Aquarius Season

Image Source: Archillect.

Your Aquarian blogger is on a birthday break until 20 February 2016. The post featured for the interim on the right-hand sidebar covered the 600th birthday celebration of Prague's astronomical and astrological clock in 2010. The Aquarian season is associated with several festivals which anticipate spring, renewal, and an awakening of the mind after winter's sleep and constrictions. The Gaelic Imbolc, the Celtic Brigid's Day or Saint Brigid's Day, together reflect a fire festival marking the halfway point on 1 and 2 February 2016 between the northern winter solstice and the spring equinox. The Christian Candlemas, a ritual for the purification of Christ's mother Mary on 2 February 2016, is represented in secular form in North America as Groundhog Day (in French Canada, it is known as Jour de la Marmotte). And the lunar new year on 8 February will be observed in Asia in 2016 as the start of the Year of the Yang Red Fire Monkey. You can find your Chinese zodiac sign here, although that gives only the simplest idea of the Chinese astrological system and another calculator is here. The celebrations run until the Lantern Festival on 22 February 2016.

Below the jump, see some tarot Star cards associated with the sign of Aquarius. Leigh McCloskey explains the archetypal message of the Star, which liberates people by encouraging them to consider their smaller values and concerns in terms of ever larger perspectives:

The Star archetype is concerned with the gradual emancipation of personal awareness by offering it a greater field of vision which evolves into a more impersonal or universal understanding of the self and its proper role. Existence begins to be viewed as inclusive rather than exclusive, other people's beliefs, traditions, and religions begin to be seen not as wrong but simply different and appropriate to their needs. This new tolerance ushers in a flow of potential, which was impossible, as long as former emotional patterns and thought structures remained crystallized.

In the Major Arcana deck, the Star card follows the Tower card; the latter symbolizes harsh, rapid collapse, change, and lessons. Thus, the Star card indicates deeper wisdom after trials, disappointments, and hardships, and a phoenix-like light from the ashes. The American film, Groundhog Day (1993) was admitted to the United States National Film Registry as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" in 2006. It depicts the cyclical learning curve and mental and spiritual awakening symbolically associated with this time of year.

The tarot trump card associated with Aquarius is The Star. "The Pole Star symbolizes universal law, higher spiritual knowledge and power. … Mythical stories of great hunters and slain warriors honoured by the gods and placed forever in the night sky were handed down through time and developed into ancient religious practices." From The Wildwood Tarot (2011), artist Will Worthington. Image Source: Laura Bruno Blog.

The Star from the Labyrinth Tarot (2004). The card offers positive enlightenment, but sometimes with challenges and mixed messages. Image Source: Insight.

The Star from the Druid Craft Tarot (2005), artist Will Worthington. The Star's two pitchers symbolize two ways of knowing: intuitive and emotional consciousness (the pitcher that pours into the water) and logical, practical common sense (the pitcher that pours onto land in five streams, representing the five senses). The Star combines both types of knowledge, with one foot submerged, and the other on dry land. Image Source: pinterest.

The Star from the Soprafino Tarot (1835; reproduction 1992). The bird which sometimes appears in the card is the ibis of thought (and the Egyptian god of wisdom, Thoth), perched in the tree of the mind. Image Source: pinterest.

La Estrella from the Da Vinci Tarot (2006). Image Source: Tarot Café.

A Star card with a male character wielding Masonic tools to achieve intuitive consciousness typically associated with feminine knowledge. Image Source: pinterest.

The Star, ReVISIONed Tarot by Leigh McCloskey © (2002). Image Source: Leigh McCloskey.

David Zahir's deviantART Vampire tarot series (2012). Image Source: David Zahir.