By Sarah Taylor

Three weeks ago, on Sunday, Aug. 30, two of the cards in this week’s reading appeared in the same order, but shifted up a position. Those were The Magus and the Ace of Wands in the second and third card positions respectively. Now, they are here again, but in the first and second card positions.

Time has moved on. You and your life have moved on. What was present is now fading into a foundational energy; what was to come is now here.

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

It’s an interesting reading for another reason, and one that I also referred to on Aug. 30. When we have a major arcana and an Ace, we are very much in the realm of archetype. Their influence is one we have to feel into, to sense their revelation between the cracks of normal perception, and — in the case of the Ace — to reach for and to work with actively.

The one grounding presence in the Aug. 30 reading was the Prince of Disks: The Magus and the Ace would be revealed through an aspect of your personality that was coming to the fore. Today, there are no court cards, and no pip cards (Twos through Tens). The themes are significant; the influence and flow created by the three cards are nothing less than phenomenal. And yet, even more so this time, they are asking for your awareness and for your action based on an intuitive sense of their presence rather than one that is external and/or more readily available to you.

You will feel The Magus and The Star as an inner knowing or a shift in how you have started (The Magus) and how you are about to start (The Star) to relate to yourself, or to feel as a force inside you.

The Magus in the past card position equips you perfectly for the imminent arrival of the Ace of Wands into your life. His active, Mercurial presence as an aspect of you enables you to work with a quality that is constantly on the move, and which asks for your agility and grace — your sense of timing and finesse — to make full use of it.

The Star is the connection to a higher presence that is available to you once you have picked up your “magic Wand” and started to use it. It connects you more deeply into your intuitive knowing; it is the restoration of a current whose trickle you may have been following with some faith and hope for some time now. It may have, at times, had you wondering if there was anything at the end of this particular rainbow at all.

A hunch was all you had; a promise of something that remained just that — a promise, a glimmering sensation at the edge of awareness that drew you forward. A part of you has always known that it held something for you; the risk has always been that your journey towards it has come with no solid guarantees. No “If you do this, you’ll get that.”

You might have felt like you were often freefalling in “a wing and a prayer” territory. Even now, it will not feel entirely tangible. However, it is there, if these cards are anything to go by. The Ace of Wands stands right in front of you, as present as it will ever be. That same faith that kept you going might be the thing you use to reach for it to see what happens when you do.

Because you will know the presence of the Ace as a burning fire in your belly that you need to harness if you want to use it.

Like a wild stallion, if you want to use it rather than simply look at it, it is you who needs to approach it with confidence, hold its mane, and engage with it — knowing only that you are dealing with something both powerful and living at the edge of predictability. Commune with it, and you are communing with something that is living, breathing fire. Your skill and your surrender to that fire will determine your experience.

Connection to creativity, to Eros, can never happen on your terms alone. You know this already, given you’ve been moving forward in an act of faith for some time now. Jump on a stallion, and there will invariably be an element of uncertainty about how he is going to behave, and what is going to happen next. That never goes away. What can remain present are the skills and abilities you bring to your meeting with him, and your surrender to his instinct — which is really your own. He knows better; and you know better than to second-guess him.

There is a part of you that believes fully in your ability and right to dance in the flames. If you find yourself trying too hard, engaging your thoughts and your will too strongly, moving against what intuitively makes sense to you, you can move back, check in, and re-establish a more give-and-take-and-surrender relationship with what’s moving through you.

You have everything you need. You are everything you need.

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: The Magus (Mercury), Ace of Wands (the pure, limitless potential of fire), 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.