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.

Alternate First Chapter of Child of Aokigahara

The Child of Aokigahara is written exclusively from Edgar's point of view. During one of my drafts, I tried an experiment wherein I wrote the first ten chapters from Aletheia's point of view. Check out the first chapter. It gives a different perspective as well as revealing information that didn't make it into the book.

The Ascendant In The Child of Aokigahara

In astrology, the ascendant is the face we show to the world. Determined by one's precise birth time, it's similar to Jung's persona, and is the way we think we should be. It also colors our perspective on things, and can suggest the outlook we have on life. If the sun sign is our core and the moon our automatic behavior, then the ascendant would be our self-image. To delve more deeply into this, I will explore the ascendant of three characters from The Child of Aokigahara: Aletheia, Edgar and Elijah.

Aletheia has a Pisces ascendant. As an Aries Sun, she's fiery and headstrong but with a temper. Her Virgo moon lends her to worrying, being critical and being analytical. But the Pisces ascendant gives one a self-image that is much more emotional and fluidic. Pisces ascendant people tend to idealize others, often putting them up on a pedestal and feeling shattered when they can't stay on. They're compassionate, but can easily fall into self-pity and can be quite unrealistic. In Aletheia's case, she has a strong urge to seem like a caring and sensitive person, but as we see in The Child of Aokigahara, she needs to embrace her fiery Aries core.

In Edgar's case, he has an Aquarius ascendant. His own desired self-image is very different than the one that we see. He wants to seem airy and intellectual, full of new and lofty ideals, humanitarian without getting terribly involved. However, Edgar's core is Pisces, and as we see again and again, the self-pity and escapist tendencies of his Sun sign run deep. His Moon is in Scorpio, which is a very emotionally intense and turbulent placement, so Edgar doesn't have much luck convincing the world that the image he would like to have of himself is the reality.

Elijah has a Scorpio ascendant. People with Scorpio ascendant can often be very brooding and emotional, but in a more private and restrained way than you find with Pisces. They also seek to go deep into the mysteries of life, transforming themselves and transforming others. Regardless, he has a need for absolute transcendence. In Elijah's case, he has both a Scorpio Sun and Scorpio ascendant. His core and his desired self-image are one and the same. It also means these qualities are much more powerful in him. His moon is in Aquarius, which for Elijah has been useful in providing objectivity and self-control, but also fuels the deep reserve of his Sun and ascendant.

To see how these play out, check out The Child of Aokigahara, available in print and on Kindle.

Second Book Published

The long awaited sequel to Collywobbles, The Child of Aokigahara, is now out! Find it on Amazon here.