Let’s talk about the ultimate Tarot card of Masculinity with a capital ‘M’,  The Emperor.

‘The Emperor’ appearing in a Tarot reading signifies the current extra significance of an important man in your life, at an individual level. He’s a father, husband, employer, friend or advisor.

The Emperor stands for government, law and order, other big, hierarchical organisations. He is the Armed Forces, the Police, the Civil Service.

He is the guiding principle of protection and of the guardian at work in society and in the home. See those ram’s heads on the arms of his throne? The Emperor is associated with the sign of Aries, the fiery ram of spring. In a reading it may indicate a future event occurring at that time of year.

Image below is The Emperor from The Gilded Tarot, by kind permission of Ciro Marchetti

The Emperor in his true dignity is strength with justice, courage with reason: a defender, a chevalier, a sheltering tree, nesting birds held safely in his branches. He is firmness of order, rule with mercy, compassion for the weak. He upholds fair play, raising his shield so that those sheltering behind it do not get hurt or splattered with rubbish and  er…manure.

He will lay down his life if that is what it takes.

He has another side to him of course: war, dictatorship, tyranny, petty officialdom, overbearing bureaucracy. The card may alternatively signify absence of structure and leadership. A bully. The Emperor Reversed is War.

But greetings are due to The Emperor at the top of his game –  best friend to woman-kind; those men that we love, and what we love best in men, the sons of the red earth of Adam.

Let your Emperor wear his crown and ermine every now and then. You may be an Empress, and you can always wear yours too.

Greetings to the Tarot’s beloved Emperor.

Until next time 🙂

I dreamed last night I was in a darkened room by an open window; a white voile curtain fluttering, billowing in the breeze. I don’t know if I was trying to get in or out. Possibly out, but someone else was there, preventing me.

It was a Tarot dream. That was a pretty close representation of the Seven of Swords there; the card of diplomacy and deceit, strategy and stealth, surveillance and sabotage, fraud and theft.

Often though, it is simply about the need for tact and discretion, and do we really think we could function in any relationship,intimate, familial, professional or public if we always said exactly what we really thought at any given moment in the interests of you know, honesty and transparency.

Wouldn’t life be so much smoother, better and happier for everyone if we did just that? Said what we wanted, how we wanted, when and where we wanted? All in the name of Truth. Anyone who thinks so please queue here. Your very own flying pig will be delivered as soon as pigs can fly. And please, no pushing in the queue.

Politicians are often accused of dishonesty, but in the real world the truth is so rarely black and white except at the most mundane level.

Is the Seven of Swords alerting me that somewhere deep down I suspect someone of telling me porky-pies or trying to nick my personal data or credit card information? It has warned me before – correctly, but sadly I understood too late to prevent it.

And sure, my security software keeps blocking a suspicious domain about 20 times a day. Always the same one. Which reminds me, if you are in the UK you can report suspicious email accounts here: Avoid and report internet scams and phishing: https://www.gov.uk/report-suspicious-emails-websites-phishing

Perhaps I ought to give that dodgy site a closer look next time it pops up, and grass it up to the gov.

Back to that open window in my dream. I remembered. I drew that card only yesterday, and my sleeping mind must simply have been processing that event. Though I drew plenty of other cards yesterday, so why did this one stick with me, rather than the others?

I think it’s to do with the furore surrounding the movements during lock-down of UK government aide and advisor to the UK Prime Minister, Dominic Cummings (for the benefit of readers outside the UK. )

Mr Cummings has been accused by the mainstream media, and in other quarters of having breached lock-down guidelines two months ago by driving himself, his wife and small son up from London to his home in Durham to be nearer a family support network in case of emergency. His wife had been ill with covid19, and now he felt that he too was becoming ill. Later his wife wrote that he had indeed, been extremely ill.

My mind must have been working on this while I was asleep, possibly trying to decide what I felt about the appearance of the Seven of Swords in this context.

Tweeted this morning 26 May

Seven of Swords. Strategy, stealth, surveillance, secrets. Often, but not necessarily sinister. Diplomacy or deceit? Ever had to avoid a gossip or a nosey neighbour, not telling them your business in safeguarding a loved one’s privacy? Then this was you. #Tarot IMG Ciro Marchetti

I already did a bit of card reading and pendulum dowsing back on Sunday, to see if it looked as though Dominic Cummings would either resign or be removed from his post, and it looked like a probable no, at least not in the short term, although there was nothing remotely triumphalist about this.

Why do I say that? I drew the 3 of Cups reversed. A card of ANTI celebration. This represents his household, understandably stressed, as one would imagine, placed under such a state of unanimously hostile siege. Nice for the neighbours too – the real neighbours.

Whataboutery. There is plenty of it about. Ian Blackford has been leading the charge, but did he take covid19 up to Skye with him in March? And Stephen Kinnock, etc etc. Stones and glass houses everywhere you look.

And it is easy to see plots where there may be none. The Seven of Cards is about state secrets as well as personal secrets. It is about covert surveillance and espionage, and sometimes this is wrong or criminal, but at other times the ends justify the means. As in, for instance, patient confidentiality. That would also fall under this card.

I do not presume to know anything more than anyone else. We will all form our own judgements, but I do see the anti-Leave lobby continues active, is extremely powerful, monied and well connected, and has not given up that fight. This extraordinary public health situation may seem to someone to present an opportunity not to be missed, to get rid of Dominic Cummings, with the UK still in transition and with key discussions upcoming in June.

The media reporting of this story has seemingly been deliberately calculated to weaponize not only the grief of the bereaved who were not present with their loved ones at the time of death, but their worries and doubts. Did THEY do the right thing by their loved ones? If others did things differently, pushed or broke ‘the rules,’ and it is judged that they did right by their family, does this now mean they did wrong by theirs?

No, it doesn’t mean that. Not for one minute. But the very idea would be beyond bearing, and that demands a scapegoat. It seems Dominic Cummings opponents have understood this perfectly well, and have been aiming directly for that bulls eye, and the MSM whether wittingly or not, are certainly pushing that angle.

If you dislike, or disagree with or disapprove of Dominic Cummings, you may feel this is all perfectly OK,. But even if you don’t, or you’re not sure, you might feel this is not fair play, or something’s not quite adding up…on both sides of the argument.

I can’t help wondering if he is not protecting not only his wife, son, parents and of course himself, but something else he cannot discuss – is not free to do so…could it possibly be to do with something that is happening in Barnard Castle ?

I have learned through previous readings that aside from the traditional list of meanings, which is obviously in need of updating so that the Tarot keeps up with modern life, the Seven of Swords is also THE card of statistics, data collection and modelling, and medical testing and research.

Should this be anything at all to do with the matter of that particular journey- and if and when there is a sufficiently safe and effective vaccine for #covid19, would you want to have it, yourself?

Stay careful.

Until next time 🙂

See comments for more.

Purists might complain that I am mixing up two or more separate histories and traditions, and so I am, but I make no apology for it

The Tarot, the Runes, western tropical astrology, eastern sidereal or Vedic astrology etc etc arose from distinctive cultures arising in distinctive landscapes at particular latitudes, looking up at the visible skies of those latitudes, and correlating celestial events with seasonal and other events at ground level.

Obviously there is going to be considerable variation between the iconography of these different symbolic systems used in divination and prediction, but there’s still a great deal of common ground, going all the way back to the Sumerians and long before that.

Bull worship in one form or another has had its place in every polytheist culture where bulls have formed part of the natural landscape.

Tarot ostensibly has its origins as a cultural artifact of fourteenth century northern Europe, but derives out of much older cultural traditions arriving into Europe from Turkey and going way back to the ancient civilisations of the Indus; the Persians, Babylonians and Sumerians.

Tarot uses the Hierophant card in directly correlating the zodiac sign of Taurus the Bull with priesthood and established religion as a general principle.

Popes issued edicts known as Papal Bulls.

The Runes on the other hand, are an alphabet associated with proto-Germanic culture both Scandinavian and Anglo- Saxon.

The Norse, we know, went travelling and trading throughout the Mediterranean and it has been suggested that the ancient Norse alphabet, the runes, derives in part from Greek.

The runes however, which began as an alphabet but were also used in shamanic practices as a symbolic magical system, reflect the landscapes they came from

You’ll notice they are made up entirely of straight lines, designed to be carved into wood, or on bones or stones.

A Tarot deck has pomegranates. The runes have a thorn and a yew tree.

Today marks the start of the third and final decan of Taurus the Bull; a fixed Earth sign, spring in its full flowering, season of wild cattle calving.

Once upon a time the spring equinox occurred a little later than it does now, owing to the movement of the constellations in relation to Earth – an effect called precession, so that one upon a time it was Taurus, not Aries, that was understood as the first sign of the new astrological year – the ‘alpha’ sign represented by the Hebrew letter ALEPH.

In the rune alphabet system, the 24 letters or glyphs of the runic alphabet, are both letters to do with cattle and specifically, bulls.

Here is that FUTHARK alphabet are again:

These two cattle letters are F and U ,the first two, top left

It sounds a bit rude…short for, well, you know, ‘Eff You.’

And maybe that’s not so much of coincidence as it seems. Synchronicity and all that. No-one pushes The Bull about.

But let’s take a closer look at these ‘bullish’ letters

Fehu

The first letter of the old rune alphabet signifies wealth,but technically means cattle and specifically, domesticated cattle. The Norse peoples measured wealth in cattle, and this rune denotes wealth earned through hard work and tenacity. There is no good quick buck. There is nothing quick and easy about looking after cattle.

The modern English word Fee is derived from this ancient proto-Germanic root

Fehu is about effort. This rune won’t help you or me one bit with winning the lottery. But imagine you are job hunting, or need a business loan.

You could if you felt so inclined ask Fehu to help.

We have other words too, based around the prosperity and virility of bull symbolism; bull markets and bullion.

The idea is not as archaic as it might seem.

The bull statue was created in the aftermath of the stock market crash of 1987. Wiki says that Di Modica – who has died recently, aged 80, February 2021, RIP- spent $360 000 to create the Bull, which was cast the bull in bronze in a Brooklyn foundry.

“Having arrived penniless in the US in 1970, Di Modica felt indebted to America for welcoming him and enabling his career as a successful sculptor. Charging Bull was intended to inspire each person who came into contact with it to carry on fighting through the hard times after the 1987 stock market crash. Di Modica later recounted to art critic Anthony Haden Guest “My point was to show people that if you want to do something in a moment things are very bad, you can do it. You can do it by yourself. My point was that you must be strong“-Wiki

The Bull was not commissioned apparently, and was installed without authorization, as something of a guerrilla act. The NYPD duly took it away but there was a public outcry, and it was reinstated in a new site, two blocks away from the stock exchange and seems to be an indefinite fixture.

People sit on it and rub its nose and horns – and other bits too, all of which are now shinier than the rest of it.

They rub the bull for luck.

Read more about this story HERE

To ask for Fehu’s magical protection, help or energy, draw or paint its rune, or carve it, carry it in your pocket, say its name. Speak in 3’s or 7’s. 9 is considered especially powerful for luck work. And when the desired effect materializes; well, it was down to your own efforts, but still…beware of hubris. Don’t neglect to say thank you to the ‘Everything That Is’.

There is a world of difference between having the wind behind your sails or not, and that is what luck work, or talismanic work, – so-called magic – is about.

Lining yourself up so that you have the right wind behind you.

Some years ago Senior sprog, then a vet nurse, had just returned from some years living and working away. She was depressed and desperate for a new job, and then she got the offer of an interview with a vet.

I put Fehu on the case big time, and she was offered the job right away, and that made the most enormous difference to a lot of things.

Now, here’s the thing before someone shouts at the screen that this is just plain daft.

She got that job on her own merits. Of course she did.

But it wasn’t my first experience with Fehu. And having the best experience or the best qualifications is no guarantee of getting the job, as I discovered working in the recruitment industry. The CV may well get them the interview but that takes the candidate only so far. Now they have to stand out at interview. They have to feel like a good fit for the individual employer who has to like them, and above all feel confident that they can work with them.

When it comes to these subjective aspects, the best candidate in the world has no conscious control whatsoever. That’s where the luck aspect comes into it.

There is always a gap.

I have had occasion to thank Fehu on other occasions. You could always give it a go. There’s no rule says you can’t. Just remember, these are very ancient human algorithms, and not to be commanded.

They demand respect.

Uruz

Health

Uruz, the second letter of the rune alphabet means physical power, primal strength, and it is inspired by that powerful wild animal, the auroch; predecessor of the first domesticated cattle as represented by Fehu.

Cattle were domesticated about 10 000 years ago, migrating into Africa about 5 000 years ago, and the auroch lives on in the genome.

Hitler got his scientists on to it,and tried to bring them back, but succeeded only in creating a mightily dangerous and bad-tempered animal, let free to roam and terrorize the forest inhabitants of Poland. Though that was at least partly the plan in any case..

Touching once again on the Taurean connection, The auroch were hunted during their annual migration starting April and May – Taurus season.

A hugely dangerous business.

Auroch burger anyone? Look. There is the auroch. Go get it, there’s a good chap.

Who, me? Would you look at it? Just look at that Fehu-cking thing?!

Yeah. So let’s go get him then. Because -auroch burgers!

You first. I just turned vegan.

Is has been suggested that the siting of Stonehenge marks a significant spot on an ancient auroch migration route. A mating ground known as a ‘lek’

Salisbury plain is a vast wide open space (vast for England) No predator could approach the herd unseen, and not only were there hungry people skulking about the place, there were still sabre-toothed tigers in Wiltshire at this time.

The bones of auroch have been found there, and Amesbury may have been a sacred hunting ground before the site itself was built around 5000 years ago.

In luck work it may be used the same way as Fehu; write it, carve it, carry it in your pocket

Say its name (pronounced Oooo-Rooooz) asking for a surge of extra strength or stamina, or to request health and healing for yourself or for another, after an injury or illness.

There we have it. Two practical applications of Northern European bull magic

Until next time 🙂

Or perhaps I should say ‘moo.’