Lord of Works - 3 of Disks

Oh look, another 3 from Thoth Tarot. Looks like Mars in Capricorn. This card is known as Lord of Material Works.

DuQuette explains that this image is a view from above a pyramid resting on 'desolate desert' of grey sand that represents the 'great sea of Binah'. At the three corners of the structure are wheels. Each wheel contains a symbol for one of the three alchemical symbols, salt, sulfur, mercury.

I myself notice that these wheels look a lot like the Buddhist 'dharma chakra' or 'wheel of Dharma'. You often see the wheel with eight spokes, representing the noble 8-fold path. The 12-spoke wheel can represent the twelve links of dependent origination. It could also be a reference to the twelve signs of the zodiac, or any of the other significant 12s in various philosophies. Also I've just realized: 1+2=3.

This is a card of craftsmanship, skilled work. It reminds me that I should 'work smarter, not harder', as the saying goes. Angel Paths says the card encourages us to examine our lives for the 'apparently immoveable object' and then to 'lean on it with all our might.' Well, now, today is my day off and I don't feel inclined to any navel-gazing in search of barriers to break down today. However, I did receive my offer letter for my new job yesterday, and today would be a good day to read all that thoroughly and get all my Is dotted and Ts crossed. I'm also going away tomorrow to attend the fabulous Marsden Imbolc Fire Festival, and so need to do my usual map-finding, packing and other preparations for a weekend away. And I have just started out on a new hobby called 'Zentangles', and I borrowed a book about it from the library yesterday which I will have a read of today, after I get back from the hairdresser's. I spent half my lunch hour yesterday marching around the town centre in search of Sakura micron pens -- but even the local papercrafting and hobby shop didn't have them. You know, you try to patronize local small businesses, but almost invariably they don't have the thing you want, and so you end up ordering online anyway. Well, one can but try. If they don't have what I need, not my fault. The last time I bought a substitute option from that papercraft shop was when I wanted to colour the edges of Celtic Tarot blue, and they didn't have the inkpad I wanted, and so I took the shop girl's advice and got a different brand. It was a disaster. So there's no way I'm buying anything other than Sakura micron pens for my zentangles, even if the first one I've done is just done with a plain old black biro. :)

Is your ship coming in? | 3 of Wands

You know that job I've been mentioning? Well, I found out yesterday that I got it! I don't have any idea yet when I start, but I was offered it and I accepted, subject to references, etc. :)

Today I've drawn 3 of Wands. Crowley was fond of the 3s. With 3s 'the ideas have become fertilized, the triangle has been formulated. In each case, there is certain stability which can never be upset, but from which a child can issue.'

Here we have the Sun in Aries. Wow, the power of the Sun, in the sign of the Ram. Now that's power!

'When this card comes up in a reading,' says Angel Paths, 'it is important that you cast aside doubts and fears, refusing to fall back into old habits. Instead you must turn to the future, trusting in your own power, making no compromises.'

Most 3 of Wands cards depict someone surveying their domain, or contemplating the horizon, or setting off on a long, crooked path. All of these images encompass the feeling of 3 of Wands. Hopeful. Full of plans, self-belief, confidence.

Burn baby burn

Thoth Tarot

The Lord of the Flame and Lightning. The King of the Spirits of Fire. King of Salamanders. 

All of these are Golden Dawn titles of today's card, Knight of Wands (or King of Wands, in most decks). He is 'Fire of Fire'. So he is very active and dynamic. He can be overwhelming. But he can also burn out really fast, in a poof. (Albeit a big, showy poof).

I couldn't feel less Knight of Wandsy today if I'd woken up this morning with the specific intention of feeling non-Knight of Wandsy. So we'll just have to see what happens today that could be a manifestation of this card.

Angel Paths says that on a day you draw this card, you may receive guidance from 'odd places,' so you should be alert to random input, because it might prove to be very useful and important. Now, I would never have come up with that interpretation of this card, so let's go with that one today and see what comes of it. :)

Be brave like bull

'Stubborn strength, toil, endurance, placidity, manifestation, explanation, teaching, goodness of heart, help from superiors, patience, organization, peace.' ~ from Aleister Crowley's Book of Thoth

Today's card is the Hierophant. His throne is a rather rambunctious-looking bull. He is flanked by elephants. Why? Because he is the card of the zodiac sign Taurus, with Venus exalted. So that is why the Hierophant in this depiction is enthroned on El Torro and has a little Isis/High Priestess-looking figure standing before him at his feet. (Crowley's ubiquitous 'Scarlet Woman').

We see the pentagram represented throughout as well. The five-petaled rose on the window behind his head. The five-pointed star with the human figure inside it on his chest, and the outline of the upright pentagram suggested as beams of light about his figure, an additional inverted pentagram suggested across his body from under the chin, elbow to elbow and down to the nether region of the little Scarlet Woman before him. DuQuette suggests this is actually the union of a pentagram and hexagram, so maybe that big shape is a meant to be a six-pointed star (though it doesn't look like one to me). DuQuette says that the Hierophant represents the Holy Guardian Angel, a figure that in Crowley's philosophy we are all meant to find and converse with as part of the initiatory level.

The four Kerubic beasts are in the four corners, but not in the traditional order. They represent the fixed points of the zodiac, and are almost always a lion for Leo in lower right, eagle for Scorpio in upper right, bull for Taurus in lower left, and man or angel for Aquarius in upper left. However, in Thoth tarot, the eagle an man are reversed. That's because Crowley decided he wanted the eagle to represent Aquarius and the man/angel to represent Scorpio. The reasons don't mean anything to me but apparently did to Crowley. In fact I would probably not have noticed the switch if it had not been pointed out in Lon Milo DuQuette's Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot.

I usually link Hierophant with established institutions, social conventions, and organized religions, things like that, and I continue to do so even when using Thoth tarot, but there's an added sense here of something a bit wilder. I guess it's the Taurus energy of that bull. After all Crowley's divinatory meanings start out with 'stubborn strength, toil and endurance.' He represents the first stage of the Great Work, I suppose, and not so much traditional authorities such as doctors, lawyers, preachers and teachers that we usually associate with this card. He tells me to stand strong and find the truth within myself, which comes of finding unity. After all, Crowley writes of the Holy Guardian Angel:

Offer thyself Virgin to the Knowledge and
Conversation of thine Holy Guardian Angel!
All else is a snare.

Be thou athlete with the Eight Limbs of Yoga;
for without these thou art not disciplined for
any fight. 

I will take this card as advice to be tough today. Be stubborn, strong, enduring and get on with things. Listen to advice and guidance from those above me. Don't be cowed (pardon the pun) by those who have no authority over me.

Let sleeping dogs lie?

Thoth Tarot

It's the last week of my 2nd annual Winter Solstice - Imbolc Thoth-a-thon, and I've decided to use my borderless deck for it. I have three editions of the Thoth, my first, the small purple box one, then this green box one which I trimmed of all borders and titles and rounded the corners on, and finally my favourite, the beautiful, silky, deeply colour-saturated 1986 AG Muller Thoth in the dark blue box.

Today's card is Moon. It features some of the usual elements of a Moon card - a crab (in this case, a water spider/scarab creature) emerging from murky depths at the bottom of the card, rising up toward a path that passes between two dogs (in this case, Anubis), two towers, and toward a horizon and a large moon. In this card, Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the afterlife, holding his set of keys, a black dog at his feet, stands guard to the path. He is the Lord of the Place of Embalming, patron of mummification and the dead on their path to the underworld. He was the god of the dead before Osiris took over, when he became lumped in with the many sons of Osiris. He is a very ancient god. The scarab, as usual, is depicted with a solar disk between its claws, a symbol of immortality. In fact, he is sometimes known as Lord of Midnight Sun. Falling through the sky from the disk of the moon are nine red yods, from the Hebrew alphabet. Yod, the first letter of the Tetragrammaton (Yod-He-Vau-He), the name of God, is thought to be representative of a totality, the absolute supernal. This symbol drips from the moon toward the path up from the depths of the water, which the scarab beetle rises toward. It suggests truths revealed.

It is an appropriate card for me to draw today. Yesterday I spent a lot of time thinking about people, about our many, many layers and depths. I felt awe and even dread of the frightening complexity of our selves, how we actually seem to relate to one another, even to those we are closest to and love the most, on only the most superficial of those many planes. We may think we know a person, but we've only scratched the surface. Even after 20, 40, 60 years. Can we ever -- do we dare -- to uncover those many layers, reveal the truth of our full person and theirs, bring up into light our weakness, our pain, our hurt, our anger? I don't mean the passing emotions of a day, but the true depths. Can we ever know our own strength, nobility, higher nature, let alone anyone else's? Is it possible to uncover those depths within ourselves and our loved ones, without destroying ourselves or each other? Or is it better, or at least easier, to just keep things on familiar ground, an even keel, just stay at the surface level and let the other stuff roil on in the deep, undisturbed by consciousness? It would be beautiful to have the full diamond of self, its many facets, revealed to one another. We've been scarred by its very formation, could we ever endure the mining of it?  Could we then endure the radiance of it revealed? Or is this something that can only be done on another plane of existence entirely, beyond this earthly realm? .... I sense only the danger of the entire proposition, lately. And thus this card, of murky depths and foreboding.