By Sarah Taylor
The unknown is uncontrolled; no strategies exist that will enclose the endless territory of the new. Only by trusting in yourself and in this world can you get past the watchdogs of your fears and out of the iron gates of the already-known.
— Arthur Deikman
The cards are tying up with the month’s astrology this week, and I have a feeling it might give an indication of timing for some of us. Moreover, the cards are — what’s the word? Undilute — in terms of their quality; all three are well-nigh impossible to overlook in a card line-up. They are conspicuous, weighty, vibrant — even when the colours and energies are cacophonous, at odds, unsettling. However they play out, there is a beauty to their symphony. Perhaps a profound beauty.
Let’s look at the astrology. From left to right, we have The Star, the Ten of Cups, and The Tower, representing Aquarius, Mars in Pisces, and Mars respectively.
The two outer cards are both from the major arcana, representing the large-theme, archetypal cards in the tarot. When we work with the major arcana, we are working with transpersonal themes that each of us embodies and experiences in a particular way in our lives. Currently, Mars (The Tower) is in Aquarius (The Star) and about to square Saturn, on Monday Jan. 7. As Eric described this aspect:
[I]f emotional and erotic energy is involved, there is only so far stuffing things down can go; eventually the container fills up. Group opinion, described by Mars in Aquarius, is saying that it’s time to break free against the constraints of Saturn in Scorpio.
So we have The Tower and The Star both being activated — and from the perspective of the tarot the meaning of that activation is clear. The Tower is card 16, following on from card 15, The Devil. In The Devil, we confront the shadow — something about ourselves that we have kept so well hidden that we weren’t even fully aware of it. The Devil is often the repository for a specific kind of shadowy energy: that of sex and sexuality, and the way that it ties in with relating to others.