Day 4

Today's card of the day is The Hanged Man. On the Tree of Life, The Hanged Man follows the path between Geburah and Hod, and it corresponds to the Hebrew letter Mem, which means water. That means despite the often-disruptive Mars energy of Geburah and the intellectual cast of Hod, it's an emotional placement, one that drives us deep into our consciousness.

The Hanged Man is a card of sacrifice. Usually it implies self-sacrifice, or some sort of suspension of movement, but it's also a highly introspective card. With The Hanged Man, you're acutely aware that you're being forced to make a sacrifice, and the lack of forward movement brings with it a tremendous amount of introspection. There's a lot of self-reflection on one's plight that comes with this card, and in the process, it can bring with it a reversal of all previous knowledge. The Tower shatters the foundation of our beliefs, while The Hanged Man keeps us so deep in the waters of consciousness that we have a lot of time to think about exactly how we got to where we are right now, and through our own humbling discoveries, we realize the error of our ways.

It looks like I'll be in for a doozy of a New Year's Eve.

Card of the Day, Day 3

I woke up with a headache, so today's description might be shorter than usual.

Using the Thoth deck, I drew the 2 of Disks. Qabalistically, the twos correspond to Chokmah, the first manifestation from the divine, but it isn't yet structured (that comes with the 3s in Binah). The earth element at Chokmah manifests in fluctuating outer circumstances. The card is thought of as harmony of change, and the use of the Yin-Yang symbol in the card is evocative of that, but also included is the image of the snake eating its tail, hinting at the difficulty inherent in perpetual reversal.

From a divinatory standpoint, the flux manifests as being dissatisfied with any one thing. There's constant change and wandering. It can be going from job to job or person to person, but generally there's a vague sense of dissatisfaction, perhaps even melancholy, where any time a person settles into their life, they become discontent and go in search of greener pastures. It can also refer to a situation where there's a mixture of gain and loss.

Card of the Day, Day 2

Today's card of the day is the Knight of Swords.

The Knight of Swords rules from the 21st degree of Taurus to the 20th degree of Gemini.  Lon Milo Duquette estimates this to be roughly from May 11th to June 10th. He is the fiery part of air, and rests at the Qabalistic point, Chokmah.

The Knight of Swords is a very active, aggressive character. He conveys the image of charging or attack in his actions and attitude. He moves quickly, and can be skilled in the pursuit of whatever has grabbed his attention, but the Knight of Swords is primarily air, which is mental and conscious. That means the movement implied is intellectual in some way, rather than emotional or practical. That he's fueled by fire adds to the urgency of his actions.

The combination of the mental quality of air and the energetic quality of fire make him good at initiating activities that interest him, but bring with it a lack of determination and focus. He can plunge full throttle but lack any clear decisiveness, or even, in the eyes of others, any intention. He is the aggressiveness of the mind unleashed and then distracted, deterred or discouraged, which make all of his efforts futile.

Writing this, it dawns on me that among the court cards in the sword suit, the male court cards are sharp-minded but ungrounded, while the female ones are much more a force to be reckoned with. I suspect that's due at least in part to the included element. The Knight of Swords, as I mentioned, is fiery air while the Prince of Swords is the airy part of air. By contrast, the Queen of Swords is the watery part of air and the Princess of Swords is the earthy part of air. It's almost as if the intellect needs to either become tempered with emotion or practicality to reach the fullest expression of its potential.

That said, while many do believe that the court cards represent the gender of the person they refer to, I find them to be more indicative of someone's astrological placement, either their Sun or their ascendant. In that sense, while technically male, the Knight of Swords could refer to either a man or a woman but expresses qualities we, as a society, tend to consider masculine.

Card of the Day: Day 1

I got the idea to incorporate a card of the day into my "morning" meditations (I usually don't get to bed until 6 AM or later, so my morning tends to be in the late afternoon) to write about in my blog. Today's card was the Princess of Wands. I usually use either the Hermetic or the Thoth, but both were upstairs, so I drew from The Golden Dawn Tarot.

Court cards represent people, generally. They're more embodied than the other cards in the sense of having distinct personalities associated with them. The Knights, Queens, and Princes have astrological correspondences, but the Princesses are unique in that they don't have a specific time of birth associated with them. Resting at Malkuth, they represent the culmination of the energies of the suit that begins with the ace.

The Princess of Wands is the earthy part of fire. On the plus side, she is passionate and enthusiastic. Her emotions, and especially her feelings towards others, are sudden and powerful. The force of those reactions, combined with her energy, can elicit the same strong reactions in others, but as these feelings can be of either great love or profound hatred, that isn't always a good thing. There's a certain chemical attraction with the Princess of Wands, but in that baffling way, where it seems to be less about her physical attributes and more about the energy she's putting out. She can draw people to her in other ways, too. Her enthusiasm can be infectious, and others can find themselves drawn into her world.

On the downside, she can be volatile, and when volatile, she can be utterly reckless in her anger. Her rage is all-consuming and has a lashing out quality to it. The Queen of Wands can alienate through her anger too, but the Princess of Wands brings with her the element of melodrama. She can seem downright theatrical in her reactions, to the point where the same emotions she reacts so strongly to seem contrived, or at least over the top, to others.

I'll have to see how this card plays out, but I'm inclined to interpret it as referring to myself. With an Aries Sun and Leo ascendant, I'm double fire, so the fire suit brought to life makes sense. I'm not going to complain. My Virgo Moon has taken the reins for far too long.

Preview of Minister's Cord

Here's a quick preview of the opening to give you a taste of what's in my new book:

Aletheia probably should have told Edgar what she’d seen. What was wrong with her that she wasn’t telling him?  Don’t. He and Elijah are such good friends and anyhow you aren’t exactly sure what you saw anyways. The first was obvious, the second less so, and the third was downright strange. It felt like a presence, like feeling someone in the room with you, reaching out to touch your shoulder and make first contact, and yet it also had a heavy, brooding quality to it, one that threatened to drag your thoughts down into it and lay claim to them.  I really should tell him.   No, you can’t, and anyhow you shouldn’t be telling people what’s in other people’s heads. It’s like snooping in someone’s diary. You don’t even have the right to be there in the first place. Besides, the dry erase board showed that he was trying hard to control his thoughts.   Still, it was strange. Back in Tokyo, the dream reads were only about Edgar. That made sense. She loved Edgar. She loved Edgar more than life itself. It had always been Edgar, with all the obstacles thrown in their way, with all the reasons each one had to write off the other, he’d been the one that was always at the center of her thoughts. She’d never had anyone know her the way he did, love her the way he did. So of course she could latch on to his emotions and crawl into his psyche. What she couldn’t figure out was why she had also connected with Mae and, even more than Mae, Elijah.   God, the ritual had changed so much.

You can find it in print and on Kindle on Amazon.

The Minister's Cord

Aletheia hasn’t been back in New Orleans for very long. Really, she came back so that her mentor could save her baby from the paranormal threat to it, but along with a suitcase full of clothes, diaries and tarot cards, she brought back with her the troubles in her marriage to Edgar. After Elijah’s ritual to protect her and her daughter, it’s his thoughts, rather than Edgar’s, that she starts dreaming. When she accidentally digs into his most private and painful memories, she knows she has to tell him. He suggests they start working together to control her ability, a daily practice that becomes an intimate exchange of thoughts and feelings—and one she keeps a secret from Edgar. As they grow closer, she finds herself in the throes of a love triangle. Does she stay with the emotionally unstable husband she feels responsible for, or does she leave him for the temple leader she’s admired for so long? As their work together and their time together continues, she finds herself in a battle not just between two suitors, but between her powerful superego and her true will.

The Minister's Cord is now available on Amazon.