Three of Wands reversed/Nine of Cups. The Three of Wands (Sun, the inner core of a person or situation, the deepest self and personal power, in Aries, “I want,” action oriented, pioneering, assertive) tells of being successfully established after some effort expended.  My Three of Wands is reversed, so perhaps hat beachhead is already established, and I need to stop looking back at it and instead, look forward. 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 Nine of Cups is called the wish card because of the sense or perception of bounty associated with it.  That success after effort that is presented by the Three of Wands I was just talking about?  Well, while I am being told to use that great energy to move forward, there is nothing wrong about feeling good about my accomplishments; satisfaction is a good thing.

My Thoth card is the Prince of Cups. The Prince/Knight of Cups (cusp of Aquarius, “I know,” friendships, the group, cause-oriented, and Pisces, “I believe,” feelings, duality, suffering, soul growth) is about feeling things strongly and about dreaming, and about the imagination.   He may appear calm, cool and collected to others, but he is actually filled with intense passion.  Perhaps the dangerous thing about the Thoth Prince of Cups is that he tends to make use of outside influences to further his own personal agenda.

My Legacy card is the Knight of Wands flavored by the Page of Swords reversed. The Knight of Wands (cusp of Scorpio, “I desire,” intense, controlling, deep, obsessive, and Sagittarius, “I seek,” philosophic, fun-loving, blundering) is a person of passion, courage, enthusiasm and boundless energy.  He is the hero who jumps in to save the day, but he just might boast about it ad nauseum.  My Knight is flavored by the reversed Page of Swords. The Page of Swords (Capricorn, “I build,” ambitious, competent, cautious, cunning, Aquarius, “I know,” friendships, the group, society, cause-oriented, and Pisces, “I believe,” feelings, duality, soul growth, spirituality) in an upright position reminds us to use our mind and intellect to analyze situations, as well as the messages of our senses, and he also reminds us to ask the questions “why?” and “how?”  Because my Page is reversed, he just might be offering a warning to my Knight.  If we don’t look where we are going and if we don’t determine if that next step has good or bad consequences, we might end up in trouble.

My 6-digit date number is 7, the number the tells of the pause that happens as growth slows and degeneration approaches, usually accompanied by a choice or crossroad of some kind.

My horoscopes: “With the current aspects at play, Sagittarius, you could find that the hard work you've done in the past finally brings financial rewards. This will make you very happy, but don't get carried away and go on a spending spree! Treat yourself a little. Celebrate with a friend. Take care to exercise a little good sense. You don't want to buy too much and have to take a lot of it back to the store.”

And: “Your adventurous spirit is noble, but you might find that this is one of those days in which you are asked to come up with justification for your actions. It could be that other people are jealous of you and your lifestyle, so they are trying to find fault in the things you do. Don't get tricked into thinking that anything you are doing is necessarily wrong or bad just because someone else may not agree with it.”

My Shadowscapes Insight is regarding the Three of Swords.  Ouch!  The Shadowscapes Three of Swords tells of betrayal and isolation, of a feeling that all is lost and there is no one out there to lend a hand or hear our cries of pain.  However, the Shadowscapes Companion offers good advice regarding this card: “Overcome the pain; the weeping of the heart is perhaps a necessary cleansing.”  Solitude is not always bad, after all.

Today, I am going to talk about the last stage of the alchemic Great Work: Coagulation.  Coagulation is a verb, and the word “coagulate” means to cause a transformation of a liquid into or as if into a soft, semisolid, or solid mass.  Blood coagulates in a cut or wound in order to prevent us from bleeding to death, and this final stage of the Great Work is similar.   After all, we spent our time within the process of Distillation letting go of the things we felt attachment to but that were stale or not relevant any more, but eventually the outward flow needs to be slowed, stopped, and then healed.  Hence, Coagulation!

We have been through a long and sometimes difficult process.  We began with Calcination, where we reduced ourselves to ashes and destroyed our ego., and brought the concept of metabolic discipline into play.  Dissolution was the second step; we add water to the ashes and we bring emotions into the equation, so we can carefully examine our feelings, opinions, reactions and beliefs.  Conjunction is the third step.  This one is about “As Above, so Below; as Below, so Above,” and we are given the first glimpse of an awareness of higher realms of existence, the Sacred, and our own spirituality.  Fermentation is step four; this is the stage when all that we are releasing begins to rot and putrify, and the ugly smells draw our attention to our Shadow.  We are reminded that the putrifaction process creates fertilizer for new growth.  Step five is Distillation, which adds water once again, this time to wash away the things that we have come to realize need to be let go.  Once we wash away the detritus, we are left with pure intuition, pure love, and a strong connection to the Sacred within each of us.  Finally, we have arrived at Coagulation.

Coagulation brings a lovely balance that comes to us through our experiences of the extremes during the processes of the Great Work.  We have dissected and then washed away everything that is stale and outdated and no longer useful to us, and we are left with a new knowledge of ourselves, a more clear connection between our physical selves and our spiritual selves, and between us and Deity.  We have strived and struggled to raise our energy vibrational level, and we have succeeded!!

Thank you, alchemic Great Work!

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