Five of Wands/Ten of Swords. The Five of Wands represents Saturn (discipline, responsibility, law and order) in Leo (“I am, passionate, dramatic, egotistical), and it represents a struggle that appears at cross purposes. This Five can represent either outer conflict or inner conflict; I am being told that for today, the energies I will be dealing with are natural, wild and untamed. I won’t be able to prevent their presence, but I can evade the difficulties if I have a good strategy. The Ten of Swords (the Sun, the inner core of a person or situation, in Gemini, “I think,” curious, sociable, dual, talkative) tells me that failure is not fun, but we can’t release the failure unless we play it through to the end, without feeling sorry for ourselves. I will need to be careful that I don’t allow the minor conflicts of the Five of Wands to become something big.

My Thoth card is the Four of Wands. “Completion” is Crowley’s keyword for the Four of Wands (Venus, beauty, allure, relationships, in Aries, “I want,” action oriented, assertive, enthusiastic) is about building enough to become established, as a beachhead, not as a finished product. It represents a good, solid manifestation of Fire, but the work is not done yet and I should not stop looking for new ideas and reviewing alternate plans. This is a pause before continuing, and the dangers Crowley mentions as being associated with this card are a lack of steadiness, unreliability, and unpreparedness. But since the card is upright, I should be good.

My Legacy card is Death (again!), flavored by the Ten of Swords. Well, Death again and a pair of Ten of Swords. Sheesh. The Death card corresponds with Water (cold/binds and wet/adapts, and sensitive, imaginative energy that strives to stay the same or take the same course), Scorpio, Nun (fish head; liberation), and the Path between Tiphareth (the hub of the creation process where energies harmonize and focus to illuminate and clarify) and Netzach (the stimulating factors of emotion and inspiration), and tells of transformation or change, both voluntary and involuntary, and the fear of the unknown result of change. The Ten of Swords is the “martyr card,” and it is the final manifestation of the Ace of Swords, which warns us that we must mix wisdom with knowledge when we use our intellect, or we will pay the ultimate price.

Both of my Ten of Swords cards are upright, so I will present a bit of additional information. The number 10 tells of the end of a cycle and the suit of Swords is about the element of Air and the intellect; thus, the Ten of Swords is about the final outcome caused by the application of pure intellect. Imbalance is imbalance, no matter how you look at it, and too much Air, too much intellect, with not enough grounding or compassion, is a recipe for disaster. However, the nicest thing about these kinds of mistakes is that they can easily be turned into lessons, and thus, offer wisdom. The light at the end of the tunnel associated with the Ten of Swords is that there is a purpose, a good reason, for our discomfort.

The good thing about the Ten of Swords is that it represents the end of conflict. Maybe not the most positive end, but an end just the same. But it can also represent the end of a temporary solution, something that we thought up to bridge the gap, that ended up not working so well; the final failure means that we can start over.

The Gateway to the Divine Tarot, the book that comes with the Legacy of the Divine deck, sees the Ten of Swords as representing a ritual killing. Hmmmm . . . that is an interesting concept. That is actually a positive way to look at this card; choosing to kill the beast and cut the cords is a great way to get rid of something. It is kind of like writing a description of some undesirable concept and then burning the paper. I like that!

My 6-digit date number is 6, the number of vertical and horizontal balance. Well, that is optimistic, so maybe the megishimagosh of those Tarot cards will balance each other out. Foolish optimist? We’ll see.

My horoscopes: “You need to be more spontaneous, Sagittarius, and stop trying to organize other people's lives. You will see that it isn't so hard to just let things happen. The unexpected also has a special charm. You're a slave to routine. You need to take a big bite out of life and put your trust in chance for a while. The people around you would like to see more originality in your personality. Listen to them.”

And: “Yes, you're good at your job, you're intelligent, you love to see new things, you keep up-to-date with politics, you work out. But it's really the people who love you who are the most important things in your life. Think about what is happening in your emotional life and within your circle. Chances are, if there are any problems, you're the first person your loved ones are going to turn to.”

And: “This is your day, so don't waste it. Being the helpful and friendly person you are, you may find yourself running around and catering to other people's needs and desires. Some may see you as the knight in shining armor who can offer good advice with a friendly attitude. Be careful, however, of draining away all your energy on others. This day might be much better spent by simply catering to yourself. Even though this may seem like a selfish thing to do, you will love yourself for it.”

My Sun reading: “Discretion is the keyword for today. Any lack of it causes trouble. Finish unfinished business in the morning to clear the decks for an afternoon when anything can happen and probably will. A Moon-Jupiter sextile tonight enhances opportunities for enjoyable and pleasant meetings.”

Okay, I am feeling brave today, so I will move on to considering the 30^th Path. The 30^th Path, which connects Hod, the sphere of the mind, with Yesod, the sphere of intuition, corresponds with the Collective Intelligence. This is an incredibly powerful Path, especially when taken after delving into the first two Paths of the initiatory segment of this Journey through the Paths of the Tree of Life. This Path is about the combination of research and the following of hunches that is scientific discovery, and discovery of all kinds that are related in some way to both the intellect and intuition.

This is the perfect ending of the 32^nd Path, the bridge between the physical body and the meditative state, and the 31^st Path, the psychic evolution that comes from a mind/body connection. It is the first aha! moment that appears on this Journey, the attainment of the first step up the ladder of evolution and enlightenment.

While this enlightenment focuses mostly on the intellect rather than the spirit, scientific knowledge can certainly be used to foster spiritual enlightenment. Isn’t that exactly what Wicca encourages? After all, discovering and understanding the workings of our physical world is sacred knowledge seeking; our world **is** Goddess, after all.

Like The Sun, the Tarot Major Arcana card that corresponds with this Path, we need to remember that the Age of Reason should not replace our instincts and the uncertainty of the unknown. One symbol often found on The Sun card is the sunflower. This plant needs both light and darkness to prosper, for its thick and sturdy stem only grows ad reproduces in the shade, while its huge yellow flower head will tilt to follow the light of the daytime sun. The way this happens is that the side of the stem facing away from the sun grows longer than the side facing the sun; thus, the heavy bloom tilts towards the shorter side, and the light of the sun.

This Path forms a triangle that points up the Pillar of Form/Restriction/Severity, the Left-Handed Path that leads upward to the sephiroth Binah, comprehension and understanding. This could explain why these first three Paths are considered Paths of Initiation; the energy of Binah travels down the sephiroths and through these three Paths, ending in Malkuth and physical manifestation.

So we have Path 32, which allows us to rise out of our physical body, we have Path 31, which allows us to become comfortable with our psychic selves, and we have Path 30, which allows our conscious, logical self to accept the validity of our intangible psychic self.

Excellent! I feel an aha! moment teasing my brain from beyond the horizon.

I must mention that today, the citizens of Egypt, after 18 days of continuous, peaceful revolution, have taken back their country. What an amazing time this has been, and how glorious it has been to watch intelligent people use peaceful protest and perseverance to remove someone who has been in power for over 29 years. I don’t know how this will turn out in the end, but at least for today, the Egyptian people are heroes.

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