“Even the upper end of the river believes in the ocean.”-said William Stafford.
But even if it doesn’t, that’s where it’s going anyway. Slowing, broadening and deepening as it goes. Like us, if we get the chance, if we are given the time. And the closer we get to the ocean, the less we strive, the more we carry, the more we reflect and the less we hurry.
Like The Hermit, who walks alone in the wild places, following a far-off light, or answering the ancient drum beat. The Hermit is feeling the weight of his years and experience but casts his own light all the same. He/she withdraws more from society, but the wild creatures draw near and cautiously welcome The Hermit home. He – us- humankind of the modern world left their path many years ago, branching away from the path of the wild.
The Hermit is airy Mercury in earthy Virgo; watchful, enquiring, creative but analytical, self-disciplined, seemingly aloof yet approachable,with a quiet warmth.
William Stafford died aged 79 at his home in Virgo Season, Lake Oswego, Oregon on 28 August, 1993. The morning of his death, he had written a poem containing the lines, “‘You don’t have to / prove anything,’ my mother said. ‘Just be ready / for what God sends.’
Ask Me
Some time when the river is ice ask me mistakes I have made. Ask me whether what I have done is my life. Others have come in their slow way into my thought, and some have tried to help or to hurt: ask me what difference their strongest love or hate has made.
I will listen to what you say. You and I can turn and look at the silent river and wait.
We know the current is there, hidden; and there are comings and goings from miles away that hold the stillness exactly before us. What the river says, that is what I say.
“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.”― Plutarch
There is what Life does to us. There is how we respond. But first there was always who we were to begin with, and the ways we are still becoming it.
Tabula rasa is the theory that individuals are born without built-in mental content, and therefore all knowledge comes from experience or perception. Epistemological proponents of tabula rasa disagree with the doctrine of innatism, which holds that the mind is born already in possession of certain knowledge. Wikipedia
There is a saying, ‘if you can’t say nothing nice, don’t say nothing at all’.
This holds true in many situations and is often the wisest thing, as well as the kindest thing, as expressed by the Hippocratic principle of medicine, ‘first, do no harm.’
There is another saying we have probably all come across, ‘opinions are like a*holes. Everyone’s got one.’
However, we all do predictions all the same, whether we see it that way or not. We are constantly planning on the basis of predicting what we will be doing next.
Forewarned is forearmed (trotting out all the cliches here)
However unsolicited comment, when it’s not welcomes is next to useless for practical purposes. It will be disregarded or worse. Plus, regardless of whether subsequent events prove them right or wrong, history shows that unwelcome ‘messengers’ really do get ‘shot.’
The Curse of Cassandra
The Curse of Cassandra refers to the princess of Troy, the legendary seeress Cassandra, daughter of Priam and Hecuba. Although she was truly gifted in prophecy, she was so weird and her warnings were so depressing, she was not believed when she spoke the truth, and could not save her city, her people, or finally, her son or herself. And she knew it. No room for hope. Here we see Cassandra having a rotten time with that thug Ajax. Troy has fallen, and it’s only going to get worse.
Cassandra was a priestess of Apollo, and he wooed her with the gift of prophecy. When she turned him down, he couldn’t withdraw the gift, so he made it a curse so that whatever she said, people just thought she was loopy and took no notice.
This in itself might be enough to send someone a bit crazy, don’t you think?
To shout into the wind. To see the approaching doom of everyone and everything you know, and to know that you will be unable to help your loved ones? Wouldn’t that be a kind of a living hell?
Then again, the truth may hurt, but beyond that, assuming it is indeed the truth, can it do any good?
That depends on someone’s readiness to consider the warning, or whatever other information you might have to share.
Was this input solicited?
Is it within their nature and their capability at any level, to have the resources to use it?
Unsolicited advice often falls on deaf ears (as does actively solicited advice) People work things out their own way, according to their own needs and understanding and resources available to them at that given time.
Making predictions in public may be regarded as so much hot air, solicited or unsolicited proselytizing, depending on the circumstances, though of course media pundits do it all the time.
Journalists have approached me on occasion, seeking a quote, an interview, a soundbite, eg; about Brexit. I have done many readings around Brexit and written them up here. But the journalist doesn’t want to trawl through those. They haven’t the time. They want a snappy sound bite.
Journalists are looking to tell a good story. This may mean, not that they lie, but they do not necessarily quote one verbatim either, while my blog archives are available to browse anytime.
‘A word to the wise,’ we may say, when offering advice. Even assuming the advice is good advice, it takes a wise person to listen, let alone act on that advice in timely fashion, especially when the advice really isn’t what they want to hear.
All around us, people are issuing their own predictions left, right and centre. The state of the country, the state of the world, management of the Covid situation, and so on. We are all broadcasters now, and publishers, such is the easy reach of social media, the global village pump on multi-billion steroids, which meanwhile is farming us.
Yesterday I decided to try out a deck I have not used before, to pull a single comment card – no context, nothing but a straw in the wind.
I was using, not a Tarot deck, but an oracle deck, ‘The Masters of Magic’ by Severino Baraldi & Laura Tuan, and is published by Lo Scarabeo. Link HERE
This 32 card deck offers a miniature potted history of key figures in western magic, including the so called natural philosophies which were in their time regarded as sciences: alchemy, astrology etc. Their theories and works are examined in the little book that comes with this deck, affording the reader the opportunity of drawing down directly on a distillation of their knowledge and experience.
I asked myself whom I needed to consult on this day of the solar eclipse, 10 June 2021, shuffled and drew Card Number 20, featuring the astrologer William Lilly.
You can see the keyword that has been ascribed to this card is ‘Independency.’
Something in me reacted with, ‘why does it not just say Independence?’ But doubtless, I was just nitpicking. I’ll blame it on my Virgo rising sign. But we talk about dependency, so why don’t we use this other word, independency more?
‘Hey,’ I said to Il Matrimonio, ‘what do you think of this word, independency?’ He said, ‘never heard of it. I heard of dependency.’
American English?
Back to William Lilly. With 21 June fast approaching, the proposed UK date for the final release of lock-down this card struck me as timely.
People were upset, shaking their fists, shouting ‘no-one is going to tell us what to do.’
Well, I didn’t like it either. But sorry. Yes they are or there could be no such thing as a society. Infrastructure demands co-operation and regulation. When there is a revolution, there is anarchy for a while but then a new society emerges. Just with a few new and different rules.
And we will see plenty of this during the next 20 years.
But our individual freedoms were already in hock when we were born, negotiated far, far back in exchange for the most basic safety and security, and later, for the many benefits of modern life depending on a hugely complex organization of infrastructure. Habitation. Protection. Roads. Lighting. Water. Food security.
If we really want to be completely free, we need to go analogue and go off-grid. But then we’d pretty soon be dealing with opportunistic human predators. New ‘zombie swarms’. They’d find us soon enough. Meanwhile the weather would tell us what to do, and so would hunger and thirst and any illnesses. The seasons would command us, and the availability of all vital food resources. We’d have very little freedom in real terms, simply in terms of everything we’d have to be doing simply to stay alive from one day to the next.
This dog is looking pretty relaxed, considering. Or maybe he is just undecided, wondering if he is running with the wrong pack, and should join forces with the wolves.
On the other hand, no, we are not like ants or bees. Short of annihilation, totalitarianism is the ultimate collective nightmare. We have witnessed it in action enough times to know what it means, in all its horror.
The human animal must have plenty of individual scope and freedom, personal agency. It is in our DNA, in our spirit, but it’s a balancing act and sometimes it has shifted this way and sometimes the other in response to the exigencies of the bigger picture at any given time.
“Why is man man? As long as we have had minds to think, stars to ponder upon, dreams to disturb us, curiosity to inspire us, hours free for meditation, words to place our thoughts in order, the question like a restless ghost has prowled the cellars of our consciousness.” – Robert Ardrey –Nature of Man Series
This card from the Masters of Magic deck, William Lilly, seemed most apposite, drawn 10 June 2021, the day of a partial solar eclipse in Gemini, ruled by Mercury, planet of science, commerce and travel.
Lilly’s Plague and Fire Predictions
William Lilly was a practicing predictive astrologer, who famously foresaw a dreadful pestilence which turned out to be The Great Plague 1665, and a fire which turned out to be The Great Fire of London 1666. He saw these in his charts and wrote them up in a book published in 1651.
Lilly was well known by this time, following his prognostications during the Civil War, when he had seen intimations of the death of a king, and success for the Parliamentary forces, though in later years, after they had won and the king had been executed, he became increasingly disenchanted with Parliament and with Cromwell and spent two weeks in prison for his remarks. You can read more about that here in this article by Barbara Dunn, via the Urania Trust.
The plague and fire predictions appeared as a series of “hieroglyphic images” in his book of 1651 Monarchy or No Monarchy in England, meaning they were published fourteen years before the events they predicted came true.
Lilly used a coded astrological language, expressing concern that his judgement might be “concealed from the vulgar,” meaning he only wished those who understood the astrology to be able to decode them. He wasn’t addressing his predictions to the general public.
What would have been the response if he had? How could anyone have used this information? He was publishing for scholarly purposes, paying it forward
French astrologer, Andre Barbault, who died in 2019, predicted the 2020 pandemic back in June 2011. No. He didn’t call it coronavirus. He did not specify details. What he did was to identify the planetary patterns, which previous events in history suggested, correlated with these kinds of events.
Barbault identified notable times in history when the concentration or bunching together of the five slower moving outer planets coincided with epidemics, wars and natural catastrophes, eg, floods, earthquakes. For example, in 1347 the planets Jupiter, Pluto and Uranus formed a triple conjunction in the astrological sign of Aries while Saturn and Neptune, the other slow planets, were nearby in the signs of Pisces and Aquarius.
Barbault noted that in January 2020, Saturn and Jupiter were in a tight conjunction aspect in Capricorn and Jupiter was relatively close by in the same astrological sign.
M Barbault was not a doom merchant. He pointed out that big things, good things could rise from the disruption of such events, and that the Renaissance had been the phoenix to rise out of the Black Death.
However…
“The slaughter engendered a terrible panic, which manifested in punitive self flogging and the massacres of Jews and lepers who were held responsible for the plague.”
When pandemics happen, as they have roughly every century, there is enough time in between them for people not to remember what it meant on the ground, attempting containment, and there has always been a conspiracy theory, different each timebut involving a powerful ‘they’ and sometimes a scapegoat- someone to ‘blame.’
Back to the theme of ‘psychics keeping schtum’ …. in one of Barbault’s books, Planetary Cycles Mundane Astrology, he explained why he often shut himself away “in a remote, faraway place where you can’t guess what’s going on in the world around you. I had to rid myself of illusions.”
But in this modern, secular world, although Barbault may be disbelieved or his predictions dismissed as vague or coincidental, but at least he was not in danger of a criminal conviction on account of his published astrology. Unlike Lilly.
In 1666, after the fire, Lilly was summoned to appear before a Commons committee to explain himself, on suspicion of arson. If he was not an arsonist, how did he ‘know’ about the fire so long beforehand, to have published these predictions back in 1651? His book had come to the government’s attention following the discovery of an anti-government plot which had used an almanac of Lilly’s to identify their most auspicious dates for action.
He explained as follows: Source: Rubedo Press an article published 26 March 2020.
“I was desirous, according to the best knowledge God had given me, to make enquiry by the art I studied [i.e., astrology], what might from that time happen unto the Parliament and nation in general. At last, having satisfied myself as well as I could, and perfected my judgment therein, I thought it most convenient to signify my intentions and conceptions thereof, in forms, shapes, types, hieroglyphics, etc. without any commentary, that so my judgment might be concealed from the vulgar, and made manifest only unto the wise. I herein imitating the examples of many wise philosophers who had done the like. Having found that the city of London should be sadly afflicted with a great plague, and not long after with an exorbitant fire, I framed these two hieroglyphics as represented in the book, which in effect have proved very true.”
These seem pretty explicit, published so many years ahead of the real time events, but that’s easy to say with hindsight and without reference to the book in its entirety to see what was readily accessible to the understanding of contemporary readers not versed in astrology. Faced with an opaque text, and lack of apparent context the significance of the pictures may not have been apparent.
The committee, with reservations, accepted the Great Fire as an act of God.
Lilly didn’t ‘know’ of course. Not as such. Astrologers don’t know as such, any more than Tarot readers or any other practitioners of divination know as such. But they think they recognize something, and that they understand what they are looking at, and this is what they can share.
Lilly showed further ‘Independency’ when his landlord wished him to leave his house, being frightened of the poor people who had started coming to see Lilly for various help and treatments that he offered…like many astrologers of the time he had some apothecary’s knowledge.
“Now I come unto the year 1665, wherein that horrible and devouring plague so extremely raged in the city of London. 27th of June 1665, I retired into the country to my wife and family, where since I have wholly continued, and so intend by permission of God. I had, before I came away, very many people of the poorer sort frequented my lodging, many whereof were so civil, as when they brought waters, viz. urines, from infected people, they would stand purposely at a distance. I ordered those infected, and not like to die, cordials, and caused them to sweat, whereby many recovered. My landlord of the house was afraid of those poor people, I nothing at all. He was desirous I should be gone. He had four children: I took them with me into the country and provided for them. Six weeks after I departed, he, his wife, and man-servant died of the plague.“
Historically, a pandemic usually lasts 3-4 years. We are in Year 2 and we have vaccines. But we also have air travel. My cards have indicated it is likely that we will still be dealing with this pandemic situation at least until March -June 2022, and that will not mean the end of it either before it peters out to a generally ‘manageable’ risk. But it will take some time to see its full effects via Long Covid and other damage.
The World card as shown here is from The Legacy of The Divine Tarot, illustrator Ciro Marchetti
I was previously over-optimistic April 2020, when the chances of a second lock-down looked about 50:50, and I was hopeful that we might escape it.
I tend to be a glass half full person though I am myself living with a chronic health challenge, a form of autoimmune arthritis that started in my twenties. Sometimes I have less energy available for predictive exercises.
At other times, as with anything, any tarot reader or other psychic practitioner may just feel, sufficient unto the day. Why make a noise unless someone is asking?
Someone asked me recently, did I bet on the footie when Chelsea played Man City in the UEFA Champions League Final in Porto?
I do not bet. I don’t follow football, only now and then, and I don’t gamble. I do look at it in the cards sometimes but his is just for exercise, and to test myself.
Il Matrimonio grassed me up once and told other Dover Athletic fans what I had said to him about the result. That Dover Athletic would win against Blackpool. A Dover newspaper got hold of this anecdote when the fans got home again, celebrating, and printed the story, and fortunately I got it right, so it was funny, and all was well that ended well. But who needs that kind of publicity.
Prognostication, psychic divination and forecasting requires us to look, then to go down a hole, then to come up again and think.
This is not the same thing as a totally unsolicited psychic experience which comes out of the blue. However such psychic moments can arise on the back of reading the cards. Divination can open the ‘door.’
In general, a psychic experience or insight comes AT us right out of the blue, and may seem entirely random and without purpose, at least, at the time.
Divination sends us to do a job in tooled-up, going purposefully into the blue. Or at least that’s the theory.
The Full Moon on Wednesday 26 May 2021 will be not only the biggest super moon of the year, but also a lunar eclipse, when the moon turns a reddish colour and is nicknamed a Blood Moon.
A super moon is a full moon at its perigee, it’s closest approach to the Earth. A lunar eclipse happens when the full moon dips into the Earth’s shadow and there is a change in colour as sunlight scattered around the edges of the Earth, is seen falling on the surface of the Moon.
We are in Gemini season, astrologically (not astronomically speaking) and the full moon is rising in its opposite zodiac sign, Sagittarius, which rules the ninth house of far travel, learning, prophecy and philosophy.
Sagittarius is ruled by Jupiter, a benefic planet, but an eclipse represents the shadow side of Jupiter, and then he can be a big bully.
Eclipse or no eclipse, there are enough bullies going stamp-a-bout on the world stage right now. Davids are getting battered, if not outright slaughtered by Goliaths in a tragic listing of ethnic and other minority groups. The weak are being sent to the wall in front of the watching world.
To the ancients, lunar eclipses were generally viewed as ominous.
“The ancient Mesopotamians… saw lunar eclipses as an assault on the moon, says Krupp. But in their stories, the assailants were seven demons.
Traditional cultures linked what happened in the sky to circumstances on Earth, he says. And because the king represented the land in Mesopotamian culture, the people viewed a lunar eclipse as an assault on their king. “We know from written records [that Mesopotamians] had a reasonable ability to predict lunar eclipses,” says Krupp. So in anticipation of an eclipse, they would install a surrogate king intended to bear the brunt of any attack.
“Typically, the person declared to be king would be someone expendable,” Krupp says. Though the substitute wasn’t really in charge, he would be treated well during the eclipse period, while the actual king masqueraded as an ordinary citizen. Once the eclipse passed, “as you might expect, the substitute kings typically disappeared,” Krupp says, and may have been dispatched by poisoning.”
Nice. It is suggested they hoped or believed this ‘healed the moon.’
‘Heavy the head that wears the crown.’
Even for just a day or two. While the idea of being expendable in the grand scheme…quite a thought, isn’t it, in this age of individualism.
Julius Caesar, a superbly capable person; a self-made man, and a military and political high achiever, was perhaps naturally dismissive of such things, but this healthy scepticism also proved most unfortunate. Had he listened to Spurinna the Haruspex (and Spurinna also has his ear close to the ground) and had he listened to his wife, Calpurnia…both of whom warned him, or had he exercise a little more imagination, he might have avoided the fatal trap. It was after all, time sensitive. The assassins had only a short window.
The day of his assassination, he had actually promised Calpurnia not to leave the house, after she begged him not to, after she had a terrible dream, but then an old friend coaxed him out…a traitor ten times the Judas that Brutus was.
Young Marcus Brutus was in on it, of course, but the worst betrayal was another man, an old friend of Caesar’s: Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus, a distant cousin of Marcus Brutus though Shakespeare pretty much left him out of the story.
Decimus came to call, telling Caesar, come along to the senate meeting. No doubt they had a few laughs, when Caesar said no, I’m staying home today. I promised the missus….she’s a bit worried, you know, and Decimus teased him about it. He and Decimus went back a long way. What Caesar didn’t understand was that Decimus bore him a grudge and the plotters had sent him to dig Caesar out.
Machiavelli had much to say about old friends who bear us a grudge. Caesar had given Decimus many rewards, but denied him a particular one he had wanted.
‘Hey, there, Spurinna’, Caesar said on his way to the forum, with his pal Decimus, ‘the Ides of March are come!’
‘Aye, Caesar,’ said Spurinna, ‘but they are not gone’.
He had actually warned Caesar to beware the thirty day period leading up to and ending on the Ides of March.
Sometimes…timing is everything, just as, behind the wheel a split second can be the difference between life and death. 1/5 of a second’s distraction at the wheel, fiddling with your radio or sat-nav or whatever, and taking your eyes off the road, that’ll easily do it.
Modern western astrology views a lunar eclipse as more potentially disruptive than necessarily ominous.
Eclipses bring sudden events, they suggest, and surprises. New things come to light. This could mean a liberation, a eureka moment.
This Full moon and its eclipse in Sagittarius, a mutable fire sign, is symbolic of fireworks or sudden eruptions of cosmic molten lava. Maybe not only cosmic but entirely earthly.
Gaia is unsettled. The sun is entering a new cycle.
It appears this new solar cycle…which is tending ultimately to the cooling of the Earth….occurred December 2019, when the global pandemic began in Wuhan.
(The UK also held a general election December 2019.)
It is all too easy to join dots and see patterns where perhaps none meaningfully exists. But why should life on earth not feel physical effects at some level.
Harking back to the doings of Humankind, and mindful of the superseded superstitions of the ancients (or their observations, based on many data correlations) who might be seen as a ‘ruler at risk’, or as a ‘substitute ruler’ at the time of this approaching eclipse?
A few possible scenarios come to mind at this present time, as I am sure they do for many others.
Also just co-incidentally, and maybe this will not amount to much in the end, though maybe it will, and while we are thinking of the power of a grudge, Dominic Cummings appearance before a select committee at 9.30 AM on this day of a lunar eclipse could hardly come at a better – or worse time- for the UK government, or PM Boris Johnson.
So particular a coincidence, one could almost imagine someone senior on the select committee had consulted a horary astrologer as to the timing of this session, just as Queen Elizabeth 1 consulted Dr John Dee in determining the most auspicious date for her coronation.
But who here, might such an astrologer have been working to help?
No-one does this kind of thing nowadays, some might say. Well, they might be surprised to discover who still uses these kinds of services today, and not only in personal matters, and why; for an extra edge, an extra inside track in professional and business affairs…and perhaps more.
26 May, Dominic Cummings is expected to launch a damaging critique of the government’s handling of the Covid crisis, while wishing to stress, he has said, that these mistakes are not necessarily to be seen as the personal fault of the PM in such unprecedented circumstances.
The mainstream media is going to town, can barely contain its glee, and many doubtless have a clear opinion on how they would have handled the pandemic better, had they been in the driving seat, and on how other countries have handled it so much better.
Historically, pandemics have lasted 3-4 years. We are in Year 2. I looked at this a few weeks ago, and my cards suggested that, looking at this problem on a global level, we are likely to be dealing with it at least until May-June 2022.
This does not necessarily mean we will be seeing lock-downs until that point. My question to the Tarot was, when will we see that this pandemic has substantially ended, looking at this on a global level. I drew cards in a line, one card per quarter, and I was looking out for the appearance of The World Card.
Why? Because this is a global issue, and because The World card signifies the end of a cycle. Completion.
The World Card from The Legacy of The Divine Tarot, Ciro Marchetti
The World card appeared for the quarter representing May-June 2022.
It may not be Britain, or Europe or the US that are still struggling with it, and I was not asking about the short to medium term economic consequences, which in previous readings, looked more optimistic than one might expect.
But it does look that the pandemic is still high on the agenda well into 2022. It may be northern India and other places. It is still with us, on its way out, but not yet quite reduced to an endemic level. As ever, only Time will tell but that’s what it looked like to me. Some may feel this is too far off, others, not unreasonably, given the historical pattern, that it’s still year 3, and possibly still too soon, vaccines notwithstanding. Especially if people start getting back on planes too soon, in anything like the numbers they did before.
Eclipses: Omens?
The ancient regarded lunar eclipses are omens of disaster. Sagittarius is a lively, freewheeling, life and soul of the party, but also prophetic sign. No- one tells Sagittarius what to do. It does its own thing. The eclipse pushes it into a box in a manner of speaking, into the shadow, and it is liable to come out spoiling for a fight. We have a lot of extremely vocal secular messiahs and missionaries flexing their muscles in respect of various social issues at present.
On a minor note, Il Matrimonio is at the moment of writing trying to find out why the lights have blown in the wardrobe. Is it the fuse box? No. Has a bulb blown, why have they all blown? The hunt continues.
The Moon card in the Tarot
The Moon from The Gilded Tarot, Ciro Marchetti
The Moon card stands for, well, the Moon obviously, and the tides, floods, cycles, hormones, fertility, dreams, illusions, deception, psychic experiences, ghosts, danger in travel, contagion, poison/food-poisoning.
Eastern astrologers may suggest we do not try to look at an eclipse directly….that it may bring bad luck. This may be sensible advice just at the common sense level.
We don’t need an eclipse to remind us nothing stays the same. But if we do need that reminder, well, sooner or later we are going to get it, big time, with or without an eclipse.
You may not wish to click or sign up to cookies, but if that doesn’t worry you, this page via space.com provides links to watch the eclipse live:
Tuesday 11 May, was a New Moon in Taurus. A New moon is the optimal time for new launches, say the lunar calendars, while Taurus is all about beauty, security, and the sensory delights and material comforts of life, also the status quo.
There were plenty of new launches all right, and challenges to a current status quo. Lightning struck more ways than one. A new peak of tragedy in Gaza, seemingly never to be resolved, no peace without an agreement on justice, the skies raining missiles, the death toll rising, children killed inside Gaza, a whole family today,and a little baby.
Locally, close to my own home in Lancashire in the UK, a little boy was tragically killed, struck by lightening, while he was out doing football training. Jordan was only nine, clearly a very nice little boy, and well known locally, and a big Liverpool FC fan, already known for his charity endeavours. RIP, little lamb.
Junior Sprog’s young man meanwhile, had been up to his waist in his fish pond about half an hour before this horribly tragic event, doing a spot of DIY, installing a new filter for his beloved koi carp. I told her, half- joking, he needed to come out of there. He was at risk of being struck by lightning. But the storm’s gone, she said. Well, yes, it had, just about. The hail had stopped but the sky was peculiar, ominous, the conditions ripe.
It looked like that scene from Independence Day, said Il Matrimonio, the scene when the aliens arrive, creating clouds as they hover on their coordinates across the world’s cities, waiting the moment to strike.
I have written about The Tower card more than once before in previous postings here on this blog.
From The Golden Tarot, Kat Black
Well, it’s a biggie, and generally, I am not pleased to see it. The Tower card and I have had direct encounters before, and they were not fun.
But that’s by the by. Keep your friends close, as they say, and your enemies closer. Let’s take another look at it today, The Tower, Major Arcana number 16. Sandwiched -entirely by design between The Devil, Major Arcana 15, and its obsession, dependency, desire, frustration and rage, and The Star, Major Arcana 17, cool, impersonal, harbinger of hope and recovery, humanitarian but oh, so logical at times, prone to abstractions and ideological dogmatism (as today Saturn moves out of Aquarius; an ideologue’s dream and dogmatic stellar combination if ever there was one, but sadly moves back in again during July 2021.)
Countless numbers are living The Tower experience right now.
Some high profile practitioners have made it something of a mission to intellectualize and sanitize the Tarot, and to educate other readers to present its manifold truths in purely metaphorical or psychological, sometimes Jungian terms.
So The Tower card symbolizes a great awakening. Pride comes before a fall and the truth will come out. And ultimately, this is good, they may say, because what is lost can be scrapped as not fit for purpose or rebuilt on better foundations. It is for the spiritual good. Good for one’s soul.
I agree, up to a point. I am all in favour of looking for the silver linings in any cloud, and of the notion of putting myself and others in charge of our own destinies, at least assuming responsibility for our own decisions and the consequences of those decisions.
But readers of the Tarot limit themselves in stipulating HOW the Tarot is to be used. The Tarot is a tool kit. A flying carpet for thinking and feeling beyond the normal personal and social boundaries.
There is no standardization in this field, and it needs to stay that way. There is no such thing as ‘A’ Tarot reader. There is only the particular individual reader and their own service remit and their own way of working.
There is a difference between articulating the professional ethics of reading and promoting an ideological agenda to ditch the Tarot as a futurist or fortune-telling vehicle in favour of its use in counselling, or for ‘spiritual development.’
It needs to be recognized, or else the reader risks being guilty of hubris themselves, not every ‘Tower’ (or Devil) experience, not every destructive event necessarily has a beneficial outcome or valuable Life Lesson attached, or indeed anywhere in prospect. What were the ‘lessons’ for the parents of the child victims of the Moors murderers?
Grace is the sacred Grail in greatest grief that no-one can deliver to another person. No counsellor can do that, no priest and no psychic reader, though a reader may perceive occasional intimations.
Not every question has an answer. This was how I came to study the Tarot, after years wrestling with a seemingly insoluble and relentlessly invasive health problem after my right knee went out from under me one day, and I went down on my face in the road. Sometimes there are no solutions for the cards that Life may deal us. There are only our own, unique responses in coping, which cannot be prescribed by a reader, but may possibly be divined.
The ‘higher truths’ of our existence are not intrinsically more sacred than the bottom line. And, ‘God does not disdain to serve the body’, as Julian of Norwich once said.
People ask about money, work, homes, jobs, travel, studies, prospects, family, other real people they know. They want to know about outcomes, timings, reasons -specifics, if this is possible.
The Tower may also mean:-
–A Tower– literally, as in the Tower of Pisa
–Tuesday- named after Tyr/Tew the Norse god equivalent of Mars which rules Tuesdays. If your question is when and you draw the tower, it maybe a Tuesday or during Aries late March-late April or Scorpio late October-late November because these signs are ruled by Mars. Or it may mean that it will happen very suddenly.
–Rain, wind or storm not only has The Tower card forecast rain or a thunderstorm on more than one occasion, -and once this was very welcome, during a heat-wave. One Friday evening it forecast a storm which turned out to be an actual tiny, typically British tornado, which came screaming down my road next morning at 8.30 and neatly, tidily flattened a neighbours garden wall.
-Bad news, a quarrel, shocks, earthquakes, traffic accidents, the collapse of building or other large structures, bankruptcy, job loss, relations breakups, marriage breakdown, accidents, sudden medical emergencies eg stroke, heart attack.
-Stroke, heart attack, fit, seizure
The Tower might be saying, ‘dognabbit, you need to check your tyre/tire pressures!’
The Origin Story
The Tower card, derivative of the Blasted Tower, the House of God or War, is ruled by the red planet Mars, ruler of the zodiac signs of Aries and Scorpio, with powerful mythic and archetypal associations, not least The Tower of Babel.
Mars is the planet of outward activity, high animal spirits, passion – courage and sometimes -a state of war.
Rider-Waite Tarot Deck
The Tower of Babel or The Tower and the City is an origin myth from Genesis though actually older, that tried to explain why the world’s peoples speak different languages.
According to the story, a united human race in the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating eastward, comes to the land of Shinar, in Northern Mesopotamia.
They build a city, so far so good. But then they decide to build a tower tall enough to reach heaven. God doesn’t like that, and confuses their speech so that they can no longer understand each other, babbling on…and now they are at cross-purposes and can’t complete the building works, and they fall out with one another and go their separate ways, and end up scattered around the world.
God is reacting to an act of hubris. The word Hubris is from Greek, and means “excessive pride, violating the bounds set for humans.”
Greek myth was very big on hubris.
BUT still readers need to face it, working with the full range of possibilities, that The Tower may be speaking, not figuratively, not metaphorically, but entirely literally, whether we are talking past, present or possible future.
If a reader draws The Tower, they carefully examine the surrounding cards, and if they perceive clear and present danger, may not say so in such terms, but may present any advice for risk reduction or risk avoidance in a calm, matter of fact manner, ‘talking in terms of ‘just to be on the extra safe side.’
I once drew The Tower alongside The Knight of Swords reversed, and, based on other cards, including the Four of Wands (home improvements) got a sinking feeling that the client was at risk of a nasty fall. I asked her, was she doing any decorating? She was. And had she been climbing up on a ladder to do so?
Yes, she said, but she had not come to see me to discuss this. She wanted to know about Mr X.
I persisted with a warning to be extra careful if climbing up on anything. I would have felt negligent in my responsibility towards her had I detected this risk and not said anything. She expressed mild impatience. I left it there and we continued with the analysis of the main issue of the day.
About three weeks later, she was painting, standing on a windowsill, and slipped and fell, fracturing her hip, and had to go to hospital as an inpatient. She was many weeks in recovery and months in physio afterwards (she was a lady in her late sixties) How do I know this? She came herself to tell me.
Life is just deeply sad sometimes. When something life changing has just happened to someone, and they have experienced a Tower experience at full blast, they may not be ready to hear that it was for the best, that it will prove to be a liberation, a blessing in disguise, that their previous existence had outworn its purpose.
It may be a time for on the one hand, practicalities, possibly deeply unpleasant, and on the other, well, in such times we reach for comfort, warmth, solace, beauty. Poetry, essentially. The common treasure chest of poetry, music, hymns, prayers, I will lift up mine eyes, The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, a season to every purpose under heaven, and so on, depending on the person’s own cultural background.
When someone dies, they leave behind mourners, living memories and a dead body, to be handled, dealt with, honoured, visited if there is a grave site, but ultimately, to be reclaimed by the earth or the elements, just as we were first made from the elements released from dying stars.
The Tower, like The Death card reminds us that nothing is for ever. Suffering is part of life, and is the price we paid not to live forever as single- celled organisms. Clones. Death was the first ever Faustian pact, the price of evolution and specialization into personal individuality. Suffering was the price of individual consciousness and sensation. Fear was the price of suffering. Hunger was the price of appetite. Grief and anxiety were the price of love.
‘This too shall pass.’ the saying goes. This, from a speech by Abraham Lincoln in 1859, “It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words `And this, too, shall pass away.’ ‘How much it expresses!” Lincoln went on, “How chastening in the hour of pride. How consoling in the depths of affliction!”
Abraham Lincoln, 1853, attrib Alexander Gardner
Lincoln was so right. But it’s not like that at once. Not at first. The bucket must first hit the bottom of the well before it can be drawn back up again.
That is why in a tarot deck, The Tower card is followed by the healing of The Star. But healing and recovery, new Hope, like Truth, like Nature itself, can be as stern in its honesty and its travail as it is a marvel, mysterious and beautiful.
“Retained EU law could cost our shipbuilding industry billions even after transition and MPs have NO plans to fix it.”
I drew a card in response to this tweet, and funnily enough, but then again, this is entirely typical of the Tarot, I drew one of the maritime cards, The Six of Swords. The Tarot will mirror the question or the issue with the very first card. Another maritime card is The Three of Wands (exports.)
The vessel as depicted in the Tarot is a mighty tiny maritime vessel, I grant you. Here in the Rider-Waite deck it is a mere punt or gondola.
The Rider-Waite Deck, A.E Waite
I am partial to this card. It is a solemn card, with a measure of regret or sorrow attached, but it tells a story of acceptance, resilience, endurance and vision.
The Six of Swords is traditionally a card of losses and mourning, but also recovery and convalescence from sickness or other setbacks. It is a card of learning, and in real life readings this has often meant distance learning, online, or with an element of travel to universities, conferences etc.
The Six of Swords is travel, exploration and discovery, charting a new course. It is independence, self reliance. See the figure at the helm. S/he has autonomy, steering east towards the rising sun (The suit of Swords correlates with the compass direction of east.)
In responding to the tweet from Scientists for Britain, it seemed to me The Six of Swords was doing two jobs. Of all the cards I could have drawn from the 78 cards in the Tarot deck, this is THE card at once capable of painting a future in respect of both the global and national pandemic problem, and telling a story of the British maritime simultaneously.
Pandemics historically last 3-4 years, we are in Year 2. But we have vaccines the governments did not have in 1918, when they were not completely certain whether they were dealing with a bacterium or virus.
The Six of Swords is not particular to Britain. Of course not. I don’t mean to suggest anything of the sort. But I am a reader in the UK. This is my home, and the card is drawn within the context of that headline tweet. If you are a reader in another country, of course this card could equally represent your own maritime traditions and industry.
This card, more than any other except for the Nine of Pentacles, has appeared again and again in my own readings to do with the future of Britain, drawn before and since Brexit, and the 2016 Referendum in which Britain voted to leave the EU.
The Gilded Tarot, Ciro Marchetti
But roll on six-seven months, as of today, 6 May 2021 the maritime issue of Fishing is nothing like resolved, post-Brexit.
Talks with Norway recently stalled as the North Sea cod are heading ever further northward in our increasingly warmer waters. UK likes cod (There is a slight north-south division of preference in the UK, cod for the south, haddock for the north )
The Norwegians like blue whiting, which they access in our waters but only in the early months of the year. If I understand this correctly, that window has passed for this year. Once more unto the breach then, but meantime it is not good news for many in the UK fishing industry.
Then France made threats to cut off Jersey’s electricity in a row over French fishing access to Jersey’s waters. A wonderful advertisement for diplomacy, and a shot across the bows, and a timely caution respecting the wisdom of interdependence in matters of essential security and infrastructure.
Jersey imports 95% of its electricity from France via French state utility EDF.
This happening as EDF is working on a mega contract at the UK’s Hinkley Point. And it all looks wonderful. Tickety- boo. But not a few private consumers in the UK might now be wondering if they would be prudent to make changes, or daft not to, reviewing their choice of domestic energy supplier.
Then a fleet of small French fishing boats arrived in Jersey waters last night, threatening to blockade the harbour at St Helier in a protest about the new fishing licence arrangements post-Brexit. And two British naval patrol vessels, HMS Tamar and HMS Severn were ordered to Jersey to monitor the situation.
I drew a card before going to bed, asking about the short term outcome, and was pleased to draw The Ten of Cups, a card of hearth and home. Pleased because, to my relief, this domestic card implied a peaceful outcome rather than escalation.
By the by- a coincidence of serendipity, this card of contentment correlates with the last decan of the zodiac sign of Pisces the Fishes.
The Ten of Cups from The Legacy of The Divine Tarot
The French boats left St Helier late this morning, heading home. There were talks in the meantime, but obviously, notwithstanding the Ten of Cups, they remain deeply discontented, as do all involved parties, and the issue is far from resolved as yet.
It would need more than one card to predict the ultimate outcome, the question is so multi-factorial. From whose perspective would I be asking? I would need to look at Norway and France as separate questions, and may do that at a later date, but though I am primarily writing to demonstrate the Tarot being used in ‘real life,’ people’s livelihoods are at stake, and feel it would not be right to do so at this point. It might look like good news, it might not.
Nor is this to paint the small French fishermen as the ‘bad guys,’ any more than I see Jersey as the bad guy, regulating access to its own waters in protecting the livelihoods of its own fishermen. Our own fishermen don’t tend to go in for protests ….’manif’…but when it comes right down to it, they are all in the same boat.
One has not only sympathy with the French fishermen as with the Jersey and other UK fishermen, but respect is due to them all; extremely brave, tough, hardworking souls.
“It may seem absurd that the Royal Navy is having to defend Jersey from marauding French fishermen. But what’s truly extraordinary is that the French government has supported them. And, with an election on the way, there’s every chance Emmanuel Macron has more nationalist posturing up his sleeve”.
The mayhem and misery of the cross Channel lorry blockades at Christmas, then the row about vaccines, now this. There is surely more to come before things find their new footing, as they will, says the Six of Swords.
This is a card of progress. It is only that progress is not easy. But when is it?
Good News
Those monstrous leviathans, the factory ships are another issue, and here is -hopefully- better news. The European Parliament and EU member states came to an agreement 13 February over new technical conservation measures for fishing, which includes an EU-wide ban on the controversial pulse trawling starting from mid-2021.
“Electric-pulse fishing was originally banned by the E.U. in 1998, but the Netherlands won an exemption in 2006 that allowed it to conduct experimentation and innovation to improve pulse beam trawl systems. As a result, Dutch pulse beam trawlers have been operating on a large scale since 2011. However, in August 2019, electric pulse fishing was permanently banned, with a transition period allowed until July 2021.
Under the terms of the new regulation, new licenses cannot be granted to any vessel during that transition, but the Butendiek BRA 2 was granted a derogation by German authorities for its new rig, and will continue to fish until the end of July 2021″.SOURCE
Other good news
August last year, 2020, the iconic Ship Yard in Appledore in North Devon reopened after it closed in 2019. It was bought by Harland and Wolff owner Infrastrata for £7 million with 350 jobs, and its special angle will be ‘Green’ shipping.
From The Legacy of the Divine Tarot, illustrator Ciro Marchetti
Maritime Britain has a lot of lost ground (water) to make up. It is by no stretch any longer one of the big boys, but greater self-reliance is the bottom line in a volatile world of competing interests, however reliable the bonds of mutual cooperation and friendship
The Six of Swords suggests that slowly, surely we are and WILL be building more again, and hopefully this will mean more new fantastic STEM apprenticeship schemes for young people, while – according to this article about Merseyside the message was diversification.
Maritime will build back with the emphasis on innovation. The innovative specification of the new Sir David Attenborough shows the amazing things that can now be done.
It is a very special place on the seabed, The Dogger Bank and every living thing it supports. Not to be chewed up and churned to bits by factory ships.
I don’t care if it means I have to pay more for fish n chips. Not because I’m filthy rich. I ain’t. But. Fair dos. Count the price of everything, respect the value of nothing.
Read here re the discovery of what could just possibly be the oldest boat-building yard in the world…a platform 8,000 years old off the Isle of Wight.
The Six of Swords correlates with the element of Fixed Air- Intellect -and the Second Decan of Aquarius, dates 30 January- 8 February
Solemnly she takes the helm, standing alone, fixing her gaze ahead, symbolizing here not only the spirit of the melded, mingled, much-invaded Britannia, but spirits and legends originating with the Akkadians, Sumerians, Babylonians, the Greeks and the Star goddess Astraea, and Dike, Roman goddess of Justice.
The Six of Swords is both Air and Water (possibly fog, too cool for steam)
It is associated with Mercury, governing Intelligence, communications and trade (Think Hermes)
And it talks about Science and R & D. This means UK Space Tech too. Ships of the air.
Till next time. I’ll leave you with this ship launch- very Six of Swords.
That massive welding jobbie is nothing to worry about- apparently.
Comments:
“I must have skipped ship building in school but surely making it in two halves like that makes it weaker?”
“No, modern welding tech means the joins are not weak (the rest of the ship is welded sections – they just did the final one outdoors).
BUILT IN BRITAIN: HMS Glasgow, the Royal Navy's first City Class Type 26 frigate, has rolled out of BAE's Govan shipyard for the first time. The Type 26 programme supports more than 4,000 jobs across the UK. #UKmfg🇬🇧 pic.twitter.com/5UfWBKo48m
Tarot cards: The Hierophant- Tradition, Orthodoxy, Received wisdom, Academia, Medicine, a teacher or mentor.
Minor Arcana cards: the Five, Six and Seven of Pentacles/Coins/Disks.
Astronomy
Wiki
Taurus (Latin for Bull) is a large and prominent constellation between Aries to the west and Gemini to the east. It ranks 17th in size of the 48 Greek constellations recorded by Ptolemy in his introduction to the Mathematics of the Heavens, the Almagest, written AD 150.
The stars of Taurus depict the face, horns and forepart of the bull’s body. His face is made up of a triangular cluster of stars called The Hyades. There are no legs, the Bull is imagined half submerged. He is the mythical Bull from the Sea. A second cluster of stars, The Pleiades, also known as The Seven Sisters, swarm like bees above his back.
The best time to see Taurus is during December and January. By March and April, you might see it in the west in the twilight.
To find Taurus first you need to find the three stars of Orion’s belt, happily, one of the easiest things to see on a clear winter’s night.
Now look up to the right, looking north-east, See a bright orange-red star? That’s Aldebaran, ‘The Follower,’ a red giant, the biggest, brightest star in the constellation, the Eye of the Bull, glaring in the direction of Orion.
Should the Bull escape his heavenly pen, said an ancient Arabic legend, he would stampede the universe to pieces, and it would be the end of things for all time. We had better hope hope nothing upsets him up there in the celestial meadows. Let’s hope he’s got plenty of buttercups and clover up there to keep him happy, and he doesn’t get bitten by horseflies.
A truly freaky factoid ….” in about two million years, the NASA space probe Pioneer 10, now heading out into deep space, will pass Aldebaran.” SOURCE
If that isn’t enough to make one need a quiet lie-down with a cold flannel on one’s head, I don’t know what is.
Wiki Commons: the horns, face and the giant red star, Aldebaran, the Eye of the Bull, glaring menacingly in the direction of Orion the Hunter
Ancient History
Carving of a Bison, France, thought to be 15000-20000 years old
I am suspicious of that bison. It looks as though it has a ring in its nose.
Taurus has been recognized as a sky bull since at least the Early Bronze Age. Historians think the figure of a bull was first discerned in the stars by the Sumerians around 3000 BC, and was recorded in cuneiform by the Babylonians.
In modern Western (Tropical) astrology Aries The Ram is counted the first sign of the western zodiac, ushering in the spring (vernal) equinox along with the first lambs.
But 4000 years ago it was Taurus, not Aries that coincided with the vernal equinox. The reason this is no longer the case is due to the wobble of the Earth and an effect called the precession of the equinoxes.
Taurus overhead marked the start of the calving season. and for Babylonian astronomers Taurus was the first sign of the Zodiac, ‘the Bull in front,’- leading from the front. The Bull was also the first sign for the early Hebrews, who called it Aleph, as in A, the first letter of the alphabet.
The bull, like its ancestor, the wild auroch, is a potent symbol of strength and fertility, especially masculine virility, but where Leo the lion, represents wild strength, Taurus the bull is domesticated, controlled strength, as harnessed in oxen or a bull with a ring through his nose.
The dairy bulls, breeds such as the Charolais for instance, are famously aggressive where the black bulls used in bull-fighting are by comparison, more easygoing.
Before agriculture, we hunted beef in the shape of the auroch. Aurochs, the fiercer, wild ancestors of the modern bull, were painted in the Lascaux caves in France, in paintings thought to date from 15000 BC.
The most famous section of the Lascaux caves in the Dordogne in France is the Hall of the Bulls, featuring four black bulls, or aurochs. One of the bulls is 5.2 metres (17 ft) long, the largest animal discovered so far in cave art.
This was the time of year of the great migrations of the aurochs; a dangerous but potentially highly rewarding hunting opportunity. Not only did the aurochs provide the luxury of meat, but the horns and hide had many uses.
Lascaux
In the UK it is thought that Salisbury plain was a Lek -a mating ground of the auroch, and this is part of the story behind the building of Stonehenge on this site. They massed here, protected from the ambush of the sabre- toothed tiger by its huge wide open views.
Then hunting gave way to farming of animals, guaranteeing supplies with less risk attached. The first ever cattle, goats, sheep, and pig- farming began in the so-called ‘Fertile Crescent;’ a region covering eastern Turkey, Iraq, and south-western Iran about 12000 years ago.
Taurus glares at Orion The Hunter, but then we stopped being hunters and became farmers, and no-one works harder than a farmer, and many care deeply for their animals too, but where is his legend in the skies?
These farming practices spread westwards, and in time had a genetic effect on the human population, with the sudden appearance of a gene mutation that enabled humans to digest raw cow’s milk. It’s not known when this first occurred, but it probably first happened in colder Northern Europe, and today 35 % of the global human population can digest the milk sugar, lactose, as adults.
The bull was considered a divine animal throughout antiquity and was a symbol of the moon, fertility, rebirth, and royal power, while today, the Lithuanian word ‘taurus’ means ‘noble.’
There is evidence of bull cults throughout the Mediterranean starting in Anatolia, dating from at least 70000 BC. From the worship of the Apis bull in Egypt, to bull-leaping in Knossos and the sacrificial portrayal in Roman Mithraism, the bull has been an integral part of many diverse and important religious traditions.
The Egyptian goddess Hathor goddess of mothers, was the equivalent of the Greek Aphrodite (not Demeter) and had the ears and horns of a cow, the original Holy or Sacred Cow.
Demeter Vindemiatrix is Virgo, but Aphrodite Venus is Taurus.
Greek legend associated Taurus with the legend of Zeus and Europa, in which the god Zeus, up to his sneaky tricks yet again, disguised himself as a beautiful, gentle white bull, coaxed the princess Europa into climbing on his back, then abducted her, swam away with her to Crete, and made her one of his mistresses. The many gifts Zeus gave Europa included a pet dog that later became the constellation Canis Major. Their children supposedly included Minos, King of Crete, the builder of the Labyrinth and the famous palace at Knossos where the bull games were held.
Bull worship, or rather, the concept of the bull as divine gradually migrated ever westwards and northwards. The Celtic druids held Tauric festivals at least 2000 years ago, and there is archaeological evidence of bull worship near Newcastle and York in the UK.
The Buddha was born when the Full Moon was in Taurus (Vesak) and his birthday is celebrated at the Vesak Festival which occurs on the first Full Moon in Taurus.
Like the Bull himself, the classic Taurus subject, male or female, is generally peaceable, pleasant, even placid. But Taurus will not be disrespected, pushed or driven. Other people can get a shock when Taurus suddenly sees red …they seemed so laid back before ….and they don’t give a lot of warning. The mistake of the other person was in underestimating them, mistaking their good nature for weakness or stupidity once too often.
Bulls cannot physically see red. It is the movement of the toreador’s cape that provokes them, and not the colour. But when the human bull ‘sees’ red, they will either dig in hard, or may charge head on. Taurus in a full-on rage is a ‘bull in a china shop’ – the one Earth sign that will withstand or demolish the opposition of the other more famous ‘fighting’ signs, Aries, Leo, and even Scorpio, its opposite number in the zodiac.
Taurus really, really doesn’t like to fight but won’t be pushed, and doesn’t lose in a fair fight. The bull ring is not a fair fight; nor is the abattoir, that’s the tragedy of the Bull, to be brought low by his physical inferiors.
But if a Taurus is being a naughty bull; unreasonable, misbehaving, or being a ‘bully’ then quietly stand your ground. It should pass. Taurus may sulk but as a rule is not vindictive.
But why upset the Bull? Look at him, quietly grazing. He’s really not looking for trouble.
Uranus in Taurus, March 2019-July 2025
The futurist planet Uranus‘The Great Awakener’- is currently in Taurus and has been there since March 2019 .
And there it will stay, sometimes direct, sometimes retrograde until April 2026.
2021 is less tough than 2021 in some ways, and Jupiter is going to lighten and ease things here and there. But it’s still tough. On a global scale this pandemic seems likely to continue into the early months of 2022 but with more, longer easing off periods in-between.
The last time Uranus was in Taurus was 1934 to 1941. Uranus was in Aries when the stock market crashed in 1929, but the aftermath of this event was felt for years after, first the Great Depression then WW2 broke out in 1939. The UK government introduced food rationing January 1940 – remembering here that Taurus rules agriculture and food production.
This transit saw a rise in women joining the workforce- a necessity with the men away at war—Taurus ruled by Venus is a feminine sign. My grandmother left her job in schools, where she taught biology, and worked in a factory by day and with the ambulance service by night. My mother, born in 1939, was largely cared for by her grandmother while her mother was out working. She barely saw her mother, and far less of her father until she was six and he returned home from naval service at the end of the war, to his civilian job as a museum curator. He was a naturalist, an ornithologist, and a Taurus subject, though not what you’d call a people person. Still, he knew a lot, did a lot, created new exhibitions and new educational opportunities for school children, and this was The Taurean Hierophant at work, sure enough.
A story of the war/post-war generation, but why mention it? Uranus in Taurus is the reason why, a transit in common. This was a point in history with profoundly far reaching consequences. Such patterns of history do not necessarily repeat, or not in the same ways. Uranus in Taurus is not sinister. None of this is to suggest there will be another world war, unless it’s a trade war.
We are not seeing food shortages. But we are being asked to ‘ration’ or do without many things we are used to, or have come to expect as our natural rights. For some this might mean things like overseas holidays, but right now all the signs are– no need for any psychic to say this- that stay-cations are still the safest booking options this summer.
Uranus in Taurus, as we have seen historically, may bring big social changes between now and April 2026, and these may include changes for the better; more sustainable practices in economics, trade and agriculture. The fast food industry, for instance, is relatively new and recent but has with remarkable speed become an everyday way of eating for many people, especially young people who don’t remember a time when it wasn’t there. But Uranus in Taurus suggests the enormous fast food industry is likely to prove non-sustainable maintained on anything like its current scale. The Hierophant = Taurus =Bull = money + meat (think beef-burger)
There is no cause for alarm based on Uranus in Taurus, but there are collective changes, challenges, discomfort and upheaval because Taurus (The Hierophant) is about material basics and creature comforts while Uranus (planet of rebellion) upsets apple carts.
My cards suggest we will somehow avoid a second Great Depression, post-pandemic. But it’s a futurist symbol, Uranus, and signifies new technology as a means of solving problems, and this may bring added social unrest, as with the Luddites, textile workers, followers of a mysterious character called Ned Ludd during the English Industrial revolution.
These men risked, and indeed some suffered, hanging or transportation, smashing the machines that threatened to take away not only their jobs, but actually, their whole way of life. New ways that forced them and their children into a harsh new environment outside the home. That put them on a clock, that cared nothing for their humanity, for their pride, skill, and need to see, or at least share in the story of a job seen through from start to finish. That cared nothing at the start, for their comfort or well-being, or even for their safety. The ‘dark satanic mills’. There are graves of the orphans who worked in them, in towns in West Yorkshire. People laugh at them nowadays, the Luddites, ha ha ha, wretched technophobes, but is it wise to laugh?
Taurus is an artisan.
Facing tempests of dust
I’ll fight on till the end
Creatures of my dreams, raise up and dance with me
A Bull dreams of a meadow. Such is the nature of a bull. No heaven more perfect.
Pandemics run their course, adding their coda to the make-up of the human immune system. ‘Hope springs eternal’, and for many, the Tarot sees new opportunities and good times in the high spring of May. But nature will have its way, in its cruelty and its kindness.
Other months are as beautiful, but what month is more beautiful than May?
The Tarot’s Emperor flags up the spirit of Aries, the Ram of spring, cardinal fire sign, and with it the eternal archetype and image of the Emperor or Patriarch
Our queen is in mourning, and many, many mourn with her. On this day in the season of Aries the Ram, a nation witnesses the passing of Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh, first prince of the realm . He has died at a very good age, peacefully in his own home, but it is suspected he had had cancer, had been ill for longer than we, the public, were told, and in this case could not have escaped considerable discomfort or even suffering.
A long and eventful life, high achievements, gifts, talents and endeavours, also great troubles and sorrows.
Early upheavals, displacement, his family scattered, and further close family losses before he was sixteen. A royal castaway, adrift in Europe, a schoolboy who had to be sent to Britain from Germany, his sister afraid he would get into trouble for goosestepping in the street, a schoolboy, mocking the Nazi salute. An athlete, a naval officer who saw active service against Nazi Germany, who directly saved many lives at sea through his own quick thinking, who held naval rank for 82 years.
Aged 18 Philip passed out from Dartmouth Naval college, and in January 1940 he joined his first posting onboard the veteran, not to say venerable royal Sovereign class battleship, the HMS Ramillies had served in the Great War, and was built 1916.
Prince Philip served four months as a midshipman patrolling the Indian Ocean, escorting troops from Australia to Egypt.
My maternal grandfather later served as a Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve officer on this same ship in 1944, with my mother, his first child, a baby daughter, born December 1939.
Philip was the real deal, a true Renaissance man of many interests; science, space exploration, even UFO’s, wildlife and adventures for the young of the inner cities. One of my own daughters did The Duke of Edinburgh Award and went camping, much to my happiness because I was becoming too disabled to do these sorts of things with her, to walk with her up on the mountains, as I had done in my teens with my family.
He was a horseman, expert carriage driver, author and artist, painter of landscapes, a husband, father and paterfamilias to three younger generations.
All this, we are being told, if we didn’t know about it before.
Less commonly reported, is that Prince Philip was a Gemini sun sign subject; hence his curiosity, intellectual agility, humour and restlessness (also perhaps, mischief) His Moon was in Leo (regal, family man, and there is a certain star quality and charisma with this placement.) The Moon sign is an indicator of the emotional temperament.
His Ascending or Rising sign was in Capricorn, and this represents the outer face of the person…duty, dignity and discipline with a red hot bullsh*t detector, and a firm grasp, always, of the reality of the bottom line.
It is the passing of an era.
The Emperor card and Timing
If you ask ‘when?’ and I draw The Emperor, the event in question is likely to occur during the zodiac sign of Aries, late March-late April.
Did I think it would be today, 9 April, the passing of HRH Prince Philip?
Did I look in my Tarot?
No. I did not look in my cards about this. Given the age and recent health issues of the Prince, this news is not unexpected. All the same, I woke one night while he was in the hospital, and thought of him and the thought flashed through my mind, ‘it won;t be now, while he is in the hospital, but before May.’
We had seen the sadness on the face of Prince Charles on his way to visit his father.
The Emperor, ruled by Mars, is in many ways, the opposite number of another classically masculine archetype, The Hermit, whose planetary ruler is Mercury. Both walk alone. The Hermit has learned many things, understands many things, and will shine a light for others. But the Hermit walks the quieter paths in life, and has to be sought out, while The Emperor feels perhaps even more alone in the eye of the storm in the midst of the machinery of power.
From The Legacy of The Divine Tarot
The Emperor as an Archetype
For all he was a technocrat, Prince Philip had a poet’s perception, and once said that to change hearts and minds on any great matter, one could do nothing without the arts and religion, and we needed to get all the religions of the world on board to protect endangered wildlife.
This aspect in particular, calls forth the vision of the Tarot’s Hermit card. The Emperor commands, enshrines in law, while The Hermit walks the wild places, in communion with the laws of Nature.
But in zodiac terms, The Emperor marks the rule of Aries, fiery sign of spring, and Philip has passed away under the banner of Aries, the royal warrior Ram.
Life is fierce, getting itself born. The unborn must attack or stay unborn. The fields are full of lambs, but lambing is not gentle.
And a ram may attack anyone entering his field, no less than a bull, and people are still killed by rams. If ever a ram knocks you down, you must stay down. Do not try and get up, or it will keep coming at you.
The Ram at this time of year is driven by the fiercest Life imperative, to defend his patch, his ewes, his lambs.
The Ram of Aries is charging at spring full tilt, the fields, the woods, the hills, the rivers and ponds. Spring has sprung out on the pond here, and you can believe it really is ‘Nature red in tooth and claw’. The coots have already lost their first clutch to the depredations of the gulls. The heron lurks almost invisible in the reeds, so perfect is its camouflage against their winter grey, and the reeds have not yet grown back green. That will not happen till the watch of Taurus.
Video courtesy of Major (ret’d) D P Hazeldine
The Emperor in a personal Tarot reading
The Legacy of The Divine Tarot
The appearance of The Emperor card is likely to be turning the conversation to a senior male figure in your life; a father or grandfather, a husband, and often he is older than you, maybe an employer.
This is the ultimate card of masculinity but of course a woman can also be represented by The Emperor card. Male or female, you could be the Emperor yourself, for example, in your role as a business owner, or as a manager, soldier, officer, police officer or in many other roles.
In a more abstract sense, this is a card of ‘rendering unto Caesar.’
We all owe dues somewhere, sometime. We all must pay our dues. We can only take out what has been put in the pot.
But Emperors, though they may wield power, are not free. They themselves owe duty. They are not free and they can be brought down. The regalia of power is in token of service. There is no loyalty without reciprocity.
The Emperor may be a worker in the Civil Service or judiciary. The appearance of this card has several times alerted me to the fact I am sitting with an off-duty police officer, whether male or female.
Once it showed me a judge in the United States.
A client’s son was due in court in the United States. A non-violent offence, a woman had accused him of sexual assault, with potentially very serious consequences for him if found guilty. Not prison, but the client wanted to know the worst, to help herself prepare to support her son and his family, whatever the outcome.
The son had become very depressed waiting for the hearing, had been suspended from his job, a teacher, as was routine in such cases, and banned from seeing his children pending the hearing, and had self-harmed, so the client told me.
I drew three cards in answer to her question. These were Judgement, The Emperor and Justice.
Based on these cards I felt she would would be greatly relieved by the outcome. I told her so and then something very odd happened.
At the very moment I drew the final card, three greetings cards displayed on the top shelf of a tall bookcase suddenly flew out mid-air, almost horizontally into the middle of the room, and fluttered to the floor. No open doors, no open windows. Still there was a draught, presumably, but the client was extremely startled. I was a little startled myself, it is fair to say. The movement of the cards in the air flying off the shelves looked so unnatural.
I could not discount the possibility that we had witnessed a manifestation of psychokinesis given the tension attached to the question, the client’s acutely worried state.
It was many months later before I learned the outcome. The judge had thrown out the case, saying – and these were his actual words apparently, ‘what a crock of sh*t.’
Impersonally, the card signifies government and large corporations organisations, the Armed Forces, the Law, and global or government organisations.
If you are job-hunting and this card comes up, you are likely to find work before long, no matter who the prospective employer may be, while if you have specifically applied to an organisation of this kind, your application looks likely to succeed.
English: Modern bronze statue of Julius Caesar, Rimini, Italy. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Emperor in real life gets many a bad rap. Many a drubbing. Often well deserved.
The Emperor in his negative aspect is a tyrant or a coward, a bully or a petty pedant. A human monster even.
The ongoing events in Myanmar, a military junta killing its own people, its own children, is a real life demonstration of the worst of The Emperor card drawn reversed.
The ambition of Emperors have over and over again been catastrophic for the peace and happiness of their fellow humans.
Marcus Antonius: And Caesar’s spirit, raging for revenge, With Ate by his side come hot from hell, Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war, That this foul deed shall smell above the earth With carrion men, groaning for burial.
The Emperor is but frail and mortal. He has feet of clay. But today, let us think of The Emperor at his very best, in his highest, greatest guise. He is a chevalier, a sheltering tree. Rule with compassion, defender of the small and weak. He is the ardent lover.
He is the one who will fight and die, if that is what it takes, to defend his home and his people. Children and animals are drawn to him, and he is ready to run with them, play like a child.
He represents the path of reason and justice and is ready to uphold it by word and deed. He is active in creating order, fixing, mending, making, inventing, reining in his strength at times, exercising it at others so that order prevails, and not everyone gets splattered with the filth of chaos.
Compassion in action, and not just fine words demands courage, nerve and know-how. For compassion of deed and not just words, you have to look to the strong man or woman. In all the light and shade of his complexity, The Emperor represents ‘our’ own menfolk, those we live with, those we work with. Those we love, befriend, honour, love, respect and appreciate.
Even though sometimes we might feel like giving them a ding round the head with a saucepan. The Empress, after all, has her own dominion.
Red earth of Adam, The Emperor may be self sufficient, but at times, there is a certain loneliness. Born to strive, to quest, to see and not to say all that he sees, trusting few with his thoughts or his deepest fears. Throneless Emperors, every one.
RIP, Prince Philip, the once upon a time baby with not even a bed, never mind a home to call his own. He once described himself as a minor Balkan prince of no importance, and he admired so many other lands, yet made his homeland here, joining that company of other, ancient, but never to be forgotten princes, the conquering and the conquered, of these isles, so many times embattled and invaded.
Here comes spring in the northern hemisphere. The spring of vernal equinox officially occurred today, 20 March 2022. Today we enter the turf of Aries the Ram, marking the beginning of the new astrological year in Western (Tropical) astrology.
Common Associations
Symbol:
Date of Birth: variable 21 March to 20 April
Ruling planet: Mars
Lucky Day: Tuesday
Energy: Yang (Masculine/Extrovert)
Element:Fire
Quality: Cardinal (the start of the season of spring)
Major Arcana Tarot Card: Major Arcana: The Emperor (Masculinity, Fatherhood, Government, Law and Order, Courage, Stability)
Image from The Legacy of the Divine Tarot, illustrator Ciro Marchetti
From The Legacy of the Divine Tarot, Ciro Marchetti
The Tarot court card correlating with Aries is the Queen of Wands. Note the sunflowers and royal lions on her throne, and the black cat, considered lucky. The Queen of Wands is a warm, kindly but shrewd, capable and insightful figure.
The Minor arcana cards associated the cardinal sign Aries are the 2, 3 and 4 of Wands.
The 2 of Wands, ambition, global trade, agreements, career choices, direction, partnerships.
The 3 of Wands, making ready to launch a ‘ship’, or a ship comes in, trade, export, new horizons, exploration, but the timing and the planning has to be right. No rushing this. No cutting corners.
The 4 of Wands: a house becomes a home, a business puts down solid foundations, professional achievements, qualifications.
Astronomy
Aries is a small, rather dim constellation in the Northern Hemisphere between Pisces to its west and Taurus to its east.Imagine the Ram sitting with his head pointing downwards.
The constellation of Aries via Wiki
The brightest star in Aries is Alpha Arietis, or Hamal, from the Arabic Al Ras al Hamal, ‘the Head of the Sheep.’ Hamal is the third star up from the bottom, a red giant with a magnitude of 2.0, and is visible to the naked eye, shining about as brightly as Mars when the planet is at its farthest point from Earth.
Below Hamal, the two bottom stars in the photograph are the stars Beta Arietis, also called Sheratan, a blue-white star, and Gamma Arietis, also called Mesarthim, a whitish binary star with two components. These are the horns of the Ram, and their names mean the Two Signs, meaning these ‘horns’ were seen as the two first signs of spring.
The three stars of the Head of the Ram are the stars to look out for, especially December around 9 p.m. local time, seen rising in the east. December is an especially good month for viewing Aries, when the Earth is on the other side of the sun .
During spring in the Northern Hemisphere or autumn in the Southern Hemisphere autumn is the worst time of year; Aries is lost in the glare of the sun. In late October, Aries rises in the east at sunset, reaches its highest point in the sky at midnight and sets in the west at sunrise.
Aries reaches its highest point in the sky – at about 10 p.m. local time (the time in all time zones) in late November, 8 p.m. local time in late December and 6 p.m. local time in late January.
The spring equinox was a time of renewal throughout the northern half of Earth, an event of great significance to people who were much more aware than we are nowadays, of the direct human dependence for survival on the earth and its produce, land, weather and sky.
Aries marked the main lambing season of wild sheep in Europe, 21 March – 20 April. The lambing season extended with agricultural husbandry.
The Sumerians
Sumeria is one of the oldest known urban civilizations in what is now called Southern Iraq, during the Neolithic-Bronze Age, 4500 BC to 1500 years BC. The ancient Sumerians called the sun, Subat, meaning the Ancient Sheep or Ram and the planets were the Celestial Herd.
The Egyptians
In ancient Egyptian astronomy, the constellation known to us as Aries was called ‘Lord of the Head’, referring to its symbolic significance, and it was associated with the sun god Amon-Ra, who was depicted as a man with a ram’s head and represented fertility and creativity. Because it was the astronomical location of the spring (vernal) equinox, it was called the ‘Indicator of the Reborn Sun’. Sources suggest the position of Aries at the zenith coincided with the rising of Sirius in the east and flooding of the Nile.
The Greeks
To the Sumerians, the stars of Aries were a herdsman. Aries was not fully recognized as a constellation until classical times when the ancient Greeks from about 1580 B.C. to 360 B.C. oriented the construction of many of their sacred temples to line them up with the star Hamal.
In Hellenistic astrology, the constellation of Aries was associated with the golden ram of Greek mythology that rescued Phrixus and Helle.
The brother and sister, Phrixus and Helle were the children of the Boeotian king Athamas and the cloud fairy, Nephele. But Nephele died, the king remarried, and his new wife, Ino, feared and hated them as a perceived threat to her own two children by the king, and planned to have them done away with.
They were warned and fled, rescued by a flying golden ram sent by Hermes at the plea of the dead Nephele, watching in anguish from the other world, but poor Helle fell into the sea below and was lost in the Dardanelles, named the Hellespont in her honour. Later, safely in Colchis, Phrixus (rather ungratefully?) sacrificed the Golden Ram, as a way of returning it home to the gods, and presented its fleece as a gift to King Aeetes, who placed it on a tree in a grove under the guard of a terrible dragon, the hideous Hydra, whom Jason later killed in order to steal the magical healing fleece.
Christianity
Founded in a society and at a latitude where ‘shepherds watched their flocks by night’…with a clear view of the night skies much of the year round, Aries speaks of God as The Shepherd, and Jesus as The Lamb of God.
Astrology deals in terms of archetypes, meaning a very typical example of a particular thing, person or situation. Of course there is no such thing in reality as THE Aries personality and the same goes for all the zodiac sun signs. Your sun sign is an archetype, a keynote, but it is not your full astrological portrait. We are all unique and it could never be the whole story.
But the archetypes did not come into being for no reason. You don’t mess lightly with The Ram. Aries is number one, the first sign in the Zodiac year, youthful and exuberant. But it is also the sign of a king, and not only that, but a warrior-king, as illustrated in the watchful, slightly weary, Emperor card in the Rider-Waite Tarot, ready armoured, always on guard. Note the Ram’s heads decorating his throne.
Aries is ultra-virile, with a warrior spirit, just as a ram will charge headlong at an intruder, and may even kill a person who enters his field, threatening his ewes and his territory at the wrong moment.
Aries is known for its determination and zest for life, and in the same spirit, Aries can be reckless and with it, accident prone in its general haste to get on and do whatever is the next thing. Aries are at a statistically increased risk of road accidents, in particular with head and neck injuries in comparison with other zodiac signs, and must beware of impatience leading to risk-taking behaviours.
Aries is ready to experiment or pioneer but may not finish what it starts. They are determined but run on a short fuse, and can be sabotaged by their own impatience if they don’t get quick results.
Aries subjects may exhibit careless or even ruthless behaviour with a disregard for others in their desire to achieve and excel. They can bear grudges but, though sensitive themselves, and occasionally a touch too quick to take offense, they are prone to be careless about the sensitivities of others.
However, in their personal relationships Aries are lively, affectionate, pleasant, frank, direct and generous. Full of bounce and joie de vivre, there is much to like and admire about the early springtime subjects of fiery Aries, the Mighty Ram.
Famous Aries in history
The Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne. Oh wow. Now there is a surprise. I mean, look at him for goodness sake…..
True Tarot Tales 