My Thoth card is The Moon reversed. The Moon corresponds with Water (cold/binds and wet/adapts, emotional and sensitive energy that strives to stay the same), Pisces (“I believe,” feeling, suffering, soul growth, duality), Qof (the back of the head), and the Path between Malkuth (the physical world of action and physical, outer reality) and Netzach (the stimulating factors of emotion and inspiration), and talks about the imagination, perception, and fear of the unknown or at a minimum, bewilderment because of it. My Moon card is reversed, so I will need to be aware that what I perceive is not always what others perceive, but as long as I am realistic, there are benefits to be had from meditation and visualization.
My Legacy card is the Nine of Wands reversed, flavored by the Four of Coins reversed. The Nine of Wands (Moon, feelings and emotions, illusion, imagination, in Sagittarius, “I seek,” philosophic, fun-loving, adventurous, blundering) tells of being pro-active in response to issues, of reaching a point of drawing a line or taking a stand. But since my Nine of Wands is reversed, today I can be a bit more relaxed. Not too much! The Four of Coins (the Sun, the inner core of a person or situation or the deepest self, in Capricorn, “I build,” ambition, authority, caution cunning), in an upright position tells of maintaining and promoting control and very solid foundations. This Four is reversed, too. Looks like today is not supposed to be a day of control and order. Sounds like a good day to be out at the beach!
My 6-digit date number is 4, the number of depth and stability.
My horoscopes: “You're more into socializing today than anything else, Sagittarius. This could be great providing you don't have a heavy workload. See who's available and go for it. If you need to get something done, you'll have to resist the temptation to chat too long. Use breaks for this and keep your focus on getting done what you've taken on. There's always the evening to get together with friends.”
And: “You may feel as if your smile is unwelcome today. It may seem to you as if there is some sort of gloom and doom to people's attitudes that makes them unwilling to accept any sort of good news. Don't let this stop you from maintaining your own cheerful state. It is important that you not probe too deeply into the reasons behind other people's behavior at this time.”
My Shadowscapes Insight today is regarding the Nine of Pentacles. This card to me tells of the moments when our spiritual self is in harmony and balance and communication with our physical self. The interesting thing is that this harmony can only be achieved in a solitary way. I need to do the work to open myself, to learn and understand, and to connect all of these parts of my “self” with balance. The being in the image on this card achieves this balance through music, through the playing of an instrument. But there are many other ways to achieve this harmony, and for today, I will open myself to both the pleasures of the physical senses, and of the higher spiritual sensations that are the “above” to my “below.”
Today is the first day in a long time that I feel completely relaxed and healthy. It has been a stressful summer; wonderful and fun and filled with great experiences for sure, but stressful too. But finally, at the beginning of day three in the Dominican Republic, I feel as if I have unwound.
I am sitting in Brian’s living room, looking out the window and door. The avocado tree right across the driveway from the door has beautiful red flowers on it, like smaller camellias; the trees behind this one are filled with fruit. Several of the banana trees are heavy with fruit. I just hung a load of wash to dry, because the sky is a brilliant blue. The chickens have been by several times (the rooster woke me up this morning), watching me hopefully. I gave them some stale bread yesterday, and amazingly they remember, after just one feeding, that I am the person who offered them food yesterday. LOL, Jeri, one of Brian’s dogs, guards the front porch as his territory and this morning two or three of the chickens made it to the front door before Jeri saw them. Feathers flew!
Yesterday we had an unexpected visitor! Along the side of the property is a barbed wire fence, which keeps the neighbor’s cows in that field. Well, apparently a bull went wandering out onto the street, and then turned into Brian’s driveway by mistake. In came the bull, and in came the farmer, chasing after him. Brian’s dogs went nuts, and at first we thought it was just a cow coming to visit, but then we got a glimpse of the “undercarriage” and grabbed the dogs. Adrenaline rush!
Despite hitting traffic on Thursday, I arrived in the D.R. by dinnertime, so I was able to pick up an extra evening. Friday, while Brian went to the doctor, Carlos and I went up into the mountains. I bought some great gifts for WGW2011, we stopped and bought cornbread from the little old lady on the side of the road, and then had a lovely dinner, cooked by Carlos. Yesterday, we took Beni, Brian’s other dog, to the vet, stopped for ice cream, and did some errands. We had another lovely dinner by Carlos.
Today, we are going to head to the beach, unless the weather doesn’t cooperate. But no matter what, I am enjoying spending time drinking coffee and talking to my son.
Today is the ten-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. We are not the only country who has experienced first-hand the horrors of terrorism, not by any means. But we have lived for so long with these horrors happening outside our borders that we have become insulated from them. How easy it is for most to feel sorry for the victims of horrific attacks in an abstract manner, and yet continue with their daily lives, unaffected. Yes, we do need to function, we do need to continue with our daily lives, we do need to rebuild after an attack, but we cannot do so unchanged. After that day ten years ago, and the days and weeks that followed, many of us here in the US have been changed.
I think sometimes about oppression, and the perception of who is doing the oppressing and who is being oppressed. And I think about terrorism, and how the definition of the term changes from one’s point of perception. Those who perpetuated the attacks ten years ago were working from religious fervor; was this fervor a true concern for others, a need to show them the “truth” and allow them to see the light? Or was the fervor the robe that disguised a need to exert control and wield complete power over another? During the revolution that brought independence to America, from our vantage point our soldiers were heroes, but from the vantage point of the British, we were terrorists. Is American seen as an oppressor? I’m not talking about politics here, or about governments; I am talking about the every-day American. We have our obliviousness, due in part from the ease of our lives. This point is brought home for me in particular now, as I sit in my son’s living room in Jacagua, a rural suburb of Santiago, in the Dominican Republic. From the vantage point of these people, even the poorest American who at least has a roof over his head is still living in a modern world filled with opportunity.
I remember the horror I felt as I watched on television the people at the top of the second tower, trapped and being choked by smoke, after the collapse of the first tower. These people had to know that their chances of surviving were slim to none, particularly after the unthinkable had happened and the first tower had collapsed. I cannot comprehend what must have been going through their minds those last moments. I am filled with horror even now, as I type this. And that is as it should be.
I don’t ever want the horror to fade. And I don’t want the horror to turn to anger either, because anger tends to morph into revenge, and revenge perpetuates the whole situation. So for today, as I head for the ocean of the Caribbean, I am going to remember the horror. I am going to remember those who died and those who survived, and I am going to remember what they experienced that day as well as what I experienced. And I am going to hope that humanity will turn to peace and love and communication to solve its problems.
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