By Sarah Taylor

“Completion,” “Happiness,” and “The Star.”

A threshold has been crossed permanently and honoured as such. Now you have an opportunity to focus on the new experience that you have crossed into, which may feel so different as to be at first unrecognisable.

Four of Wands, Nine of Cups, The Star from the Röhrig Tarot deck, created by Carl-W. Röhrig. Click on the image for a larger version.

Like all the Fours, the Four of Wands stands as a marker on a particular part of your journey. The Fours are pauses. Last week, there was the Four of Swords, which refers to time out that is prescribed, with the admonition that if it’s not taken now, it might be enforced more strongly later. Here, the Four of Wands is also a pause before another threshold — a stepping into an agreement that has a sense of finality to it.

Often, the Four of Wands will indicate marriage or some kind of commitment ceremony. Here is the agreement; from here, life moves forward, but somehow differently. If there is no marriage, it is the acknowledgement that one phase has passed, and you are contemplating the next step into a new paradigm. The position in this week’s reading refers to what has just happened, and which has a strong bearing on the present: the Nine of Cups.

I love the Nine of Cups, and yet it also has the tendency to frustrate me a little: it is light and wondrous, and whimsical. How, then, to put that whimsy to practical use in a world that can often be anything but light and wondrous? Perhaps it is to take to heart (Cups being associated with our emotions) that you are operating in an environment that you have come to view in a particular way — stolid, intractable, heavy — yet maybe it is you who has become somewhat stolid, intractable and heavy in a world that is waiting for you to lighten up a little. Or to lighten up a lot!

By “lightening up,” I don’t mean that you ignore the very real events, responsibilities and feelings that you have that show you the flip-side of the Nine of Cups. No, these are to be honoured — and my sense is that you have: the Four of Wands points to a fully lived-out rite of passage from which you have recently emerged.

What the Nine of Cups encourages you to do is simple: to make a wish. This wish might seem like a flight of fancy; you might tell yourself that what you desire is too good to be true, or that, somehow, it is at the very least too good to be true for you.

Feel into that again. Is it really too good to be true for you, or are you living out a piece of history that is no longer relevant? Can you remember a moment when it seemed that things changed? Can you feel it to your depths? You might look back and find a point of reckoning that was subtle at the time, but which was, in effect, a doorway. A one-way doorway: you stepped through, and there’s no going back.

The Star adds further emphasis to the Nine of Cups as the figure points towards it, enclosing it in her presence, while looking towards the Four of Wands. It is as if the Nine of Cups is being held between two energetic poles, and all three cards are connected by the circles that form the centrepiece to each one, namely the bubble in the Four, the spiral in the Nine, and the woman’s head in The Star. The light above the woman’s head — emanating from it, I would say — is the light of consciousness. The Star is flow and grace; it is the reconnection to what is intrinsically true for you; it is your Truth. Coming after The Tower, where all that was out of integrity was razed to the ground, The Star is what is now able to enter because what was blocking it has been cleared away. The words on the card itself speak to this:

“Inspiration,” “Crystallization,” “Self-knowledge,” “Clear Vision,” “Self-Confidence” … “Conjunction with universal intelligence.”

The Star is transpersonal, as is Aquarius, the sign to which it corresponds. It goes beyond the individual to the collective. You, somewhere, and in some way, have access to an intelligence that lives out through you on an individual level. It is from you, but not strictly of you. It is ushered through by humility, and that is something you cannot manufacture; it comes as a result of surrender. Yet again, a paradox: it is when we surrender that we are powerful, and we can have an impact on our world in ways we could only previously imagine — if we could imagine them at all.

There is magic in the air. Your task is simply to recognise it. Now that you’ve shed a skin and you’re as shiny as the Nine of Cups, you might find that your world works a little differently. At the very least take this as a working theory and see what happens when you start to apply it in your life, increment by increment.

This is your route to practical magic — the practice of working with the unknown creatively. You are an artist with a canvas; make it your own. Paint your life large in a way that holds integrity, and you’ll find that you’re not the only one who stands back and looks at it as if it is some kind of wonderful.

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: Four of Wands (Venus in Aries), Nine of Cups (Jupiter in Pisces), The Star (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.