The skies have turned their face away from me too.

 

There are no alignments this week and the visitations are all extremely basic. This is a good week for Virgos to press their luck – Mars and Mercury are joined by the newly-arrived Sun.

It’s time to review another card I mentioned a few weeks back, so let’s talk about the Queen of Wands.

 

Known as the Rider-Waite Tarot, the actual artist is Pamela Coleman

 

IFLA

So, I’ll be going about this card in a couple of ways.  First, I’ll accept the Waite/Coleman version as the prime variant, but I will also take into account Jodorowski’s analysis based on the Marseille tarot.  Jodorowski, being a world-renowned Crazy Person™ has opinions about such things which are more likely than most to be correct, though even more likely to be wildly inaccurate.  But inaccurate in an entertaining way and since the readings are for entertainment purposes only, we’ll go with it.

 

La Reine des Batons

 

You’ll notice that the W/C version is a LOT more detailed than the Marseille one.  The Genius of the W/C deck is that it pulled a lot of esoterica about the cards and put it out there openly, so that you didn’t have to constantly remember 78 blocks of fiddly little occult trivia.  But, in order to make it such that every semiliterate who got their mitts on a deck wouldn’t become an oracle, Arthur Waite wrote The Key to the Tarot, a slim volume filled with delightful misinformation about said esoterica.  Fortunately, he made it pretty obvious that this book was misdirecting (really Artie?  Clubs in the Tarot decks became diamonds in the modern card deck?) so with just a bit of awareness, there’s still some good stuff in that book.

 

She has a set of fangs an orc woman would kill for.

 

So the basics:  Wands is the suit corresponding to masculine creation.  You’ll notice that W/C wands are always shown as being alive, with green leaves.  In the really tortured attempt to make the four suits correspond to the four elements, wands gets air, mainly by default.  The current hotness is to claim that wands corresponds to air because plant material is created from CO2 in the air.  If the client points out that there’s no way that the creators of the tarot knew this, point out how this just proves that the tarot is prophetic!   In order to make the air connection clearer, Coleman often draws them with gusts of wind coming from the ends of the wands that in no way should be interpreted as evidence of the historical persistence of the kind of woman who is into slashfic or yaoi.  Of the four social classes, wands corresponds to the peasantry, which is also why clubs is the lowest ranked suit in the modern deck.  And it corresponds to brunettes in the French system of hair colors.

In Jodorowsky’s analysis, he ditches the “masculine” aspect of the suit and emphasizes the sexual aspect of “creation.”  He even goes so far as to base his card on a slightly differently colored one in which her left hand is not clutching something blue, but flesh colored turning a fold of her dress into the hand of someone who is currently giving her a little something extra from behind her throne!  His system is based on a a series of colors, numerology, and a cyclic narrative but regardless, they result in the Queen representing the aspects of the suit in their maximized, isolated form.  So A.J.’s Queen of Wands is absolutely the kind of monarch who would have a designated throne-based fucktoy.  And he agrees fully with the rest of the standard interpretation of the suit as representing the active aspects of the lower/physical/earthly qualities.

 

See how nicely they hold the tennis ball in place?

 

In the Waite/Coleman card the most obvious thing is this is a woman who likes cats.  We’ve got lions on the throne, lions on the banner, a cat head cloak clasp and a kitty sitting at her feet.  And to get the Freudian bit out of the way: yes, she’s holding a dick in her right hand and and an intercourse symbol in her left.  And lots of vaginal symbols in the sunflower emblems.  And yes, she isn’t exactly the most feminine looking queen there’s ever been.  This absolutely does not mean she’s a lesbian, though.  The rather linear appearance is to emphasize the masculine aspects of the suit, though she’s still extremely fond of the D.  You’ll notice that she, like the Marseille version, has her knees as far apart as she can get them.  If I ever get my keys to the time machine back, I’m going to visit Pam.  I’ll bet she’s a complete freak in the sack.

Put “you are here” circle in the lower right corner

OK, so back to the lions:  this is actually a very old part of the Tarot, predating A.A.W. by several centuries.  Even though it’s not on the Queen of Wands card itself in the Marseille deck, it is on their (and the R/W/C) Trump XXI, The World.  In the lower (earthly) right (active) corner of the card is a lion.  This is (obviously) also the corner corresponding to the Wands suit.  So wands again are the earthly hungers, the striving in the physical world, and the forces of conquest and domination.  Swords are the suit of established authority but Wands are about rebellion and uprising.  And again, the Queen is this in purest form, without having to worry about direction or interaction with the outside world (or as Jodorowsky puts it “The Queen lives inside her castle.”)

But why the kitty?  Well, because while this is a court card, it’s still a minor arcana.  The symbology, the goals, the philosophy is that of the lion, but the actual living being is just a housecat.

The last thing I’ll point out here is the background.  On the Queen’s right, the terrain is rugged, mountainous.  This is also the side on which she’s holding the boner.  On the side in which she’s holding the intercourse symbol, the terrain is much more relaxed and easier to deal with.  In addition to the literal observation of the mood-elevating benefits of sex, it more esoterically represents the transformation of raw energy or destructive passions into something useful via the creative process.

So, now you know what that card’s all about.

 

Horoscope for the Week of August 29

Virgo:  8 of Coins reversed – Voided ambition, vanity, cupidity, exaction, usury.

Libra:  5 of Cups reversed – News, alliances, affinity, consanguinity, ancestry, return, false projects.

Scorpio:  2 of Swords – Conformity, equipoise, courage, friendship, concord in a state of arms

Sagittarius:  The Magician – Skill, diplomacy, address, subtlety, sickness, pain, loss, disaster, snares of enemies, self-confidence, will

Capricorn:  7 of Coins reversed – Cause for anxiety regarding money especially if you are a creditor

Aquarius:  10 of Swords reversed – Advantage, profit, success, favor, but none of these are permanent; also power and authority.

Pisces:  Page of Swords – Weasely backstabbing little fuck, but on your side.

Aries:  7 of Wands reversed – Perplexity, embarrassments, anxiety. It is also a caution against indecision.

Taurus:  The Empress reversed –  Light, truth, the unravelling of involved matters, public rejoicings, vacillation.

Gemini:  7 of Swords reversed – Good advice, counsel, instruction, slander, babbling.

Cancer:  The Chariot reversed – Riot, quarrel, dispute, litigation, defeat.

Leo:  Judgment reversed – Weakness, pusillanimity, simplicity, deliberation, decision, sentence.

 

Keep your friends close, and your tennis balls closer.