I hope you’re all having the best June you can so far. This is a weird year. I am almost raising a toddler by now (!!!), and Minneapolis is still the epicenter of so much upheaval and heartbreak from the ongoing events that started late this winter.

Minneapolis at sunset

I’ve also been working hard to maintain DEAR TAROT, which is a monthly reader Q&A where the tarot takes on the role of a modern witch version of Dear Abbie or Ann Landers. There are also weekly emails with that offering that run you through the tarot’s advice for your practical life, creativity and spirituality for the week ahead. One thing that developed sort of naturally over there is an additional section of the weekly newsletters that I call the Witchcraft Weather of the Week. Here is where I talk about big cosmic, lunar or solar events, any Sabbats or other special days of the week or other magical goings on that may affect our personal or spiritual lives.

The two big things I’m mentioning weekly until they pass at this point are June as Pride month, and June 21st as the Summer Solstice, or Litha for those of us who learned it that way. I’m a chaos witch, a folk witch, a synthesis of everything between and beyond that binary when it comes to spells, so here’s a little of what that means for my practice:

Pride to me is a special time with queer ancestors, spirits and gods. There’s an egregore I work with that is the energy of the first Pride and the ongoing movement of Pride. Because Pride started as not only a protest but a movement. We were never seeking to change things for just that day or week, we were ready to unpack and move on from the anti-queer dystopian kyriarchy once and for all. I work with this spirit to keep us safe as we can be, while also asking them to help us bolster our progress.

A witchcraft Discord I am in does a multi-day queer ancestor veneration together. We choose what that means for us individually and work the spell in our time, in our own way.

Whatever way you want to go, this month is rich with opportunities to cast spells like:

• Glamours so you’re perceived as the gender you know yourself to be

• Sex magic to pull in a sexy Pride time, or with another person to make big, audacious wishes at climax.

• Protection magic

• Strengthening magic

• Bring down the patriarchy magic

• Love spells for a new suitor (or 3, or 12 - I don’t know your life) to come knocking

• Butch-femme polarity work to find your truest self

• Money magic for the queer community or your favorite social group/non-profit within that

And so much more.

Summer flowers in the dew

For Litha or Summer Solstice, we are celebrating summer itself but especially the sun. Allegedly ancient British and Celtic people would give back to the sun in this time for its’ role in farming health, success and growth. The next major witchcraft Sabbat is Lughnasdha/Lammas - here we begin our Harvest holidays, so Litha is a great time to tend to growth and ensure your metaphorical or literal gardens are overflowing by August. This one is on 6/21, and I recommend noon or the moments of the strongest sunlight where you are for the most potent magic of this type on that day.

In either case, I have updated my tarot reading specials to reflect the coming summer months as well as my affection for Pride and Litha. The Pride readings are CHEAP so snag one or both of those for yourself, a loved one, or everyone you know. Check those out here, and if you want the full Zoom experience, that is over here. Please note if you are LGBTQ+ or questioning, you are eligible for a STEEP discount where you’re only paying $40 per half hour of Zoom readings. You MUST email, DM if you follow on Insta, Threads or Bluesky or contact me via Patreon or Substack to utilize that sale. (DEAR TAROT also runs on the Patreon by the way, as well as it’s own Substack)

The absolute MOST exciting things going on this month in Cassandra’s Corner:

• I am teaching a Tarot for Creative Writing class at the Loft starting on the 18th of this month! This is a four week class where we use the cards to help you figure out what kind of writer you are and/or would like to be, and then move into the different stages of the writing process using tarot as a guide and set of prompts to actually create some outlines and/or rough drafting of your work. It’s in person here in Minneapolis, and if you’re local I’d love for you to join me!

• Across the river in St. Paul : my SECOND TTRPG Live Actual Play! It is actually ON the Summer Solstice (which is also Father’s Day) at 2 PM. I love the cozy and cute Hive Collaborative space, and it’s going to be really fun to weave you a magical urban fantasy with input from the dice - and you. Please don’t miss it!

Another major thing I’m working on right now is my next book. ICYMI, I am writing about tarot & friendship (my two favorite things!) for North Atlantic Books. If you want to be all caught up on the Cassandra canon, or if you simply want to read queer books by queer people, grab copies of my others here. I especially recommend my most recent two, Tarot In Other Words and Lessons From the Empress. See them all here!

In the meantime, I am sending you and yours wishes for the absolute best Pride month ahead. Love, love, love you all.

XOXO,
Cassandra Snow

PS: Chaos and Cunning just wrapped our season 1! It’s out wherever you listen to Podcasts, and if you’re already thirsty for more, please support our Patreon where there are bonus episodes!

It’s April Fool’s Day, which I am personally not a fan of but its’ okay! I’ve made it 7:15 PM by using tarot, witchcraft and baby snuggles (the actual holy trinity. Jk. Sort of) to do so. One thing I’ve been doing is letting both Patreon/DEAR TAROT Subscribers and Instagram followers request a one card, $10 reading on embodying The Fool archetype for themselves. It’s gotten me thinking a lot about what the OTHER tarot archetypes would look like if they had their own calendar day - but that’s a fun sidequest for a different day.

TODAY, well, tonight, I want to talk to you about The Fool showing up in other cards periodically via Reversal! What better tarot concept to illustrate a single card’s interpretation, though this activity would also work well for Hanged Man showing up throughout the tarot as well. Basically, I believe reversals come up to offer Fool lessons or solutions in situations where the fool themselves would just confuse you, or potentially offer TOO much and leave you confused about where to start digging through that card’s messages. A card in reverse is a tease, a little loving joke (albeit at your own expense).

For example, let’s say you ask what to do about a conflict at work, and you got a 5 of Wands in Reverse. The messages from The Fool filter into this unexpected take on this 5, asking you to look at the conflict with fresh or “new” eyes after backing out of it for a couple of days. It would further suggest trying to hit a “reset” at work instead of dragging the conflict. A different card in reverse, say most of The Swords, would be telling you NOT to resort to witty retorts or going above someone’s head. Do the logical thing, a reversed sword would say, but do so with trust and belief that this will work out.

Hopefully this is making sense to you but if not, it’s okay! One of my favorite tarot techniques to help you navigate any block with any card is one I just called “sandwich technique.” If you’re struggling to understand the Page of Cups, you’d turn your deck so the images face you, and look for the Page. It most likely has a card in front of it and a card behind it, making a Page of Cups sandwich. Each of these cards help you break down what the Page of Cups might have to say that you’ve been missing. So Strength underneath would remind you that play and daydreams make us stronger, not weaker. The 7 of Pentacles on top may be asking how you could sow seeds for imaginative futures, and what the Page of Cups may show you through that.

You can also give the bottom or top “bread” cards specific meanings that you decide in advance. The card underneath could specifically mean “what I’m not seeing about this card” and the card on top could be “the most obvious takeaway, which is still correct”. Or the bottom one could mean “why you’re struggling with this card” and the top one could mean “how to connect to the card”.

For a Reversal sandwich, let’s try it both ways! Shuffle your deck, and identify what you want to know about reversals. If you don’t know where to start, you can use my basic ones:

• Bottom card: What in my life am I not seeing from the most helpful point of view?

• The reversed card: How that’s manifesting for me

• The top card: How to embody/get into the point of view needed.

You can certainly go more basic, like in my first description of Sandwich Technique. Literally just ask the cards what you need to know about reversals, and the cards on either side of the first reversal you get answers that question for you.

Hopefully this was helpful for y’all! Here’s some cool places to find me this month:

• Strike Theater for some improv shows I have coming up!
  I’m doing a set I created called First Date at Strike Theater on some Sundays, starting on April 26th. It will literally be me + a stranger/some strangers each time. We’ll do scenes based on first date tropes, using a suggestion from the audience. I’m excited! It should be very fun!

• In your earholes!
  Siri Vincent Plouff and I started a podcast called Chaos and Cunning and we are literally back with an episode on how to come back to witchcraft after a break launching tonight at midnight. Please listen wherever you listen to podcasts, including YouTube. You can also see transcripts for free on our Patreon, as well as, with simply $5 a month, get our mini-episodes that will happen every season as well.

• In your hands and/or on your computer screen!
  Basically, I am trying to remind you I write books, which you can snag wherever ya normally get books or right here.

  
  Additionally, I have a paid substack where weekly I go into the magical weather and goings on and then break the tarot down into advice for your practical life, creative life, and spiritual life for the week ahead. Monthly, I do an old-fashioned advice column meets modern occult sensibility in the titular DEAR TAROT advice column. (A gentle reminder for those who like to ask for a free issue to see if you like it that Substack allows you a one-time use free unlocking of a paid newsletter. Please use that! I put a lot of love, time and energy into this, and the constant demand to see it for free is a lot to keep up with.)

• At your tarot reading!
  I recently updated my April and May availability for Zoom readings or the email equivalent of a 1/2 hour or hour long reading. I also have seasonal specials exclusively for email readings specific to Spring!

• Over at social media for The Rebis
  To help print and email publication The Rebis promote their upcoming Moon issue, I’ve been helping them with Moon Musings and more for their social media.
  
  This is also your gentle reminder if you check that out and like the copy, that I could do the same for you! I can work with a variety of schedules and budgets so long as you also have some flexibility, so hit me up for your copy and social media needs via snow.cassandra@gmail.com .
  
  And also, get hype for the next issue of The Rebis on one of my very favorite tarot cards.

It’s a pretty quiet month here publicly, but I do have announcements about Tarot Study Hall, summer classes, another TiTteRPiGs production and HUGE writing news in coming months, so keep hanging out, and get your cards read in the meantime!

Love y’all.

Cassandra Snow

Welcome to March. Two of my very favorite people were born this month - my godkid and my oldest baby sister (on the same day, actually, though obviously many years apart!) so this is an exciting one for me. I also know that globally, socially, we are all going through it. On top of that, in comes Mercury Retrograde which we have been in since this past Thursday. That IS going to oversee a lot of our March. I shared this with my DEAR TAROT subscribers last week as Mercury began moving retrograde, and thought I’d copy and paste here. I send WEEKLY magical updates WITH advice from the cards on your practical, creative and spiritual lives on the Paid Substack, so if ya want that, sign up!

THE EXCERPT
Mercury, everybody’s favorite communication, STEM and travel pal is in Retrograde starting (this past) Thursday, meaning we are fully in its’ shadow as you’re reading this. I want to be clear: This is NOT a Mercury Rx fear-mongering account! I love Mercury in all of it’s forms, and in Retrograde this is actually a VERY powerful time for going back to backburnered projects and goals. While the ex who calls every Mercury Rx gets a bad rep, if you’ve been jonesing for contact from a long-lost friend or family member, instigate it in this time! Reconnection can be good, and if you know it’s just time or a reconnect is overdue, this retrograde kicks our butts into gear.

All of that being said, yeah, make sure you take your car or phone in AS SOON as it starts acting up. Expect Instagram to go down for a few hours like it does EVERY Mercury Retrograde. Don’t be surprised if you order vegan garlic breadsticks for your birthday party and extremely not vegan pepperoni sticks show up instead. (Based on a true story about my birthday party Saturday night.)

One successful Mercury appeasement spell I do when I can feel things going sideways in Rx is to mix hot water and honey, and pour it over a jar partially filled with lavender buds. Leave it outside so the planets can “see” it if possible, or in a windowsill. Shake it up every so often. Dump or consume when retrograde is done - but obviously it will be a STRONG taste so dilute it and use as coffee/tea sweetener or the base for a baked good.

Mercury gets blamed for a lot of things in its’ retrograde period, and a lot of it is justified. That being said, if you KNOW you’ve been putting things off, ignoring bugs in code you’re designing or whatever, think of this as the karmic cycle showing up to urge you to not do that again. I also want to add that if something is NOT about the things we put in Mercury’s realm like communication, transportation and tech mishaps…that’s not Mercury, babes. Something else is going on. I don’t think the planets really like when we blame our own life management skills or other people using their free will in ways we don’t like on them!

Wishing y’all nothing but love as we move through this, together.

In Cassandra World

• I have a show on Friday (3/6) at the Phoenix Theater in Minneapolis! It’s a DnD-ish Live Actual Play, with 4 of my all time favorite performers, people and collaborators. We are gonna be on MPR Art Hounds (!!!) so buy tix now! I promise I want ya there if you’re local or driveable - and as such, it is Pay What You Can, even online. Tickets here!

• I updated my Zoom and email availability for March! Remember, if you want email, that just means signing up for the appointment sends me the appropriate amount of money, and the time slot is my due date to get it to you. I also do have some email reading specials, but y’all will get a notice when I update those for March! The ones on there now are pretty evergreen, except for the winter one which those of us in MN are still IN, lol. The spread is changing to spring soon though.

• I’m gonna be at Paganicon again! I’m just on the one panel this time, about witchcraft beyond gender (and other) binaries. It’s some local queers putting it together this year and I think it’s going to be quite lovely. I also will be doing some book signing, and I’ll include those details when I send your Spring Email Special newsletter because I um. Do not have them yet. That is the weekend of the 20th here in Minneapolis.

• Siri Vincent Plouff and I have a podcast! Chaos & Cunning: A Magical Podcast at the Crossroads of Magic and Daily Living. Please listen wherever you listen to podcasts, and if ya wanna support us on Patreon, you are certainly encouraged to do that! We are doing basically EVERYTHING ourselves so like. All support is rad.

• As always, please buy my books. Tell people how cool they are. Etc.

Sending y’all so much love and support. I know we are all going through it and truly wish you the most joy you can find right now.

XO,

Cassandra Snow

I have absolutely adored writing DEAR TAROT, a monthly Q&A advice column and weekly advice-for-all post from the tarot cards focusing on our creative, spiritual and practical lives. Here is a sample of my newsletter that kicks off February, and if you want access to the whole thing (I have practical advice per card as well as spiritual advice per card after the creative listed here) and future ones, it is now only $5 a month at deartarot.substack.com

Before we get into that, some ICYMI:

• My DnD Live Actual Play was moved to March 6th to honor the Economic Blackout. Come see me and some of my most beloved collaborators in TTRPG, theatre and improv spaces!

• Siri Vincent Plouff and I have been banging out podcasts at Chaos and Cunning: A Witchcraft Podcast at the Crossroads of Magic and Daily Living. We just re-dropped a really juicy interview with Kelly-Ann Maddox! It’s up wherever you listen to podcasts.

• I’m open for readings! And have a full online scheduler!

Now, with that, here is the first 2/3 of the piece going out on Monday at Dear Tarot

DEAR TAROT - WEEK OF FEBRUARY 2ND
This month, for the weekly advice for all, I’m working with Jessica Roux’ Tarot Of the Woodland Wardens. I got it for Yule and it is already one of my very favorite decks, combining fairy tale & folklore with nature-based spirituality. One reason I love Roux’s work though is that it is very fresh and “today”. It does not assume we all have a forest in our backyard, and instead, helps us connect as if we do.

With that, let’s jump into what February holds for us. Magically, we are coming off of yesterday’s Imbolc. As a Brigid devotee, Imbolc is a holy day for me, and one where I consider apotheosis, assimilation of cultures, and the pain of forced conversion. It’s also one I turn to for creative inspiration, as well as protection of my home, hearth and child. If those things do not resonate for you right now, that’s okay. This card celebrates - well, not Spring exactly, but the idea that Spring always comes back and that we can find it’s love and comforts even in prolonged dark days.

Yet the magic of the month ahead does not stop here. February is also the start of Pisces season AND YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE IS THE START OF PISCES SEASON?! MY BIRTHDAY! If you’ve read Queering Your Craft you know that I take birthdays very seriously. If you haven’t, here’s what you need to know: I take birthdays very seriously. By which I mean, celebrating the birth of myself, my loved ones, people I look up to? What could be more magical than that?! While your birthday is likely not this month, this is the month I remind people of birthday magic, for obvious reasons.

Valentine’s Day is an oft-aligned so-called Hallmark Holiday and if you don’t like it, that is fine! You can skip to the next paragraph! I could get into the myths and historicity of martydom and massacres here, or I could talk about Valentine’s Day as a compromise move away from Lupercalia. In the end, while these things matter, what matters the most is the centuries of lore building into modern day. Valentine’s Day is a day for love, including platonic and familial love. I stayed single for a long time, and I’ve always had friends who are ace and aro. It never hit my notice that Valentine’s Day was a day a lot of people are surly about until after college, because my mom brought home balloons for me and my sister ever Valentine’s Day for growing up. Additionally, my childhood best friend and I also exchanged gifts. I remember giving her a Sweet Valley Twins book about secret valentines, as well as candy one year. It’s not all about gifts or spending money though. This is a wonderful day for extra quality time, saying things that make your people really feel seen, and overall celebrating the myriad of love bestowed upon us day to day from each other and the gods & spirits. This makes February a prime month for artistic collaborations, sex/love/friendship magic, and showing your devotion to the spirits or gods you fuck with the most.

SO, keeping all of that in mind, let’s jump into where this leads the tarot to guide us this month.

We got TEN OF PENTACLES, NINE OF WANDS & ACE OF CUPS

This week has us focused on family (please remember I am ALWAYS talking about ALL types of families, including and especially found/non-traditional/etc.) and community. Of course this 10 of Pentacles is what I was going to pull. I write this newsletter from Minneapolis, MN, which is under siege by federal agents hellbent on terrorizing my neighbors. Yet my neighbors and I have done nothing but show our deep love, commitment and roots to each other in all of this time. Through all of this, Minneapolis has been clear: we want you to support us in this time of extra duress. But we ALSO want you to learn our lessons of how to build and show up for community from us. We are proving that this is how you defeat evil: showing up for everyone else.

That being said, all of these things DO push us out of our comfort zones. The Nine of Wands shows a lot of internal friction midweek, but if we push past it and just do the brave shit, we end up at this Ace of Cups where our emotions and love overflow everywhere. The Nine of Wands forces us to do it scared, reminds us that bravery is acting or speaking in spite of fear and not without it, and that we are going to have fucked up nervous systems right now because (points at literally any headline). Midweek forces our hand to live or values or do not - and what happens in coming weeks for you does build on those moments.

The Ace of Cups does get a wildly sunny rep. One of my favorite takes was actually Melissa Cynova’s Insta post from a million years ago showing the traditional fountain-esque Ace of Cups, and the caption said something to the effect of “Everyone sees this card as a sure bet for love or feelings, but all I see is water, water everywhere and a big mess I have to clean up.” Like most tarot interpretations, both cases are true. Love is messy - especially the devoted love we have of neighbors, community and family right now. It’s messy BUT IT’S ALSO WORTH IT. That is both the curse and promise of this card, and the general energy as we go into the weekend.

CREATIVE ADVICE FROM THE CARDS
Ten Of Pentacles
You may need some creative input as the week kicks off, and your usual solitary MO is not likely to cut it. Call some friends to come over and watch then dissect a movie or show, or go to a book club. Hit up a museum with the squad, or just get together for an art date meant to be generative and soul-filling. Make sure to talk about art/writing/technique/etc as you go.

Nine of Wands
When your energy is frazzled and you are starting to wear out, it may not be time to pause. It may actually be time to push through, refusing to let the self-sabotage so many creatives have when it comes to abandoning projects in the end stages of the rougher drafts win out. Dig deep, summon up your courage, and finish that piece!

Ace of Cups
I would actually suggest taking a creative break this weekend! The Ace of Cups is about art, and if you have a piece ready to show, be read or seen by others, or otherwise “out there”, trust it to do it’s thing! Let it thrive. Don’t feel the need to push or market too hard through the weekend.

For ALL of us, even if that’s not true, the Ace of Cups reminds us that creativity is also the backbone of the lives we’ve built. We literally create the path we are walking with every step. We essentially are all world-builders - but even for the most actively creative of us, we need to hit pause and simply live in the worlds we built from time to time.

Again, if you like this, subscribe at just $5 a month here on Substack or over at Patreon. Yes, that is a price drop. We live and we learn!

XO

Cassandra Snow

When I was thinking about my writing career in tandem with my tarot career, it came to mind that what I often wanted to read for fun and to further my understanding of tarot and how it can show up for people, was an old-fashioned advice column through a modern tarot lens. It is from here that my latest monthly offering, DEAR TAROT, right here on substack was born.

I wanted to give people more than a monthly post as well as try to sure up some additional income (because capitalism is crushing us all right now, and I am in constant distress about ensuring I have enough to take care of my sweet baby) and that’s when I looked at my current offerings. A BIG piece of my yearly transition readings is offering Practical, Spiritual and Creative advice for each season. Each week, until now, I hopped on to social media to offer prompts from the tarot cards for the week ahead. Mixing these ideas together I came up with the roots for the fruit of DEAR TAROT advice column to grow from: a weekly substack offering Creative, Spiritual and Practical advice for all of us as we navigate the coming week in an ever changing world.

I love pulling back the curtain on process like this but I’ll be honest: the main purpose of this letter is to get you to subscribe to DEAR TAROT. I genuinely think it is valuable and important, and I absolutely love writing it. Yet for that, it is taking off QUITE slowly. Money has not been going well and I feel awful as I am unable to financially contribute to the incredible mutual aid movement flooding Minneapolis, the home that I love. There are two ways to secure your access to these offerings: one is simply going to deartarot.substack.com to subscribe. You can also subscribe to my Patreon at the $7 or above level. Whatever you’re more comfortable with is great.

If you have been getting DEAR TAROT and love it, I’d love to hear from you about what you love about it and why, so that I can help spread the word via my social media and the various Discords I am in. I appreciate you all sharing this space with me SO MUCH, and I’m excited to hopefully keep writing these weekly articles as well as the monthly advice column. This first month’s advice column was pretty juicy; someone wrote in looking for advice on keeping the faith when it feels like your spells aren’t working and WHEW did the tarot have Things to Say. If you subscribe, you’ll also get into my Discord at no additional cost, where there is always something fun and funky going on.

Sending you all so much love!

XO,

Cassandra Snow

PS: I am also open for readings and have email reading specials going on, as always!

PPS: My books are evergreen for sale, but given what we are all going through, some spiritual takes on anti-fascism are likely exactly what you need right now!

PPPS: My Live DnD Actual Play got moved to March 6th out of solidarity with the widescale economic protest happening in Minneapolis. Help us sell out the Phoenix!

Today’s newsletter is going to be short and informational, but don’t worry - in spite of the announcement I’m about to make, newsletter subscribers at the free level will still get monthly or twice monthly newsletters from me, often with lots of writing samples and bonus material from my books, Patreon, and social media. I’m just doing A LOT to set myself up for a year of more writing and ATTEMPTING to pay down some debt, and I’m also still sorting out what magic, mischief and myths I’ve been weaving personally that I want to share publicly and which pieces I do not.

SO YAY, HAPPY ANNOUNCEMENT TIME!

I am a launching a SECOND, paid newsletter called DEAR TAROT. This publication is a monthly (for now) old-fashioned advice column meets modern day tarot witchery written by yours truly, but obviously the answers are all filtered through the lens of a tarot card I pull to answer your question and go as deep on as humanly possible on to do so. DEAR TAROT will also show up in your inbox bright and early (almost) every Monday to give you tarot-fueled advice for your creative, spiritual and practical life for the week ahead. If you follow me on socials, that will look like a deeper, remixed version of my free Monday posts with prompts for the week ahead.

You SHOULD be able to see the new newsletter and subscribe at either a monthly, annual or founding level. I need a nice mix of all three in order to sustain the work, so please pick the one you are more comfortable with. If you support me on Patreon at $7 or above, you do not have to do both. These posts will show up for you on Patreon as well. If you support me on Patreon at a lower level, feel free to bump up whenever you are comfortable to join the fun! The first newsletter hits Substack and Patreon THIS Monday and I am very nerv-cited! If you can’t find that link naturally here, that’s alright. I got ya right here.

OTHER STUFF:

• New year, new online scheduler + payment processor! (That’s how that saying goes, right? RIGHT??!) Come get your cards read via Zoom!

• I AM GOING TO BE PERFORMING IN A TTRPG ACTUAL PLAY ON THE 23RD! If you’re Twin Cities or driveable, come see a very funny, very heartfelt show. Tickets here.

• ICYMI: Me and Siri Vincent Plouff launched our podcast, Chaos and Cunning which is a witchcraft podcast at the crossroads of magic and daily living. It’s up wherever you listen to Podcasts and also, youtube!

• Never a bad time to buy my books.

• My baby turns 1 on the 17th. (Goofy grin.) I’m so proud of her and ever more in love with her with every passing day.

Thank you so much y’all, and I hope you have a wonderful year. I’m very excited to share mine with you.

XOXOXOXOX,

Cassandra Snow

Hello wonderful newsletter subscribers!

While I may have been raised in the Bible belt where I learned and loved heat magic & swamp witchery, and while I have ALWAYS been a Halloween superfan who become a Samhain devotee in my older witchcraft life, I’m also a huge freakin’ evangelist of winter and all of the magic therein. Some VERY basic magical theory I hold true emphasizes this:

• Snow is precipitation; alchemized water droplets turned into ice. If our emotions, art, and long-term intuition are represented by and expressed in rain, the alchemization of nature makes snow incredible work for “freezing” or composting your own difficult emotions. This can mean magical aids to cool yourself off towards a lukewarm lover or friend, or turning your Big Feelings into art or do-gooding towards those who deserve some good.

• As I was looking for this Gilmore Girls screenshot and quote to share with you, I was reminded of the magic theory of layering your spells. In other words, you start with a type of magic that will support your work - candle or knot magic, a chaos ritual, etc. You add a couple of correspondences for your intention, and you use your intention to write an incantation for the spell. Each thing you add layers the spell, helping it work on multiple levels.
  
  I wrote in Queering Your Craft about using clothing for daily magic and winter is quite literally about layered fashion. This is more true the colder your climate, but I feel pretty confident it’s true everywhere. One way to syncretize these theories is by choosing an intention for the day with your clothes, then adding your cold-weather accessories with the same intentions and the intention to layer the spell.
  
  For example, the other day I put on my favorite green Holiday season dress to connect with the color magic of the season, hoping for abundance through the winter but primarily using the color of evergreens to fortify me magically and connect to evergreens. I then added leggings with a leaf design on part of them, and a green and brown scarf as a belt. The belt served two magical purposes: amplifying the primary outfits intentions and also reminding me throughout the day to be resourceful, use what I have, and get creative. I also wore my black coat, black being one of my all-purpose magical correspondences. (While known for banishing, it is also the color many of the deities I work with enjoy being called through, so for me it has that all-purpose effect.)

• ‘Tis the season for Kitchen Witchery, especially! This Yuletide season I have a Yule meal with friends planned for this weekend. I have a baking day with my queerplatonic partner planned of beloved family recipes. I have a new cookbook that I’m obsessed with (thank you, Dad and Bonus mom if you’re reading this! You know how much I love America’s Test Kitchen and am excited to use this one). If you also like playing in the kitchen for witchcraft AND ALSO like using this few weeks for deep winter or general new year and life prep, take an inventory of the magical ingredients in your kitchen. Incorporate some of them into planned meals and treats, and allow the rest to speak to you as you cook or bake, helping you design spells in the moment.

If you’re into this, I’ve published a couple spells and formulas on my Patreon, so head over there to see that.

Other Cassandra Sundries:

• I still have Yearly Transition Readings available! The price has DROPPED this year because I fully understand where we all are right now to $350 for new clients and $300 for return or regular clients. Snag here (or email or DM on any socials to get the discounted rate). These readings help you process 2025, have the best time possible in this weird “between years” liminal space AND prep for 2026 with insights and advice.

• I totally understand if that is still too much! I have the three portions of this one slimmed down for discounted seasonal specials - including a card-a-season reading for 2026 still. You can also see me on Zoom or Moonlight to help with any of this.

• GIFT CERTIFICATES ARE AVAILABLE FOR ANY PRICE I OFFER OF TAROT READINGS, or for 1:1 lessons or consultations (which are $150). Please email snow.cassandra@gmail.com to set those up.

• You know what else makes incredible holiday gifts? BOOKS, BAYBEE. I created 5 (!!!). You have until the 22nd to grab a Fat Folks Tarot Guidebook which are only available here. You can grab my 4 from Weiser/Red Wheel literally anytime. I STRONGLY suggest my latest two: Lessons From the Empress for the creative soul in your life, and Tarot In Other Words for tarot lovers of any level looking for something different than a card-by-card tarot book.

• Finally, I HAVE A DATE AND TICKET LINK FOR THE DND LIVE SHOW I AM CREATING AND PERFORMING IN. January 23rd, at Phoenix Theater, 7:30 PM. Sliding scale tickets because art is for everyone! But please pay the highest level that feels good to you when possible because we uh. Do not have a Plan B for paying ourselves or the other performers.

Hope y’all have a lovely and magical week! See ya soon XOXOXO.

My hard commitments to honor Yule and Solstice feel stronger and more urgent.

My NEW commitment to making “Christmas” a celebration of winter itself feels exciting and fresh, something to really bring a child into easily. This feels different to me than Yule, which is a celebration of darkness or light, depending on who you talk to. (I tend to honor both.)

One thing co-parent and I have done the last few gift-giving cycles is focus on what’s important to each of us by breaking gifts down to Wear/Read/Want/Need with um. An added category for dice because we are, in fact, dice goblins. We feel strongly about bringing Baby up this way too where gifts from us or for the holidays are concerned. If she’s not into TTRPGs then her Dice will simply be an additional game or toy. Perhaps the category becomes "play”, you know?

But so much of what we are doing this year is not about gift giving it all. We have snow play days planned.

We have Yule festivities planned.

We have a baking day planned where we bake a bunch of beloved dead’s favorite baking recipes. (My yearning for sitting at my grandmother’s kitchen table and helping her roll out dough is still so sharp, fresh and painful every December even though she has been gone for several years.)

We’re hosting a NYE Open House for fun, play and intention-setting.

We’re going to non-religious affiliated lights displays and planning holiday movie marathons.

We’re going to new events in the city not at all connected to this to celebrate newness and the cities we live in or near.

I think this is a year we are all trying to grapple with what we’ve let “Christmas” become, and I feel really good about our plan to blend and synchronize various important things to us spiritually and emotionally. I’m telling you all of this so you’ll give yourself permission to do whatever the hell you want. Make new traditions, or try new stuff, or just fucking use your critical extra days off to rest and recover. Opt out entirely. THIS IS YOUR TIME AND YOUR LIFE, no matter what. You don’t have to do the things I’m doing, but you can. As long as it’s what you want to do.

Keep reading for current offering info for the holiday season for yourself or others!

• Of course, the best gifts in my humble opinion are BOOKS. I am a 4 time published author and that’s rad but I’ll be so for real. My last two books have NOT paid out, and Tarot In Other Words is not even close in spite of being my best project if I may say so myself. That being said, they all make THE BEST GIFTS and Weiser and I work hard to keep them under 20 bucks so this year they’re an extra great option. (Buy books from the shop that aren’t just buy me too though. I get a lil’ kickback from Bookshop which I frankly desperately need right now.)

• If you like my writing, want to connect more, or are getting serious about tarot or witchcraft in the new year, I can not suggest my Patreon highly enough. You can also gift a subscription if that doesn’t describe you so much as someone you may know!

• Yearly Transition Readings are here again and I have NINE still available for Dec/Jan. These are $350 for new clients, and $300 for returning and regular clients. (Please do contact me directly instead of using the link for returning pricing.)

• If you can’t do the full Yearly Transition but want a sneak peek at the new year, that is also rad. For just $60 you can get a 5 card snapshot of what 2026 might hold for you and how you can best use each season/quarter of the year.

• Also available in this vein is my 2025 Rewind reading, which helps you process the bizarreness this year was for so many of us.

• New to this year completely, there’s also a Messages From the Moon reading which works as a Yule reading combined with the section of the Yearly Transition Reading that talks about how the transitions between years do not start and end when the calendar does. In other words, it covers what’s ongoing, what carries with you into the year, and what DOES have an end but the end is not the NYE ball drop.

• Unrelated to the holidays, but I’ve started offering Oracle-of-Delphi style Oracle Deck readings on my website as well. By this, I mean you get the messages the cards give you! No questions, no guidance. Just 3 cards, vibes, and hopefully messages that hit on something you really needed to hear. This week I’m using the Woodland Wardens for these, as well as Seasons of the Witch Yule. You can choose or I can, whatever!

• ICYMI:

  • HELLO YES, MANNY AND I ARE CO-PRODUCING A DND ACTUAL PLAY LIVE SHOW HERE IN MINNEAPOLIS!
    January 23rd!
    It’s at the Phoenix Theater which is the last place we ever did a Gadfly show before the pandemic killed that, so it feels really lovely to return with something even more fun and frankly, way less stressful to get up and running.
    TICKETS FOR SALE HERE and the way I would weep with joy if someone got me tickets to a cool ass event like this for holiday giving! Grab your own and like. 10 for your 10 closest beloveds, lol.

  • Winter Season Cycles Tarot Readings are up for sale.

  • You can finally get a Zoom reading with me by scheduling on my website instead of just hoping emails or DMs get through. I also have full hours available on Moonlight as well as quick lil’ Async readings.

  • I’m going to be doing tarot readings LIVE on Saturday as well as selling my books and Tarot-to-Go readings at the Threads of Becoming art opening here in the North Loop neighborhood of Minneapolis.

If you made it to the end I love you! Wishing you the best, this month and always.

XO

Today’s newsletter is quick. I have had the time of my life doing my email reading tarot specials in October but they were always meant to be October only! If you’ve got something bugging or haunting you, want to find the werewolf within, or are ready to be the slasher in your own life to make way for the new, NOW IS THE TIME. These come off the website on WEDNESDAY so do not miss your chance!

As a bonus, you may notice when you head to that link that I now have a Zoom scheduling option again!!! Would love to see you for a traditional 45 minute Zoom, especially as we are ending the year sooner than seems feasibly possible yet here we are what the heck even is time I swear…

OKAY back on track. I am still sorting out what end of year offerings are going to be and regrettably, do not currently have many special events lined up for November. I absolutely love doing my normal Yearly Transition Readings though so newsletter and Patreon ONLY can hit me up as of now to get those scheduled.

ONE very fun and exciting thing - I am Queer Historian for History Is Queer Improv Show again! This one is on November 9th as part of the Queer and Funny Improv Festival. Come laugh and be in community with me if you’re in the Twin Cities! I think I’m focusing on disaster queers like Hans Christian Anderson this time, so it should be super silly and fun which queers absolutely need!

As a reminder, everything is bonkers right now and my co-parent unexpectedly lost 3/4 of their income from a gig that had been floating them for years. The best way to help me long term is to buy my books. I know that sounds so goofy, but sales ensure future books get picked up, and new books are always a fresh chance to pay down CC debt from being alive if nothing else. If you want to help the very most, snag them here. Consider them for everyone you love for the holidays! Anywhere you buy books is fine if you don’t want to use that link though.

If you just really want to help even more, please feel free to send me an end of year tip via Venmo at Cassandra-Snow for any newsletters or social media posts that particularly impacted you or, of course, support me monthly at Patreon. This month on Patreon we looked at the interconnectivity of kink and horror movies as well as some lesser known Halloween folklore and anecdotes so it is very cool and worth it in my quite-biased opinion!

That’s it from me today. Sending you all so, so much love as we go into November. I know this is a hard one for so many of us, and I also know that community is the way forward. Please be kind and generous to others this winter if you are in a place to be so, and please do not be afraid to reach out for help or even just connection if you are not. I mean it when I say I’m sending you love.

XO.

Today’s post came to me when I was plotting for my IRL Queering the Tarot 201 class which got moved (due to my own ding-dang COVID infection last month) and was focusing on reversals. If you’re SUPER new to tarot, a Reversal just means a card comes out upside down in your reading. To some people, this means nothing - they right it and keep going. To many of us, these cards are special, deserving emphasis or reevaluation of our card understanding.

For me, that journey began early on. I would occasionally get reversals, and when I looked them up, I’d instantly feel like what I was reading just wasn’t right. Often, a tarot book would refer to a card in reverse as having the “opposite” meaning of the card. As I got to know the tarot (and as my relationship with it has grown over the past two decades+) that has come to mean literally nothing to me. If I am pushing for a world beyond binaries, a culture where we don’t put people into boxes, and a language full of nuance…what the hell does “opposite” even mean?!

This, of course, is not every writing on card reversals. There’s a lot of really beautiful, more in-depth working and thinking about them, obviously. I am not the first to think anything, and to be frank, neither are you. The job of a writer is not to constantly be churning out new ideas (how exhausting) but to put language and romance, in their own words, in their own way, into something so that others might also resonate with the ideas anew. Barbara Moore, Mary K. Greer, my own brilliant friend Siri Vincent Plouff have all waxed academically poetic about reversals in books and essays, among many others.

This is great! It also means that I had to dig deeper, finding my own way to express what Reversals mean to me as a queer, fat, disabled, kind-of femme, and here is where (for now) I have landed. I’m going to use the example of single-card readings like daily pulls or when you’re looking for a quick, one-card answer as my examples, but we’ll be getting deeper and more complex than that in my upcoming Queering the Tarot 201 class.

SO. Let’s say it’s Tuesday. You wanna know what the day holds for you or what you should focus on. You pull a card.

It’s upright. Great! You know enough to interpret the card through the lens of today’s lessons, struggles, joys and events. That is so important while we are finding what my therapist calls our “growth edges”. We need the myopic focus to chew on, talk about, view things through. It is how we learn, think and evolve.

If you do inner work for long enough though, in any capacity, there comes a point where we have learned what we are meant to about a card in this cycle of our life. There are no further messages for us, and yet the card comes out - but in Reverse. This is, I believe, when we are meant to “yes, and…” the tarot! You take the messages of the card and think about the boundaries, the edges, the scope presented and then because the card is reversed you think about how to push those boundaries or edges further out. You seek widening your scope, and tearing down or moving beyond the inherent structure in the card.

There is a time for structure or something like it, let me be clear. That time is when we are coming to, coming of age, moving on a new journey and trying to find our way. We need to know which paths in the road lead right to the Wolf’s Den, and which paths lead to our destination. Well, I don’t know about y’all, but I am 40 years old. I don’t know everything and I never will (thank the Gods - that is way too much responsibility for me), but I also have my handle on the metaphorical woods in a lot of areas of my life. I don’t know what happens if I stray from the path, but I know where the Wolf’s Den is, which means I can be smart enough to avoid that on my lil’ walk.

Something else could happen to me on the path. I could run into a snake, or a cult, or fall into a big hole. I could also discover a breathtaking waterfall, a field of lushly scented flowers, or a whole bunch of surprise edible woods-snacks/gifts. (Think mushrooms, acorns, edible flowers, wild herbs, etc.) I will never find these reasons to be alive, to be grateful, to thrive if I don’t allow edges and “supposed to” to blur and fall away. I just won’t.

If the card is upright, stick to the path it outlines. It’s trying to get you where you need to go.

If it’s Reversed? Fuck it, we ball - but we ball specifically to learn more about ourselves, the world around us, and the (literal or) metaphorical woods we are traversing through. A Reversal can be a permission slip to push beyond what you think you’re capable of or even want. It can be about busting down walls/ceilings/barriers. It can be a sign that it is time to break from tradition, break from the straight and narrow (of which I am proudly neither, LOL), run amuck or wander not-quite-aimlessly but not overly directed either. It means moving not with discipline and determination, but with the lessons of the card and/or our destination in mind but no real timeline or sense of societal conditioning to keep us simply moving ahead and not asking questions. Maybe, just maybe, when your tarot cards come up in reverse it’s time to get a little freaky, erase the outline of the image at hand, and just see what happens if you move through the world. After all, these times are often when we learn, grow and change the most.

News, Reminders and Announcements For the Month:

• My IRL Queering the Tarot 201 on reversals, card combos & spreads was moved due to my own ding-dang COVID last month and is now October 16th from 6:30-8:30 PM. Grab a seat here if you’re local or local-ish.

• Because of that STUDY HALL is the following week, the 23rd from 7-8:30/9 PM. That one is on ZOOM and I will try to upload the video to a private YouTube Link for attendees. Last time, technology failed me and that video is still floating in the ether somewhere, but in either case, coming live if you’re able is way radder anyway so grab a spot to that right here!

• Shiny new autumn and spooky season tarot email specials are available! Grab ‘em here to get into next week’s batches. (And beyond, if you wanna wait for whatever reason! The spooky season ones come down 11/5. The autumn ones stay up until much closer to Winter.)

• Buy my books if you haven’t! Rate them 5 stars wherever you can do that! Write me fancy reviews/testimonials/etc and generally tell your pals!

• Unfortunately I can not offer any discounts to this one because it’s through a partner org, but I am doing an ONLINE session of Queering the Narrative In Prose which I am deeply thrilled about through Loft Literary here in Minneapolis. Those seats are here, so please join us!

Sending you all so much love. The world seems terrible as ever, but you remain wonderful. Please don’t forget that.

XO,

Cassandra Snow

Most weeks on my social media (find me at mx.cassandra.snow almost everywhere, and without the dots at Bluesky) and in my discord, I pull three tarot cards at random and offer some prompts from the tarot for your week. I use these both in journaling and in conversations with my queerplatonic partner; they can also be used as creative prompts or just as something to think on or cast spells on throughout the week.

I'm feeling compelled this week to share the ones I came up with from The Dark Goddess Tarot. This is both a share from my heart for us to all mull over, but it's also, admittedly, a plea for more Patreon subscribers who, again, have Discord access to these every week. So here we go! This week we got The World, The Sun, and the 3 of Fire. Prompts are under the photo.

1 - We got two Major Arcana this week. Where do you feel like you don't actually have a lot of control right now and how does it feel? Are there places it can be liberating instead of scary? What supports do you need for that shift?

2 - The story the cards are telling is one of an ending, some joy & then idea generation rooted in play, sensuality and passion for what comes next. Where and how is that playing out for you? And play with it! What CAN that mean for you?

3 - We always tend to get sad about endings even if they're good but this one is a full-on CELEBRATION. What makes it so for you?

4 - I tend to read the 3 of Fire as a card of idea generation but also a need for novelty and fulfilling whatever your version of wanderlust is. Name 3 things you can do without emptying your bank account to meet those needs this week!

Xoxoxox.

OTHER SEPTEMBER SUNDRIES:

• I'm teaching IRL Queering the Tarot 201 at Moonstone on September 18th, 6:30 PM. This one is gonna be on queered up card combos, reading spreads and writing your own. The following week will be a Zoom Study Hall FREE for attendees with exercises and activities to help you find your way through the cards. Both class and study hall stand alone! So if you're local come to one or both, if you're not, come to Study Hall! Links here.

• My Summer Tarot Email Reading Specials are DISAPPEARING THIS WEEK. Don't miss out on summermaxxing or processing the season because you waited too long!

• I'm open for regular Tarot Readings via Zoom or Email for $75 per half hour. Just email me at snow.cassandra@gmail.com or DM literally anywhere to set up. Same pricing at Moonlight if you also want a digital deck to play with. (There are also pre-recorded 15 minute readings for only $25 there!!!)

• Please buy my books! I'm finally getting some meetings, etc for a new project and the number one deciding factor for established authors ends up being pre-existing sales a lot of the time. Please help me keep doing this work by snagging copies - whether those are paperback or digital wherever ya buy those things OR audio book where available.

Thanks so much y'all and I hope ya have the best week we can have these days.

Hello wonderful newsletter readers!

With the release of my latest book project, Tarot In Other Words, readers get to see tarot history through a queer lens. While my career has largely spanned being gay and being a tarot nerd, rarely have I gotten to go into depth and remind y’all that I’m in no way the first person to combine queerness and esotericism in organic ways.

Let’s start where most tarot students are told to start: The Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck. Artist of said deck, Pamela Colman Smith, was rumored to be queer in her lifetime, and in fact died leaving a female life-long “roommate and companion” who was almost certainly her long-term partner. There’s a lot to make of the fact that the AE Waite’s writings on the deck they created together at times see a disconnect between her art and his words. The way he describes the Two of Swords looks nothing like what she illustrated, for example. There’s a million possible reasons for this, and a few that we can name more confidently. The way I’ve always seen it is that her life experience was absolutely less myopic than his. Waite was primarily and almost exclusively influenced by the Golden Dawn, a historical Hermetic order. Smith’s was influenced by the same spiritual beliefs but also by her many travels, her theatre and visual art and her lived experiences as a woman (and likely a queer one at that).

While Smith illustrated the most sold, beloved and mimicked deck, and the one most tarot books reference most often, we get further queer influence when we jump ahead to tarot’s present day popularity. Tarot’s current trends are about reading the cards for self-discovery and self-awareness, through an almost psychological lens. While I still consider myself a psychic and a fortune teller, most clients that come in through my personal business as a tarot reader are looking to break their own bad patterns and move towards something more truly themselves.

This is because of the late, great Rachel Pollack. Her book 78 Degrees of Wisdom is as enduring as Smith’s illustrations, and it’s this book that revolutionized tarot as a tool for contemplation and processing while maintaining it’s spiritual roots. Pollack was transgender and a lesbian, and has never made a secret of either. Much like Smith was an occult artist AND a more generalized theatre artist, Pollack also dabbled and was known for her comic book writing and visual art. (A different thread for a different time comes up here, which is the connection where esotericism, queerness and art all meet.) Her takes on tarot are again colored by her art AND her lived experience, and her lived experience was deeply queer in a way that many of us are extremely familiar with today. After all, we only lost her in 2023 and she spoke, taught and wrote right up until the end.

When I first started reading, learning and writing about tarot I felt like I was often re-writing or naming contrasts to what we expected or thought we knew of the tarot. While certainly the tarot is a living, breathing, evolving tool and spiritual organism, and this remains a function of every living tarot lover today, I’ve spent the last several years working to excavate the innate queerness of the tarot cards and bring them to the center. Patriarchy, Christian supremacy and capitalism have done a number on erasing alternative viewpoints in the tarot, just like they have everything else, but those perspectives are inherent in tarot’s history and application. Old school occultism had a lot of bad ideas - but the reason we are here talking about it today still is because they also had some really GOOD ideas that have been whitewashed or downright erased through escalatingly right wing cultural sensibilities.

So how can you connect with the innate queerness even in the oldest of tarot decks? You may not like my answer, but like so many things occult, the deck contains a million different mysteries that have to be seen, digested and incorporated slowly over time by living a life in alignment with your holiest goals, desires, and values. It is from this place that we begin collaborating with the tarot deck, working as a team. We learn tarot then by living the tarot, and by studying how to apply our existing lived experiences (spiritual and otherwise) to the cards.

In other words, go slow.
Learn a card at a time.
Only add card combos or spreads when you feel ready.
Really spend time embodying tarot, and letting it embody you.
Then, just when you think you’ve got it down, it’s time to start over.

Tarot is not something you can learn or master once. (I would argue that VERY, VERY little in this world is meant to simply be learned once, but that’s a different rant for a different time.) It is something you return to, having learned different lessons each time. The cards, and most of our mysteries, are, ahem. A bit like an onion. Or an ogre. (This is a Shrek reference if you didn’t know!) They are layered, with each layer tasting and behaving slightly differently depending on what’s going on around it. We need to understand the tarot in the context of the time of its’ creation, but it sustains so prevalently to this day because it is applicable no matter your context today as well.

In taking our time and coming to the cards as our most authentic selves, the queerness in the cards jumps forward eventually - think of those Magic Eye posters from the 90s, but slow that process down by days, weeks or even longer.

That being said, while mysteries are personal stories and lessons we need to see unravel, the context of the cards and the world has always been one of interdependence and community. Sometimes you need someone to help you understand what you’re looking at. Sometimes you need a guide or a teacher who’s been working with these cards for a decade or, if I may gently suggest, multiple decades. That brings us to the general theme of many people’s Augusts: Back to (Tarot) School.

Lucky for you, I am such an instructor and this late Summer, I’ve teamed up with Moonstone Minneapolis (a REAL cute, quirky metaphysical store here) to bring you TWO “Queering the Tarot” sessions. These will be in-person experiences, and cost Sliding Scale $20-30 bucks. You can snag your seat to one or both right here, or you can email or DM me literally anywhere for pay info to pay closer to the $20 end.

Via Zoom, I’m personally hosting a Queering the Tarot Study Hall a week after each class as well. If you haven’t been, Tarot Study Hall is a lightly guided, come-as-you-are not-quite-class that gives you some light structure and guidance to practice specific tarot skillsets. Study Halls are a flat $20, but if you support me monthly or attend the prerequisite Tarot Class the week ahead, there is NO additional charge for you. This probably reads confusing, so here is the full schedule with more information:

1. August 14th, 6:30-8:30 PM CST
   IRL Queering the Tarot 101 CLASS at Moonstone
   This 101 session will break down tarot’s biggest stories, shed insight on the consistent structure of the deck including explaining the suits, Courts and numbers, and answer all those little questions that stump us all at the start of our journey.
   

   

2. August 21st, 7 PM CST via ZOOM
   Queering the Tarot 101 Study Hall
   I’ll have designed some exercises and spreads to give you quality time to both DIY a queered card understanding AND excavate some written-over longstanding queer truths. This will be 7-8:30 CST.
   

   

3. September 18th, 6:30-8:30 PM CST

   IRL Queering the Tarot 201 CLASS at Moonstone.
   This 201 will cover queer takes on how to read card combinations, tarot spreads, and maintain a sustainable but evolving tarot practice.

   

4. September 25th, 7 PM CST via ZOOM

   Queering the Tarot 201 Study Hall.
   I’ll give you some exercises and spreads to practice reading more in-depth and with more cards on the table.

Links are embedded into those descriptions, but if ya wanna sign up for both classes more easily, there’s a spot for that too. If you wanna do JUST the Study Halls, you are totally welcome! You can easily snag spots at both of those right here. These are included for monthly supporters AND class attendees but everyone else will need to pay and reserve a spot.

Please note I have FIVE FULL scholarships to any session of your choice (hell, you could even snag a seat to all four and leave me with just one). I’m doing honor system for these, so BIPOC & Disabled queers to the front, please! But please do not hesitate to reach out if finances are a barrier for you in this.

One final note on these classes:
Moonstone has generously offered me space for book signings and tarot readings whenever I want to start ahead of each class (!!!). Even if you’re not coming to class but want to buy my books and/or get your already-purchased books signed, I will be there at 6:00 on 8/14 and 9/18 doing that.

If you’d like to make an IRL tarot appointment for those days, email or DM me and we will do that! Readings will start at $40 for 15 minutes.

As we slip into August TOMORROW, I am so excited to bring these offerings to you, along with a couple of others:

• I am reading at the FINAL Cake Fat Splash of 2025 THIS Saturday the 2nd at the GORGEOUS AND SO FUN Bloomington Aquatic Center! 50 bucks for 15ish minutes.

• In general, I am open for tarot readings and 1:1 lessons.
  $75/half hour, so $150 for a full hour.
  You can snag those by contacting me or getting a Moonlight reading which is just a fun and cool thing where we can BOTH interact with the deck because there’s a digital one!

• I write books!
  You can buy them here or wherever you like to buy books (including the big bad sites) if you want kick-ass queer takes on the tarot that go much deeper than a 2 hour class could.

• Additionally, I am happy to work on writing projects. While ideally that simply means making money for the writing I do, it ALSO means you can reach out for help with your own book proposals, editing or proofreading projects you think I might be a good fit for. I also love helping people with copy for the badass businesses and projects so that’s an option as well!
  
  For writing work, contact me however, let me know about your project, what you’re thinking for my role and involvement and its budget.

Hoping y’all are having a super gay (or allied) summer and I’ll see ya soon!

XO!
Cassandra Snow

I did the math the other day and I have been practicing witchcraft for precisely 22 years! This has been, by far, one of the most special and intimate journeys of my life. It is always growing, always changing, and always pushing me to be the best version of myself. I have made a lot of really incredible things happen in my life - but witchcraft has been a huge tool helping that happen. I owe so much to it.

When I started doing witchcraft, I truly felt like I needed to take my time and memorize every witchcraft book and every spell I wrote. I was convinced I had to do everything “right” and that there even was a right or wrong way to do things. A lot of people in modern day witch discourse talk about negative repercussions or spells “backfiring” (whatever the hell that even means). I don’t even think I had enough awareness of what magic was to worry about that when I started dipping my toes instead. Instead, my genuinely OCD brain (though undiagnosed at the time) was convinced my spells simply wouldn’t work if I wasn’t methodical and careful as hell. When you are 18 and desperate to break awful cycles of codependency, avoidant attachment and poverty then it absolutely feels like your spell not working is the worst thing that can happen. Certainly even today I am far more worried about spells not working than messing up in this way, especially if I’m short on cash or really struggling to make a dream happen for myself.

So how do I make sure they work? What is my number one tip? You ready?

Use what you have first.

In Lilith Dorsey’s Water Magic she talks about how sourcing specific ingredients is an adventure and a necessity for relationship development with those ingredients, and she talks about how modern day conveniences have led people to make too many substitutions. I agree with Dorsey, 1000%. (I also think she would agree with the thing I am about to say.) Yet waiting to be able to travel or order a certain ingredient does not mean you have to not do magic in the meantime. It means you need a different spell, a different approach while still pursuing the ingredient that feels really necessary to push your witchcraft or spell over the edge.

For that different approach, you need look no further than your shelf of houseplants, your own medicine cabinet or your array of cooking spices. Hell, you don’t even really have to look further than the food you’re cooking or the body itself that you’re living in. There are magical correspondences to literally almost everything. Furthermore, what makes magic work best is YOUR relationship with the things you’re using in spellwork. Witchcraft is absolutely not about spending a bunch of money on a million different ingredients. It is about connection, awareness, relationship building and energy utilization. Really. Really, really, really.

When we are talking about “stuff”, my number one witchcraft advice is to start with materials in your home. Let’s use the example of protection magick, a thing I think is acutely on all of our minds right now because of (gestures wildly). Here are some things you can do using basically zero dollars!:

• You can dress in a lot of blue, black and red, calling on the spirits of each to protect you throughout the day.

• Literally table salt is one of the absolute most commonly used protection ingredients.

• The dandelions in your yard or sprouting up between the cracks in the sidewalk near your house have a million different uses. They are naturally protecting you where they are, but they can be brought inside for working with them more up close.

• Hell, hands are considered protective because 5 is often considered the number of protection (Learned this in Judika Illes recent Protection Spells deck). You can absolutely use the energy of your own hands to do some kinetic or somatic or whatever the hell you want to call it spells, drawing protective sigils or symbols in the air.

These are literally just four examples! The important thing is that you can use a few minutes of research in your witchy books or online (just please do vet your sources because its’ tough out there lol). You can ask witch pals for advice. You can pick an all-purpose correspondence like the aforementioned color black and work extensively with it over a number of weeks getting to know it and how the two of you work together. If you do that with enough correspondences, guess what? You’ll actually reach a point where spell substitutions take little thought and will actually work just as well (if slightly differently).

Relationships with our materia are one of several cruxes of witchcraft - so much so that Siri and I wrote about that relationship extensively in Lessons From the Empress. You do not begin materia relationships by bringing in a bunch of new crap you are convinced will “Fix” your craft. You start by choosing some things already in your space, getting to know them, and developing your magical relationship from there. Use what ya got. ‘Cuz even the brokest of us actually got quite a lot at our disposal.

Sending you all SO much love, and here is where to find me the rest of July!

In Person:

My only real IRL events this month are Cake’s Fat Splash, but there are still tickets and we have three left! They are THIS Saturday at 7:30 PM at the Sabes JCC in St. Louis Park, and August 2nd at the same time and place. The other one will be Sunday July 20th at the Bloomington Aquatic Center. More info here!

Online:

Obviously please buy my books! They are available wherever you buy books! I put truly so much love and care into each one, and each one, I like to think, serves as a magical portal to belief in self, love of community and a whole lot of queer, creative expansion. If you don’t know where to start, start here!

If you’re looking for tarot readings, you have 3 options!

1. Email me for a Zoom or email tarot reading. 75 per half hour or typed email equivalent! I’m at snow.cassandra@gmail.com - I won’t lie, this is my preferred way. Being a new parent and chronically ill to boot in this economy is (shudders) and this way I get the least amount of fees.

2. Over at Moonlight! This is a SUPER fun option, and if you wanna play with a digital deck, etc this is the place! You can also get very affordable pre-recorded messages here, if ya wanna “sample” me before committing to an hour or half hour session.

3. By supporting at one of my top levels on Patreon. Here, you’ll either get 6-9 Snail Mail Tarot readings a year OR an (almost) monthly email tarot reading! Very exciting options! There’s also a Discord included!

That’s really all I got today y’all! Business is a lil’ slow right now so if you’re curious about tarot or witchcraft mentorship, having me help you with your book proposal or rough draft, or bringing me to a private event, these are also options I’m happy to work with you on based on your budget and needs. Just email me!

Thanks y’all! Truly wishing you the best!

Last night I kicked off Pride month by kicking off another great season of queer cinema with Flip the Script, a local queer film festival to me that I’m on the board of directors for. It was so fun to kick off Pride & the oncoming summer by introducing my kiddo to some of my favorite people, watching the cutest dog chase balloons, and view a new-to-us venue still in buildout.

Summer is such a mixed bag for me, and literally everything in 2025 has been a mixed bag for me. I birthed the book I am proudest of thus far - and rollout has felt weird and stilted. Everyone is tired. People aren’t finding the book. My bestie-surrogate gave birth and I’ve been raising a whole human since January. She brings me more joy and love than I ever thought possible. The way I have become softer and hopeful again, the way cynical me has flown out the door as I look into her eyes. Yet still, I am saddened every day by the world it seems I’m leaving her when I eventually go. I still feel so defeated to think how much of my life I have spent trying to be a part of change being made, and now as a country we are sliding so far backwards it terrifies me. Yet I keep fighting and am constantly emboldened by those fighting with me or leading the fights.

Summer is hard for me personally, and then you add a political landscape on top of it and it seems like it would be entirely too much. To be clear - it absolutely has the potential to be entirely too much. Pride reminds us though, that riots are useful and riots are parties and parties are useful. That we are a community, and we will fight. That we will celebrate and love and fuck and have the best friends anyone ever had. Because our queer ancestors deserve for us too, and the queer gods watching us can’t believe how batshit it’s all gotten, and because we fucking can.

I have some personal life joys too. My beloved sister getting married. Traveling with my girlfriend, QPP and baby TWICE this summer, including returning to my favorite place, Lake Superior, whose waters always remind me of how much I’ve already healed. So yeah, the heat and humidity are going to try to keep me down. My arthritis is going to flare, my thyroid and lymph nodes are going to swell. I’m going to spend more time hiding in the AC than I want to because I simply can not function otherwise. The economy is trash for most of us, the air is trash for a lot of us, and the people in power don’t want my family to exist.

I’m going to go swimming anyway. I’m going to read tarot cards and teach you tarot so that you can consistently find joy, enthusiasm and power in the day to day. I’m going to cast spells. Dance. Get sweaty for the all the best reasons if I have to be sweaty just because anyway. I’m going to live, and thrive, and I’m going to make space so others can live and thrive too. My garden is already blossoming, and so is our community. We’re going to keep doing it.

NOW, HERE’S HOW TO FIND ME TO GET IN ON THIS LOVE IN THE SUN SUMMER THIS MONTH.

I have a book event in Duluth, so if you're in North MN or Western WI, come see me at Zenith Books on June 12th!!!

Other things:
+ I'm teaching writing exercises to teens at the Pride teen annex here in Minneapolis. My heart is already so full!
+ Cake Plus Size Re-Sale Fat Splash pool parties start this month, and I am PUMPED to be able to read cards at all four.
+ I'm now a Board of Director director at Flip the Script, a queer film fest with lots of goodies going on throughout the month. Check their website for details.

AND OF COURSE I am still open for tarot readings, tarot lessons and pick-my-brain sessions as well as more public facing tarot/tarot teaching gigs & (always!) writing gigs. I'm loving Moonlight and still doing quick video options at Purple Ocean. For a more standard live Zoom or typed email reading, Email me at snow.cassandra@gmail.com . You can also see my very cool email specials for the month right here!

XO darlings!

PS: As a reminder, I have a monthly support platform with a growing kickass discord for all kinds of artsy, tarot-y, witchy stuffs!

PPS: If you already have and love my latest book, the powerhouse essay anthology that is Tarot In Other Words, please rate it 5 stars and leave even a short review wherever websites let you do that! Amazon and Goodreads, unfortunately are the big ones and I can not stress enough that you do NOT have to buy from there to leave a review. Storygraph, Fable, Barnes and Noble website etc all help a ton too though. If you haven’t read it, what are you waiting for! Snag right here!

+ Stevie Nicks - Yes, I’m a long-time fan, but she’s also a badass rebel making her own way in a male-dominated field and finding more fame than the men who were shitty to her. I live for clients with that combination of rageful feminism, longevity & resilience especially when they are already steeped in mystique and occultism themselves and we can really go deep.

+ Marsha P Johnson - Really, none of us are anything without the brick throwers and way makers in our communities. Marsha P Johnson was smart and funny, and she was also DEEPLY caring about her fellow trans community members - especially those who were sex workers even further pushed to the margins. I’d love to read her cards on how to support HERSELF as well as she supports everyone else, and do all kinds of readings on the best kind of good trouble she could get into along the way.

+ Oscar Wilde - Foppish, always up to some bullshit, and quick-witted. No attachment to society’s rules or arbitrary guidelines like “living within your means”. Never sure what he wanted, I’d love to help him figure that out OR help him develop some hilarious new scripts with characters and scenes from the tarot deck.

+ Jim Henson - If I’m being honest, who I want to read for is Miss Piggy, Bean Bunny or Kermit the Frog. I’d settle for their creator! Jim Henson was a hard-ass worker AND true creative visionary. I’d love to guide him creatively, but I’d also love to pull some cards for him on showing his non-work supporters and family the love and grace they deserve too.

+ Sappho - Baby girl was a hot mess. I just wanna help us verbose queers get our shit together! Sappho, let me read your cards about why that girl is no good for you, assure you you do not have to live by society’s rules and what to do with all these brilliant and evocative stanzas you keep dreaming up.

Obviously, here’s my sales pitch! If you see yourself in any of the above and are contemplating a tarot reading, hit me up right meow! OR if you want to learn to read in any of the above styles and would love a 1:1 tarot lesson, extra hit me up! There are two ways to do this right now. Email snow.cassandra@gmail.com to schedule a Zoom or order a typed email reading or head right here where we can play with digital tarot decks and have some fun. My price list is here if ya wanna check it out before emailing me about a Zoom or typed email reading.

Also! I always have seasonal email reading specials happening right here!

In the meantime, um, TAROT IN OTHER WORDS IS OUT RIGHT NOW! This is NOT a drill ya silly geese! Please, please buy it wherever you buy books. If ya don’t know where that is, start here! You can also request it from a public library, write me a 5 Star Review on Amazon or GoodReads (I KNOW but it does really help and you absolutely do not have to buy it there in order to review it there), or help me spread the word about it on social media. I truly worked SO very hard on this project, and if I’m being honest, I am very proud of it. I want it in as many hands as possible but I am one small time creator in a huge world that happens to be on fire, so any help or support at all is HUGELY appreciated.

Sending you all so much love, support and Empress energy as we marinate in Spring’s (kind of nuts) heat here in MN. XOXOXO.

Cassandra Snow

I wanted to write you with all kinds of cool and exciting news this month, and to be clear, I still am. But I am BAMBOOZLED because I tried to write this three times and nothing came.

I’m also writing an essay for an upcoming project through Llewellyn on The Chariot as learning to claim our own desires and divest from the expectations of others. Readers, I’ll be honest. That was about as far as I’d gotten on said essay until yesterday when I pulled out a couple of my trustiest tarot resources (Rachel Pollack and Mary K. Greer’s work) as well as some of my new faves (Lane Smith and Christopher Marjelo, to name a couple) and was suddenly inundated with ideas. Now I’ve got tons of notes typed out and am raring to go but it took me WEEKS to get there.

On top of this, if you follow me closely online (or know me IRL), you may know that I had a HORRIFIC hay fever bout a few weeks ago. Like, truly felt like maybe I needed hospitalized? Over hay fever?! AND NOW all of that drainage has backed up. My voice is GONE. My throat has been on fire for over a week. I finally sought medical care and it is helping but so much slower than I wanted. Because of all this, I lost TWO classes via The Loft’s Bringing The Loft to You Program which feels like a gut punch right to my wallet. (I was also just very, extremely excited about the class, which I still have a few sessions of later on thank goodness.)

You’d think with my voice being totally gone in so many ways I’d be really struggling, but this doesn’t feel symbolic. It just feels like I’m sick. I don’t feel like I’m learning a lesson, I feel like climate change is terrible and has caused a lot of unanticipated literal ick in my body. I’ve been coping by happily cuddling Baby, watching TV and otherwise trying to just enjoy sick time as much as I can. My life has nine million moving parts of it and it’s frustrating to feel like I’m letting so many people down all at once. It’s also not the piece to focus on right now. It’s almost nice, in a way, to have the singular goal of healing my throat.

Even so, humans are gonna cabin fever but I have SO MANY fun things coming up, so let’s shift the focus to that! We’ll jump right into:

Where to Find Me In Coming Months

• DIGITAL HANG - On Sunday, April 13th I’ll be helping lead Chelsey Pippin Mizzi’s Journaling Club via her substack at 1 PM CST. Come journal with us!

• Via The Loft’s Bringing the Loft to You series, I’ll be teaching on Queering the Narrative in Prose in person on 4/19/25 at 3 PM at the Arvonne Fraser Public Library here in Minneapolis. I’ll also be teaching that at the Brooklyn Park Public Library on 4/26/25 at 2:30 PM and back to Minneapolis at the East Lake Library on Tuesday, 5/6/25 at 6 PM. These classes are FREE to you (I’m still getting paid, I promise) so if yer local, sign up now through the library of your choice.

• And then we launch Tarot In Other Words! My next book, a curated essay collection featuring NINE incredible queer tarotists plus my goofy ass, which I edited as well, drops on 5/6! Please pre-order ASAP here or wherever you buy books. I am so proud of this one. It has personal essays like you’ve never read before and plenty of tarot reading how-tos on subjects like reversals and queering the questions themselves that we ask the cards. Truly do not miss out!

• Speaking of Tarot In Other Words, join me and TWO of my esteemed contributors - Junauda, the reigning Poet Laureate of Minneapolis (!!!) and Siri Vincent Plouff, author of Queering the Runes and my co-author of Lessons From the Empress for a night of conversation, reading excerpts, and some tarot-riffic surprises. We will be having this party at Moon Palace Books on 5/8/25 at 6 PM and it’s gonna be very rad! No need to RSVP but PLEASE save the date, mark it on your calendars, et cetera!

• I’ll also be doing a book event in Duluth, obviously, because I am obsessed with that place, and need some lake time so badly right now. I’ll be at Zenith Books on June 12th at 7 PM for a Tarot In Other Words event. It’ll just be me but I wrote up a whole vision for the night and it’s still going to be very fun and cool, so if you’re further North, come see me!

In the meantime, as aforementioned, I lost a couple of classes I was teaching and need to make up that income because self-employment is precarious in the best of times and the best of times are um. Not currently happening. Please pre-order the book, support me on Patreon, and get some email tarot readings since those are the things I can do with no voice and still earn my bread or whatever.

Thanks so much y’all! Hope you are all staying healthy-ish and warm-ish as best we can. Be that literal or metaphorical.

XO!

For example, if you’re a musician, which cards speak to the process of learning a song? What about performing one? Or writing one? Which cards show the finished product, and which ones show the artistic input or inspiration you use in your music?”

This is what I wrote in an printable mini ezine I’m putting the finishing on touches now and there’s only one way to get it. But first, let’s back up.

ICYMI: My next book (a collective essay anthology curated and edited by yours truly which features NINE incredible queer tarot writers waxing on what makes tarot so queer and how you can grab a deck and create systems all your own, making a comprehensive, accessible and radical tarot understanding for yourself) comes out on May 6th! So soon! That means we are firmly in the pre-order window that I neeeeed to succeed in order to help this book succeed!

In addition to pre-orders ALWAYS boding well for authors, my agent is taking this manuscript to the foreign rights fair in London soooooon and the more people that look interested in this book, the better the chances non-American and non-UK publishers will pick it up! I literally do not get paid on this project unless royalties come in fast OR we sell extra rights and in either case, your pre-order helps me get there!

Because of that, I've created a short, printable mini e-zine for anyone who pre-orders and sends me proof of purchase! You can email said PoP, or screenshot it and DM me basically anywhere with your email address and you will get on the list! I'm currently in edits for the zine, so give me a couple more weeks but then it'll be in your inbox!

In the meantime, the above tip is a sneak peek of the Tarot Tip sheet in said ezine that also features one of a kind tips from the other contributors. Further included in the ezine will be a playlist crafted by the essayists and me, plus a complete list of published works by these great writers should you wanna really max out your wallet collecting bad ass queer writing. It’s going to be really fun, so don’t miss out!

Grab your pre-order of Tarot In Other Words here or wherever you buy books, and then send me your PoP and we'll be good to go!

XO,

Cassandra Snow

PS: I’m open for readings again! Head here to get a reading via Moonlight, or if you want a more typical zoom or email reading, email me at snow.cassandra@gmail.com to get the ball rolling.

I had the loveliest New Year’s Eve celebrations. I don’t talk about it as much as I do other things, but I’ve been alcohol sober for somewhere around 7 or 8 years now. New Year’s Eve tends to be the hardest celebration for me, and not even because I want to get plastered. Having sparkling water or juice as the ball drops has simply never felt as satisfying or celebratory to me, probably because I drink 900 sparkling waters a day so it doesn’t feel special.

This year I hosted the world’s smallest gathering, and my beautiful girlfriend brought an ice cold ginger beer that MAYBE would’ve hit the spot regardless, but I cut it with strawberry seltzer and some strawberry cotton candy glitter bombs which I insisted we waited until midnight on the dot to drop into our drinks. For the first time in years I felt like I had a true NYE experience as the cotton candy dissolved into a fit of bubbles and edible glitter. On top of that, I’d done a bunch of fancy cleansing rituals before everyone (my girlfriend and ONE friend, that is) got settled into my home. (I also insisted we wear finger puppets while we dropped our glitter bombs but that’s neither here nor there!)

In the end, I rung in the New Year the way I wanted to - with a special fizzy drink, some very goofy shenanigans, and some of my favorite people keeping it chill. I also felt truly spiritually clean and ready for the blank slate of a new year. It was perfect.

AND, as I look at my personal planner and the news cycle, I can’t help but feeling like it was the eye of the ongoing storm that is life in late-stage capitalism. There are better political writers writing about the absolute absurdity of…well, everything, and I don’t want to bring you down. I’m trying instead to focus on myself and what I know I can do to make the year incredible for myself and others. Yet it would be an act of spiritual bypassing and dissonance to pretend that because I had a really good New Year’s Eve the horrors ceased to be. One thing I’ve been doing is taking a moment of silence every day for those we are losing to colonization, and to name where I am and where the world is in this moment. It helps me carry on the rest of my day, while still making space for all the grief and pain on my heart. It reminds me why I do the work I do, and provides a specific container to work through my despair before remembering how much we are capable of when we bind together

In spite of everything, this is a very exciting year for me, personally, and looking forward to this joy and fighting for others to have it also is what makes it all bearable. I’m having a baby NEXT MONTH (like, literally, my surrogate may be in labor IN ONE MONTH FROM TODAY if not sooner)! My fourth book is coming out in early May! I’m leading a session at Paganicon. I’m teaching on queer narrative at The Loft Literary Center here in Minneapolis (!!!). It’s going to be a good year.

In terms of business, it’s also going to be a weird year. The financial reality of my life remains precarious, always. I am fully self-employed, while disabled, while the AI algorithms turn social media fully against small business. It’s hard. It’s probably going to be even harder this year, and on top of that, a human can only do so much. So here is what working with me will look like in 2025:

• If you are looking to work with me as a writer, performer, arts admin, tarot or witchcraft teacher, everything will look normal EXCEPT for my parental leave in February and a couple of weeks in April and May when I really need to hit book press hard. Please just email me to discuss projects, rates, timelines, etc. and know that I am not working! At all! In February!

• If you’re looking to work with me as a tarot reader or 1:1 tarot or witchcraft consultation (for lessons, hired witch work, to pick my brain, anything like that), you basically just have my regular times now via my website and Moonlight that are “normal” until the end of January.
  
  In February I am FULLY closed to this work.
  
  In March, I will open up for monthly supporters, friends & Family, return and referred clients only. I do not know when these restricted hours will end. I know they will, and if capitalism does bad things to me I may just have to become a super juggler. But in my ideal world, I am doing limited 1:1 tarot work through the end of the summer.

AND at the same time, this is scary and hard and precarious, as mentioned. Please do snag my current appointment slots via my website (including specials on certain readings!) or via Moonlight. Please pre-order Tarot In Other Words. Shop my Bookshop affiliate in general! Support me monthly. Reach out about projects for March and beyond.

Thank you so, so much for being here. I’m excited for another year of reaching your inbox and being met with love. You always have a safer space at my tarot table, and when I am taking time off, it’s so I can bring my best to that space with you. I can’t wait to see what the new year brings you.

XO,

Cassandra Snow

PS: You don’t need to get anything for my baby - buying up all the Cassandra goodies and supporting monthly are the best ways to support right now. If you insist, however, I am taking instacart, Target, GoPuff and Door Dash gift certificates to my email at snow.cassandra@gmail.com - and I do have a baby registry here should that not be fun enough for ya!

While it’s not a super popular opinion, I freaking love winter! I think it’s completely underrated magically, and I certainly think it’s flat out gorgeous and whimsical. I decided to use my love of winter to kickstart a new monthly-ish series for my Patreon on Small Spells. I’m defining Small Spells as ones that require very few to NO ingredients, and that likely will not take you more than a few minutes at a time. Here’s a lil’ snapshot of this first one!

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am sharing this to give you a sample of what you’ll get by supporting me monthly on Patreon. I work really hard on mine, offering a mix of tarot and witchcraft information with original, creative writing on these topics and so many more. My patreon is absolutely critical to my ability to do the things I do for a living. Writing rarely gives you money until months or years after you write the thing, and I can not be there for clients during busy times if I don’t have this support to keep me afloat in the dead times in my business.

I’m pushing this platform harder now because I am going on a Parental Leave in February and for much of March! Posts will be queued up, and I will be active in the Discord I started for it to give myself a little adult conversation. It’s a great time to join for yourself, as there will be lots of fun stuff uploaded in this time without any kind of social pressure from me. It’s also when I need support the most.

Thank you so much for understanding! Enjoy the Small Spells, and know there are EVEN MORE going up on said Patreon on Saturday.

For Tuning In to the Energy Of the Moment

1. Grab a clear quartz or other beloved, all purpose stone or metal. Sit by your favorite window. Gaze at your view. Let your eyes soften until things become pleasantly hazy. Close your eyes and breathe deeply a few times. Open your eyes. What is the scene outside of your window telling you? You may want/need to wait a couple of minutes before things seem to "happen."

2. Grab your favorite hot beverage. Intentionally choose all of your ingredients based on your relationship with them and what you know them to correspond to. (For example, coffee is protective, inspiring or drawing so it's one of my all-purpose faves. Hot chocolate can help you notice and melt into the sweetness and love in all areas of your life. The herbs in your herbal teas obviously have their own correspondences.)

As you're making the drink, stay focused on tuning in to the magic you're about to sip up, or let your mind go blank. Sit outside or in a favorite spot inside with your drink. Hold it between both hands and say a simple intention like "for every sip I take, I awaken more to life's joy". Sip it slowly.

Steam or liquid scry if you feel up to it, letting your eyes go hazy again, looking for symbols and messages to guide you on your journey towards your intention.

All Purpose/Customizable

1. Draw sigils, symbols or entire images in the snow or ice.

2. If you have (safe) access to a fireplace or outdoor fire, use it! Name your intentions for connecting with fire spirits, and make an offering of fresh wood or dry leaves. As you sit by the fire, remember that it connects us to The Sun and reflect on Solar energy and lessons.

3. Kitchen Witchery: make soup (or whatever but soup is obviously the best!) with very carefully planned herbs and seasonings based on the intentions you want to manifest for yourself and anyone else eating it.

4. If you decorate for the holidays, choose your symbols and correspondences intentionally. I also like to hide sigils, symbols and images behind other ones so that the magic works on a daily, subconscious level too. For example, if I were going to put up some holly myself based on its protective elements, I would also either trace a pentagram underneath it, or even place a small physical one that I had (like a metal charm or something like that) behind it to reinforce that.

But babes, magic stalls if you don’t give it time. Your bodies fail if you do not let them rest. Your hearts hurt if you do not give them the freedom to truly be in love with being here, where you are, with the people you love. Everything gets affected. You enter the new year already burnt out, already over it, and all of your best intentioned goals for the year are designed to fail.

Historically, most of our ancestors took most of what we now know or experience as January or December to rest. (This is largely true of places where it gets cold in this time - if you’re reading elsewhere, keep this newsletter until your own climate’s slow season.) Our bodies have not evolved past the point of needing this slow period. Our souls, in my queer opinion, flat our refuse to give this need up. Yet here we are, in late 2024, giving into the system and allowing egregoric urgency to become our emergency. I don’t know about you, but I’m done. I’m exhausted. I’m ready to listen to my body, to the climate, to my spirit. I’m ready to just be still for as long as is feasible.

You are probably reading this and fighting this message. I’ll be honest: I don’t care. Your feelings are always valid but that doesn’t mean they are rooted in reality. You have time. You “deserve” peace. You are supported in this time. It doesn’t matter if you believe me. That doesn’t make facts untrue.

A side effect of the natural urge to slow down right now sitting in immediate tension with the hellscape culture we live in is that we have developed fears of sitting with our own thoughts. We don’t want to process pain from the year, and we are riding the dopamine high of the highs and want to keep going. Life used to be much slower even for those of us for whom, like myself, worked as servants for the upper echelons. We have allowed our capability and desire to actually internalize life’s messages and lessons dissipate. If you’re willing to slow down and take time for yourself over the next several weeks, here’s a tarot spread I created to specifically help this process along.*

The image shows a row of three tarot cards on top of a row of two tarot cards, making a 5 Card Tarot Spread. The placements of the cards are:

1. Where you meant to be by now.

2. Where you actually are right now.

3. A thing you learned this year.

4. A card to help you reassess and reset any “by year’s end” goals or intentions.

5. An evergreen reminder.

ENJOY!

*If you like this, I do have THREE Yearly Transition readings available that use a similar spread and framework to start the reading off, before segueing into the coming year. Please head here if you wanna snap one of those up! The date suggestions are my rough due dates, but I might move them around. Right now it is my plan to get them all done and to you by 1/31.

Other Things

• I am only doing ONE MORE in person maker’s market until AT LEAST Summer of 2025. I love doing these so much, and honestly I get FOMO about not being included. That being said, doing these indoor markets as an immunocompromised person, even when masks are required, makes my health plummet and activates my OCD really badly. I’ll be back when it’s safe to be outside!
  Again though, there is ONE more chance to catch me, and that’s at Fat Flea in Minneapolis for their “Treat Yourself” Market - the perfect time to come get your cards read or snag tarot related gifts from me to give to loved ones. It’s gonna be from 11 AM to 4 PM on Sunday the 8th at the Hollywood Theater on Johnson St.

• YOU CAN ALREADY PRE-ORDER MY NEXT BOOK (!!!) Tarot In Other Words is an incredible, modern resource for those looking to create tarot understandings their own way. If you pre-order now, SAVE your receipt! I’ll be putting together a mini e-zine available in the new year EXCLUSIVE to pre-order buyers for this project with “alternative” journal templates, tarot tips you won’t find elsewhere and probably a couple of other fun lil’ bonuses!

• A fun and big announcement: Patreon supporters ONLY now have access to a Discord moderated by me and full of community-building fun chats AND opportunities to learn and grow as tarot readers, witches, artists, etc etc. Come join the conversation!

• I’m open for readings through the end of January in general, so come get your email or Zoom tarot readings OR your 1:1 Tarot Lessons. As a reminder, I am not taking clients in February or March! So if ya wanna make tarot part of your winter cozy plans, now is the time. You can also get async AND live readings from me via Moonlight until then!!!

Thanks y’all!!! XO.