October and the trees are stripped bareOf all they wearWhat do I care?
October and kingdoms ariseAnd kingdoms fallBut you go on|And on
~U2
Aaahhh…..October, now we are into fall, and here in the northern hemisphere, we can really feel it. The weather is shifting, cooling down, the leaves are changing colors and falling off the trees...we are heading towards winter. What have we brought to life through the season of the harvest, which is that same thing we must now let go of?In chinese medicine, fall is part of the metal element, linked to the organs and meridians of release: lung and large intestine. Often when we grieve a great loss we come down with bronchitis or even pneumonia, we just aren't able to breathe, to really let go what we wanted so badly to hold onto. And yet in order to move onto the next thing, we have to let go, to accept dying as part of living, and autumn is the season of dying.As the darkness closes in around the corners of our garden, possibility gets passed over for repercussions. We remember that death is a part of our life’s process. There is no evading this aspect of the Great Goddess, there is only living a good, deep, and meaningful life in light of our eventual release from it. Our impending end is supposed to make the moments here more meaningful. We don’t get forever, but we do get this life, for now.
~Chani Nicholas (https://chaninicholas.com/)
In the end of October many of us celebrate Halloween, which is also considered the Celtic New Year, Samhain. It is said that at this time the veil is the thinnest between the worlds and we can actually connect with our ancestors on the other side. A few days after Samhain, Dia De Los Muertos, is celebrated in Mexico and Latin America; this is a celebration of recognizing and honoring our ancestors on the other side. (we’ll talk more about this next month in November)And as we move more deeply into fall, the sun moves from the sign of Libra which represents balance and beauty and justice, into the sign of Scorpio, known for its connection to the dark underworld, to death and secrets and passion and sex...all those things most people find difficult to openly acknowledge and honor.Jupiter has been in the sign of Scorpio for the past year and will be moving into Sagittarius in November. But for now, the planet of expansion, luck and largesse is finishing up its year long journey of revealing and bringing up and out into the light those things we have tended to keep hidden. This has been a powerful year of “Me too”s and “Times up”s and things are coming out of closets every time we turn around...I wonder what Jupiter will expand upon in it’s grand finale as it exits Scorpio into Sagittarius...stay tuned, it should be a doozy.In preparing for this article I read again each of the past articles of cards referenced/linked below and it is amazing not only what I began the year with and feel as if I am completing now, but also what I have cycled through from years past and am getting ready to begin again.Funnily enough the majority of the romantic relationships in my life have begun in the fall, not in the spring as is the traditional imagination of starting new things. (Sometimes I wonder if a part of me isn’t anchored in the Southern hemisphere, as it is spring there when it is fall here...). However my last two relationships in 2016 and 2017 began in the spring, they were both incredible and powerful journeys propelling me forward into a path of self love that I would never have imagined.
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barrierswithin yourself that you have built against it.
~Rumi
Both of these men had differing aspects of unavailability, a common trait in most of my relationships, at least up until this point in time. And as I processed these relationships (along with resonances of all the ones before) and have also been doing some intense work around family dysfunction, I realized that it has been me all these years that has been unavailable. First with the business around my abandoning father that got worked through, completed & released around his death in 2012, and then just recently I released a hitherto unbeknownst (or rather buried deep beyond recognition) to myself enmeshment with my mother and sister that had kept me just as unavailable as all those I had attracted to me in the past. It is amazing to me what we humans create for ourselves to unwind and uncreate in these lifetimes we live with each other!In coming to the place where I recognize, acknowledge and accept that it is my responsibility, alone, to love, honor and cherish myself, I have begun to do just that and have begun to feel so much better about myself and my life. And now, as I head into fall, I have the feeling that I am truly opening to love and that this time, during this fall season, love is falling into me!
And so it's not a surprise to me that October, as the 10th month is bringing completion and renewal just as its symbolic number does. 10 is a number of completion, of endings and beginnings; it ends the first cycle of numbers in our numerical system and starts the second. And just as it moves the numbers to the next level, into the teens, numerically speaking it take us back to 1. 1+0= 1. This is also the meaning of 10 - Wheel of Fortune - which represents the turn in the wheel, a change in fortune for the better, an ending of what's ready to end along with the new beginning and a fresh start. It's a cycle within the midst of many cycles all turning together at once like the inner workings of an old fashioned clock.
These cycles lead us to a new beginning, like a brand new day, a fresh start with the rising of The Sun, the 19th card - 1+9=10 -> 1+0=1 which also brings us to the number 10 which takes us back to 1. One thing that’s evolved in how I read this card since I wrote about it back in February of 2016 is that when I look at the picture I see that the figures are partner dancing (not just running) through the field of sunflowers. They are a team, moving together in the dance of life, and this dance of life, this field of sunflowers, is like any field of sunflowers, that when planted over unhealthy or sick soil actually pull the toxins from the soil and heal the earth they are planted in. Mother Nature, Mama Gaia, Pacha Mama, this planet Earth herself, is a miracle, and we, as a part of her are equally as miraculous,http://www.truedivinenature.com/blog/emotional-forecast-healing-the-masculine-and-feminine-shadow-2-6-18?Our individual and collective journeys are healing journeys, which occur whether we are trying or not, we are evolving just as she is, we are just one part of the myriad of parts of this whole miraculous existence.
As we recognize our self as a part of this whole, we remember that we are co-creators with all that is, we are The Magician - 1. We return to the one-ness, to the acknowledgement of our place this world as co-creators working with all of the elements, being a part of the whole and whole within ourselves. Which in turn brings us back again to all the ones, to the Aces- the symbols of new beginnings in all of the elements.And as we look forward to the new beginnings, let us also take a moment to honor and give due to the endings, to the completions that are the 10s in the minor arcana:
10 of swords - This card was always the card that scared me the most in the tarot. The figure lying on the ground filled with swords is such a tragic and painful thing to see. I came to terms with it when I was able to joke with it a bit, so now when it comes up I let the person know that if they were wondering if something was over or not, it is actually “So done you can’t get a fork into it”.With this bit of humor I can let the person know that there is no going back, it truly is over and done with and the only thing left to do is move forward with all gratitude we can muster for the lessons, blessings or knowledge we have gained from the situation.
Hi the road Jack and don't you come backNo more, no more, no more, no moreHit the road Jack and don't you come backNo more...
~Ray Charles
10 of wands - “God never gives us more than we can handle, even when we think she has us confused with somebody else.”This is a card that represents grace under pressure; the understanding that the pressure we feel can teach us to bend rather than break. It’s a card to remind us that we are the only ones to walk our journey in our own shoes; to understand that if we were to really consider it, we likely wouldn’t want to walk in another’s shoes, no matter how much their life might seem better or different than ours.When I visited and lived in Zululand in 2012 and 2013, I watched more than one Zulu woman carry what I considered to be enormous burdens on their heads and yet walk with the grace, beauty and gratitude of a goddess. Seeing these women carry their burdens in this way made me think of how we are all here to carry our own burdens with as much grace, beauty and gratitude as we can muster.The stars in the night sky behind her remind us that our ancestors are always there, supporting us and shining down upon us, reminding us that we are not alone in our journey.
'Cause love's such an old fashioned word,and love dares you to care for the people on theedge of the night, and love dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves.This is our last dance,this is ourselves,under pressureunder pressurepressure
~David Bowie
10 of pentacles pictures two people embracing each other and kissing through the tree of life. This card symbolizes the capacity to be a whole, complete person within oneself and to come together with another in that same wholeness, loving themselves, each other and life.Traditionally this card represents success and happiness on all realms in the material world, especially with home and health and finances and family.This card, to me, and specifically in this deck, also represents a completion and a wholeness that can heal our planet. When the divine feminine is able to reach out her hand to the divine masculine in right relationship, and they step forward together, in love, in wholeness, healing and integrating the wounds of the past...this is how we heal the planet - We got ourselves into this mess together and the only way out is together.The completion of the “Me Too” and “Times Up” movements come when (after the initial lancing of the boil and clearing of the puss of the sickness we have kept under wraps for so long) we realize that we all had something to do with the sickness and only together can bring on the medicine, which is love.
Love yourself before you get into a relationship. Please
~Prince Ea
10 of cups - represents again a wholeness and completeness, this time in our emotional capacity for connection and love. Basically everyone has on their “big girl panties & big boy chonies”.The man is standing behind the woman, holding her, patiently and sturdily whilst she pours the tenth cup of water as the beginning of a cascade of water into the stacked nine cups below.There is calmness, solidness, patience and compassion here; these are two people who are each doing their own emotional work and able to come together and create structure and flow in a powerful way. This card speaks to the union of masculine and feminine energies in the Kabbalistic sense spoken of often by David Deida and also in the book “God Wears Lipstick” by Karen Berg (LINKED)This is a grown up relationship: the healthy masculine is holding the structure, supporting the healthy feminine while she flows. And this is only possible because both the masculine and feminine aspects of ourselves, and each other, have done (and are continuing to do) their work.During my most recent relationship last year I had a powerful dream: “We were in bed just waking up and he was holding me gently from behind, I wanted him to hold me more tightly so I nestled backwards into him and as he wrapped his arms strongly around me I gave a great sigh of relief and homecoming.” What I understand about this dream now is that this love, this homecoming, is an inside job; that’s what this dream was telling me. This man and I never slept together and so this dream let me know that inside myself I have everything I need to feel safe, loved, adored, cherished and “at home” in the world, all in my own psyche.And so this October, this 10th month of the year, let’s take stock of all we have planted and harvested. Let’s be grateful for for our gains and our losses, for the beginnings and the endings that are working us into loving, patient, compassionate human beings who are birthing this new paradigm as the old one falls away. And it is falling away, just as we feel the winds change to autumn at the end of summer, can we not feel the winds of change blowing over our entire culture and reality? And in this death, this turning of the wheel, can we not feel the stirrings of the new preparing itself?Let us tend and hold dear and intact that sweet loving sunshine light in the heart of each of us (and each other) as we weather the fall and prepare to hibernate through the winter. In this commitment to love and light and transformation, we transmute the completion, the ending, into a seed that will eventually germinate and become something new when the time is right.Please come by on the 4th Saturday, October 27, 2018 and we’ll see what and where completions and new beginnings are happening in your cards.So many blessings, Kristine Thandeka Marie
