We’re taught to imagine beginnings as dramatic moments: writing the first page of a novel, getting in the car and leaving, picking up a paint brush and staring down a blank canvas. But most beginnings are less dramatic than that. And there are so many steps between thinking about something…and actually doing it.

A beginning is usually a persistent thought. A half-formed image. A feeling. A phrase we can’t forget. A curiosity that keeps returning despite our attempts to ignore it. Something is gathering. Not fully formed or certain but gathering nonetheless.

The problem starts when we consider readiness a prerequisite to beginning.

We tell ourselves we’ll start when we have more confidence. More clarity. More energy. More certainty that our efforts will amount to something worthwhile or at least unembarrassing. But in my experience, readiness never precedes a beginning. More often, readiness is what develops through participation.

We become ready by entering the conversation; making the first mark, taking the first step, allowing ourselves to encounter what becomes possible once movement begins.

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In my creative coaching work, I see this all the time. People arrive believing they need to rid themselves of fear before they can change. That they must solve the jigsaw puzzle before daring to take it out of the box.

Building tolerance for beginning something only happens through doing something differently. Understanding only comes through trying. The path reveals itself through regular moments of contact: the contact between our potential and our efforts.

The philosopher and process thinker Alfred North Whitehead said that reality is not made up of static things, but events; ongoing occasions of becoming. Contemporary new materialist thinkers agree. Creation is never a solitary act. We are always participating in larger fields of relationship: with other people, with place, with memory, with language, with the materials in our hands.

This includes relationships with parts of our own selves. Like the part that wants to emerge (through beginning something) and the part that dreads beginnings. Beginning then, is not a manufactured decision of the brain alone. It’s something we slowly enter into. It’s a meeting place between our patterns, our values, our old selves, and all our not-yet-known potentialities.

In the nondual Śaiva traditions, the Sanskrit term Spanda refers to the subtle pulse or vibration through which all life continually unfolds. A movement that pervades in everything, as everything. I return to this image often. It softens the fantasy that everything depends on the force of cerebral will. I have found that every time, no matter what: the task is not to push harder. It’s to notice what’s already stirring and to pay attention to the small movements between what is, and what could gently emerge if we let it.

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Beginnings don’t announce themselves with trumpets. I see them as quiet repetitions. That gentle knocking. And then, there comes an inevitable moment when we must decide whether to (equally gently) open the door. Despite not knowing what’s on the other side, or where it will lead. Despite the discomfort of putting one unsure foot in front of the other. And because we’ve identified a willingness, amid the uncertainty. A quality of curious improvisation. A small trust in the jazz of life. This is where courage comes from.

This is how we make contact with something unknown and unfinished, and allow both ourselves and it to be changed by the encounter. We become together, through an/other. Through nurturing the relationship between (often dissonant) parts of ourselves.

This is how the artist starts before the work knows what it wants to become. This is how the gardener plants without guarantees, or the writer sits down at an empty page. This is why the therapist asks a question without knowing what kind of answer will arise.

Again and again, beginning something asks us to exchange certainty for participation with another force. And perhaps this is why it feels so vulnerable. It’s because a beginning isn’t a declaration of confidence or mastery. It’s an admission that you don’t know. And that you’re willing to be surprised.

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A small note about Thresholds

As I was writing this piece, I realised it speaks not only to personal beginnings, but to one unfolding here and now. Over the past year, Thresholds has developed a couple of recurring forms for paid subscribers: namely monthly Seasonal Thresholds and Full Moon Ritual Guides. I’ve heard that these have been meaningful for some of you, and they’ve given me a routine (and format or container) within which to write. Lately though, I’ve been feeling the edges of that container. Not because anything is wrong with it, but because I find myself wanting a little more room to follow what feels alive.

Rather than asking, “What should I write because the zodiac calendar says it’s time?” I want to spend more time asking, “What is genuinely calling for attention right now?” Sometimes that may still result in a seasonal reflection, or ritual guide. For example (and as you may have guessed) this article on beginnings was inspired by today’s Sagittarius full moon. But I would like to honour the possibility that these times may call for an essay, personal reflection, prompts, media, or something completely different.

So while the rhythm of publication will remain largely the same, the forms themselves may become more varied, with a greater emphasis on depth, experimentation, and responsiveness rather than recurring franchises. And all posts will again be free to read. The paid tier will continue for those who value my work and would like to ensure its sustainability. I understand that some readers may have subscribed specifically for these paid franchises, however. If this change means Thresholds no longer serves what you came here for, I completely understand. And if you’d like to continue alongside me as the publication evolves, I’m deeply grateful.

In many ways, this feels true to the spirit of a threshold itself. As in, a place of perpetual becoming. And this publication deserves the freedom to become, too.

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Journalling invitations on beginning

What keeps returning? Consider an idea, longing, project, conversation, or question that keeps visiting you. What might it be asking of you?

Write from the middle. Instead of beginning at the beginning, write from wherever you are right now. What changes when you stop waiting for the perfect starting point?

A conversation with the threshold. Imagine the threshold you’re at right now could speak. What would it want you to know before crossing?

What am I calling hesitation? Might it contain something other than fear: care, discernment, grief, excitement, responsibility?

What is already beginning without my permission? Where is life already moving, changing, gathering, or unfolding?

What would a very, very small conscious beginning look like? Not the whole project. Just the next five-minute step, small conversation, sketch, quick email, or another kind of action. Break it down to its smallest and crappiest (scrappiest) form.

Creative invitations

Gathering forces: Create an image using whatever materials are nearby. Rather than depicting the outcome you want, focus on everything contributing to the beginning: people, places, memories, materials, emotions, accidents, and desires. You might like to illustrate this like the weather, a car, or another energetic force.

Trace a becoming: Without lifting your pen from the page, create a continuous line. Let it wander. Notice where it hesitates, speeds up, loops back, or changes direction. Push a pebble with your pen, or use your nondominant hand to relinquish more control.

Crossing over: Find a doorway, path, shoreline, gate, or threshold in your environment. Spend ten minutes there. What do you notice about movement, transition, arrival, and departure?

If you’re standing at the edge of something right now, sound off. And thank you for reading, for reflecting, and for accompanying me at our shared thresholds of beginning and becoming.

Warmly,
Jerico

Thresholds is a newsletter for artists and seekers on the path of becoming. Brought to you by Jerico Mandybur (author, art psychotherapist and creative coach at Virgil Therapy). Subscribe to Thresholds to receive a free guided somatic centering practice. And if you enjoyed this post, share it around.

This email has been sent from unceded Dharawal Country. I send my solemn respects to Elders of this place, past and present, and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders. I vow to continue the journey of unsettling colonialism and aim to do my part to move us closer to treaty, truth-telling, and land rights.

This is the part of you where your embodied sensing, values, desires, and intellect come together, forming a coherent truth. This knowing might emerge into your conscious awareness through dreams, through images, feelings, or fragments. Through sensations (including that of resistance or dissonance) or the sudden rush of emotion.

Often we don’t hear it when it speaks. But when we (truly, deeply) listen to this knowing, our truth becomes clearer and our lives begin to change shape.

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How to listen (and why to journal)

Journalling has always been my portal to knowing. The simplicity of picking up a pen and writing words disguises the powerful magic of this practice. And it is a spiritual, creative, contemplative practice. Journaling is nothing short of—and sue me for sounding cliche if you must—soul work.

To journal is to journey back, again and again, past the debris of mind chatter and into your own truth. It’s an energetic clearing. A way to clear out the stagnant and touch (even if just for a moment) the well of inner knowing alive in, and running through, you.

I find the same pattern at work every time: thoughts come thick and fast. First the mundane recounting of life, then the “shoulds” and “I have to’s” begin to flow out. Then, a wave of questions. “Why?” and “Since when?” Then, a calm assurity: “I believe”, “I will”, “I won’t”, and “I know”.

There is one inside you who knows. One who already has all the answers. Who has the truth, as it appears at this moment. And not the one you’ve been told or sold. Rather, the one that’s raw, ancient, certain. Not even certain in terms of answers or guarantees. Just certain in terms of trust.

In many mystical traditions, the soul’s not a fixed object, floating somewhere in the matter of our meat suits. It’s a process, a verb, a dynamic unfolding of consciousness. I see your inner knowing like that too. It’s not a certainty, it’s an orientation. And for me, writing (of any kind, but especially journaling in this case) is a way towards that truer orientation.

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Most people write a journal as if it will be read. “You are your own voyeur” to quote Atwood. They try to explain or perform. This is still incredibly fun. But I think writing is its most magical and psychospiritually alchemical when it’s about invocation. Devotion. A way of asking: “Who is here, inside me, under all this noise? And what do they know to be true?”

When we meet the page without an agenda, a kind of portal opens. We enter into a relational space with our own minds, bodies, the space around us, and with our own felt senses. The part of you that you might typically silence could begin to speak. The nervous system and its associated experiences may feel safe enough to share something of their intelligence. And the wisest, most deeply held aspects of our knowing may emerge.

It might not always be poetic or clear, but it will be honest. It definitely won’t all come out in one sitting, or one week, but it will come out. I don’t know how it works, but I do know this: in any therapeutic creative practice, journaling included, what emerges is exactly what needed to for that specific moment.

If you let it, your inner knowing will make itself available to you more and more over time. And it will be your anchor in any storm.

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A provocation to journal

I dare you to start journaling a little every day. (I dare you to re-start.) I dare you to give it the sanctity it deserves this time. I dare you to light a candle. To use the good pen. To return to your breath and bone. To the eternal hum beneath each passing thought.

Don’t expect it to be beautiful. Don’t ask it to make sense. Just purge. Some days it will pour out like a fire. Other days, you’ll be wading in fog. But stay. Stay long enough for the page to act as a mirror. And you see not just the familiar face and voice, but the deeper one who knows. And who’s been waiting for you.

Also, journalling doesn’t have to be limited to words. I like to collage and draw too. I recommend moving your body before you begin journaling. Sense into what’s with you in this moment. Then you might like to start by marking abstract marks, with colours or images that capture these sensations. Then move into words (or not!) when you’re comfortable.

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Writing prompts about writing

꩜ What I’m afraid to write is…
꩜ The big question I have for my wisest Self is…
꩜ My inner landscape contains (name the roses and the thorns)…
꩜ What I know to be true in this moment is…
꩜ How can I recognise my inner knowing when it arises…
꩜ When I write, I allow myself to remember that…

Write about now

If this stirred something in you and you’d like to learn more about my mindful journaling method, and practice in community, please reply “Yes” to this article. I’d love to get an idea of numbers, so I can run my 90 minute journaling workshop, Write About Now, on Zoom soon inshallah.

P.S. I have paused payments on my Substack for Gemini season, while I attend to some life admin. Thank you to all my Creative Kin (paid) tier members for your understanding.

Warmly,
Jerico

Thresholds is a newsletter for artists and seekers on the path of becoming. Brought to you by Jerico Mandybur (author and founder of Virgil Therapy). Subscribe to Thresholds to receive a free guided somatic centering practice. And if you enjoyed this post, share it around.

This email has been sent from unceded Dharawal Country. I send my solemn respects to Elders of this place, past and present, and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders. I vow to continue the journey of unsettling colonialism and aim to do my part to move us closer to treaty, truth-telling, and land rights. This always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

As a water sign associated with intensity, desire, power, vulnerability, and transformation, Scorpio is associated with the inconvenient emergence of what we’d rather stay hidden or ignored. In other words, the truth.

The themes of this moon invite you to ask yourself questions like:

꩜ What am I avoiding feeling, because it feels too fucked up?
꩜ What am I holding on to that I actually should allow to change?
꩜ What truth have I sensed, but not yet fully acknowledged?
꩜ Where do I try to control, instead of learning to practice trust?
꩜ What is ready to be released, even if I don’t yet know what comes next?

Scorpio’s illumination is penetrating. It brings awareness to what is hidden, defended, or entangled, particularly in the realms of emotional attachment, intimacy, power, and fear. So no, this is not a comfortable moon. But it is an honest one.

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This zodiac sign reminds us that transformation is never tidy. It often asks us to sit with uncertainty. To fully surrender to the nigredo—the dark night of the soul—of the alchemical process. To not bypass the shadow and focus only on the coming dawn. But to let things dissolve before we can fully understand what is emerging. This is the terrain of dissolution and shedding.

Keep reading for: therapeutic themes to work with under the full moon in Libra, a tarot and reflective writing ritual, creative practice suggestions, and therapeutic journaling prompts to work with during this moon cycle.

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Inside, I share reflections on some of the archetypal themes of Taurus season, pull some random tarot cards with some help from Daily Draw Dot Com, and offer a series of creative questions you can use for journaling or gentle self-inquiry.

You might like to listen while lying down, walking slowly, or with a notebook nearby. There’s no need to take it all in at once; let it meet you where you are. And thank you deeply for meeting me where I am in this moment.

P.S. The Seasonal Threshold series is usually offered to paid subscribers, so please consider signing up if you’d like a more substantial, written version of this.

With care,
Jerico

Thresholds is a newsletter for artists and seekers on the path of becoming. Brought to you by Jerico Mandybur (author and founder of Virgil Therapy). Subscribe to Thresholds to receive a free guided somatic centering practice. And if you enjoyed this post, share it around.

This email has been sent from unceded Dharawal Country. I send my solemn respects to Elders of this place, past and present, and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders. I vow to continue the journey of unsettling colonialism and aim to do my part to move us closer to treaty, truth-telling, and land rights. This always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

His name was Sifu. Named by my father, he occupied my home before I was born. By the time I arrived, he no longer belonged to anyone. He lived at the edges of the garden, moving between what had once been his home and what was now, unmistakably, not.

My mother did not like cats and often referred to them, in earnest, as evil. A distrust for black cats and all they might represent is not unusual, but in my mum’s case, it extended beyond the boundaries of mercy. Once she became a single parent, stretched beyond capacity by a baby and a toddler, something had to give. What gave was him.

She stopped feeding Sifu. I don’t imagine it happened abruptly or with ceremony. Just a gradual forgetting. A slow withdrawal of small acts. A bowl left empty. A door unopened. The expectation, I think, was that he would leave. He didn’t.

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He stayed close to the house. Circling it. Watching us. He would often abruptly appear at the sliding glass door that opened to the back yard. Maybe thin, but certainly upright; holding his body in a way that didn’t read as pleading. It was something else. Like a kind of refusal.

I remember sitting cross-legged on the other side of the glass, still small enough that the world was still divided into inside and outside, safe and unsafe, permitted and forbidden. Still, I would slide open the glass door, so that only the flyscreen separated us. I would press my hand to the screen and pretend to stroke him. I would quietly sing. A gesture, or outline, of contact if not quite the real thing.

I was told never to touch him. He’ll attack you. Stated as fact; he was not predictable. Not safe. Through the fly screen, he would stare right into my eyes. Not with affection but not with hostility, either. Just a steady, unflinching gaze. Taking the measure of something I couldn’t see.

We never did touch.

Outside, his life was secret. He had reorganised himself around survival. The backyard of our house bordered on a large swathe of unnamed swampland, dense and overgrown. He learned to hunt there. I know that because on more than one occasion I sat on my little swing and watched as he jumped back over the fence and into our yard with a dead red-bellied black snake—native and highly venomous—in his mouth. On one of these occasions, he walked directly up to me and dropped the snake’s corpse at my still-swinging feet.

He fed himself. He didn’t leave. Just adapted. Surely there were other places he could have gone. Other, kinder, strangers. But he remained right outside. Holding his ground with an insistence that, I’m sure, felt increasingly hostile to my mother.

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Over time, his body changed. He became bigger and leaner and harder. Sharpened. He began a direct campaign of guerilla warfare against the powers that be. Often when my mum would hang clothes on the washing line, moving quickly so she could hurry back inside, Sifu would deftly emerge from a random hiding spot and charge full speed. He’d fly at her, attacking with intent. Scratching and biting. Teeth bared. Drawing blood.

It became an ongoing conflict that I wasn’t spared from. Some days, Sifu would tolerate me sitting quietly, or singing, on the grass nearby him. Some days, I’d be the one bleeding. From the outside, it looked like aggression. But even from my little girl perspective, it was clearly a revolution. The protest of a pained, hungry being. And deeper than that, it was refusal to disappear. He didn’t soften in response to neglect. He didn’t leave when he was no longer wanted. He stayed, fed himself, and defended what was his. He became, unmistakably, feral.

On one hand, this is a tragic story. A breakdown of what should have been a simple relationship of care. And of course, it could be seen as a painful allegory for my own early experience. But looking back now, I see something more complex. Sifu never lost his nature. He lost the conditions that made domestication possible and necessary. And in the absence of those conditions, something else emerged. A reorganisation. A way of living that didn’t depend on being well-behaved, contained, or even mildly approved of.

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It came at a heavy cost. After years of self-sufficiency and what I can only imagine was near-starvation, Sifu never returned. I don’t know if the snakes killed him, or he drowned in the swamp, or he found a loving home, or something else entirely. All I remember is my mum met someone new and was engaged three months later, with home renovations (including a backyard makeover and re-fencing) quickly behind.

There is no romantic version of his story. His life was hard. But I can’t deny that it was self-directed. He never waited to be invited in. He never bargained or compromised to be wanted. Even on the rare occasions when my grandfather, taking pity on him, snuck around the back and left him a saucer of milk, he seemed to have gone beyond expectations or attachment.

I think about him now as I try to understand what it means to come back into a deeper relationship with my own creative life and voice. Not the version I was trained to produce for a profit motive. Not the version that seeks to prove something in the realm of “proper” art, either. But the part that remains when attachments and expectations fall away. The part that knows how to discover a self-sustaining quality, even when it seems that the world has nothing nourishing to offer. The part that knows what’s mine and stays with it, even when there’s no reward.

This is not a perfect analogy, nor a perfectly meaningful story. But there may be something of a significant question to be found within the shape of it. Something about a refusal to disappear. Something about collective resistance and personal resilience. Something at once political and artful; archetypal and potentially, responsive to the moment we find ourselves in.

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To grow feral—in your own life and context and creative expression—is in some ways to court harm, it’s true. But what is the cost of staying toothless? And what kind of creative, adaptive intelligence might you be denying yourself if you never venture over the garden gate?

I don’t have answers today. I just have this story. Maybe it’s one way of understanding what happens when you yourself grow a little more feral. Maybe, you learn how to continue onward, long after you lose the supposedly safe structures that once held you in place. Maybe you get creative. You fight for something. Maybe you struggle. But you get to eat what you hunt. You get to bare your teeth, to protract your claws, and hiss. You get to show yourself what you’re really made of.

And maybe you get to remember: you are a wild thing. You always were.

Warmly,
Jerico

Thresholds is a newsletter for artists and seekers on the path of becoming. Brought to you by Jerico Mandybur (author and founder of Virgil Therapy). Subscribe to Thresholds to receive a free guided somatic centering practice. And if you enjoyed this post, share it around.

This email has been sent from unceded Dharawal Country. I send my solemn respects to Elders of this place, past and present, and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders. I vow to continue the journey of unsettling colonialism and aim to do my part to move us closer to treaty, truth-telling, and land rights. This always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

Our attention is being called to become twofold and dynamic; turning toward outward relationships as well as inner reflection. And holding both, in the delicate, ever-shifting space between.

Libra is an air sign, ruled by Venus. This archetype is concerned with balance, beauty, fairness, and the ways we can meet each other. Under this full moon, our relational field has the potential to become extra illuminated. Showing us something of not just who we are alone, but who we are in contact.

This moon asks:

꩜ Where am I overextending to maintain “harmony”?
꩜ Where am I withdrawing to protect myself?
꩜ What does balance actually feel like in my body? Not as an idea, but as a lived experience?
꩜ Where am I abandoning myself in the name of connection?
꩜ Where am I resisting connection in the name of independence?

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Under a Libra moon, what can come into energetic view is our relational patterning: the subtle negotiations we make to be loved, accepted, or understood.

Libra seeks equilibrium. But true balance doesn’t really exist in nature. What we call balance is usually a dynamic dance. Something responsive and alive. Don’t seek perfect harmony, seek honest recalibration.

And remember that relationship is not something we claim or achieve. It’s something we practice.

Keep reading for: therapeutic themes to work with under the full moon in Libra, a tarot and reflective writing ritual, creative practice suggestions, and therapeutic journaling prompts to work with during this moon cycle.

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As the first sign on the zodiacal wheel, Aries is the symbol of initiation. It is concerned with emergence, instinct, courage, and that raw, animating life force that precedes reflection or deliberation. Where Pisces (the last archetypal season we sat in) dissolves the edges of the self, Aries redraws them. No matter where Aries sits in our chart, this creative archetypal energy inside us says: I am here. I can act.

That is, our inner ram helps us to move. To explore what it means to take action sourced from inner instinct. As opposed to external fear or expectation.

This seasonal threshold is also marked by the Equinox. A profound moment of balance between light and dark. In the Southern Hemisphere, we move into what’s colonially known as Autumn: a time for letting go and embracing the quiet courage of cold and descent. In the Northern Hemisphere, Spring: growth, outward motion. Aries holds both. It’s the paradox of beginnings; they always contain the memory—and promise of—endings.

As a creative, artist, or seeker, how do you act without abandoning yourself? How do you follow desire, without becoming consumed by it? How do you access healthy anger as information, without letting it overtake your sense of clarity?

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The below Seasonal Threshold is an invitation to work therapeutically and creatively with your thresholds of initiation. Your impulses, resistances, and potential beginnings. And to learn the art of embodied action; movement that is responsive, grounded, and aligned with your deeper sense of self.

Welcome to Aries season. May this guide help you become more fluent in your own aliveness.

Keep reading for: reflections and therapeutic perspectives on the archetypal themes of this season, a tarot reading for the collective, journalling prompts for self-inquiry and creative expression, creative ritual invitations, and a curated Aries season playlist.

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Eclipses are not gentle; they’re accelerative. They can act as boosters or course-correctors that reveal what’s been misaligned. They ask us to both surrender control and pay attention.

Virgo supports us to come down to earth. To the small, precise, embodied rituals that, together, sustain a life.

It’s archetypally associated with discernment, craft, refinement, care, devotion, and the daily practices that support wholeness. Under this full moon, and perhaps intensified by eclipse energy, we may see clearly where our systems, habits, or internal narratives are no longer coherent with who we are becoming.

The Virgo full moon asks:

꩜ Where is my energy leaking through perfectionism or self-critique?
꩜ What daily creative practices genuinely nourish me?
꩜ Where have I confused control with self-care?
꩜ What is asking to be simplified, purified, or gently reorganised?

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Eclipses tend to surface what we’d rather avoid. Under Virgo’s influence, that surfacing often relates to work, health, boundaries, responsibility, service, or the relationship between self-improvement and self-worth.

Virgo reminds us that transformation does not only happen in grand gestures. It happens in purposeful, values-based repetition. In attention. In the humble act of tending to what is in front of us.

This energy might feel clarifying, unsettling, or both. Something may become undeniably visible; a pattern, a misalignment, a truth you can no longer overlook. This is not an opportunity for self-criticism. It’s just an invitation into alchemical refinement.

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As the final sign of the zodiac, Pisces is an archetype that carries the weight and wonder of both culmination and dissolution. Pisces is concerned with the depth of human experience: intuition, imagination, compassion, fantasy, and that quality of inner sensibility that feels mysterious precisely because it evades the sharp edges of rational thought.

Where the Aquarian archetype invited us to loosen identity and think otherwise, Pisces asks us to feel otherwise; to expand our capacity for connection and to explore the places where individual experience dissolves into something shared.

But as much as it offers creative power, this season also presents a therapeutic paradox: how to surrender without vanishing. How to dream without losing touch with embodiment. How to train your eye to see fairies, without stepping in their ring.

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The below Seasonal Threshold is an invitation to feel your personal threshold right now. Your dissolutions, longings, and openings. And to learn the art of compassionate presence, both to yourself and to the relational field you inhabit. How might tenderness become a form of strength? How can your imagination serve your life and not merely distract from it?

Welcome to Pisces season. May this guide help you become more fluent in your own depths.

Keep reading for: reflections and therapeutic perspectives on the archetypal themes of this season, a tarot reading for the collective, journalling prompts for self-inquiry and creative expression, therapeutic arts invitations (including images of my own practice results), and a curated Pisces season playlist.

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Leo corresponds to the Sun, the source of vitality, identity, and purpose. Under a Leo full moon, these lunar and solar principles meet across the sky: inner feeling illuminated by outer radiance. This is a moment when the heart moves into the hands. Where we’re charged with walking the talk, through action.

The Leo full moon asks: What wants to be expressed through you now? Where have you dimmed yourself to stay safe, agreeable, or unnoticed? What would it feel like to take up space without apology?

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Like all full moons, we’re looking for illumination and release. Under Leo’s influence, what can come into view is often tied to visibility, pride, joy, and the fear of being truly seen. Old stories about “too muchness,” shame, or performativity may surface, in order to be softened and reworked. How can you transmute performance into presence?

Creativity is not frivolous decoration, it’s life force. Expression isn’t essentially “ego” in the pejorative sense. When the heart is suppressed, vitality dulls. Revolution wanes. Life becomes boring. When it’s honoured, energy returns. Life is fully lived.

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Take a deep breath. The archetype of Aquarius invites you to let your vice grip on identity go, and instead, sense into the wider field of living systems. It’s only natural and appropriate—at this time in the Gregorian year, and given the fascist ways of being appearing all around us—to consider the future. To care about the collective. To bear witness to the unseen architectures shaping our lives.

Enough navel-gazing about who you are in isolation. You’re being called to be more curious about how you participate as a member of a larger we.

What ideologies are you ready to question?
What versions of yourself are ready to evolve?
What future are you quietly preparing your nervous system to inhabit?

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In therapeutic language, Aquarius season is ripe for repatterning. Its themes offer us a chance to step outside of habitual self-concepts and envision otherwise. To notice where the self has become boring, rigid, or resigned. And to divest from unhelpful compliancy once and for all.

This Seasonal Threshold is your creative, expressive, psychospiritual guide to this month. It’s a practical resource in growing your ethical imagination, your conscious choices around difference, and your courage: to think, create, act, and live beyond inherited scripts.

Keep reading for: reflections and therapeutic perspectives on the archetypal themes of this season, a tarot reading for the collective, journalling prompts for self-inquiry and creative expression, creative invitations rooted in play and futurity, and a curated Aquarius season playlist. Let’s go.

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As the moon comes to fullness in its home sign, we’re invited into a ritual of tending; to the emotional body, to the inner child, to the places inside us that long for safe-enoughness, nourishment, and actual rest.

Cancer corresponds to the moon itself. This is the archetype meeting her own reflection. So it offers us a potential doubling of sensitivity, intuition, and depth. Where Gemini’s full moon asked us to speak and listen, Cancer asks us now to feel and hold. To notice what arises when we slow down enough to meet, and be touched by, our own interior weather.

This lunation gives us the chance to visiblise our usual invisible emotional undercurrents. Emotions that have been quietly shaping our behaviour. The grief we’ve learned to minimise, the need we’ve learned to override, the longing we’ve learned to carry alone.

The Cancer full moon asks gently but insistently:

What do you need, that you have not been giving yourself?
Where do you feel most at home? And where do you not?
What within you is asking to be held, rather than solved?

All full moons offer an opportunity of illumination and release. Under Cancer’s influence, this release is not dramatic or declarative. Rather, it’s soft and subtle. This is a moon of self-attunement, of remembering that sensitivity is a form of intelligence. Read on (or subscribe) for a breakdown of this moon’s themes, a creative ritual, journalling prompts, and integrative practices.

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Capricorn season is here. Much like a low, ancient bell sounding from the deep, it comes with a resonance that can be felt down to the bones, if one wishes.

And it comes at the threshold of wintering in the northern hemisphere and the symbolic midwinter of psyche everywhere. Capricorn, archetypally, is the place where spirit crystallises into form; where we remember that meaning is not an idea we think, but a structure we slowly build within our lives. It presents us with the opportunity to reflect on our concept of (and lived relationship with) inner eldership. The part of us that has survived enough to speak with some kind of weight.

Where Sagittarius season invited us to stretch toward the horizon, Capricorn brings us back to ground, asking: What will you honour as true? What will you slowly, lovingly, commit to? In certain kinds of therapy, we might call this a process of integration. The sober, sacred work of living out our values with every right action.

This Seasonal Threshold guide is not for self-improvement. Capricorn’s medicine is older and quieter than the hustle of fixing or “doing”. It’s the commitment that grows out of discernment and devotion. The responsibility of tending to the shape of your life.

Welcome to Capricorn season. How can you learn to better hold what you long for? I hope the below gives you some felt sense of insight.

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It’s the voice we often ignore in ‘everyday’ life. Because it doesn’t shout. It doesn’t demand. It doesn’t explain itself. It simply gestures toward what feels true.

In mythology and literature, this voice has a thousand names. For Dante, it was Virgil: the steady, poetic guide who led him through the underworld and down (yes, down) toward the light. In Jungian psychology, it’s the Self: the organising centre of the psyche that draws us toward wholeness. In ordinary language, it might be called intuition, creative intelligence, a gut feeling, or our inner knowing.

Whatever we call it, this guiding presence lives in all of us. It is the archetype of the inner sage companion; the knowing one within. And yet, so often, we resist it.

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Why we resist being led

The paradox is that while we long to access our inner truths, we often fear surrender. We crave clarity, but resist being shown evidence for something that might jeopardise our current patterns of behaviour—our learned ways of being and the stories that come with them.

Many of us learned early it wasn’t safe to be in our bodies, or feel our feelings. That to be led was to be controlled; that to trust our gut was to risk being disappointed or worse. For others, our culture’s fixation with “doing” rather than being makes slow, gentle listening to oneself feel weak or indulgent. The myth of the self-made, productive person leaves little room for noticing, let alone following, our felt senses and inner nudges.

But the kind of deep knowing the inner guide offers is different. It’s relational, not hierarchical. It doesn’t impose, it invites. It doesn’t tell you what to do. It simply allows meaning to emerge.

To follow this inner guide is not to abandon yourself, but to accompany yourself. It’s to become the one who can radically be with what is, without forcing an outcome.

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The guide as mirror

In Dante’s Divine Comedy, Virgil can lead our protagonist only so far. Through the dark, through the fear, but not all the way into paradise. That final step must be taken by the self.

I love this as a metaphor for therapy, and for life itself. Any guide, whether external or internal, is only so powerful. Their role is to mirror what’s already within you—to help you recognise what matters most, so that eventually, you can know your values, choose differently, and take action.

In experiential and creative arts therapy, this process unfolds through image, movement, sound, and dialogue. Meaning arises from arts materials, from the body, and from the therapeutic relationship. When we slow down enough to listen, we discover that our own wise inner knowing is always speaking to us. The arts process simply gives it a form and a language.

Sometimes what emerges is tender, sometimes chaotic. But beneath it all runs a current of intelligence. Something in us that knows how to move toward meaningfulness and change.

This, to me, is the essence of the wise inner guide. They’re no authority figure. They’re our natural orientation toward presence, reflection, and deep listening. Toward our own truth.

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Listening for guidance

The work, then, is learning how to listen to oneself. How to listen beyond the ego’s urgency. Beyond what we think we know. To allow ourselves to be long enough to hear what the body, the breath, the process, the image, the space between us—is saying.

When we begin to listen, we notice the difference between learned patterns and new potentialities; between the inner critic and the inner companion. The critic demands perfection. The companion offers presence. The critic says, you must. The companion says, you are and you may.

This is the invitation of arts-based therapy: to become intimate with your own guiding inner knowing. To recognise that sense, that voice. To practice allowing it, listening to it, trusting it, and walking with it through the not-yet-known.

Why I named my practice Virgil Therapy

I chose the name Virgil for my arts-based therapy practice—which just launched and you’re the first to know—because it symbolises the archetype of inner knowing itself—the one inside us that can guide us through what feels fearsome. And still move forward.

In Dante’s story, Virgil doesn’t rescue or fix. He illuminates the path just enough for the next step to appear. That’s what I believe therapeutic work can offer: not answers, but alongsideness.

To honour that archetype is to remember that wisdom isn’t something we acquire. It’s something we learn to recognise within ourselves. Virgil Therapy is an expression of faith in that process. And in the creative intelligence that lives inside all of us, waiting to be attuned to.

We all have an inner Virgil. The invitation is to let them lead.

Whether you’re looking for a body/arts-based therapist or not, I hope Virgil Therapy resonates with you and I’d love to hear your thoughts on my new website, and overall new profession ;)

My perspectives and experiences as a registered therapist will continue to inform everything I offer in this (albeit personal and informal) space. And I’d love to invite you join the Creative Kin tier or Founding Circle tier of my Substack for collective tarot readings, creative resources, embodied practices, and live gatherings from a therapeutic framework.

Thank you for meeting me at this particularly potent threshold. I’m glad you’re here.

With care,
Jerico

Thresholds is a newsletter for artists and seekers on the path of becoming. Brought to you by Jerico Mandybur, author and founder of Virgil Therapy. Subscribe to Thresholds to receive a free guided somatic centering practice. And if you enjoyed this post, share it around.

This email has been sent from unceded Dharawal Country. I send my solemn respects to Elders of this place, past and present, and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders. I vow to continue the journey of unsettling colonialism and aim to do my part to move us closer to treaty, truth-telling, and land rights. This always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

The pause when a person sees the reflection of something significant in a card, before any words are said. That’s the moment that keeps me devoted to this work. The recognition of a deep knowing. Over the years, I’ve come to understand the tarot as a living, symbolic conversation. Where each card is a mirror, offering us an image of what already exists somewhere in the inner world.

Yes, tarot is a powerful tool of divination. My clients might be surprised to learn that my first tarot mentor taught me via an old-school approach to divining the future from the cards. Yet over my decade of reading professionally, I’ve found it most transformative when approached as a practice of therapeutic revelation. Of seeing what’s ready to be seen, here and now.

For me, what began as a lifelong esoteric curiosity has evolved into a contemplative art form and, ultimately, into a companion to the therapeutic process itself. With the upcoming launch of my experiential and arts-based therapy practice, Virgil Therapy, it feels right to bring tarot fully home: to integrate it as one of many doorways into creative and archetypal exploration.

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Tarot at Virgil Therapy

Within my arts-based therapy practice, tarot may appear when requested, or when the moment calls for it, much like any other creative or somatic process. Sometimes we might draw a single card to offer a different perspective on an experience. Sometimes an image might become a bridge into art-making, storytelling, or somatic noticing.

In this space, the cards are not fortune-telling devices. They are potential new ways of seeing; metaphoric touchstones within your inner landscape. When approached through a Jungian, imaginal lens, each card becomes a way of asking: What aspect of my inner landscape am I invited to connect with? What is this image showing me about how I’m relating—or could choose to relate—to life right now?

This kind of inquiry is less about seeing the future and more about offering a wider, higher perspective on the present moment. It invites us to explore what may be seeking to emerge and unfurl through us, to understand what part of ourselves might be asking to be more deeply known, and to find language (and image) for what was previously wordless. In essence, my approach to the tarot is about active, creative meaning-making.

Tarot readings with me

For those who don’t require my services as an arts-based therapist however, I continue to offer one-hour virtual tarot readings (and readings at events) through my new, simplified author site, jericomandybur.com. These sessions are offered through the same archetypally-informed, healing framework, but with the awareness that we’re decidedly not “doing therapy” and thus, our conversation and quality of presence will be held differently.

They’re not readings about your life so much as readings with your life—an intimate dialogue between your conscious awareness and your deeper knowing. Though I won’t be actively promoting tarot readings in this season of my professional life, I remain deeply honoured to meet those who feel drawn to seek out this work. I’ve also felt called to make these readings more accessible and less formal! The price has therefore shifted from $177 USD ($270AUD) to $143 USD ($220AUD), reflecting my desire to keep this work open and alive, without the pressure of continuing to position it as my main bread and butter.

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Divination and the present moment

Considering my therapeutic approach to the tarot, you might wonder: do I still “believe” in divination? My answer is always yes…and.

Yes, I believe in mystery, in synchronicity, in conscious awareness pervading in everything, as everything. And yes, I have my own spiritual practice and tradition. I believe the universe speaks in senses, images, and symbols, and that tarot can help us listen. And…I also believe that the deepest magic happens when we return to the living, breathing present: when we see that every card, every question, is an invitation to know ourselves more fully, here and now.

To me, divinatory and psychological readings are not opposites; they’re siblings. Both reach toward meaning. Both honour the intelligence of the unseen. One speaks the language of fate and future. The other, the language of process and presence. But when done with responsibility and care, both bring us to the same place: a renewed relationship with our wise inner knowing.

I’ve found that I’m at my best when I can hold space for people in the now-moment; when I can be alongside you in the in-between. To sit in the not-yet-known with another—to allow meaning and inner truths to arise through expression, imagination, and body—this is the generative, radical power of creative and experiential therapy.

And I’ve found that tarot (like therapy) is at its most magical when it’s not about knowing what’s next. But about learning to be in relationship with what is.

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For my Creative Kin + Founding Circle community

If you’ve followed my work through my book and deck, Neo Tarot: A fresh approach to self-care, healing and empowerment, you already know that tarot has never been, for me, a system of pure prediction. It has always been a creative and healing technology. I’m ramping up sharing the tarot from this framework through the Creative Kin tier ($12USD per month) of Thresholds.

There, I’m sharing:

𓁿 A monthly guide to each zodiac season including a collective tarot reading, creative prompts, a seasonal playlist, and ideas for navigating the moment.
𓁿 A monthly bunch of full moon tarot journalling prompts.
𓁿 A monthly advice column where no question or theme—personal or practical—is off limits.

Additionally, members of the Founding Circle tier ($21.50USD per month) will also get access to:

𓆟 Live gatherings, including future tarot workshops!
𓆟 A monthly live coworking space, where we’ll tend to our creative work or personal reflective practices, together.
𓆟 Guided practice resources

Whether you’re a part of this community via the free tier, the Creative Kin, or Founding Circle, I hope to offer a spacious, gentle container for you to explore the tarot as an instrument of insight, self-care, and empowerment. A resource for listening to the wise inner voice beneath the noise.

If you’ve ever felt called to work with tarot in an affirming, richly archetypal way—held by a trained psychotherapist—I’d love to welcome you to step closer.

Warmly,
Jerico

Thresholds is a newsletter for artists and seekers on the path of becoming. Brought to you by Jerico Mandybur, author and founder of Virgil Therapy. Subscribe to Thresholds to receive a free guided somatic centering practice. And if you enjoyed this post, share it around.

This email has been sent from unceded Dharawal Country. I send my solemn respects to Elders of this place, past and present, and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders. I vow to continue the journey of unsettling colonialism and aim to do my part to move us closer to treaty, truth-telling, and land rights. This always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

Gemini is ruled by Mercury; the messenger, the quicksilver mind, the restless wind of ideas. So the Gemini full moon brings a dynamic energy of communication, duality, curiosity, information, and the urge to speak, listen, reflect, connect.

Like all full moons, this one offers us a chance to let the invisible become visible. For what’s been hidden to draw nearer, for the unresolved and half-formed to emerge into view. This moon asks: What can you no longer keep in the shadows, and what is asking to be voiced, shaped, shared?

All full moons are a time for release, clarity, and integration. Here, in this space between the seen and the unseen, lies an opportunity for self-reflection and ceremony.

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The feeling of having left one realm behind but not arriving fully into the next. Like standing at the entrance to a cave. You are in-between. It’s a largely untranslatable place, where the “self” is porous and we sense the present moment is significant; a kind of kairos, pregnant with potentialities we may not even fully imagine yet.

A threshold is a sacred space of transition. Like a caterpillar, we feel our once-stable self-image dissolving. We fear the not-yet-known and yet-to-take-form. But in the language of the psyche, this void is fertile. A cocoon between the familiar and the becoming.

Across cultures, thresholds mark transformation. In Jungian terms, threshold moments are archetypal initiations: the descent into the underworld that precedes rebirth. Every artist, seeker, and soul traversing self-knowledge of one kind or another meets this gate.

It’s not comfortable, but it is sacred. To really be at the threshold is to “stay with the trouble” as Haraway would say. To stay with the tension between dualistic opposites, and listen, until a third thing—whole and unexpected—can reveal itself.

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The fuckery of becoming

Modern culture doesn’t find it easy to acknowledge, let alone honour, the liminal. We’re constantly urged to leap-straight-over, to define, to be certain of. To be any other way can feel terrifying, especially in the extra change-adverse hearts of us who are traumatised or neurodivergent. Yet it’s only at the growing edge—the edge of our comfort and certainty—that we can learn to stretch our capacity and move toward something new.

As an arts-based therapist, I often witness how the in-between is the very soil of transformation: the moment a client is willing to sit in the murky and attend to the unfamiliar, something significant always unfurls. Not in the intellect, but in the body, the breath, the image. When we surrender to not-knowing, colour, texture, sense, movement; it all begins to speak to us. The creative process mirrors us, and attends to us right back.

Like this, the threshold asks for trust in process over outcome. It is a practice of listening. Of allowing creative intelligence to germinate, and gently emerge. Not by constant doing and distraction, but by being where we are, with what is. Here and now. No plans. No promises. Just letting becoming unfold in its own time. Just shittily practicing the art of trust.

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A ritual for locating yourself in liminality

In my experiential approach, we might say that the threshold space invites attunement: to what is emergent rather than imposed. Whether through image-making, journalling, movement, or some other kind of ritual, we enter into relationship with the unknown at the threshold. And in doing so, become midwives to new potential new meaning.

Try this:

• Stand up. Let yourself be relaxed yet alert. Feel your centre of gravity. Recall a current life threshold, whether creative, relational, existential.

• Ask: What am I standing between?

• Let an image arise. It might be a doorway, a bridge, an ocean. Draw, write, or gesture freely without judging its content or quality. Just let it out as raw material.

• Then place your hand on your heart. Exhale fully and ask: What does this image ask of me right now? Spend time with it. Listen. If this image could talk to you, what wisdom would it offer? How might it shift your body’s stance? Notice sensations, emotions, and additional images as you go.

• Let yourself breathe freely and ground fully, as you reflect, until reaching a natural point of containment and completion.

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Don’t trick yourself into thinking thresholds are a detour. They are the path. The resistance they conjure in you is the journey. Being scared is a confirmation of your aliveness and attentiveness to the new. You are not lost, you are unfolding. T.S. Eliot said “between the intention and the act falls the shadow.” In that shadowy interval, life reshapes you.

If you wish to journey deeper with others navigating their own creative thresholds—through creative ritual, reflective practices, and gatherings—you’re warmly invited to upgrade to my newly-launched Creative Kin or the Founding Circle tier, where we walk these edges together.

Paid subscribers gain access to exclusive offerings like:

• The Seasonal Threshold: Detailed creative guides and collective readings from a psychospiritual lens for each new zodiacal season.

• Ritual Full Moon: Monthly tarot-based therapeutic reflections + prompts.

• Crossings Column: A monthly advice for the in-between.

• Regular intimate monthly live co-working, workshops, and guided practices (for Founding Circle members).

Warmly,
Jerico

Thresholds is a newsletter for artists and seekers on the path of becoming. Brought to you by Jerico Mandybur, author and founder of Virgil Therapy. Subscribe to Thresholds to receive a free guided somatic centering practice. Paid subscribers receive a wealth of monthly resources. And if you enjoyed this post, please share it around. Thank you for being here.

This email has been sent from Tongva land and I send my respects to the Elders of this place, past and present.

This is a note from a threshold.
The kind where things begin quietly and unfurl slowly.
The kind where something ends. And becomes something else.

For the past few years, this Substack has been called The Dreamer. It’s held essays, reflective practices, and prompts, as heartfelt as they are inconsistent. It’s held me, too, through moments of uncertainty, not-knowing, and exploring the creative in-between. But like all dreamers, at some point, I had to open my eyes and gently take in the emergent shape of things.

So, this is me letting you know that The Dreamer is becoming Thresholds.

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Why Thresholds?

That’s where I find myself. Not just metaphorically, but in every part of my life. I’m in transition: personally, professionally, spiritually.

I’ve been moving through a long, quiet season of dissolution. Of letting go. Old structures have collapsed. Old identities have softened at the edges. It’s been a few years of sitting in the sacred tension of the not-yet. But with patience, something new has germinated.

Thresholds is a soft new beginning. A reorientation toward wholeness in my self-concept and my work. Soon I’ll be formally launching Virgil Therapy; my registered experiential and creative arts psychotherapy practice. And Thresholds is the personal complement to that.

What to expect

This Substack will remain a living, breathing companion. A place for creative process, spiritual practice, embodied psychological inquiry, and becoming.

Whether you’re navigating your own threshold—whether in illness, creative calling, loss, uncertainty, or the emergence of new identities—I hope to offer something that resonates, softens, or steadies you along your path.

You’ll continue to receive:

• Reflective essays with prompts and practices.

• Personal writing.

And in the spirit of deepening my offerings and resourcing this work sustainably, I’m also introducing two paid tiers for those ready to go deeper together.

What’s inside the Creative Kin Tier [Paid]

If you choose to subscribe to Creative Kin, you’ll receive:

🕯 The Seasonal Threshold: A slow, creative guide for crossing into each zodiacal season, including a collective tarot reading, creative prompts, a seasonal playlist, and ideas for navigating the moment..
🕯 Ritual Full Moon: Tarot journalling prompts + reflective guidance.
🕯 Crossings Column: An intimate advice column for those between selves or stages.
🕯 Post comments and participate in collective conversations.
🕯Everything in the Free Tier
🕯$12 USD per month ($3 per week)

You’ll also be helping sustain the free version of Thresholds, so that it remains accessible to those who may not be able to pay.

What’s Inside The Founding Circle Tier [Founders]

If you choose to subscribe to the Founding Circle, you’ll receive:

🕯The Quiet Room: A monthly collective space for tending our creative work, together.
🕯Practice Circle: Exclusive access to regular live gatherings and practice resources.
🕯The Library: A growing Substack archive of ideas, prompts, and practices.
🕯Everything in the Paid and Free Tier.
🕯$259 USD yearly ($21.50 per month)

This is a soft, spacious beginning. The pace will remain thoughtful, slow, and seasonal. This is not a content machine but a hearth. An intimate place to gather and tend to what matters.

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What’s coming next

Some of the themes I plan to explore in the coming months:

• The archetype of the wise inner guide (and why we resist being led).

• Unknowing and improvisation as a way to practice being.

• Leaning into active imagination, without the escapism.

• I also plan to embrace more of a teaching role in relation to the tarot.

This is what I know how to offer; space for those in the sacred (and scary) in-between. A space for questions, initiations, nuance, creative explorations, neuro-affirming reflections, personal expression, and spiritual depth. Whatever “spiritual” means to you. A space for you, if you find yourself in the tender middle of something ending and something beginning.

You are welcome here

If The Dreamer has spoken to you before, I trust Thresholds will meet you here with a deeper presence. Perhaps more clearly, more consciously, and more aligned with where we’re both headed.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for walking alongside me. If you feel called, I’d love to have you as a paid subscriber. But whether you read silently, share with a friend, or just took a moment of pause with this letter, I’m grateful.

We don’t always choose our thresholds. But we can choose how we cross them. Let’s walk this path, together.

With care,
Jerico

Thresholds is a newsletter for artists and seekers on the path of becoming. Brought to you by Jerico Mandybur, author and founder of Virgil Therapy. Subscribe to Thresholds to receive a free guided somatic centering practice. And if you enjoyed this post, share it around.

This email has been sent from Tongva land and I send my respects to the Elders of this place, past and present.

꩜ Book a 40% off tarot reading with me (two days left!)
꩜ Purchase one of my five books/decks.
꩜ Learn about Come Alive, my 1:1 creative coaching program.

There’s no eloquent way to write this.

My best friend Tan (Tania Safi), was aboard the Handala as part of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla Coalition; a civilian ship carrying desperately needed food, baby formula, and medicine to starving Palestinians in Gaza. The flotilla was intercepted in international waters by the Israeli military, and the entire crew was kidnapped and imprisoned.

They are now on hunger strike in protest. They are being punished for bringing life-saving aid to dying people.

In case there was any doubt: this isn’t a distant conflict. This affects us all. And this is my friend of 19 years. This is one of the most luminous, crazy, courageous people I know—a queer MENA filmmaker, a human rights activist, and a person whose heart beats for liberation in every sense.

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I know it can feel overwhelming. This tidal wave of grief, rage, helplessness. But see what’s rising, too? People with clarity. With soul-level conviction. Ordinary citizens with a refusal to be silent, still, or numb in the face of systemic cruelty.

We don’t get to choose the times we’re born into. But we do get to choose what kind of people we are inside them. Our actions: where the spiritual rubber hits the road. If our practices—our tarot, our mantras, our astrology, and meditations—don’t root us in love and courage, what are they for?

This is a moment to remember that it’s not peaceful to turn away from injustice. It is not healing to avoid discomfort. Right action is devotional. Right speech is sacred. Right relationship is the path.

Joy helps…

Please don’t think that joy is not a part of this. Especially now. I feel an immense joyful pride in the value-led choices and hopeful, joyful actions of those on the Flotilla. Palestinians have shown over the last 20 months that joy is defiant, life-giving, and deeply necessary in struggles against oppression.

When powerful systems want us flattened by grief, when they weaponise despair, joy is a refusal. So sing, dance, affirm and assert your dignity, your imagination, and your humanity as you take action in the name of freedom for all.

An action for today

Email the Australian government and demand they act to bring Tania Safi and fellow activist Robert Matthews safely home. For all other Handala crew members, see below for the contact details for their nation’s representatives. Feel free to edit my email template below, so it makes sense for your country.

• DFAT (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade): enquiries@dfat.gov.au

• Penny Wong, Foreign Minister: senator.wong@aph.gov.au

Suggested subject line: Urgent Action Required: Australians Detained by Israeli Forces

Dear Minister Wong,

I am writing with grave concern for Australian citizens Tania Safi and Robert Matthews, who were aboard the humanitarian Gaza Freedom Flotilla’s Handala vessel and have been unlawfully detained in international waters by Israeli forces. These citizens are now on a hunger strike. I urge you to call for their immediate release, provide consular support, and publicly condemn this illegal interception.

I also urge the government to implement immediate sanctions against Israel for its violations of international law and human rights, amid the Gazan genocide.

Australia must act with moral courage and in accordance with our stated values.

Sincerely,
[Your Name]

Emails aside, there are also all your usual options for calling on your governments—from local to federal—through meetings, weekly protests, online actions, donating to vetted Gaza organisations and citizens, holding vigils, praying, spell work, and more. To what works according to your ability.

Whether you are loud or quiet, online or offline, grieving or galvanised—your presence matters. Your voice matters.

Let us not leave the sacred work of justice only to the brave few. Let us speak in solidarity. Let us sing out in defiance. Let us act as if we were already free. Because we are. It’s the systems of domination that would like us to believe otherwise.

For Tan. For Gaza. For a free Palestine. For all beings resisting colonial violence. For all of us, everywhere, who deserve freedom and safety. And for our own hearts, which long to be in right relationship with the world.

ALL EYES ON GAZA. ALL EYES ON GAZA.

Xo Jerico

This email has been sent from unceded Dharawal Country. I send my solemn respects to Elders of this place, past and present, and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders. I vow to continue the journey of unsettling colonialism and aim to do my part to move us closer to treaty, truth-telling, and land rights. This always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

꩜ Book a 40% off tarot reading with me.
꩜ Purchase one of my five books/decks.
꩜ Learn about Come Alive, my 1:1 creative coaching program.

There’s a particular depth of clarity that only emerges in the shadows.

A soft, shimmering kind of vision that comes when you let go of a hard focus and gently adjust and widen your gaze. Let shapes shift and new aspects come into view. A more embodied way to observe. The darkness teaches us to listen—to see—with all our senses.

Tarot, at its best, lives in that shadowy, shifting space. It doesn’t hand out airtight answers. It couldn’t give a fuck about “fixing” you. Instead, it opens a door: to pattern, to archetype, to emergence. And with it, potential new meanings and choices.

This is why I empathise with people who say “I’m scared to get my tarot read! What if I don’t like what it tells me?” While my instinct is to reassure these people as to the therapeutic qualities of my reading style, I also honour the truth implicit in their experience. What if it does show you something you’d rather not see? It might! And that kind of discomfort—like standing alone in nature, in the middle of the night—might be the threshold to a more attuned, better sensitised, more resilient self.

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Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about these quiet thresholds—how we so often reach for certainty when we’re at some invisible edge. And how often that edge isn’t just about “what to do” next, but “what my real values are” and “who I’m choosing to become”.

Later this week, we have a full moon in Capricorn; a sign known for structure, ambition, integrity, and commitment. Capricorn is an elder, a mountain guide. The version of you who has been walking a long, rocky road. They know what matters. And they know the way through.

Under this moon, you’re invited to pull out your tarot deck, your journal, and reflect:

𓃵 What inner structure am I outgrowing? What wants to take its place?
𓃵 What does being in right relationship look like for me now?
𓃵 Where am I being called to claim my own authority?
𓃵 What vision am I being asked to honour or recommit to?
𓃵 What does emotional fulfilment look like within structure?
𓃵 What legacy am I quietly shaping through my everyday life?

Full moons are a mirror. A lantern in the dark. A quiet witness to what’s really there, visible when we practice refining our senses. Don’t ask the cards to help give you answers. Ask them to help illustrate what you already know.

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July 40% SALE

To support this midyear threshold—and offer something nourishing during my winter lull—I’m offering 40% off all tarot readings for the entire month of July! I’ve never done this before and I don’t know if I will again.

You can choose between:

🕯 A recorded video reading
Sent to your inbox within a few days. A beautiful option if you like to revisit insights as much as you want, in your own time, or prefer to digest readings privately.

🕯 A live Zoom reading
One-on-one, spacious, and relational. Perfect if you’d like to explore something more complex, offer more context, or ask live questions as we go.

Both are intuitive, gentle, and grounded—offered through the lens of archetype, therapeutic insight, creativity, and integrative spirituality. My work has a trauma-sensitive, accessible, and collaborative approach, whether you're brand new to tarot or a longtime seeker.

BOOK HERE and use the discount code JULYTHRESHOLD for your 40% off. Offer ends July 31st. If you’ve been curious, this is a beautiful time to receive. If you’re a returning client, this may be your nudge to return. If you have questions about readings, LMK or feel free to read my FAQ.

If you’re ready, so are the cards.

Xo Jerico

This email has been sent from unceded Dharawal Country. I send my solemn respects to Elders of this place, past and present, and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders. I vow to continue the journey of unsettling colonialism and aim to do my part to move us closer to treaty, truth-telling, and land rights. This always was and always will be Aboriginal land.