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Tarot Liturgy: New Moon in Virgo

The Moon has now entered the mutable earth of Virgo, conjoining the Sun in the silence of the novilunium. A new cycle opens at the exact point where the zodiac consecrates the sixth house to Virgo under the mercurial sign, opposed to the twelfth house of Pisces, mutable water and the zodiac’s final degree. This lunation carries within itself the promise of culmination in Pisces, since at the plenilunium it will unveil a total lunar eclipse on the seventh of September, in the fifteenth degree of Pisces within the Egyptian bound of Jupiter.

That eclipse will be opposed by Mercury in its own dominion in Virgo, right when Uranus turns retrograde in Gemini, the other mercurial house. The entire cycle resounds with the voice of Hermes. The eclipse occurs beneath Jupiter’s measure, but opposed to the planet of the Word. The mercurial current moves through the waters of Pisces, seeding visions, dissolutions, and revelations, whilst the earth of Virgo offers an opportunity of purification and order.

The reading of the cards took place shortly after the exact New Moon, at the hour of Mercury on the day of Saturn. The planetary sequence placed the rite under Elohim, beneath the weight of Zaphkiel and the gentleness of Gabriel. The four directions were honoured with incense of myrrh and the reading of Psalm sixty-two, so that the Spirit may descend and sanctify the act.

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Fiat Lux.

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The Annunciation

Artist: Frederic James Shields (British, 1833-1911)

Date: 1894

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, United Kingdom

Description

Scene depicting the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary by the Archangel Gabriel that she will give birth to Christ. Situated outdoors on the flat roof of a middle-eastern house, surrounded by a low stone wall, Mary kneels, her head bowed, right hand clasped to her chest and her left hand open and extended outwards - as the winged angel hovers over her. Gabriel, to the left, with blue-pink drapery and a mane of golden hair, gazes down at Mary, extends his right hand towards her head and indicates upwards at the sky with his left hand. Arranged on a mat to the side of Mary, who wears white drapery, are a handful of straws of corn and a piece of bread (a symbol of the Eucharist and the human nature of Christ); growing in the left foreground and behind the Archangel is a plant laden with pink blossom and new leaf growth (possibly almond blossom, a symbol of divine approval and also that of the Virgin Mary). In the right background are the geometric forms of the nearby town buildings within a rocky desert landscape that extends into the horizon where the thin crescent of the moon hangs partly below the horizon. In the otherwise deserted landscape, in the centre background, is the minute figure of a shepherd and his flock. The sky is deep turquoise blue.

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Tarot Liturgy: Sun in Virgo

The Sun has departed from his throne in Leo, the royal house of fixed fire where he manifests his sovereignty. He now enters the mutable earth of Virgo, the cadent sixth sign, mercurial by excellence, the field of labour, purification and service. This passage precedes the equinoctial descent, when balance is demanded and the scales open upon the axis of day and night.

The present ingress is further charged by the conjunction with Mercury himself, who will soon dwell in his own house throughout next month, and by the promise of a partial solar eclipse at the anaretic degree of Virgo, sealing the cycle with a shadow upon the very limit of this sign. The reading was performed at the exact moment of the Solar Logos’ entrance into Virgo, under the smoke of sandalwood incense, during the planetary hour of the Sun on the day of Venus, beneath the guardianship of the Venusian Archangel Haniel and of the Solar Archangel Michael, following the utterance of Psalm 67.

Full liturgy at The Mirror of Sienna.

Fiat Lux.

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Tarot Card of the Day: The Empress

The image of the Empress shines today with an unusual radiance, as her veil is lifted by the Coronation of Mary. It marks her enthronement as Queen of Heaven, sealed in Apocalypse 12, where the Woman clothed with the sun stands crowned with twelve stars, and the moon rests beneath her feet. This vision is a direct unveiling of the Empress herself, seated upon her throne as mediatrix between the wisdom of the Father and the understanding of the Mother.

She is the Arcana of fruitfulness, the sacred bride of the Logos, and the living doorway of Daleth through which abundance flows. This Friday falls under the dominion of Venus, and the Morning Star sings her hymn across the Tree. The Archangel Haniel, whose wings extend over the Principalities, presides over this light, making the Queen’s coronation a flowering in the world of men.

The luminaries themselves prepare to cross from the fixed fire of Leo into the mutable earth of Virgo. The harvest season is sealed within this card: wheat flowing at her feet, the promise of ripeness, the mystery of seed transformed into nourishment.

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Coronation of Mary: Sun and Moon at the End of Leo

The feast of the Coronation of Mary shines like a seal of light upon the cycle of the heavens. It is celebrated on August 22, when the Queen is seen crowned in eternity, clothed with the splendour of the Sun and raised into the celestial court. This is also a mirror of the cosmos. The Virgin crowned is the soul lifted to the throne, Sophia transfigured into the realm of eternity. The image joins heaven and earth; it shows that matter, once sanctified, welcomes the diadem of glory.

Today, the celebration is marked by a remarkable alignment in the skies. The Sun, ruler of Leo, is at the last degree of its sign, about to pass from the throne of fire into Virgo. The Moon, companion of the cycle, is likewise preparing to leave Leo and enter Virgo, ending her regal course and bowing towards the earth of harvest. This double transition deepens the meaning of the Coronation, since Mary is crowned at the close of the fiery kingdom and at the dawn of the mutable earth. She is the bridge between splendour and service, triumph and offering.

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Card of the Day: Eight of Cups

The Eight of Cups has long been a card that unsettles the contemplative soul. Its image is one of departure, leaving behind vessels that once promised fullness yet now spill only a bitter residue. The figure who turns away goes into obscurity. It speaks of abandonment, of stepping out from a chamber where the air has grown stale. It whispers of a movement that is a slow detachment, a desertion of what once was thought to be enough. And, in that movement, one feels the cold presence of acedia, the ancient malady of the monks, the spirit that presses upon the heart when the sun stands high and the soul begins to faint beneath its own weight.

The Fathers of the Desert called acedia the demon of the noon. It is the strange aversion to prayer and to life itself. One sits, and the hours lengthen into dread. Food tastes like dust. Scripture resists the eyes. The cell, once a temple, becomes a prison. But, within this aridity, one finds the same movement as in the Eight of Cups.

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Gift and Altar: The Mystery of Sacrifice

The word sacrifice bears the deepest paradox of human and Divine exchange. Its origin is Latin: sacrum facere, to make sacred. To sacrifice is to consecrate, to take what belongs to the sphere of the human and deliver it to the sphere of the Divine. The act is double: it empties and it fills, it wounds and it heals. Sacrifice is transfiguration. It is the movement by which what is common is set apart, lifted into a different order of meaning. In this sense sacrifice is the key to liturgy itself, since liturgy is nothing but the rhythm of making Sacred the passing gestures of life.

The ancient stories preserve this truth in the figure of Hannah who, having longed for a child, finally receives him and then yields him to the Temple. In that act she shows the law of sacrifice with greater clarity than a thousand sermons. What is most desired becomes gift and in the giving it is magnified. Sacrifice is more than a relic of archaic religion but the very structure of existence. All that is born must be offered; all that flows must return. To understand this movement is to begin to live liturgically, perceiving each act as altar.

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Fiat Lux.

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Tarot Card of the Day: The Chariot

There is a passage in Megillah 29a that speaks with a simple and inexhaustible voice. It says that, when Israel went into exile, the Shekhinah went with them. The Presence did not remain aloof in heaven, untouched by grief. She descended, clothed herself in the dust of Babylon, and remained beside her children. Few lines are more daring. They present the Divine not as a monarch who abandons the condemned, but as a Mother who follows her own into captivity. This vision touches the heart of Marian devotion, where the Virgin is seen at the Cross, silent yet inseparable from the pain of the Son. To meditate on this truth is to recognise that the divine Presence never leaves, even when the world appears a prison.

The Chariot in Tarot is tied with the sign of Cancer, the house of the Moon, the place of maternal waters. The Presence goes into exile; the Mother enters the realm of severity; the veil is torn and the abysm glimpsed. The Chariot teaches that such descent is also ascent. The rider advances not by avoiding the abyss, but by crossing it.

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The Broken Whole: From Sparks to Communion

The question of division has followed humanity from the beginning. Some saw it as punishment, others as fracture, others as exile. Still, within different traditions, runs a deeper recognition: the soul belongs to a greater root, a body or tree from which it cannot be separated. Encounters that seem accidental are in fact echoes of ancient unity. The memory of what was broken still circulates, and philosophy, mysticism and myth have given it different names. Plato spoke of a lost whole, Luria of shattered vessels, Paul of the body of Christ. Three languages for one truth.

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The Weight of the Law and the Breath of the Spirit

The words of Paul in the second letter to the Corinthians draw a line of fire between two ministries: one carved in stone and heavy with death, the other radiant with Spirit and alive with freedom. The passage of II Corinthians 3:4-11 unveil the limit of the Law. A covenant inscribed in stone is a monument, fixed and immobile, and yet what lives in the heart is breath, untamed, borne by the wind of the Spirit.

The opposition is the conflict between a world ruled by weight and a world stirred by breath, between permanence that calcifies and movement that liberates. Stone tablets against tongues of fire, Sinai against Pentecost, Saturn against the living breath of the Ruach.

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Tarot Liturgy: Moon-Venus Conjunction in Cancer

The Moon is balsamic, three days away from closing the lunar cycle that began in the house of fixed fire in Leo under the other luminary. The next cycle will open in the sixth house, in mutable earth of Virgo, under the aegis of Mercury, the swift Hermes.

The Moon has just joined Venus at twenty-three degrees of Cancer, in the Imum Coeli, which is the maternal womb itself, Moon's own dominion. It is a union of Selene and Aphrodite in deep cardinal water, a kiss at the source of the Great Mother. Venus is herself about to cross into the solar fifth house of Leo, as summer begins to decline and the Sun prepares to leave his throne, two days away from entering Virgo. The reading that follows was drawn at the exact minute of this conjunction, under the smoke of myrrh, in the protection of the Archangel Raphael of Wednesday, at the solar hour. It is offered as a seal upon this alignment, to discern the voice of Spirit within the pattern of the heavens.

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Fiat Lux.

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Eros and the Divine Body: The Lot of Venus and Haniel

The mystery of Love has always carried within it a hidden wound and a hidden flame. Traditional astrology contains the Lot of Eros, drawn from the relation between Venus and Spirit. This Lot is a cipher of the soul’s capacity for desire consecrated. It reveals that Love spreads through the body, through pleasure, through the intensity of contact, and also through the risk of ecstasy. The ancients placed Eros among the daimons, mediators between the mortal and the eternal, and the seers of Kabbalah placed Venus in the sphere of Netzach, victory and radiance. The Archangel who presides over this is Haniel, the guardian of Friday, the Light of beauty and desire. Through this alignment, the Lot of Eros becomes the clearest mark in the chart of how each soul may turn its longing towards God, and how even the most embodied pleasure may become theurgy when consecrated to ascent.

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Sibyll

Donato Creti

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Card of the Day: Seven of Wands The Gospel of Matthew preserves one of the fiercest moments in the ministry of Yeshua. Chapter 23 resounds with seven cries of judgement, the ouai hurled against the hypocrisy of the religious guides of his time. These “woes” are words of fire that expose, wound and cleanse. They cut into the heart of falsehood with a sword of the Spirit, stripping away pretence and revealing the face of the Holy.

When this passage is read beside the Seven of Wands in the Tarot, a correspondence emerges that is more than accidental or superficial. The card of fiery resistance mirrors the prophetic stance of Christ himself. Both unveil the same archetype: the solitary figure who stands against a multitude, armed only with the fire of truth, refusing compromise, sustained by a force that exceeds the human. More at The Mirror of Sienna.

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By the grace of God I am who I am, and His grace towards me was not in vain.

1 Corinthians 15:10

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Portugal and the Incarnation of the Logos

The smallest lands often conceal the heaviest mysteries. At the very edge of Europe, pressed between mountains and ocean, Portugal became a paradox. It was fragile, poor, and peripheral, but named as vessel of a destiny that reached beyond empires. Those who discerned its secret intuited that this land could never be reduced to armies or commerce. It had been marked as a theatre of incarnation. The Logos, eternal and infinite, requires matter where it may descend. It chooses the improbable, the overlooked, the small. As the desert once received the law, and a Galilean girl received the Word, so too a narrow strip of Atlantic coast became symbol of the Verbum made flesh in history. Portugal remains as sigil of the scandal of incarnation, the eternal choosing the lowly in order to reveal itself in the visible.

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Fiat Lux.