By Sarah Taylor

David Bowie — A Fool’s Journey

David Bowie. His public life threw out the rule books; he was a voyager into the unknown, creating movements rather than following them.

As an artist and performer to whom it seemed art and life were one and the same thing, he exemplified the archetype of The Fool.

He never stayed the same.

“Just gonna have to be a different man / Time may change me / But I can’t trace time.”

It feels significant that Uranus, the planet that corresponds with The Fool, was squaring the New Moon on the day he died – reactivating the Uranus-Pluto square, which is all about revolution.

And maybe the revolution, as he sings here, is love.

Go well, Cosmic Traveller.

“There was a boy
A very strange enchanted boy
They say he wandered very far, very far
Over land and sea
A little shy
And sad of eye
But very wise
Was he

And then one day
A magic day he passed my way
And while we spoke of many things, fools and kings
This he said to me
“The greatest thing
You’ll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved
In return””

~ Nature Boy, David Bowie and Massive Attack (orig. Nat King Cole)

* * * * * * * *

This Week’s Tarot Reading

This week, two Minor Arcana cards and one Ace mark a shift away from the broader, Soul-story told by the Majors over the past few weeks — from what you are being and the world within — and into your interactions with the world around you, and what you’re doing. Think of the Majors over the two prior readings as being the backdrop to your experience, and this week a tangible moment in time painted in finer detail onto that backdrop.

The three cards in front of you do not mark a Past, Present, Future reading. Instead, they are happening simultaneously, with the Ace as the cauldron into which the card on the right — the Five of Swords — can be alchemized into the card on the left — the Three of Wands.

You can salvage what seems to be slipping from your grasp — or maybe what was torn from it — and transmute it. In other words, you can take a situation that’s riddled with conflict, and transform it into one that holds creative potential. You get to sift through a war of words and find the key to disarm it. You get to distill lightning from a shit-storm. You rediscover fire. You find a way through.

How?

By asking for, and reaching towards, what is held there in potential: the Ace of Cups.

Remember last week you were The Magician as the central card, with all four Aces in front of you with which to start creating your world? Somewhere along the way, maybe just for a moment — perhaps for longer — you slipped out of alignment and integrity with your highest ideals and your calling. Now, here is your first opportunity to use your abilities to harness the gift of the Ace of Cups and get to work on dismantling a snafu that you’ve gotten yourself into.

You don’t do this by thinking, analyzing, or perpetuating a war of words (even if only with yourself). You do it through love. But this is not a love you can force into existence; it’s not something you sprinkle like sugar (“Hey! The more the better!”) in the hope that the bitterness disappears. You can’t foist love on people and things that can’t relate to it, won’t accept it, don’t need to accept it.

No. The Ace of Cups is simply there. Enough.

We do love to feel in control. We do love to feel in control of love. With love, we tend to sit like a kid in the passenger seat of a car, who’s holding a plastic steering wheel, believing that the hard work they’re putting into turning that wheel one way and the other is having an effect on the direction of travel.

When, in truth, love makes its own course. It always has. It is a current that flows through life, and beyond it. You are either flowing with or against it. And, paradoxically, sometimes the stronger you feel the stinging barbs of ‘not-love’, the harder you’ll try to get back to it — when what might serve you better is to let go and fall into it. To fall back into love.

There is nothing you have to do to it or with it apart from acknowledging the possibility of its presence and inviting it in.

It is that simple. So simple, that you frequently forget to try it. I mean, it can’t be that simple, can it? Something that simple can’t work.

Or can it?

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Three of Wands (Sun in Aries), Ace of Cups in the North (the pure, limitless potential of water), Five of Swords (Venus 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.