Editor’s Note: If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article tells you how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc

By Sarah Taylor

This week, we’re looking at two cards that concern themselves with events that, for the most part, lie outside our control. I write “for the most part” because there is always an active choice that we can make in any situation — even if that choice sometimes feels like sailing between Scylla and Charybdis. In fact, sometimes the choice is as simple as this: we can fight the inevitable, or we can surrender to it.

Wheel of Fortune and The Hanged Man from the Rider-Waite Smith Tarot deck -- cards ten and twelve in the major arcana, respectively.

The Wheel of Fortune and The Hanged Man are about surrender. But it is not a surrender that has to be passive. It can be significantly empowering, as we’ll explore a little further on.

The tenth and the twelfth cards of the Tarot’s major arcana respectively, the Wheel of Fortune and The Hanged Man deal with archetypal situations rather than characters. Whereas someone can embody different aspects of the divine feminine with The High Priestess or The Empress, the regality and authority of The Emperor, or the alchemical prowess of The Magician, the Wheel of Fortune and The Hanged Man refer more to events in a person’s life that further their journey along the road to individuation (the route along the major arcana, from zero to twenty-one).

What follows is an exploration of how each card can feature in our own journeys along that route. It is by no means exhaustive; but if you haven’t guessed from my previous articles, I am an ardent proponent of synchronicity: when we are active participants in our own individuation process, we create the information and resources that we need at any particular time. (In these moments, we are living The Magician archetype.) If there’s something here that clicks for you, know that you are the one who conjured it up.

Wheel of Fortune

The Rider-Waite Smith version of the Wheel of Fortune incorporates many diverse symbolic elements. I’m not going to describe each one in detail (there are many resources that do this more than capably, including one here), but instead explore the overall picture that they convey.

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Good morning! Today’s podcast is ready. This includes a look at the Venus-Sun conjunction and some new details about Venus retrograde; Mars changing signs to Sagittarius, soon to cross the Galactic Core; and a rant about the elections and activism. I also introduce Light Bridge, the 2011 Planet Waves annual edition.

Today’s Oracle takes us to the Sagittarius weekly of Sept. 17, 1999

The mind plays many games. One that I see is possible for your mind to be playing with you involves a kind of struggle over whether you have the right to exist. This may sound strange, but it’s actually a fairly common affliction, and were it not for this, most people’s lives would be a lot closer to their inner wishes. What you’re likely to experience is an exaggerated, and temporary, form of this process, which may come in the form of extreme doubts about who you are, what you believe or the image you project into the world. All you need to do is notice, for these questions, when they arise, are likely to seem so ridiculous that they will answer themselves once and for all.

(The Daily Oracle is a random selection from one of 10,000 Eric Francis horoscopes. New horoscopes by Eric are published weekly plus twice a month in Planet Waves Astrology News and Planet Waves Light. The Oracle itself is a divination tool available to subscribers to either of these services.)

by Amanda Painter

Portlanders and live music fans throughout southern Maine celebrated last weekend: the State Theater has reopened again. Why should you care if you live nowhere near here? To my mind, this is the sort of thing that signals a community has some of its values in order and is willing to work to make them tangible. If we’re lucky, that may be contagious.

View from the balcony, State Theater, Portland Maine, Oct. 17, 2010. Photo by Amanda.

The State Theater was built in 1929 in a semi-Atmospheric/Spanish Renaissance style. Its history is varied and for a while its future was uncertain — though its resurrection has been on the perennial wish list of Portland residents since its last shuttering in 2006. Beginning as a first-run movie cinema at the start of the movie palace hey-day, it reincarnated as a porn theater in the 1960s. In 1989 it closed and languished until its first restoration in the mid-1990s, closed again briefly, and then served as a mid-size music venue until 2006-07 when disagreements between property owners and venue operators over code violations left it boarded up again.

It’s the last movie palace of its era left in Portland, so its maintenance serves as both a functioning lifeline to cultural history as well as an important link in the community’s arts culture between home-grown musical acts and the national music scene.

I wasn’t able to attend the entire day-long open house last Sunday, which was part “welcome home,” part “thank you,” and part fundraiser for a local music non-profit. But I did manage to catch the last hour of big sounds, bright lights, familiar faces and dancing strangers. With my friend Ryan at the helm of the soundboard, I roamed around snapping photos to the practically apocalyptic soundtrack provided by Jacob and the House of Fire, a local band of about nine or so members (horns, violin and accordion?) whose motto is apparently “Love unconditionally and always question authority.” Exhorting the crowd between songs to wake up and pay attention to the moneyed string-pullers of this world, their primal, raucous set of ‘roots rock’ seemed aimed at stirring us up for a united revolution of love and truth — and unbridled music.

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By Len Wallick

Today the Scorpio Sun forms a harmonious relationship with Pluto. You read that right. Pluto and harmony in the same sentence. It’s not just because Pluto’s reputation is a bit overwrought, it’s the signs.

But before we do that, let’s check on two other things. First, the other train running in the opposite direction, Mars. Just yesterday our focus was Venus and its brief but meaningful conjunction with Mercury. This was one of a series of contacts with the rest of the Scorpio stellium that distinguishes the first stage of Venus’s retrograde period. Mars, Vesta, Mercury and the Sun are also in that sign together for less than a week, with only Venus conjoining them all while they are there.

Mars on the other hand has one foot out the back door of the sign it co-rules. Taking a cue from austere asteroid Pallas, Mars will be jumping from the frying pan into the spiritual fire of Sagittarius. Indeed, one wonders what Scorpio will be like without its host, but Mars is not done there quite yet. Today, provocative as ever, the Red One embraces asteroid Eros in a hot conjunction that keeps the pan sizzling as the squeamish squirm. At the same time it taunts Arachne in the opposing sign of Taurus. There’s something about that bad boy Mars that Scorpio is going to miss.

One other thing before we get back to the ins and outs of Sol and Pluto. Remember those four goddess asteroids that all jumped signs about the same time earlier this month? We have already mentioned Pallas Athene is on sabbatical in Sagittarius, waiting to show Mars that she is not to be trifled with. It will be an interesting conjunction to start Thanksgiving week. Meanwhile, the other three goddess namesakes are intimately involved with Sun and Pluto, so let’s get back to our aspect du jour and see where they fit in.

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Today’s Oracle takes us to the Virgo monthly of April 1, 2004

Your intelligence is not failing you; rather, you seem to be the one who is not quite taking notice of the excellent information readily available now. I tell you, economically feasible solutions to all the problems in the world are sitting in file drawers somewhere. And your life is not any different. It would also seem you’ve been here before. The biggest mistake you can make is to compensate for your perceived limitations with some form of aggression, such as the motivation to conquer or win the day by dividing anyone or any thing. I recommend precisely the opposite approach: act in ways that hold the world together. Start with yourself. You need a unified set of objectives, ones that take into account the considerable inner divisions you may currently feel. From there, the way to peace and harmony will be obvious.

(The Daily Oracle is a random selection from one of 10,000 Eric Francis horoscopes. New horoscopes by Eric are published weekly plus twice a month in Planet Waves Astrology News and Planet Waves Light. The Oracle itself is a divination tool available to subscribers to either of these services.)

By Len Wallick

Well now, there’s two, there’s two trains running / well they ain’t never, no, going my way / well now, one run at midnight and the other one running just `fore day”
-McKinley Morganfield

Today retrograde Venus conjoins on-rushing Mercury in Scorpio. In order to appreciate and utilize their brief engagement in passing we need to review the back story.

Recently, after months of dogged pursuit and adventure, Venus and Mars had two dramatic conjunctions in short order. In August, just as Venus achieved its greatest eastward elongation, it caught up with Mars in Libra. On the same day Mercury stationed retrograde in Virgo. At about the same time Saturn and Pluto exacted the last of their three T-square aspects, closing a chapter for Libra and Capricorn and laying the foundation for another. It seems so long ago.

The second time it was Mars that did the catching up. Earlier this month it was in Scorpio, just days before Venus stationed retrograde. That rare retrograde started about the time of the Libra New Moon. In turn, those events were closely concurrent with the asteroids Juno, Pallas, Vesta and the minor planet Ceres all changing signs within days or hours of each other.

All of that may also seem like a long time ago. By the time the Scorpio New Moon takes place in the same degree of that most recent Venus-Mars conjunction, the midterm elections will have concluded in the United States and today may seem to be in the distant past as well. Such is the current pace of events as reflected in the planets.

Coincident to that apparent expansion of time is a sudden and ephemeral collection of planets in Scorpio. It started with the yin of Venus last month. The yang energetics of Mars followed less than a week later. Vesta was next, making ingress just hours after the Libra New Moon. Nearly two weeks later Mercury was next. Closely following was the ingress of the Sun this last Friday, just hours after opposing the Aries Moon. All of a sudden, it seems we have a stellium in the sign of metamorphosis and transition.

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Today’s Oracle takes us to the Aquarius weekly of Jan. 1, 1999

If God had made me an AQUARIUS (January 19-February 18)­ I would still be wondering what I was supposed to do with all of these amazing psychic and intellectual resources that I sometimes doubt exist because the world is so intent on doing things the stupid way when so much easier ways are available, and I would be wondering when I would get the courage to tell all the sleeping, miserable, enslaved, distraught, blind-folded and stuffy people of the world to get off their asses before I strike an enormous green match and do it for them. 1999 will be the year of my emerging leadership and being so free that everyone around me has no choice but to declare their absolute freedom.

(The Daily Oracle is a random selection from one of 10,000 Eric Francis horoscopes. New horoscopes by Eric are published weekly plus twice a month in Planet Waves Astrology News and Planet Waves Light. The Oracle itself is a divination tool available to subscribers to either of these services.)

Editor’s Note: If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article tells you how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc

By Sarah Taylor

The Knight of Wands, a youthful figure, straddles his mount. His hair, his gloves, and the horse are a fiery red, and plumes of flame spout from the top of his head and the back of his left arm. The reds are complemented by the yellows in his tunic, the leaves on the horse’s rein covers, and the desert below him. This is a card that radiates heat.

The Knight of Wands from the Rider-Waite Smith Tarot deck.

Then there are two counterpoints to the fieriness.

First, I see green on the horse’s rein covers and the five sprigs of leaves on the wand he clasps in his right hand. The heat is tempered. The horse — the means by which the Knight makes his journey, or the way that he moves through life — is not out of control. The reins lead my eyes from the Knight’s left hand to the horse’s mouth, which sits “on the bit”: it isn’t fighting the Knight, but is working for him; and the Knight’s grasp is both strong and authoritative.

Second, an expanse of sky forms the largest part of the backdrop. Blue is cool and that coolness is extended to the metallic sheen of the Knight’s armour. This particular personification of creative spirit may be intense, but there is also the presence of rationality. The sky also speaks of possibility — a cloudless blank canvass, and a lack of interference. He is a free agent, his path unimpeded.

This sense of free agency is further brought out when we take a second look at the flames on the Knight. Only his armour is on fire, and he doesn’t seem at all concerned about it. This is because the fire is as much a part of the Knight as his flame-red hair. Far from inflicting damage, this is the fire that comes from within. It is the Knight’s questing zeal as he burns up the landscape.

And what of that landscape? Along the bottom of the card runs a thin strip of desert, with pyramids at the far left. The desert is an earthly furnace; the yellow of the sands are echoed in the ragged yellow tunic, which draws my eyes to the salamanders, themselves symbols of fire.

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