Astral Numbers

The instant I got home from Readers Studio, I landed right in the middle of a work emergency. One of my co-workers left for other employment and I’ve been up to my Astral Numbers in spreadsheets, something like the 4 of Pentacles. Let’s just say I’ve had it up to here with foot and tick.

So, in honor of all that, I thought I would bring you a little exercise in Astral Numbers from a book copyrighted 1899. Much like the documentation my co-worker left me, some important details may be missing. I leave it to you to fill in the blanks. Oh, and if you decide to use Excel spreadsheets, please don’t tell me about it. Nothing personal, really. It’s just my nerves.

Excerpt from Occultism Simplified or the Mystic Thesaurus, by Willis F. Whitehead, Past Supreme Grand Vizier, Ancient Order of Oriental Magi, copyright 1899 by The Charles T. Powner Co.:

The Astral Number.

Every person has an Astral Number which represents the conditions and culminations of life. It is formed from the Astral Numbers of the day and month of birth, the year born, and the planetary forces operating on the individual, as denoted by personal history and constitutional make-up. Following are the

TABLES OF ASTRAL POWERS.

Powers of the Planets.

Mercury -               994356                 Saturn -                           241056

Venus -                  964224                 Uranus -                          120528

Mars -                    542376                 Neptune -                        60264

Jupiter -                482112

Powers of the Months.

January -               161624                  July -                              491294

February -              266438                 August -                          324839

March -                  334154                 September -                    353675

April -                    499637                 October -                        227963

May -                     597728                  November -                     217433

June -                    593389                  December -                     188192

Powers of the Days.

1 -      157732                   12 -    622348                   23 -    386152

2 -      213136                   13 -    491128                   24 -    468772

3 -      256876                   14 -    361852                   25 -    683584

4 -      358936                   15 -    236464                   26 -    524176

5 -      461968                   16 -    186892                   27 -    362824

6 -      533896                   17 -    169396                   28 -    269512

7 -      616516                   18 -    154816                   29 -    246184

8 -      656368                   19 -    221884                   30 -    198556

9 -      722464                   20 -    233548                   31 -    163564

10 -    881872                   21 -    274372

11 -    719548                   22 -    376432

CENTURY ORDINATES: 19^th, 8331652; 20^th, 8331642; 21^st, 8331632; 22^nd, 8331622. These tables are correct.      

Directions for Casting the Astral Number.

Set down in regular order, under each other, the powers of the planets, etc., as follows:

1.    If a male, set down the power of Mercury.

2.    If a female, the power of Venus.

3.    If single, at present, the power of Mars.

4.    If never married, or a virgin, Uranus power also.

5.    If married now, the power of Jupiter.

6.    If single through divorce, the power of Neptune.

7.    If light complexioned, the power of Venus.

8.    If black hair and eyes, both Mercury and Venus.

9.    If medium complexioned, use no powers.

10. If own father is dead, the power of Jupiter.

11. If own mother is dead, the power of Saturn.

12. Set down power of month of birth.

13. Set down power of day of birth.

14. Set down the year of birth.

Add together. The sum total is the Astral Number.

To test the work, add the four figures of the year of birth together, and their sum, to one final digit. This will also be the “final digit” of the Astral Number.

The Century Ordinate is added to the Astral Number. Analysis is made by means of elaborate books.

When applied to the Zodiac, the operative results of the Astral Number, through analysis, indicate that:

1.    Aries represents a male.

2.    Taurus, a female.

3.    Gemini, a married person.

4.    Cancer, that the mother is dead.

5.    Leo, a dark complexioned person.

6.    Virgo, a virgin of either sex.

7.    Libra, a medium complexioned person.

8.    Scorpio, a widow or widower, or divorced.

9.    Sagittarius, that the father is dead.

10. Capricornus, that the father is alive.

11. Aquarius, a light complexioned person.

12. Pisces, that the mother is alive.

Well, as Mr Whitehead says, “The ideal mystic life must not be relaxed.” So, I’ll be slogging away at the spreadsheets until further notice.

Best wishes.

When Presented With the Choice

Back at another company, years ago, I found I was about to get a new boss. I had liked my old boss and he had liked me. You might think of that as a plus. Ordinarily, when manager and subordinate are high-performing professionals and agree about goals and approaches and other things material to the work environment, it’s a good thing.

I thought so. I had moved to that difficult area from a job I had really liked, felt good about, and received awards many awards for.  Shortly after my old work group had done a group exercise with the official MBTI test, I found out something that did not surprise me, that I was a different Jungian personality type from the rest of my management team.

I had realized that and sought to make that difference the difference. After all, my type is called “results oriented.” To my mind, it was a good fit for a technology director focused on meeting the needs of business. I had a great team of programmers and managers who were tops at churning out projects that worked, that built on the future, that mattered in helping other technology teams meet their project goals. I liked my peers and our differences.

As it turns out, I was the only person on my management team who was comfortable with my results-oriented approach. I liked my job instead of groaning under the tremendous workload. I enjoyed the projects we worked on, enjoyed understanding them, enjoyed working with the programmers about them. I was happy. My team was, for the most part, happy.

My peers and boss in this group, however, were pretty sure I was the puzzle piece who didn’t fit. When it came time to shrink the group a bit, I was the one who was selected to move out. In the shuffle of the reorganization, a miscommunication occurred, however. My boss thought he had placed me in a “great” job in a group called “journaling” which was an accounting area. Unfortunately, the management of that group had placed someone else in that position and I was stuck momentarily without a chair. I was devastated and it was a measurable part of my performance not to show it.

Stripped of my team and without a new position, awkwardly I was asked to stay on as my VP’s special projects person, which is corporate speak for that deadly position indicating you should find another job immediately. I chugged away to create extensive documentation of my area for a quarter which impressed my non-results-oriented VP to no end and he gave me a high rating with shock and surprise, his.

An opening came up that looked good. Well, it looked like the only possibility of an opening in my company. I spent 45 minutes talking to Charlie and knew we were going to get along.

Charlie was from Texas and was about as un-San Franciscan as possible. Politics and the occasional thoughtless joke aside, he was a good, smart guy who would listen to reason and take a chance to develop employees. He sent me to an excellent technology intensive course and helped me learn the ropes. It wasn’t easy, but I latched onto it and gained the respect of people within the group.

I was starting to heal from being booted out of the department that I had helped create from scratch. I was deep into the new position, a nearly impossible job with too many customers who all thought they should be number one on my list and regularly were verbally abusive. One difference I made was not to pass this abuse along to my team, knowing that beating the horsie seldom makes her go faster when you’re using a sledge hammer.

That didn’t mean I didn’t have a standard of performance for the team. So, when one team member had an issue, which Charlie dealt with, fairly, I thought, I had respect for him. Charlie had explained what happened after it was complete without revealing too-personal details. I had agreed with his assessment and decision. We agreed, even on difficult topics. It was a good partnership.

I didn’t realize how important it was to understand how well-regarded your boss is in an organization. As it turns out, Charlie’s boss hated him, hated everything about him. I also had misjudged that she would project that hatred onto me because I worked well with him. She hated the decision he had made, assumed it was made with the wrong reasoning. She brought each person on the team into her office for interrogation about the issue. I gave my honest answer based on the facts as I knew them, allowing for the fact that I was not present at the time of the alleged incident but had spoken with both Charlie and the employee with the issue.

Honesty was not the best policy. Charlie’s boss easily spread her hatred of Charlie to me also and in an instant, although I was aware only of her displeasure at my report, my fate was sealed.

Charlie’s was sealed a lot sooner and within a month he had been fired for not getting along with his boss. And now, I was getting a new boss.

Naturally, with the upheavals I had had in the past three years, I was anxious to know more about my new boss. Following my own quipped advice that it is always best to learn from the mistakes of others, I called a friend who used to work for the new guy. She was an intelligent, outspoken woman and I thought perhaps my own experience might in some ways mirror hers.

“Now that you know him,” I asked her, “what would you do differently?”

She laughed. It was a laugh I came to understand was one of grateful escape.

“With him,” she said evenly, “you constantly must ask yourself with his every word, his every action, ‘Is he evil or stupid?’ In his case, always pick stupid.”

My spirits sunk low. It had been my experience that when presented with the choice in bosses between Evil and Stupid, always pick Evil.

I know it seems counter-intuitive. Evil can be appealed to on some level. You can accomplish great good while justifying your acts to the Evil Boss as something that will advance his position or otherwise appeal to his sense of greed. But, as I constantly warned my friends, the depths of Stupidity have never been plumbed.

I worked for the new guy for about six months. While he was geographically appealing to his boss, the one who fired Charlie, he was much more sexist, arbitrary, capricious, customer-negligent and the epitome of what business people fear in technology professionals: He wanted to spend their money to buy cool new toys, not to deliver business solutions. I did everything I could to remain professional, competent and customer-focused. He was openly skeptical of my abilities, my intelligence, my prospects and my gender.

When the next round of layoffs came, we talked the evening before. He finally loosened up talking to me, saying that he knew he had given me a hard time in the last six months and frankly he was pleased, so pleased with my performance, that the only flaw he could find with me was that I was “too nice.” He said he thought I had all the makings of a vice president, and he wanted to start work on that once all the layoff stuff was over.

I remembered what I knew of him from experience and from advice. I knew what I had read for myself. I told him that if he needed to tell me that I was laid off, please do me the favor of coming for me the very first thing in the morning. He was shocked that I thought that might happen. I smiled. We shook hands and parted.

The next morning at 7:15 am he came to my office, shame-faced and flustered. To this day, I honestly do not think he knew that the conversations he was having with his boss would result in my being let go.

In the Tarot, “stupid” might be represented by The Fool and “evil,” The Devil. If those are your choices, I urge you to draw another card! Neither one makes a good boss. Just don’t be convinced that those are the only two cards in the deck.

Best wishes.

Time, Talent and Treasure

I couldn’t help telling my wonderful chiropractor that I just flew in from New York and, boy, are my arms tired. When those old jokes crop up in unfamiliar places, they get a life of their own again.

But I did go to New York and I did come back home and I was tired all over. Ruth Ann and Wald Amberstone are so good to try to warn people not to attempt to do everything at Readers Studio. This tosses the gauntlet down in front of me and my Aries sun says, in my best Inner Child voice, “I can TOO do everything if I want to!” My Inner Child needs a spanking. But, oh, my, what a good time!

Time – This year’s Readers Studio included a new extra day of Psychology & Tarot with three lecturers with expertise and unique points of view. First, David Van Nuys, PhD, of http://shrinkrapradio.com/ gave his talk on The Power of Story, the Jungian model, the collective unconscious, synchronicity, archetypes, alchemy and amplification. Tossing in a little Joseph Campbell and Dr. Dave easily pointed out that the roots of psychology and Tarot lie in shamanism. Dr. Dave also talked discreetly, for the most part, about some of his own experiences and the evolution of his career. We ended with a little meditation.

And suddenly, I was standing on a rocky shore with a beach below me, looking at the sea and the bright blue sky. I am the 3 of Wands. A seagull cries. OK, break.

Elinor Greenberg’s session was entertaining and informative. What a revelation! Go back to Looney Tunes and notice that the point when Wile E. Coyote falls into the canyon isn’t the instant he leaves the cliff; it’s the moment he notices he is the Fool walking on air. In the spirit of “a bad life makes good art,” we were provided with materials to make our own oracle decks, reducing concepts to a single word or pictograph to trigger the essence of meaning.

Mary K. Greer was a surprise and welcome substitute when the originally scheduled lecturer for the third session called in sick. Her lecture on Intuition and Transference was eye-popping and sparked conversations long after the session was over. She posited some definitions. Intuition was described as personal bias projected onto a situation with its basis in information available within the environment even if not consciously. Intuition differs from being psychic since the psychic arrives at conclusions with no information in the environment. And, from a psychological point of view, tarot works because it is a projection device. Metaphors do not exist in the concrete world. Truth is intersubjective congruence, the story agreed upon with the example given that we would all say the sky is “up” from where we are and, yet, objectively, the sky isn’t really up. You might say the crowd was stirred; for some, these were “fightin’ words.” There are those who must embrace the concrete and nothing else, however, and this was a good reminder of how much of the world views what we do and the ways we get information in a reading or otherwise.

Still, when I read for a client this weekend, I realized their child was “adopted…sort of”, in fact the product of the miracle of in vitro donor egg and donor sperm. I don’t know where I got that information because I don’t know the client at all, but I did see it as a result of the cards. And I met the adorable child, a miracle herself. How interesting are the many ways we seek to understand how that works!

The next day, we started Readers Studio as I have grown used to. My partner for the Foundation Reading was a newbie from India, the delightful Chandni who is a talented young reader.

Our afternoon teacher was Nancy Antenucci. Known to her fans as “Nucc” (say NOOCH), she was our guide to thinking outside ourselves. With grateful thanks to the generosity and energy of wonderful, wise and funny people who could not be there this year, Nucc walked us around the room letting our imaginations take our personas on a short trek to a strange place. When Nucc said, “Now, walk as if the Chosen One is in the room,” I looked up from my feet and there in the streaming ballroom lights was…Paul Nagy. Naturally, I had to tell him about his Chosen Oneness (with profound apologies to James Wells who may have been misinformed).

Favorite Nucc quote of the day: “I found myself too funny there for a minute!”

Lucky me that I was able to attend Carrie Paris’ oracle class in the evening! I dragged my great collection of Junk Oracle toys a/k/a the Choking Hazard Oracle to her class and they were lovely fun to demonstrate. If you see tarot readers with their fingers boxed like a film director, you’ll know we were the ones in Carrie’s class, practicing one of the oldest forms of augury.

My Day Job took my hours from 11 pm to 2 am and interrupted the first half of the next morning’s session with Major Tom Schick. Tom was delightfully “in the now,” something I sometimes call “Be the Dog” since my dog understands “now.” Tom’s point was to approach tarot from a place of love. My favorite statement of his is that Tarot is counter-indicated for narcissists, psychopaths and sociopaths because it is a tool for shaping reality.

Our final lecturer for Readers Studio was Ferol Humphrey who brought us her Living Tarot method. We found ourselves blurting the completion of sentences like, “You may embrace…” and turn over the card and blurt. “You may reject…,” turn over the card and blurt. Ferol met her goal of getting us out of our comfort zones!

Talent – I dashed upstairs as quickly as my bad knee and favorite frog cane would take me for a quick costume change. I had to transform into my “altered ego,” the Page of Wands in time for the Readers Studio Banquet and entertainment. I was almost ready when my roomie Beth Seilonen popped in from her table in the Merchants Mall and shrieked with, well, I think it was delight. She made a couple of key suggestions, anchored my tiara in a jaunty pigtail in back, rolled her eyes at the tutu and pink tights and I was ready for show time!

Dinner was delicious but I could barely eat because of the pre-show jitters. I was grateful for the salad and the righteousness of eating just a little of the salmon I had ordered and then, the curtain call!

As the Miscreant of Ceremonies, I was pleased to introduce one of the stars of the tarot world, Ciro Marchetti, who earlier this year announced his retirement from tarot. He presented a video that showed us that Ciro has moves we never even dreamed of and the power of a thrift-shop red jacket. His contributions have influenced the vision and color of tarot forever. I have admired his basilisk lizard-wrangling technique for some time (a lizard took refuge in his kitchen one day and he published photos…Photoshopped? On Facebook) and it was a pleasure to sit next to him for dinner and talk about the future of publishing tarot decks.

For our next act, a musical interlude from a tarot trio: Mike Hernandez on guitar, Jeannette Roth from Tarot Garden and songbird Maribeth Edwards Elliott Pittman sang songs from the Tarot Songbook, the one that isn’t published yet. (Some pipes, there, Maribeth!!)

Our third and final act from our own troupe of Tarot Players of the Tarot Theatre showed us how those really difficult cards in the deck feel when the party hostess says, “Oh, and leave out those scary cards," you know: Death (Rhonda Lund in exquisite skull makeup), the Devil (I maintain Dan Pelletier is typecast) and the Tower (Nancy Antenucci…and that girl can dance). In spite of their costumes having been lost in the mail a couple of times and never actually arriving at Readers Studio, their play was The Thing. I hope I didn’t actually spit coffee on Ciro while I was laughing.

Treasure – Ah, the third of my indulgences at Readers Studio! Where to start? Carrie Paris’ Lenormand Oracle. Beth Seilonen’s decks new for RS13 and a hands on shuffle through her Schiffer-published Dream Raven Tarot coming out later this month. Judy Nathan’s one-of-a-kind deck covers made of antique embroidered silks and other precious materials. Books. I bought books. Lots of books. Decks, oh, I bought decks, all right, thanks to Tarot Garden. I traded for a couple of things at the swap table. Even our extra-curricular bus trip to the East Village was a score when I followed Theresa Reed to Momofuko, a restaurant that makes Ramen noodles like no packaged noodles I’ve ever had, plus a shitake bun, then branched off to nose through shops and find a couple of yummy shawls at the Tibetan shop. All that made up for the bus driver who was lost and the chance encounter by Jeannette and Dan who happened to stumble across our return charter bus. Better to be lucky than good!

I’d like to give a special shout-out to Gina Jean for her mind-blowing perfume creation fresh from Paris, her Oracle Belline. I was the lucky buyer of what will I’m sure be entirely too small a purse spray size of this heavenly scent. Trans-scent-dant, I say, and sure to be an es-scent-tial at future tarot events. I predict this magical perfume will be a future hit!

I loved getting a chance to talk to old friends and make new ones. You'll read more about them in coming episodes. There really wasn’t enough time in the week to talk to everyone but I sneaked a hug in to Donnaleigh de LaRose, Kendra Hurteau and Rachel Pollack, learned that the ever-fascinating Robert Place's friend Phil says that rats taste a lot like squirrel (uh, ewww), met Maralyn Burstein, astrologer extraordinaire, and was thrilled to see SO many first timers at Readers Studio.

Finally, I want to thank someone who could not make it this year. Thalassa Therese, without you, the show would not have been able to go on. On a whim, I packed the red clown nose you gave me. When the theatre troupe’s costumes were lost, that nose became the key element to the Devil’s transformation to a much more user-friendly card!

Oh, yeah. I’m going next year.

Best wishes.

***********************************

Photos reprinted by permission from Oliver Puzon Photography.

Read Tarot, See the World!

Just sneaking this in while I’m supposed to be packing for Readers Studio 2013, an annual gathering in New York for Tarot lovers, creators, artists, writers, accessorizers (ha-rumph! Spellcheck doesn’t believe in that word. No matter. I do), collectors and most of all READERS: It’s time!

I am looking forward to seeing all my Readers Studio friends. Several people are unable to make it this year for various personal reasons. I’m going to miss you!

This year we are going to have more Tarot, more Lenormand and I’m dragging along my Junk Oracle for fun. We will have a few days of intense learning and several nights of intense…more than learning!

It’s a fabulous time to see what is new in the realm of cartomancy and indulge in a full day of Tarot and Psychology. It’s a time for me to reflect on what I’ve created over the last few years too. And you know what? I like it. Thank you to all of you who like my work also. Your support and enthusiasm and kindness mean more than I can say.

Hope to see you there at Readers Studio this week! There may be a Twitter or two coming this week, too.

Best wishes and easy travels!

***^^^***

PS--The Dust Bunny Lenormand Third Printing is now available, $20 plus postage, including custom-made case. Contact me for details!

Go Boston

I don’t know enough yet about what happened at the Boston Marathon. It’s either that, or I know too much. I know a sweet little boy named Martin died. A college student died. Mrs. Campbell’s Krystle child died. I read that two brothers who attended together, just at the wrong place, both had amputation injuries. I watched the initial film clips, one over and over where one of the runners next to the blast had his legs collapse under him.

“Somebody help that man,” I murmur every time I see that video of 78-year-old  Bill Iffrig. I learned he is all right and he spoke to the news people, a little stunned that after all he just got knocked off his feet instead of the much worse injuries suffered by others who were not exactly in focus.

Some wonderful, amazing people did help those around them who were hurt. There are photos showing them and the people terribly injured. We are all stunned. I say that then realize that there is someone, somewhere out there, at least one person who is not stunned. There is someone who thought it should happen something like this. There was intent. There was intent, apparently, to do more harm than this.

I can’t help but want the good people to get more attention than the bad people. I want the hospital employees and the rescue professionals and the event organizers and the passers-by, the police and other investigative bodies who have worked since the moment of the first blast to have heroes’ welcomes and their names written in history. I can’t help but want the people who worked carefully to create cheap and deadly chaos to be erased from history, to have their own sympathizers turn on them, to be overwhelmed with the enormity of this sin that they bring themselves to justice.

Running isn’t just an individual sport although it can be solitary. Marathons aren’t solitary. There are runners, marathoners, “endurers” as Rachel Maddow calls them.

Cousin Patti’s husband Bob is a runner. Bob’s family has more than one runner. They make a family event of their marathons. They have a rhythm of practice, of attendance, of celebration, of food, of community all marathon-centered. They compete but define winning their own way, as marathoners can. Few compete for the first place title. Most compete to conquer their past timings or just the 26 miles themselves. Most run because they run. It’s what they do.

Some tarot readers define the 5 of Wands as a negative card and you might view the vigor and seeming disorganization as threatening or mean. I don’t usually. It might be part of my own orientation to competition in games. When I look at it, I see competitors trying their skills against worthy opponents in the field of sport, not battle. They share a common passion for the activity they are thoroughly engaged in. They have a tacit agreement to participate and test their skills. They may define their own “personal win” differently but they are likely to agree on an overall winner. They are likely to want to come back and try again. Are they mean? I don’t think so. They are participating to win, not half-hearted, ho-hum energy. But part of the agreement among the competitors is that the competition is not a life-and-death event.

Alternatively, the 5 of Swords is the true zero-sum game. This is the victor and the vanquished. This isn’t a friendly competition. This is the meaningful attack with the intent, not to prove one’s abilities, but to crush an enemy.

In one of my classes at Readers Studio one year, I had a chance to really spend some time with the 5 of Swords. Despite his smirk, the “winner” does not look any happier than the “losers”. Some look to the other characters in the card to say the apparent winner ends up losing in the end; the losers end up winning. Somehow I’d like to think so. The winner gathers up the swords of ideas and conflict and takes them with him, alone. He has lost friends, people, trust, love and perhaps even touch with reality, all for the gathering of swords.

The marathon is an example of the 5 of Wands, the field of play to test one’s mettle. The act of terror is an example of the 5 of Swords, somehow an idea to make a statement of violence and power.

With the 5 of Wands, we can decide we don’t want to compete anymore; the better competitors may seem too intense for those less competitive. Competition can seem unkind because it does leave some behind as competition is eliminated. But almost everyone agrees that the players can come back and try again tomorrow, if they want to.

With the 5 of Swords, however, the intent is different, not sporting, but power driven, with the intent to do harm to one’s opponents for a “permanent” victory. An idea triumphs over another. An argument is won and lost. Someone exercises violence for gain of…something. War is waged.

I checked with my friends who work in Boston today. Their offices are near the blast point. For safety, they worked from home today. I was happy to learn they were not injured.

The many professionals who track down criminals are very, very focused and motivated to find those who did this. When they find them--when, not if--it will not necessarily feel like victory, no more, perhaps, than putting out the trash on Wednesday night.

But the marathoners will be back, because the spirit of community and celebration of joy and the love for those maimed or lost cannot, will not be beaten, even by the evil done this week.

Go Boston.

Best wishes.

Gimme a Light

You’ve done this, right? You’ve told yourself that you could walk through your house with the lights off because you know where everything is, then stubbed your toe on a chair or stepped on one of the cats’ or kids’ toys that wasn’t supposed to be there.

Just about everyone I know wishes they could see things more clearly.

“I just want to know if I should keep going to school or quit and try to get a job.”

“I just want to know if he really, really cares about me.”

“I just want to know when this is going to happen because I am so tired of waiting.”

Yeah, me too. Seriously.

Well, in the absence of a clear choice, I worked full time AND went to school. I wasn’t getting any younger and I certainly wasn’t too old, although I had had feedback from my contemporaries that, well, I probably was.

“That’s your choice,” I told them. “I’m going to do it.”

That was thirty years ago. Now, I’m astonished that anyone would think I was too old for anything in 1983. I’d say that I have some real physical constraints now, but not many. One of my friends and team members at two companies noted that, due to my scooter accident, my pro football career was most likely down the tubes. The doctor confirmed I should not ski or play tennis; it’s a knee thing. But, the good news then and now is that I hadn’t actually had aspirations of greatness in professional or even amateur sports, especially the knee-intensive variety.

Running my hand down my silky and comfortably rounded form, I answered the doctor, “I see why you might mistake me for a tennis player or skier….”

He was a smart guy but he didn’t have much of a sense of humor. He was, after all, paid to fix my knee and not laugh at my jokes. They tell me the osteo surgeons are often grumpy. But that was more than ten years ago, too, and, heck, I can walk. That’s pretty amazing.

But that time in between, the times where I was stubbing my toes in the dark on the path of my life, between deciding to go back to college again and getting the degree, between the accident and the first confident steps I took after months of physical therapy and surgery, I could have used a light.

When we are in a place of uncertainty, we think we want a guiding light, a Star to fix upon, to shine down on us and show us the Right Thing to Do. There’s a really important hair-splitting point about that shining star to guide us. We pick the star; the star doesn’t pick us.

Oh, of course it would be easier if the star picked us. Sure, if your heart’s desire just fell into your lap, well, wow, that would clear out a lot of uncertainty. Wouldn’t it? What if you didn’t have to choose it, set your sights on it, plot a course or at least start out in some direction towards it? What if you didn’t stumble along the way or momentarily wander off course? What if you didn’t have to work so darned hard for it? What if you didn’t have sleepless nights wondering if it would happen because you want it so badly?

Would a star still be a star?

Would it just be a point on a map or an X on a calendar? Today, I got my heart’s desire without lifting a finger. Ho hum.

What would you do tomorrow? Do you go to second on your list? Do you stay home and play with your toys until you’re bored?

Can’t there be something between stumbling in the dark and finish line? What if, just what if you could see your way clearly to make sure you were taking all the right steps to get to place you want to be? Wouldn’t that be “the best”? Maybe it would.

But, maybe not. After all, what makes you think you’re so smart? You may have a goal that sounds like the right answer. But, ask yourself, have you ever been wrong about what you wanted? Remember the time you insisted that you wanted the chocolate-beer-bubblegum ice cream and would not be persuaded of anything else only to find out it was pretty awful? Have you ever been sure you could fit into those shoes that looked so good only to be an agony halfway through the Big Event? Did you ever fight with your family about going out with the Wrong Person only to find out, darn it, they were right?

I’m in the middle of one of those walking-in-the-dark things myself right now. I’m working to stay conscious of the fact that I choose the Star, the Star doesn’t choose me. I’m not a victim of my life. I’m an active participant. I have a general goal in mind, something specific and attainable but not so locked into exactness that I’m out of options or alternatives.

One of my favorite exercises, when I’m faced with a goal that seems difficult to attain or at least farther away than arm’s reach, is something I think of as the Hermit’s Lamp. The Hermit has a darkened path, an interior journey, because so often when we face these walking-in-the-dark times much of the work is individual. He’s a bit better prepared for his travel than the Fool because he has a cloak to keep out the rain and cold, a walking stick to keep him steady and maybe most importantly, the Hermit has a lamp. His lamp has a star in it. That star is a smaller version than the one up in the sky. Think of it as personal sized, trying your goal on with the clarity that it can bring to your path. Through the light of your goal, you see your next step. It’s not sunrise yet, with the whole landscape lit up. It’s not moonlight that shifts and changes like mist. The light you carry with you is the light of your goal. It’s the light you picked. It’s not even the most important part of the Hermit’s tale.

Taking that next step is.

Best wishes.

Irene and the Tower

Weep, skies! We’ve lost Irene

Of the Queen Anne tall and palace-y.

She rides out on spring’s lightning bolt

And not pathetic fallacy.

Let the winds blow.
Let the stones fall low.

Let light itself lose its glow.

The Lioness is dead.

From Irene Buck's family:

IRENE P. BUCK

March 23, 1944 – March 30, 2013



Irene Patricia Buck, 69, passed away Saturday at her daughter’s home in Vallejo following a brief illness with an agressive cancer.



Irene was born in San Francisco to Edward and Esther Del Rosario on March 23, 1944. She held various positions throughout her life as a TV producer for KQED, an artist, a social worker and was the manager of the Cancer Society Thrift Shop. Irene was involved in politics and was a campaign manager for several local candidates. She enjoyed collecting antiques, gourmet cooking, gardening, and spending time with her family.



She was preceded in death by her parents and her brothers, Edward, Jack and Louis Del Rosario.



Survivors include her daughter and son-in-law, Angela and Anthony Brennan; and numerous nieces and nephews.


Peace be to you and your family, sweet Light and Lioness.

Best wishes.