Ushered in by a Lion Moon: February, the Fae and the Fires of Imbolc

Today is the Aquarian Full Snow Moon in Leo at 13 degrees, and this is typical of the Tarot. I drew 3 Tarot cards inviting comment about the Full Moon and drew the Strength, the Six of Wands and the Nine of Pentacles. The Strength card, ruled by Jupiter and correlating with the zodiac sun sign of Leo (as does The Sun card) The Six of Wands which correlates with the second decan of Leo at 13 degrees.

A Full Moon of fighting energy, winning energy, scoring victories. The Sun in Leo says, ME, myself and I, with the bombast or the innocence of a child. But the Six of Wands says, the victor may wear the laurel wreath, but he did not do it alone, and the victory did not come quick or easy. It was worked for. Earned. The Six of Wands also talks about transport issues, literally, travel AND the vehicles themselves. MOTs, cars, vans, motorbikes and of courses, horses, and at this coming New Moon we will be entering a year of the Fire Horse.

These cards have “merely” reflected the astrology of this Full Moon but the synchronicity is striking.

The third card, the Nine of Pentacles is ruled by Virgo. The card nicknamed “Luxury”…this comfort has been hard earned through consistent effort. Virgo in turn is ruled by Mercury which is currently in Aquarius. A theme therefore of devotion, duty and attention to detail in tending to “our garden.” Also health matters. A Full Moon In Leo speaks, not only of our inner diva and personal projects, but of a time of great focus upon the wellbeing and happiness of what we love; new things, young things, of children and grandchildren.

The first of February marks the mid-point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. It’s also known as Candlemas, the Christian festival of presenting Jesus at the temple. But long before Christianity this time of year marked a more ancient celebration in Gaelic Britain: the rites of spring, and the fire festival of Imbolc.

February

Let’s get with the programme and parade down the street, and go pray for the health of the fields! It’s all about the health of the SOIL.

A close up of small green plants growing in dirt
Photo by Nora Jane Long on Unsplash

The name February comes from the Latin ‘Februarius,’ referring to Februa; a Roman festival of ritual purification. Below, the Roman spa at Bath, UK.

Photo by Rachel Claire on Pexels.com

January and February were two new months added to create the new Gregorian calendar matching it up correctly with the 365 days of the Earth’s journey round the sun.

The Anglo-Saxons called February Sōlmōnath, from sōl , the Old English word for wet sand or mud, alluding to the weather this time of year, and the effects of rain and snow-melt. The romantic Solway Firth between North West England and South West Scotland is actually the massive tidal ‘Mud Way,’ rather than the romantic ‘Sun Way.’

The northern English scholar monk, saint Bede, wrote that February was celebrated as “the month of cakes,” when ritual offerings of savoury cakes and loaves of bread were made to ensure a good year’s harvest.

Imbolc- In the belly of the ewe

In the belly of the ewe is gestating the fiery Aries Ram-Lamb.

The fire festival of Imbolc and Brigid began as a neolithic festival marking the 1/2 way point between the winter solstice (Yule) and the spring equinox (Beltane.)

This half-way point correlates with 15 degrees of Aquarius. And so Imbolc this year astronomically speaking is happening 3-4 February. For more about this look up Maureen Richmond who suggests we could treat 1-4 February as the window for any observance of Imbolc this year.

Imbolc marks the start of spring, celebrating the arrival of the goddess deity Brigid, “The Exalted One,” the harbinger of the first lambs, so vital to the survival of those early communities. The deity Brigid later became conflated by the Church with the Christian figure of Saint Brigid of Kildare.

Brigid From The Sacred Circle Tarot

‘Imbolc’ is thought to mean ‘in the belly.’ It will soon be the time of the first lambing, though the start of the lambing season can vary by up to two weeks in any given year.

Photo by Paul Seling on Pexels.com

Brigid was a protector of women in childbirth, as well as the safe birthing of precious livestock. She was not only a goddess of the Tuatha Dé Danann, The Tribe of the Gods, but a triple goddess of healers, poets and smiths.

Via Wiki Riders of the Sidhe, the Tuatha de Dannan

“The Tuatha de Danaan, the people of the (mother) goddess Danu in Celtic mythology; a race inhabiting Ireland before the arrival of the Milesians (the ancestors of the modern Irish). They were said to have been skilled in magic, and the earliest reference to them relates that, after they were banished from heaven because of their knowledge, they descended on Ireland in a cloud of mist. They were thought to have disappeared into the hills when overcome by the Milesians. The Leabhar Gabhála (Book of Invasions), a fictitious history of Ireland from the earliest times, treats them as actual people, and they were so regarded by native historians up to the 17th century. In popular legend they have become associated with the numerous fairies still supposed to inhabit the Irish landscape.“-From The Encylopedia Britannica

Brigid might visit your home at Imbolc. People would make a bed for her, and leave food and drink and items of clothing outside in the hope of receiving her blessings, petitioning her to protect their homes and livestock.

This was a time for feasting and visits to sacred wells, and a time for ritual divination. A St Brigid’s cross is made from rushes and was placed in doorways to protect the home from harm, representing the wheel of the seasons.

By Culnacreann – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3500722

Ingwaz -The Fire Rune

Fire is not gentle. Spring is not gentle. New life is not gentle. It rises up fast and fierce. It has to fight in order to “become”, or it would never break through. Like a space rocket leaving the Earth’s atmosphere. Spring is fierce in its quickening of new shoots. It is initiation. Spring is fire, just as Aries the Ram of the zodiac is a cardinal fire sign, even though we do not enter Aries until late March.

Where Brigid represented an essentially feminine energy concept, the old Norse rune ING/INWAZ or INGUZ, a fire sign rune in particularly associated with masculine principles of fertility, vitality… and also recovery from sickness.

This ancient masculine fire rune represents the power and potential of “The Seed” matched with action. Literally, the name of this rune means “the seed of the god Ing.” When we say we are do-ing, writ-ing …anything at all with -ing at the end of it, we are describing an action, and indirectly, invoking the magical energy of Ingwaz.

The Elder Norse fire rune Ingwaz

The people would light bonfires on the hilltops by night, and by day, they might run cattle through the smoke of lower lying bonfires, asking divine protection for the livestock. We can think too of the comfort and the contained danger of the fire in the ingle-nook.

a fire burning in a fireplace in a dark room
Photo by Scott Greer on Unsplash

With the whole of Pisces season coming up next, we are being given a sneak preview of Aries.

Imbolc was a key moment in weather forecasting. This was the time when The Cailleach —the divine crone of Gaelic tradition—gathered firewood for the rest of the winter. If the Cailleach knew the winter was going to last a good while longer, she’d make sure of good weather during Imbolc, and use it to gather more firewood to top up her stores. Bad weather at Imbolc was regarded as welcome news. It meant the Cailleach wasn’t worried about running out of firewood. She had turned over and gone back to sleep, and the worst of winter was almost over.

Via Pinterest

I am somewhat mixing up these cultures, systems and traditions, but Nature is the common ground and I make no apology for it.

As I mentioned earlier, Imbolc falls at 15 degrees of Aquarius, within the second decan of the fixed Air sign of Aquarius. The fixed signs denote the height of a season. The second decan of Aquarius marks the height of winter, at least symbolically speaking, in the northern hemisphere… and yet already the snowdrops are breaking through.

The Six of Swords in the Tarot deck is a card of recovery and onward progress, taking matters into our own hands, we chart our own course into the unknown, steering the passing of winter’s peak point.

The Gilded Tarot

See the toad in the rushes? The frogs and fishes are, right now, undergoing a alchemy of profound physiological changes, getting ready to spawn. The light is coming back again, galloping faster it seems, by the day. Dark sacred night’…yes, and the night is dark. It is sacred. It brings rest and healing. But when the dark goes on too long, we rouse ourselves to purposeful Action, stirring the Promethean gift of fire.

You and I overcame such odds just to be here, to get born as US and not someone else. Science suggests the statistical odds against you and me getting born as us, and not as someone else were 1 in 400 trillion. Yet here we are. Somehow we broke through. We must have had our reasons. Mighty powerful ones.

Snowdrops of the Snow Moon.

white flowers on brown dried leaves

Back soon.

Thank you for reading.

Happy New Year, 2026, The Doorway of Janus

Well, Happy New Year 2026!

We know fine well, we can see this for ourselves, astrology or no astrology, that 2026 will not be a quiet year, but yet another pivotal year, marking a seismic level shift in the respective status quos of global power in a cycle likely to run some while yet.

2020 opened up a seismic crack in the previous status quo of world affairs. A “thing”-I I saw on the night of 20 January 2020 -I later called it a “djinn” simply for want of a better word- meant that business would never again be as usual, whatever we mean by usual.

But the astrology that is tracking it, that is for sure, is clearly announcing this turbulent geo-political weather will continue at least till 2028. There is no way back to the way things were done in 2019. This will hinge to a fundamental extent upon the events surrounding the Saturn-Neptune conjunction at degrees of Aries 20/21 February. The last time Saturn was so closely conjunct Neptune was 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down and the World Wide Web was launched.

More HERE from astrologer Anne Whitaker.

There are always things we can’t control, at home, in nature and in society. But we weather them by means of our individual competencies, skills, knowledge, know-how, and by community and collaboration.

We are currently in the second decan of Capricorn, associated with the Three of Pentacles or Coins in Tarot.

From The Gilded Tarot

This is a quiet, thoughtful but productive card of arts, crafts, heritage, the art making of making things beautiful. “Form follows function.” A functional object, well made, well able to perform its job, will de facto also be a thing of beauty.

The Three of Coins also denotes part-time work, restoration work and community activities. In this emergent world of Techno-globalism, here is a reminder of the roots of our creative, handy, self-reliant selves, and of exchange and barter with neighbours, my help, time and skills for yours. This is the very basis of social exchange, the cradle of society and of modern industry. It has never gone away, and we may decide to reclaim it more actively. We could say that the artisanal Three of Coins is right at work here in this online writing community, enabled by Techno-globalism.

January and Janus

We say Happy New Year based on the Gregorian calendar, and before that, the Julian calendar, both solar based calendars. One could argue that the new year does not begin today. That this is calendar date was devised as a solution to tackle that timing problem of astronomy we call the leap year, caused by the approximately 23 degree tilt of the planet on its axis as it rotates. It is this axial tilt that gives us the seasons.

Nebula
Photo by NASA on Unsplash

Otherwise, the seasonal events of Nature as observed on the ground would say that the new year starts either just after the winter solstice, or else after the spring equinox. And once upon a time, over centuries, other dates marked the start of the calendar, including March 25 and December 25.

Heron on the nearby frozen pond, January 2024

January was named after Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, frames, and endings. He is usually depicted as having a double-sided head, signifying that we can look both forwards and backwards in space and time.

Likewise Janus was a god of both war and peace, presiding over the beginning and ending of conflict. And as a god of transitions, he had functions pertaining to birth, and to journeys and exchange, and through his association with Portunus, another portal god, the guardian of harbours, Janus was also concerned with travelling, trading, and shipping with strong echoes here of the Mercurial Twins of Gemini. Seafarers used to ask the Gemini for protection on voyages.

Solar and Lunar calendars, different New Year dates

Other countries, signifying a quarter of the world’s population of 8.2 billion people, notably China and other countries in the Far East, calculate the date of their new year based on lunar cycles.

This year we will be entering the New Year of The Fire Horse, February 17.

A large paper horse in the shape of a horse
Photo by Frank Ng on Unsplash

Cute, eh? But the Fire Horse is fast and furious. One thinks of The Trojan Horse, or the terrible scenes in “Marco Polo,” when Kublai Khan ordered horses set alight and then stampeded them into enemy cities. All eyes on China, US and Taiwan, nothing new here except for a recent escalation of military threat displays following the signing of a trade deal between the US and Taiwan. Signs and portents etc etc.

Something or nothing. But the Fire Horse rides in so closely coinciding with The Saturn-Neptune conjunction in Aries, February 20, and additionally, Forbes tells us…

“Coincidentally, the Year of the Fire Horse begins and ends with a “ring of fire” annular solar eclipse, in Antarctica in 2026 and in South America and West Africa in 2027.”

This extra fiery Year of The Fire Horse brings great changes, challenges and opportunities. More so even than 2025, a year of the supposedly strategic, stealthy and self contained Wood Snake, and we are still in the year of the Wood Snake for another six weeks or so. The Fire Horse says that works best this year is to trust your first instinct, act on it pronto, going straight from A to B. It will serve better to act rather than to watch and wait. Better to speak plainly, better to be angry than afraid.

We can look back and make up our own minds at what the popular astrology had to say about the Wood Snake Year. It is hard to disagree about the stealth, the shedding of old skins of a few of the 2025 mighty fallen, and the abiding twistiness. https://astrostyle.com/2025-year-of-the-snake-wood-snake/

There is lots else out there already about the incoming year of the Fire Horse.

But we are not there yet. Sol Invictus. This is the solar new year celebration, not the lunar new year celebration, even while I look out of my window facing north east and see the rising waxing gibbous moon (which today is in Gemini AND Mercury, the co ruler of Gemini and Virgo will be moving into Capricorn later today (at 4.10 EST -5 hours behind where I am writing this in Lancashire UK).

Mercury in Capricorn January 1-January 20/21

Mercury will be staying in Capricorn until January 20. This could prove a very productive time for tackling various long overdue jobs, reducing our burdens and our overheads, breaking problems down into steps, drawing up a checklist, and tackling them slowly, methodically….unexciting, for sure. The same perhaps with certain fairly minor but vexatious health matters. But not much feel better than the sheer relief of making up our minds that we ARE going to wade into that pile of shit stuff, and come out the other side knowing we finally have it back under control and firmly back in its box.

No, cat. I said its. You may be a problem cat for all I know, but I don’t mean you.

brown cardboard box on white table
Photo by Sahand Babali on Unsplash

We are getting on top of it. Thank you Mercury, for that welcome extra bit of lift when we were so tired. And now we feel ready to take on the world.

We weigh our words, choose them with care, strategically. Our words have weight.

This is the functional application, the power of Mercury in Capricorn, the gutsy and relentless mountain ibex. It just keeps on going. But now it has an added spring in its step. Nil Desperandum as they say.

Happy New Year

May Janus open wonderful new doors for you this coming year.

Back soon.

Dancing With Saturn 2025-2026

This World card is from The Gilded Tarot illustrated by Ciro Marchetti. This was one of my go-to working decks when I started reading professionally back in the noughties. A hard-worked deck of cards, as you can tell, but now relaxing in its box.

Image
From The Gilded Tarot

“Dance dance wherever you may be…”

The World card correlates with Saturn in astrology, Old Father Time, and in readings involving timing questions can literally represent events that happen on a Saturday.

More broadly, The World card signifies the end of a chapter in our lives, the closing out of a cycle, the end of an era. Bittersweet, perhaps, or even a cause for grief, but not unexpected. Timely, due and inevitable. Somehow we must make our peace with that existential sword of Damocles, living in the clear and certain foreknowledge of loss and of our own mortality.

Que sera, sera, says the World card. What will be, will be. But that doesn’t mean we do not have an agency all of our own. World dancers, you and me, one and all. The adventure of Life is its own reason and meaning enough. The experience is its own purpose entire.

The odds against us being born as us, and not as someone else have been estimated as 1 in 400 trillion. But somehow it was us that got through. And here we are. Reaching out and across to one another, conversant in cyberspace.

blue and brown globe on persons hand
Photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash

Expansive, ebullient Jupiter doesn’t get all the fun. Saturn has its moments too. The World card not only signifies completions but adventure and opportunity. Where to next? “Dance dance wherever you may be…”

Saturn as the ruler of Capricorn holds the bottom line, however. It promises and demands honesty. Saturn is old age, memories, ancestry, parents. Saturn is work, responsibility, discipline and duty. Growing up. Facing life head on. Putting our shoulders to the wheel. Life is the eternal dance. So the artist shows us the world dancer. Her dancing signifies grace in effort, vision in struggle, form to music and movement. Something we can do, and make, and show for our time here in spite of, and in defiance of our natural fears, tribulations and anxieties.

Saturn has been going back and forth between Pisces and Aries in 2025, struggling to bring order to chaos, and having a Capricornian devil of a job trying, snared in Neptunian fog and wilful illusions and deceptions (Epstein’s island being just one of many examples under the searchlight throughout 2025, and with files released but heavily redacted.)

Saturn will finally settle into Aries 13/14 February 2026, and will stay there until 2028 in a whole new astrological cycle. New, because Aries is the first sign of the Zodiac. The spring-born ram-lamb baby of the Zodiac.

white and brown horse on green grass field during daytime
Photo by Liam Read on Unsplash

This Saturn in Aries cycle has been seen before. History tell us that previous cycles of Saturn in Aries have witnessed the rise of ideological fanaticism, new religious wars or revolutions, for example, The Reformation, The French Revolution and the American War of Independence.

People decide they are being pushed around, and now, they are not going to put up with it any longer. Lines get moved. Maps get redrawn, and so do constitutions, creeds and codes.

Saturn in Aries moving into the ultimate zodiac sign of new beginnings is like Saturn The Old Man of the Zodiac, herding the bumptious ram lamb. Saturn (settled authority) is rejuvenated but Saturn also needs to show that pioneering rebel ram-lamb how to focus, directing its energies and strategy to lasting effect, and to do the necessary legislative spadework and paperwork, operate through existing state apparatus.

Or else to overhaul it.

Health-wise, Saturn rules old age and specifically, the functionality of the knees. Saturn in Aries could mean wonderful advances in related medical knowledge and technology.

Saturn does not dispute we need to take proper care of ourselves. For our own sakes, first and foremost. But, as Saturn will advise Aries, “Ask not what your country/people/family can do for you but what you can do…”

This from AskAstrology:

Saturn enters Aries on February 13, 2026, and will stay there until April 2028. This transit marks a time of personal accountability, renewed ambition, and disciplined action. Collectively, Saturn in Aries encourages courage in leadership and a willingness to take bold, responsible steps toward progress. It asks society to rebuild systems with integrity, initiative, and resilience. As a result, the global focus turns toward independence, innovation, and defining success through effort and perseverance.

On a personal level, Saturn in Aries strengthens confidence, structure, and self-discipline. It challenges people to act with integrity and take ownership of their goals. For those with Aries ruling the 6th House, this influence reshapes daily work, health, and routines. Individuals need to set firm boundaries around time, energy, and service. Consequently, consistent effort and steady habits will lead to lasting results, empowering a healthier, more focused approach to both work and well-being.

And then….

Saturn and Neptune will Conjunct in Aries

On February 20, 2026, Saturn and Neptune form a conjunction in Aries at 0°45′, blending vision with discipline. This powerful alignment urges the collective to build new systems rooted in visionary ideas and action in a long cycle focused on spiritual leadership, inspired innovation, direct experience and courageous reinvention rather than blind faith.

We see ever more starkly now, that something has changed in the western societies that goes way beyond even the most important considerations of party politics. Something has fundamentally changed in the historic covenants between the People and elected Governments in the West, in the UK, in western Europe, in the US and Canada. This, we are coming to realize, is neither recent nor sudden nor organic and accidental. The New World Order. It has been quietly taking hold for a long time now, starting after the end of WW2, but now it is raising its head above the parapet, starting to flex, and whatever the good intentions, at least to begin with, the gimlet super-corporate gaze of this new Globalist Techno-Sphynx is not friendly, not even…or even least of all…to its own people.

The implications for this increasingly authoritarian so-called New World Order seem likely to come to a head during Saturn in Aries. Saturn is on the side of farmers, and the countryside. Mao crushed the farmers and starved the people. So did Stalin in The Holodomor, especially in the bread basket of Ukraine. Closer to home, when WW2 broke out, my maternal grandfather left his day job as the Curator of the Museum in Bolton, Lancashire, joined the Navy, and in 1942 was part of “Operation Pedestal”, and the convoy that went to the relief of hungry Malta.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/SmXflagrdpo?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

The UK government has just relented somewhat in respect of lowering the threshold for inheritance tax which has threatened to close down smaller farmers. It wants the land for eco-energy, massive solar panel farms, truly huge, and we can see it shaping up nicely (not) very near where I am, and that certain companies and their shareholders are going to get incredibly wealthy, basically vandalizing the countryside and local economy on a fragile coastal flood plain, purportedly for environmental reasons, but actually for a mega-profit.

Saturn says we need land to live on. We need a base, a place to stay rooted and connected, however far we may travel. And those roots go very deep socially historically and even biologically. Not every soil is the same.

We need energy, yes. Lots of it, yes. The cleaner the better, yes. And we need reliable food supplies. It is madness for any government to rely too much on imports, not in times of war, and not in times of peace either.

Saturn, from the Latin “sator” is “The Sower of The Seed.”

There is revolution in the air when Aries is in Saturn. We may be seeing it again. Saturn is slow to rouse but if really pushed, then it will pick up pitchforks and shovels in defence of the land, local jobs and food supplies.

Resetting to Zero

steel wool photography during nighttime
Photo by Jeremy Perkins on Unsplash

Resetting to Zero. What does that even mean in real terms? Zero emissions, zero anything? When can that happen in the real world?

But in terms of Tarot symbolism, The World card, major arcana 21, is the last card in the Tarot deck, thereby returning us to the beginnings represented by The Fool card, and its numinous portal, the number Zero.

The Fool stands for a landscape in which we do not have our map co-ordinates to know where we are right now, let alone plot our direction of travel.

(Alternatively, some Tarot scholars might say, the number 22, nicknamed “The Master Builder”, signifying that big changes are just round the corner, but on balance, it’s probably for the best right now to take a few chances.)

“The discovery of zero will always stand out as one of the greatest single achievements of the human race.”–Tobias Dantzig

But the number zero, so indispensable in the modern world, and to the new gods of the algorithms, was not discovered, or would not have been discovered, had it not been invented, used initially as a placeholder for accounting purposes, likely as far back as Sumeria about 4000 years ago (as usual).

Zero does not stand for nothing, but for an unknown value or quantity. Likewise, there are many unknowns in the natural world. But there is no zero.

We can decide to clear the decks, but the past is never dead and gone.

We stand witness. We carry the torch. We look for ways to pass the torch. That’s what we are doing here right now, you and I, and everyone else.

With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. It was an old song, old as the breed itself–one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when songs were sad.

– Jack London

wolf pack on rock formation
Photo by Thomas Bonometti on Unsplash

No wolf goes out to hunt for zero rabbits.

Or for zero anything else.

Tonight and tomorrow night, 27/28 December, the first quarter Moon is in Aries. See what happens tomorrow, if there is any uptick in your energy levels, or in family news, or the pace of events.

And if the skies are clear tonight, and you see a brilliant planet a little way east of the crescent Moon in the southern skies, well, there it is.

a saturn saturn is shown in the dark sky

That’s Saturn up there right now. Saturn, son of Chronos.

Saturn, the planetary embodiment of Time itself.

The things that time does with us, and for us. And to us. For better and for worse.

But still, we are here. There were never any promises.

But this is our time.

We were given this.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/dzNvk80XY9s?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

Thank you for reading.

Back soon.

Stories of Sagittarius Season

Celestial Archer of the Sinking Sun

man holding composite bow
Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash

This year we entered the sun sign territory of Sagittarius, The Archer of The Sinking Sun, November 22.

See him pictured here in this photograph, standing on the liminal shoreline, aiming his arrow of fire into the darkness of Scorpio. The arrow’s target is the winter solstice, and then we know we are heading back into the light.

Let’s take a closer look at the ancient story of The Celestial Archer.

Traditional Associations

Symbol: The arrow, “Sagitta” speed with accuracy, impulse, instinct, far sightedness, the active masculine principle,

Ruling planet: Jupiter

Element: Fire

Quality: Mutable

Zodiac House: Ninth

Key phrase: I seek

Hebrew letter: Samech, meaning “trust,” “support,” and “nearby”

Body: Hips/Thighs

Tissue cell salt: silicea/silica. Strengthens and cleanses connective tissues, helps to eliminate foreign material from the body. A rejuvenator, easing signs of premature ageing, important for managing stress.

Birth Stones: Topaz, Citrine, Turquoise

Colour: Light Blue

Trees: Elder, Sal/Saal, Eucalyptus (rejuvenation)

Tarot Cards: Temperance, Knight of Wands, 8, 9, 10 Wands

Astronomy

The constellation of Sagittarius is near the centre of our spiral galaxy, the Milky Way, and is mainly visible in the Southern hemisphere between June-November.

In the Northern hemisphere we can see it low on the horizon between August- October.

Sagittarius gets its nickname, ‘The Teapot’ on account of its vaguely teapot-shaped star pattern, or asterism. The best time to see The Teapot is in August or September, but we need somewhere really dark, locating the hazy band of The Milky Way stretching right across the sky, looking up in the northern hemisphere where the Milky Way seems to bulge as it descends to the southern horizon. This ‘bulge’ is roughly the middle of the Milky Way.

The tip of the spout of the teapot, and the stars that make up the handle are the bow and arrow of the Archer, pointing straight at Scorpio next door, aiming at the red star Antares, the Heart of The Scorpion.

There are actually two constellations sharing the idea of the flying arrow, which is also understood mythologically to represent masculine instinct and the sexual act.

There is also the constellation Sagitta from the Latin, meaning literally, “Arrow”…with the constellation of The Eagle, Aquila, in-between Sagitta and the constellation of Sagitta-rius, the fiery Archer himself.

Mythology

Sagittarius is famously associated with the ancient Greek story of Chiron the centaur. But the story is far more ancient, and goes back to Mesopotamia and the story of Pabilsag, a deity or divine king of a city called Larak, in a story that was handed down to the Greeks through the Sumerians.

The Sumerian word ‘Pabil’ means ‘ancestor or relative.’ Combined with ‘sag’, meaning ‘chief, head, tip or foremost,’ his name can be translated as the ‘Chief Ancestor’ or ‘Forefather.’

This makes sense in anthropological terms. The Archer is a hunter, just as our forefathers were hunters at the dawn of human civilization. And Sagittarius is a solitary hunter, just as many a hunter or trapper still hunts alone in winter.

But also, like Hermes/Mercury, the messenger of the Gods of Ancient Greece, Sagittarius, aka Pabilsag, is a ‘psychopomp’ – the guardian and guide, not only of the dying year, but of the mortal dead, offering safe escort to the souls of the dying as they…we… re-ascend to the heavens through the stars of Capricorn, called by the Neo-Platonists “The Gate of The Gods.”

We go home again across the arc of the Milky Way. So Sagittarius as The Archer, is understood as a bridge between worlds. Sagittarius, represented in the Tarot as Temperance, denotes the Healing Arts, moderation, patience, the art of compromise, and the art of good timing (crucial to all good decision-making and a successful hunt.)

The Sagittarius Archetype

From The Smith-Waite Centennial Tarot

All the zodiac signs represent archetypes, meaning something that is considered to be a perfect or typical example of a particular kind of person or thing.

Sagittarius, aka “the forefather” is the Archer, a Hunter, the Voyager, the Philosopher, the Scholar, the Author, the Seer, the Prophet. An eternal student, exploring high and far.

The month of Sagittarius was the most critical time for hunting. The crops were long since gathered. Most foraging was also done by now, of berries, roots and fungi.

Meat must now be caught and hung, cured, salted away for the hungry months ahead, when people were also more likely to get sick.

The court card of Sagittarius is the adventurous Knight of Wands, wearing his hot yellow coat, his helmet with a plume the colour of flame, and his coat decorated with mythical salamanders or fire dragons. Here is a dashing fellow, zooming in and out, here today, gone tomorrow, and very often when he has turned up in real life in readings, he has been riding on a motorbike, or driving a rather fast car. Sometimes too, he has been a fire fighter, literally.

In terms of real events this card denotes and foreshadows sudden or surprising events, arrivals and departures. It may foreshadow a far-reaching political decision, just as the U.S is now proposing another highly questionable controversial peace plan for Ukraine…but whose idea was this plan actually? With whom did this 28 point supposed peace plan originate? This time last year the U.S had authorized the use of long-range Storm missiles to be used by Ukraine. Now Russia has committed an act of railway sabotage on Polish soil, claiming that two-pro Russian Ukrainians committed the sabotage (“can’t point a finger at us, na na na”) and apparently is deploying North Korean personnel for clearing land mines inside Ukraine in clear breach of international law. I do feel that Ukraine will likely lose a big chunk of its eastern territories, at least Donetsk and Luhansk, while retaining its sovereignty. Unjust if so, in view of the guarantees made by Russia and the US in the Budapest Memorandum 1994, and a shabby indictment in that eventuality, of the dithering cowardice of the Eurocrats who already let Putin get away with it in 2014. If this supposed peace plan goes ahead in its new current form, highly unlikely because so manifestly unreasonable to require Ukraine to disarm whatsoever, then it can only be agreed by a decision of the Ukraine parliament and why should they trust any more guarantees from Russia, the U.S, NATO or EU countries.

What price for peace, with or without justice.

It may also in physical terms denote a heat wave or volcanic activity. Even as we entered Sagittarius season last year in 2024, this volcano in Iceland was erupting for the seventh time in a year, and the tenth time in three years.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/Xj7To4YbW1k?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

This year, Scorpio season began a spike in volcanic activity in Japan as we were counting down to the much heralded…and somewhat foreboding New Moon in Scorpio 19/20 November. The volcano, Sakurajima, is Japan’s most active volcano, on the southern tip of Kyushu near the seaside city of Kagoshima. The ash clouds were so high just a few days ago, there were dozens of flight cancellations.

Scorpio stirs up a cauldron. Mars, the ruler of fixed water sign Scorpio, is deep water, deep heat. Sagittarius shoots out flames or fireworks.

Sagittarius is the sign of our farthest travels. This includes mind travels. Reading a book is a form of travel. Reading rolls up telepathy, mind reading, space travel and time travel all in one page. Each page a magic carpet. Sagittarius represents the Ninth House of long haul travel, and this also applies to study, philosophy -and publishing.

There are so many terribly sad events when we might ask, what use is philosophy? What use is poetry? But that is exactly the use of them. Words have the power to lift us up. We conjure special words for births and weddings and funerals. Words are magical invocations. Words are comforters. They help us readjust and regain our equilibrium when everything is dark. Words contain the magical power of Wyrd. We get the word weird from Wyrd, meaning mystery and destiny.

Word.

Weird.

Wyrd.

“I will lift mine eyes up to the hills from whence cometh my help.”-Psalm 121

The higher we go, the more bearable, or at least, the more manageable the situation when the going is really tough.

The real life Sagittarius natives are astute, capable people. They need a lot of freedom of manoeuvre, and they may fail to apply themselves if bored. Like Gemini, they are prone to restlessness, and may at times struggle financially in consequence. Sagittarius is energetic, with an enlarged curiosity, and needs plenty of physical activity outdoors, and to be in contact with nature. They tend to have lots of friends, so much so, family and friends can sometimes feel neglected. Sagittarius can do domestic and devoted. of course. But you wouldn’t say it’s really how they roll.

This rolling stone of a centaur sooner or later almost always comes cantering home again, expecting to find loved ones exactly where they left them. And usually, they will. But others must not be taken for granted either, and this needs care. Sagittarius does best with a quietly confident, self-reliant partner. Hence, their challenge, but their guiding light is Temperance, as personified in the Tarot, symbolizing patience, prudence, the wisdom of moderation, self control and the art of good timing. This may be their life lesson.

Sagittarius may well be psychic; religious or spiritually inquiring, with a prophetic or visionary gift which they may express through music, writing, animal connections, or group endeavours for some common cause.

But as we are reminded every time we discuss the archetypes of the natal sun signs, there is no such thing in reality as THE Sagittarius personality. You are a unique individual. Your zodiac sign (sun sign) is a major keynote, but there are many other factors in play, your rising sign, your Moon sign, and the planets in your houses, elements, the lunar nodes, asteroids, aspects, transits, and so on. If you don’t feel like you are a ‘typical’ Sagittarius, perhaps you are a second or third decan Sagittarius, rather than a ‘most typical’ first decan Sagittarius.

The Decans of Sagittarius

“If you’ve ever wondered why people born in the same sign seem different, the decans can help answer this puzzle,” – astrologer Rachel Lang.

The decans or decanates, known to be in use by astrologers in Egypt at least as far back as 2100 BCE, as evidenced carved on coffin lids, may be far older in astrological usage, and have been described as ‘the thirty-six faces of astrology.’ Each of the 12 signs of the zodiac (Wheel of Life) represents 30 degrees of the 360 degree wheel of the zodiac, tracking the course of the Sun over a year. Each sign is subdivided into three parts of ten degrees each. These are the decan from the Greek word “deka” meaning ten, supplying extra clues and nuance in respect of character and potential destiny.

First Decan

Sagittarius-Sagittarius

Dates: 22 November-30 November

Planetary ruler: Jupiter

Tarot card: Eight of Wands (Smith Waite Centennial Tarot)

Smith Waite Centennial Tarot

Card Meanings: speed, changes, news, sudden developments, arrivals, departures, or situations that may prove to be short-lived- a ‘flash in the pan.’

Jupiter, the planet of expansion, progress, ambition, and optimism is both the ruler and sub-ruler of this decan. There is idealism and a love of knowledge. This Sagittarius decan is an enthusiast for life, upbeat, spontaneous, and fun. They are highly competitive. They really, really do not like to lose, but they have a keen sense of fair play and justice.

There is a fascination with medicines, shamanism, and with ancient cultures and their healing traditions. Sagittarius loves wide-open spaces, fresh air, and being close to nature. This native is outgoing, and seemingly approachable, yet actually rather private and reserved, and not easy to get to know well. They can be the life and soul of the party, but when it comes down to the serious business, they confide in very few.

Famous first decan Sagittarius subjects: Winston Churchill, Pablo Escobar, Tina Turner, CS Lewis, Britney Spears, Gianni Versace

Second Decan

Sagittarius-Aries

Dates: 1 December-11 December

Planetary rulers: Mars and Moon

Tarot card: Nine of Wands

Smith Waite Centennial Tarot

Card Meanings: battered and bruised but I am still standing. Courage, stamina, fortitude, stubbornness, a pause for recovery, a need to reflect

Mars brings to this decan even more of an adventurous spirit, energy, and ambition. This decan could be an explorer or adventurer, but does well in business and commerce, and generally shows marked executive abilities.

These natives are natural sportsmen and women or soldiers. They are charismatic, and though they push people away when guarding their space, when they do fall in love, they will want to show you the world, though they may have a bit of a short fuse, and need plenty of time outdoors with lots of physical activity to be at their best. Second Decan Sagittarius is courageous, clever, good with their hands, quick with their minds, technically proficient, independent and stoical. No matter how rough a time they are having, just as with the first decan, they usually keep this to themselves, showing their best face to the world.

Famous Second Decan Sagittarius subjects: John Kerry, Kirk Douglas, Jim Morrison, Tyra Banks, John Malkovich

Third Decan Sagittarius

Sagittarius-Leo

Dates: 12 December-21 December

Planetary rulers: Sun and Saturn

Tarot card- Ten of Wands (Smith Waite Centennial Tarot)

Card Meanings: I am taking this to town, effort, determination, shouldering a burden, nearing the end of a process, journey or situation

Ruled by the Sun, the centre of our solar system, this person is rather like the sun in their own environment, very much at the centre of their universe, but with a great love of change, and a hardwired desire for reform in whatever cause. This decan is full of enterprise and novel ideas. They are realists, even cynics, but they are in tune with their instincts, and can make great researchers, investigators, or teachers.

They can be very direct in saying what they think, and this can give them a reputation for being opinionated. They may have a dark sense of humour. But their sub-ruler, the Sun, which stands for warmth, pride, and vitality, joining up with beneficent Jupiter means they have initiative combined with magnetism, and when they feel like it, a talent for making other people laugh. (Not that there was anything remotely funny about Stalin, but of course every zodiac sign has its fair share of seriously nasty bad apples)

Famous Decan 3 Sagittarius: Jane Austen, Beethoven, Nostradamus, Joseph Stalin, Steven Spielberg

The Cusps of Sagittarius

In reality, there is no such thing as being born on the cusp. We are born under one zodiac sign or another, and if we know our time of birth, we can confirm this. But the cusps at the start and end of each sign, again, offer further nuance to the zodiac archetype.

Birthday 22 November- 25 November

This is Sagittarius with Scorpio qualities, ruled by Jupiter and Mars. They are courageous with great physical endurance. They tend to take on a lot of responsibility, maybe too much, which can overload them and hold them back. They take great care over their work, but they will voice strong opinions, and though they are keenly sensitive to the things others say to them, they can be pretty direct themselves when conflicts arise.

Birthday 19 December -21 December

This is Sagittarius with Capricorn qualities, ruled by Jupiter and Saturn. They can be great company; hospitable, entertaining, and well-informed, although they are forthright in disagreement and can rub others up the wrong way. On the other hand, they have a strong sense of duty, they seldom betray confidences, they’re not petty, and they don’t interfere in matters which don’t involve them directly.

The world is their study. And in Sagittarius season, we let loose the arrows of our curiosity.

a man walking into a library filled with lots of books
Photo by Julian Terenzio on Unsplash

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”

―T.H. White, The Once and Future King

Via Giphy

The world is our study, and our study is a salve. But this is not to say we hide ourselves away in our reading. When we study, when we do a bit of research, we may clarify something that has been eluding us. We may identify a new line of strategy, and start planning a new course of Action.

Sagittarius loves study, but Sagittarius transmutes it into ACTION.

Back soon. Thank you for reading.

Till next time.

Stories of Scorpio: Part 2

The Death card and a psychic dream premonition

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Photo by Jo Kassis on Pexels.comcaption…

Last time I was talking about on the origins of the Scorpio story: the history, natural history and the scorpion itself, the symbolism, and the astronomy and astrology. Now for a further look at the archetype.

The Scorpio Archetype

The zodiac signs represent archetypes, meaning something that is considered to be a perfect or typical example of a particular kind of person or thing. The zodiac signs paint a ‘poetic’ portrait of a person born at a particular time of year.

Scorpio is The Sorcerer, The Witch, The Investigator, The Hypnotist, The Alchemist and the Necromancer. Scorpio is also the World Serpent, and the Eagle, and the mythological Phoenix, the fire-bird of resurrection, as new life rises from the ashes –The Phoenix.

a blurry photo of a yellow flower
Photo by Egor Litvinov on Unsplash

Scorpio is the season of fast dwindling daylight and with this comes the new season of chills and influenza. The medical salt associated with Scorpio, the tissue cell salt Calcium Sulphate, performs a cleansing and cooling function in the body. Injury or infection may produce pus which may form a boil, and then the boil bursts, expelling infection and with it, expelling the dangerous heat of inflammation. But better out than in. Though like a volcanic eruption, the immediate aftermath may be destructive. This can be viewed as an allegory of world events.

What has been festering, must either turn inward, bringing sepsis, rot and death, or must find a way to break out. Scorpio breaks out with heat and violence and/or conceals by means of stealth, wealth, secrecy and intrigue.

New readers will often discuss the water cards in terms of how healing they are, and and sensitive, ‘spiritual’ and emotional. True. But great emotions will just as readily wreak great turmoil. There are terrifying floods. There are storms at sea. Heaven help Jamaica at the time of writing. There are tsunamis. The fixed water sign that is the Scorpion of the zodiac is ruled by Mars and the red star Antares. It doesn’t freeze. It may steam. It may simmer. But it may scald. It may boil.

a pot sitting on top of a fire next to a log
Photo by Adams Arslan on Unsplash

The cards representing the fixed water zodiac sign of Scorpio are The Death card, The King of Cups, and the Five, Six and Seven of Cups.

The Death card sits in between two mutable cards: The Hanged Man card of Pisces, denoting twelfth house matters, hidden matters, and a time of inaction, and Temperance of Sagittarius, representing ninth house matters, and the power of right timing and targeted action, just as the arrow of the Archer flies to its mark.

Temperance is also the card of healing where Scorpio is Life or Death.

The Tarot is saying that Death too may be a way of healing. Or rather perhaps, that Death itself is healed. That the Dead go forward into the unknowable with the safe escort of the angel of Temperance, thought to be Michael, the angel of Fire, returning home again. They are going home to the source whence they came, reascending though the Gate of the Gods in Capricorn, rising through the Milky Way, straddled by the constellation of The Archer.

Smith Waite Tarot

As mentioned last time, and the tarot readers here know all this, the major arcana card in the Tarot representing Scorpio is the Death card, one of the most feared cards in the Tarot deck. Note the Biblical ‘pale horse’ of Death and the white rose. The rose signifies beauty and immortality. The rose is meant to suggest all that has ever once been, is recorded somewhere, somehow, forever.

The Death card is rather played down these days. Many readers rush to assure us that the appearance of the Death card does not predict a death, or not in the physical sense. Rather, it is the end of a chapter. And this is often true. But not always. I have learned in my own experience as a reader, the Death card can mean exactly that, and there can be no bottling out. The Death card demands we face the truth of our existence.

A long time ago I saw in a dream the death of a long-ago neighbour, a friend of my parent’s. She was still only quite a young woman, the mother of five children. I woke haunted, the dream was still so vivid, and it sat with me all day. I had not seen this family friend, let’s call her L. for some years. What was she doing in my dreams? So often, when we wake, if we remember them, we clearly see that our dreams have only been processing recent events and conversations.

But what do you do with a dream like that? What can you do? Nothing. You forget it, blame it on cheese at bedtime, or you might log it and put it on one side. A fortnight later I was visiting my parents, and while I was helping my mother in the kitchen, I said, “by the way, Mam, how is L. W.…have you heard from her at all lately?”

My mother turned sharply. Her face set hard like stone.

“Why do you ask?”

“I had such a strange dream about her.”

“Tell me.”

I described the dream. How I had seen people and cars arriving at L’s house one street away from where we had used to live when I was growing up. Some, though not all of these visitors, wearing black. But it was my mother who opened the front door to greet them, and not L or her husband. L did not appear in this dream, herself.

The absence of L, at her own front door, with visitors arriving dressed in black, said this was a dream of death.

And now my mother told me, she had just heard from L’s husband who was a close colleague of my mother’s, that L., only fifty at the time, the mother of five children, a fun, brave and vivacious person, a real fighter always, a local politician, an educator, and something of a social justice warrior, had just a few days previously been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour.

In terms of the date, I will never know how closely the news of this dreadful diagnosis coincided with the dream of the funeral or wake. But how much closer did it need to be, my God.

L. had been in a minor road traffic accident. She had hit another car, no great damage done. But she hadn’t seen the other car. So she went to the opticians who saw something he did not like the look of, who referred her to a specialist and then they found the tumour.

How long did dear L have, my -always very hard-headed- mother now asked. How long did I think?

I am a Taurus sun sign sun native. People may not tend to think of the earthy mid spring sign of Taurus in terms of all things psychic, supernatural or occult. But The High priestess which is widely associated with Pisces, represents Hathor and the Bull Cult of Apis, and Walpurgis Night is in Taurus, April 30, May Eve, the spring time equivalent of Halloween and all things the other side of The Veil. The crescent moon of her headdress does double duty as the cow horns of Hathor, her throne festooned with the pomegranates of Persephone, queen of the Underworld.

Smith Waite Tarot

Scorpio is the opposite sun sign of Taurus and vice versa. The shadow sun self, one might say, while my own personal Taurus natal sun is in the eighth house, ruled by Scorpio.

We are not defined by our birth charts. Or by our sun sign. We are zodiac kaleidoscopes. But still, we are the children of the place and season into which we were born. The rocks, the light, the animals, the flowers, the birds, the skies at night at the time of our birth. The hours of daylight and the vitamin D of our mothers. The melatonin. Our zodiac sun sign is our touchstone and our totem.

Back to my mother’s grief stricken question. How long did our friend L. have? Those children at home, and the youngest still only little? Of course I do not know the answer to such questions. Nor do I want to. But I told my mother what I felt, that she had maybe two years, and sadly, it was not even quite that. L died at home one night aged 52, sitting up suddenly, fighting for air, in the bed she still shared with her husband, and with her mother who had come to stay to help with the children, there in the next room and beside her when she died.

God bless and keep L. and her mother, now also long gone, detaching gently from the tree like a faded leaf.

But unpopular Pluto, Hades, lord of the Underworld has a compassion all his own. It is not Death itself that is our enemy, or the enemy of Life itself, but despair. Like the song says, after all, the ‘Seasons Don’t Fear The Reaper’.

Scorpio confronts us with Death. But this is not about any kind of a death wish. It is the cry of Life’s own longing for itself.

Many years later, when I started to work with the cards, I was trying to understand more about this dream, and other such experiences. Where did such dreams come from. And what was the point of them? What good did they do anyone?

I did not like it. But it is what it is. And later, when I started to learn to read the cards, I sometimes saw death in the cards, although I will never predict it. But still, a reader should be prepared to “go there” and at least discuss it if someone asks in all seriousness. To walk the road alongside. No ducking the tough discussions. There is much that can be discussed. Not least, family matters. Usually, a legal professional is already being consulted, as is wholly appropriate. But people have still wanted this other kind of conversation and there is a careful, critical line between respect, ethical responsibilities, and officiousness or nannying.

It is important to note that there are other cards in the Tarot deck that may indicate a death. The Three of Swords or the Six, Nine or Ten of Swords, for instance. The Death card, in my experience so far, has tended to denote a peaceful natural death.

The entirety of human experience is encapsulated past, present and the future unknown in a deck of only 78 cards. It is of no use for a reader to seek to work with the tarot or any oracle, shirking the most difficult questions, though we must still adhere to strictest ethics, and like Hippocrates, first we must do no harm.

It’s a tricky line at times. Readers are on the one hand, fallible, and need to remember this at all times, while on the other hand, to be of service, we have to trust ourselves sufficiently to speak clearly, and to the heart of the matter in service to this oracle of the human spirit.

full moon covered with clouds
Photo by Hulki Okan Tabak on Unsplash

“The man, who has seen the rising moon break out of the clouds at midnight, has been present like an archangel at the creation of light and of the world.”~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Old age is not our natural birth-right. Few animals reach old age living in the wild. The scorpion itself lives 2-3 years in the wild…although in captivity, incredibly it may live 25 years. The price of freedom, hey? But it is this sharp focus of such an awareness that gives Scorpio its drive, intensity, its passion, or its preoccupation with the “darker” side of life, and with the occult and the mysterious, but also its power of regeneration, and the drive to procreate new life.

Thank you for reading.

Back soon…the decans of Scorpio, and Halloween

Till next time 🙂

Season of The Scorpion 2025

The Stories in the Stars

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From Uranias Mirror 1825

The fixed water sign of the celestial Scorpion is the zodiac archetype of Halloween. Still waters run deep, truly, but this is water as steam, like the steaming geysers of Iceland, bursting out from sources deep down in the heart of the hot rock.

Traditional Associations

Zodiac glyph

Scorpio’s glyph is symbolic of a serpent representing the life force energy, the flow of that energy and the release of it. Imagine the M as a coil with the energy flow going outward with an arrow sign attached. This arrow represents the sting of the scorpion. It also represents futurity, but is also the arrow of Sagittarius, the next sign of the zodiac. The other “m” glyph in the Zodiac is Virgo, but here the M is imagined as a coiling serpent with its tail folded inward in protective, healing mode.

Ruling planets: Traditional: Mars. Modern: Pluto following Pluto’s discovery in 1930.

House: The Eighth House of power, secrets, sex, death, finance, legacy

Symbols: Scorpion, Serpent, Eagle/Phoenix (nearby constellation, Aquila, the Eagle.)

Element: Water (but this water STEAMS.)

Quality: Fixed

Keywords: I desire. I transform

Hebrew letter: Nun, meaning the snake. Scorpio has three glyphs, the only sign to do so; the snake, scorpion and eagle (or phoenix.) The snake sheds its skin and thus represents transformation, healing and magic.

Colour: Dark red

Birthstone: Yellow Topaz, Opal, Aquamarine, Tourmaline

Body: reproductive/sex organs

Tissue cell salt: calcium sulphate, repair of tissues and resistance to infectious diseases.

Trees: Walnut, hawthorn, blackthorn

Tarot Cards: Death, King of Cups, 5, 6 and 7 of Cups. The major arcana card in the Tarot representing Scorpio is the Death card, one of the most feared cards in the Tarot deck. Note the Biblical ‘pale horse’ of Death and the white rose. He comes for all, the king, the archbishop, the child. But the rose signifies beauty and immortality. All that has ever once been, is recorded somewhere, somehow, forever.

Smith Waite Centennial Deck

The Death card is not usually about the literal death of any person. It may represent the death of something else, like the ending of a situation, chapter, project, plan, or relationship.

But. BUT. I have learned in my own experience as a reader, the Death card can mean exactly that, physical death, like it or not. The cards can mean exactly what it says on the tin and this has more than once hit me hard and very close to home in the literal, physical human sense. There is no Life without Death. We die. Even rivers can die. Even the stars die.

Old age is not our natural birth-right. Few animals reach old age living in the wild. It is this sharp focus of such an awareness that gives Scorpio its drive, intensity, its passion, or its preoccupation with the “darker” side of life, and with the occult and the mysterious, but also its power of regeneration, and the drive to procreate new life.

The Real Life Scorpion

A scorpion crawling on a piece of wood
Photo by Andrey Tikhonovskiy on Unsplash
  • The scorpion is a staggeringly ancient creature. The earliest evidence dates from the Silurian period 450 million years ago, when the first scorpion ancestors left the seas for the land. Fossils from the Carboniferous 300 million years ago indicate little change since then but early scorpions may have had compound eyes.
  • They are arachnids: arachnida scorpiones, with a body in two sections, 2 pincers or pedi-palps, 8 legs like a spider, and an exo-skeleton made of chitin. They are more closely related to Harvestmen than spiders.
  • They dance before mating, a stately promenade. They give birth to live young and carry them on their backs until the babies have their first moult and disperse. The mothers may eat the young if resources are desperately scarce.
  • They have a long life span compared with other arachnids, 2-3 years in the wild but they have lived up to 25 years in captivity. They can live a year without food and they eat insects, spiders, other scorpions and lizards. They also eat small mammals, such as mice.
  • They glow in the dark except when newly moulted. Scorpion fossils still fluoresce, despite spending hundreds of millions of years embedded in rock.
  • They are famously venomous. However of the nearly 2,000 known species of scorpions, only 25 have venom powerful enough to be dangerous to an adult human. In the U.S., the Arizona bark scorpion, Centruroides sculpturatus, produces venom strong enough to kill a small child, but anti-venom means deaths are rare.

The Stars of Scorpio

Wiki: Till Credner

Nature, science, religion, astronomy and astrology were intertwined in the ancient world.

Scorpius is a massive, spectacular j- shaped constellation located in the skies over the southern hemisphere near the centre of the Milky Way. In the Northern hemisphere it can be seen in July and August, and in the Southern hemisphere, it’s visible from March to October.

Sometime around four thousand years ago the Babylonians looked up, discerned the huge and brightly leaning “J”- shape in the summer stars, saw in this the shape of a gigantic scorpion and called this constellation MUL.GIR.TAB – the ‘Scorpion’, literally read as ‘the (creature with) a burning sting.’

The movements and relative positions of Scorpius were mapped by Babylonian magicians and astrologers, who left written records of the omens they observed.

“When a halo surrounds the Moon and Scorpio stands in it, it will cause men to marry princesses, (or) lions will die, and the traffic of the land will be hindered.”

A comet appearing in Scorpius (Scorpio) was read as a dire warning of a coming plague, but when the Sun rose in Scorpius, alchemists saw their chance for the transmutation of lead into gold.

By kind permission of EarthSky.Org

There are 18 known stars in Scorpius, the most famous being the red giant star Antares (rival of Mars, the god of war and the original planetary ruler of Scorpio) Antares, its biggest star, is almost unimaginably huge – our sun is barely more than a dot in comparison- is one of the brightest stars in the night sky.

Methuselah

Scorpius contains exo-planets, some extremely old, while others may be potentially habitable. The planet PSR B1620-26 b, nicknamed “Methuselah” is estimated at 12.7 billion years old (The universe is about 13.7 billion years old.) Methuselah has a mass about twice that of Jupiter and it orbits around not one, but two stars.

Cue existential angst. I may need to lie down awhile in a dark room. Where, pray, is the eau de cologne?

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/Zr9MxbFBV70?start=12s&rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

Scorpio Season 2025

Hot water under pressure but it’s in a hosepipe this month, and it has sprung a few leaks, spouting scalding jets and clouds of steam. Water as steam. Full force.

Veritable spiders webs and networks. Flexing. At home here in the UK, amongst so many other terrible and furious things on the world stage right now, we see China threatening the UK government behind the scenes. Long suspected. Now we see it in plain sight. We are told it is presented as a case of “You will authorize the building of this monstrous new super embassy in the historic heart of your capital. Or there will be consequences.”

One thinks of the unquiet ghost of the failed Guido Fawkes. There are fireworks outside my window even now.

a bunch of fireworks that are in the dark
Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash

More hopeful news, The Met Police are now declaring they will no longer be policing NCHI’s – Non crime hate incidents. No more knocking on the doors of the citizenry to threaten them over social media posts that have upset “someone.” May the other police forces now swiftly follow suit. This is Britain, not North Korea, and there can be no apologies for drawing the parallel.

A bill to introduce Islamophobia as a new crime has not passed in the House of Commons. Thank goodness. But after all the furore a few weeks ago, they seem to have kept that rather quiet. England finally did away with blasphemy laws in England in 2008. The history is cruel. Ans so are the things that still happen now, in countries where blasphemy is still punishable by death. We do not want blasphemy laws creeping in again by the back door, enabled by our government in the name of so-called diversity and inclusion.

Just as in Scorpio season 2024 we are challenged with keeping our own equilibrium while watching yet another intense month of massive threat and fury in world events. And keep it we must, while maximising our own energy bursts to fix, to clear, to burnish, to cherish all those and all that which we most rightfully hold dear.

Eruption of the Strokker Geyser, Iceland, public domain, credit Andreas Tille

This month we are all children of The Scorpion. Scorpio may sting. And it may heal us. Scorpio is a great healer. Natural charisma and…anti venom.

Human Uses of Scorpions

I beg your pardon

I never promised you a rose garden…

But remembering the Death card, and Death offers a perfect white rose. Still, there are roses, always and for ever, even in the season of the Scorpion.

a black and white photo of a rose
Photo by KOKESHI on Unsplash

Salutations to the celestial Scorpion. Wishing a very Happy Birthday season 2025 to our savvy, deep and subtle Scorpio friends.

Till next time 🙂

Royalty and Innocence: The Lion and The Dog Days of Summer

Leo Season 2025

Katie-Ellen Hazeldine

Jul 22, 2025

On July 22 we entered the zodiac domain of Cancer the Crab; the zenith of the summer in the northern hemisphere, and moved into the sun sign territory of Leo until 22 August. But what’s the ancient story behind the zodiac sun sign of The Lion, and what is the astrological mood-board this Leo Season, 2025?

Settle in for another long one….

Traditional Associations

Ruler: The Sun Lucky Day: Sunday

Symbol: Lion Element: Fire Quality: Fixed

Hebrew letter: Av (father, regal) Tet (coiled serpent) Tov (goodness)

Astrological House: The Fifth House of joy, vitality, self-expression, life passions, children and childhood.

Metal: Gold

Body: Heart, aorta, circulation, blood pressure, spine

Constitutional salt: Magnesium Phosphate (Mag Phos) Leo rules the heart and this salt is a cardiac tonic. Magnesium Phosphate is a muscle and motor nerve nutrient, helping to empower the muscles, or to relax them, helpful for all types of cramp or spasm, whether induced by physical exertion or by the menstrual cycle. May be beneficial dissolved in warm water for cramps in the stomach, or for colic in babies, crushed and rubbed onto the gums

Trees: Palm trees, laurel, walnuts, olive trees, lemon and orange trees.

Plants: Marigolds, sunflowers, dandelions, (dents- de- lion =”lion’s teeth”) celandines, passion flowers

Gemstones: peridot, sapphire

Key phrase: I love/I desire (The Strength card of Leo is called Lust in the Thoth Tarot deck)

Norse rune: Sol/Sowilo/Sigel: meaning Sun, signifying or invoking happiness, health, success, victory

Tarot cards: Strength, Sun, 5, 6, 7 Wands. The Strength card (Major Arcana 8- in the Thoth Tarot, it is Major Arcana 11) signifies health, vitality, power, physical courage and moral fortitude

Astronomy

Via Wiki

Leo is the 12th largest constellation in the zodiac, one of the most recognizable in the skies of the northern hemisphere due to its many bright stars, and its distinctive shape suggesting a crouching lion facing to the right, located between the constellations of Cancer to the west and Virgo to the east. The bright planet beneath Leo is Jupiter.

The best time to see the Leo constellation is in Spring in the northern hemisphere, from around the March equinox, and in the fall/autumn in the southern hemisphere where it can be seen in the northern skies, but is seen as if upside down. By late July and into early August, the Lion is fading into the sunset before disappearing, and by late September into October it is visible again, reappearing in the east before dawn, below the Big Dipper or as it is also known in the UK, The Plough, which is visible all year.

Archaeological evidence suggests that Mesopotamians recognized the star grouping we later came to know as Leo as early as 4000 BC. The Persians knew this constellation as Shir or Ser. The Babylonians called it UR.GU.LA (“the great lion.”) The Syrians knew it as Aryo. The Turks called it Artan, or, and most famously Aslan, as in Aslan the Lion in The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis. The Greeks associated Leo with the story of the Labours of Herakles/Hercules, and the slaying of the man- eating lion of Nemea.

The Lions of The Nile

and the Dog Days of Summer
a plowed field in front of a body of water
Photo by Mohamad Sameh on Unsplash

Leo season includes the so-called Dog Days of summer, July 3 to August 11, is the window of the warmest days in the Northern Hemisphere. The ancient Egyptians and later the Romans, had noticed that Sirius, “The Scorching One,” aka The Dog Star, aka, Canis Major, reappeared in the sky, rising just before the sun, rising in the east 21- 23 July when the sun entered the zodiac sky territory of Leo. Sirius is pictured at the bottom, below Orion.

This was immediately prior to the annual flooding of the Nile River which started around August 15 for two weeks every year. The Nile floods, while potentially massively destructive, replenished the soil, bringing forth new life, renewing the lifeblood of their agriculture- and the nation entire. New life. This is the almighty power of the Sun in Leo.

adult lioness lying on ground
Photo by Chris Rhoads on Unsplash

Lions were once a common sight in Egypt, roaming the semi-desert regions either side of the Nile Valley, with surviving depictions of pharaohs hunting lions. But that was long, long ago. The lions began to disappear during the New Kingdom (c. 1550-1070 B.C.) until eventually they became extinct in Egypt as the climate and environment became drier and the human population increased. But not before they had become an eternal part of the zodiac story.

By August the desert lions were becoming increasingly desperate after weeks of drought, coming ever closer in sight of the walls of the cities in their search for water. But this lowest ebb in the lives of the desert lions was a welcome sign that the Nile floods were now due, the tributaries far upriver massively swollen by tropical storms over the highlands of Ethiopia and southern Sudan, and in their joy, the people honoured the lion with festivals. Statues of lions can still be seen along the course of the Nile River, while the lion-headed fountains so popular with later Greek and Roman architects was a legacy of this great story of the zodiac, symbolizing the life-giving waters released by the sun in the season of Leo.

Lion statues on a water fountain
Public Domain, photograph Petr Kratochvil

The Zodiac Archetype

Leo is ruled by the Sun, bestowing radiance, warmth and vitality. Leo is energetic, decisive and pro-active. The major arcana cards in the Tarot representing Leo are The Sun card and Strength, denoting not only physical strength vitality and courage, but moral courage; resilience, stamina, discipline and fortitude in the face of adversity. Leo acts on instinct, sometimes on impulse. Sometimes in haste. To be effective, is a message of this card, strength must be wisely directed. There is no Strength without the inner strength of self-control, self mastery. The figure in this card, the Lady Una, has the lion on a loose chain. But it is on a chain all the same. The lion represents her own inner fire, passions and impulses, and she has them under control.

Strength from The Illuminati Tarot, The Sun and King of Wands from The Gilded Tarot Royale

The charismatic King of Wands represents Leo, regardless of the sex of the individual Leo native. This card represents communication, travel, sports, entrepreneurship, exports, estate agents, higher education. He is both visionary and warrior.

There is of course no such thing in reality as THE Leo personality, and this applies to all zodiac signs. You are a unique personality. Your zodiac sign (sun sign) is a major keynote of your natal chart, but it’s nothing like the whole story. These archetypes are based on thousands of years of observation, however, and your decan, which depends on where your birthday falls within your zodiac sign, digs a little deeper.

Tarot Cards

Smith Waite Centennial Tarot

First Decan Leo: 23 July-1 August

Proud, passionate, purposeful.

Tarot card: Five of Wands: ambition, test of strength, contest, competition, stress, conflict, honest intention, summer thunderstorms

This Leo born native, ruled by the Sun twice over, does not just enter the room. It makes an entrance. Lively, confident, warm, talkative. Others who are quieter, or who are less confident or energetic may find these Leo divas loud, overpowering, or even arrogant. And Leo may be any of these things, but the chances are, it is just a natural exuberance. First decan Leo will finish what it starts, and they set themselves exceedingly high standards and targets, though they tend to be fair minded and realistic in their dealings with others, asking only that others do their best.

Second Decan Leo: 2 August-11 August

Name, fame, reputation

Tarot card- Six Wands: victory, progress, vehicle, travel, pride in success, team, determined effort

Subjects of this decan may be literally taller and bigger than other Leo decans, and (apparently) with a collective tendency for having rather noticeable neat, square white teeth. The influence of its sub-ruler, cheerful, outgoing Sagittarius makes this Leo the life and soul of the party when they are in the mood, but this smoothest-talking decan is somewhat restless, for travel, for adventure – or learning. This is Leo on a quest of some kind, hungrier and less settled in temperament than the other two decans. This Leo in general tends to be more of a cat walks alone. Yes, it loves people, but still retains a certain aloofness. Its sub-ruler Sagittarius however, is about groups and communities, and it is this, somewhat more communal spirit, which sets the second decan Leo slightly apart from the other decans. But second decan Leo is something of a philosopher.

Third Decan Leo: 12 August -22 August

Fire, focus and curiosity.

Tarot card- Seven of Wands: courage, moral courage, stamina, endurance, outnumbered but fighting your own corner, defeating the odds

This decan is sub-ruled by fiery Mars- Leo with a double-dose of warrior energy. Third decan Leo is confident, competitive or combative. Driven, ambitious, sometimes this Leo decan loses patience and may not finish what it starts, due to restlessness, but it operates on its own terms, and is an excellent planner and problem-solver, finding failure almost intolerable. This decan needs peace and quiet when its mind is working on something, to figure things out in its own way. It has the usual Leo warmth but with, possibly, an explosive temper at times. Leo in general is quick to forgive and forget, and is not known for bearing grudges, though others may not necessarily be so forgiving in return. Third decan Leo is particularly curious about other people.

A few dates to watch this Leo season 2025

July 24: New Moon in Leo Perhaps not an easy New Moon, this one. Emotionally demanding. Tensions close to the heart. We think we can see a way ahead. Others do not agree. Mercury is retrograde this Leo Season until August 11, and this new moon symbolically suggests dusting something off and shining it up again, perhaps a passion project and now you know how to give it a new lease of life supported by Neptune (vision) and Saturn (focus and attention to detail)

July 31-August 25: Venus goes into Cancer. Tarot card: the 2 of Cups. Cheers! Sociable, romantic, collaborative. Ah, now that is nice. AND the Sun is conjunct Mercury. You may be acting as a messenger. You may be someone’s very angel.

August 8-10 Mars opposite Saturn and Neptune: a mood board that says stay calm, do less, avoid arguments with older family members or senior staff at work. Travel over water could be bumpy, metaphorically or literally, or beware picking up a tummy bug. The so-called Lion’s Gate, August the Eighth, the 8 of the 8th, is a mythical portal said to represent a peak of intensity in human affairs. As if we need any more intensity. But anyway, here is a bit of the background story, The Lions’ Gate Portal via Forbes.

August 9: Full Moon in Aquarius: A dash of inspiration, vim and vigour, doing our own thing, away from the crowd.

August 12: Mercury goes direct in Leo. The lion is still in shadow until August 26. But now he is waking and stretching, the lionesses are mustering again, ready to go hunting.

lion and lioness on brown rock during daytime
Photo by Jonathan Cooper on Unsplash

Happy Birthday and Happy Hunting, Leo 2025.

Till next time.

The Devil walks abroad: The Tarot’s Own Psychic Whiff of Sulphur

We entered strange times in 2020. Strange times. The news all over the world right now is almost a perfect storm. Where to focus? What good news to be guaranteed via divination? Great change is here and it is unavoidable. There will be turmoil for quite some time to come, above what we have been used to for a long time. This is not a short term cycle, and we are all affected.

Imagine being a cottage industry weaver, at the time of the Industrial revolution. The enclosure of the land, the decline of the villages, the rise of the cities and the giant satanic mills, that grew the power of the British Empire. Entrepreneurs grew rich, the rural poor got poorer. The urban poor exploded in numbers as people left the land, looking for work in the cities. How to calculate the human cost? The Luddites resisted and were hanged or transported for life.

This is broadly the kind of place we are at again, collectively, living in the early days of the so-called fourth Industrial Revolution, (and some might say, the WEF, and the person who coined this term, Klaus Schwab, are inimical, not friends of humanity, agents of the Devil.)

All this, even without adding in the inextricably interconnected red-hot state of global politics. I will leave this with the mundane astrologers, at least for today, but, unsurprisingly, the Devil card is showing up a lot right now.

The Devil card is not necessarily bad news at all when it turns up in a reading. It may be neutral and entirely benign in a card interpretation. The Devil corresponds with Nature and with Saturn, Old Father Time. He may stand for Pan, The God of all wild creatures, “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,” in The Wind In The Willows.

The Devil may be neutral and entirely benign in a card interpretation. But the Tarot addresses everything known in the totality of human experience and it has only 78 bits of cardstock with which to do it. This cannot be all sweetness and light. The Devil card also has the job of addressing Desire, Hunger, Rage. Fear. Frustration. Power and powerlessness. Dependency. Addiction. Prison and how to break free. How to respond to unwelcome change.

“Change is like death. You don’t know what it looks like till you’re standing at the gates.” – ‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’, 2018

a view of a city through a chain link fence
Photo by Vadim Koza on Unsplash

A true Tarot story from 14 July, 2015.

I was away from home, my younger daughter’s graduation in Carlisle and I was unsettled at what I saw in my cards. My question to the Tarot was a run of the mill question, almost idle, really. A general day-ahead reading. What kind of day could we expect the following day? We had another long drive next day, stopping off to see my parents on the way home again.

I drew three cards. The Devil, The Chariot and The Wheel of Fortune. But while I am showing these cards the right way up, the better to display them, I had actually drawn two of these cards, The Chariot and The Wheel of Fortune reversed, that is to say, upside-down or ill-dignified. Not in their positive dignity.

From The Tarot Illuminati

The Devil card may be referring to Capricorn timing. It may be flagging up Tenth house matters (professional life, public life) or it may be pointing at a Capricorn sun sign native. When it turns up as a problem, it may mean passion, wild nature, the wild god Pan. It can mean obsession, addiction, entrapment, fear, rage, loss of control, imprisonment. I have known it to mean manslaughter and a prison sentence. One time the Devil card came up with the Ten of Swords, The Tower and the Ten of Pentacles, prompting me to ask, somewhat diffidently as you will imagine, if a man in this lady’s life had knocked someone down? (The Devil and Tower). Yes, she said. In a fight. And the other man died? I asked. (Ten of Swords) Yes, she said. A fatal head injury. And he had received a 10 year prison sentence? (Ten of Pentacles) Yes.

The Chariot can mean the summer solstice, Cancer season. It can mean parents (most usually the mother) It is the home, or the homeland. It can mean teamwork, success. It can also mean exactly what it looks like. It can be saying car, road, travel, journey, garage, driving test, motorbike, horse, etc.

The Wheel of Fortune in general, means sudden changes and events beyond our direct personal control. Luck, Fate, a gamble for good or for ill. It can mean a Thursday.

I did not like this card combination. I felt it spelled bad news for a vehicle, or a journey. Fear, anger or violence might be attached. I felt a lurch in my tummy, thinking of our drive over the moors next day, and the M6.

I am not an all-seeing psychic with reliable remote viewing capabilities. I do have those experiences. Usually via dreams over which there is no direct control, or not usually. It has happened that I have requested a dream asking a certain question, and received an answer in dream form. But using cards, one asks a question and gets an answer, or at least a response on demand.

From The Tarot Illuminati

So now, looping back to this row of cards above, The Devil, The Chariot (Reversed) and The Wheel of Fortune (Reversed) I considered the cards first and foremost in terms of my general question, what to expect next day, thinking primarily of immediate events in my own situation.

‘We’ll need to be extra cautious on the road tomorrow,’ I said to Il Matrimonio. ‘There’s something here I’m really not liking, something to do with wheels. And that parking space is tight. Why are wheels jumping out at me? I’m seeing tyres. Maybe we’ve got a flat tyre?’

He went and checked the tyres, and everything seemed fine. Ok. Well then, I would just have to wait and see, and learn what this was all about with the benefit of hindsight. But I knew I didn’t like it.

Next morning, Friday the 15th (and The Devil is the Tarot’s fifteenth major arcana card) we woke to this appalling news from Nice…

“On the evening of 14 July 2016, a 19-tonne cargo truck was deliberately driven into crowds of people celebrating Bastille Day on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France, resulting in the deaths of 86 people and injuring 434 others. The driver was Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a Tunisian living in France. The attack ended following an exchange of gunfire, during which he was shot and killed by police.

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, saying Lahouaiej-Bouhlel answered its “calls to target citizens of coalition nations that fight the Islamic State.“

So now I understood that I had drawn The Devil, The Chariot Reversed, and The Wheel of Fortune Reversed only about an hour ahead of the horrible real-time events in Nice.

This had not been an instance of prediction. I had formulated no such prediction. But this had been a clear and terrible instance of psychic foreshadowing. I had “seen”, I had been “shown” Tyres. Rage. Terror.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/m6YDhVeW5Kc?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

By now I am left in little doubt there is such a thing as the collective mind. The hive mind. We communicate telepathically en-masse more than we usually get the chance to notice, and we are not constrained in our perceptions by linear time. We, for all our individuality and separateness, and sometimes, loneliness, are more like bees or starlings than we might think. Sleep easy, les pauvres. Vive la France.

Could the Tarot be used to avert such horrors and disasters as this Nice attack? A reading may help an individual to avoid trouble if they heed a warning, and is able to act upon it. I have witnessed this happening, just as I have known of warnings that went unheeded, and the consequences. We have personal agency at all times.

But for an event on a public scale, this would need such precise intel, reporting a detected risk of (event X)-happening at (location Y)- on this day around that time (Z)

And that person in receipt of that intel would need to have the authority and the resources to take action based on that feedback. What happens in maximum security outfits, military and other, who knows. Dowsers are employed by councils to find hidden water pipes underground. I have seen them at work myself, in a field behind my parents house, and dowsing is a form of divination (finding what is hidden)

It was attempted once before, after the tragedy in Aberfan, when a giant coal heap collapsed slipped and crushed a school in a mining village.

“The British Premonitions Bureau was formed in 1966 by psychiatrist John Barker after the Aberfan mining disaster in which 144 people, including 116 children, died when 500,000 tons of debris smashed through the Welsh town and buried the primary school. Reports of precognitive dreams foretelling of the catastrophe prompted Barker to form the bureau in the hope of predicting and avoiding future tragedies.

In the 18 months the Premonitions Bureau was open, nearly 1000 reports of premonitions were collected, and while a few seemed to foretell disasters, over 90 percent failed to predict future events and none prevented any disasters.”

Pitifully, there was more than one story of people experiencing a psychic foreshadowing of this horrific tragedy. One was a little girl, saying she was scared to go to school that day, asking not to go to school that day, and she went and died that day. You can read more about this on my old blog HERE.

A foreboding, like other psychically sourced data, is rarely sufficiently detailed, specific and precise to be treated as directly actionable. This is the meaning of the so-called “Curse of Cassandra”. To feel that something is badly wrong, to know vaguely what this bad thing might will look like, but to be powerless to prevent it, like the seeress Cassandra at the Fall of Troy. She told them not to bring that giant wooden horse in through the Gates. They just thought she was a nutcase. But you would tear your hair out, wouldn’t you?

cassandra troy princess prophetess
Cassandra, Evelyn de Morgan

This is the challenge with divination. One takes soundings. One expects to get it at least broadly right far more often that not. If we can only do 50:50, then a guess is just as good. Only time will tell. But if you ever get a particularly strong whiff of that old sulphur, call on Michael to come and kick ass. And he will roll up his sleeves, buckle up and sigh, “ffs, here we go again.”

Archangel Michael binding Lucifer, Jacob Epstein, Coventry Cathedral

Another tragic and dramatic instance of the Devil card hit the news that same year, in May 2015. A tarot reader had called the police after her client told her he had killed someone. He had told her this by way of feedback after she had drawn The Devil, followed by the Death card and The Emperor Reversed.

The tarot reader, with his permission (!) called 999, and was advised to call the non-emergency number, which she did, going outside to make the call with the client still sitting at the table in her front room. The Police arrived 52 minutes later, arrested him and it soon emerged the man was telling the truth. The Emperor Reversed was the victim, another man, found lying in a pool of blood.

But, asking my brother, who was at that time a serving police sergeant in Wiltshire, what he made of this news story, he was horrified that the tarot reader’s call had not immediately been treated as an emergency. The tarot reader should have been assessed as being at immediate risk. The man could have changed his mind about wanting to confess, and then done her in. BBC interview here

This of course, is The Devil at its most violently extreme. All the Major Arcana cards have extremes of polarity. When The Devil turns up drawn reversed, it tends to indicate that the worst is over, whatever that was, and now order is restored.

The Devil card in its guise as Capricorn embodies the very best of Saturn, and our natural instincts. There is a good reason some artists have depicted him in the tarot as one heck of a sexy beast. “That ole Devil called Love”.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/D7KypAf0iac?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

Here is artist Ciro Marchetti’s take on The Devil in The Gilded Tarot Royale. If the force we refer to as The Devil was such a plug-ugly turnoff as he is generally painted, where would be his power of attraction and temptation?

The Gilded Tarot Royale

We are not in Nature. We are of Nature. When the Devil strikes and sears our soul, we turn for a salve to the wild god Pan, and rest ourselves, go feed some birds, water some plants, watch a bee, sit out under the moon, get up to greet the dawn. Nature is often cruel, but absent of malice.

My mother once said if she ever met Old Nick she would say, fuck off you. She said, we know he hates us, so why we would we give him the time of day? One of my sisters, a lawyer, said she would ask him in for a coffee and ask him to tell her his side of the story. And no doubt she would be royally entertained. He is a great story teller. The best. But a filthy liar. And nothing wastes precious time like a liar.

Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth– Buddha

Thank you for reading.

Back again soon!

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