Week of August 29, 2016
What happens when two Venus cards (Nine of Disks = Venus in Virgo and Two of Cups = Venus in Cancer) meet the kind of Martian energy that can only be depicted by the card at centre, The Tower?
We get a very fine balancing act needed in a time of change. Moreover, that change can be abrupt, sweeping, and permanent. There’s no going back to the way it was. There is no return to Oz.
But, but, but ~
Though this reading is about the falling away of something as represented by The Tower, it is also about redemption. Profound redemption. A re-encounter with something that is true, and inextricably a part of you.
Stay with me here; there’s a lot of detail in this reading, but I hope it’s going to be worth it.
The card on the left is the Nine of Disks. It is associated with the astrological placement of Venus in Virgo.
As of 22.06 Eastern Time tonight, August 29, Venus moves from Virgo into Libra. So the first card has a ‘time and date stamp’ to it, and situates it in the completing past.
It is foundational to what is going on in the reading.
The Nine of Disks is called “Gain”, and it speaks to an accumulation of resources on a physical level — and the idea of “resources” can be broad.
Here, it feels like the resource of partnerships and collaborations.
So what is foundational to your experience is something that involved a co-creative effort and a shared vision.
It was imbued with the energy of “we’re in this together” — and it would have had a substantive impact on your tangible experience.
It could have involved a work venture. It could have involved a creative enterprise. It could have meant an alliance around a particular interest, or a set of goals.
But as with all enterprises in this world that are worth their merit, there is a period of adjustment and readjustment.
This is where The Tower comes in.
When it comes to the order of appearance in the tarot’s Major Arcana (the 22 Soul-based cards out of the 78-card tarot deck) The Tower, as card 16, comes after The Devil, as card 15.
Knowing this is important because it explains what The Tower is, and what The Tower is not.
When you surrender to The Tower rather than trying to resist it (and in the case of The Tower, resistance is futile), then you are working with the Martian energy of a card that:
- Acknowledges what has come to light from the shadows of your unconscious in The Devil — an element of who you really are that you were repressing, and
- Is wholly concerned with the business of tearing down everything that no longer works once that new knowledge about yourself and your situation has come to light.
An example: someone realising that, instead of following their own dreams, they have been following the dream their parents dreamed for them instead. (Or following “The American Dream,” for that matter.) Once that piece of information from the unconscious has been acknowledged and assimilated, then that person is awakened to a reality that they understand is not their own, and so it no longer sticks. They may choose to quit their now-meaningless job, but equally if not more likely there are events that conspire that they lose their job (because we seldom work proactively in matters of consciousness). The one they worked years for. The one that formed their identity. Except it wasn’t their identity: it was their parents’ desired identity for them.
Abrupt, sweeping, permanent.
And in response to the coming to light of vital information about who you are. Who you really are.
Who you are when you embrace what you didn’t want to look at but which became ready to reveal itself to you — because a part of you was ready to see it.
Martian energy is the energy that topples castles in the sky, leaving only the foundations of what is really working for you.
Of what matters.
This destruction can happen to your outer life, or it can happen to your inner life — your beliefs, your patterns, your sense of who you are.
It can feel like the earth is moving under your feet.
It can feel like you have been cut loose from sequestration.
It can be sublime; it can be painful; it can be both. Yet behind that pain there is a knowledge that there was a reason for the release, as beyond-your-control as it was.
In this case, it feels like it has been shaking the foundations of an alliance, a cohort, a shared vision, a creative collective, some form of collaborative relationship.
That’s the bad news.
The good news is this — and I will repeat myself here:
First, it is already happening.
The Tower is not in the near future card. It is bang-on-centre in your life.
Whether loud or soft, you can hear or sense the rumblings of what is leaving, making way for the gems of what will be revealed at the core.
The keystone.
Second, The Tower takes nothing that was not already going.
In fact, what is going may have been on its way out for some time. More than that: in some situations (not all), it may never have been yours to begin with. (Think of those parental dreams dreamed up for you.)
What it reveals, when the dust clears, lies in the final card to the right: the Two of Cups.
The Two of Cups is traditionally about romantic love, but what is romantic love if not the falling in love with oneself through another?
The Two of Cups is a mirror created when we meet someone who reflects back those things that we cannot own for ourselves — so creating the opportunity to do so.
If you look at the figures in the Two, something interesting reveals itself. Whose hair belongs to whom? And why three arms?
It’s similar to love: what we believe we are feeling for someone else — that phenomenal groundswell of emotion and energy — is actually coming from us, not them.
When we know that when we are falling in love with another, we are falling in love with ourselves, then we can see something new both in the potential of relationship, but perhaps more importantly in our own potential.
How can you undersell yourself when you know how fucking beautiful you are?!
‘The power, Dorothy, was in you all along.’
As it has also been with you in your gainful collaborations, your shared visions, your sense of wealth and gain in your world and how you place value on yourself as an intrinsic aspect of something that is both rich and supportive.
The Tower may feel like a shake-up of where you place your value(s). It may be asking you to look at yourself and others in a new light. It is, however, asking nothing of you that isn’t what a part of you is demanding of yourself.
No returning to Oz, my love.
Why would you need to, once you realise that it is you who had the courage, and the brains, and the heart all along?
About the Author:
Sarah is a tarot-teaching, tarot-reading, tarot-writing witch with a devoted interest in getting people turned on to the magical, alchemical, utterly transformative possibilities of these potent 78 cards. With a background in psychotherapy and certification as a somatic sex educator, Sarah is not only supremely interested in tarot as an art-form, but also in every client and student who comes through her virtual doors, and how they can forge their unique rhythm with the cards.
You can find Sarah at her website Integrated Tarot, and on Facebook.
Astrology Correspondences: Nine of Disks (Venus in Virgo), The Tower (Mars), Two of Cups (Venus in Cancer)
[Cards from The Röhrig Tarot deck, created by Carl-W. Röhrig © US Games, Inc.]
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