Another eco-artist for this month is Leopold Blaschka, a master glass artist. In the spring of 1853 Leopold traveled from Germany to the United States. The trade winds died and stranded the boat off the coast of Azores for 2 weeks. To fill the time, Leopold began studying, sketching and admiring the transparence and colorfulness of the local invertebrates. Ten years later, back in Dresden, he created a moderate business of making lab equipment and specialty glass-work items; however, it would be his hobby of blowing glass flowers as accurately as a botanist’s drawing that drew the attention of Prince de Rohan and five years later to Professor Ludwig Reichenbrach. With their support, he and later his son began a lucrative business for creating mail ordered ocean specimens that he drew in that fated trip.
Many of his works are exhibited at the Cornell Museum now. A Cornell professor, Drew Harvell, is taking this collection of 700 invertebrates and searching for the actual animals to match the art to see if they have changed. She has found that now some of them are endangered. You can see this amazing story with the documentary Fragile Legacy or read her book Sea of Glass. He and his son also did a collection of botanically accurate flowers, The Glass Flowers of Harvard, exclusively for Harvard University. I highly recommend seeing any of these amazingly intricate studies in glass.
P.S. Remember signs with an * it a big week for you.
Aries
Two of Wands – Last week, the Moon’s reflective light revealed the fact or fantasy of your fears, and helped you finesses navigating by your intuition and feelings without letting them overwhelm you. This enlightenment on one’s fantasy and fears should have readied you for the action of the Two of Wands this week. For this week is the time to strike out on your own and discover some new places and people. This week expand your world and don’t let last week’s fear stop you.
Taurus
Eight of Coins – This is your second eight so let’s look at 8s for a sec. Eights are the cards of expansion and contraction. The Eight of Cups last week had you contracting by doing some spring cleaning. The Eight of Coins wants you to expand by growing your skills. This week is all about work, but it isn’t all about how hard you work. It is about using your skill-set to work smart. This combination of cleaning and efficacy should give you a sense of accomplishment by the end of week.
Gemini
Knight of Coins – The Knight of Coins is all about pace and persistence. If you go to slow you will miss an opportunity but if you go too fast you will miss the details. This week slow and steady wins the race.
Cancer
King of Wands – The King of Wands is about spirituality, passion and creativity. He wants you to understand and work with not only parts of yourself but your destiny that ignites it. This life is to be lived with gusto, so do something every day this week to kindle your spirit, passion and creativity and it will lead you to a brighter destiny.
Leo
Ace of Cups – Ace of Cups foretells new beginnings or insights in relationships. This week spend some time with someone new or reignite an old relationship. This can be with our love partners, but it also is just about spreading love to any living thing – earth, plants, animals and humans. Because ultimately –Love is all there is.
Virgo
*Temperance – Double whammy weeks, last week the Hierophant advised you to work on structures and efficiency. Then Temperance doubles down reminding you that structure is great but does not last without balance and moderation. So, with your work there must be play. With your happiness there is also sadness. With hatred is love. The challenge is how to do the balancing. Not as reactive equilibrium act – falling to one side and rebalancing the other in a teeter-totter fashion – but as a proactive act of accepting the paradoxes and mixing a new cocktail. Think if it like cooking without salt but getting the satisfaction of saltiness by using a mixture of spices and herbs.
Libra
Five of Coins – The Five of Coins is the card of loss, despair or loneliness. No joke this can be a hard week with mishaps and misdirection; however, the lesson with this card is realizing you are not only resilient but also not alone. Your challenge is asking for help. No shame, this is not only beneficial to you but a way for the people around you helping someone who has helped them.
Scorpio
*Chariot – The Chariot gives you energy to do some moving and shaking of your own this week. Take this time to do activities that will move you closer to your goals. The only challenge with the Chariot is all movement is up to you this week. It’s not exactly that you must do this solo, but it is essential you do all the driving.
Sagittarius
Page of Swords – The Page of Swords is the card of the investigator and hidden information. There are clues and messages you need, but you will be required digging for them this week. Ask lots of questions, read between the lines, digger deeper, keep your ears, eyes and mind open.
Capricorn
Nine of Swords – The Nine of Swords is the card of worry and over-thinking. This card makes sense with the past two weeks of heavy lifting in your mind. The challenge and work with this card are finding ways to turn off the mind by giving it a break or diverting it with playful thoughts. You can do this with a bout of binge-watching TV (no commercials), escape into a good book, day dreaming, or meditating to quiet the monkey mind.
Aquarius
*Judgement – Judgment is the card of evolution. It is time to shed your skin, molt your feathers, or wrap up in a cocoon. The shift of your paradigm has happened. The question is: have you evolved to survive in it a healthier way than the previous phase of your life? If not take this week to be tender with yourself, you are still in your soft-shell phase of your evolution. Take this week to harden your shell/skin, grow in your feathers, grow your wings. The only thing you should be doing this week is figure out what you need to grow/obtain in this new phase.
Pisces
*High Priestess and Ten of Swords – The High Priestess is here to help with the Ten of Swords. The Ten of Swords is the card that foretells that the World can be a triggering place. One reason we get trigger is we let our reactive ego do the driving instead of more kind conscious mind. The High Priestess steps in with her cool thoughts sitting on her lofty seat seeing the bigger pictures and cycles. She challenges you to stand back from the World and not react – just watch. You will find that observation and not confrontation will bring you more enlightenment in situations this week.
May light be on you, around you, and within you,
Nina
The Five of Cups ponders the idiom of perceiving your life or situations as a cup half full or empty. This card challenges you this week at the end of each day to quantify where your glass-line lies.
The King of Swords is the decision man. This week is a great week to make decisions, write, create proposals or bath in the literary world. The challenge is to maintain your focus while you doing it.
The “building” energy of the past three weeks continues with the Ace of Pentacles. This is a great way to start off your birth year. All aces are about beginnings. This week is a great time to start new projects, experiment with old projects in new ways and explore new places. The challenge is seeing everything with fresh eyes.
This week is the beginning of your month-long wind down to your birth day. This card asks you to wrap up emotions that you have been dealing with the past year. The challenge is how to see these emotions with rose-colored glasses. I know that the blinding truth is your recent M.O. but just for this week look through the rosy-tinted optics as a fashion/lifestyle statement.
The Seven of Wands is about your boundaries versus your walls. The challenge this week is defining and then acting on those definitions.
This is your second five in a row, so let’s look at fives for a second. Five challenges or forewarns us about the chaos in our life. Last week the chaos resided in your material plane, and this week it is with your interactions with your community. The Five of Wands asks you to examine your line between play and competition. The challenge is seeing to that line not getting stepped on by others or you.
The Hanged Man card foretells a week of delays and side roads. The challenge is seeing that this detour is just that. You will eventually end up where you were heading, so sit back and enjoy the slow lane.
The Empress is the card of growth and fertility. Like last week this week create new things on the material plane. However, the Empress wants you to take the long view with what you are planting. She is the supreme gardener. The challenge is what to sow, where to sow it and then know that you will need to tend to it for the longer haul.
The Page of Cups is the card of innocence and joy. So here is your challenge: Enjoy life like a child. Laugh. Play. Sounds easy but really hard for you all to do for a whole week.
The Knight of Swords challenges you to slow down. The main reason to be almost sloth-like is that you will need to notice something along that way that you would have missed at the pace you have been setting lately. This is also an omen card and comes up when we are more accident prone. You can avoid these missteps by keeping your feet on the ground, keep your eyes on whatever you are doing and slow your roll.
Five of Swords is the chaos card. The way to deal with this is to realize that this chaos has really nothing to do with you unless you engage with it. The challenge is imagine the chaos blowing over you like the wind. It might leave some dirt or dust on your skin but you can wash it off.
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