Getting from one place to another quickly is imperative for many at this time of year. After all, less time in transit means more time to enjoy a brief holiday respite with friends or family. That’s one way Venus is probably correlating with some of your own life right now.

Even if you are not among the tens of millions on the road or in the air recently, it’s very possible you might feel as though you have been. The world itself is moving rapidly.

Venus itself is currently moving around the zodiac circle at a relatively brisk pace, and getting faster by the day. Its ingress to Sagittarius Wednesday represents the second sign change for Venus this month.

It was only about three and a half weeks ago, on Dec. 5, when Venus plunged into fixed, watery Scorpio. Fittingly, a lot of emotional moments (a water sign thing) have presented themselves in rapid succession

There has been a lot of enthusiasm (an emotional mindset that often corresponds with Venus), which some have indulged (an activity related to Venus) in full. By the same token, many have felt it necessary to resist getting carried away (a fixed sign thing). Yet others have been compelled to simply endure (another fixed sign correlation) one form of trial or another during the rapid transit of Venus through Scorpio.

Venus in Sagittarius (from Wednesday until Jan. 23) will implicitly be a whirlwind tour as well, but another sort of trip entirely. Instead of a predominantly emotional background to the abundant values and receptive virtues of Venus, you will probably find yourself being more instinctively proficient than usual.

Given how Sagittarius is ruled by magnanimous Jupiter, the instinct that distinguishes between right and wrong (conscience) is likely to be especially sharp. When you add in the fact that Mercury will be retrograde from Jan. 5 to Jan. 25, you might even want to prioritize conscience over intellect for the next four weeks or so — especially when you need to make a quick decision.

Indeed, Venus will soon be moving faster than Mercury (which is slowing down on the way to turning around). All the more reason to default towards doing what’s right. By way of determining what’s right, of course, you will want and need to take others into account, in addition to your own interests.

Stage One of Vision Quest — the written readings for all 12 signs — will be released in a couple days! Order all 12 signs here, or individual signs here.

As a matter of fact, when you consider the spiritual associations often to attributed to Sagittarius, the term “enlightened self-interest” could come to be more understandable and vital for you than ever.

In order to practice enlightened self-interest in the environment implied by Venus in Sagittarius, be constantly mindful of how your actions, words, even thoughts might conceivably boomerang right back at you rather promptly. Then, make your choices with the assumption that such a rapid return on your ‘investments’ in the world are indeed probable.

At least one thing is for certain. Venus will not be in Sagittarius for very long. If you want, you can simply choose to go on living your life without any consideration for either the perils or potentials of its rapid passage. You could simply allow things to happen to you with the assurance that “this, too, shall pass.”

But consider the extent to which you might be able to to expand, open and pioneer new vistas of conscientious interaction with the world. Why would you simply want to stand by when you will implicitly be able to get from one place to another in your life with such effect?

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For many people, this week between Christmas and New Year’s can feel rather like limbo: it’s a vacation week for most schools in the western world, taking both kids and adults out of their usual routines. Plus, our cultural tendencies include both looking backward to review the year that’s ending, and looking ahead to set intentions for the year to come.

Christmas morning by the old Mill Pond. Photo by Amanda Painter.

As a result, potential exists for celebration and optimism as well as for tension or melancholy. The early-week astrology reflects both ends of the spectrum.

First up is a square between Mercury in Capricorn and Mars in Libra, exact Dec. 29 at 9:52 am EST (14:52 UTC). I’ve checked my astrology books looking for constructive ways to take this aspect, and what I’ve come up with is that Mercury-Mars squares tend to produce an active, energetic mind. If you have to apply your thought processes to concrete tasks that you can take the lead on (Libra and Capricorn are both cardinal signs, indicating initiative), this could be useful energy.

This square comes with a warning, however: you may find communications from certain people to be especially irritating, as though everything is a challenge. Don’t be surprised if your thoughts are drawn toward imagining scenarios of conflict and anger, especially if you think you’ll be pitted against established rules and authority with whom you have no real recourse or power.

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By Sarah Taylor

As you can see, this week I’m using a different tarot deck, thanks to leaving three of my Röhrig cards in a scanner at my partner’s house. I’m taking it as a deliberate mistake, and that the Weekend Tarot Reading wanted to cross the threshold between the old year and the new with an emphasis on something ending, and something beginning.

And I have no doubt about that when I look at the three cards in front of us.

Death, The Emperor, Ten of Swords from the Haindl Tarot deck, created by Hermann Haindl. Click on the image for a larger version.

The cards themselves come from the Haindl Tarot, a deck created by the late German artist Hermann Haindl. (Interestingly, The Röhrig Tarot that I usually work with is also named after its creator, Carl Röhrig, who is also a German artist.) I was fortunate enough to do a reading for Mr Haindl back in 2012. I didn’t fully appreciate who he was at the time, which was probably a good thing given the pressure of coming up with a spontaneous 60-second interpretation of the card he was holding out to me. I searched out his deck after that, but I wasn’t drawn to it then. Today, I was.

The Haindl deck is generally considered advanced tarot-reading material. I’m not sure that’s to do with the cards themselves as much as people’s response to them. Haindl uses a lot of contoured hatching in his illustrations, and this gives the cards a shadowy depth — as if there is layer upon layer. He also uses pagan, Ancient Egyptian, and Native American imagery, so some of it is unfamiliar, at a cultural remove to many readers.

I think the imagery is striking, and has a sensate clarity to it — if you can get past any judgments that tell you you’re not up to feeling it. The images are less stylised; they may feel a little sobering.

Perhaps that’s entirely supportive for a reading that is interested in showing you what is falling away, and — and this is important — what remains and continues because it holds integrity.

On Dec. 6, the Ten of Swords appeared in the same position it does here. It’s entirely possible that what’s going on now is a continuation of a theme that you identified back then. This time, the Ten’s companions are The Emperor, at centre, and Death, on the left. I drew The Emperor first. Although he represents a pure archetype — the secular ruler — he is also the only card of the three that has a person as the protagonist (if you exclude the bony arm in Death). He’s also facing us head-on.

So in this case, you are The Emperor — or more accurately The Emperor is an archetype that is active in you. And you, as The Emperor, are flanked and influenced by — and are influencing — two experiences: Death and the Ten of Swords.

Some of the ways the cards are ‘talking’ to each other drew my interest immediately.

First, the relationship between Death and The Emperor. These two correspond with each other numerologically, the 1 and the 3 of the 13 in Death adding up to the 4 of The Emperor. They are complementary. How? As ruler of the human realm, The Emperor is interested in secular (i.e. non-religious) law and how it is expressed and enforced. When this archetype is in balance, he ensures our human outer and inner realms remain accountable to themselves and to the natural world, which is ruled by his counterpart The Empress.

Here, The Emperor knows he has no clothes. He doesn’t need them! There is no guile, no need to embellish his power, which is in alignment with natural law — hence the tree behind him.

Both Emperor and Empress understand the cycles of life — that all things are born, live, die, and are reborn, time and again. More than that: death makes way for life; from death emerges renewal. Look at the sceptre that The Emperor holds, then look at the skeletal forearm holding the scythe in Death. They mirror each other. From the bones comes a wheat-sheafed symbol of power that is to the living truth of things what the hand in Death is to its polar opposite.

The raven looks away from The Emperor and off to the distant left. Something has happened in the recent past that marks an ending. It was time. And there’s no going back to the way things were, no resurrection of the form it was in. As painful as it might have felt, and perhaps as sudden, there was a stripping away and, with it, a completion.

Well, actually, not quite. Not a completion; a transition. Because what remains standing, facing us, at centre, is The Emperor. His nakedness now takes on a new meaning in light of Death. Maybe it was his clothes that were stripped away? His perceived source of protection; his armour; his defences; his insistence on demonstrating his leadership through appearances rather than holding himself to the truth of his calling.

Maybe he gave up the pretence.

To his right, another correspondence makes itself clear: the small ball and cross-bar of the central sword’s hilt in the Ten of Swords is reflected in the eye of the raven in Death.

“Remember who you are,” it seems to say. “And remember who you thought you were.”

Those caves you hid out in, conveniently running from one shady corner to another to escape the blaze of consciousness?

Those mind-games that have taken up so much time of yours, as you tried to convince yourself in the face of increasingly compelling evidence to the contrary?

All those entrances are barred to you now. There’s nowhere to hide out anymore in this particular matter you’ve been facing down.

Nowhere to run; nowhere to hide.

Why would you want to? You’re The Emperor, for crying out loud! Maybe it’s time to start acting like one. Because what I see now are the colours of the cube above your head also reflected in the eye of the raven. A cube is even, solid, stable. The four directions are indicated in each horizontal vertex, the ‘above’ and ‘below’ in both vertical ones. And there you are, at the centre — of the seven directions and of this reading.

Something that didn’t fit any more has fallen away. You experienced loss? Certainly. You’re raw? Probably. Vulnerable? Yes. But ducking for cover — whether by disappearing (so you elude yourself, too) or by wearing masks — will no longer be a game that serves you particularly well.

You have the capacity to step into a deeper, more responsible integrity. It’s time to start assuming a role of leadership in your own life.

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Death (Scorpio), The Emperor (Aries), Ten of Swords (Sun in Gemini)

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.

If you are aware, you are halfway there. That maxim applies to many (if not most) of the situations you will ever face in the course of your life. Rarely need you know all the details in depth. So long as you are conscious of what’s going on in general, you will nearly always have all of the information you need.

For instance, if you intend to cross a street, simply pausing to look both ways before stepping off the curb makes a huge difference in the probable outcome.

The same principle applies with weather forecasts, purchasing decisions, relationships and (yes) astrology. A little bit of awareness goes a long way to help you understand what you are observing. That understanding, in turn, helps you to make good decisions.

Once you can correlate what you observe here on Earth with some basic information about the sky, you can often put two and two together all by yourself. As noted here on Wednesday, for example, simply knowing a little about the historical context of today’s Cancer Full Moon has the potential of indicating what it’s now time for in your life.

It so happens that today’s Full Moon will almost immediately be followed by another astrological development that will allow you to at least conduct an experiment in awareness. Shortly after 10:52 pm EST tonight (03:52:23 UTC tomorrow), about five months of Uranus retrograding back through the middle of Aries will come to a close. From that point, until Mercury begins its next retrograde on Jan. 5, all of the sign-ruling planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto) will be in direct motion.

There are a lot of stories about what retrogrades mean, but none of those accounts can carry as much weight as your own personal experience. First, however, you need a baseline for purposes of comparison. That is what the next 10 days will provide. All you have to do is pay attention.

Beginning tomorrow and through the fourth day of next year, pay attention to how your life proceeds. Take special note of any trends that seem somehow unusual.

Endeavor to be especially conscious of that which does not proceed (for good or ill) as your experience would lead you to expect. Keep track of both pleasant and unpleasant surprises.

As the events of the remaining days of this year and the first days of next year gradually add up, see if you can discern any patterns developing. Then, when Mercury stations retrograde on Jan. 5, keep an eye out for any changes in the direction of developments, and in what parts of your life those changes take place.

While the phenomenon is not as rare as a Full Moon on Christmas, it is not often that the entire solar system (as represented by the sign-ruling planets) is in direct motion. Now that you have read this, you have awareness of when that situation will begin and when it will end. Try experimenting with that awareness. It could very well be a life-changing experience.

Offered In Service