By Sarah Taylor

Once more, we have a Queen and a Prince in the line-up (the last one was two weeks ago, on Sunday, Nov. 30). There is a whole lot of integration going on, if we take the view that any court card represents an aspect of the self that is in current expression — in other words, that is at the forefront of an inner transformation.

Queen of Wands, Prince of Disks, Six of Swords from the Röhrig Tarot deck, created by Carl-W. Röhrig. Click on the image for a larger version.

Here, both courts encompass all four elements, so there is a rich balancing act at play: the Queen of Wands is the watery aspect of fire, and the Prince of Disks is the airy aspect of earth. Moreover, the Queen is head-on to us, while the Prince is in profile, facing the Queen; a reciprocity between one card and the other, and between one card and us. This is a three-way conversation in action.

Who are you? Who are you becoming? Where is the dominant feminine seeking integration with a masculine that is in his prime, but not yet King?

The Queen of Wands is described by the following words on the card: “Self Knowledge,” “Sympathy,” “change.” The only English word on the Prince’s card is “Design,” although one word in German will almost certainly be translated as “Architect.”

The two primary differences between this reading and the one two weeks ago are that the Queen and the Prince’s positions are switched, and so the Prince now looks at the Queen instead of looking away from her. And his eyes are open and filled with the light that sits inside his crown. That light is reflected in the feather beneath his chin and the constellation to the right of the gem in his helmet.

The Queen of Wands is a witch in the broadest sense: she harnesses erotic energy in service to her art — whatever that art may be. And she is the guardian of both that energy, and of herself. She looks at us directly, fingertip on chin, surveying us. She epitomises masculine energy (Wands being masculine and phallic); and yet as the most individuated aspect of the feminine, the Queen has balanced both principles in a way that works for her. She is then able — if she so chooses — to offer that to others and to the world.

The Prince as Architect is a mathematical designer-builder — and yet his suit is a feminine one (Disks), which means that his raw materials, like the sign with which he is associated (Taurus), are of the earth. Like Taurus, he also works with the raw materials of what he considers to have worth; he is an architect of values. He understands what will be enduring, and places his focus on that. Right now, his inner sight is focussed on the Queen.

What does the Prince build that the Queen knows? What does the Queen transform and the Prince construct through his knowledge of form?

The answer lies in the final card, the Six of Swords, or “Science.” Here, we have two separate strands, their origins in two distinct areas of the cosmos, running through a circular maze to meet each other on the other side and to form the most beautiful and complex of blooms, its colours a synthesis of both.

Through separation and trial, we now find integration. Behind the rather exotic flower is a feather of light, which sits at the same level as the light in the Prince’s cranium, and the white of the Queens headdress.

The words on the Six of Swords:

“Differentiation,” “Cognitions,” “ability to analyse.”

Three swords stand, point down, on each side of the card. Balance, yet “differentiation.” Analysis, yet synthesis. This is one of the ‘lightest’ of the Swords cards, and speaks of a transition from the confusion of the Five to a coming together and moving into a new form. It will also frequently speak of a trip across water in the real world. There is a shift to a new state of relating, and relatedness. This is likely to have its origins in you, although it may also play out through the mirror of another, or others, in your life.

Finally, while the Queen is facing us and the Prince is facing the Queen, the Six feels discrete. This integration may be taking place outside awareness, or at least outside a place that is immediately accessible to you — as if it is in your psychological ‘peripheral vision’. You might sense — but not see — it, because, at this moment in time, what you are looking at is that other, and not what you are co-creating.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. Frequently, and perhaps frustratingly to the part of you that loves to believe it knows and has a handle on everything, this alchemical magic needs little of your conscious attention. Simply being there, doing your thing, in the presence of what transforms you, works its own wonder. Let the understanding of this filter through to its own rhythm; the maze confounds at times, but the path has already been resolved.

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Queen of Wands (the watery aspect of fire), Prince of Disks (the airy aspect of earth), Six of Swords (Mercury in Aquarius)

If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread.

There are so many topics that might be written about today that it’s like playing Whack-a-Mole to select one; just when you smack one down, another pops up. We could discuss the amazing clash of civilization playing out in response to the Torture Report, with Dick Cheney emerging from his hidey-hole to deliver scathing remarks to spider-friendly FOX News, while most of the CIA uses the same kind of duck ‘n cover defense used by foot soldiers throughout history: “I was just doing my job.”

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

We might examine the new federal guidelines regarding racial profiling, which only applies to federal programs, not your local cop shop, or take a look at the call for further sensitivity training in the halls of law enforcement, which is a bit like putting lipstick on a pig (pun, no pun).

True, Obama is expected to issue executive orders regarding oversight of military equipment going to police, as well as requiring extensive training in its appropriate use, but that won’t impact the dark heart of racism that exists in small towns everywhere. Hopefully, it will at least put local bullies on notice that someone is watching.

If we’re worth a tinker’s dam as human beings, we’ll have found the level of state-approved sadism become visible these last weeks to be not just AWESOMELY (Colbert here and Stewart here) distracting but deeply disturbing. In the land of the free and home of the brave, cops are picking off black youth with impunity, tazing pregnant mothers and autistic kids, while Texas and Missouri feel free to execute retarded prisoners on death row despite federal guidelines that forbid it. Ohio has botched so many of these drug-induced procedures, putting the offender through Constitutionally-forbidden cruel and unusual punishment, that the ONION wrote a piece entitled, “Ohio Replaces Lethal Injection With Humane New Head-Ripping-Off Machine.” Sounds almost merciful, compared to what’s been going on recently.

We could even open the lid on some of the good things that are happening — rare as a liberal at an evangelical revival — because POTUS is using his executive power without much fanfare to try to balance the right-tilt, or we might review a recent decision by SCOTUS that makes the Supremes seem almost reasonable, given their own considerable list to the right (and, as an aside, don’t count on the continuation of either). We could look at any of those things, but today let’s try splashing our faces with the cold water of realism and tackle the big green elephant in America’s living room: unregulated capitalism complicated by an addictive level of consumerism that has led us to full-blown plutocracy.

After pre-Black Friday sales shooting an arrow through our Thanksgiving festivities, there was Black Friday itself, followed by pre-Cyber weekend and Cyber Monday, then Cyber week, which — presumably — ends on Friday. I’m not counting on it. As I live too far from amenities to forgo buying on line, I’m stuck. Unfortunately, this option carries a cost in privacy, and due to the dreaded ‘cookies’ of cyber life, I presume my in-box will immediately fill with whatever newest cyber-salesmanship comes next. Like the gutting of Thanksgiving traditions — and the appearance of Christmas paraphernalia even prior to Halloween — nobody asked me what I preferred. Money won this round.

Money is the Gawd we worship on these shores. That’s always been true to some degree, the founders having established the seriousness of America’s capitalism by dumping tea into Boston’s bay, but now the mandate of the corporate board room as the holy of holies has gone as viral as fears over Ebola. I fault the religious right for this escalation of valueless secularism. If they hadn’t re-created Christian philosophy to resemble some darkly-inspired Disney cartoon, droolingly simplistic and insultingly ignorant, many of us wouldn’t have tossed the whole of religion over the side to sink with the tea.

In the years that followed, many of us who considered ourselves spiritual-while-secular failed to realize that it takes a certain amount of education to keep a system of ethics without pinning it to habitual practice and religious philosophy. When we throw something overboard, we create a void that must be filled. Unfortunately, the nation filled its own ethical void with shallow thinking and ambition for money and power. Now, sandwiched between fear and paranoia among the elders and the lack of structured ethical values in the generations that followed, we find ourselves with only mammon to bow to.

The Christocrats — read that Republicans, although the conservative base is a good deal more Wall Street than Church Street — have developed some very interesting ideas, force-fed to the home schooled and packaged for sale to those most nervous about things that go bump in the night. Capitalizing on that movement, the Koch brothers have spent years investing in research to discover how to capture the zeitgeist and harness it to their desires. They seem finally to have perfected their mojo with a data mining project that is, as Eric proposed in his subscription piece, a “sign of the times.” Do not be surprised, then, if an outlier presidential candidate surfaces with the K brand on his/her rump.

Combined with large donations to education providers that meet their prerequisites, the result of this kind of social engineering — smacking of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and its cohorts — can be seen in the latest bill to come before our lame duck Congress, the Omnibus Budget Bill. This is the trillion-dollar baby, the one that is close to passing while containing enough poison pill riders to give the average liberal a very bad case of agita.

If you’re a C-SPAN wonk, you might recognize this baby. It isn’t new, it’s been kicking around the House since 2013, closely matching, word for word, a proposal written by Citigroup. It turns back regulations and allows banks to do more high-risk trading: the same kind that all but burned down our fiscal house, which had to be bailed out by taxpayers. The already fragile Dodd-Frank financial reform act takes multiple hits in this proposal, while the five big banks that deal in derivative trading — Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Wells Fargo — will benefit. Let Mother Jones fill in the blanks if you’re interested.

This Omnibus Bill, which will cost upwards of a trillion bucks and keep the nation from shutting down once again, contains something for everybody to bitch about. The Baggers object bitterly to the “moderation” included in this proposal, funding Obamacare and other “liberal” projects. They insist that the bill’s touted “bi-partisanship” shows that Boehner’s gone too soft by refusing to defund the dreaded “amnesty” offered by Obama’s immigration plan.

On the left, the bill is seen as a monument to triangulation, Obama giving in too quickly to the big money faction and selling progressive leadership down the river. It is, they insist, the same kind of short-sighted accommodation Clinton sought when he signed the repeal of Glass-Steagall, established the Commodity Futures Trading Act and completely redesigned welfare. Indeed, the bill itself — best referenced by Charles Pierce, I think, who named it “a veritable compost heap of Republican goodies” — seems to make no one happy but that infamous one percent.

Republicans aren’t good at looking back. It seems encoded in their DNA to let themselves off the hook while trolling for someone to blame things on. They depend upon the ignorance of the American public when it comes to politics. They only tortured because they had to and they’re only giving the store away to big business and banksters because jobs, jobs, trickle down, jobs (or, as Al Franken once titled a book, “Lies and the lying liars that tell them”). Their greatest skill, like baby quail running in lockstep behind their mother (but not nearly so cute) is unity. They do “hive mind” better than any other type of citizen here in North America. They all “get the memo” and abide by it, even though the information may not serve their best interests.

Democrats aren’t as good at herding their diverse kennel of cats, but at least they have the grace to look guilty when charged. The schism that’s finally being felt in the liberal party is shaking like an earthquake, thanks to the ascendency of big money, brought to us by clueless culture voters on the right and uninformed moderates in the middle this mid-term. It shouldn’t take long for a real sense of buyer’s remorse to set in when Wall Street pops its cork in celebration and the only thing that trickles down to the rest of the country will be slim pickings.

This current government funding bill has brought out the harshest judgment on party policy heard in years — referenced in the press as “a revolt” — and led by no less than House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who is not a member of the Progressive Caucus but is being supported in her criticism of this bill by over 70 members of that group. They are mostly House members that include dependable lefties like Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, Raúl Grijalva, Alan Grayson, and accompanied by the ONLY Senator aligned with the caucus, Bernie Sanders.

To their credit, however, there are a number of mainstream Dems complaining about this bill and very reluctant to support the White House, which seems to want to just get this over with. the Prez relieved that the Pubs are making an attempt to do ANYTHING that smacks of compromise. It’s apparently time to throw the cards in the air and pick a side. And although they wouldn’t admit it, Pubs must be silently ruing the day they fought Obama’s desire to appoint Elizabeth Warren to the newly created and continually endangered Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where her duties would have been limited.

Instead, she found a job in the Senate as the progressive voice of the Democratic Party, and she’s not afraid to use it. With rare clarity on the Hill, here’s what she had to say:

“I come to the floor today to ask a fundamental question — who does Congress work for? Does it work for the millionaires, the billionaires, the giant companies with their armies of lobbyists and lawyers? Or does it work for all of us?”

“A vote for this bill is a vote for future taxpayer bailouts of Wall Street. It is time for all of us to stand up and fight.”

This arrives on the heels of Warren’s loud protestation over the nomination of Antonio Weiss, Wall Street insider, to Treasury. This is an example of the “revolving door,” Warren asserts, supported by policies of both parties, but in service to no one but the one percent. A number of senators — Durbin, Franken, Shaheen and a conservative, Joe Manchin — are also opposing the nomination and for the same reason.

The Wall Street wing of the Democratic party is beginning to look a lot smaller these last few days, even though, as Robert Reich writes, “… the reason Democrats have pulled their punches with the financial sector for years is because it’s hard to punch the hand that feeds you.” As to Warren, this is not a woman to whom political maneuvering matters.

I believe her when she says she doesn’t want to be president. This is a senator who values the truth, within her purview. I’ve heard she is not supportive of various other issues progressives favor, like vanquishing the XL pipeline for instance. But what she does understand — feels she has a personal stake in — she puts herself on the line for.

By the time you read this, the bill will probably be in the can, awaiting a signature on Obama’s desk. At this point, Elizabeth Warren and her progressives are holding up a Senate vote on the poison pill that allows derivative expansion, and it’s important to understand that the principled stand she’s taken on this is not equal — as is being suggested by CNN as I write — to those held by Ted Cruz on the right. It’s taking a good bit of nerve to stand on that populist principle, to split her party and oppose her president. At risk today is closing down government, not a gamble for the faint of heart.

Still, this is just the opening shot on these kinds of heart-burns. In January, we begin a two-year brush with the wish-list of plutocracy, champagne glasses clinking in the ivory towers and the unaware below them bumbling along without a clue that life is about to get tougher. Not good news, but always best to bite the bullet before it bites you. Ultimately, we will manage it and it will inform the nation in ways we don’t yet appreciate.

And before I close, I want to do a little reminder of the “politics is personal” sort. I want to bring anything you’ve read here, buzzing around like abstractions, down to earth. This is the reason that the differences between Wall Street and Main Street are important:

A friend in her mid-seventies, who takes occasional work to try to flesh out her slim Social Security check, got caught by traffic cameras making a rolling stop this week. The system generated a picture of her failing to stop for the obligatory three-seconds, and sent a bill for $436.00; half of her monthly income. It seems to me that this is the kind of extortion that has kept Ferguson, and neighboring communities, in the cross-hairs. What was that example we reported? Some 1,800 residents and over 33,000 warrants? Warrants that citizens have no way to pay for or deal with? When the government feels free to consider the public a cash cow, it’s time to make changes.

A friend who has had chronic problems with arthritis was prescribed an 8 ounce bottle of topical cream that was helpful with pain. Covered by insurance, he was told his cost was $90.00, paid by his plan. As the yearly deductibles are due to kick in, he looked over the paperwork that is sent from time to time by his insurance carrier and discovered that the cream was charged out by the pharmaceutical house that offers it at $2,100. My friend called, indignant, and spoke to a representative, who said he’d have to speak to a pharmacist, who, you will not be surprised to learn, wasn’t available at that moment. Nor since. When these kinds of disparities are tolerated by the system, it’s time to make changes.

A family member could not afford a non-generic of a med she used every day, but the generic option simply didn’t do the trick. Although she only sees her (expensive) specialist when necessary, she contacted him because of her symptoms and he insisted she get the real stuff,” hundreds of dollars worth a month. When she told him she couldn’t afford it, he wrote her a script and gave her the name of a Canadian pharmacy where she now spends pennies on the dollar for the exact same meds in question, delivered promptly to her door by her mail carrier. When we have to go outside our own borders to get our needs met, it’s time to make changes.

It’s time to make changes, because we’re being victimized. Time to decide where we stand because the culture war has just been given a green light. Time to support those who support us and let the others fall by the wayside. In the wake of near-genocide of young black men, a close look at terrorism through the lens of an inquisitor, and a coming handover of power to the business class that considers us all a demographic to be squeezed and wrung out until dry, it’s time to take these politics very personally.

Monday, Dec. 15, is yet another exact contact of the square between Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn — the 6th of seven exact squares in total. This is the astrology that has been defining our current era for a few years now: breaking open social and political institutions as well as structures on a more personal level; calling individuals to wake up, take part and define themselves in a dramatically shifting landscape.

Hundreds of protesters block the Brooklyn Bridge Dec. 3 following the grand jury decision in the choking death of Eric Garner. Photo by James Keivom/New York Daily News.

While the first exact contact of Uranus and Pluto was in 2012, the effects began warming up long before that as these two powerful planets approached alignment (think Arab Spring and the Occupy movement).

In your life, your community, and in the wider world, you can probably identify sparks that have ignited in unexpected ways; foundations seemingly being bulldozed out from under you; opportunities to engage with your community and the motivation to actually do so; intense reactionary steps taken by those who have a lot to lose in the face of progress.

You can see it now in the stories dominating the news: the militarization of police; the unification of voices speaking up against racial injustice; the release of the Congressional Intelligence Committee’s report on torture by the CIA. Many of these stories are united by the theme of “abuse of power” — institutionalized power (and the power to undo institutions) being a theme of Pluto in Capricorn.

You can see it in the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Malala Yousafzai: the 17-year-old Pakistani girls’ education activist determined not to let a Taliban bullet to her face dissuade her from her mission to speak up and assert herself (revolution of self being a theme of Uranus in Aries).

Consider also that there’s a grand fire trine blazing in the sky right now: a loop of fire connecting planets in Aries, Leo and Sagittarius. It’s anchored by Mercury and the Sun in Sagittarius trine Jupiter in Leo (exact Dec. 12 and 14, respectively), but if you take a wide view, the grand trine fans out to include Ceres, Pholus and Ixion in Sagittarius; Uranus, the South lunar node and Eris in Aries; and Juno in Leo.

That’s a hot sky. Whatever is sparked this week may well keep burning, thanks to the flowing nature of trines — there is enough upheaval around us to serve as tinder, and the flames are being fanned. Thankfully there are major planets in earth and water water signs: a little grounding, perhaps some empathy. Not all fires will run unchecked, although maybe some are long overdue; even nature gives us examples of fire’s essential role in certain life cycles.

Bring the focus in a little closer. Think about the changes in your life since around 2011 or so: the unexpected upheavals opening new spaces to step into; the insistence (seemingly from the universe itself) that you assert who you are — or that you discover who you are as the world comes crashing into your living room. What facet of your life that you thought was a concrete foundation reinforced with rebar has become more like tectonic plates along a major fault line?

There are parts of yourself just waiting for a match to be lit within reach. Where within you has the revolutionary spark and the process of evolution been most palpable, scary as it may sometimes be? Get your bearings within, and look without. This is the event. You’re in it.

On Sunday, at 7:51 am EST (12:51 UT), the Virgo Moon will reach its last quarter phase, with 90 degrees of separation from the Sagittarius Sun — both in the sky and on the zodiac. It’s called a closing square aspect between the luminaries (Sun and Moon), and it approaches at a time when we could all afford to be closer with each other.

There has been so much in public and political exchange to drive us either apart or into seclusion since our current season initiated with the last full week of September. For many, perhaps including you, such a social environment has taken a personal toll.

After all, who would not want to recoil from injustice, atrocity and confounding absurdity? Yet, separation is even worse for the intrinsically social beings we are.

We are living at a crucial moment that will not just decide how this season will conclude and the new season will begin. Also being decided by all and each of us is whether the innate social nature that allowed humanity to survive is compatible with the respect for each and every individual human life that is necessary for society to survive.

While respect for human life begins with you, none of us are going to get through this moment alone successfully. Indeed, growing closer to each other will not be enough. Only by perceiving and cleaving to our individual and collective connection with the Earth and the universe will we be able to resolve our current crises and ascend to another cycle, another season.

As evidence that we are, together and individually, part of and contributing to something greater is how the Earth’s natural environment is now at a comparable moment of crisis correlating with that of our social environment. An even farther reaching connection is being evinced by how a solution is simultaneously being demonstrated on the zodiac and in the sky by the luminaries — the two greater lights.

Astrologers consider the lunar last quarter to be a crucial moment as the Sun and Moon close in on their next New Moon conjunction.

As the template for all closing square aspects, the last quarter Moon poses two questions for you. The answers you arrive at determine how the closing lunar cycle (or lunation) will end, and how the next lunation (initiated at the next New Moon) will begin for you. That’s where astrology can help by bringing thousands of years of observation and correlation to your situation.

Both questions have to do with the intrinsic nature of a square aspect as a moment of tension. The first query is whether the source of apparent pressure will be properly identified. After all, finding anything requires that you first look in the right place. The second uncertainty is how to gain relief from the evident strain on our individual and collective constitutions.

You have to stay up quite late or wake up very early to see the half-lit last quarter Moon. That’s because the Moon is getting closer to the Sun from our perspective, rising at about midnight, reaching its highest point in the sky around dawn.

By implication then, you have to go to some trouble to actually see the source of tension in a closing square. Even then, it’s still possible to be internally divided over its origin.

Fortunately, astrologers have been observing closing squares between the luminaries for a long time. Reliably, the correlated human experience is tension originating on the inside.

Unless one goes to the trouble of putting the illuminating experience of astrology to use, it’s easy to ascribe the perceived pressure so often concurrent with the lunar last quarter to an external origin. Such a misattribution gets you out of sync with the Sun and Moon, severing your contact with the universe, the Earth, and other people.

The Sun and Moon have no such problem — they persist and grow closer after the last quarter. By doing so, the greater lights are demonstrating what your priorities should be even as they offer an example for you to follow. Even more importantly, the luminaries are symbolizing an example for you to set.

While none of us are going to get through this moment alone, each of us must take responsibility for getting the ball rolling. You must first recognize that the Sun and Moon exist inside of you, and express through you, just as surely as they do in he sky. Hence, the extent to which you are at variance with the sky is the extent to which you will be out of whack with yourself, with other people, with the Earth and with the cosmos.

In effect, you are now being called to grow closer with all that is. You are being asked to become a living, breathing luminary for the rest of us to see and move with. You are being required to find and show your greater light so as to contribute to our collective survival.

A week from this coming Sunday, something extraordinary will happen on the zodiac and in the sky. The Sun and Moon will synchronize with each other and the Earth by merging directly overhead at the Tropic of Capricorn, while simultaneously conjoining in the first degree of the sign Capricorn to begin a new lunation and a new season at the same time. That doesn’t happen very often.

Hence, the Capricorn New Moon and solstice will represent an opportunity to begin anew on two different levels at the same time — emblematic of a giant leap. The sky implicitly will be part of it. The Earth will intrinsically be part of it. Whether we will also be part of it will be a matter of choice — your choice, of whether or not to grow closer and be as one with each and every other.

Offered In Service

Len is available for astrology readings. You can contact him at lenwallick [at] gmail [dot] com.

Venus enters Capricorn at 11:42 am EST (16:42 UT) tomorrow with an implied sense of completion. Not an ending, please understand. As Eric recently pointed out in the context of the Gemini Full Moon, there are no endings in astrology because (with few exceptions) everything on the zodiac just keeps on moving without pause.

Completion in the astrological sense is not about endings. It is about meetings — or perhaps more properly, returns. So, in a very real sense Venus will be returning to Capricorn where it has traversed about once a year since before there were years.

For astrologers, completion can also mean two or more objects, points, or signs with complementary natures interacting so as to move into or away from balance with the the other(s) in some way.

You might call this interactive type of completion a form of continuous cosmic titration. It’s a process that hints at the constantly changing nature of a solution you might apply to a correlating issue in your life. Interestingly, this year’s ingress of Venus to Capricorn works toward finding the nature of a solution on several levels.

On the level of what you can see in the sky with your own eyes, Venus is returning to visibility after a long trip behind the Sun. Of course, whether you can see Venus in the West after sundown at this time depends on your weather, sight lines and latitude.

Before long, however, nearly all of us will be able to witness Venus rising on a new horizon. Which means that you will no longer have to wake up before the birds to witness the brightest planet in all its glory, as was the case earlier this year.

Hence, there is a sense of completion in having Venus appear on a new horizon in the sky. Perhaps you can apply that sense to understand and address any new horizons now appearing in your life. In order to do so, be bright like Venus and gradually rise to whatever occasion presents itself as a result of those new horizons. You might even want to emulate Venus to the point of gradually increasing your visibility after a long period of being less than apparent for whatever reason.

Speaking of new horizons, the spacecraft of the same name is on the last leg of its approach to Pluto (one of Eric’s top five events of 2015 featured in the readings and horoscopes of the upcoming annual edition: “Cosmophilia”), and we will soon get our first good look at astrology’s Little Big Planet. So happens Venus is entering Capricorn to conjoin with Pluto (and square Uranus in Aries) on Dec. 20.

Consider how the Uranus-Pluto square is a continuing story that is (as Eric has said many times) defining our era. Venus completing another cycle with Pluto on the zodiac (just as we are about get a good look at Pluto in space) indicates some possible solutions for how political events are playing out in your personal life.

First, make like the New Horizons spacecraft and go to meet. Especially if you can’t see things clearly, confront the personal problems that come with the political territory of our time by going to meet. 

Go to city council meetings, for example. Or go to meetings of activists in your community, and see what’s happening from up close as complementary points of view meet and moderate each other (or not). Do this to better understand where your own interest fits in with anybody and everybody else. Who knows, your own presence might bring some completion and balance just as Venus will bring the same to Capricorn.

For as Venus enters Capricorn it will ingress a slice of the zodiac ruled by Saturn, where Mars is also exalted. For some time now Mars, first from Capricorn, and now from Aquarius (where Saturn co-rules with Uranus) has been in what astrologers call “mutual reception” with Saturn.

That’s because Saturn is currently in Scorpio, where Mars co-rules with Pluto. As result, much of how astrology has been expressing in your life lately may well have seemed unbalanced, or at least incomplete. That’s how, with Venus entering Capricorn tomorrow, some completion is in order with yet another example you can emulate — with the objective of bringing further balance and completion for your own life.

So, let’s review what you can do to be in stride with Venus from tomorrow until it leaves Capricorn behind to enter Aquarius early next year:

First, look to new horizons, which may already be appearing in your life. Be bright, rise to the occasion, and be visible in a way others will welcome for the illumination you bring.

Next, go to meet. Nearly everything in the sky, on the zodiac, and in the world is moving. To the extent you can, so should you. Move and get a good look at what’s going on from up close and personal. You might be surprised at what you find.

Finally, look for where your own unique nature and qualities will complete what is already there. Not to end, please remember, but to help determine the nature of what have possibly been elusive solutions.

Who knows, by simply showing up for a look, you could ultimately be the final piece in the greater and heretofore unrealized peace we have continuously been trying to find for so long. Don’t think so? How will you know unless you try?

Offered In Service

Len is available for astrology readings. You can contact him at lenwallick [at] gmail [dot] com.

By Sarah Taylor

The three cards in front of you together offer a simple, potent, and deeply transformative reading, with the figure in the central card, the Seven of Disks, as the initial point of focus.

The Seven of Disks speaks of Failure. But in this case this is failure from a limiting point of view — the view of the person sitting under the seven disks, arms resting on his knees, shoulders hunched, head lowered. Despondent.

Death, Seven of Disks, Six of Wands from the Röhrig Tarot deck, created by Carl-W. Röhrig. Click on the image for a larger version.

He is sitting facing towards the card on the left, which he has come from: the Death card. He is dwarfed by it; it is writ full in his current experience, sitting as he is at the level of the skull that emerges from the shadows in the lower half of the picture. This is what he is associated with — an ending; the falling away of something whose time had come to an end, like the dried leaves that are blown from the bough of a now-invisible tree.

The Death card is a major arcana card, which means that the shift that accompanies it has a depth to it that indicates a shift in the Soul’s journey. The death may be an ending in the day-to-day world, but it is also the transition from one inner state to another. Like the shedding of the leaves, it is the shedding of a skin. However, what the figure seems to be identified with is that old skin, and not what the skin makes way for.

Look back at the Death card and to what emerges from the skull. It is the figure of a woman, holding to herself, young, the harvest of wheat giving a golden shine to her hair and dress. Note this: what was harvested is the bringer of light and life. She is in a protective position, though, which suggests there is something that is not yet ready to emerge fully, because it needs time to strengthen and to grow into itself. It needs time to adapt to its new surroundings, to become fledged.

And so back to the card at centre. Are you able to see it differently now? You, who might be that figure who sits, pressed down upon by the weight of something that felt too much to carry. Was it yours to carry in the first place?

Can you now look up and see what that burden was concealing: a source of light that lies at the level of the woman in the Death card, in much the same way that you, the seated figure, are at the level of the skull. See how a shift in perspective can reveal more than you might at first have thought?

Notice, too, that the sky behind the disks is clear for the most part, the clouds dissipating as the eye moves towards the darkness along the top of the card. The figure is alone, but there is an atmosphere of beauty, and a place of space. There is a depth to this card that confers a feeling of grace if you are able to look past — with your mind’s eye, your intuition — the oppressive opacity of the disks.

And what if you were to change your position completely, to see what is opening up at your back? The final card brings the nascent light in the Seven, that was birthed in the Death card, into the centre of the picture. Now, it is a Sun. And here, right in front of you, is a road, the ‘wall’ of rock before you blasted open to reveal something that is calling to you. It is compelling, impelling — the energy of wands quickening the atmosphere, calling you onwards, fuelling you for your journey.

“Victory,” “Success,” “Clear breakthrough,” “Combination of power.”

I’m intrigued by the word “combination.” A combination of — what? Maybe that is part of the journey too.

What’s clear is that there is a turnaround here, and it may be one that you feel quite palpably because it has at its foundations a major arcana card. And if the hints weren’t enough to look at what you’re not seeing in your situation, then the face hewn from the rock to the left of the road in the Six of Wands is perhaps the final sign you need to know that there is a route leading you somewhere. It is there. You don’t need to find it immediately. In fact, it may well be that it finds you.

What you will feel, though, when you see it, is that quickening of the wands; a stirring in your body; a fire ignited; a job well done!

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Death (Scorpio), Seven of Disks (Saturn in Taurus), Six of Wands (Jupiter in Leo)

If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread.

Life has been so packed for the past however long it’s been. In the past few days, I’ve been able to unwind a bit, due mainly to forcing myself to take the entire four day Thanksgiving weekend off from all five (six?) of my jobs.

OK, I was forcing myself at first, but then the sheer pleasure of not working sunk in.

And let me tell you, three and a half days without doing anything I’m obligated to do was so very much needed, even if I folded on that last day and did a bunch of work because a strange bout of inertia kept me away from anything else.

I’ve now entered what some friends and I are referring to as Self Care December (SCD). I hate December. It’s true.

Growing up, I was all about the carols and the tree and togetherness, but then shit got weird: family started disintegrating and death anniversaries became a reality and I realized that even though I’m perfectly fine with my oodles of outsider status the other 11 months of the year, it’s way too hard to be ‘different’ in December. I don’t like consumerism or plastic; Christianity makes me pretty uncomfortable; I don’t have a traditional romantic relationship; and the complex emotions that arise, coupled with some dear-hearted friends who really try to help, just make the experience kind of a mess.

Part of SCD is that I’m taking a lot of walks. I love walking. I love focusing on a given color, or my breathing. I love getting a feel for the city, or talking to the trees and bushes, even just in my mind.

In the past two days, I’ve wandered around walking a lot. A LOT. Someone mentions Christmas, I feel my anxiety start to rise — even though my life is pretty rad and amazing (which just compounds the anxiety) — and I just take off down the street.

As I’ve engaged this practice, I’ve felt a familiar longing creeping back into my soul. It’s hard to articulate, but it has to do with the urge to wander the world combined with the urge to establish home.

At this point in my life I can feel these different paths in front of me. I feel like I’m at a crossroads. The sacred sexuality route is calling, amplified by a sudden preponderance of opportunities to explore it at all levels. Do I want to explore it just for my own personal sake, or bring it into my work with clients? I don’t know. There’s the energy healing path. Mostly for my work with clients, but clearly it would be an experiential path as well. There’s the part of me that very much wants to follow the path that is partially laid out already, working with ancestral and earth-bound spirits, and incorporating that into my work. And there’s my commitment to furthering my understanding of astrology, particularly in the therapeutic context.

Clearly all of these things are connected. But there’s that whole ‘time’ thing to think about.

Days like today have made me feel homesick in a way. For the days in grad school when I got to wander and just do what my soul wanted me to. I would wake up, write, go on a walk, come home and make food, take a long walk to a coffee shop, write, ponder, drink coffee (or whiskey) and stare out the window, walk home, make food, write… That kind of behavior feels like home. And it feels like freedom.

Space and spaciousness are themes lately. Breathing into spaciousness. Imagining space around the parts of my body and my emotions that are constricted or anxious, breathing spaciousness into the bad emotions and breathing out to create space for the new. Finding the space to do the work. Finding a space to live. Finding a space to call home.

Then there’s that conflict that always arises. My soul longs for the space to do the work I love on a full time basis. Working with people. Striving for change. My soul also longs for the space to wander empty beaches and silent forests. But I have to pay rent. I have to pay rent in a city that is seeing rent increases more pronounced than anywhere else in the country — and the home I’m currently living in, while incredible, is temporary.

It makes me think of the Devil card in the tarot. It makes me think of my own general interpretation of the card, which emphasizes an understanding that we are here, in the material world, for a reason. That reason is not to shun the body and materiality, but rather to play here. To enjoy. To learn how to work with stone and steel and flesh and bone.

It is when those things, the money and the desire for tactile goods to create security and comfort, take precedence that we find ourselves chained. The gravity of the material is real — but there has to be space, too. Space for the mind and the heart and soul to merge and be explored. Finding the balance — honoring the structures while not making them the center and becoming chained to them — is an ongoing lesson.

So I wander through the city, now that I’ve been able to do something other than focus on work and family drama, now that I’ve started coming back into myself and the work — MY work — and it hits me: I want a home. I’m ready for a home — for MY home. But I also want to wander.

This dichotomy is so present in so many areas of my life — the tension in my life as a person practicing non-monogamy, for example. It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that I want primary bonds and long term intimacy and someone(s) who feels like home. But I also want freedom. I want the freedom to explore other people, other places, other things. And people keep telling me that the two things — home and freedom — can’t exist together. That I have to choose.

I’ll admit that I’m stubborn, and that when people tell me I can’t do something I’m prone to dig my heels in. But I don’t think I’m doing that now. I want home, and I want freedom. I want to do the work I’m meant to do and I want the money to be able to live where I want, and probably on my own. I want a home base and the ability to wander the globe. I want primary intimate and sexual bonds and I want the freedom to explore that with more than one person if needed. I want core commitment and family, too. I want the space to explore anything that’s going to help me help others. And I want the freedom to do it my way.

And so I leave you with a poem by Rilke, who really says everything I need to, much better than I ever have:

You see, I want a lot
Maybe I want it all:
the darkness of each endless fall,
the shimmering light of each ascent.

So many are alive who don’t seem to care.
Casual, easy, they move in the world
as though untouched.

But you take pleasure in the faces
Of those who know they thirst.
You cherish those who grip you for survival.

You are not dead yet, it’s not too late
to open your depths by plunging into them
and drink in the life
that reveals itself quietly there.

— From Book of Hours