  Tradition
Due Process Institutional Memory Calcified and consecrated, old guard Guru Ancestors Boys’ Club, Gates Closed, Glass Ceiling Gleaming Infallible Wisdom of the Ages Confessor/Inquisitor Beloved Guides Systems of Belief Moral Authority Show-er of The Way Portal for The People Learning Liberation A clear, resonant prayer is sent from our Jupiter in Scorpio underworld --as Saturn steps closer to his crossing Home to Capricorn on, of course, the Winter Solstice! We are the leaders, teachers, way show-ers with integrity in word and deed. Let our structures be sound but not stagnant. Doors open wide for The People and all of Our Relations.
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 Bound, entwined, enmeshed, entrenched.
Beholden, be careful. Stuck, sucked in, sucked dry. Shadows, projection, poison. Demonized. Suffocation, soul strangulation Treasure of taboo. Kiss of rope in the dark. Didn’t think I could? Didn’t know I would? Devil arises in a reading and across the table, the seeker’s heart skips a beat. I am sure to smile slowly. “Oh, the Devil card! Wonderful!” Now we can play. Now we can poke and prod. Now we can shadowstalk. In Christian mythology of the Bible, the Devil is conflated with the character of Satan, further conflated with e-v-i-l. And thusly, we (raised in Western culture) lose so much damn fun, so many priceless treasures, so much self knowledge, and so much ecstatic exploration it is ridiculous. Let’s unpack and track back to the plain ol’ Devil/devil. Demi-urge of the World, assigned by the divine to tend to Earthly business. To tend to the humans and all of our relatives, green and growing, feathered and furred. To hold the realms of magic and sorcery. Old Scratch standing at the crossroads, dice clinking in deep pockets. Trickster who downloads throughout the ages the technological and consciousness uplevels of the written form, alchemy, metallurgy, and so much more. Cue the literal demonization of this character and all that entails. A particular favorite author and thinker of mine, Gordon White, remarks that the Devil is “a polyvalent, pulsing phenomenon at the very heart of Western magical tradition.” This phenomenon - as we flip the corresponding Tarot card - emboldens our private magic, calls us to break ensorcellment, and forge alliance with our truest Shadow. We call off the spells cast to bind and distract us and counter with something of blood, bone, and sovereignty. We deprogram and de-escalate. Pry off shackles. Abuse and emotional violence will not stand. Oppression and obsession are overthrown. Someone else’s baggage can get tossed from your airport because that trip is fucking cancelled. Boarding pass revoked, narcissists. Now you have fertile ground, rich and loamy to root some Dark Power. Your Dark Power. Use it wisely, Demiurge. Oh Mercury/Hermes, dear friend. Delighted you are back ondeck.. Say what you mean. Word witchery. Expression of intellect. Quicksilver flow of ideas and lucid language of connectivity. For heightened powers of written whimsy, sociability. For Curiosity with a Capital C. Blog returns...   Tarot’s High Priestess assures us that indeed our Inner Council is eminently wise and that its nobility is an extension of Sacred Order.
As card number two of the major series, she has a special understanding and affinity for card number eleven (one plus one ever equals two) the Justice card. While this sense of measured mercy and enduring wisdom enlivens the harmonizing force that the Justice card represents our High Priestess, our Seer can get her info download from some fucking funky sources. Cue Neptune. ( You might have to try it twice, he’s In The Zone.) Neptunian influence in its highest state is pure flow, deep waters, boundaries dissolved. Dreamtime. Behind the veil. All One, honey. This realm of poetry, art, music, merging with divinity, all-the-time-in-the-world is captivating---and under just the right circumstantial/celestial/existential blend: addictive. This is where you get lost. You can get lost for a moment or for a lifetime…. Delicious glamour of the Otherworld. Technically speaking, a glamour is a spell cast to visually enchant. With a specific intention, the spellcaster imbues a person or place with a magnetic and luxurious power to captivate. To show the seer the Dream. Is there illusion/delusion? Projection? Or does the seer see the truth, the beauty, that lies under the surface? And what does that vision mean? How does it evoke response? When in communion with Neptune we want to Feel It. So we open right up. And so we should. Moved by melody, embraced by bliss, surrendered. High Priestess acts as a channel for the Holies. Testify. In this current astro-environment, in the world that we call Now, the shadow side of Neptunian influence is uber pertinent. Icky-sticky, insidious, abusive. Hoax. Hypnotists. Liars. Online dating profiles that are an unmitigated farce. Political spin. Wait! Neptune is mystical, splendiferous, ecstatic. Sure is. I won’t give up my time with Him. But our High Priestess’s spot on oracular power comes from inner knowing. Comes from raising and lowering the veil at the right moment. We gather the revelations from the haze, we part the mist with one quick flash of our fingers. When you are so beguiled, lap up the nectar of the dream from a huge lapis bowl. Drink as deeply as you can. Gather the shimmer to bring it home. Hot tip for when the undertow is too great (undertow of obsessive thought patterns, substance abuse in all its many incarnations, enmeshment, brainfog above and beyond, theft of your chi): Brilliant internet viral video quote that I say to myself when in need: The ocean is the shark’s house. If go in there, you’ll end up on the plate. STAY OUTTA THEM OCEANS! Need a life preserver? During this extended Saturn Square Neptune Era: here I am!  Magician turns spirit to matter, making magic manifest. Magician plays with raw power, bending and shaping with intentional invocation.
The divine spark of creativity that gives way to art, prose, poetry, song, sculpture, fiber arts: sure, sure. Certainly Magician is at work there. Too easy though to look past the pure red-hot elemental magic of: a pot of soup, a tiny container garden perched atop a fire escape, hopscotch scrawled on the sidewalk, an ecstatic and almost impossibly long orgasm. Magician uses the Yang to birth the Yin into being. Magician speaks the words. As Magician we need the tools to alchemize, convert, create. This construction of the gift, the expression of unseen comes with responsibility. Even beyond responsibility to an ethical construct, you are responsible to Great Spirit to get it OUT. Make it. Give it. Live it. See it and have it Be Seen. In ritual, a magic wand is an extension of a power conduit that starts with your availability to Spirit. In shamanic work, our drum extends that power through sound and vibration. When using our physical bodies as that conduit we experience sensations that we often (humans as we are) synch up to stories. When A feels like B , it means C. It’s your body, your drum, your magic wand. You know the tale. Pick the bones clean though! Tell me about your tools. Tell me about the way that Spirit calls you to Show Up. Tell me you have only heard a fleeting whisper and that you are finally ready to find out.  What could be more fitting than a Jupiter Direct to make one toss caution to the wind and remember that magic is at every moment there for the taking?
Fool is the Zero card in the major arcana. The zero card! Already we know that we are playing with Coyote Medicine. Unwilling to even be pinned down into a numbered spot our wandering, freewheeling friend brings the wild wake-up of This Moment. (Of course followed by This Moment and another This Moment and another ever to follow.) We are in the realm of the Sacred Clown, the Heyoka of Lakota tradition. Our heads are thrown back, squinting at the glorious light. Traditionally in readings the Fool marks the start of a new chapter, the place where we must make a leap of faith. Oh but the judgments! So many judgements. Are we a fool for thinking we can do this/be this/see this? Will this leap of faith fall short and send us into the abyss, down deep? Can we really travel with such freedom, with such a light step? Jupiter Direct comes along to clap us on the back in encouragement. The Guru, the Storyteller, softening the edges, that Lucky Bastard… In the divine pause, the reset of the Fool card-- our Benefactor dangles lucky charms ahead on the path. And he is not going to snatch them away! If we are acclimated to struggle we can mistrust this pure generosity, we can mistrust the holy reprieve Fool is granting us. I know Coyote intimately : tip of nose to tail, so long as he sticks around for a few minutes. I know Jupiter’s wisdom well, expansive, charmed, winning all the chips at the table when you’ve only just learned the rules of the game. Come on buddy, I want to believe. During this exceptional line up of planets in retrograde I have moved house, my new home suspended over a river flowing from North to South. I have called Coyote’ s bluff and can feel Jupiter pulling up a chair beside me to peek at my cards with a wink. This is my Zero Card, my sacred fresh start. And yours is awaiting you….a thought, a habit, a relationship, a story.. A weight that is ready to jettison over the cliff to make damn sure that when you leap, you’ll land on your feet. One, two, three: jump!  “The brightest flame casts the darkest shadow.”
In my work with seekers (to ground us before the drum comes out and we head “away”) I call in the Seven Directions and all of the players that represent that team. As I speak or sing gratitudes to each of these elemental forces it is simple to express thanks for the beauties, the ease-full moments. In the North, I thank the body of our mother for salt, sand, spices. In the South, I offer gratitude for the flame that brings love, art, and magic into form. However, if I am to play with Black Panther, my very dear friend-- my invocations and blessings would include one for isolation and impenetrable bounds in the North. In the South, that reverent flame would be the heat/hellscape of a devastating passion. Sexuality, sensuality, rage, grief, fear are our raw material with Black Panther. When we struggle again our shadow-selves the pain is exponential. The judgement, shame, guilt linger and find easy projections onto our loved ones or that random lady on the subway/bus/plane! We become bound by taboo, choked by words unspoken, beholden to habitual response. Black Panther slinks through the dark on paws that are sure and steady. Her footfall is silent. Her plush, jet coat stretches over ribs that are sharp and filled by growl/roar/screech. She will knock you down from behind, pull flesh from bone Just Like That. You might roll over on your back, throw your hands up and beg her to do it again. (Not a bad idea.) You might try and pull yourself to your feet and run. (I can’t recommend that strategy.) As her eyes flash more brightly in the shadows and every single tiny bristle of fur (hers and yours) stands on end-- you might reach out to her in silence. Surrender? Maybe. Communion of souls? Yes, that. Consciously call on Black Panther as ally and you have access to a level of healing and power that bridge time and space and annihilates every binary polarity that holds you hostage. Meow.  Abundance with deep reverence is Buffalo’s wisdom legacy. With Buffalo’s strength of spirit and embodiment of the sacred, there is no race to cut the line in a powerplay of greed and grasping. Instead, we share with gratitude the wealth offered. We know that there is plenty to go around if we practice the power of the circle, of grace and gifting. How can we live Buffalo’s teachings in a world of obscene economic injustice?
Buffalo trundled up alongside me just a few years into the Pluto and Capricorn era to make the global lessons of deep transformation of resources, power, and structure keenly personal. Just a few months into my “phoenix from the ashes” divorce stint, while still heavily mired in the ash heap, the next floor to vanish beneath my feet was financial. Reorganization at workplace. Position eliminated. Exhausted unemployment while fighting to find new work. Buffalo snuffled closer and we spoke our gratitudes for what we had. Still, the path grew bleaker. Damn, much bleaker. Cue the revolution. After skipping at least one meal a day since July 2014, after hocking wedding bands, anything left in closets, the fan off my bedroom ceiling: Somehow, I am laughing. Buffalo shook out my beliefs about working hard, earning and saving money-- about resources, about security. Such beautiful medicine is found in observation of the abstraction of money by innovator and author Charles Eisenstein in the unputdownable “Sacred Economics” (primer for Pluto in Capricorn if I ever saw one): “In that realm it is exempt from nature’s most important laws, for it does not decay and return to the soil as all other things do, but is rather preserved, changeless in its vaults and computer files, even growing with time thanks to interest. It bears the properties of eternal preservation and everlasting increase, both of which are profoundly unnatural.” What true wealth will I bank? Promises? Ecstasy? Connection? Wisdom? That store will not sit untouched but be depleted in sacred giveaway. This is as it should be. Coffers of this type of treasure will be filled from unlikely allies, serendipitously placed strangers, from hustling hard but with grace. From plants, animals, children, elders, the elements at play. From each of the Seven Directions.  Feeling, Feeling with Queen of Cups
Ah, those lovely liquid eyes and that soft touch. Gently gazing, hands clasped at her breast, Queen of Cups engenders such feelings! Deep pools, rivers, oceans of emotion are her inner landscape. She encompasses such an affinity for loving and being loved, a gatheress of the tenderest moments. A dreamer, a mystic, a mermaid dwelling in sweetness. She pours from the Chalice of eternal love and compassion. Again and again she gifts from this vessel of her own heart both in right relationship and when the drinker in insatiable. In that giving without boundaries, in deepest water her Shadow is cast. Without the vessel, the chalice, that flow becomes a deluge and place to drown or be drowned. Relational dysfunction, codependency, abuse, create an undertow. This queen capable of such deep connection is caught in the mire. Her Direction:West Her Element: Water Medicine Totems: Snake, Owl, Spider. Deeply feminine, yin, seated in mystery the totems of unwinding, unravelling, shedding, and shifting between worlds. Astrological correspondences: Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces Key Aspects: Love and connection- Wellspring of spiritual communion with divine beloved- Beauty Path- Experience of feeling and sensing as sacred revelation In Shadow, drowning in the flow, empathy as self abuse, emotional martyrdom, “lower Neptunian” influences of addiction/obsession and illusion/delusion Can you sing the tender lullaby, your spirit song? Are you willing to journey for it, find it deep within the tidepools of self? To Be Her: Hold the chalice to your lips and drink deeply from the wellspring of creation and connection.  Body Wisdom with Queen of Pentacles:
Oh, this Queen is In No Hurry At All. Gracious, grounded and completely at home in the delights of her body, she radiates welcome. Figs with rose syrup, black olives drenched in oils and herbs, blooms open wide lavished amidst the laughter. As long as she is in her own lusciously perfumed skin, there is not simply Enough but Plenty. “Here” is a beautiful place, “now” is a paradise. Catching her eye, we sink down into the pillows. Maybe she has cupboards full of summer’s garden treasure lined up in gleaming jars. Or piles of warm woolens for her little ones she crafted by hand. Whether succulently sensual or tucked in a simple chair fireside, she in harmonious relationship to her resources. Her time, health, home are blessings she acknowledges gratefully In Shadow, she stagnates, weighed down by the limits of her resources. Her scope becomes so narrow and earthbound that her soul’s dream, her sense of innovation and magic flattens. Home becomes simply a box. Her Direction: North Her Element: Earth Medicine Totems: Bear and Buffalo Astrological correspondences are Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn Key Aspects:Riches of the Mother’s Body- Security- Abundance- Prosperity- Strong anchor to the seen world, “reality”- Loyal- Dedicated- Student growing toward Mastery -Sensuality/Sexuality In Shadow, materialism, bound only to the known, stubborn, entrenched, playing only by the rules, can indicate laziness/disconnect from spark. What is your relationship to your resources? What do you value? Yeah, what’s it worth to ya? How do you build the vision, brick by brick? How do you (do you?) experience the wisdom of your body? Tell me about your belly. Better yet, show me. To Be Her: Yeah. That belly thing one line up. Right now. |
AuthorLinda River Valente Archives
November 2017
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