Staying whole under pressure

Greetings in the 27th week of the sacred calendar. This is the opening week of the second half of the astrological year.

This week

If something in your life is under a lot of pressure or heat right now, whether its a relationship, the way you earn your living, or breaking old narratives, the natural instinct is to look for the exit, or to wait for someone to come help. This week's pattern says something harder and kinder than that. The pressure you are enduring is doing a job. Don’t worry, I’m in the same boat, I’m going through redundancy, and this is even tough for me to hear sometimes.

Most of what holds you in place was put there link by link with your own hands, which means your own hands can take it off. You are being asked to stay in the room, stay honest, and let the pressure finish what it started.

The deeper teaching

Three emanations came through this week, and each approached the same message from a different side, as emanations tend to do. When that happens it is worth slowing down to listen.

The first was about seeing. There is more capacity in you than you have been willing to look at directly, and this week the looking is being pressed on you from more than one direction. Most of us keep a smaller picture of ourselves close at hand because it is familiar and asks less of us. That picture is being held up to the light. One line has stayed with me all week: the Universe is not withholding provision, it is waiting for you to stop withholding yourself.

The second was about tension. You may feel pulled between what you want and what your life is built to allow, between firmness and gentleness, between discipline and desire. The temptation is to pick a side so the discomfort stops. Hold both a little longer. A blade gets its edge where hammer and heat meet, and neither does the work alone. The pull you feel is the shaping itself.

The third was the bluntest. The restraints you feel are real, but you still have a control in what you can do in response by looking at what ideals you cling to, the limits you have accepted about yourself, and the power you have never quite claimed. That is hard to hear, especially if we are undergoing pressure that is not caused by our own doing.

This is partly answered in the lesson of the Devil card that I spoke about this past week. In the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, you’ll recall two figures stand chained to a block, and the image frightens people. Look closer and you will see the chains hang loose around their necks, wide enough to lift off over their heads. Nothing in the picture holds them except what they believe they see. The tradition's teaching on this card is a gentle one: when you finally see your situation truly, it turns out lighter than you feared. So if you are under a lot of pressure, make sure you are looking at every angle, especially the few things you CAN control.

App updates

For those who have ordered Natal signatures over the week, remember that today will be the first time you receive a full weekly forecast, and personal breakdown of the planetary energy affecting you. This arrives every sunday morning for every one. It really does help you better understand where to concentrate your efforts each week.

New Courses
The free Natal Signatures course I will be breaking the natal signature report further in a multi part course. The first few will drop in the next few days. So if you have recently ordered a natal chart and want to begin studying it more and get beyond what the oracle is explaining, watch out for that in the coming days.

The Second Module for the Pathworking course has been posted to the app. The full course is free to everybody. It helps with mindfullnes as you go about your day, and is a full ritual that I’ve been able to recover from the Sefer Yetzirah itself. There are many things unique to Lucian Kabbalah and this will become a hallmark over time. It is available on the app (or web) and guides you through a daily exercise step by step.

If you want to go deeper into the tarot or astrology, don’t forget to sign up for the RWS Decoded course that begins October 7th. You can find out more here

If you are struggling with anything or have a question on where to start first, I can always be reached at fraterlucis@tarotpathwork.com

b’od hayom