuesday at JessicaaAdams.com.

The challenge is to pick just one card, and share my intuitive impressions triggered by this card for the coming month. But without benefit of any other context than this loose time frame. One or two other Tarot card readers also write up their one card readings for the month to come, and Jessica then correlates these Tarot findings with current astrology.

My chosen card for this February 2020 was the Six of Swords.

Book meanings: relocation, progress, exploration, charting a new course, mourning, travel by water, self determination, east

From the Legacy of the Divine Tarot, Image by Ciro Marchetti.

Lick your finger, hold it up…what is the prevailing wind?

Winds are changeable of course, from day to day, even hour to hour, but still, it has been interesting for me as a reader, to correlate my previous one card ‘crystal ball’ readings with events of the ensuing month.

An earlier one card reading said ‘wild fire,’ (you can see previous readings via the link provided below) and it is still playing out, tragically; particularly the Australian wild fires, of which the first were actually in September, and now it is known that several of these were started deliberately.

These single card readings are actually drawn 2-3 weeks ahead of publication, so that I am drawing a card mid January for the first Tuesday in February, and mid February looking ahead to the first Tuesday in March and so on.

Logically, none of it ought to make any sense at all, unless by sheer coincidence. Except that isn’t how it works, when it works.

It works on animal sensing.

Click below to read February’s Tarot Tuesday feature, courtesy of Jessica Adams.

Tarot Tuesdays with psychic astrologer Jessica Adams

Until next time 🙂

Brexit Day: Currents and Currency

Card drawn today as my Card of the Day: (tweets limited to 280 characters.)

Katie-Ellen@ktlncartomancer·57m Tarot COTD: The Magician. 1st card out of the deck, shuffled & drawn blind. Skill, alchemy. Self-assurance, self-determination. Yet. 4 elements-‘corners’ of the globe & see globe of the spheres?Tricky year ahead but UK Manuf, tech & space ind will do big new things. IMG Marchetti

The Magician: The Tarot of the Divine Legacy: Ciro Marchetti

The Magician makes things happen. Britain is making things happen. Britain is still making things. See the factories hidden inside this image? See the tower blocks of the City and the service sectors? See the books new and old? See the astrolabe, the wheels, the cogs, the electricity, and the conjuring, welding and harmonizing of a master conductor/physicist?

There are a number of posts here on this blog, card readings on Brexit dating back to the referendum of 2016. We were in Bilbao the day the result was announced, and next day drove across to Sitges, and were asked about it a few times by total strangers, all in a thoughtful, friendly way.

Some were Catalan.

Let’s just look back to December.

Posted on Twitter 9 Dec 2019:-
Katie-Ellen@ktlncartomancer· Will it be a hung parliament? Let’s look through the lens of playing card cartomancy. No opinions. Just cards. Shuffle blind, draw 5 cards, red/black, central card key. 10 Diamonds, Queen D, Ace Clubs (reps GE & a NO answer) 4 Spades (ugh) Ace Diamonds (future = new start).

And let’s look back again at an earlier reading, posted 1 October 2019 in which I used pendulum divination, asking this question…..

“Will there be a General Election BEFORE the UK leaves?

The pendulum is swinging to NO. But I don’t know. I keep thinking of that Ace of Clubs card. I don’t see one occurring in September or October and that timing would be exceedingly tight. But, swinging the pendulum again, there’s something here, suggesting however unlikely, there may be one either concluded or announced before Christmas.” – (posted 1 October 2019)

The dates though? The dates. How did I do there?

I was timid. I posted in October that I drew a 2:5 chance of there being the Halloween Brexit promised for 31 October. I still detected it as possible therefore, while far from guaranteed, and of course, now we know it didn’t happen. 1 October the chance suddenly reduced from 3/5 to 2/5.

1 October 2019 “The figure on this card from the Legacy of the Divine Tarot deck, illustrated by Ciro Marchetti, is reaching out his arms, spanning the Scorpion of Halloween and somewhere between Aquarius and the Fish of Pisces, late February-late March. But is it 2020 or a continuum into 2021?”

We entered Aquarius 20 January, so that the formal declaration of Brexit tonight is set to occur at the very beginning of the time window indicated by my reading.

And yet, as we know, this event at 11.00 PM tonight UK time, midnight Brussels time, marks the start of a year long transition period.

Time and again since 2016 I have looked to see if it would be a No Deal Brexit. I have not at any time seen a No Deal Brexit. We might still get one, but the Withdrawal Agreement means it has been averted at least until the end of 2020.

So how will that proceed this year? In other readings, I have noted many appearances of Leo the Lion for some reason I don’t understand, indicating a key development in July-August 2020. I’ll have to watch that space.

Again and again since the 2016 referendum I have asked, what is the ‘destiny’ for Britain, and drawn the same card over and over, the Nine of Coins, suggesting a slow gathering momentum, a juggernaut, and a coming decade of hard work and economic achievement.

This card specifically suggests notable prospects including but not limited to: financial services, manufacturing, horticulture/agriculture, farmer’s markets and a surge in demand for local produce luxury goods, the heritage industry and hoteliers.

I would be happier to see a fish leaping in that pond, though at least there is a pond, and that is clearly vital business pending, fishing rights and fisheries, significant by a silence in the noise around the current withdrawal bill passed by this Parliament. This bill, may presumably, may be superseded by events.

Update: Click here to read: BBC: Fishing will be a red line issue

Meanwhile, the new 50 pence coin has apparently so enraged many Remain voters who are not reconciled to the direction the UK has voted to take, they are threatening to deface it. It is unlawful to deface a coin of the realm, but nail polish remover will remove permanent ink, and so will toothpaste and baking soda.

To those so utterly irreconciled at this tide of national events, that they are publicly threatening to deface these new coins with a swastika, on the grounds that this coin marks the new face of Britain, shame on them. And this, the week of the 75th Holocaust Memorial.

Britain, for all its many failings, and despite the likes of Moseley, and shockingly, the machinations of Edward v111, has never had a fascist government, unlike all those countries in mainland Europe we shall forebear to name. Britain was fortunate too, in its allies, and was lucky that it was more than once assisted, and even reprieved by its island status, a 450 000 year old accident of geography.

…“The breaching of this land bridge between Dover and Calais was undeniably one of the most important events in British history, helping to shape our island nation’s identity even today,” said Professor Sanjeev Gupta, a co-author from the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial. “When the ice age ended and sea levels rose, flooding the valley floor for good, Britain lost its physical connection to the mainland. Without this dramatic breaching Britain would still be a part of Europe. This is Brexit 1.0 – the Brexit nobody voted for.”-Source: The Independent.

This has of course not saved these islands from wave after wave of historical uninvited migration and hostile invasion. The British people were forged in wave after wave of intermarriages following invasion and migration; the Romans, the Norse, the Jutes, the Saxons. The list goes on and on.

The shock of 1066 must have been so seismic as to be almost unimaginable. Duke William abolished slavery, but freemen landholders became serfs and tenants almost overnight.

Harold Godwinson

Betrayed by his brother

Begged wait by his mother

Echoes shrined in thread

A fallen king still speaks

Of ships on shingle

Senlac sundered

Homeland hillside

Battle ringed in red.

The English language was never the same again. Norman French was the new language of state and power, and continued so for another 300 hundred years. Click to Continue

Who are the British anyway? Who ARE the Brythones? And who are the English? These islands been invaded so many times, often with horrific violence, by incoming peoples plundering minerals, seeking fertile farming land, sweeping in from the European mainland, and with such an ensuing commingling of tribes, it is not so easy to say, let alone characterise the ‘indigenous’ population, if they are not direct descendants of the Anglians themselves, except to say the native Britons are largely Indo-European, and as such shall remain.

We are not moving away anywhere, except that our island home is drifting westwards as our eastern cliffs continue to crumble and our westerly margins build. The sea is further and further out, along the coasts of Lancashire and Cumbria, I have seen that visible difference during my own lifetime.

Today is about isolationism. It never was and it never will be, as if that were even possible, anyway. It is not anti-global, and yet is is a rejection of a certain kind of globalism, the corporate kind.

The future being resisted here is a chimera of the virtual world, where a chip implanted in your body will mean you swipe left or right, opening a door, getting in to work. That technology is already here,with our greater ease of convenience as the supposed trade-off.

After all, we are already using this technology in medical procedures, such as pacemakers, and in pets, chipping them in case of loss or theft, is the reasoning, meant to reassure:

“The syringe slides in between the thumb and index finger. Then, with a click, a microchip is injected in the employee’s hand. Another “cyborg” is created.

What could pass for a dystopian vision of the workplace is almost routine at the Swedish startup hub Epicenter. The company offers to implant its workers and startup members with microchips the size of grains of rice that function as swipe cards: to open doors, operate printers, or buy smoothies with a wave of the hand.

The injections have become so popular that workers at Epicenter hold parties for those willing to get implanted.” Source – The Independent, 2017

And could we,would we sell our children’s futurity for such a mess of pottage as that?

A ‘metropolitan’ city dweller might counter this in terms of the alternative vision; recoiling in their turn from some vision of a kind of folk horror revival.

It comes down to outlook, but the kingdom has spoken in reclamation of community; the fact and meaning of landscape, the minerals that build our unborn bones and teeth, and our feeling of connection to these are the fixtures and fittings wherever we go. Only the furniture, we choose.

If home is where the heart is:

On y reste.

On y va.

On y retourne.

It looks to me we are in for a momentous and hard-working decade of change, and doubtless this will be unsettling for some, and there will be losers as well as winners, just as there are now, and have been this past 45 years, but the more we thrive, the better we can carry the poor and the sick, the young and old and weak, and the UK is going to do OK.

The Nine of Coins says- better than OK.

Till next time 🙂

Tarot Marshmallow

Psychic consultations are generally very serious conversations, but they have their lighter moments…

True Tarot Tales

Metaphysical, metaphorical. Love n light. Blah.

Readers must aim for meaning and precision, and avoid waffle at all costs. Being ‘psychic’ is one thing. Being a practitioner of a discipline is another. Effective communication is another.

The ‘right’ words must be identified, transmitted and received for a purpose.

What people generally want to know is what do the cards MEAN? For them? Right now? In terms they can get hold of and use, should they so choose? We live in a physical world and must wrestle with ourselves, yes, at times, but so many life challenges focus on matters of practical substance, and this is not the lesser stuff. It is simply temporal, time specific where the metaphysics is the stuff of enduring truths and eternal experiences.

I was doing a reading for a lady who worked as a hypnotherapist, when the Tarot suddenly seemed tosuggest it was time to…

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A Lunar Eclipse: The Crab, the Sultan and the Wolf

Tweeted Friday January 10

“Tonight is the first full moon of the new year, nicknamed the Wolf Moon. As winter bit down, hungry wolves came down to the villages in search of food.”

January and February is wolf mating season, and their howls haunted the nights more than usual, both in Europe and in North America. This nickname was shared by Europeans and Native Americans alike, though this full moon has other nicknames too, including the Snow Moon and Ice Moon.

Also Tweeted

“Tonight’s lunar eclipse full moon in Cancer rises at 15:50 GMT (UK) or 2:21 ET and sets at 07.53 GMT (UK) Last night’s almost-full moon was spectacular. Excited cat playing & pouncing on things. This ‘watery’ lunar event typically signifies big changes at home. A letting go.”

That evening I said to Il Matrimonio, “I wonder who we will be hearing about tomorrow, who has ‘let go and left home’?”

Very many people will have ‘let go and left home’ of course. 2 people go out of this world every second and 4 come in, or if we want to be statistically exact, 1.8 go out, and 4.20 come in.

“The unborn are banging on the gates of the dock. What’s the limit on the shipping lanes?”- KT Kearns

But who would we be hearing about?

Which crab would quit his rock-pool?

Who would the wolf moon carry away in tonight’s meteor shower? (The Quadrantids)

It was the Sultan of Oman, Qaboos bin Said Al- Said, 79, a ruler for 50 years, ally of the UK and US and the longest ruling monarch in the Arab world.

Publicly at least, apart from three years of marriage which ended in divorce, after which his wife remarried, he lived to all intents and purposes as a hermit (crab) But his personal life has remained entirely private, protected by his shell of court and state.

Qaboos bin Said Al -Said

Excerpts from an Obituary in the Middle East Eye: (Link provided below)

“The sultan took the throne of an extremely underdeveloped country with a history of civil conflict and oversaw its transformation into a politically stable middle-income state during his half-century reign. Under a model of modernising absolute monarchy, he largely managed to steer Oman away from the extremes of consumerism of neighbouring Dubai and the religious conservatism of Saudi Arabia.

The concentration of political power and wealth in the sultan’s hands, combined with the absence of a clear route to succession, had led to fears that there could be a leadership crisis following his death.

The appointment of Haitham bin Tariq, Oman’s culture minister and the 65-year-old cousin of the late sultan, on Saturday appeared to put to rest lingering uncertainty over the country’s succession process.

Under Qaboos, political parties were banned and laws of lese-majesty created an all-pervasive system of surveillance and repression that ensured no organised opposition could emerge.

Still, there is no doubting the genuine affection in which the sultan was held by many Omanis and expatriates, seen as a visionary leader who had secured the welfare of Omanis and expatriates alike by leading the nation through its modernisation, and leaving a legacy that his successor will be hard put to equal.

Oman’s Sultan Qaboos is pictured at his palace in Muscat on 14 January (AFP) — Oman’s Sultan Qaboos is pictured at his palace in Muscat on 14 January 2019 (AFP)

The Sultan inherited a conservative, highly religious country riven by armed insurrection and tribal divisions, Valeri wrote, and over several decades, reduced the influence of the tribes, while incorporating their leaders in the political process.

Qaboos also championed the advance of women, gradually opening the way for many to enter education and the labour market in increasing numbers, despite Oman being a conservative society that traditionally segregated women in domestic roles.

Qaboos was also a big supporter of the arts with his government sponsoring the country’s first societies of artists and traditional music. As a lover of classical music, he played the organ and the lute, composed music and founded the Gulf’s first symphony orchestra in 1985, its players recruited from the towns and villages of Oman.

Qaboos was careful to maintain diplomatic ties even with those states, such as Iran and Iraq, which were in conflict with his western allies. As he explained to an Egyptian newspaper in 1985: “There is ultimately no alternative to peaceful coexistence between Arabs and Persians, nor to a minimum of agreement in the region.”

One of the world’s longest-serving heads of state, Qaboos began tentative moves toward a constitutional monarchy in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with the introduction of an elected consultative assembly and municipal council elections. However at the time of his death he remained head of state and prime minister, and commander in chief of the armed forces.

Qaboos’s successor will face the growing question of how to quell rising expectations of a new generation of internet-savvy young people no longer satisfied with the repressive paternalism that prevailed under half a century of Qaboos.

Excerpts from the Middle East Eye: Read more HERE

Now. Here is a very interesting piece of information, linking the Full Moon In Cancer with the Sultan Qaboos, or at least, I find this interesting. If not downright spooky.

Your Moon sign is an expression of your temperament and style of doing things. The natal chart of the Sultan shows that he was born with his Sun in deep and secretive, watery Scorpio and his Moon in the sign of almost equally deep and secretive sign of Cancer the Crab.

That was one enigmatic man of deep waters. That was one tough shell.

Two tough shells.

Now consider this image of the Moon card from The Gilded Tarot Royale, from the illustrator Ciro Marchetti, and the full moon uniting wolf and crab.

Or should we say, reuniting.

Until next time 🙂

A Robin’s Tarot Tale

A Christmas robin reading…..

True Tarot Tales

A real reading done for a robin, befitting the season.

Image: Public Domain

There are many depictions of animals and birds in the Tarot. They form a great part of the human landscape physically, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, and symbolically. If there’s a heaven, what would it be without them? I wouldn’t mind, personally if mosquitoes, maggots, deadly snakes and komodo dragons didn’t make it. Spiders would be all right as long as they were non-venomous and less than two inches in diameter. However, it’s not me in charge.

The songbird traditionally most associated with Christmas, or to give the winter festival its older name, Yuletide – is the robin redbreast. The cheeky, dumpy little European robin, Erithacus rubecula is a member of the flycatcher family.

Its preferred habitats are woodlands, hedgerows, parks and garden. Its staple diet is worms, seeds, fruits and insects. It will fight over sunflower seeds and it adores…

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The Zodiac’s Celestial Scorpion

Scorpio…The celestial scorpion

Most of us know our sign of the zodiac, but what does its constellation look like in the night sky, and what’s the story behind the sign? Around October 23 this month we entered the sign of the Scorpion.

Common Associations

Dates: October 23 –November 22

Ruling planets: Co-ruled by Mars, and after its discovery in 1930, Pluto

Symbol: Scorpion, Eagle (Because of the nearby constellation, Aquila, the Eagle)

Zodiac element: Water

Zodiac quality: Fixed

Keyword: I desire. I transform

Colour: Dark red

Birthstone: Yellow Topaz, Opal, Aquamarine, Tourmaline.

Tree: Walnut,Hawthorn, Blackthorn

Tarot Card: Death

Image from the Rider –Waite

Astronomy

Scorpius from which the zodiac sign of Scorpio gets its name, is a massive and spectacular j- shaped constellation located in the southern hemisphere near the centre of the Milky Way. In the Northern hemisphere it can be seen in July and August, most visible in July at 9.00 PM. In the Southern hemisphere it is visible from March to October, looking like a faint band in the Milky Way overhead.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4e/ScorpiusCC.jpg/256px-ScorpiusCC.jpg

Its name is Latin for scorpion and it is one of the 48 constellations identified by the Greek astronomer Ptolemy in the second century. Like Aries, Taurus and Leo, it is an ancient constellation, recognised as such pre-dating the Greeks.

Scorpius is the southernmost of all the constellations in the zodiac, and lies between Libra to the west and Sagittarius to the east. It used to be bigger, but its claws later became part of the constellation the Romans named Libra in the first century.

Its brightest star, one of the brightest of all in the night sky, is the ‘heart’ of the scorpion, Antares, meaning ‘rival of Ares’ (the Greek name for the Roman god of war, Mars) It is so-named because it is bright reddish in colour, like Mars, and also because Scorpio’s ruling planet was Mars until Pluto was discovered in 1930. Now it is considered co-ruled by both Mars (The Warrior) and Pluto (The Transformer)

Scorpius contains many bright stars, and interesting exo-planets.

The planet PSR B1620-26 b is sometimes nicknamed “Methuselah” being estimated at 12.7 billion years old. (The universe is about 13.7 billion years old.) Methuselah is vast, with a mass about twice that of Jupiter and it orbits around not one, but two stars.

Gliese 667Cc is a “super-Earth” about four times as massive as Earth. It orbits a red dwarf star, Gliese 667C; part of a three-star system only 22 light-years away from Earth. It’s considered potentially habitable and the same system contains two other potentially habitable planets: Gliese 667Ce and Gliese 667Cf – both are about 2.7 times the mass of Earth.

“Habitability” is defined as a rocky world that is close enough to its parent star for liquid water to exist on the surface, though other factors may later rule it out, such as the variability of its star, or the composition of the planet’s atmosphere.

Mythology & History

Nature, religion and astrology were intertwined in the ancient world, and the scorpion has been here hundreds of millions of years, more than 450 million, compared with our six million or so.

Sometime around four thousand years ago the Babylonians looked up, discerned the brightly leaning J- shape in the summer stars and called this constellation MUL.GIR.TAB – the ‘Scorpion’, literally read as ‘the (creature with) a burning sting’.

The movements and relative positions of Scorpius were mapped by Babylonian magicians and astrologers, who left written records.

“When a halo surrounds the Moon and Scorpio stands in it, it will cause men to marry princesses, (or) lions will die, and the traffic of the land will be hindered.”

A comet appearing in Scorpius was read as a warning of a plague, but when the Sun rose in Scorpius, alchemists saw their one chance for the transmutation of lead into gold.

Sidney_Hall_-_Urania's_Mirror_-_Scorpio.jpg

Public Domain

In Greek mythology the scorpion refers to a story about Orion. According to one of these myths Orion boasted to his friend the goddess Artemis and her mother, Leto, that he would hunt and kill every animal on Earth. Demeter, the goddess of Earth decided this was completely unacceptable behaviour.

Artemis was a great hunter herself, but she did not kill for the sake of killing and was ultimately a protector of all creatures. Demeter sent a scorpion to deal with Orion. He fought back, and according to some accounts he killed the scorpion, but whether or not Orion killed the scorpion, the scorpion definitely killed Orion.

Zeus was much impressed by the scorpion’s battle spirit, and raised the scorpion to heaven, and at the request of Artemis; he did the same for Orion.

In other cultures it is not seen as a scorpion. In Indonesia it is the Banyakangrem – “the brooded swan,” or the Kalapa Doyong, meaning “the leaning coconut tree.” In Hawaii, it is “The Fishhook” of the demi-god Maui.

In Chinese mythology, the constellation is part of the Azure Dragon.

And yet, there is consensus across not only continents but hemispheres. Thousands of years before the Greeks and Romans established their societies, the Australian Aboriginal people also saw the stars of Scorpius as a cosmic scorpion, as did the Aztecs of Central Mexico. The Lowland Mayans had scorpion constellations. These may have matched up with the Scorpion of the zodiac, but there no clear proof. It is thought that the Mayans viewed the celestial scorpion as an eclipse-causing agent.

The arrival of Scorpio’s sign in the northern hemisphere coincides with the advent of mystery, the fast fading autumn light, and the ghosts, myths and superstitions of Halloween, or All Hallows Eve, hence its association with the Tarot’s Death Card.

Facts about scorpions

They are an ancient creature, the earliest evidence dates from the Silurian period 450 million years ago, when the first scorpion ancestors left the seas for the land. Fossils from the Carboniferous 300 million years ago indicate little change since then. Early scorpions may have had compound eyes.

They are arachnids: arachnida scorpiones, with a body in two sections, 2 pincers or pedi-palps, 8 legs like a spider, and an exo-skeleton made of chitin. They are more closely related to Harvestmen than spiders.

They dance before mating, a stately promenade. They give birth to live young and carry them on their backs until the babies have their first moult when they disperse. The mothers may eat the young if resources are desperately scarce.

They have a long life span compared with other arachnids, 2-3 years in the wild but they have lived up to 25 years in captivity. They can live a year without food and eat insects, spiders, other scorpions and lizards. They also eat small mammals, such as mice.

They glow in the dark except when newly moulted. Scorpion fossils still fluoresce, despite spending hundreds of millions of years embedded in rock.

They are famously venomous. However of the nearly 2,000 known species of scorpions, only 25 have venom powerful enough to be dangerous to an adult human. In the U.S., the Arizona bark scorpion, Centruroides sculpturatus, produces venom strong enough to kill a small child, but anti-venom means deaths are rare.

The Scorpio Zodiac Personality

Like the other water signs, Cancer and Pisces, Scorpio is considered clairvoyant, or at least, keenly intuitive. But Scorpio has far greater intensity. This is water behaving as steam, while not overlooking the venom of its sting.

Scorpio rules the eighth sign of the zodiac, to do with Birth, Sex and Death. No wonder the subjects can be intense, and they are often possessed of great personal charisma. They are watchful but keep their feelings hidden. Born investigators, spies or secret agents, they are shrewd judges of human nature, while less conscientious Scorpio subjects may make use of this to their advantage, and drop friends whom they no longer see as useful. But combined with their intense determination and loyalty where they decide to accord it, Scorpios can make great leaders, scientist, and devoted doctors. They are quick learners, very adaptable, often changing careers, going down new paths.

Scorpio can be vengeful…and patient, but also devoted, and they never forget a kindness either.

Next time…the story of Sagittarius.