Just today I was considering the possibility of opening up a thread on SkyScript to check something on my own natal chart. Then I looked at one of my Tarot decks and decided to do something I have been considering for some time. Splitting the deck in two: Minor Arcana to one side, Major to the other.
Mostly because I consider the 56 Minor cards to be a perfect tool for 95% of divination queries. The Major are an entire symbolic building in itself. Some experienced, old-school cartomancers even say that, when you have more than three Majors in a reading, the thing is already in the hands of the gods and not in yours. They are extraordinary for spiritual, ritualistic and magic-driven enterprises, but rather heavy-handed for mundane stuff.
So I did split the deck, used only the Minor cards, and shuffled it to answer my question: should I open the thread? I was mostly afraid of the endless torrent of opinions we face there and on other online portals. Background noise. People discussing whether transsaturnian planets ought to be accounted for, the issue of fixed stars, the importance of aspects, sidereal versus tropical, the preferred house system, the five-degree rule, medieval versus Hellenistic, and so forth. We shall always remember that astrology is an art form, a really ancient one, by the way. Imagine having one hundred Italian painters in a hall in Italy, discussing every brushtroke and symbol before adding actually them to a painting…
The Tarot handed me the 5 of Swords. Well, of course. Swords, the element of Air. The matter at hands is intellectual, prone to discussion, opinions, arguments. Then you have the 5 there, which points to the martial Geburah in the Tree of Life. Again, arguments, but this time with an aggressive, quarelling tone. And the 5 of Swords is Venus in Aquarius, so the planet of love entangled in a fixed, sanguinine sign. Venus enamored with long debates (fixed signs are slow), with endless blabbering, with the chance of winning arguments and someone ending up ‘happy’ with a Phyrric victory.
Smells like a can of worms. I will not open the thread, then.
Kύριε ελέησον