July 23, 2016: Antares

So, my Wild Unknown Tarot card for today is The Magician.  Haftorang may not appreciate this card, but it is personally significant to me.   Here are my thoughts regarding The Magician: The image on The Magician is of a seated jaguar, a powerful predator who survives by using his own strength and his own intelligence.  In front of the jaguar are the four symbols of the elements and the Minor Arcana; both of the jaguar’s front paws are resting on the symbol of Earth/Pentacles, and there is an omega sign on his chest or heart.  The jaguar is alert, looking behind him with ears pricked, but he is also relaxed.  His eyes are open, but they are relaxed (in that very cat-like fashion).  Behind the jaguar is a brilliant sun.  The energies of this card are confident, strong, and connected to the physical world, but all four elements (and their correspondences) are there, waiting for the jaguar to access them. The Magician works hard to perfect his abilities that allow him to use his tools, to make use of those abilities in unexpected ways, and to focus and carry through to the end of a task (which is pretty important to him).  He also understands the eternal nature of his efforts, mainly because of the polarized nature of the elements he works with.  This card is personally significant to me; the skills of The Magician were gifted to me after a particularly harrowing experience.  The keywords for this card are action, self-empowerment, and purpose; three powerful concepts.  Notice there is no mention of ethics; The Magician uses the tools that he owns in a manner that he deems appropriate.  He does not necessarily consider the impact of his actions on others.

I am already seeing a theme here, and it is interesting to me.  This is the Watcher connected to the west, to sunset, and to the element of Water, all concepts that correspond with feelings, dreams, visions and the subconscious.  And yet, I am being herded toward knowledge and learning.  I guess in the end, knowledge (and wisdom, which I define as the ability to make use of the knowledge I gain) is an intangible thing, too.  It is located within the mind; the mind resides within a physical, tangible place (the biological brain) but it is not physical or tangible.  Hmmm . . . I feel a tickle in the back of my mind that usually indicates some important message trying to find its way out. 

In the meantime, here is some information I found on the internet from Wikipedia and other sites about the star Antares:

Antares, also known as Alpha Scorpii, is the fifteenth brightest star in the night sky and the brightest star in the constellation Scorpius (it is known as “the heart of the scorpion”). Along with Aldebaran, Regulus, and Fomalhaut, Antares comprises the group known by ancient Persians as the “Royal stars of Persia.” It is one of the four brightest stars near the ecliptic.

Antares is a red supergiant, slow irregular variable star, and is one of the brightest and most massive stars visible in the night sky.  If placed in the center of our Solar System, its outer surface would lie between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.  Its visible luminosity is about 10,000 times that of the Sun (because the star radiates a considerable part of its energy in the infrared part of the spectrum, the bolometric luminosity equals roughly 65,000 times that of the Sun), and the mass of Antares has been calculated to be in the range of 15 to 18 solar masses.  It is approximately 12 million years.

Antares is visible in the sky all night around May 31 of each year, when the star is at opposition to the Sun. At this time, when viewed from the equator, Antares rises at dusk and sets at dawn. For approximately two to three weeks before and after November 30, Antares is not visible in the night sky.

Antares has a secondary, or companion star, Antares B.  At magnitude 5.5, it is only 1/370th as bright visually as Antares A, although it shines with 170 times the Sun's luminosity.  Antares B is difficult to see in small telescopes due to glare from Antares A, however it is visible when Antares A is occulted by our moon.  At that time, Antares B appears blue or bluish-green in color.

Antares will almost certainly explode as a supernova, probably within the next few hundred thousand years (a relatively short time period, galactically speaking). When this happens, the Antares supernova could be as bright as the full moon and be visible in the daytime for a period of time.

In Polynesia, Scorpius is often seen as a fishhook, with some stories describing it as the magic fishhook used by the demigod Maui to pull up land from the ocean floor that became the Hawaiian islands.   Now there is an interesting connection with Ophion, who also created the Earth from within the ocean.

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