Lapis Philosophorum

Day of Nymphs – Dec 29th This card encourages us to connect to our playful side, our inner child and how best to cultivate this aspect of ourselves.

I shuffle and draw 10 of Cups.

This card is about happiness, abundance, love and relatedness. Just as is the Lady. This is the Lady’s energy expressed through real life relations; family, children and friends. To be playful and childlike (not childish) and to make room for my own inner child is simply to be with my family and to cherish the time I spend with them and for them.

“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.”

This time the two cards in the Little Cross don’t seem to opposite each other. On the contrary they point in the same direction. Actually what I asked was something like how can I keep and nurture my energy? So one should think, that this is all about Fire. But No. The answer is Water.

So we have the Knight of Vessels standing in the lake, gathering  water in his vessel. According to the LWB he is collecting information from the unconsciousness, which is of course exactly what the water symbolizes. But there is always the danger of getting more than bargained for or to get in too deep. I don’t need to be foolish and just take the plunge.

I need to be awake and aware, I’ve already gotten the message, I just have to take notice. The fish is the message – according to the Alchemical Study Group – the Knight just have to be aware of it:

“[You] may be getting a message “out of the blue,” perhaps in the form of a synchronicity. It is an unexpected emotional satisfaction. Maybe you’ve already gotten it, and like the knight, need to take notice. Open your eyes to what is around you.”

And what is the fish then? A BIG fish. The Ace of Vessels, no less. An extremely interesting card, I think. A fish carrying a vessel on it’s back, wherein floats a heart shaped vessel in blood (?) from where grows a vine with two bunches of blue grapes.

The vessel symbolizes the alchemical retort, wherein the philosophers stone can be transformed, and everything about the card indicates that Love is the agent or catalysator of this process:

“The card points out that both the goal and the source of emotions, represented by the heart in the vessel, is the need to give and receive love. Love is the very source of life, and the goal of love is to be fruitful. Rejoice and release an out-flowing of love, and allow its returning bounty into your soul, for then the alchemical vessel of the heart shall sustain new life.”

This card is also about finding one’s purpose in life, according to the LWB. And since it is about transformation by Love, there seems to be here an intertwining of meanings; that the purpose of life, any life, is Love.

Where the Staffs are about passionate love, Eros, the Vessels are about empathic love, or Agape. This is what this out-flowing of love seems to be about, when we are in the Realm of Water. But maybe this difference may not be that important – after all, love is love is love – like; a rose is a rose is a rose.

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

The first week of Januar. Went. Not well, but it went. My sinusitis came back. Copenhagen is freesing. I feel like hibernating until February. I’ve written about spiritual practise today, but frankly, I feel blocked and doubtful right now.

So what is it about? Let me do a little reading – The little Cross again; The Situation crossed by the Challenge:

The situation gives me The Empress: Here we have the Alchemical Vessel personified by the Mother Goddess herself.

Again from The Alchemical Tarot Study Group:

Alchemically, the Empress represents the alchemical vessel, which nurtures the creation of the philosopher’s stone. She continues the process of dissolution of the prima materia, begun by the High Priestess.

Tarot wisdom: The Empress signifies the potential to bring forth great abundance, the bounties of life, a spiritual flowering. She is grounded in the earth, and therefore in the material world, which helps us keep our center as we probe the spiritual planes. However, we cannot take this abundance for granted. The alchemical womb must be watched and tended, lest it abort, and we be forced to start anew.

Again, I think this has do with grounding and nurturing. I guess I simply tend to forget this, while (still) feeling self pity about January.

I guess I will meditate on this card for the next week, and try to nurture the aspects of everyday life that has to do with the Goddess. And nurture my children, husband, and myself as mother and wife, and woman of course.

I’m afraid I has been withdrawing into myself  and that is not a way to tend to this alchemical vessel, I think.

Crossed by Two of Swords as the challenge:

I’m being involved in thought processes, that are too airy, too dualistic, too intellectual.  If I let it be, I might find a compromise of wisdom (the owl) in a entirely different place, than where I look for it now. Maybe it is a conflict between emotion on one side (the sword with the red handle) and rationality on the other (the sword with the blue handle). Or maybe it is this dichotomy itself that is the problem.

So here I read the Challenge card as an obstacle, something that prevents me from going to the source of the Goddess, so to speak. I’m simply troubled with thoughts and rationalizations. Maybe the owl is telling me to hover over this and that is in doing that I find wisdom.

By the Empress, and pointing back to my last reading, by Children.  In this particular reading I see the Empress’ child, Eros, symbolising both children, childish things and Love.

And the Two swords also points back to the Three swords from last week; That thoughts and mental processes can sometimes be a problem in it self.  I can actually forget what is most important in the midst of them.

But then I’m gently reminded.

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

Birth of Freyja: – Dec 27th. This card points to issues of love, luck, artistic and creative expression and female wisdom.

Ace of Cups
I do feel lucky, drawing this card.

The is a lot of abundance happening here – if I may put it that way. And again the Moon Sickle hangs high in the night sky – or the morning sky – because it seems like the Sun is rising in the east. The Goddess is in the form of water pouring herself out in five streams. I think I’ve learned that five is the number of Venus (and in the norse mythology Freya) – the goddess of love and luxury.

This card is about dreaming, inspiration, creativity and love, according to the book. Well, I do not need the book to see that. And so it seems to accentuate and second the meaning of the position. This is the gifts of the Godess. This is available to everybody – including me – if they understand how to connect with her spirit as does the High Priestess.

This year I’ve decided to focus on Temperance. The idea of Temperance (and the card also) is very much about Equilibrium and Balance.

Therefore I asked the cards about how I can best balance the different aspects (roles, task and identities) of my life. As a mother, a wife, as a co-worker, a friend and as, well, me. How can I make all that a whole person?

In a short while I’m going back to my job after 11 months on maternal leave, and would like to know how to balance things so my life with my little projects, work, family etc does not end up being too stressfull and chaotic. In fact I’m a little bit afraid to get drained of energy in the swing of things.

I drew 10 of Staffs: The Phoenix : rebirth, strengthened by ordeal, renewed strength; 3 of Staffs:  The ship: a new wave, reinforcements, replenishment;  and the Lovers: The Minor Conjunction, love, sex, attraction, coming together.

One of the things I have to get used to by this deck is that Place connects Staffs (or Wands) with the feeling function, not the intuitive function, of the Psychological Types coined by C.G. Jung. So the two Staffs card makes this very much about feelings and about valuing. (Appearently feelings should not be confused with emotions. Emotions can rise from all of the four psychological functions).

There is some passion in this reading, I should say.

The Alchemical Study Group at AT says about the 10 of Staffs: “The phoenix represents the birth of a new personality. Tarot wisdom: You have been transformed by your experiences. You have been tested by fire; your old self has died away, and a new self is being born. You are renewed .”

During the months of my maternal leave and by giving birth to a new little child, some changes have already happened to me. A transformation has taken place, so that I am actually ready for the new phase in my life. I can start anew. I am also at a point in my life where I am proactively starting changes for myself. For example I’ve decided to let go of my overweight and a lot of bad habits. Im ready to let go, purify, and let something new into my life. 

There certainly is a lot of power in this image of fire. 

The Alchemical Study Group at AT says about the 3 of Staffs: Tarot wisdom: Your ship has come in. Energy has been put out, and now it returns in reward. What you have been waiting for is arriving; the project will be complete. Or, the message may point to the arrival of reinforcements to help out in a tough situation.

I guess that this means that I need not to be afraid to get drained. I have the power in my self to sustain, and there will come reinforcements from my reserves, as long as I stick to my course. Here I also have in mind the UW 3 of Wands. I also think of this ship in connection to the Six of Swords, and my soul journey, I’m going to embark on this spring. That will provide me with energy too.

The Alchemical Study Group at AT says about the Lovers, that “The Lovers mark the first or lesser conjunction of the masculine and feminine principles, symbolized by the union of the Emperor and the Empress, with their spiritual essence, Sol and Luna, in the background. This is called the alchemical wedding, and was depicted in the texts as a wedding ceremony, or more often as a consummation of the marriage. […] [A]nd ideally balance between the male and female aspects of our personalities. The Lovers are in harmony with each other, and therefore with the entire physical world”.

The Lovers are in fact doing what the Temperance is ultimately doing on a more sophisticated level: Mixing and combining opposites; female and male energies, solar and lunar. This is the alchemical wedding in the more mundane, sensual form. I’m also thinking about my husband and about my marriage, and that tending my love for and with him really is a key to make things work – of course. All you need is love. Well, love certainly is the x-factor to make the world go around. That goes for our little world too.

Something is also telling me that a key to balancing and healing (making whole) my life is passion. To be passionate about things. If some activity does not “do it” for me or fail to make me want to “just do it”, it has to get out of my life. 

The overall message seems to be : The balance will be right. Just do it.

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

Welcome to my new blog on one single topic: Tarot and my love for it.

I’m very excited about this, and I am looking forward to sharing my passion.

This blog will function both as a tarotblog and as a ressouceguide about the topic of Tarot. I’ll try to write a least one or two posts per week.

In the About … page you’ll soon be able to read about me and my love for Tarot, and soon here will be links to and comments on Tarot cards, decks and books on this site.

I am currently writing an essay about Why I’m reading tarot. I’m writing the essay to clear some things out for myself and therefore I’m writing it in danish – my mothers tongue. But as soon as I feel ready I’ll also post it here in an english version.

Love,
Kristine Gazel.