August 20, 2016: Regulus

My Wild Unknown Tarot card is The Devil.  This card has the image of a horned goat with a pentagram embossed on his forehead, standing with a black background and his four hooves glowing with orange and yellow light, as if the goat was walking through flames. The keywords for this card are negativity, materialism and addiction, but they are difficult to see in the image on the card.  Is this goat a representation of the worship or elevation of those things not meant to be worshipped?  Or does the goat on this card remind us all that while we are spiritual beings, we are also animals, complete with urges and needs and pleasures of the body.

Here is some information about the star Regulus, taken from the internet:

Regulus is the brightest star in the constellation Leo and one of the brightest stars in the night sky, lying approximately 79 light years from Earth (which makes it one of the closest, too). Regulus is a multiple star system composed of four stars that are organized into two pairs. Regulus A, a binary star, consists of a blue-white main-sequence star and its companion, which has not yet been directly observed, but is probably a white dwarf. The two stars take approximately 40 days to complete an orbit around their common centre of mass.  That is pretty fast! The primary of Regulus A is also spinning extremely rapidly, with a rotation period of only 15.9 hours, almost fast enough for it to spin itself apart.  Regulus is much hotter at its poles (27,212 F, or 15,100 C) than its equator (18,032 F or 10,000 C). This is because the star is so distorted (because of its rapid rotation) that it lessens gravity's strength, which then turns down the temperature at the equator, the researchers said Located farther away is the pair Regulus B and Regulus C and D, which are dim main-sequence stars.

The name Regulus is from the diminutive form of the Latin rex, and means Little King. Astronomers know Regulus as Alpha Leonis, but in times past it has been known simply as Rex. Regulus has also been called Cor Leonis, which means Heart of the Lion, the same name given to Richard the Lionhearted (although more frequently in French).  There is a great deal of mythology associated with Leo, perhaps the most common tale being that Leo was the Nemean Lion of the Hercules story. It is said that even in South America, some Peruvian Indians knew these stars as the Mountain Lion, whereas in China it was sometimes seen as a horse, and at other times as part of a dragon. Christians in the Middle Ages sometimes referred to it as one of Daniel’s Lions.

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