Cosmic Radiance

This week I'll be working with The Cosmic Tarot by Norbert Losche paired with The Oracle of the Radiant Sun by husband-and-wife team, Caroline Smith and John Astrop. As I sat in front of my altar in the early morning, little canine familiar at my side, I thought of what question there might be within that I wasn't aware of, what question wanted a voice, wanted embodiment?

Transformed? Yes. For our task is to take this earth so deeply and wholly into ourselves that it will resurrect within our being. We are bees of the invisible. Passionately we plunder the honey of the visible in order to gather it in the great golden hive of the invisible.    Rilke, Letter to Hulewicz, 1925

So what invisible honey is wanting its sweetness to know the country of my tongue, I wondered. And I had to smile when this card bubbled up to the surface....

Flirtation ~ Oracle of the Radiant Sun

Flirtation ~ Venus in Sagittarius. A traveling troubadour or bard serenades a lovely huntress in the bloom of youth and beauty. He holds a lute symbolizing the pleasure-loving nature of Venus and she holds a bow symbolizing the far-seeking adventurousness of Sagittarius. Together they complement each other quite nicely.

According to the LWB this combination denotes someone who is fair and philosophical and honest in relationships. The element of openness in communication is a theme for this combination, sometimes to a fault. There is a love of freedom which results in speaking openly from the heart making for very playful or flirtatious conversation.

The word flirtatious felt both ambiguous and limiting and a quick dictionary check revealed...showing an attraction for someone that is not meant to be taken seriously ; coquettish ; endeavoring to gain the attention and admiration of someone.

I can see both the Venusian and the Sagittarian aspects here with the element of beauty at work (Venus) focused on the goal of gaining attention (Sagittarius). However I have enlarged that definition a bit to include playfulness, levity and lighthearted give and take. Where specifically do I need to bring these qualities to the surface, where do I need to regard my day as Beloved?

Temperance ~ The High Priestess ~ from The Cosmic Tarot

Seeing these two Majors come up was a nice surprise. I think of them both as threshold cards, of embodying the liminal without the need to arrive at either/or. That's a fairly powerful place to speak from and being asked to bring such a lighthearted approach to cards that have a fairly sober energy about them is intriguing.

I note immediately that there are three beautiful women depicted in the trio of cards and the element of blending, harmonizing or navigating polarities is a theme. Though the figure in Temperance appears to be looking to the High Priestess for...support? affirmation? her eyes are closed and perhaps her veiled glance is a recognition of shared duties. There is a bit of a Siren quality going on with all of these cards.






My room and the vastness around it,
awake in the oncoming night,
are one. I am a string
stretched taut
across resonating distances.

The above excerpt from Rilke's poem, On the Edge of Night, speaks to this kind of encompassing of energies. And I spend some time ruminating on the idea of spaciousness and light-dark energy within the Majors I have drawn.

Temperance ~ The Cosmic Tarot

This depiction of Temperance makes me think of a dancer flirting or engaging with someone just out of view.  A beautiful and very sensual woman pours water from two cups which spills as a clear, strong stream into the waiting pool below which disappears around a corner, presumably to the sea. It is edged with irises and greenery, the hills behind her are verdant and rich, a tree supports and witnesses her alchemy as a heron stands behind her taking note. The heron is a bird comfortable on both water and land. Irises, too, speak to this ability to navigate two realms. Iris was the Greek goddess who took messages from the Gods on Mount Olympus to earth by way of a rainbow.

One shod foot touches the water, the other rests on the shore and the sun shines from behind a cloud. This lovely figure wears a graceful sarong and is bare-breasted with a necklace spilling down across her heart center. Her eyes are closed and her half-smile suggests an intimate dialogue with the Beloved.

The theme of blending, of tempering and mixing is present here as well as the sense of purification and cleansing. Our alchemical goddess is poised between worlds here with one foot in the spiritual and emotional realm and one in the earthly plane. She is shod though and wears rich jewels and this suggests a kind of semi-cultivated consciousness, as do the fields behind her. Her partial nudity gives me the impression of her ability to move between the world of logos and eros.

My eye is drawn into focus on the pouring of water, this is her meditation and as such I sense I'm being asked to gather memories, experiences and impressions as well as half-conscious material and work with them so there is a feeling of flow through my hands, which is to say, through the way I shape and tend to my day. Integration of this material feels like a key theme here along with balance and moderation, neither too much, nor too little. Today that feels do-able. It's a mom day of driving and tending to duties here at home but there will also be some time for a hike and later, a walk and it's during these times that I most feel a sense of balance. Perhaps I need to widen that feeling of balance into other areas, allow the flow I feel while hiking to permeate other less 'spacious' parts of my day. Temperance, the quality, feels like a much sought-after gift, something achieved not through effort so much as non-effort, as 'relaxing into reality' as a wise friend describes it, a grace, really.

All things are the body of the violin,
filled with murmuring darkness.
There, grieving women lie down to dream.
There the resentments of generations
surrender to sleep...
A silver thread,
I reverberate:
then all that's underneath me
comes to life.

The High Priestess ~ Cosmic Tarot

Eternal keeper of ancient wisdom, balancer of dark and light, harmonizer of the spiritual and the mundane, moon goddess, radiance of silence, binary consciousness...The High Priestess is most often a welcome sight in my draws and she appears with more frequency for me than some of the other Majors.

Here she is qualified by oceanic tides and a star-studded cosmos running through her hair. A yin-yang symbol on her third eye points to union and separation. A book depicting the Alpha and Omega letters lies at her throat center, center of communication, as does a thin crescent moon.  She is in harmony with opposites, the first and the last, the tides and the pulls and she gazes at us with a directness that is yet full of mystery and secrets.

There are no pomegranates on this card, no pillars, no veiled background and yet somehow this High Priestess manages to convey those intimations of descent, polarities and enigma.


Her sexuality here is both hidden and manifest, her gaze both beguiling and remote, her lips full and sensual yet telling nothing and this quality is a magnetic one, empowering her with a kind of holy and sacred and sensual ray of the Feminine. Today that feels like something that might occur only on the inners as I tune in to the places where my body feels pulled by the Moon, by my dreams, by desire for connection to something larger than myself and yet of myself.

Looking at this trio today with its emphasis on beauty and flow, harmonizing body and psyche, mystery and purification I feel that a good session of authentic movement is in order. What will my dreams tell me through the dance of my limbs and sinew, what recent experiences need the cleansing energy of movement to release them, what kind of body will desire have today?



These questions will be good guides for my day as I flirt with deeper themes of union and alchemy, flow and ascent, duty and inspiration.

And what has lost its way
will, by my vibrant sounds,
be at last brought home
and allowed to fall endlessly
into the depthless source...

Rilke, The Edge of Night from Book of Images