In contrast to the Rest themes I investigated last week, I am now being called to look at it’s life partner, Action.
At first it seems like a real mind bender to meditate on action during a shift from the action-forward fire sign season of Sagittarius into the rooted earth-based Capricorn moment - a sign and season most often associated with rest, darkness and quiet - which officially kicks off…now. Looking deeper, I know that Capricorn season is indeed connected to action, but you know, that hidden kind as I also discussed last week: seeds, compost, soil, etc.
Capricorns feel a responsibility to respond, thus I am tending to new ways to act. For me, the tarot card which best embodies this call to be in new relationship to action is the Queen of Wands in the Thoth deck. What is she all about? Well, for starters she looks like a substantially badass boss bitch in command of her own power and pleasure. Appealing. And a bit arresting as well. Just look at those spiky flames framing the hem of her garment. Woah.
The Queen of Wands governs the “watery region of fire”, which felt especially aligned when I pulled her in companionship with a blue calcite stone that I selected prior to the reading from my West/Water altar. Essentially, I was asking the deck for assistance with how to communicate and hold space in a new, more interdependent and connected manner. To paraphrase the Crowley Tarot handbook, she is all about magnetism, attraction, creative vision, and she encourages us to “embody a willingness to mature and develop” - becoming a match for new and worthwhile tasks. I have been working to process and compost a lot of scarcity, self-doubt, and imposter syndrome thinking patterns. Meditating on the Queen of Wands has been helping me to literally reprogram my thought patterns, and rewire my response to opportunity, risk, and new connection. The questions of self worth are all still present, but the way that I respond, react, and act on how to proceed is shifting. This fire-y sovereign says Match my energy…I seek mutual submission.
To return to the other themes that action brings up for me, response and responsibility have been a more central focus over the past year and a half since a natal chart reading I had with JP Hawthorne, of Cosmophilia and co-founder of the Portland School of Astrology. They pointed out that both Capricorn and Cancer signs tend toward these themes, but from different angles. So after this reading, I started to check in with myself more often about response and responsibility. When do I need to respond? Do I have to respond to everything? How do I distinguish which actions need a response? Can anyone else relate?
I am still mainly sitting in awareness with this work to realign myself to response and responsibility, but the work could never even be approached without that initial seed! I find some answers for myself in the archetype of the Queen of Wands. Her shadow is domination, but her light is independence, so in a balance of that duality she assures me that I don’t have to initiate all of the action, nor do I get to rest fully. I must sit in my own creative and divine power - making, fusing, diving deeply, experiencing, and sharing - so I can learn to notice where the opportunities for my own magnetism and creativity are recognized and matched. She says Hold it. Seize it.
Match my energy, she says.