For my first #3card reading I didn’t ask a specific question. I wondered what message the spirits had for me and the online tarot community, and so I let my mind empty itself as I shuffled the deck and then selected the following three cards:

Images from the Alchemical Tarot (copyright Robert M. Place): Used with Permission

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There is a lot going on here to look at. When I first looked at the cards, I wrote the following in my moleskine:

We build a tower to the sun, alchemically transforming ourselves through the tools given to us by the planets and spheres. The world is our crucible, and life is our furnace.

The uest is one not of reaching for divinity only,  but of remaining aligned with the physiccal realm through temperance and connection. Temperance in attitude and in the act of being tempered by the gods. Allowing ourselves to be rarified but not losing connection with the earth and the reified qualities of divinity found here.

We come to the reflection of the full moon where light touches us today. The moon in Virgo and Libra, reminding us to analyze the chances we take and balance the various forces at work in our lives.

I look at this on a few levels. Personally, I feel this is a clear message to me in my life. I’ve just undergone a very powerful and transformative ritual that has irrevocably change my worldview. The spirits or gods are telling me here to have care and caution with my actions. I am new to this state and as a child full of wonder I ache to drive in with all my strength and power, but it behooves me to be more cautious and careful with my actions here.

On a more general level, looking at this as a message for the Tarot community that seems to be building itself online via Twitter and our collective blogs, it seems we are being told the opposite. Drive forward towards the sun. Temperance demands that we thrust ourselves into the heat of action and let the fires do their work. We are drawn forward by the Lady of Coins, her intuitive understanding of the physical realm is a lesson about our senses and perceptions. We seek to be guided by the intuitive self, the moon, but that light shines physically down upon the earth. It is a reminder that our intuition and perception is only important in how we apply it to the world, and reminds us not to get lost in the analytical or theoretical nature of our explorations.