New Moon Reading – Thursday December 29, 2016

Well, how has your month been? Have you felt some new shifts in your life that has given you the opportunity to create something fresh? I tend to look at some connective “tissue” to the previous reading and to locate a thread of ideas in the current reading that can take us deeper and further about events in our lives.

Last month, we saw The Magician standing in the placement of what is coming into our experience. This month’s New Moon Reading seems to suggest a clean slate and an exploration of the new components that have come together for us. In the Page of Wands, we find ourselves free to relax and be curious. We can move about our life free from worry or pressure, to investigate our dreams and wishes in this new “landscape” of potential.

Do you remember those days of just hanging out in the library and feeling an almost insatiable thirst for knowledge? That could have been as a young student or later as an adult. Curling up in a quiet corner and having the whole day to yourself? Whatever our age, we’ve been learning and studying new things, and what’s more, we have felt ourselves refreshed by new energy and inspiration. The Page gently holds the wand of new potential and is “listening” to the energy it contains, and appears in an exotic landscape free of clouds.

But as with all study and learning, we can’t exist in a vacuum. Knowledge needs to be applied and integrated in order for it to mean anything to us. I can learn all I want about a subject and its counterparts. Unless I actually venture out and speak to people who know more than me, my knowledge will be limited. Not only that, I will be naive in my ideas because I will have formulated my beliefs based on other peoples experiences.

The connection between the Page of Wands and the 3 of Pentacles is suggesting that innocence and quiet study is wonderful – for a time. Then we must broaden what we’ve learned by working with others and receiving feedback. It is a progression into a more mature and expanded awareness.

What becomes fascinating is that, not only do we become more than what we were, but we have suddenly become valuable to others. Our talent and skill have created a need in someone or for something. We open a door to more potential when our creative talents are guided into more tangible expression, and often times it is through our collaboration with others that allows this mechanism to work.

In the 3 of Pentacles, we see a skilled worker listening to the instructions of a Monk and an Architect under a dome where the three pentacles form an upward triangle and the flower underneath it form a lower triangle. We see the ability to channel and create something beautiful by combing Spirit (monk) and logic (architect) into a product of lasting value.

Seen another way, we can think of an artist creating and completing a work in a fit of inspiration, but we never really see the years of hard work devoted to the technique that facilitated it. And then my music teacher once said to me, “When Beethoven completed his seventh symphony, he wrote pages and pages of sketches that he never used. In the end, we have a masterpiece. Was that hard work or inspiration? It was hard work, but in the end he was inspired.”

The point is that we can’t let only feeling and inspiration be the sole creative factors in our work just as much as we can’t have our intellect govern every artistic choice. If we do, then our work never reaches for the sublime in our technicality, and our ability to describe our deepest yearnings collapse in a heap of muddled and meaningless phrases and abstract sentimentality. But again, these are the more mature perspectives brought about by collaboration. If someone tells you, you can do that better, 9 times out of 10 you will look your work over again to make sure.

As we look ahead to the 2 of Swords, we see a card showing a watery landscape (emotions) behind a figure holding two swords (intellect) in a precarious balance. The very themes of balancing emotion and logic can also contribute to a feeling of being stuck, mostly when it involves other people’s beliefs and opinions.

The difference in quality between the 3 of Pentacles and the 2 of Swords is that one is public and collaborative, and the other is private and isolating. The ingredients that we were working with, now need some time to be properly considered. Whatever was set in motion is now not serving us well because we are being asked to get back in touch with the very truth that is in our core.

“Who is instructing me? Do I agree with the direction that these people are giving me? How do I feel about my work? Does my work reflect my beliefs?”

The figure’s posture is showing that the heart area is blocked. Whether this is out of a need to create a healthy boundary or in response to confusing and polarizing ideas, the peaceful waters suggests that this is a necessary and needed time for quiet reflection. Moving from a “3” to a “2” also suggests that we can benefit from taking a few steps back. Interestingly and coincidental to the New Moon, in the sky the emerging Moon suggests that new information is coming and we will be glad we waited for it.

I offer my sincerest wishes to you for a warm and peaceful New Year, filled with love and joyful new experiences!

Daniel Palmo