The Hanging Man reversed/King of Pentacles reversed. The Hanging Man corresponds with Water (cold/binds and wet/adapts, and emotional, sensitive and imaginative energy that tends to move deep, and attempts to take the same path as in the past), Neptune (inspiration, spirituality, magick, enchantment, dreams, altered states), and the Hebrew letter Mem (water, stability and balance, the reflective quality of thought); this card is about surrender, about seeing things in a new way, and about putting aside my Will.  This is not a card of action, and it has been showing up lately.  My Hanging Man is reversed, so he is encouraging me to not think out of the box.  Action is the word of the day. The King of Pentacles (cusp of Aries, “I want,” action oriented, assertive, competitive, and Taurus, “I have,” sensual, stubborn, cautious, physically oriented) is the expert on the physical world, on physical world resources, and on physical manifestation.  Upright, my King would be encouraging me to focus on the physical world and its slower and more predictable effects, but since my King is reversed, I am being encouraged to act even if there is not a plan in place.  In some ways, these two are somewhat supporting each other.

My Thoth card is the Two of Cups. Aaaah, “Love”!  Not Major Arcana love, but love all the same. The Two of Cups (Venus, beauty, allure, relationships, in Cancer, “I feel,” sensitive, family and home oriented, tenacious, moody) is about love and connections, usually about relationships and commonalities.  This card tells of favorable connections of all kinds, even business connections, but more likely having to do with caring and respect and love.  Perhaps this is alchemic love, chemistry.  Hey, I’ll take it!

My Legacy card is the Nine of Cups reversed, flavored by the Four of Swords reversed. The Nine of Cups (cusp of Aquarius, “I know,” friendships, the group, cause-oriented, and Pisces, “I believe,” feelings, duality, suffering, soul growth) is about emotional satisfaction and the ability to find pleasure in my feelings and in my expectations for the day.  The upright Nine of Cups tells of nourishment, fertile surroundings, luck and romance, but since my Nine is reversed, those things may not be a big part of my day.  That’s not bad, it just means that today is not a day for wishing.  The Four of Swords reversed is flavoring my reversed Nine and kind of reinforces this.  The upright Four of Swords (Jupiter, expansiveness and growth, justice, fortune, in Libra, “We are,” partnerships, balance, cooperation) can represent a pause or truce, but that’s not what today is about. 

My 6-digit date number is 6, the number of vertical and horizontal balance.

My horoscopes: “You have a natural ability to accomplish a great deal rather easily, Sagittarius. But today you may feel snowed under with projects. Things around you might be moving quickly, and perhaps you're having difficulty dealing with it all. For once, try to take it easy. You don't need to struggle all the time in order to be accepted by the world. Lighten up!”

And: “You will find this day agreeable. There is a great dynamic energy in the air that is helping to fuel your fire with extra logs from the woodpile. Have a good time regardless of what your daily activities are. You will find that an adventurous, high-spirited approach will get you where you need to go in every situation. You have the power to make important transformations that will aid you in the future.”

My Shadowscapes Insight is regarding the Six of Cups.  Pretty!  “They are drawn forth by her innocent chatter and by the mind that has not yet been chained by boundaries of ‘what must be’ and definitions of responsibility.”  Don’t you just love that??!  Perfect description of the energies of this card.  Today I will strive to keep my mind unchained!

Well, I must have done a good job pruning my wisteria two weekends ago, because last weekend I discovered that we have a robin who has built a nest right in the middle of the vines.  How lovely!  She does not seem to mind us sitting on the porch so far, and last Sunday I waited for her to leave the nest and checked; yup, two pretty robins-egg blue eggs in the bottom of the nest bowl.

I did a bit of research (how novel for me!), just so I would know what to expect.  Apparently, robins march to the beat of a different drummer, at least as far as procreation is concderned!

Most birds lay their eggs at dawn, but robins tend to lay their eggs mid-morning.  This is so they can eat breakfast first.  Robins have an easier time finding earthworms at dawn, and so they delay the egg-laying long enough so they can eat first.  Which makes sense; after all, producing eggs is a tough job. 

They say that robins usually lay four eggs, one each day.  Sounds like I had better check that nest again tomorrow!  The cool thing (literally) is that a mama robin may appear to be a bit neglectful for those first days, but there is a method to her madness.  She is allowing those first eggs to stay cool so that the chicks are not too much ahead of the last egg to be laid. 

Normally it’s 12 to 14 days till hatching, so by next weekend we might begin to hear some noise from tat nest.  Once they hatch, the babies will stay in the nest for anywhere from 9 to 15 days.  Once they are all hatched, we should see papa too; it takes two parents to feed four hungry babies!!

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