Ace of Swords/The Tower. Ya think?! The potential for intellectual interactions regarding challenges, and the result of not addressing those challenges. There is a reason why The Tower (Fire, hot/separates and dry/shapes; Mars, action, aggression and drive, and Phe, mouth or speech) follows The Devil; focusing on only one element to the exclusion of the others is a recipe for disaster.

My Thoth card is the Two of Swords. “Peace,” but peace created by vigilance. This card can also indicate some deception; whether someone else is deceiving me or I am deceiving myself can only be determined by me.

My Legacy card is The Lovers reversed. Air (hot/separates and wet/adapts), Gemini (“I think,” curious, social, duality), and Zayin (two edged sword) are the correspondences to this card, and in an upright position this card represents personal relationships, intimate correspondences and choice. Because it is reversed, I need to be aware that today my choices are not all about me. I cannot forget the power of love, and I need to choose with the highest good of the group as my main goal.

My 6-digit date number is 13, which reduces to 4, the number of both stability and stagnation. There ain’t no stagnation today, no stability either; except if I think like Uncle Al, and proclaim that change is stability and stability needs change. Okay; that makes me feel a little better.

My horoscope: “Today you're unstoppable! You're a very hard worker by nature, and with the current planetary alignment you'll be able to accomplish even more than usual. You have an abundance of energy, more than enough to handle everything that comes your way. Just be sure to use your usual good judgment. Rash decisions, especially those concerning your personal life, could lead to regret later.”

**sigh** It seems that today is not my day to catch up on First Degree Homeworks, or to work on my Third Degree Lessons. Today is my day to deal with egos, both my own ego and the egos of others. I have done my best to state my feelings with complete honesty and without causing hurt, and I hope that I was able to do so. Time alone will tell.

Part of the difficulty is the usual ingredient: the imposition of the reader’s expectations and emotions into the written post of someone else. This is sooooo easy to do, and it applies not only to the written word, but to physical world situations that we experience “after the fact.” It is so easy to infuse our own feelings and expectations into a situation, and this happens both in a good way and a bad way. I guess the lesson here is that if anyone feels as if an event or a situation is focused entirely about them (especially an event or situation that is initiated by another) in a bad way, everything needs to stop so that an assessment, an objective assessment, can be made.

**another sigh** I am starting to cook my feast for tonight. Hopefully the drama will be over, and I can accomplish some Lesson work.

$