Lapis Philosophorum

Feast of Mothers, Christmas Eve: – Dec 24th. This card shows how we can connect with the spirits of our ancestors for communion and to ask for wisdom and guidance. It is also a time for Christians to reflect on the birth of Christ.

Princess of Swords
I guess this is about being calm, distanced and objective, and that that would be the advice of wisdom and guidance I would get from my ancestors, especially here I am thinking about my immidiate ancestors, my mother and my father, who are not with us anymore.

Actually there are som simililarities between this and the prevoius card, the colours of blue, for example, the birds and of course the swords. Both Justice and this Princess belong to the element of Air.

I guess both cards advice me to use reason and rationality more – since I do have a tendency to get carried away by emotions.

Hopi Time of Renewal – Dec 23rd. This card indicates the best way for us to seek purification and renewal, and to build tolerance for others.

Justice
What first came to mind was that something has to be cut. Old patterns of behaviour and thought. That is what the renewal and purification is about, and that is the decision that I wrote about yesterday, I guess. To be able to take a decision, to take action, to let go of the old and take a step forward. The Justice is able to do that. Clear and conscious. Know what I want, decide what to do, then go in that direction.
As for tolerance –  be just, be wise (like the owl), judge fairly and balanced, and keep this in mind.

The Time of Beth: – Dec 22nd. This card points to the inner blocks and resistance that is holding us back from following our dreams.

Rebirth
A call is heard and a process of change has already begun, but still a decision has to be made. I ‘guess that what’s holding me back: The need to make a decision and take the responsibility for my change. I’m somehow afraid to do actually do this. To take the first steps in following my dream all though I know exactly what my dream is.

Yule – Winter Solstice: – Dec 21st. This card shows us how best to connect to the Light within and without – it symbolizes the Birth of the Sun.

The World
The end of one cyclus – the start of a new. I think that this is about accepting the flow of time, light, and energy, of beginnings and endings of events and epoques. Actually this woman is embraced by light – it is a question of letting it in, letting it shine from within and without.

Actually there is a lot to learn here. In fact it is hard to allow oneself to be enlighted – to allow ones own light to shine freely, and others as well.

Mother Night of Dreams: – Dec 20th. This card reminds us to look for a particular message in our dreams tonight. The ancients believed that our dreams on this night foretold some of the important events in the coming year.

Prince of Cups
The sickle of the Moon is hanging in the light night sky, this young man is a true knight in the service of feminine powers. The Prince, and his horse, both seem to be a bit sad or melancholic.

Prince of Cups

I’m reminded to look for male figures in my dreams tonight. What messages from within will my Animus bring me and how will he reveal himself to me?

Cups are about feelings, intuition or perhaps creativity. Is this young man telling me that creativity comes with a choice, maybe even a sacrifice? Is there some kind of bitterness in his toast? Maybe in the form of loneliness or shyness?

It is now again time for the Sacred Days of Yule Spread.

The Sacred Days of Yule Interpretation says: “This spread will help you to learn to apply the tarot to enjoy and enrich your passage through the twelve festive days from December 20th to 31st. The meaning of each card in the spread reflects the energy of the festivity associated with each of the twelve days.”

I’m using the DruidCraft Tarot again for this spread, since it’s pagan imagery fits the idea of Yule well.

At the Aeclectic Tarot Forum somone asked how the renaming of cards is perceived. The discussion there inspired me to write the following:

The classic example is of course Death – often renamed as Transformation. I think this obscures the whole idea about what Death is about in the Tarot.

No doubt that Death in a actual reading can mean transformation, or letting things die, letting go, thus making room for change. But does not the Wheel of Fortune express this idea very well also? You know, the notion of  “what comes around, goes around”.

There is a tendency to think – and perhaps ensure the querent, that Death is not really about the real physical death, about dying. But about “Transformation” – whatever that may mean in the context. It seems to me that the grim urgency of the Reaper is somehow being denied and euphemized here.

In the “original” tarot – emerging in  the 15’th century Renaissance Italy – Death was quite literal and ever urgent. The Plague swept over Europe in the course of five centuries, came and went several times only to return again. You never knew who was next in line. Often young people and children died first, leaving no new generations so that cities and rural districts was almost void of people year after year.

Death from the Alchemical Tarot

We have the idea of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse bringing with them Pestilence, War, Famine and Death. And the motto Memento Mori  – Rememeber your Mortality. Actually we find this at the back of the beautiful and scarily intriguing Bohemian Gothic Tarot cards.

This is not to ruin your day, just to say that Death always has been ever present to the individual. But there is a tendency – whenever it is possible – to distance ourselves from this harsh reality. I guess that this “Transformation” talk is a symptom of this. The true is that Death is and will always be a something we human beings must be confronted with, no matter our life conditions, and no matter how nice these are to make us believe that Death is not an issue to us personally, to make us foolishly believe that Death is something that happens to somone else.

I think that Death in the Tarot – coming after the Hanged Man and before Temperance – is about accepting this and looking this fact of life right in the eye. Memento mori. I did not say anything about accepting it without anxiety or fear. Angst. I guess that is too much to ask for. But never the less.

When you have accepted Death, not as a abstract idea – like me dealing with it now (see I’m also fooling myself) – but after having been hanging upside down for a few days or weeks, you are ready to pursue. An maybe, just maybe, at this point you have the courage and peace of mind and knowlegde – to do as the Temperance Angel does. To mix.

But you are only able to do the Mixing, after having stepped over the treshold of Death, that is having accepted your very own, very literal mortality: That this very body, and this ego are dying and you can’t avoid it nor do you have not the faintest idea about what is going to happen on the “other side”. If there is an other side.

Having accepted this, you are ready to Mix Fire and Water. There is a lot of Power in Mixing, don’t doubt that. And this in turn makes you ready to deal with the Devil.

Images from The Alchemical Tarot, copyright Robert M. Place, are used with kind permission. Visit the Alchemical Tarot website.

I made another little cross; one card (the Center, the Situation) crossed by another (the Challenge).

I drew 9 of Staffs:  The Grey Wolf – sacrifice, overcome with passion crossed by 2 of Staffs Hermes and Aphrodite – one lover lost in the other.

I’ve met the Wolf before; It is as said above about Sacrife; “A wolf is sacrificed in a fire. This is an alchemical symbol representing the restoration of the king, who was devoured by the wolf.

Tarot wisdom: You face a calamity, a fire out of hand. Fire consumes you to exhaustion or illness. The message also suggests sacrifice, especially for a higher purpose, like suffering for the good of others, or being a martyr, or subduing the animal passions for spiritual purpose”.

Please notice the little third branch on the torch – this points to the thirdness as a product of the conjunction of the two, the lovers. This is the creative outcome of the relationsship, their child. Being either a creative product or an actual child.

The message being that it is only possible to create something new and to engage in life on a truly passionate basis if I’m willing to let go of my old worn out (wolfy) I.

The fire will devour and purify.

Being attracted to the Alchemical and the Vampire Tarots – as should be appearent by reading this blog – I started  wonder what it is about  blood and its symbolism, that so intrigues us?

I guess that blood has so many symbolic layers that you could write volume upon volume about it. And this has been done.

So now I want to turn my – and yours – focus on Blood and Redness as symbolizing Eros.

In the fairy tales three drops of blood can symbolize the defloration of the virgin, in a more unfamiliar freudian sense. This I choose to interpret as the point where the young girl become mature and able as a women to give herself to a man on the wedding night. The wedding symbolizes that there has been a true union, a conjuntion, between the man and the woman, the groom and the wife.

So, the mother in the fairy tale of Snow White cuts her finger on the needle, and tree drops of blood fall on the snow in the black wooden window frame and she says: “I wish that I had a daughter that had skin white as snow, lips red as blood, and hair black as ebony”.

And then she concieves and gives birth to a little daughter, which the royal couple names Snow White, soon after which the good mother dies. We all know what then happens. Btw, I have always been more attracted to the cruelty and vile in the original fairy tales, as supposed to the cute Disney versions, which I do like, but it is not just the same (more about this in a later post, perhaps).

What I find interesting here is that the blood and the Redness is linked to the Blackness and the Whiteness. These are – off course – the three alchemical stages; the nigredo, the albedo and the rubedo. The rubedo is pointing to the culmination of the Opus, i.e. the Great Work, the red Stone, the conjunction, the fusion of opposites, and – yes – the wedding between the King and the Queen.

The World in the Alchemical Tarot (Courtesy of Robert M. Place),
symbolizing the Great Work,
The Red Stone

So – Blood and Redness, the beauty and brilliance of the colour red, then is about the pulse, the spark of life, love and passion, ripeness and maturity, the ability to be whole and united with the opposite, yet be differentiated.

We also have the virgin, the mother and the crone, as aspects of the goddess trinity, where the mother stands for the mature woman, representing the fase in a woman’s life, that is about love, passion and eros, and where she, being able to give birth and create new life, is bleeding on a monthly basis.

My husband had a more earth-bound approach: “Blood is what runs our machine – it is liquid, yet coagulates easily, it is thick and warm, it is sort of alive, a living organism in itself”.

And as the blood runs thin, we are embarking on its scarier implications, we are reminded of death; It is at this point that the Redness turns back into Blackness. And the circle comes full.

Soon it is Halloween. It is not a danish, nor a protestant tradition. But in our house hold we are celebrating it with Jack- O’-Lanterns. Partly because my husband is American, partly because it is scary in a cosy sort of manner. So here is what he created today:

Jack-O'-Lanterns

I have dug up my Halloween Tarot in a Tin, and will be using this deck for the next week, that is until Halloween. Look also at The Tarot Table Talk where Susan has this deck on her table this week.