When working astrologically with derived houses, we gain the ability to understand to what extent another person’s destiny infiltrates our own. This was precisely the case of a querent who came to me recently, concerned about a recurring pattern she observed within her circle of friends: men and women who, almost chronically, face turbulence in…
In the opening of Lost, the first track on Neurosis’ Enemy of the Sun (1993), the grave voice of Paul Bowles asks: “Are you lost?”. The sample, taken from Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Sheltering Sky, drifts through the track like an old voice amiss in an electric desert. To be lost is the necessary vertigo before…
Two days ago, on December 24, Venus joined Capricorn, precisely one month after her Morning Setting. The nocturnal benefic is now invisible, covered by the solar light, under the beams of the Sun, gradually losing individuality and moving towards a stronger combustion. This is the phase in which she ceases to be Phosphoros, the morning…
It is Christmas. Right now, in small Bulgarian, Armenian, or Georgian churches, lost in remote villages, the vigil happens. There is no comfort. No electric lighting. No staged décor. There is cold, stone, aching feet, repetition, hours standing upright. The incense weighs on the air. The Pantocrator dominates the dome: an asymmetric face, one side…
In the previous article, I mentioned that my recent readings had been lacking a certain lightness. Curiously enough, the Tarot seemed to take that remark personally and answered with a touch of mordant humour. In one reading made over the past few weeks, for personal matters, the first card I drew was the Five of…
This is it. The Sun has entered Capricorn today, marking the Winter Solstice in the northern hemisphere, after the longest night of the year. From this moment onward, the days begin to lengthen, and light slowly returns within the densest of the zodiacal signs. Capricorn is Cardinal Earth, the realm of structure, ascension, and discipline,…
Today, the New Moon in Sagittarius opens a paradoxical cycle for the nocturnal luminary. The Moon, cold, moist, and phlegmatic by temperament, belongs naturally to the lower half of the zodiacal wheel: it rules the Cardinal Water of Cancer, where it nourishes and protects, and it is exalted in the Venusian Earth of Taurus, the…
Mars entered Capricorn a few days ago. After having been peregrine and unstable in the mutable fire of Sagittarius, ruled blindly by retrograde Jupiter in the cardinal water of Cancer, the martial iron now finds its exaltation in one of the densest signs of the zodiac. Capricorn is cardinal Earth under Saturn’s governance, one of…
A few years ago, when I first began to handle the Tarot, I did so with the lightness typical of a beginner, with that blend of scepticism and playfulness which protects the spirit when it comes close to the invisible. There was no fear, no heaviness, only curiosity and fascination with the forms. I used…
The 4 of Cups belongs to the element of Water, therefore to the plane of Briah, the sphere of Creation and Emotion. As a four, it closes the Pythagorean cycle initiated by the Ace (as Yod י and Monad), continued in the Two (as He ה and Dyad), and in the Three (as Vau ו…
