We’ll start this week again with a look at the numerological meanings attached to the Chariot, which is the eighth Trump but aligned to the number 7. This week’s lesson’s keyword is Will Power and the number 7’s keyword is Mastery. This mastery is the result of the discrimination we learned about last week. It is the equilibrium that results when the two opposites are brought into balance.
I love Lakshmi! She is a goddess of all good things. Her main attribution is wealth, but not just in a financial sense. Lakshmi is the embodiment of wealth in all things: money, yes, but also love, contentment, friendship, understanding, and anything one could hope to be wealthy in!
I didn’t originally plan on writing about this, but something caught my attention while reading all of the jubilant coverage on the Supreme Court decision. Please don’t mistake me; I am jubilant about it too! I was outside the court building demonstrating while the arguments were being heard on the Defense of Marriage act. I always knew it would come down to the Equal Protection clause (it feels a little redundant to be saying this during the furor over the Confederate flag, but Thanks Reconstruction!!).
The keyword for the Lovers is discrimination, which seems odd at first glance. One shouldn’t necessarily have anything to do with the other. Case begins the lesson with looking at the card’s Hebrew letter, Zain which means sword. Swords cut things, usually into two pieces, which is now our way in to the examination of the Lovers.
I hate the cold. I just can’t deal with it. In the winter I only leave the house when I absolutely cannot help it. I hibernate, as regular readers may have noticed: sometime around Samhain I just disappear. It’s a terrible thing to do, and I know that even as I’m doing it, but I just can’t seem to get my shit together in the winter.
Hooray for Summer, then! I usually begin to really get my mojo back around Beltane, and especially now, around the official astrological beginning of summer. So to celebrate, I’m pushing back my next mythology post (sorry, Lakshmi, if you can hang on until next week, I promise I’ll do you right) and examining the sabbat.
This is going to be the first in a series of posts I plan on yoga. I’ve been doing yoga for the last twenty years and consider it an integral part of my spiritual practice.
When I was little, my grandmother was way into yoga. She had books and did the poses along with a TV show that was on public television at the time. I want to say it was Lilias yoga’s show, but I can’t say for certain. I kind of thought of it as exercise for old ladies who couldn’t do aerobics (sorry, Grandma!). Later on, when my daughter was preschool age, I impulsively picked up one of Gaiam’s VHS tapes with Rodney Yee. I liked the sequence in it so much I started doing it before circling. It really put you in the physical and mental space to do the work in the circle.
This week’s keyword is intuition. That seems obvious for those of us that use the tarot principally as a means of divination. All the cards are for focusing your intuition. However, many traditions use the tarot as a series of symbols to help understand the mysteries of the universe. There’s a rumor that the reason A. E. Waite commissioned the Rider Waite tarot was to hide the secrets of the Golden Dawn in plain sight. This course by Paul Foster Case is also using the tarot to explain various psychological principles, as well as metaphysical ones. Anyway, on to the Hierophant.
We’re at A Full Moon Rising in Dayton Ohio! Hee!!
The Emperor is the other half of the Empress. Where she is the nurturing mother, he is the authoritative father. His key word is Reason. He achieves reason through order as a “classifying activity of self consciousness” according to Case. He oversees the regulation of mental images and human affairs.
Lucina's Cauldron 