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September 20 through September 26, 2021

Three major astrological events grace the heavens this week, beginning with Monday's Pisces full Moon, also known as the Harvest Moon. This Moon marks the completion of a cycle, a time to reap what we have sown and the opportunity to release the past once and for all. Two days later, on Wednesday, the Sun will move into Libra and mark the start of a new season, autumn in the northern hemisphere, spring in the southern hemisphere. With the Sun in Libra for the next four weeks, a sense of inner peace and balance will accompany all we do. As the sign that rules partnerships, love relationships, beauty, and harmony, we'll gravitate to the things that make our hearts sing! It could be challenging to get much done until the Moon moves into Taurus on Thursday, but we'll be able to make up for lost time under this grounding sign. Mercury will go retrograde on Sunday, and with the Moon in Gemini that day (a sign Mercury rules) we may find it impossible to make up our minds or figure out what action to take next. Remember, when in doubt, do nothing! As always, Mercury retrograde is famous for causing a computer or electrical glitches, miscommunication, lost mail or messages, etc., so be sure to back up any information you simply can't lose and practice patience when those glitches show up - they're designed to get our attention and create higher awareness, so there IS a purpose behind them!

The Spirit of Tarot, by Kristoffer Hughes

(Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal.)

Materially and superficially, the Tarot appear as a set of images printed with ink onto slightly stiffened paper or card; to all sense and purposes, they appear as simple pieces of art. However, the Tarot is significantly more than just pretty pictures; they are a treasure house of images that express a profound connection to a mystery school that was centuries in the making. Elements hid within the Tarot reflect a truth that was old when the world was new. The school of Tarot emerged from an Occulture that was intent on creating a tool that would transform the lives and spiritual wellbeing of its users. They succeeded.

As a fledgling Tarot reader, I often felt out of my depth, isolated from my teachers or those who inspired me. Cut off from the guide books and the information therein that, my fallible memory failed to recall clearly and succinctly. With the eyes of the Querent upon me, I cannot begin to tell you how often my breath would catch in my chest, as pearls of sweat broke out on my forehead to glisten and betray my lack of confidence. Thankfully, most querents were patient and willing to allow a young person to simply have a go, and I am grateful to them for their tenacity and encouragement during my studies. And yet, I often felt so alone in my quest to understand and move into deep relationship with the cards.

That is, until one fateful day when I was to meet the most influential person in my magical life. Her name was Myfanwy Davies, and she hailed from the green valleys of South Wales. For decades she had resided in the North Wales coastal town of Rhyl. She was profoundly crippled by consequence of a road traffic accident; she wore glasses as thick as milk bottle bottles, and I would jest that she could still see Haley's Comet through them things. Short in stature yet huge in heart and magic, she told of me something inherent within the Tarot that I had yet to consider or contemplate—the Spirit within the Tarot.

Aleister Crowley explored this spiritual principle hid within the Tarot in his seminal work The Book of Thoth. In it he discusses the animistic principle held within the cards and stated that the cards themselves are living beings. They appear on the surface of to the untrained eye as inert and stationary and yet they crackle with a life-force and a vitality that is accessible to any student or adept of the Tarot. It was of this that my teacher Myfanwy referred to and then encouraged me to expand on that thought and explore the nature of the Tarot as a landscape of living, spiritual entities. My relationship with the cards were never to be the same again.

It is easy for us to consider that the nature of consciousness only applies to that which we consider as kin or near-kin, fellow humans, our pets, other animals, trees and rocks. We can identify the consciousness in others because we may share a similarity of awareness. We may not immediately consider this when we look at a deck of cards, and yet we would be foolhardy—as students of the occult sciences—to dismiss that the cards themselves reflect a consciousness. As I learnt that day, all of those years ago, as the western winds brought hailstones to beat at Myfanwy's windows: the Tarot are pictorial representations of the natural forces of the universe, and they contain within them the very principle of existence and all of its glorious expressions.

Tarot functions through the occult hypothesis that consciousness is not local, and it is not confined to specific points in space, or places like our brains. But in turn, our brains coalesce that consciousness, like a receiver, into a moment in time, and like the opening of a book and the turning of its pages, consciousness reveals itself in the here and now. This is precisely what the Tarot does: it opens the book of consciousness and coalesces material and information relevant to a precise moment in time (the reading), and reveals it.

It is able to do this because of the immense psychic energy that went into its creation.

In truth, each time you take to your decks, you are accessing a storehouse of wisdom that is more than the sum totality of its creators. For instance, if your deck is one inspired by the Rider-Waite-Smith system, a plethora of energies and influences went into the making of that tradition. From the Kabbala to the complexities and magical endeavours of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, to the profoundly powerful images of Pamela Colman-Smith, to every student and reader of that particular system. All have fed and nurtured a mystery school that is complete in 78 branches of wisdom. This magical heritage gave breath and life to the thought-forms that would eventually rise as living beings in their own right, as the spirit within the Tarot.

If your deck is inspired by the Rider-Waite-Smith system but has another overlay, take for instance my own Celtic Tarot. I have retained the primary symbology and system of the Rider-Waite-Smith but overlaid it with the magic of Celtic mythology. This adds another spiritual dimension to the cards; it does not detract from what is already present in the symbols themselves. By proxy of this, using a modern deck connects you to its creator and artist and the spiritual work that was necessary for them to perform to bring their decks into being.

Tarot is revealed to both reader and querent simultaneously, as each card is turned the spirit within that card sings of its heritage and the connection it has to all that has gone before it. The reader interprets the meaning of the card based on its position or value within a spread, and reveals this vocally to the querent. The most effective of readers are those who can sense and work with the spirits that inhabit their decks.

With this in mind, when one takes to a deck, one is in actuality never alone, for the spiritual beings that inhabit the Tarot are your constant guides to their revelation and inspiration. I sit here now, on a night not dissimilar to that which I enjoyed decades ago, the winds blow and hailstones stammer at my window demanding attention. But in my office, I am not alone, I have a number of decks, too many to admit to, and I sense their companionship. For within these decks are the wonders of the universe and of all life and living, of things seen and unseen and things betwixt and between sense and sensibility. In them are the efforts of occultists and artists and magicians long since dead, the mighty ones of the Tarot. It is the company of Tarot that I share this space with, and the comfort and stability that they offer my adventures into the magical world of Tarot.

Next time I will share some of my techniques for accessing the spirit within the Tarot.

Until then, fare thee well, and keep reading.

Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal. Copyright Llewellyn Worldwide, 2021. All rights reserved.

Whenever I get into a trance state, I see visions. When my boyfriend is around, sometimes I see images of women that are sexual in nature. Does this mean something bad or is he just being a guy? Are my visions telling me something like a prediction, or is this more of a telepathic feed? Also, how do I know these images are coming from him? Thanks!

- Alexa

Susyn:

You know these visions are coming from him because they only occur when he is around. Even if they are coming from him, however, they may not have anything to do with what is happening in reality. More than likely, the images of women you pick up from your boyfriend are simply a part of his biological makeup. You can't assume from these general visions that he is involved with other women. However, if your visions begin to feature a specific woman or a scene in which your boyfriend and a specific women are involved, you may want to pay closer attention.

When people first learn the art of going into a trance, the visions they experience tend to be random. When I first learned to read a crystal ball, the ball flashed from image to image. It was similar to watching TV when someone else has the remote and is constantly changing channels. The images meant nothing to me. As I continued to practice, however, more meaningful visions appeared.

It sounds like so far, you have merely been allowing any and all visions to come to you. This is also common when one starts channeling. When we open ourselves up to new realms, all sorts of spirits or images may come to us. Setting up boundaries by directing your trance or channeling sessions is very important. You can do this by requesting that only certain things be revealed to you. I recommend you fine-tune your experience by directing these visions. For instance, as you go into a trance, you can ask that you see into the life of your boyfriend, family members or the future.

You must be careful not to take these visions to heart unless you have some tangible proof to back them up. However, if you begin to have visions of certain events that then come to pass, you'll know your visions have moved to the next level. When this happens, you can start to rely on the validity of your visions more.

Once you have had a vision, you will want to do some background work to validate it. For example, if a loved one is sick and the doctors can't figure out what is wrong, you may ask for a vision regarding the source of the problem. Based on what comes to you, you may offer some suggestions to your loved one regarding what the doctors investigate next. After they have explored your suggestions, you can check back in with your loved one to determine if your vision (or your interpretation of your vision) was accurate or not.

Another example would be to visualize something you have misplaced. See if a vision can reveal where it is. If your vision is accurate, you will find it in the place you were mentally shown.

I recommend recording your visions in a journal. This will help you keep track of which ones come to pass and help you determine if a particular vision is something you need to take seriously or not.

*****

Mata:

When our interests are in jeopardy, our intuition will try to warn us. This is why we go on psychic alert when others are lying to us and when we are in danger of some kind: When our need is dire, instead of whispering, our intuition will begin to shout.

What you are experiencing is a primal instinct similar to a mother's intuition. As your relationship is very important to you, your psychic instincts are trying to help you ensure its survival. Whenever anything occurs that could threaten something you treasure, your instincts will poke at you to get you to pay attention.

It can be hard to hear our intuition when we are caught up in external events, so when we get meditate or go into a trance as you say, we may immediately start to receive messages from our intuition or telepathically pick up on what's happening with the people around us.

To answer your question, it sounds to me like this is just your boyfriend being a guy, as you put it. I'm basing this on the fact that these visions only occur when he is around, and you not mentioning any other reason to worry about his fidelity. It is a natural male instinct to want to mate with as many females as possible, which causes many men to fantasize about other women. Just because this drive is there doesn't mean he is acting on it; we all have base impulses we squelch on a regular basis.

If these visions only happen when you are out in public or around attractive women, I would assume that you are simply picking up on fleeting fantasies. However, if this is happening when you are at home alone with your boyfriend (and he is not in the other room looking at pictures of naked women on the internet while you are meditating), then it may be a warning of some kind. If you were being warned, however, you would receive these visions whether your boyfriend was nearby or not.

Since we can't control what others choose to do, it's foolish to make yourself crazy over these visions. That being said, you might as well make good use of your ability to read your man's mind by dropping subtle hints that you know what he is thinking. This will keep him on his toes and may even scare him into cleaning up his thoughts! For example, if you sense him checking another woman out, you might say, She's lovely, isn't she? If you catch him fantasizing, you might say, How often do you fantasize about other women, my love? (This is the fun and entertaining side of being psychic!)

Of course, being too psychically open can create all sorts of confusion and make your life harder than it has to be. If these visions are upsetting you, you could ask your guides to only make you aware of what you really need to know. Then if you have a vision, you'll know it's something you need to take seriously.

Astrea:

Many times in life we hear, "You will always have what you NEED, but not necessarily what you WANT." Your spirit must have needed to experience the feeling of leaving your human body, and the suggestion in the next chapter of Sylvia Brown's book was all it took to get you there.

Even though you hadn't read it yet, your SOUL recognized the title of that chapter as something it had been seeking, and your soul, knowing that you had that reference to read after your experience, got with it and out you went!

While I don't usually recommend her books, Sylvia Brown has a wide reaching and powerful effect on lots of people. A Gemini like you would be able to relate easily to her writing and put it to good use. Synchronicity - you gotta love it!

I like your description of "getting caught." That's exactly what it feels like, isn't it? One minute you're free and hovering above the room, and the next minute, ZAP! back down into your corporeal form you go!

As a little kid, I loved that "feeling of return." With practice, most of the time we can control that event, but sometimes, when our physical ears hear a distracting noise or something else occurs to knock us back into reality, back we go. With practice you will be able to control your return better.

I find it interesting that you were visiting your mother-in-law and not someone in your own genetic family. Evidently, you and your husband got married for reasons that are even deeper than love. His family's interest in "psychic stuff" will nurture your children in such matters and help them to grow into their own abilities.

You'll never have to be concerned that when your daughter visits them, she'll be discouraged from exploring her own psychic life and power. My parents encouraged me to develop my psychic senses in a time when it wasn't nice to even discuss such things in public. Heck, it's STILL not considered a great topic at the dinner table in some families!

Your kids will get to talk about it ALL and ask questions and read and study. This is going to give them such an edge in life! Talk with your husband about how you want to present this to your kiddos, so that you are united in your approach and ready to tell them their experiences are all natural and okay.

A word or two of warning: Geminis often have difficulty staying grounded in REAL LIFE. Don't get so strung out on your ASTRAL life that you neglect what you're doing here on Earth.

You are at the beginning of a long journey to learn where your power really lies. Try to be patient with this process and take your time.