1st- Lammas, Lughnasadh (First Harvest)
4th - New Moon in Leo
13th-15th - Nemoralia (Diana)
19th - Super Sturgeon Blue Moon
21st- Festival of Hecate
23rd- Vulcanalia
The first two months of summer, we experienced a shift from primarily outward growth to the inward journey. In August we can expect to integrate these learnings. We’ll be using the Dalí Tarot Universal deck to explore the bleeding of worlds from a surrealist perspective –external and internal, dream and reality, psyche and manifest. Salvador Dalí was a Spanish surrealist artist in the 20th century who used trancework to transcend preconceived notions of the world, and build novel connections for his paintings, so that the viewer may experience the subconscious. He was the first famous painter to create a completely new deck of tarot cards, a medium which is also intended to make the unconscious conscious. At Angel Intentions, we offer tarot readings to create an understanding between these two states, so that all aspects of the psyche can make a collaborative effort to make meaningful change, and fulfill one’s purpose and dream.
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Lughnasadh, the festival of the Celtic sun god, marks the beginning of the harvest season. Lugh’s influence grants us the ability to collect the wisdom and divination we’ve conducted thus far this year from a broader, big picture perspective. We can re-envision our lives from the framework of an epic poem in which we are the warrior who renders obstacles obsolete and creates the conditions for meaning and beauty in our lives. With a New Moon in Leo, we are further encouraged to bolster self-confidence as the protagonists of our own story, and to immerse ourselves in free creative expression. The interplay of solar and lunar energies continues with the celebration of Nemoralia, a festival of torches at Lake Nemi in ancient Rome. Gratitude is expressed for the year’s bounty to Diana, Goddess of the Moon. The Super Sturgeon Blue Moon in Aquarius, named after the ancient fish species, symbolizes sturdiness and resilience through the ages, intuition, and insight. These qualities can help reignite our inner fire for any innovative visions we may want to actualize. The festival of triple moon goddess Hecate towards the end of the month reinforces crone wisdom brought forth from the underworld to assist us in navigating the crossroads and liminal spaces. Vulcan’s festival at the end of the month celebrates fire once more, the force which purifies, hardens, and strengthens our resolve.
The Key or Main Aspect: Four of Cups ~Step Into Your Power - Ray Lamontagne~
In Dalí’s rendition of the four of cups, our eyes are drawn to a nude seated figure, perhaps feeling vulnerable and exposed. He hugs his legs and presses his forehead to his knees, as though trying to hide or console himself. He pays no mind to the three golden cups before him, that represent the current gifts he has at his disposal, nor his natural surroundings. Awareness would reconnect us to ourselves, the present, nature and the world. In the backdrop is a tree from which a hand, representing Spirit, emerges. It seems that solace is but a tap away, bent fingers hovering just above his head. If the man were to look up, he would see the golden cup that Spirit has to offer–a bright opportunity to stir up complacency and renew his vigor. The bird could be likened to our soul still in its familiar nest. A spectral female with bare breasts and a hen’s head stands behind him, with a trailing blue line that could be imagined as a phantasmagoric placenta. This Freudian imagery suggests what keeps the man curled into a nearly fetal, infantile state. From birth and early development, we subconsciously learned to associate safety, survival and comfort with nourishment, with the person who would act as our mother hen. Learning to be mindful would allow for the enlightenment necessary to see that remaining in this state hinders our growth, whereas Spirit offers something more. A shift to a curious mindset will allow us to transform the bird soul atop the tree, free to erupt into birdsong or erupt into flight.
The Past or That Which Already is: Reverse Ten of Coins ~Within You Without You - The Beatles~
At the center of this card is a scene depicting bathing women, from the painting The Turkish Bath (1863) by Ingres. The figure on the far left idly plays a string instrument while the rest of the women have their attention fixed elsewhere–one even glances at the viewer. The women have been displaced from the bathhouse and appear to exist in a liminal space lined with red drapes, as though they were performers on stage that might soon be revealed to an audience. A distinction has yet to be made between reality and performance, before the actor morphs into persona. We experience a doorway to the surreal in which we can consciously induce the unconscious, using art as a medium to affect great psychic transformation. This is mirrored in Dalí’s placement of two enormous butterflies–one perched on the shoulder of the musician, marking her as the vehicle for transformation and another hovers above her. The butterfly on the musician’s shoulder is red and blue, indicating the active and intuitive principles necessary for music’s creation. This butterfly covers some of the women, as though ready to take them under its wing. The one overhead is yellow, symbolic of alchemical gold, the soul’s transformation made possible to all when music, the unifying force, is experienced.
In the naked indefensive state, the soul should more readily accept this metamorphosis. Instead the women seem closed off from one another. The bubbles, instead of bringing cleansing and uplifting attributes, weigh down the wings of the butterfly, rendering flight impossible. The wings are as heavy as the ten coins that border this card, a symptom of unshared wealth. As this card is inverted, it is indicative that in the past, the figure from the previous card did not take up the golden chalice. At some point in the process, whether due to artist's block, a fear to play, a lack of audience or an inattentive one, withholding the gift only for an exclusive audience…the music never truly had a chance to reach and transform the soul.
The Future or That Which Needs to be Newly Evaluated: Reverse Moon ~Moon in the Mind - Ed Askew ~
In this position, the reverse Moon suggests we need to reevaluate how we approach the subconscious, lest we experience our unrealized dream in the future. In regards to the four of cups, it means we passively remained in a curled up position, which has allowed us to become haunted by the spectral siren of safety, rather than engaging with our present gifts and more importantly, the golden chalice. In refraining from making a choice, we make a choice. In the short term we may feel comforted, but in the long term our inner moon, the subconscious psyche, will feel great discontent. The divine feminine will not accept confinement to the mother hen role–she will insist we explore subconscious depths, wailing and moaning in a volatile manner until we do so, for she is chaotic matter that cannot be contained. Yet her wolves are miniscule in this scene, their howls drowned out by the city sounds. Her lake mirrors the skyline, and solar colors intrude otherwise blue waters.
The Moon finds herself at odds with the skyscraper–our self-made tower, or the reality which we have locked ourselves into. It is constructed of defense mechanisms that we think will keep us from having to engage with the subconscious world. This tendency is mirrored in the previous card, as well as the red crustacean that refuses to allow gravity to pull down its masculine armor. As a skyscraper, the tower mistakes the Moon as its foe and tries to pierce her with its needle, to kill her off. In reality, it is but an irritant, though the more we do so, the greater we provoke her. The skyline represents phallic man-made ideologies of domination and exploitation, the pressure we put on ourselves to reach our goal in a linear fashion so we may adhere to city standards of material success. We have a tendency to do this without regard to cyclical rhythms, the natural waxing and waning of our energy levels and need for rest. We keep the city lights on to ward off what lays dormant in the night of the psyche. We fear the traumas and negative substances lurking there. Avoidance causes them to grow increasingly until we are forced to deal with them in an unmanageable state. We need to really examine our dreams which inform us what we need to work at so it doesn’t get to this point. Finally, the city pollution dulls the night sky such that we can only see a faint glimmering of a few select stars. In warding off the night, we distance ourselves from hope itself, which rests at the bottom of Pandora’s box.
The Root or Foundation: Reverse Nine of Wands ~Mad Rush: Part D (Bar 232 - Bar 273) - Philip Glass, Vestard Shimkus~
When we look at Dalí’s Nine of Wands in reverse, our primary focal point becomes a vibrant green aquatic scene drifting through muted waters, with the central muted scene shifting into secondary focus. At the top right corner, we see a green amphibian man who seems to be struggling to reposition himself to a point where he can gather back up the nine green wands of vitality that seem to have slipped from his grasp. He may have been swimming upstream for a while and tiring himself out, making him susceptible to a sudden current that caught him off guard. He hardly has the energy to recover them, and ascribes this as a personal failure, when in reality he is very strong, as we can see from how developed his calves are. This figure represents our inner green man, our primal aspect that primarily engages with the world through the senses and direct physical interaction. He longs to connect with our conscious aspect through nature and has gotten very close to doing so. He reaches out to the murky vision through which our conscious mind wanders ungrounded, suggesting that our own mind creates the divide between ourselves and our sense of oneness with nature. We resist metamorphosis, the ability to slip between land and water (the conscious and subconscious) when, as in the four of cups, we remain unaware of the inner green man who would help us reach for the golden cups.
The root or foundation of the disconnect can be found in the central scene, through which a man wanders through a forest, perhaps for a very long time. At this point his walk begins to feel monotonous, tiresome, and he forgets why he came here or what he was looking for in the first place. The man has left the city we saw in the Moon card, but the city still resides within him. That is to say he has become goal-driven, believing he has a hunt to accomplish, a landmark to find, a home to get back to. Miles from the city, he thinks he has somewhere to be and something to do, but deep in the forest, all he can do is walk and wander. He forgets that this is what appealed to him in the first place. He entered the forest to be mindful, to commune with nature and rejuvenate the self–the journey and the process were the intent all along. This reversed card asks us - why don’t we enjoy ourselves while we are here? Why don’t we delight in our surroundings, in the sunlight, and our senses? Rather than treat the hike as a chore, we can open ourselves up to curiosity and appreciation, so we may live life to the fullest.
The Crown or Change: Reverse Eight of Swords ~Somewhere in My Heart - Aztec Camera~
Throughout the reading, we have looked at the main aspect, ie the curled up figure in the 4 of cups, from various angles. In the past, there was a missed opportunity to transmute through shared art. We found we need to re-evaluate how we approach the lunar subconscious lest we experience the unrealized dream (the golden chalice) in the future. The root or foundation revealed itself to be a disconnect between our conscious city self and the inner green man that would use nature as a medium to slip between the conscious and unconscious, bringing subconscious desires to fruition. Finally, we have arrived at the reverse eight of swords, which reveals two primary oppositional forces that must be mentally resolved, so we may experience the crown or change that would allow our four of cups figure to grasp the golden chalice. The first force is the superego–defined as cultural and systemic programming that we mainly absorb from our parents–which is concerned with its own spiritual ideals. It prohibits the expression of the id–our drives, fantasies, feelings and actions. The superego is evidenced in the woman who holds a butterfly tight to her chest. It recalls a Heimlich maneuver as though she is trying to revive a choking butterfly, never realizing that she is the suffocating force. She mirrors spectral siren mother hen from the four of cups, because she believes ignorance is bliss, and remaining unaware of the unconscious will keep us safe in what she envisages as a castle in the sky. In reality we know this castle to be the tower from the reverse Moon, which we know to be true because the eight swords appear to serve as bars for her prison cell. This contrasts with the green wands in the prior card, that act as trees in a forest –a necessary life force.
The second force is Eros, or our desire for wholeness. The woman (the superego) holds a loving intent towards the butterfly, which can be likened to our inner child. She is trying to keep it safe from the dark bubbling water that could provide cleansing qualities, because in contrast to the light bubbles in the ten of coins–it is a heavy, dark, and difficult cleansing. The nature of the cleansing, an alchemical process known as nigredo, is evidenced in the butterfly’s black upper wings. In the Jungian psychoanalytic realm, this involves a painful growing awareness of the paralyzing shadow aspects that lurk in the reverse Moon card–undealt with traumas we have compartmentalized, for instance. Per Jung, we must seek the coldness of the moon to find the sun. The superego fears the darkness but it does not know we will rise like a phoenix from the ashes. She fears the transformative death process because she fears she will not survive it. And when we look at this card in reverse, she even seems to want to cushion the butterfly from their fall, though all she would have to do is release it for its true safety. The woman does not realize that in holding it close, she keeps the butterfly from its own nature, to fly, transform, and pollinate. Its life is so short–we cannot waste our time locked in the prison cell. The swords, i.e. rationality and thinking, that serve as bars could be used to cut ourselves free. The lower wings of the butterfly hint at the final process for the figure in the four of cups–the alchemical gold, or final transformation of the soul that can be found when we drink from the golden chalice.
