Prince of Swords (Robin Wood Tarot)

Today’s card is the Knight of Swords from the Robin Wood Tarot. Wood has taken the air symbolism of swords very seriously, showing us a knight on a pegasus, soaring above the clouds. His sword crackles with electricity. He seems totally focused on his mission.

The knight of swords is an archetype I have some close familiarity with, having often played the role of intellectual crusader myself. One of the dangers associated with our verbal faculty is that of becoming ungrounded, detached from the realities of a situation. The words and concepts can take on a life of their own, and we can get caught up in the internal logic of our arguments and lose sight of the practical, social, or emotional implications of our ideas.

We can almost imagine this particular knight setting off from a literal “ivory tower” on his crusade to save the world from the dangers of incorrect thinking.

It would be a mistake to paint this fellow in completely negative or cynical terms, however. Sometimes ideas do need champions, and intensity of focus can sometimes have a very clarifying effect. Wood has given her knight a face that is more intent than aggressive, more idealistic than dogmatic. On balance, he is a positive figure, a hero coming to the rescue.

Here are the questions to ask when this card appears:

What cause am I fighting for?
Do I need a reality check?
Why is it important to be right?
How do I bring my good ideas to the world?

Moon Goddess - Capricorn

Although your calendar may show the Full Moon on Friday, the best evening for ritual is July 17 (Thursday), as this is the night when the Moon is actually closest to full.

Tthe theme for this Moon is “The Call of Perfection”. You may have had some nasty run-ins with perfectionism lately, thanks to Mars and Saturn being conjunct in Virgo…perhaps a run-in with law enforcement, or a humorless petty bureaucrat making you life miserable. With positive intentions and a little luck, the Full Moon in Capricorn can help you process the uncomrfortable aspects of perfectionism into something productive and rewarding.

This Full Moon is heavily colored by the Mars-Saturn conjunction in Virgo, as well as Jupiter’s proximity to the Moon in Capricorn. These energies draw us of out of our domestic sanctuary and encourage us to make something of importance in the world outside. There is a sense that everything will open up and bear fruit, if only we can put the pieces together without lapsing into error or mishap. It’s a good time for magic directed toward your vocation or avocation, to bring an important project to birth. Get as much pragmatic groundwork as possible done before the Moon, and then use her energy to seal it and manifest it.

Affirmations for this Moon:
I create perfection.
Careful work earns lasting rewards.
I am ready for the test.
Today’s opportunity is tomorrow’s foundation.

For more on upcoming full moons and dark moons, see Moon Magic at Starweaver’s Gems from Earth and Sky.

Greetings!

Thanks for your patience during my posting hiatus. I took a trip to Florida that got me in “vacation mode”, and when I returned, I felt I needed to get my main website updated before spending more time on this blog. I think I’m kind of back in the groove again now, so I should be posting more again soon!

Blessings, Tom

The Litha issue of Starweaver’s Gems from Earth and Sky is now available on the web at www.telp.com. Contents of this issue include

• Litha, Darkness in the Light
• The Fourth Door: Change Complements Form
• Celestial Gossip for July, August, and September
• Tarot Wisdom: The Priestess
• In the Garden: The Best of Thymes
• From the Hearth: Enchiladas and Spanish Rice
• The Imaginarium: Valiel, Lady of the Seas
  A new issue of Gems from Earth and Sky is published eight times a year.

The full moon in Sagittarius falls on June 18th, and the best evening for ritual is the night before, June 17 (Tuesday).

This moon’s theme is the  Search of the Restless Heart.

The essential issue of the Sagittarius Moon is reconciling the desire for exploration with the comfort of knowledge and information. To grow, we must step beyond the easy thoughts and ideas of the Gemini Sun, and reach out into unfamiliar territory, where things are not so easily analyzed.

The energies of a Sagittarius moon are thus both intellectual and spiritual, and at this time, Venus’s continued close contact with the Sun emphasizes the emotional qualities of this Moon as well. We’ve been looking over the options, trying to find our true desire and how it reinforces our life purpose, but now our attention swings outward, into the unexplored adventures that await us in the larger landscape of the world. There is an attraction to new ideas and the people who represent those ideas for us. The heart yearns for something new, some stimulation that will help us learn.

Use this Full Moon to add energy to your spiritual and geographical excursions. Welcome the new!

Affirmations for this Moon:
There is freedom in motion.
Excitement lies ahead.
Old questions give birth to newquestions.
To discover, I must explore.

Ritual planning is nothing more than preparation, an act of imagination. The reality is what happens when the ritual is actually performed. When the time comes and the ritual begins, the plan is secondary. The most important thing now is the frame of mind of the person or persons leading the ritual.

In some ways, leading ritual is similar to acting on stage. Not in the sense of being a performer trying to entertain an audience, or trying to project a fictional character who is not yourself, but rather in the sense of putting aside the stress and jitters and entering the flow of the present moment.

The primary role of the ritual leaders is not to follow the plan or make sure that nothing goes wrong. Rather it is to manage the energy of the ritual and the participants. The leaders must not project tension, desire to control, or irritability. They must project love, flexibility, confidence, and genuiness.

If you lead ritual with feelings of warmth and respect for the participants, the ritual will become a collaborative project, and glitches and departures from the plan will not bring down the group feeling and the positive focus. This is especially easy to do for a group that has worked together for some time, with different people assuming leadership roles; everyone understands how to support the energy and love of the circle.

In public rituals or with looser groups, there is more of a challenge. Leaders must be sensitive to the presence of participants who are confused or intimidated, whose energy is flagging, or who are caught up in private thoughts. If the ritual is well planned to begin with, addressing these problems should not require major changes to the ritual plan. More likely, they can be taken care of by a shift in your own attitude or focus, which may manifest as a bit of spontaneous humor, an increase or decrease in the level of drama you are projecting, or just reshaping the energy flow slightly by will.

It’s been said that leading ritual and teaching kindergarten require basically the same set of skills and attitudes. There’s a lot of truth in that. As people learn the ways of adult life, their basic nature doesn’t change, they just learn to match external behavioral expectations. We may still get bored and cranky like we did at 4 years old, but we’ve learned to stand and wait patiently instead of throwing fingerpaint at the teacher. But in a ritual context, it is not enough that participants behave well. They must also be well.

If the personal energies of the participants are flowing as they should, then the collective energy becomes available for achieving the ritual purpose. In a magical context, the energy is strong and palpable and is directed like a luminous fluid into the work. For less intense rituals, the energies are more diffuse and less kinetic, but still very real. And the desired result is the same: the collective will of the group becomes focused on the ritual purpose and moves to achieving with clarity and force.

The term “synchronicity”, coined by Carl Jung, is a key idea that applies across all different systems of divination. A synchronicity is a meaningful correlation between our inner thoughts and an event in the external world.

Some examples:

Thinking of an old song and then walking into a store where it happens to be playing.

Contemplating a change of career, then being phoned by a friend in a distant city who is starting a new company and looking for a partner.

Feeling a great need for peace, then having a dove settle onto the fence in front of your house.

Synchronicities are different from coincidences because (1) they connect the inner and outer worlds, and (2) we find them meaningful, full of significance. Two external events that happen at the same time, no matter how unlikely they may be, are just a coincidence, not a synchronicity. (For example, if two people both get flat tires on their cars on the same day.)

Most divination techniques might be thought of as ways to encourage synchronicity to happen. If you draw a tarot card while thinking about an important question, for example, you are setting up the possibility of a meaningful correlation between your question and the card. Since the tarot symbols are designed to be provocative, stimulating, and meaningful, they lend themselves readily to this kind of thing.

But as ancient people knew very well, unplanned external events can also convey meaning, to those who are open to finding it. Once our minds become accustomed to seeing things symbolically, then the whole world becomes a treasure trove of potential meaning.

One of the most basic forms of divination, therefore, is simply being open to synchronicity and noting any events that speak meaningfully to you about the matter on your mind. No special tools are required, although a notebook might be helpful. This is a kind of divination you can do for yourself, anywhere, any time!

Dark Moon in Gemini, June 3, 1:24 pm

Best evening for ritual: June 2 (Monday) or June 3 (Tuesday)

Theme: Know Yourself to Show Yourself

The Moon, Sun, Venus and Mercury are all in conjunction during this Dark Moon in Gemini. This presents a great opportunity for looking yourself over, up and down, back and front. What do you know about yourself? How do you feel about yourself? Are you the person you believe you are? Are you the person you want to be? Mars is in Leo, in a close sextile with the Solar-Lunar entourage. He is ready to express himself, to go to battle on your behalf, to be your personal hero bringing in fame, fortune and admiration. But he needs to know who he is fighting for, and that is the task this Moon presents.

Questions for this Moon:

Are there two sides to my nature?

Am I wise?

Am I beautiful?

What side of me needs to be seen?

Today’s card is The World from the Waite-Smith Tarot.

At the beginnings of tarot history, this card probably depicted Christ triumphant (the symbolism of the four creatures, representing the four evangelists, is consistent with this, as is the reference in the Steele sermon which glosses the World card with “that is, God the Father”). A very early version of the Tarot de Marseille indeed shows a male figure on this card, posed and draped much like the female figure of later versions.

Whatever the origins of this image, it speaks to us today of the integrated spirit, a person whole and centered and at peace with the cosmos.

The four figures around the outside (in addition to their connection with the evangelists) represent the fixed signs of the Zodiac (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius), and hence the four seasons of the year. The card thus conveys the wholeness and completeness of nature’s cycles.

Whenever I draw this card, I consider it a profound blessing. It reminds me that I am at home in the world, at home in my life, and that the sacred is always present, always permeating everything. As advice, it can suggest a need to breathe deeply, meditate, and put your worries into perspective.

Theurgy is religious or spiritual magic; thaumaturgy is practical magic. Putting it another way, theurgy is directed at changing the magician, thaumaturgy is directed at changing the world.

The theurgist uses magic to come into closer relationship with divine, to evolve spiritually, to rise to higher levels of awareness. The theurgist may focus on aspecting deity, communing with angelic entities, or unlocking the subconscious, healing wounds, and forming a more integrated personality. The “high magic” of the renaissance and the occult ceremonial magic tradition is very much in this mold. The worker of high magic studies religious symbolism and ancient wisdom, not to achieve worldly rewards, but to learn the deep structure of creation and thus draw nearer to a divine consciousness.

Thaumaturgy, on the other hand, is more concerned with earthly needs and desires: wealth, love, career, health, and so on. Most “folk magic” is thaumaturgic. The magician isn’t seeking an internal change of consciousness, but rather external physical effects. This is the type of magic that most readily captures the popular imagination. Who wouldn’t want to cast a simple spell and get a $1000 check in the mail the next day?

In truth, the line between the two types of magic is not a line at all, but a continuum of gradations. Every act of magic changes the relationship between the magician and the world, so every act of magic has both internal and external effects. In fact, the strongest acts of magic seem to affect both self and world in very powerful ways. For these reasons, a magical practice should be undertaken only by those who welcome spiritual growth and inner change. Once the door between the inner and outer worlds is open, there will be a flow in both directions.