July 27, 2016: Yesod

My Wild Unknown Tarot card today is The Empress; here are my thoughts regarding this lovely card:  The image on this card is a beautiful shade tree.  The branches are tall and wide, providing shade and protection; the leaves are thick and healthy, and beautifully-colored under the night sky.  There is a waning moon in the upper left quadrant of the dark night sky, and yet the tree seems lit from within.  Serene and fertile energies emanating from the heart of the tree light up the branches and the leaves, celebrating pleasure, creation, the workings and cycles of nature, and the protective nurturing of the Mother.  “A queen is wise. She has earned her serenity, not having had it bestowed on her but having passed her tests. She has suffered and grown more beautiful because of it. She has proved she can hold her kingdom together. She has become its vision. She cares deeply about something bigger than herself. She rules with authentic power.”- Marianne Williamson, A Woman’s Worth

While not specifically attached to Dissolution or the Watcher of the West, the sephira of Yesod seems appropriate to discuss here.  Yesod (Foundation ) is the ninth sephira on the Tree, the third on the Pillar of Balance, and like the Moon, which is the heavenly body most easily reached from our Earth, it is the most easily reached non-physical sephira of the Tree.  Yesod provides the life force that animates our physical selves, so in a sense, we are always experiencing Yesod.  Yesod contains the astral or etheric plane, and it is within Yesod that we build thoughtforms and intentions.  It is the sphere of illusion, and like the Moon, which appears to grow and shrink but actually stays the same size, Yesod is the whole of our visualizations of that which is not yet manifested in physical form.

Yesod is not only the last step before physical manifestation, but it is the first step after physical manifestation as well.  Our physical bodies are born and die within Malkuth, but our personalities are born and die within Yesod.  This sphere is the home of the Self, and of the Dark Night of the Soul.  Only after we dispel the illusion of failure and do the work to achieve forward motion once again will we truly understand the energies of Yesod.

My correspondence list for Yesod is:

Magickal Image:  Beautiful Naked Man, Very Strong

Planetary: Moon

Vice: Idleness

Virtue: Independence

Deity: The Moon, Fertility

Spiritual Experience: Vision of the Machinery of the Universe

Briatic Correspondence: Receptivity, Perception

Illusion: Security

Obligation: Trust

Path: Path 9, the number of completeness of experience.

$>