Just One Card: Four of Wands

The moon is in Virgo now, the Venus/Mars conjunction is in the rearview mirror, and it’s time for us all to get back to business.

The Four of Wands is a card of joyous prosperity– two women raise their nosegays amid a crowd of dancing people. A garland is suspended from the wands, and flowers cover the bridge to the old manor. It is a perfect moment.

Earlier this year Jeff Jawer talked, in his Mountain Astrologer forecast, of the difference between perfecting and perfection:

Perfecting

Perfecting is the act of continually improving ourselves and our craft. It is good when we strive for an ideal in this way- our work improves, our standards get higher, we grow and change and learn.

Perfection

Perfection is an unattainable ideal. When we strive for perfection we will, as humans, continually fall short of our goal. Perfection is the brass ring we can never quite reach.

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The difficulty with using perfection as a standard is that it’s demoralizing- when you are guaranteed to never attain your goal, it makes it really hard to keep working on something, even when you work is incredibly valuable.

Virgo is a sign of perfecting, of refining, of harvesting and reaping what we have sown. Use this time when the moon is in Virgo for working diligently on the details of things. Remember to have patience while everyone else is focusing on their details also!

Three things to think about:

• Where is your lineage? What traditions are you carrying on? We all learned parts of our craft from others, and have mentors, role models, and ancestors behind us. Whose work has been passed down to you? How are you building upon it, in your own way?

• Hard work will lead to success eventually, if you have a goal in mind as you work. Remember that people who are extremely hard workers are often perceived as aloof or hard to know intimately, however. Are you inadvertently sending people a message that is not the message you want them to receive?

• Part of painting is knowing when the painting is finished. How will you know when you’ve achieved what you set out to do? It’s easy to overwork yourself and throw your life out of balance if you don’t know when to stop (whether for the day, the week, or at the end of a project).

Are you perfecting, or just searching endlessly for perfection?