December 30, 2011 - January 1, 2012: 10 of Wands
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Ten of Wands
OPPRESSIONMeditation Pattern: Place Atu XXI, The Universe, and Atu XIV, Art, side-by-side, with the 10 of Wands above them.
Traditional Description: Eight wands crossed as before. Two more wands upright, traversing the junction of the others. Flames issue from the juncture. The symbols of Saturn and Sagittarius are above and beneath.
Malkuth of Fire: Blind force detached from its spiritual sources. Overbearing force and energy, cruelty, malice, revenge, injustice.
Saturn/Sagittarius: Cruel and callous power applied to material and selfish ends. Tyranny, oppression, repression. May show failure in a matter, and opposition too strong to be resisted, arising from the person’s excessive selfishness at the start. Self-doubt, feeling overburdened or not up to the task. Ill-will, lying, malice, slander, envy, deceit, obstinacy, if ill-dignified. If well-dignified, a strong sense of justice and morality, asceticism, prudence, helpfulness, objectivity, self-sacrifice, and generosity.
Malkuth + Saturn: Perseverance, endurance, effort, but to little avail. The need for economy. Materialism, possessiveness. Overburdening inertia impedes progress.
http://www.firehead.org/~pturing/occult/thelema/libri/The Book of Thoth/thoth/wands10.jpg
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10 of wands = Good luck getting anything worthwhile done. Or better yet, get ready to deal with your own resistence to accomplishing something that's important to you.
Whatever energy we got out of the 9 of wands needs to be grounded and it's going to take some work. And work under this influence is extremely inconvenient. Malkuth is DARK and scary. The imagination takes over. We don't know where we're goin or what's going to happen along the way. We could get hurt. We could fail. Taking action occurs as a little too risky. I hated this arrangement.
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The usual esoteric understanding of this card is along the lines of "the burden of the universe" or "the weight of primal force." I'm never surprised to be reminded that Waite depicted someone bent under the weight of bearing a cross.
The card shows the conditions of trying to bear the weight of primal Fire - pure Will force - in our physical bodies and (more broadly) in the physical context of our lives. This is, frankly, often too burdensome for the physical life to sustain. It's more than "the weight of the world is on your shoulders" - more like, "the weight of the universe is on your shoulders."
So (here was my insight)... what do we do in the face of this? We resist! We're the ones who shut off our access to the wholeof the current, and it's by our resistance.
See today's Meditation of the Day for the same theme from the other side.
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I checked out the meditation of the day and what's interesting is I got an insight last night while I meditated on the Ace of Cups that's very similar to todays MOTD. It's becoming easier and easier to forecast what the next arrangement Also, as we were going into the Ace of Cups, I sensed that what would be necessary to carry out the Primal Will and overcome the inertia would be to "die" meaning relinquesh any sort of personal identificaton, attachment etc. to the task at hand and just DO it.
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