Queen of Pentacles

Queens in the tarot, get things done.

Toady I’d like to speak about a woman of great power and influence who had a good head on her for finances, health and many other matters. A woman who got things done.

Catherine The Great of Russia inherited a mess when her husband, the emperor, died. Russia was a poor and struggling country. A smallpox epidemic in Siberia wiped out some 20,000 people, and Catherine came to believe that reducing its terror would be a great step forward for her people. So at considerable expense she recruited the services of Dr. Thomas Dimsdale of England, the most famous inoculator of the day.

Catherine wanted herself and her son to be the first inoculated, to prove to the people that this was a safe and effective procedure. Dimsdale wanted to try his skills with some commoners first, since he was not fully certain that Russian smallpox would behave like the English versions. His attempts were not successful, and Catherine felt that she must take matters into her own hands to establish the credibility of Dimsdale and his work. So on Oct. 12, 1768, she was inoculated. She developed a light case of smallpox but was fully recovered by Oct. 28. And to disprove the popular idea that taking pus from a donor patient would kill that patient, she herself donated pus for inoculation of several members of her court. She and they all survived and inoculation quickly became widely accepted.

In taking these steps Catherine The Great did wonders for public health. She enforced inoculations and oversaw the creation of hospital and health care that previously had been reserved only for the nobility. It was under her reign that the common people too could begin to benefit from these systems.

She was also very instrumental in creating education for the masses. She felt that her subjects were rather backward at the time, much of it as a result of poor education. Here too she uplifted her people as she enabled them to receive an education that was previously unavailable to them.

It is said that Catherine The Great had a great many lovers, and that she was sexually manipulative. Her bed-partners were keen to remain in her favour and therefore made themselves available to further her ambitions towards change for the people. In return, she generously rewarded former lovers for their favours, often maintaining this even after dismissing them.

In the period that she ruled, she made changes and really managed to get things done. A great many improvements were made to benefit her subjects, nobility and commoners alike, due to her vision of improvement and even her strategies in achieving these.

Today this card brings us the following lesson: While there is no harm in enriching ourselves we should always try to find ways to share and help our fellow mankind too. We sometimes make the mistake – however nobly - of donating monies to far-away-charities like feeding children in Africa, for example; however we often fail to notice that our own neighbour, our own people or someone close to us, is starving.

I’d like to end today’s segment with a quote by Sam Levenson:

“For Attractive lips, speak words of kindness.

For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.

For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.

For beautiful hair, let a child run their fingers through it once a day.

For poise, walk with the knowledge that you never walk alone.

People, more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed. Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you will find one at the end of each of your arms.

As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself and the other for helping others.”  


Source: http://www.heraldextra.com/lifestyles/article_52f0024b-e7e6-526f-9b10-04fdc159b3c1.html

Eight of Swords

This card depicts a woman loosely bound, her hands behind her back. She is blindfolded and is flanked by 8 swords pegged into the ground. It speaks to us of restrictions, but also of the ability to break free from restrictions.

Spartacus was a Roman slave who was sold for a gladiator. A grim fate indeed. Yet, he refused to remain captive and broke free. This encouraged other slaves to break free and to join him in the largest slave revolt in Roman history. The Roman threw everything they had at him yet he remain undefeated and in fact defeated his enemy in battle for a year. He was finally defeated through trickery and superior Roman forces.

Spartacus could have remained a slave, instead he chose to break free. In the process, he provided inspiration to many other slaves, some of whom joined him. Approximately 70 gladiators managed to free themselves when Spartacus broke free.

As he started defeating the Roman forces who were sent after them, he so inspired other enslaved men that approximately 100,000 slaves also broke free to join him in this defiant act. Spartacus somehow managed to feed and shelter his men as he led them into one battle after the next.

Although Spartacus was eventually defeated by the Roman Crassus, history remembers Spartacus, not Crassus, for the inspiration that he gave to so many slaves.

Sometimes when we break free from bad habits, or a corrupted system we inspire other people to do the same. If we can stop ourselves from accepting defeat when we are faced with restrictions that we have the ability to free ourselves from, others become inspired, reasoning if we could do it so can they!

The woman in the card who has her hands bound behind her back and who has been blindfolded can free herself. She need only want to. Sometimes we find it easier to wallow in self-pity or despair instead of taking a stand and releasing ourselves from the restrictions. When this card appears we might want to ask ourselves whether there is some aspect of our lives in which we feel bound or restricted. If so, now is the time to consider liberating ourselves instead of accepting our lot or misery. It is within our power to do so.

In closing I share with you a quote by C. JoyBell, on breaking free:

“When I was little and running on the race track at school, I always stopped and waited for all the other kids so we could run together even though I knew (and everybody else knew) that I could run much faster than all of them! I pretended to read slowly so I could "wait" for everyone else who couldn't read as fast as I could! When my friends were short I pretended that I was short too and if my friend was sad I pretended to be unhappy. I could go on and on about all the ways I have limited myself, my whole life, by "waiting" for people. And the only thing that I've ever received in return is people thinking that they are faster than me, people thinking that they can make me feel bad about myself just because I let them and people thinking that I have to do whatever they say I should do. My mother used to teach me "Cinderella is a perfect example to be" but I have learned that Cinderella can go fuck herself, I'm not waiting for anybody, anymore! I'm going to run as fast as I can, fly as high as I can, I am going to soar and if you want you can come with me! But I'm not waiting for you anymore.” 

Two of Swords

A long time ago, when it was still believed that the world was flat, there lived a man named Ferdinand Magellan. Like the figure on the two of Swords card, Magellan needed to make a choice – blindfolded in a sense – with no guaranteed outcome. A choice that would require a huge leap of faith, given the times he lived in.

Magellan decided to sail around the world, without any knowledge of what may await him or his crew. To not do so, I imagine, would have been to choose an almost certain fate in mediocrity.

Against all odds this man Magellan convinced a crew to join him as he set off to become the first person to circumnavigate the earth.

He and his crew were met with many challenges. Most of his crew did not survive this dangerous mission, and yet, they chose to face the dangers of the high seas, and the possibility that they might fall off the end of the world, in order to challenge themselves and change the world as they knew it.

All choices have consequences, and today’s card reminds us of this. When faced with a choice we seldom have guarantees regarding the outcome, but we do know that all choices have consequences.

The consequences for Magellan and his crew was that many of them would not make it, many would die in the attempt. But, Magellan made it, he succeeded in being the first person to circumnavigate the world, a victory that would not have been possible without a huge leap of faith on his part, and a willingness to face whatever consequences arose from his choice.

Our daily choices may not necessarily be as dramatic as Magellan’s was, but we occasionally find ourselves in positions where we really do not know what the outcome of our choices might lead to. It is at times like these that a leap of faith is needed as well as a healthy understanding that we need to be prepared to live with the consequences of our choices.

The figure in the card is blindfolded, she is flanked by two swords, a decision or choice must be made and she cannot begin to see the outcome of either. Yet, the only way out of breaking this deadlock is to take the plunge and chose one or the other. Even the wrong choice is better than no choice.

If we think that we do not really have choices to make every day, consider this:

After we choose to get out of bed in the mornings, we choose to either approach our day with dread or desire. How do we choose to project ourselves onto our world today? Do we tackle the less-desirable or difficult tasks that we have left for last, or do we get them out of the way first? Do we choose to live in appreciation of the beauty that surrounds us, even on the subway or in the concrete jungle of our cities? Do we choose to frown or smile at strangers. Have you ever noticed how much better that first cup of coffee tastes in the morning when you sip it with a song in your heart rather than a black mood stifling your thoughts?

If nothing else, today’s card reminds us to make conscious choices though our day, without guarantee of reward or outcome. One never knows what a difference even a small positive gesture can make to someone who crosses our path, however briefly. Like Magellan’s it may even change someone’s world for the better.

In closing we could do as William Blake suggested in Auguries of Innocence: We could choose to:

To see a world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour.

The Empress

The Empress is the archetypal mother. She who nurtures, feeds, embraces and loves us. She who honours the interconnectedness of All.

Metis was a goddess of wisdom, a divinity worshipped long before Zeus and the Olympians. She was Zeus’ first consort and it was predicted that she would have two children, a daughter with courage and clarity equal to any man, and a son, ‘a boy of all-conquering heart, who would become king of gods and men.’ When Metis became pregnant, Zeus feared that the child she was carrying was the predicted son who would unseat him. He therefore tricked her into becoming small and then swallowed her.

As it turned out the child she was carrying was not the son, but the daughter, Athena, who emerged out of Zeus’s head, as a full-grown woman. Athena had no memory of her mother, and considered Zeus her sole parent.

Metis, as divine feminine wisdom, was indeed swallowed by the patriarchy, and disappeared from the Western world. The myth reflects what happened historically as successive waves of Indo-European invaders, with their warrior gods and father-based theologies, subjugated the people of old Europe, who for 25,000 years had followed mother-based religions and developed peaceful, culturally advanced civilizations that were unstratified, agricultural and egalitarian. Because their cities were unfortified and exposed and because they lacked military skills, they were conquered by the horse-riding, sky god-worshiping invaders who imposed their patriarchal culture and religion on the defeated people.

The Goddess became the subservient consort of the invader gods, and her attributes and powers were absorbed or came under the domination of a male deity. Even the power of giving birth or creating life, which had been the natural realm of women and the Goddess, became co-opted, and the sky gods now created life through their words and will, or gave birth through the head.

Women forgot her, thus resembling Athena, who was born as a fully grown woman out of Zeus’s head, with no recollection of her mother Metis. Like Athena, most women are daughters of the patriarchy, who have recognized the divinity only of God the Father. Women have not (until recently) remembered a time ‘when God was a woman.’ Lost to memory was the existence of God the Mother, the Goddess, the feminine face of God. In the last few decades, ‘Metis’ is re-emerging and being remembered In a contemporary women’s journal, Women of Power, this renaissance is described:

The ancient spiritual voice of woman now speaks its long-hidden wisdom and becomes an active force for the conscious evolution of the interconnectedness of all life; the awareness that everything has consciousness and is sacred; the re-membering of our selves as sacred beings, and the loving of our psyches, bodies and emotions; the empowerment of women and all oppressed peoples; the creation of world peace, social justice, and environmental harmony; the activation of spiritual and psychic powers; the honouring of women’s divinity; and reverence for the earth, and the celebration of her seasons and cycles, and those of our lives.

Thus The Empress card today serves to remind us to recollect and to honour our connection to spirit, to the earth and to one another. As the great mother nurtures all, we too – men and women alike – should reaffirm our commitment to these feminine qualities, our intuition, our natural urge to birth and nurture life in our projects, work and relationships so that this archetypal goddess of wisdom may once again find a home within each of us.

 From: Gods in Everyman, by Jean Shinoda Bolen

The Tower

The Tower card often evokes fear, simply because it warns of a sudden, often destructive, change.

In biblical times mankind built the tower of Babel in an attempt to reach God. God did not approve and devised a plan to stop them. Overnight He changed the language that they communicated in, making it impossible for them to understand one another, all attempts at communication were wrought with misunderstanding and frustrations. They were therefore unable to complete the task. Thus the Tower of Babel became symbolic of man’s fall from grace during that biblical period.

A modern-day example would be the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York on September the 11^th 2001. This too was in-a-sense a fall from grace in that the aftermath of 911 saw controversial laws being pushed through and passed, for good or for bad. Laws that would otherwise have taken years to go through the senate. The passing of some of these laws has caused moral points to be raised.

In a personal sense The Tower could mean a sudden change of events for which we are not at all prepared. With the tower of Babel example miscommunication and frustration followed when friends and family suddenly became strangers in their failure to communicate with one another. When The Tower visits us it is therefore necessary to step back and to accept that what has happened has happened. It is too late to over-analyse the situation. We are urged to look at the bigger picture instead of being swept up by the confusion, panic, fears, and frustrations; and to ask ourselves whether we want to be part of the problem or the solution.

There are ways that we can make even these frightening situations work for us. If necessary, we can find other ways in which to communicate or we can work at developing the resolve and attitude to adapt to the new situation. We are cautioned against becoming aroused by the chaos that often follows the falling of our tower, guarding against allowing the sudden change to overwhelm us. Now is the time to calmly re-evaluate our position and to find a different approach or solution to the new circumstances or events.

It is often true that when we are forced onto our knees we somehow find ways to shine brightest. It takes courage and bravery but as the saying goes: “If you aren’t scared your actions can't be brave.”

A lot of good and positivity can come from the falling of the tower. The civil unrest present in many countries in current times is indicative of a power shift in the making. Ordinary civilians no longer want to stand by feeling powerless as their countries and large corporations rob them and lie to them. In such cases it is as if these civilians are rocking the tower, willing it to fall, so that irrevocable change may follow. It is probably no coincidence that The Tower card depicts the toppling of a crown as the tower starts to fall, possibly symbolizing the demise of those who abuse their power.

On a personal level, facing life’s challenges takes courage but also teaches us a great deal about ourselves. For it is not possible to find our life’s purpose without first wrestling with our life lessons – the very challenges that steer us towards purpose fulfilment once we embrace these lessons and make allies of our nemesis.

Eight of Pentacles

The Eights are about action and change. Breaking the inertia to gain momentum which is often a difficult thing to do. Eight of Pentacles is the card of the Apprentice, or the Neophyte, and speaks of the hard work that lies ahead. This card requires of us to get out of our comfort zones in order to learn or re-learn whilst taking the necessary action required to do so.

An apprentice who dedicates himself to learning a new skill or task often feels frustration when faced with repetitive tasks that are seemingly unimportant or unglamorous, tasks that are often at the ‘bottom of the ladder’ as it were. This is true especially if his teacher is thorough and a stickler for creating a solid foundation of knowledge in the Neophyte before he is allowed to spread his wings.

There is something quite honest and refreshing about the apprentice who learns a skill that will stand him in good stead, if he is dedicated.  And few things are admired as much as someone who truly knows his subject and who delivers the work expected of a qualified tradesperson. A good apprentice does not mind doing the hard work necessary to develop the skills needed to become one who is really good at what he does. Most skills learnt will improve his life on one level or another, and hard work is most definitely a requirement if anyone is to learn something new. We’ve all been there, or are perhaps going through this again.

Through trial and error we learn, we are at times perhaps humiliated as we learn what others seem to do so well, but we need to remember that they too were once apprentices and had to do the work necessary before they could excel in their chosen fields.

Upon joining a Pagan coven, for example, much learning is required from the Neophyte before he can expect to become a fully contributing member. Responsible Pagan Elders or circle leaders will insist that each new member learns the basics first before being allowed to manipulate energies in circle or exert their will on creation.  Even a respectable and wise Pagan Elder is forever learning or re-learning skills. Be those divination skills – like the tarot – or skills that fall into the camp of Magic, whether sympathetic or ceremonial, each has it’s own set of skills that are needed.

Once we have acquired the necessary skills we can move on to become accomplished in our field of expertise. We can then look back at the challenges that we faced during our apprenticeship with pride and knowledge. With hard work we have ensured that our foundation is solid. Only then can we truly make a meaningful contribution.

With the Eight of pentacles visiting us today we could challenge ourselves to learn something new or to brush-up on skills that we have not used in a while, perhaps they have become a little rusty or outdated. Perhaps we want to learn how to build a website, or how to ride a bicycle. Or we may have some larger task ahead of us for which we may need to undertake an apprenticeship. Many of us who are interested in leading healthier lifestyles for example may need to learn about nutrition and exercise. Someone who feels he may be stuck in a dead-end job may want to consider expanding their knowledge by going back to college or learning a trade. Of two things I am certain, we never stop learning and we can only improve our lives when we embrace opportunities to learn more.

In closing I’d like to recite the last part of a poem by Aleister Crowley, called "The Neophyte":

I am come into this darkness to attain the light:

To gain my voice I make myself as dumb:

That I may see I close my outer sight:

So, I am here. My brows are bent in prayer:

I kneel already in the Gates of Dawn;

And I come, albeit unaware,

To the deep sanctuary: my hope is drawn

From wells profounder than the very sea.

Yea, I am come, where least I guessed it so,

Into the very presence of the Three

That are beyond all Gods. And now I know

What spiritual light is drawing me

Up to its stooping splendour. In my soul

I felt the Spring, the all-devouring Dawn,

Rush with my Rising. There, beyond the goal,

The veil is rent!

Yes: Let the veil be drawn.

Seven of Wands

Today’s card speaks of standing our ground, even against overwhelming odds, to claim victory. When this card appears it tells us that we have made progress, and the worst is over.

Rarely in military history have the odds been so unequal and the stakes so high. One of the largest armadas ever assembled appeared off the Mediterranean island of Malta. Its 200 ships had been sent by Suleiman the Magnificent, sultan of the vast Ottoman empire to destroy the Knights of Malta who had long been a thorn in his side. Aboard were crammed some 40,000 fighting men, including 6,000 of Suleiman’s elite infantry.  Opposing this force were just 600 knights, a few thousand mercenaries and a few thousand Maltese irregulars – in all between 6,000 and 9,000 men. Once Malta fell the Turks would evict the Spanish from Tunis and then invade Sicily and Italy. However, in spite of the odds the Knights of Malta became the heroes of the age and the siege - one of the most celebrated events of the sixteenth century. Nearly 200 years later Voltaire could write, ‘Nothing is more well known than the siege of Malta’. These Knights of Malta gained glory and fame for standing their ground against overwhelming odds, which prevented the Turks from invading Italy. If the Knights of Malta had lost, as was expected, Malta would have been the springboard for the Turks to invade the rest of Europe.

Standing our ground against overwhelming odds.

More recently two ordinary people stood up against the fast-food giant McDonalds in a matter that became known as McLibel. Gardener Helen Steel and postman Dave Morris successfully humiliated McDonald’s in the biggest corporate PR disaster in history. McDonald’s loved using the UK libel laws to suppress criticism. Major media organizations like the BBC and The Guardian crumbled and apologized. But then they sued Helen Steel and Dave Morris. In the longest trial in English legal history, the “McLibel Two” represented themselves against McDonald’s £10 million legal team. Every aspect of the corporation’s business was cross-examined: from junk food and McJobs, to animal cruelty, environmental damage and advertising to children.

Outside the courtroom, Dave brought up his young son alone and Helen supported herself working nights in a bar. McDonald’s tried every trick in the book against them. Legal manoeuvres. A visit from Ronald McDonald. Top executives flying to London for secret settlement negotiations. Even spies. Seven years later, in February 2005, the marathon legal battle finally concluded at the European Court of Human Rights. And the result took everyone by surprise – especially the British Government. McLibel was not just about hamburgers. It was about the importance of freedom of speech now that multinational corporations are more powerful than countries. McLibel is the David and Goliath story of two people who refused to say sorry for criticizing McDonalds and creating public awareness about the misleading advertising claiming that the food is nutritious and offers a balanced diet. They refused to apologise, proving instead that McDonalds questionable marketing was aimed at children by using a clown mascot – Ronald McDonald – to manipulate and brainwash kids. Kids who’s choice of food as well as their eating patterns and habits would determine what they would eat for the rest of their lives. And in doing so,  Helen Steel and Dave Morris changed the world for the better.

These two ordinary people stood their ground, they held McDonalds accountable to society on behalf of society. They are hero’s of our time and perfectly demonstrate the deeper meaning behind what the Seven of Wands card is trying to tell us. Just because the odds are stacked up against us it does not necessarily mean that we are fighting a losing battle. At times it is good and even necessary to stand our ground, and who knows, perhaps we too will taste victory in doing so.

Source:

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/mclibel/

http://www.historytoday.com/tony-rothman/great-siege-malta