The Moon card

Halloween, Tarot and a true ghost story

Scorpio Photo by Jo Kassis on Pexels.com

Halloween is designated the season of ghosts. Why is that? We can encounter a ghost any time of year.

But there is an especially potent natural reason for the ghostly season. Halloween or All Hallows Eve is celebrated 31 October each year, marking the cross- quarter of the year, half-way point between the autumn equinox in the northern hemisphere, and the winter solstice, which in 2023 will occur on Friday 22 December.

Halloween began as a pre-Christian Iron Age festival 2000 years ago among the various peoples of Britain and Northern Europe popularly known as the Celts.

In parts of Britain and the Republic of Ireland Halloween is still called Samhain (pronounced Sow-an, from Gaelic/Irish meaning ‘summer’s end.’)

This is a critical turning point of the year from an ancient survival point of view: food production, harvesting and storage as the days grow shorter, the nights longer, vegetation decays, temperatures drop – and more people get sick. We are now in the zodiac sign territory of Scorpio, and the Tarot card correlating with Scorpio is the Death card.

From Halloween in the Anglo-sphere to Alf-blot (Elf Blood) in Scandinavia, to The Day of the Dead in Spanish speaking countries, the period 31 October – 3 November is a festival marking the end of the harvest season.

Russia does not celebrate Halloween as such. It is not recognized by the Orthodox Church, though it has been gaining popularity among young people since the 1990’s.

In France, again, Halloween is not a traditional festival, though certain elements may be catching on nowadays, cultural imports in the twentieth century. But La Toussaint or All Saints Day, is a widely celebrated national holiday celebrated on the first of November.

Now we are preparing for the decay of vegetation, the coming darkness, the time of hibernation of many animals, and the hardships of winter. This is a natural time to be marking the remembrance of the Dead.

Do I believe in ghosts? I have had some deeply strange encounters, and met enough perfectly sensible people who have told me their stories, and had no reason to doubt their common sense, and the validity of their account.

What is a ghost? We have the dictionary definition:

“Now chiefly, an apparition of a dead person which is believed to appear or become manifest to the living, typically as a nebulous image and attempting to right a wrong done in life; this sense of the word is recorded from late Middle English.

The word is recorded from Old English (in form gāst) in the sense ‘spirit, soul’, and is of Germanic origin; the gh- spelling occurs first in Caxton, and was probably influenced by Flemish gheest”. – Source

But the question still remains, what is a ghost, really? Are they sentient? Do they know they are there? Do they have intent? Or are they some kind of an echo? Do they know who they are- or were? Do they know who we are? What do they want?

I recommend reading up about the Cambridge archaeologist and paranormal researcher Tom Lethbridge T.C. Lethbridge

The Tarot card that in a reading can suggest a vivid dream, a vision, a psychic or supernatural experience or even a ghost is The Moon card. And this Halloween, we have only just passed through a Full Moon lunar eclipse. Perhaps you have been experiencing unusually vivid dreams.

From The Gilded Tarot Royale, illustrator Ciro Marchetti

This time of year represents a ‘liminal’ space, a threshold – a doorway of some kind, an ‘in-between’ space between outside and inside, one room and another, or between summer and winter, night and dark, and therefore symbolically, between Life and Death.

Being half-awake or half-asleep is an ‘in-between’ state of mind or consciousness, when we are might have a powerful frightening or psychic dream experience or even experience sleep paralysis, traditionally known as a visit from The “Night Hag” aka The Mara, as portrayed in a famous painting in its several variants, The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli.

This is a not uncommon experience that can occur when the brain is in-between deep and lighter sleep stages. The person thinks they are awake when they are not. There is a strong sense of threat, a malevolent presence, and they cannot move a muscle to defend themselves. I have experienced it myself, very unpleasant. Read here for the scientific medical explanation.

The Death card bears the Rider of the Pale Horse who comes for one and all. But the white rose is a symbol of the sanctity of life, and is a promise of resurrection.

A True Ghost Story

Some years ago, my phone rang one Saturday night, about 8 PM, a lady calling from Preston, about ten miles away from where I live. She had found my number in the psychic pages of the online telephone directory, and she wanted a psychic medium.

Note. I have never advertised as a psychic medium, but there is no separate listing for Tarot readers who are frequently listed under that same heading, along with astrologers and clairvoyants.

This lady was calling to ask me to come over to her house. Right now, please! There was ‘something’ in the hallway and it was blocking the stairs. She, her partner and the children were huddled in the sitting room with the door shut, too terrified to leave the room.

I could not go in person, sadly. Nor do I advertise such a service. But there are others who do. I gave her the name and telephone number of a local lady who specialized in clearing ‘haunted houses,’ -I didn’t know her but she had positive reviews, and meantime I reached for my cards, asking the lady what exactly had happened?

Her youngest child had been upstairs, she told me, when an invisible lady started whispering in her ear. The child panicked. Then her siblings panicked. Then the mother panicked too, and so did her partner.

Now there was something outside the sitting room door; a cold spot, a moving shadow.

I asked, what had this invisible lady said to the little girl?

The caller said, the ghost told her youngest child, her hair was very pretty.

I was looking through my cards while we were talking. This figured. The cards confirmed a benign presence – or influence. A grandmother?

The cards also indicated the lady on the other end of the phone had been under a lot of strain. I asked about this, and she confirmed a prolonged period of acute financial and other worries. Her mother had died three years earlier, and she was still missing her, really quite badly. But, she said, the littlest child was too young to remember her grandmother. Why, the lady wondered, if the ghost was her mother, had her mother not talked to her, but instead to the child, she had never known in life?

It was because the little girl happened in that moment to be the one tuned in on the ‘right’ wavelength to receive such an incoming message. The little girl had ESP in other words, and was hyper sensitive to atmosphere. This was why she alone had heard it. If there was a ghost, if the grandmother was still around, then she was tuning in to the living, seeking to deliver comfort to the mother who was her child.

The little grand-daughter was the most receptive conduit.

First things first. The lady had called to ask for help. I had given her the number of a reputable medium but she needed support right now, and help to restore order in the household.

To do this she needed to assert herself and reclaim her territory, ‘psych it out’, and show the children it was safe to go anywhere in the house.

The living can talk to a ghost, or say boo, just as it can say boo to us.There was no nastiness in these cards. If there had been, then the living can use aggression too. And tell the presence to GET GONE.

photograph of person facing opposite in smoky spotlight — Photo by Mads Schmidt Rasmussen on Unsplash

This presence was not nasty. Or at least the original one was not. But it was not wanted. I suggested that she tell the family, ‘it’s all gone now’, open that sitting room door, put lots of lights on, go herself down that hallway, alone if need be, put the kettle on, serve up something for supper. Light, movement and noise will shatter such a spell, and fear is contagious and feeds upon itself.

I later heard directly from the medium whose number I had given the lady. The lady gave her my number. The medium and her team had gone to the lady’s house next day, taking with them an array of electronic equipment. The medium confirmed there was an old lady’s ghost in the house, that it was the grandmother, and that the mother’s state of stress had called the ghost forth. The ghost had behaved in character, affectionately, but since the child had been startled, and then the mother had reacted with fear, everyone became frightened, and the thing took on an unpleasant aspect. The medium said that now the mother was consciously aware of it, the house should stay quiet now.

No suggestion of judgement attaches to the lady’s handling of the situation by the way. None whatsoever. Fear was and is a natural reaction to such an inexplicable experience. But if it happened again, now that she had some kind of explanation, however questionable, and reassurance that it was not malevolent, she could choose a more controlled and matter of fact response, whilst not dismissing the child’s experience.

“The Mind has many corridors” – Emily Dickinson

Psychic author Cassandra Eason has written a book with advice for parents with psychic children available from a range of second hand book sellers online.

https://cassandraeason.com/https://cassandraeason.com/

From my point of view, since I had never spoken with this lady medium myself before her visit to the house, but had simply provided contact details, I was interested that my tarot and this lady, this psychic medium, had detected virtually identical stories.

The power of the physical, the element of Earth, is the power of the living moment, here and now. We are exalted in the Earth. We take in air. We take up space.

This time is ours. Our inheritance of Earth. Our ace card in otherworldly dealings, the Ace of Pentacles. A nice cup of tea? How about a biccie? Fed the cat. Take the dog a walk.

Take it a walk to the cemetery.

It’s nice in there.

ALL SOULS

The transient day dies silently, and at its edge,

four grey hounds hunt for signs among the graves,

snuffling in the leaves, they lift their legs

on dead bouquets and faded wreaths.

A wind sprite sneaks round urns and angels,

and whisks the skirt of a woman kneeling

with a basket beside a new earth mound.

Two small children crouch behind.

Lights come on as dusk draws in,

and the woman with her kids drifts away

with the mist, all grey, sky as one,

into the Hesperian town.

The hounds stay running among the stones,

backs bridged over their skittering bones.

Circling together they lift their heads

and howl for the souls of their ancestral dead;

hunters, and all the prey that gave up the ghost

dying together in the close embracing hills.

They know who they are calling; The Host,

All Souls, rising from the earth like smoke.

Torches have blazed with saxophone and drum.

Masked revellers with candles in the town

finally sleep. And, under the windy moon,

the graveyard walks.

-Margaret Whyte

RIP Mam who wrote this poem (23 December 1939- 27 February 2023)

I saw my darling mother’s ghost just once, the day after she died in her own bedroom at home, released from hospital on end of life care. A movement caught my eye and there it was, a faint cloud, a movement on the turn of the stairs.

But she did not linger long. She was out and through “the valley” by the tenth day, and smiling up at hills the other side, clouds chasing sunlight across the tops. A child of the Pennines always. I reckon she has found her way to her own perfect heaven.

Life is for living. But Time is not linear. There is much wisdom in superstition, and we give thanks this All Souls season and every day, for the time we have shared with all those we have loved, who have gone on before us.

Thank you for reading.

Blood Moon Rising: the Moon card, the tides of Earth and in the affairs of men

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.

Extract From The National Geographic

“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.

Modern Western (Tropical) astrology

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.

The Sun is Entering a New Cycle- What Does This Mean?

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:

https://www.space.com/super-flower-blood-moon-2021-webcasts

Till next time 🙂