By Sarah Taylor

Some time ago — not too far; recent enough to remember clearly — you were inspired to liberate yourself. This liberation could have had any number of outer guises, but two things would have defined it behind the scenes.

Ace of Wands, Princess of Swords, Seven of Disks from The Röhrig Tarot, created by Carl-W. Röhrig. Click on the image for a larger version.

First, you were given the chance to make use of a bolt of fiery energy. This is described by the Ace of Wands. Here’s an excerpt on the Ace of Wands from an article I wrote about it in 2012 (An encounter with the Ace of Wands):

“Wands energy is the sensation that we get when we are turned on — and I use that phrase broadly as well as specifically. It ignites us; it is fire; it is heat, tingling, licking us into action. And, thus, we become tuning forks: we are tuned into the frequency of creation. We’ve hit the same wavelength with something, or someone, and that wavelength urges us to do something. Now!

How you feel it in your own body depends on the part of you it is spurring into action. When you’re with someone who makes your blood surge through your veins and your juices flow, it’s because Wands energy is asking you to meld and create something new — whether through alchemy or biology.

Artists might feel it as a tingling in their hands and arms which cannot be quieted until it is discharged in some artistic endeavour. Runners feel it in their limbs; performers feel it in the pits of their stomachs. I clearly remember the sensation of its coursing through me as a child, and when my mother — exasperated at the child-shaped dynamo pinging off the walls around her — asked me what it was that I wanted, all I could do was to match her exasperation with the cry, “I need to create!” That was the only way I knew how to articulate what I was feeling; I’m not sure I’ve managed to articulate it any better since.”

Let’s unpack this a little …

“I need to create:

• a new life for myself
• a new set of circumstances
• something I’ve never/that’s never been done before
• a work of art, a poem, a song, a child
• a change in the way I express myself
• whatever it is that makes me feel alive.”

One of these might have been something you said to yourself, whether out loud or silently; whether you were aware of it or not. However the Ace appeared to you, a part of you felt the driving force of fire. It lit you up. Once you’ve reached for it and taken it — held it as your own — it is a flame that cannot be extinguished, only ignored or neglected. And the price you can pay for not working with your fire can be high, for the simple reason that you are being asked to step up and step into a life that is more in line with your soul than with anything you had pretended to be before.

There is a quote that I will put at the end of this article to illustrate this. I’m putting it at the end, because the quote is apparently uncompromising enough in its tone to feel definitive in a particular way. I would argue that it is not. It is nuanced enough to accommodate any number of ways that we can sabotage our own creativity on this path that we call life. And we sabotage it in ways large and small.

In this context, the destruction is not so much to our lives as it is to our alignment with a truth that, once spoken out loud, serves both us and everyone and everything connected to us.

This truth is the second part to this story: the Princess of Swords (corresponding to the Page in the Rider-Waite Smith deck). Her sword is the sword of insight, and the way that she wields it is with the fervour and passion of the fearless. She doesn’t yet know fear, and this serves her. She is True North, and any backlash from her truth-telling means nothing to her because she hasn’t felt its sting. Not yet, anyway.

In a momentary swish of her beautiful blade — the force of her mind and her power to see so clearly that it cuts through everything — she speaks and she is a free (wo)man. She speaks where others cannot. Others who know better and so remain silent. She stands alone, the rope and chains around her wrist sliced through. She is young. People underestimated her.

People underestimated you. You do not need to underestimate yourself.

So speak. Speak and free yourself. And then wait. Wait for the backlash to clear. Because there may well be a backlash in the not-so-distant future. You may even be encountering it now. It is a tangible one; perhaps a sense of not being able to move forward, or the feeling that resources are scarce. Saturn in Taurus (the astrological correspondence to the Seven of Disks) speaks of the tight limits around resources and the sense that your values are being put under pressure. The Seven of Pentacles (Disks) also speaks of defying odds and working with faith (not blind faith, but one that is justified) that something will pull through.

Faith.

Look carefully at the card. The Sun is blotted out, sure. But the Sun is there.

As that figure, feeling dwarfed, you can look up, look back at the Princess and remember how you got here. Hold on. The Sun is there. And the sky is clearing. Failure is a moment of forgetfulness. And, yet, the Sun is there. Take heart (Cups, representing the heart, are the only suit not present; you work harder to get to this one). You haven’t stepped off the path. The fire remains with you. The next implied card, the Eight, sees its resurgence.

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” ~ Gospel of Thomas

 

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Ace of Wands (the pure, limitless quality of fire), Princess of Swords (the earthy aspect of air), Seven of Disks (Saturn in Taurus)

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.

By Amanda Moreno

I’m sitting in my bedroom, on my bed, trying to write. My bed is pushed up against two big windows, affording me a view of my backyard from two floors up — a backyard that is currently being besieged with gusty wind and pelting rain. It’s a perfect late-October Seattle day.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

I’ve missed the rain and moodiness so much, as we’ve had yet another year of seemingly endless summer. I’m also grateful for the moments right now that are allowing me to just sit and breathe and sink into myself, something I’ve been avoiding for a few weeks.

So thank you, Planet Waves, for providing me with required ‘sit-down-and-reflect’ time each week! And my apologies for being MIA last week. I don’t like doing that.

Between mid-August and mid-October I felt the light coming back in after the onslaught of Saturn in Scorpio. That transit was everything I dreamed it could be and more — and some of those dreams were, in fact, more on the nightmarish end of the spectrum. Luckily, one of the beautiful things about being a believer in astrology is having a knowledge of timing, cycles and purpose.

I can’t understate, however, just how shocking it was when that light started coming back in — in a positive way that just made me want to play! That remembrance of what it’s like not to have a tourniquet twisted around my emotional body provided me with a sense of momentum that was sorely needed.

I’m not naive enough to have ever thought the transit was over completely, but I so enjoyed that two-month period of feeling more like myself than I had in years — but better, somehow. Stronger, more centered, more in my power.

Then I experienced somewhat of an…aftershock. It came in the form of a death in the family. It wasn’t a death that was entirely unexpected, but it was traumatic and still had that ‘out of the blue’ feeling to it. My family is no stranger to sudden, traumatic death. After all of the writing I’ve been doing about patterns and complexes, this sure did provide the opportunity for me to revisit some of those. Again. Thanks, universe!

The grieving process on this death was punctuated with my body giving in to a cold. Not a bad one, just one that forced me inside, with a focus on self-care. It’s so interesting to me that when ‘bad things happen,’ our society encourage us to ‘take care’ of ourselves by indulging a lot of the time. For example, in my case: death happened, girlfriends came over and then took me out for nachos (my favorite) and margaritas (the cucumber one was amazing). Are nachos and margaritas the best thing I could offer my body? Probably not. Did they help my soul? Yes, almost as much as going to see live music played by some of my best friends.

But still, there is a dissonance there. My inner six year old is pretty into mac n’ cheese at the moment, and my current 35-year-old self is weighing out a cost/benefit analysis in terms of the havoc that might wreak on my gut — while also wondering if an almond croissant might help.

I wouldn’t say this has been an intense grieving process at all, however. I said goodbye the recently departed a while back, as I’ve had to do with so many blood relations. The initial grief period has been spent a little bit disassociated, going through the motions, paying a lot of attention to the totally rad coloring books my roommate brought me while watching “Sister Wives” and “The Leftovers,” and feeling grateful that my various employers are fairly aware of the cycles of my life so far (which tend to include a fairly consistent amount of crisis), and are extraordinarily supportive and patient.

I have, however, been more in touch with my own triggers around death and loss — and lack of feeling connected to a family. Also, some deeper questions are arising that I’m not quite prepared to go into just yet, be it here or even just with myself, in my own room, watching a storm.

Part of that unwillingness has to do with giving myself a little more time to just let my defense mechanisms do what they’re doing. Part of that unwillingness has to do with observing the ‘old scripts’ coming back in, and not wanting to charge them up, even though they can seem valid at times. Which, I suppose, is why part of that unwillingness comes from the surreality of life at times, and a need to grapple with the fact that, yes, another series of events just happened that are painful and hard and that seem to just… keep happening in my life. I’m not quite sure what to do with that.

Well, yes I am. For now, I observe the fact that I feel more settled into that reality and able to cope. I continue forward, feeling grateful that I don’t feel like this event and these past few weeks indicate a total departure from the feeling of lightness and emergence, just a little detour. I’m existing with the knowledge that I don’t really want to tell the story of this death — whether that is because I’m denying it, or just because I need more space from it and from people’s reactions (which are rightfully heavy, especially if they know my history).

I remind myself that we are headed into the dark season, that the veils are thin (as evidenced by a bunch of things jumping off of my ancestors altar last night, thankyouverymuch), and that I have a pattern of emotional intensity — if not all-out distortion — at this time of year.

Life is so weird, so surreal, so beautiful, and sometimes so downright hard. Sometimes I really hate thinking in terms of patterns and sometimes I’m grateful for the awareness of them, even when that doesn’t seem to change them.

Happy Samhain, y’all. May we learn what we’re meant to, and may the souls of our ancestors and loved ones move into the light.

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

Don’t look now but minds are changing. We’ve grown accustomed to that as a rarity, and now, seemingly from out of nowhere, we’ve got a reversal of what had long been chiseled in stone. Me, I think liminality had a lot to do with it. While this is a new word for a familiar process, it’s one I’ve been exploring for awhile now as my personal astrology reveals a marked period of transition. If you haven’t yet subscribed to receive Eric’s weeklies, then let me describe liminality as the process of shifting from one phase to another. That’s the brief take; Wikipedia provides a fuller description:

In anthropology, liminality (from the Latin word līmen, meaning “a threshold”[1]) is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of rituals, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the ritual is complete. During a ritual’s liminal stage, participants “stand at the threshold”[2] between their previous way of structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way, which the ritual establishes.

The concept of liminality was first developed in the early 20th century by anthropologist Arnold van Gennep and later taken up by Victor Turner.[3] More recently, usage of the term has broadened to describe political and cultural change as well as rituals.[4] During liminal periods of all kinds, social hierarchies may be reversed or temporarily dissolved, continuity of tradition may become uncertain, and future outcomes once taken for granted may be thrown into doubt.[5] The dissolution of order during liminality creates a fluid, malleable situation that enables new institutions and customs to become established.

While we often think of change as coming out of the blue, a thunderbolt thrown by Zeus to complicate our little mortal lives, change is more often a result of pressure from within, the consequence of internal dissatisfactions that grow into rebellions or rejections. Change happens when the old is outgrown, when the consequences of worn-out patterns are no longer valued or required, when being stuck becomes a liability we can no longer live with — and everyone has a different breaking point.

The liberal personality is less frightened across the board, more at ease with social risk, and less defensive. The conservative personality is more easily threatened, more concerned with what will be lost than gained in any exchange, and quick to defend. While we’re each a mix of both, it’s fair to say that the conservative folks despise the liberal open society, which they refuse to join, while the liberal folk despair at the conservative closed society, in which they feel neither welcome nor comfortable.

But something had to give, we couldn’t remain at loggerheads forever, and that lock on doing nothing is beginning to slip. Perhaps we’ve finally come to that place where we’re bridging into the next thing — everybody a bit jumpy and unsatisfied — as defined by liminality.

Amazingly, for example, there will be no shut down of government this year. Congress, dysfunctional as it is, passed a budget bill so that the American pocketbook can remain open until March of 2017. The bill is touted in some circles as Boehner’s parting gift to the Democrats, a spit in the eye of the Freedom Caucus, and a sell-out to Establishment politics. Progressives are calling it a “survival” compromise, while regressives are furious at their leadership for caving to big government. Evidently big government includes struggling seniors who received no Social Security cost of living raise this year, while the ‘entitlement’ programs elders depend on are still first in the cross-hairs  for concessions to any forward movement.

This week China changed its decades old one-child policy to include one more. Perhaps now daughters can be as valuable as sons, and the Chinese can begin to solve their problem with too many males, some 30 million of them with no mates in sight. Talk about out of balance!  Still, because there is always a tit for the tat, this policy will not make the Zero Population people happy nor comfort the xenophobes who already see their numbers dwindling, and their ‘enemies’ reduced to dangerous and uncivilized breeders of hordes. Not to mention what the environmentalist will say about more energy demand by more Chinese babies.

The President announced that he’s sending a small number of special forces into Syria to assist the Kurds and a coalition of moderate rebels in combating ISIS. The White House does not call this boots on the ground, but truly, that’s splitting hairs, isn’t it? As much as Obama wanted everything drawn down, this call — along with the five thousand plus warriors left in Afghanistan — constitutes a sea change in military deployment. Much as I’d like to see all the nations sitting around the table, sharing a beer and planning better days, I suspect there will always be somebody quick to throw a shoe. Unless the military-industrial complex is dealt with — much like the big banks, big pharma, and the oil industry — we can’t really pull our foot — ummm — boot out, altogether. That’s not the play of one president or even one political party. Such a move can only come at the consensus of a nation.

The third Republican debate was also a game changer, finally showing Trump and Carson vulnerable on the actual logistics of leadership, which left the slickest politico in the pack, Marco Rubio, to step into the void. It’s interesting how Trump cut into a vein in what is considered politically incorrect on the left, while Carson routinely runs over political correctness with hobnails on the right. Donald mentioned Carson’s religion — Seventh Day Adventist — as an ‘unknown’ and caused a shit storm of PC commentary on the right about how questioning a candidate’s religion is un-American. This is absurd, considering that 60+ percent of Republicans polled consider Obama a covert Muslim, punishable by impeachment, and Mr. Carson himself finds a Muslim candidate unacceptable.

I personally find the tenets of Carson’s religion, with a six-day creation story and literal Bible interpretation — which Carson stands by, proud and unquestioning — far too inflexible in a presidential candidate. But even should the evangelical voters change their minds about Trump or Carson, it’s likely those votes will fall to Ted Cruz, so theocracy will still win the day with the base, who take their marching orders from the pulpit. That would be the same base who hate Iran because of theocracy. Yet, because things have changed, it remains true that they will hold their nose and elect a lukewarm Presbyterian if it looks like Trump can rebound to win the day.

JEB! — the Establishment candidate — did himself little good in a sharp exchange with Rubio in this debate, his less than impressive performance causing some of his donors to exit, stage right. Rumors of his demise are premature, though. He continues to hang in, despite a real lack of charisma and/or supporters, trying to wait out the process as the mainstream guy. Without an Establishment candidate to go up against (presumably) Hillary, the Foggy Bottom Boys don’t think they’ll have a chance. Considering how little Jeb is bringing to this game, I wonder if they realize how conflicted their line-up seems to be, and — because everything is in flux — perhaps it won’t be Hillary they’ll have to battle, or the Establishment types at all.

Meanwhile, Charles Koch told the Wall Street Journal that he’s just disgusted with the political conditions on the right, with its “coarsened discourse, lack of substance and civility.” No, this isn’t a real change of direction, it’s more a PR campaign.This is an exercise in ‘crying wolf,’ considering that he and his brother David spent more than three decades financing a political movement that could force big government to stay out of their affairs. If it morphed into the Tea Party — dead set on skewing reality, slapping a religious face on cynical secularism and killing off any government oversight that might interfere with profit and loss — then why should the Kochs complain? These are the very patriots who allow the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to ride roughshod over state programs and policies, giving Koch Industries easy access wherever it goes.

Ultimately, the big loser at the third debate was the media, who took it in the shorts from candidates and the public alike. While everybody is happy to take a poke at media, which rarely does its job any more, I wouldn’t have wanted to be the one quizzing Republican candidates from the reality side of the spectrum. FOX News is better at that than the rest of us: they made up most of the facts in question, so they’re the most able to walk the razor’s edge of right-wing truthiness.

As suspected, Paul Ryan was the only candidate with sufficient votes to take the speaker’s gavel, despite his insistence that he get weekends off with the family. This precludes the traditional courtship and hobnobbing duties demanded by big donors and lobbyists, the lounge lizard portion of the job at which John Boehner displayed genuine talent. Someone will have to step up for that part, if the party is to keep its mojo.

Paul gave a speech about uniting the party under one big happy new tent, while the various factions leaned in, purring like Cheshire cats and biding their time. The Tea Party has nothing to lose by continuing to obstruct: their rural constituents are happy when they plant their feet and say silly things, and when government doesn’t work they get closer to their goal of permanently drowning it in the bathtub. It’s hard to believe Ryan thinks he can herd these hard-headed critters — his long delay in decision told us he’s not so sure — but something sweetened the pot that allowed him to say yes.

If it’s liminality at work these days, it’s working just fine, isn’t it? Baby steps will do, a little willingness to make a change. What used to be absolute is now open to interpretation. People are changing attitudes because their lives have taken a turn, and their experience demands something more authentic than rhetoric. This is a good time for a dialogue, a good time to take cookies to the neighbor and start a conversation, a good time to ask questions about why someone feels the way they do, about what they need. This is a good time to listen.

The shift to the next thing is on us, the energy building to move us toward new options and discoveries. As long as our minds stay alert and our hearts open, our second thought about something important may take us farther than we suspect, while allowing someone else their second thought is guaranteed to change everything.

One of the great things about Halloween as it is now celebrated is that it is frivolous. It’s important to remember that frivolity is sometimes a good thing. It’s a good thing to get back to the original spirit of play as you may have experienced it in childhood, before life had objectives.

It’s not complicated. The original spirit of play is to have fun for fun’s sake. You do not need to learn anything while playing, instructive though it may be. It is also not essential for play to be competitive or to get anything done. Instead, play should be a safe alternative to learning and working all the dang time.

The spirit of play specific to Halloween allows you to safely explore what would otherwise be risky, or even scary. It’s a chance to loosen up emotionally, intellectually, even physically if you manage to get out and look at the decorations and enjoy the costumes.

The costumes and customs germane to Halloween celebrations are a chance to be imaginative and creative with no pressure to produce anything and no need to satisfy somebody else. It’s an opportunity to be curious and experiment with some of your own boundaries with no requirement that you be disciplined or show a result.

If ever there were a Halloween to indulge the spirit of play, astrology indicates that this might well be it. A lot of it has to do with where Mercury has been, where it is now and what it’s heading for.

For starters, Mercury has been in Libra since Aug. 27. That’s more than two months, a long time for a planet that very often moves through a sign in less than three weeks. What kept Mercury in Libra so long was one of its famous (some would say infamous), periodic and predictable retrogrades. Indeed, it was less than one week ago, on Oct. 24, that Mercury finally emerged from the narrow confines in which it had pedantically paced back and forth three times for over seven weeks.

Since Mercury is so versatile, a long, slow and repetitive oscillation in a narrow slice of the zodiac can correspond with you and your life getting a little stale. That’s especially true of your mind — another thing Mercury will often correlate with. What better way, then, to refresh stale thinking than to play a little?

Right now, Mercury is nearly back up to full speed. It’s clipping along through what remains of its Libra tenure at the rate of more than a degree and a half every day. By early Monday, Mercury will be in Scorpio where it will accelerate even more, dashing through one momentous aspect after another. It’s enough to make you feel like Lewis Carroll’s white rabbit, always worked up about being late. What better remedy to being frazzled than to take advantage of Halloween being on a Saturday this year? Why not consider taking your eye off the clock, allowing time to fly if only for a day, or at least an evening?

Of course, you should also remember that play and fun at their best are safe. When you were a child, your elders took on at least some of the responsibility of providing safe times and places for you to play. Now that you are an adult, the obligation of assuring that the spirit of play remains without trouble or hazard falls to you.

A big part of playing safely is preventative in nature. If some of your Halloween play ends up being sexual, use protection. If you need to drive an automobile, don’t drink alcohol or indulge in any other substance that interferes with your judgment, alertness or reflexes. After all, kids don’t need to be wasted to have fun. Also, be careful with fire in all its many forms.

Finally, be mindful of others, especially in how you play with them. You are not the only one who needs to have some fun. Make a point of honoring the spirit of play by at least being safe and fun to be with.

If you can, give yourself a break for Halloween this year. Step out of the rat race. Slow down. Be frivolous. Without getting careless, find a way to do something something that helps you remember what it is like to be carefree again. Of all the various spirits you may encounter, let the spirit of play be the one you choose to spend the most time with.

Offered In Service

By Amanda Painter

The astrology for Halloween on Saturday is not particularly scary (despite the Sun in Scorpio, which rules the ‘scary’ subjects of death, sex and money). Unless, of course, you’re afraid of your emotions, your mother, or cooking for others (Moon in Cancer). Or unless you’re afraid of music, your imagination, or psychic activity, and how those things make you feel (Scorpio Sun trine Neptune in Pisces).

Sadly, I do not have any photos of people in masks…This is along the Fore River Trail in Portland, Maine. Photo by Amanda Painter.

Okay, on second thought, plenty of people are afraid of some of those things (therapy, anyone?).

I have yet to meet anyone who fears music in general, though plenty of people would rather be naked in public than have to sing in public. And I’m sure you can think of at least one musician, song or genre that strikes you as being horrifyingly awful.

In all seriousness, though, take a moment to think about some of the themes I’ve mentioned above in the context of this social holiday, for which people dress up as other people, creatures and objects, masking their true selves. Yes, for some, All Hallow’s Eve and the following Days of the Dead have deep spiritual significance. For most people in our culture, however, Halloween is a big party for playing dress-up and letting the imagination run as wild as your crafting skills allow.

It’s a night when our ability to mask ourselves is celebrated. We mask ourselves all the time, however; we just tend not to acknowledge it.

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