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When I graduated from my MFA program, I felt the opposite of what I imagined when I started three years before. I did not have a stellar, shiny manuscript that some publisher eagerly embraced. I’d barely cobbled the manuscript together in the first place, and was grateful everyone on my thesis committee hadn’t laughed me out of the room for turning in the disparate collection of stories that still needed a lot of work.

As for employment opportunities this shiny new degree could unlock — there was adjunct teaching. But I’d already been teaching rhetoric and composition classes and knew what it took to grade all my students’ assignments multiple times a month — hours upon hours upon hours. And I knew what it felt like to try and get students excited about a subject they didn’t choose to take, but had to take in order to meet course requirements.

I’d been working at a movie theater, in addition to teaching creative writing in local public schools, a job I deeply loved. But that gig was running out. I ended up moving to South Korea for a year to teach English and immersed myself in a very different culture and language. I told myself I would use that year to really write, to write about the experience of being there, to reawaken the creative practice that, ironically, at the end of an MFA writing program, felt totally dead.

I had hoped the MFA experience would become a launching pad to bigger and better things in my life, and it did, ultimately. But in the immediate aftermath, it felt more like falling off a cliff and landing on a desolate beach all alone, like I’d been shoved out of a nest but hadn’t actually been taught how to fly.

I was in a creative no-man’s land. All the striving to be acceptable and good enough in the MFA program, all the effort to naturalize the academic literary vocabulary I wasn’t already privy to, all the discipline it took to keep up with the reading, the academic writing, the creative writing I was really there to do, and the college-level teaching I was doing for the first time… I was ravaged. And I still didn’t feel like I knew who I was as a writer.

There was no juice left. No creative energy. There was no belief in myself as a writer, even though I had the degree I thought would prove I was one. The worst part: my own delusions of grandeur had been dispelled. Writing was no longer a fantasy I idealized — it was a hard road with real limitations and demands and hurdles to clear, and I wasn’t sure I could ever rise to the challenge enough to succeed (whatever that meant). The result was creative exhaustion and deflation, which would leave me in a creative drought that lasted several years.

There were a few things going on that I couldn’t see at the time, and I remained in denial about how bad it was for a good while, which only prolonged the situation.

But many of us have been here, and we don’t have to pursue an MFA to find ourselves in this creative ditch that lies way, way, way beyond the land of writer’s block, which looks quaint when we’re drowning in a full-blown creative rock-bottom.

If we look to the Tarot, the Ten of Swords best reflects this place none of us want to end up, but some of us sometimes do. Maybe you’ve been there in the past. Maybe you’re wondering if you’re there now.

I want you to know: it’s okay, it happens to the best of us, and there is a way out. But you won’t find it trying all the stuff you already know. Because honestly, that’s how you ended up here. When we find ourselves in a Ten of Swords place, we have to try something new, something different. And we have to identify what wasn’t working before.

How do we end up in a creative rock-bottom?

There’s no one way to get there, but here are some factors and situations that are likely to contribute:

• You’ve been in a creatively demanding environment where you didn’t feel accepted or understood. A lot was expected of you, but you didn’t receive the kind of support, mentorship, or attention to your creative process you hoped for or desired.

• You had push your creativity intensely, like you were trying to gather and channel every last magical particle in the Universe to shape it into the creative vision you were committed to executing. Once you got it done, your tank was empty. And your soul became disillusioned with the creative process writ-large — because if it’s this hard to make your art, if it takes this much, if it leaves you flattened like a pancake in the end, maybe it’s not worth it.

• You suffered creative ridicule, you were ostracized from your creative community, or you experienced some other form of creative trauma (a mentor or collaborator back-stabbing or taking advantage of your goodwill, trust, and vulnerability). Your nervous system is convinced it’s simply too dangerous, too risky to create, so it won’t let you.

• You’ve been trying to create work that you think is palatable, acceptable, or popular, but it’s not leading to the experiences you want because it’s not what you’re truly here to create. You have the skill and the drive, but you’re missing the heart, and your body and spirit can sense the disconnect, which can lead to creative freeze. Because you’re tired of performing, but you’re not sure what kind of artist you are when you stop pretending to be the artist you think everybody wants.

• We can also become estranged from our creativity any time we become estranged from ourselves. Surviving abusive relationships, falling into addiction, facing a spiritual crisis, grieving a loved one, or going through a medical challenge can upend our sense of who we are. Creativity can be an anchor in our recovery, but often we have to prioritize more immediate needs.

Here’s what won’t help us recover from creative break-down:

• Trying to make art you no longer feel connected to or excited by.

• Trying to be some version of another artist you look up to, or letting the art you see “out there” or on social media influence what and how you create.

• Trying to force yourself to create on a schedule, or produce a certain amount without ever connecting with your motivation or capacity. (This creates system-override that will lead to system shut-down.)

• Holding yourself to high standards and expecting your art to be amazing thirty minutes after you start creating.

• Shit-talking yourself for ending up in a tough spot, not knowing how to get out of it (yet), and not being somewhere other than right where you are right now (even though where you are sucks and doesn’t feel good).

What can you do revive your creativity after a low low?

• First of all, you need to be gentle with yourself. Let’s look again to the Ten of Swords. Does this beleaguered figure need to be shuttled back to the factory right away, clocking in for 9-to-5 creativity? Do they need a harsh lecture on all the stuff they did that may or may not have brought them to this place? Hell no. This poor soul needs care, rest, and space. It’s important to stop the bleeding and create time and space for healing to occur.

• When we feel a bit more resourced and neutral, we need to take stock. There are always contributing factors that brought us to our knees. When we reach a Ten of Swords place, the lesson is: we can’t go on as have in the past. Something has to change. And in order to figure that out, we have to reflect.

• Usually, there were some blindspots that led us here. Sometimes, the extremity of the Ten of Swords reveals everything we need to see. But sometimes we need someone else to process with, someone who can understand and notice what we can’t see from the inside. Of course, I’m always gonna tell you to journal about it. With Ten of Swords in particular, I recommend lots of journaling! Can you pick up your pen and notebook at least ten days in a row (if not 30)? Use some of that journaling time to just let your mind spill out whatever it’s holding, whether it’s related to creativity or not. But also reflect on what’s gone wrong (without placing all the blame on yourself). What wasn’t working? Thinking on your recent creative trajectory, what didn’t feel good — and how did it feel? What have you made that mean?

• I also invite you to reflect on how you’re making it harder for yourself. We can do this by beating ourselves up with our own inner dialogue. We can do this by expecting big things when we’re simply not able to rise to our own high standards right now. After a Ten of Swords moment, we’re looking for the path of least resistance, so we need to make sure that resistance isn’t coming from inside the house.

• With this particular situation, I think it’s time to come at creativity very differently. We get so much programming about what creativity is, how it’s supposed to look, what makes it valuable (or not), who gets to do it, and how it should be done. In almost every case, we come at creativity from a capitalistic perspective, but creativity existed way before capitalism. And it will exist long after. Creativity can fuel or engage with capitalism, but for best results, we need to meet on its own terms, and a lot of us simply never learned how to do that. I created a gentle, magical process to help you re-enchant your creativity, and you can learn more about it here. But in the meantime…

• Pick up a creative pursuit that’s not your strongest area of talent. I do best as a writer, but I’ve started using a sketchbook. I have very mediocre drawing skills, so I can’t possibly expect a lot of myself or beat myself for not being better. (I guess I could if I really wanted to, but it makes less sense in my brain than it would with writing.)

• Create without a goal, objective, or end result in mind. Create just to be creating. It will feel VERY strange. But try to make the creative process actually enjoyable — light a candle, put on a creativity playlist (you created), pull a Tarot card for a little inspiration, then fuck around in your sketchbook (or equivalent) for a little while, until you feel complete. Then step back, take a look at what you’ve done, and SMILE. Not because it’s great, but because you and creativity met up and had a good time. Try this low-stakes approach for a few weeks, and I suspect you’ll be receiving more guidance from The Creatrix before too long.

One thing I want to note about the Ten of Swords is that even though this person looks VERY wrecked, they’re letting us know they’re okay with the gesture they make with their hand. It’s the same one we see in The Hierophant of the Tarot. Two fingers up for what is revealed, two fingers down for what is concealed. As above, so below, as The Magician says. (The Ten of Swords is a Gemini card, and Gemini is ruled by Mercury, which is The Magician in the Tarot.) The point is — there’s a bit of humor hiding in this card, and I know us creative types know how to make a joke — and sometimes how to take one. If nothing else, we know how to laugh at life’s hardships and find a little levity in the horrors of the human experience.

Which is all to say, as long as we’re still breathing, we can still connect with Creativity. We can find the gap between what’s gone wrong and what’s still possible. Creativity is never off-limits for any of us.

But if we end up laid out flat, like the creative vampires sucked us dry, we have to rise up and come at it with fresh eyes and new approaches. Something has to change, and that becomes our next creative project — charting our way back and imagining a path that better holds, supports, and inspires us.

✨ If you want help with this, I have a six-step process that will take you there, and it comes with twice-monthly group support, lots of magical and practical practices, and weekly inspiration and prompts. Check out Creative Channel.

✨ If you’d like one-on-one support with your Creativity, I offer deep, grounded, magical mentorship, and you can learn more or book a free curiosity call here.

✨ Not on my OG email list yet? Sign up here to learn about new offers to support your creative and magical practices. When you do, you’ll receive the first three journaling prompts from my Tarot for Creative Spirits workbook — for The Fool, The Magician, and The High Priestess — which can be helpful for easing back into a creative practice and reflecting on new beginnings.

The night before we entered the second decan of Gemini (which officially started Sunday, May 31, coinciding with a full moon in Sagittarius), I went to see “Backrooms,” a new Kane Parsons film (dude is 20!!!) featuring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve. (Here’s the trailer.)

It’s always wild to watch how the collective moves with the astrology, with the decans. How is it that an insanely Nine-of-Swords film hits theaters just days before we enter the decan for this card? There are 36 decans, but it enters the world under the archetype it most fully expresses. This shit is real, y’all.

In the film, Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Clark, a middle-aged furniture-store owner whose life is in closing in on him. No one’s shopping in his store, despite his trying-too-hard TV ads where he hobbles around dressed as a pirate touting no-credit approvals and best-in-town deals. His wife threw him out of his own home (THAT HE’S STILL PAYING FOR! he yells) after he came home drunk one night, broke a plate, then unloaded all his loathing and self-loathing on his “beloved.”

He’s mad he pays for everything while she’s going to school. He’s mad he’s not more successful, though he won’t say so. He’s mad at the world, friendless, sleeping in the giant furniture store, which is starting to glitch in strange ways — the lights going off and on at odd times in bizarre patterns. When an electrician comes to assess the issue, he finds three switches in the breaker-box embedded in the wrong place, seemingly unconnected to the rest of the wiring.

Clark has also started to see a therapist, Dr. Mary Kline, played by Renate Reinsve. Dr. Mary is the author of The Windows Within, a book that’s quoted at the beginning of the film and later on. I can’t find the exact language, but she talks about the open loops in our mind, how the habits and behaviors we’ve formed become our way of being without us even realizing it, keep us locked in limiting beliefs and patterns that repeat and produce the same unwanted effects.

As the glitches keep glitching, Clark descends to the sub-floor of the furniture store to check the breaker-box again. This time, he notices a strange crack in the wall that seems to glimmer open, then disappear, the shimmer back into being again.

When he approaches and investigates, he finds the wall is really an entrance into an entirely new space, one that looks very much like the furniture store — big open rooms, drop-ceilings, florescent lights (with a sickly yellow hue). It’s another space that is bland and vast, without personality beyond its eerie distortions — furniture piled in heaps, objects that protrude only partially through the walls, stuck there like they didn’t make it fully from one dimension to this one.

While most of us would pop back through the portal, hightail it back to consensus reality, hug the nearest tree, and never ever return to the furniture store again, Clark goes deeper, exploring rooms and hallways, which transition from one to another with strange passageways — odd doors, holes in the floor, small descending chutes.

He even convinces his assistant and her boyfriend to come through and record what they find, so he can prove to Dr. Kline that it’s really real. (The first and only time he tells her about the backrooms during a session, he asks if she’s ever committed anyone to an institution for a mental breakdown. Because he knows how it sounds…) With his young helpers on a quest for proof, they descend into territory that is both familiar and foreign.

As you can imagine, it doesn’t go well.

I won’t spoil it, in case you’re planning to see it, and the reviews aren’t raving. I saw it with a friend who’s played the video game it’s based on — she was disappointed. My boyfriend was utterly weirded out, and trying to hold this film with “I Love Boosters,” which he say the day before.

I liked it. Or, I was intrigued by it. It felt different to me, somehow. Distinct. Offering commentary on a universally understood existential struggle in terms I hadn’t quite seen before. Or maybe the fact that now I view a lot of life through the lens of Tarot made it more interesting.

But I was compelled by the questions the film raises: What is this space? Is it really real? Where did it come from, and why is it connected to Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire? How much of this space is constructed by Clark’s consciousness — or sub/unconsciousness? How much of it came from some greater mind, or someone else’s? Who else is in there? What happens if you stay too long? How far back does it go? What monsters lurk in its corners and basements, roaming its halls? Can you ever really get out?

This is exactly the sort of mental and psychological labyrinth we find in the Nine of Swords, the card where we find a human wrenched from sleep, fraught with worry, nine long blades hanging on the wall overhead in a darkened room. This lone figure, head in hands, cradling and wrestling with the one brain they can’t escape.

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After tending to material matters, we turn to the realm of consciousness & relationship…

After Taurus season’s earthly density, we move into the realm of air and enter the mutable sign of Gemini, which is represented by The Lovers in the Tarot, and ruled by Mercury (The Magician).

As we enter this sign, we look beyond the substantive elements of nature to the perceivable but mysterious and invisible realm of consciousness — our thoughts and the information humans have gleaned, recorded, and produced over many thousands of years.

Gemini and Mercury are concerned with communication, ideas, technology, and the ways we connect with one another — bringing two (or multiple) consciousnesses together to engage in problem-solving, romance, friendship, collaboration, cultural production, etc., etc., etc.!

In The Lovers, we have a card about choice, intimacy, self-revelation, and connection. In The Magician, we have a card about channeling, transmitting, alchemizing ideas and visions into real-world things. It’s a pairing we’d love to see in a reading, because it almost seems to suggest a meet-cute (possibly even some sex-magic!).

But in Gemini, there are important lessons to gather around how we relate to our own minds, how we digest information, how we deal with our choices, and how we contend with limitations, break-downs, and fallout.

The first decan of Gemini (May 20 - May 30)…

Gives us our first encounter with Jupiter on this decanic journey. Jupiter is the Wheel of Fortune in the Tarot. In Gemini, Jupiter is in detriment. (Jupiter is detrimented in Mercury’s home signs — Gemini and Virgo — while Mercury is detrimented in Jupiter’s home signs — Pisces and Sagittarius.)

Entering this decan, we can think about the Wheel of Fortune spinning before us, delivering us to new moments, new opportunities, new possibilities, new choices. But this detrimented Jupiter / Wheel moves so quickly. It’s too difficult to choose where to hop on the ride and where to hop off, so we’re left paralyzed and unsure about which way to move.

Or imagine Eve (shown in The Lovers) taking her first bite of the apple from the Tree of Knowledge (right behind her), her head filled with a torrent of information — visions from divine realms, sacred geometrical grids, evolutionary history. As a single human being on this vast planet, confronting the enormity of information swirling through the Universe creates paralysis as well.

The Eight of Swords

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn called this decan the Lord of Interference, and something has certainly stopped this woman in her tracks. Has she been exiled from the social order for some transgression (alluding to the choice implied in The Lovers card)? Is she being punished, made an example of? We have to wonder how she got here and how she might get free.

Astrologer Austin Coppock calls this decan The Apple of Eden, emphasizing the blessing and curse we have as humans — the free will to follow instructions or disobey, and the ability think and reason at higher levels, to philosophize and chronicle what we learn and discover about life here on Earth. It’s so life-enhancing and stimulating, but also such a mind-fuck sometimes! Even with millions of books, thousands of libraries, jillions of podcasts, and TONS of content, the big existential questions must be wrestled with again and again, without resolution.

As Coppock notes, “The Picatrix [a composite work that synthesizes older astrological and magical studies] states that ‘this is the face of the art of the scribe, of reckoning, of number, of giving and receiving, and of the sciences.” (Interesting how apples are also associated with teachers and classrooms!)

Christopher Marmolejo emphasizes Gemini’s relationship to The Digital Age, and our modern tendency to always be online, receiving and processing information constantly, and creating content for human eyes we never see.

Marmolejo calls this decan No Girls on the Internet, emphasizing how the rise of social media gives women a platform for self-expression, but one in which they must subject themselves to the male gaze, to criticism and judgement, to the shape-shifting of Self required to please the algorithm.

“Having to be constantly online, constantly cultivating personas, endless variations of Self become bewildering,” Marmolejo writes. “At what point does the inquiry stop being productive, and worse, restrictive?”

In this decan, we grapple with choice, with the movement of the wheel of fate and time…

We reframe thoughtforms and beliefs within our own minds to create more space and less overwhelm (or else end up in an Eight of Swords predicament)…

We realize we need to move step by step to build knowledge and layer information in order to make it meaningful to ourselves and others, rather than just consuming blindly…

We confront the energy drain of trying to carry too many data points or bits of trivia that don’t actually inform or enlighten…

And we can look out for the ways in which our own thoughts can make our world smaller, rather than more expansive.

Our autobiographical writing prompt for this decan: Write about your relationship with information. That’s a HUGE topic, I know — which, on a meta-level, is very Gemini. But I mean: what were you deeply interested in and curious about when you were little? As you grew older, how did those interests evolve? Who were some of the thinkers, writers, and historical figures who helped you craft your worldview? As you continued learning in adulthood, what did you decide to study? And what frustrations did you run into in terms of trying to narrow down your interests to focus on one or two things, when there are so many possible paths and courses of study to take? Were there external forces trying to direct you away or towards certain pursuits and ways of thinking? What are you learning (and dorking out) about right now? What do you imagine you’ll explore and study as you get older? If you were to do this life over again, what lines of inquiry might you pursue instead?

Follow whatever threads arise for you as you write about or contemplate these questions. I’ll share mine in a few days, and I welcome your responses too!

If this series is sparking your curiosity about the connections between Tarot and astrology, I host a learning community where we’re exploring all of this in greater depth, in an embodied and experiential way, and sharing our discoveries as we go. If you want to hear about next year’s journey, join the waitlist here.

Here in these final hours of Taurus season, I’m sharing my writing in response to the Seven of Pentacles prompt, which was:

Write about a time where your efforts, labors, and ideas converged with fate to send you in a new direction, deliver opportunity or success, or challenge you in defining ways.

This is the decan of my ascendant, the decan that was rising over the horizon line from Webster, Texas, at the moment I was born. The ascendent signifies a course for life, something to move towards, grow into, aspire to. For this piece, I wrote about how I came to work with Tarot as a means of supporting myself, and the glories and struggles that entails.

In the first part of Taurus (Five of Pentacles), I wrote about my struggles with depression and alcohol addiction. In the middle decan of Taurus (Six of Pentacles), I wrote about my first AA meeting. Here, I’m writing about what came after, because of the struggle and the recovery. You can find the full series in the Writing the Decans tab here.

I’m trying to write mostly in one straight sitting, and give it a once-over read / edit to smooth the rough edges and trim the extraneous, make it hopefully legible and not too rough. That’s all to say: you’re getting an early draft. And, I’m sorry, they keep getting longer! This one is 3,600 words — good goddess, why?!?! My Mercury + Neptune in Sagittarius is truly helping no one. Erstwhile, I continue to second-guess my choice to publish these pieces in this early / raw form, or to challenge myself to write at this pace and frequency. I also keep remembering that no one asked for this! But, nevertheless, I have written it. Today I am still willing to share it. I trust you know what to do with your inbox!

Tomorrow, Gemini seasons begins, and I’ll soon have a little post for you about the next decan, which is Eight of Swords! (It’ll be under 1,000 words, I SWEAR!)

Labors of Love & Heartache

Taurus is my first house, and my ascendant-degree falls in this Saturn-ruled decan belonging to Seven of Pentacles. I am Venus’s servant as a Taurus rising. And Saturn’s bitch with my sun, moon, and Mars in Saturn-ruled Capricorn, plus my midheaven in Saturn-ruled Aquarius. Here Saturn is looming and lording over my horizon line at the moment of my birth.

I’m sure Saturn — which is easy to misspell as Satan, I just discovered — gifted me my daddy issues, as did my actual father. But that’s not what this about. Or maybe it is? We’ll see…

Saturn also made me hard-working. Granted, I almost always finish things (like this post!) just in time, sometimes slightly late, but the work is usually good. Not exceptional or impeccable, but Saturn-level solid, sturdy, considered, strong.

The farmer inhabiting my Seven of Pentacles decan is, at the moment, assessing his harvest. But if he looks up and across the horizon line, he’s staring into Scorpio, the sign of the underworld, death, the occult, the taboo, the mystical, the witchy.

I’ve grown into that side of myself slowly. I had to uncover it, and go out in search of models and guides — thanks, Saturn! — though my family did teach me to attune with nature, which is, as any Taurus-rising knows, magical af.

As I worked to stay sober, I felt something magical happening to me, for me, with me. Saturn squeezed me through the grinder of addiction, and not that everything was easy on the other side, but everything was better.

Yes, I felt like a raw little baby growing hair and skin and teeth all over again. But everything was brightening —, my energy, my mind, my mood, my outlook. I was regaining my appetite for food and life and things that brought me joy.

It was revelatory and refreshing to be out of the old trap of drinking, and instead evolving into a version of myself that previously seemed so far away and fantastical, like I was watching her through 10 panes of sea glass — the two of us separated by dimensions I had no idea how to could cross. But now I was learning the way.

As sobriety became more familiar to me, I felt a growing desire to show others what I was finding out firsthand. Yes, just like any newly sober gal with a new lease on life, I wanted to spread the gospel. Not specifically about AA, but the message that transformation is possible, that it’s not hopeless. I’d received so much help — from people in AA, from my therapist, from my mother, step-sister, and father who encouraged me, and my friends who stuck with me. I wanted to pass it on. But I wasn’t sure how.

I thought about becoming a sponsor in AA, but didn’t think I needed people calling me at all hours of the night on the verge of a relapse. I thought about going back to school to become a therapist, but I already had one master’s degree and tons of student debt, and I was nearly forty and wouldn’t be able to start that work for a another few years, at least.

Then… one year and one month after I quit drinking, Saturn — or maybe it was Venus? — gave me a gift. Perhaps they paired up and got their girl the next right thing!

The partner I was living with had moved in with more stuff than we could fit into my small house. And with my natal Saturn in Virgo (LOOK OUT!), we can’t be having extraneous stuff sitting around taking up space, so I set about going through my things and his things and figuring out if there was anything that could go, or where we might store whatever we had to keep.

My partner had the Rider-Waite Tarot deck, which I had too, but he didn’t know anything about Tarot, and neither did I. By that point, I’d had the deck maybe ten years, but could never recall where or when I got it.

I do recall one time getting out the box, probably while drinking, and thumbing through the cards, looking at the little white book, feeling confused, and putting the deck back in a drawer in my office, where it stayed for a looonnng time.

My partner also moved in with a zombie-themed Tarot deck — here was a thing we could part with! I knew my step-sister would love it, so I took it to her one weekend, and we did a little reading for her. She’d been playing with the Tarot since she was a teenager, something I only found out that day for the first time.

We used the heart-shaped spread in the little guide-book, for romantic concerns. I remember the Three of Swords coming up. And surprise when every other card we turned over aligned with her feelings and the situation she was going through. I was captivated by how directly — and magically!— the cards responded.

Within a week of that reading, I woke up one morning and thought — that’s it, that’s the thing I’ve been looking for: Tarot could be my medium, my helper, my teacher in helping others explore their own paths of recovery and reclaiming.

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With five pieces written and nearly 10,000 words under my belt, I’m now running into the existential whiplash every writer knows by heart: Does this really have a point? Will anyone care? Is this a good use of my time? Is there any real benefit in putting my life stories on the internet? How can this be used against me?

But I have to remember I’m largely sharing this creative experiment in self-exorcism for my own accountability, which is perhaps a selfish way to deploy a newsletter. I worry this entire project does little to support you in your magic, divination, and creativity, and that my time would be better put to some other use. But I also know that creativity and the creative process work in mysterious ways, and it’s our job to trust it.

Below is my piece in response to the Six of Pentacles prompt, which was: Write about a central experience in your life related to giving / generosity / receiving help / sharing abundance. (You can see all the Writing the Decans posts in the Writing the Decans tab.)

With Five of Pentacles (“In Times of Woe…”), I wrote about my struggles with alcohol addiction. It seemed only fitting to follow that with the story of how I pulled myself out, thanks to the help of so many people along the way.

It started with some rather noisy messages from the Universe and an AA meeting I never wanted to go to… until I did. It seemed all the more appropriate to write about this for the Six of Pentacles decan, given that I actually quit drinking during this ten-day period, and celebrated ten years of sobriety from alcohol on May 2.

I planned to put this piece behind a paywall because I’m still cringey about people seeing more of this side of me, but it seems antithetical to the spirit of this decan and the spirit of AA to gate-keep it.

So, here it is in full, all 3,300 words of it (yowza!).

If you’ve ever struggled with addiction or cared for someone who has, I’m sending you a big hug. Addiction is a mind-fuck — for the people who experience it, and especially for the spouses, children, parents, siblings, and friends who watch their loved ones struggle in ways that make no logical sense. Of course, please forward this post to anyone who could benefit from it…

Divine Intervention

I couldn’t get to my first AA meeting fast enough.

At the same time, I wanted — vehemently, with every bone in my body — to do anything BUT show my face in AA meeting.

The men in my family who’d paved the way for my addiction — my father and both grandfathers — liked to proclaim: they weren’t alcoholics, just drunks! (Which is one of the most alcoholic things an alcoholic can say.)

None of these men ever set foot in an AA meeting — that I know of.

Aside from being explicitly taught it was okay to be a drunk, but not okay to be an alcoholic… Aside from my mother warning me that I was at greater risk of alcohol addiction thanks to this family lineage… I suppose I was determined to test the theory and find out for myself.

In movies and on TV, AA looked like a sad room full of folding chairs and people who looked to have been cranked through the psychological meat-grinder before crawling themselves to a place where you repeated affirming chants over free coffee in styrofoam cups and grocery store cookies.

I don’t know why, but I associate AA with the image of a bald man wearing a clean white V-neck T-shirt, having just smoked a cigarette or on the verge of smoking another one (from a red pack of Marlboros).

All the men in my family were also always smoking. Goddess, I wonder what might have happened if they’d tried AA.

I’d been dancing for years with the question of how bad my problem was. Was I actually an alcoholic? Or just a drunk? Did I have any control over my relationship with alcohol? (The answer increasingly appeared to be NO!) Would I ever be able to drink “normally,” like other people? Or would I have to give it up completely, god forbid?

My identity had become so entangled with drinking, and I inherently understood that AA was about remaking that identity entirely. But I just couldn’t see it, couldn’t imagine it, didn’t want to.

It’s so bizarre. It’s just a substance in a bottle.

But for some people, it’s a portal into 14 different levels of hell.

Even so, a huge part of me believed that…

Going to AA would make me the object of scorn and gossip.

Going to AA would mean giving up the one thing (besides my dog) that had provided constant company.

Going to to AA would mean admitting, at last, that I wasn’t “just a drunk,” but a full-on alcoholic, just like my father and grandfathers.

Going to AA meant humiliation and defeat.

It meant admitting finally that I truly couldn’t handle it — this life, being me, being a good little member of society, contributing something valuable to the world. The world was a hard place, and while drinking took the edge off, it only rendered me more lost to myself, more disconnected from the world.

It had been a long, slow road to the doorstep of AA, then an acceleration there at the end, where I practically screeched into the parking lot, rushing not to miss it.

Because of the way I was drinking at the end, I’d lost a laptop, a phone, a passport, and a second phone, in the span of about two weeks. (Possibly more details on that someday, but it’s hard to go there.)

Even at a time when I felt spiritually hollow, almost dead inside, I could still feel Universe trying to get through to me. The red lights were flashing, the directive seemed pretty straight-forward.

The missing belongings portended what would come next if I didn’t change.

You think it sucks replacing expensive stuff?! Well, soon you’ll be losing things you can’t replace.

I knew those things were my relationship — with a partner I was now cohabitating with but for a long time had been “waiting for” (a separate yet linked saga). I knew the things I could lose included my safety, my health, my integrity, the respect of people I cared about.

Even though my mind was a mess and my intuition dim, I was slowly readying my response… I intended to quit on Sunday, May 1 — the start of a new month felt inspiring and close at hand. New months made me hopeful — another opportunity for change (a tactic I’d attempted before).

I’d tried therapy, but was never honest enough about the severity of my problem, and never chose someone who really knew about addiction in a way that could help me. One therapist told me I should make sure not to drink when I was hungry or tired, and I was like, Okay, Melissa. I think we’re on very differently wavelengths here. But good try?

I’d broken promises to myself hundreds of times. I’d failed and failed over and over to limit my drinking in ways I knew were more healthy and moderate.

It made no sense. Because I knew better. Hadn’t my mother told me?!

But as my drinking became more severe, it did become harder to deny. I could see that it was sucking me dry — body, mind, and spirit. I just didn’t know how to stop.

But now, at least I had a date for stopping!

That Sunday, I had to host and coordinate a work event mid-morning. When I returned home, I saw my partner briefly, then watched him leave for the restaurant where he worked most nights. Even though we were now living together after three years of long-distance drama, we were hardly ever at home at the same time, and my loneliness persisted.

When I say I watched him leave, I mean I literally snuck to the front window and peered out, like a teenager ready to call her friends over for a party as soon as her parents pull away for the weekend. I wanted to make sure his car had driven off, that he hadn’t forgotten anything. He would be gone until late. Probably after I went to bed.

I said fuck it. One last hurrah. It was a beautiful day, after all. (Melissa didn’t get the memo that an alcoholic will literally find any reason to drink!)

I went to the store, stocked up, spent a good chunk of the day sitting outside, probably drinking pinot grigio with a couple ice cubes (classy!). I probably took a nap sometime late in the afternoon and continued to drink after I woke up.

I was a sad drunk, not a mean one, and about the time things got blurry and the sun set, I was sad again about where I was, how lost I felt, how everything in life seemed rather hard and unfulfilling. I was probably also sad about the thing I was about to give up, the white flag I was about to wave, the part of myself that was about to die.

Somehow, even drunk, I found the wherewithal to prepare for the thing I had to do. For real this time. Starting tomorrow.

With little tears dripping onto my iPhone screen and my vision blurry from the wine, I nevertheless found a podcast on sobriety and listened to the first episode, where the host instructed me to get a piece of paper and draw a dot (which was me), then a circle around that dot (which was my comfort zone), and then a dot somewhere outside the circle (which was where sobriety lived).

Somehow, that very basic graphic cut through the fog of inebriation and laid a path for me.

I got my laptop and started searching AA meetings in my area. A banner at the top of the site listed the AA hotline, open 24 hours.

I was embarrassed to call drunk, but conceded that was exactly what the line was for.

Part of my fear around going to a meeting was not knowing what would happen when I got there. Would I be called upon to speak? Would I become the center of attention in a room full of people who could see right through me, every quaking wrecked little piece of me? Would I have to fall apart in front of strangers as some rite of initiation? Would I be forced to own the one thing I still wasn’t ready for anyone to see?

I was afraid of the whole God bit, too, the higher power stuff. Talking about Jesus and trying to stay sober seemed like too much to ask.

But I called the hotline, and was kicked to the cell phone of a woman who sounded a little older than me. I remember her name as Rose, or maybe that’s how I remember her essence.

I’m sure I was crying as I told her about the crossroads I was coming to, how I thought I needed to go to AA, but was scared, and could she tell me what to expect?

She said she understood, and that the first meeting is always nerve-wracking, but everyone was there to support each other.

She told me the usual routine at a meeting, and when I asked if I would have to speak, she said they usually ask at the beginning if it’s someone’s first meeting and that I should raise my hand, just so folks would know to help me. I didn’t have to share anything, but I could if I wanted to.

I don’t remember how much she told me, or what else she said, but this was the first time I’d spoken about my drinking honestly, with someone who understood exactly what I was grappling with.

I found a meeting I could get to after work the next day, which I muddled through. Again, I had to host a poorly attended event at a library branch. Once it got going, I ducked out early, asking the librarian if she could handle the rest. It was a shitty move — but not even one of the worst in my repertoire of shitty moves brought about by alcohol. At least for once, I was making an excuse for the sake of sobriety, rather than getting drunk.

I was a couple minutes late to the AA meeting, and the parking lot was nearly full. It was a big church in a nice neighborhood not far from my office. I searched the halls for the right room, and found it nearly full, with people standing against the walls and nearly coming out the door.

I almost turned away — how could I squeeze in there? If they’d already started, I didn’t want to disrupt. I didn’t want to draw more attention to myself.

I wanted to slink in, hide in the back, and hope the meeting would work its magic on me while I kept my eyes trained on the feet of whomever sat in front of me.

But someone noticed me nearing the door, not sure what to do, and they said, “Here, let’s get you a chair,” and I was like, “Oh, no. That’s okay,” and they said, “No, no, come on,” and I followed them to another little room where there were more chairs, and this person grabbed one for me, wouldn’t even let me carry it myself, and I nearly died from the care and kindness, given how wretched and unworthy I felt inside.

There was more room inside than I thought, but it was still quite full. Maybe forty or fifty people. The facilitator was beginning the meeting, making announcements. He called for someone read the 12 principles and steps.

He asked if anyone was visiting from another chapter? Maybe someone raised their hand and said hello, shared their name, declared themselves an alcoholic.

Welcome, everyone said.

Was this anyone’s first meeting? the facilitator asked.

Wanting to absolutely die and sink into the floor, I raised my hand.

Would you like to introduce yourself?

Sure, I said. I’m Cecily.

I wasn’t sure if I had to say the next part at my first meeting, and these days I have qualms about the label “alcoholic” (not the same qualms as my grandfathers), but I think, on that day, it was important that I said it out loud to myself, and that someone — or many someones — were there to witness it.

And I’m an alcoholic.

Welcome, Cecily, they said together.

So many voices saying welcome, warmly, even though I’d just admitted my biggest, most shameful secret.

Someone next to me put their hand on my shoulder.

I tried to keep from breaking down, bawling, causing a scene.

Someone handed me a box of Kleenex.

The facilitator pulled a blue Big Book from the drawer of the desk where he sat. He sent it around the room, asking the women present to write their names and phone numbers on the first page. He told me what the book was, what it was for, and to use those phone numbers any time I needed to.

When it came back to me, there were 19 names inside, some with little notes: Please call me! Don’t be shy! It gets better! One day at a time!

Twenty women, just like Rose, I could talk to, total strangers who knew exactly what I was going through because they’d been there too. What kind of dreamland was this?

The meeting opened up with a reading I can’t recall, then sharing, with someone keeping a two-minute timer that dinged to signal it was time to end one testimony and begin another. So many people, women and men, shared their experiences for my benefit. I say that because more than a handful explicitly said so.

They described how bad it had been, how hopeless they felt, how impossible quitting seemed, what they stood to lose if they kept going, what they lost because they waited too long, how they found AA and managed to do something different.

They shared about what changed for them — their relationships improving, their ability to do things they’d given up on before, their ability to be alive in their lives and build toward something and enjoy most of their days without needing to hide behind the foggy film of alcohol.

Each story restored something in me — it gave catharsis to my shame and heartache, helped me believe change might be possible for me too, that the things I was hungry for were things I could taste and relish again, if I could just keep letting go.

At the end of the meeting, they handed out chips for people who’d made it one month, two months, three months, six months, even years.

Each person who came to the front spoke as they held their chip, reflecting on their journey, celebrating what they’d done, what they’d gained.

One young woman a little younger than me was celebrating six months. She looked like she’d come from work — put-together, confident, fully collected within herself, the way I wanted to present myself to the world.

I can’t recall what she said, but I remember her up there. Maybe she looked toward me and offered encouragement.

I watched the dispensing-of-chips in disbelief. I had no fucking idea how I could ever make it six days without a drink, much less six months. But as the people around me had said more than once that hour, it was something you did one day at a time.

The meeting closed with the Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

We all joined hands, and the group spoke in unison:

Keep coming back. It works if you work it. And you’re worth it!

I did keep coming back. Daily for the first few months. Then weekly until I’d made it a year. Some of the meetings I went to lived up to every trope I’d seen on TV. But I let myself find something useful in each meeting, something to keep me going.

AA is a strange thing, and it’s not for everyone. But it’s utterly unique in that it has no hierarchy and no profit motive. The people who use it are the people who keep it going. You only get kicked out if you don’t have the intention to get sober.

As an organization, AA never comments on politics or policies. They don’t conduct PR. There is no advertising, only word of mouth. You can find a meeting almost anywhere in the United States almost any day of the week. In bigger cities like mine, there might be forty or fifty different meetings going across town in a single day — some just for women, some just for the LGBTQ community.

AA has persisted for nearly 100 years, without much change, sticking to its mission to provide safe-haven and guidance for those lost in addiction. There is no intake form, no insurance requirement, no payment needed. You simply have to make it through the door and sit your ass down.

Yes, AA was founded by men, and the Big Book, which I never read fully, is a little out of date, a little old-fashioned, and certainly flavored with patriarchy. It doesn’t give context or nuance to the experience of addiction among marginalized people, for whom the stigma is even greater. You will run into misogynists and racists and blowhards who are sober only in a technical sense, not a spiritual one. It’s not always safe space for everyone.

And I didn’t throw in all the way myself — I didn’t get a sponsor, nor did I officially work the steps.

But I did get a therapist who specialized in recovery, who truly did wonders for me and had seen hundreds of people go through the same process I was undertaking.

She understood AA, and she was amazed I was attempting sobriety “on my own,” without residential rehab, though I desperately wanted to escape my life for a while and focus entirely on healing.

But I didn’t have the money for it, didn’t want to ask my family, and didn’t want to confess the truth of things to my boss and ask for leave from work.

But AA kept me going until I could stand on my own, which took a little more than a year.

As I write this, I’m 10 years and 10 days sober from alcohol. It was during this Six of Pentacles time that help first arrived. Or I went out and found it.

I was talking to my mom this weekend about writing this piece. We’d been talking about her father, who drank himself to liver failure.

She told me that once she realized her father was in really bad shape, she filed paperwork with the county to have him sent to rehab. But before the paperwork cleared, he moved to another county, which meant she’d have to start the process all over again.

He would pass away soon after.

Staff found in him in a hotel room in one of the Carolinas, where he’d traveled to conduct insurance adjustments in the aftermath of Hurricane Hugo in 1992. I was twelve years old, just finishing middle school.

My grandfather was taken to the hospital, and it seemed he might get better. My mother planned to fly out and drive him back to Texas when he was well enough, but he died a couple days later.

In another story I heard from my grandmother, about a time not long after their divorce, a renter in the home they used to share had complained the AC wasn’t working properly. My grandmother took my uncle with her to check out the problem. When they opened one of the vents, they found it stuffed with liquor bottles my grandfather had hidden there over the years.

My mother recalled the evening I told her I’d quit drinking, that I’d started going to AA. She remembered that I found a meeting in Houston during that visit, and went early the next morning before escorting my grandmother on to Colorado to visit my cousin and his first child.

“You saved your own life,” my mother told me.

I absolutely believe that to be true.

I could not have done it when I did without that stranger who picked up the phone that night, who spoke to me while I felt at my utter worst. I could not have done it without the strangers in those AA rooms who helped me see that I wasn’t the only one, not by a long shot, who’d ended up lost on a dark road… strangers who pointed me in a direction that led me out and helped me get free.

☸️ This Writing the Decans series will introduce you to the decans of the zodiac, ten-degree sections of the sky that have been imbued with meaning and significance by astrologers and mystics for thousands of years. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn connected the 36 decans to the archetypes of Tarot’s minor arcana, and of course all the cards have an astrological correspondence — with signs and planets too. Every ten days or so, I introduce a new decan, its Tarot card, and an autobiographical creative prompt to go with it. I’m also writing to the prompts myself and sharing a new first-draft essay in an ongoing experiment with self-discovery, narrative structure, and alchemical writing.

We have exited the Six of Pentacles decan and entered the Seven of Pentacles (as of Sunday, May 10).

How it went with Six of Pentacles…

In the Six of Pentacles, we receive (or give!) assistance, reflect and deepen our generosity practice, and open our arms for divine intervention that brings remedy and relief from suffering.

During this decan, I took home a dog I found wandering the streets and slept with him on our couch so he wouldn’t start a fight in our bed where our two dogs usually sleep. We heard from Sparky’s human parents the following day — an older couple living in an apartment nearby. I figured Sparky probably didn’t get out as much as he’d like, so I offered to take him on an excursion along a wooded creek (no leashes!).

I sold some clothes at the thrift store where I like to shop and earned just enough to buy a pair of shorts and two summer dresses, with a $1.02 credit left over!

I wish there were more to point to in the collective sphere around the Six of Pentacles, but as we all know, our leaders mostly enact Six of Pentacles amongst themselves, trading off one another and feasting off the proletariat.

The Supreme Court’s stay of a Fifth Circuit ruling banning telemedicine prescriptions of mifepristone, an abortifacient, looked promising, but isn’t a final ruling — from the same court that in 2022 revoked women’s right to reproductive choice.

In the wake of the court’s recent ruling invalidating key portions of the Voting Rights Act, which occurred (aptly) under the Five of Pentacles decan, there’s surely a smattering of groups, leaders, and activists organizing to overcome what was an overtly racist, overtly partisan decision. But we can’t expect much in the way of miracles or victories just ten days later.

Back to the Seven…

The final decan of any sign is a mutable because it provides the exit ramp for out of one sign, into the next (from Taurus to Gemini, in this case). But Taurus is a fixed sign (as it occurs in the height of spring).

That fixed-mutable combo creates tension — mutable energy wants to move and shift, while fixed energy wants to hold steady. We can see this tension in the Seven of Pentacles itself. Movement has happened, the crops are growing. But there’s also stasis, as the cultivator can do little more but watch and wait for nature to do its work.

This tension is further heightened by the planetary ruler of this decan — Saturn, the planet of discipline, hard lessons, constraint, time, karma, and (appropriately) agriculture.

Recall that Venus (The Empress) rules the sign of Taurus. She’s a champion for the creative process — whether growing a garden, building a life, making art, or making babies. When Saturn enters the mix, we’re reminded that the material world is littered with obstacles, constraints, surprises, and break-downs, and so our farmer is uncertain, skeptical, worried that what looks good now could all fall apart before harvest season arrives.

Looking back at Taurus season…

Recall that our Taurus decans are ruled by Mercury, the Moon, and Saturn, in that order, giving us…

The Five of Pentacles, which I called “In Times of Woe…” Here, Mercury lends the decan a transitory quality, as the figures in the Five traverse the night searching for safety, suffering from disconnection to a support network that could, and arguably should, sustain them and provide a place of belonging.

Then the Six, which I’ve dubbed “Divine Intervention.” With the Moon ruling this decan, we get a more generous, mothering quality. A place to rest. Restoration for the body itself.

And finally the Seven, which I’m tentatively calling “Labors of Love and Heartache” because it’s about the work we’ve invested toward building something we care about, something we need in order to live a good life. It’ also about the aspects of the creative / growing / building process that we simply cannot control.

For the farmer, this could be blight or drought, strong winds, hoards of locusts. For the artist, it could be a canceled grant, or a war on the other side of the world that raises gas prices so people have less money to invest in art. For the pregnant mother, this could mean miscarriage, or navigating a healthcare system that devalues mothers and motherhood. The farmer, the artist, the mother — all have been diligent in what they’re nurturing, but that never provides a guarantee.

It’s like you studied for the final exam, went to study group every week, made flash cards and quizzed yourself while waiting for the bus. Then you showed up and took the test. At which point, you truly can’t do anything more to influence the outcome except believe in yourself and pray to the gods of academia, or send requests to your ancestors, petitioning them to work behind the scenes on your behalf so “it all works out.”

While Taurus is generally a steadying sign — a sign concerned with comfort, beauty, and building good things — when we peer into the decans, we see an abundance of REALISM — the hard facts surrounding our spiritual and soulful needs in a material world full of limitations. (Indeed, you can count on Taurus to always be practical.)

In Taurus, we combine The Empress (representing Venus, Taurus’ ruler) — so alive, so sensuous — with The Hierophant (Taurus itself) — concerned with matters of God and godliness.

Together, they usher us into a portal where the divine matrix that weaves together The Material and The Spiritual becomes more visible, more felt.

In our modern world, the material is everything — science, measurements, allocations, economies, money, housing, clothing, appliances, property, food. But the material is just an interface — something we fleshy humans can kinda grab onto as we wrestle with the existential and spiritual dilemmas of being alive, being conscious, being embodied.

How will we behave? What will we believe? What choices will we make? How will we give our life meaning? How will we relate to the embodied spirits all around us, human and nonhuman? Especially those that dwell in the land itself?

As we wrap up Taurus season and enter Gemini (happening May 20), we can notice what threads of life became illuminated during Taurus re:

• our relationship with Spirit and spirituality

• our relationship with the material

• what happened with our money (since: capitalism).

• what resources (non-monetary as well!) came in, went out, or simply exchanged in flow

• what you’re working on and what it means to you and how it’s going…

Seven of Pentacles is also a card of examination and assessment, or deep attention to life’s unfolding so we can try to clock how the great matrix seems to be turning.

Now to the writing…

HERE’S OUR PROMPT FOR THE SEVEN OF PENTACLES:

Read more

I developed an intense pain running from my shoulder across my collarbone, up my neck and around my ear. (Fitting perhaps, given that Taurus rules the throat, a bridge piece of anatomy connecting all that pain.) I also developed abrasions on my toes from wearing the wrong shoes, cork-heeled mules — the heels of which, it turned out, were literally disintegrating. I got a light bee-sting on the back of my knee while giving a Tarot reading outdoors. I tried to gently brush the bee away from that tender spot, but ended up lightly pressing its stinger into my flesh.

One of my Air BnB renters sent me a message: he really liked the place, but “one sad thing” — he lost his balance getting up from the couch and dented the drywall. It turned out to be a two-foot-long dent that will cost some $1000 to repair. (Here’s hoping Six of Pentacles time means Air BnB insurance will cover the damage if the renter won’t.)

My mother got her first bid on the home she’s selling so she can downsize, but then the deal fell through when the buyer’s lender declined their loan request. One community member reported being almost approved and denied twice for a mortgage refinance (it worked out in the end!). Another’s refrigerator died. Another’s boss denied her accommodations request at work, saying he “didn’t see the value in her working another day at home.”

Zooming out to a collective view, the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voters’ Rights Act during Five of Pentacles, and the attempted violence at the White House correspondents dinner culminated with a unified Republican framing of the incident as a scarcity situation requiring $400 million from taxpayers to fund a White House ballroom two-thirds of Americans don’t want.

It was a lot. Which is why I hope we’re all feeling some relief as we move into the second decan of Taurus (as of April 30 — publishing late, like I said!), which is reflected in the Six of Pentacles, a card of helping, assistance, and support. More on this archetype in just a moment.

Our autobiographical writing prompt for the Five of Pentacles was: Write about a time when you felt debilitated or impoverished in some way — mentally, physically, spiritually, materially. On a micro scale, this could be about last week’s trip to a medical appointment where they couldn’t validate your health insurance. On a macro scale, it could be the developers who took over your old neighborhood and paid a fraction of what anyone would else would have to invest. Or living with chronic illness. Or familial estrangement. Or spiritual rock-bottoms. It’s heavy stuff, and I don’t want to toss you into the jaws of your own worst memories and fears. So, if you pick up this prompt, calibrate according to your capacity. At the same time, I do take this card seriously as a critical element of the human experience and as an invitation to reflect on how we’ve endured hardship and we made it through.

Reader shared this poem in response to the prompt, noting: “I love how it feels like we’re going between highs and lows, as good stories always tend to travel. So here’s a time when I felt incapacitated — a semi-recent experience that has turned my world upside down.”

Thank you, Katie, for sharing this beautiful and powerful poem!

I fell.
Two words that changed everything.
Two words that slowly stole my hope.
Texted once my breathing slowed,
and I thought, I am
okay. I am
safe enough. I am
not broken.
But the pain never went away.
Until suddenly I am
diagnosed.
With something new,
another chronic —
never-going-away thing —
staring me in the face,
or more specifically,
the foot.
It’s been several long years now,
since I fell,
but my body still speaks its language.
A body that entered the world
fearless;
now, I cower at the strength with which
she still cries,
defeat nestled in her minor scales;
a chorus of pain,
a melody attempting to cling to mercy:
“I am
broken,
but I am
still here.
My heart still hums
its staccato truth:
I am, I am, I am.”

My own response to the Five of Pentacles, which is longer and explores a prolonged period of spiritual impoverishment and disembodiment, is included in full at the bottom of the post for paid subscribers.

Now to the Six of Pentacles…

Entering the middle (or fixed) decan of Taurus — a fixed earth sign ruled by Venus — we find helpers after traversing the cold, dark night as outcasts in the Five.

In the Six of Pentacles we see what appear to be the same travelers from the Five receiving a “hand-out” from a gentleman who’s done well enough for himself that he can share his surplus with others.

In the Hermetic Order, the Six of Pentacles is titled the Lord of Success.

As we’ve discussed, Taurus is about the earthly realm, the material that defines and shapes the substance of our lives. The Hierophant (as Taurus) provides a fleshy vessel for the deliverance of spiritual messages, and indeed, in many ways, the realm of the material is where and how we interface with the realm of spirit. Such encounters can be ethereal, fleeting, and non-substantive — like with dreams, visions, etc. But so often it is material — delivered via chance encounters, or the divine timing of paths crossing, or messages spray-painted on passing train cars. The owl that lands in the tree above you just as you were wishing something good for yourself or the world.

How do we act in accordance with our own values in a world defined by constraints and limits? How do we interact with the material we were given for survival in order to perform the daily rituals and actions that foster spiritual meaning and substance?

Are we sitting quietly in our bodies for a few moments each day to connect with the divine, light a candle for our ancestors, touch Tarot cards, and write wishes down on paper? Are we tending to the land and the living things around us, such that we’re able? Or are we consuming endlessly, filling our homes with products made from earthly resources, only to toss them into landfills months or years later? Are we chasing success for its own sake, at odds with our integrity or without genuine purpose?

The second decan of Taurus is ruled by the moon (The High Priestess), interacting with the Venus rulership of Taurus (The Empress). These two divine feminine energies want to tend to the needs of the people. The Empress deals in harvests, the business of cultivating and distributing material abundance. She is concerned with the collective, wanting material comfort for all, not just herself.

The High Priestess is of course deeply concerned with spiritual matters — what the gods have to say, the stories they tell, the records left by ancestors, the layered meaning of collectively constructed archetypes that outlast empires and survive across centuries. She tends the archives, selects the wisdom needed for the moment, and — similar to the work of The Hierophant — makes her body into a vessel for spirit. But she’s less concerned with broadcasting outward to all who can hear (like The Hierophant), and more concerned with selective distribution of spiritual information: who needs to know what, and when?

We can also notice the visual echoes in The Hierophant and the Six of Pentacles, with whom each encounter raises a variety of questions: Are we the generous giver in the image? Or the receiver in need of support and spiritual uplift? Is the exchange this card refers to in our lives one of spiritual offering (giving without expectation or judgment)? Or is it more transactional, a performance of generosity that provides cover for systemic inequities or problematic power dynamics?

HERE’S OUR PROMPT FOR THE SIX OF PENTACLES: Write about a central experience in your life related to giving / generosity / receiving help / sharing abundance. This could be something about a grandparent, aunt, teacher, mentor, or bonus caregiver who helped you through a difficult time in your life. It could be about something you thought was generous but turned out to be toxic. Or vice-versa. Or something that was totally both. It could be your own experiences receiving government or nonprofit assistance, or working / volunteering with groups who do that work. If you’ve ever been part of a missionary trip, this could be a moment to reflect, critique, and remember. You might write about your own evolving generosity practice and what it means to you spiritually. Of course, there are many more examples of how you can approach this prompt than just these. Pick it up where you feel the nudge, the pull, the rising up of a memory, image, or time.

I want to also add — if you’re writing with me, be gentle with yourself. I’m letting it be fairly messy, letting it flow out rather than trying to construct it a certain way, but my brain, in the background, is also puzzling about the narrative structure that’s emerging, the narrative journey that’s unfolding, which is part of the experiment. (And, hey, if you’re new here — this year, I’m writing about the astrological decans, their Tarot correspondences, and creating — and responding to — autobiographical writing prompts guided by the turning of the zodiac wheel.)

I also host a learning community where we’re going deeper with this material, looking into the astrological connections, sharing our own experiences with each decan — some totally experiential, some creative. Join the waitlist for next year’s decan walk here.

Now we’re coming up to the paywall (a very Five of Pentacles invention!), after which I share my autobiographical piece in response to the Five of Pentacles prompt. I’m writing in prose, short essay form, usually 1200-1900 words — this one is 1,766. (Mercury in Sag, sorry!)

As I mentioned earlier, my response explores the feeling that, for most of my life, something important was missing from within me. And how this feeling of lack evolved alongside alcohol addiction, keeping me miserable for decades. It’s almost like I believed myself to be haunted, though I wouldn’t have put it in those terms then.

If you’re a paid subscriber, thanks for supporting my work and livelihood. Paid subscriptions have been turned back on, and you’ll get full access to this “Writing the Decans” series — and any other posts. If you’re still reading and these pieces inform, inspire, or open up something magical for you, please support the work for free by hitting the heart button or sharing with a friend!

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✨ Are you in Austin? I’m hosting an arts pop-up celebrating The Sun card this Sunday at Captain Quack’s (with storytelling, improv, sun songs, light crafting, and good vibes). Grab a ticket or get art …

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✨ Are you on my OG newsletter this? This is where I share more about creativity, mysticism, and Tarot, and where you hear first about upcoming workshops, courses, and offerings. I email about once a wee…

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Each of the cardinal signs (Capricorn, Aries, Cancer, and Libra) herald the arrival of a new season, and the sign of the sea-goat, in the Northern Hemisphere, brings the coldest, darkest time of year, when the pulse and thrum of life pulls inward to lay foundations for next year’s renewal and growth.

Capricorn is an earth sign, embodied in the mountain goat that climbs to areas of the mountain few others can reach without wings. Despite its large body and the mountain’s craggy surface… despite the tiny, uneven footholds across the cliff face, the goat reaches incredible altitude.

From up way up here, A) the goat is untouchable, and B) the goat can see for hundreds of miles, taking in expansive views of the land and environment. Like the goat, Capricorns are known for their ability to perceive and speak to the larger vision… for their resilience and perserverance, their willingness to work hard and take tiny steps that one day bring them to the mountain-top.

But Capricorn is also a “sea-goat,” an allusion, perhaps, to Capricorn’s depth. Sea-goats feel and think deeply, but mask it well, and are known for their stoicism and evenness (even in moments of chaos). Despite the non-plussed exterior, Capricorn travels from mountaintop to the bottom of the ocean, covering great territory and vastly different environments. The sea is the site of emotion, mystery, ancient memory, life’s origins… Capricorn is interested in all of this too, but often holds it like a mountain’s face, with calm reserve.

I like how this astrologer puts it: While Capricorn is often associated with structure, responsibility, and tangible achievement, the fish tail of its mountain-goat self reminds us that they are never disconnected from the unseen realms. Capricorn moves through the world anchored in form, yet inwardly attuned to intuition, memory, and the subtle currents beneath reality. They do not abandon mystery in order to build. They build from it. ~ @girlandthemoon

The goat brings us into connection with Capricorn’s Major Arcana card, The Devil, where another hybrid goat sits atop a throne, lording over two naked captives who are chained to The Devil’s seat of power. With long, curling horns that look like weapons or dildos or both, a pentagram on his crown, bat wings, and chicken claws, The Devil holds his arms much like The Magician — as above so below — only his torch points down to the pits of hell.

His two captives look rather placid, given the circumstances. Maybe it’s dissociation… or perhaps they’ve grown accustomed to their oppression. More likely, The Devil’s magic has made them blind to the power they’ve lost, which only makes The Devil’s job easier.

It’s often said that Capricorns tend to grow up fast and mature quickly. Through this process, supported by their keen perception, they become highly aware of the unspoken power dynamics at play in a given situation. And they tend to develop unconventional ways of wielding power — sometimes secrecy, witholding, or giving off a mysterious allure that never seeks the spotlight. It’s not like they never fall prey to traps or snares, but often choose a certain “confinement” out of loyalty or a sense of duty, a commitment to see something through.

And it’s The Devil, after all, who teaches us how to get free.

There’s so much to say about The Devil, but as we climb this Capricorn mountain, the next crag takes us to Saturn, Capricorn’s ruling planet.

Saturn is the great patriarch of our lives — Father Time, the one who teaches discipline and pragmatism, the one who reminds us that our frilly little dreams become boulders we must push uphill if we want to see them manifest here on Earth and not just in our daydreams. Saturn is always pushing us to develop new skills, hone our focus, let go of the hindrances we cling to, and do the hard thing.

In the Tarot, Saturn is The World, which wears a very different face than that of the Patriarch. An androgynous femme, floating within a celebratory garland high above Earth (beyond the mountaintops!), surrounded by the fixed signs of the zodiac.

In this pose of ease and embodied power, the goddexx in The World encapsulates and exalts their entire journey through the Major Arcana. Having traveled through each of the 20 other archetypes, The Fool becomes The World.

This is Saturn’s promise: if we face what life brings, if we make space for the struggle (instead of trying to escape it), we grow stronger, we find out what we’re made of, we see the extent of our power, and learn how to wield it according to our cosmology of ethics, values, and desires.

Saturn helps us see how hard things in our past make it possible for us to enjoy good things now, as we step deeper into our personal sovreignty and make our own meaning about who we are and what we’re here to do. Saturn is the one who presents us with choice: there are limits, so what would you like you to do with your energy, opportunity, time, and resources? What matters most, and are you willing to choose that time again over lesser paths?

This is why Capricorns are always working hard and looking serious and doling out hard truths you didn’t want to hear — Saturn is their teacher, the one who raised them.

This year I’m noticing how Sagittarius season — with its fiery expansiveness, its giant appetite to know and create and explore — couples with its successor Capricorn, which helps focus and plan around the big visions of its neighboring fire sign.

I enjoy Capricorn season not only because it brings my solar return, but because it feels juicy to reflect on the past year while also planning, sketching, and taking little steps to bring next year’s visions into being.

This isn’t a time for fiery unfettered action, but deliberate steps (one little crag upward at a time). Sometimes the work needed is clearing, sorting, crunching numbers, and assessing the greater whole. Other times its moving material around and beginning some of the behind-the-scenes work Capricorns tend to be so good at — setting the little pieces in motion, so the whole thing runs more smoothly later.

Before we dive into the three decans of Capricorn, here are some recommended practices for the season, and a Tarot spread.

Practices

• What kind of space allows you to do your best work, and how can you begin preparing that space now so it’s ready to hold you in the new year? Dedicate some time to arranging your space and moving out dead material that holds little relevance to where you’re trying to go.

• Sit and meditate while holding a rock in the palm of each hand. Imagine your visions, and imagine them becoming as solid and strong as the rocks you’re holding.

• If there’s something you want to do or create or build next year, take time to break down how you’re going to get there. What are the different smaller actions to take? In what order should you take them? Over what timeframe? Where do you need help? What do you need to learn or delegate? How do you need to allocate resources? You don’t have to create a five-phase plan you must follow to the letter, but working intimately with these questions will create more clarity and commitment to sustain your climb!

• Give your body rest and be in the water — hot baths or springs, cold plunges (if you’re into that), showers with a little epsom salt. Add candles and music for a more oceanic, wintery feel. Notice what comes to your mind and imagination when you’re with the water.

✨✨ This Capricorn season post completes a series that began at the start of 2025 during Aquarius season. In 2026, we’re taking this type of Tarot study — via astrology and the decans — into deeper practice inside the Creative Magic Collective. That is to say: we’re embarking on a “decan walk,” where we’ll move through the year one decan at a time, exploring each Minor Arcana card as it arises on the zodiac wheel. (Each decan lasts about 10 days, so every 10 days you’ll get a new post focused on a new card, with recommended practices, Tarot pulls, and creative prompts.) We’ll also have quarterly collective chart readings led by Sarah at , who’s been studying astrology a lot longer than I have! If you’re curious about joining us in this decan walk, click here and add yourself to the wait list to receive invitations in January. We’ll begin the decan walk in mid-March with the beginning of Aries season, which launches the zodiac year. ✨✨

The Minor Arcana Archetypes of Capricorn

The three decans of Capricorn correspond to the Two, Three, and Four of Pentacles. Because Capricorn is a cardinal sign — initiating a season — it’s assigned the early numbers in the progression of its suit — Pentacles for the earth element of Capricorn.

Here, the energy of Earth is in its initial stages, just beginning to take form — wobbly and vacilating in the Two, more established and oriented toward building in the Three, then more settled and foundational in the Four.

But let’s look more closely…

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🌀 Next year in the Creative Magic Collective, we’re embarking on an embodied pilgrimage through the 12 zodiac signs and the 36 decans that comprise our cosmic arc through the calendar year. I’m hosting a series of workshops in the coming months to help us prepare, orient, and explore — you can see them all and sign up here. To hear more about the Collective as doors open for enrollment, sign up here.

🙏🏻 I’m able to write these posts and share these new (to me) angles on the cards thanks to my studies with Christopher Marmolejo, an incredible teacher whose decolonial approach to understanding the Tarot (and ourselves) is unique and much-needed. You can find Christopher’s work here.

While all the zodiac signs possess magical powers — which they express in their own unique ways — Sagittarius, arguably, is Magic Supreme. (Not that it’s a competition. It’s simply a matter of leadership.) Sagittarius, among all the signs, has mapped the contours of the Universe.

This sign of the archer, which is actually a centaur (half man, half horse), can traverse solar systems and galaxies, can move like the wildfire its element symbolizes. Just as Sagittarius is both human and beast, this sign, as a rule, wants to make contact with both ends of the extreme, and everything in between.

Sagittarius is quantum… is everything everywhere all at once… is the singularity and the endlessly expanding universe. It is the supernatural. The transcendent. The thundering awe of a cosmos we can only partially perceive and comprehend.

We see this expressed in the Temperance card, which belongs to Sagittarius — the archetype in which Spirit takes form and stands before us, demonstrating alchemy in action as they hover above the calm yet flowing waters. Behind them, a setting sun that will soon bring darkness (the unconscious), but with dignity — notice the sun taking shape as a crown. Third-eye chakra activated — the entire head an activated eye, actually — this angel has seen it all, and then some. They understand the physics (and quantum physics!) of change, of making and remaking. Sagittarius is the never-ending fractal, the multiverse, the akashic records.

It makes sense, then, that the Wheel of Fortune rules Sagittarius. (The Wheel represents Jupiter, the planetary ruler of this sign.) The elaborate symbology in the Wheel of Fortune aims to represent all the mystical codes and operations at work in the visible and unseen realms. We have the four fixed zodiac signs in the corners, creatures writing in books with invisible ink, the golden serpent, the red Anubis, the ascent of victory, ecstasy, awareness, success, and the downfall of oppression, loss, failure, and depravity… all described in the turning of the wheel.

One of my favorite Sagittarians is a former colleague named Jim. We did some reporting work together, making short documentaries for a tech company in the social services sector. Once upon a time, this Sag and I traveled together (a very Sag thing to do) on a long road trip across Pennsylvania, his home state, to gather interviews and video about several organizations that were working to help their communities and collectives (also very Sag). On one of our days off, we stopped in Gettysburg — my first time there.

While standing on some important mound where a lot of people died messy, tragic deaths at the hands of their own countrymen, my friend told me this historical site — of all places! — was his Disneyland as a kid. It was where he wanted his parents to take him every summer. (Because this Sag wanted something REAL, something historic, a place where multiple timelines coexist.) Only one thing could explain this, I though — he’d been present at Gettysburg in a past life (which would also be very Sag of him!).

When it came to time to actually make our films and turn all of our reporting into a narrative, we had to run the same gauntlet each time — his heart’s unending desire to make a full-length Netflix documentary when the marketing department wanted nothing longer than five minutes. (It helps to have a Saturn-ruled Capricorn around in times like these — just sayin’.)

But a Sagittarius can’t help it. They want to say it all, to show the nuance and complexity, to let the fullness of a story exist and travel as far as it can to awaken and enlighten others. Shouldn’t they have this?! Shouldn’t they have all of this and…?!

Let’s see what Sag has to say about the Minor Arcana cards that inhabit its three decans. (Decans are 10-degree slices of the zodiac wheel, which are each ruled by a planet and associated with a Minor Arcana card in the Tarot — from 2 to 10.) As a fire sign, Sagittarius will invoke the wands. And like all mutable signs (Virgo, Gemini, and Pisces), Sagittarius will invoke the 8, 9, and 10 — the conclusion of a cycle or season.

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Apologies for the tardiness of this missive. I became entangled in a gauntlet of spiderwebs as I descended into the Underworld to channel our Scorpio season message. The webs were sticky and unrelenting, gr…

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And the Universe — bless it! — helped me spend the final week of Virgo season on a farm in upstate New York, which is everything to a Texas girl who stuck it out the whole summer on a concrete heat island.

So, this is a love story. About a farm and the people I met there.

The entire week was so very Libra, very coming-of-autumn, very eclipse season. Rich with vibes a Libra would surely love.

I offer this story for our shared exploration of Libra season and its associations in the Tarot — both the Major and Minor Arcana. I’ve also woven in recommended practices for the season and a Tarot spread (after the paywall). If you’ve reclaimed your Disney streaming dollars, perhaps you’ll consider supporting an independent creative witch and her writings instead. Thank you to paying subscribers for supporting this work, and thanks to everyone for being here!

It’s called the Farm at World’s End, and it feels like the place you hope we’re all going when society collapses and we have to start over. Or, it’s where we wish we could all start living now, relearning the practice of right relationship with ourselves, each other, and the land.

At the center of it all is the old barn, which holds a ceramics studio, long tables (where I started writing this piece) for scheming, sketching, dreaming, and community meals. The barn opens onto a pond rimmed with goldenrod, withered late-summer stalks of Queen’s Anne’s Lace, and an ongoing flutter of songbirds.

The farm spans three pastures and dozens of acres of woodland. Two generations of women live here, but really it’s more than that, if you count the people who’ve pass through, stopping to work, rest, create, or find their footing again.

There are laying hens and “meat birds,” two gardens and a greenhouse, a soap studio that smells like heaven, and a flock of Icelandic sheep with a pair of vigilant but sweet dogs to protect them.

There were three other women living there for the week, seeking space and quiet to write, play, plan, learn, and recover, to some degree, from a year that’s done nothing good for anyone’s nervous system, here or elsewhere.

My week in this blessed place is part of a self-guided artists’ residency where you do what you want, on your time, and owe nothing but the cost of room and board and respect for the ethos of the place. You can put in a few hours of labor too, and I did, of course, Capricorn that I am — pulling coriander from its bed and gathering seeds with a kindred spirit of a younger generation. Weeding and laying hay to cover bare ground that will soon be seeded for fall.

There are three more young women / femmes working and living here. Plus two men and a small army of corgis, an aging German shepherd, and a sweet but obsessive border collie living and working the farm. The elder matriarch and her husband have a home in the upper field. The daughter who runs the place is away somewhere restoring herself from the hard work of stewarding the vision and longevity of a farm as beautiful and fruitful as this.

I didn’t plan it this way, but my trip to World’s End landed between two eclipses and concluded with the new moon in Virgo, fall equinox, and the start of Libra season. Because oftentimes, the magic is the timing.

In my seven days on the farm, the leaves deepened their colors, the great oak began tossing her acorns with fuss and fanfare, the nights grew cooler, and the pumpkins were pulled from their tent of leaves. Driving away from the farm the last time — this year, at least — I bought my final milkshake of the summer (chocolate and strawberry!) from a roadside burger stand and said goodbye for now. Both the goodbyes and the milkshake were sweet and delicious and hard to put down.

Libra & the Justice Archetype

Appropriately, Libra’s card is Justice, or Accountability in The Liberation Tarot (below), where we see bodies floating in shared space and time. Maybe these are ancestor spirits floating in the cosmos, watching over the moves we make, the future we create step by step, alone and together. Perhaps these are simply bodies orienting themselves in the dimensions of their shared reality. As we’ll see, Libra — and Justice — are about, among other things, the quality of our relations.

The archetype of Justice seeks balance, particularly where misalignment occurs. The Justice card is interested in repair and reparations. It’s interested in hearing the stories of all invested parties and finding a path that honors every one, or makes its best, most considered attempt.

We can’t undo the past, but Libra insists we acknowledge it. How else do we meet the future with greater insight and consideration? As Carl Jung wrote in The Gifted Child…

Libra is the crossroads where past and future meet. The stories that came before — the histories — have everything to do with experience of future generations. But here, in the now, we decide what to do with that history, with what we’ve inherited, whether we’ll keep on building extractive systems of decay or cultivating idyllic landscapes that feed us all and honor the inherent power and magic of nature.

Libra is ruled by the planet Venus, the planet of art, aesthetics, beauty, relationships, and connection. And Justice is a relational card — one that asks us to consider our own values and whether we’re relating to ourselves and others in accordance with those values, or through some unconscious pattern born of fear, judgment, or scarcity. Justice asks us to consider how relationships are structured — are they rooted in mutuality or transaction? Are they performative or genuine? Is the relationship a proper container for what each person wants to bring through it? If not, where do we want to go from here?

On the farm, life is communal. Yes, there’s ample space for all who seek solitude, space to spread out our tools for creating and working. But there is also the negotiation of bodies, particularly in the kitchen: Who’s cooking together? Or for themselves? Who’s using which burner on the stove? Who’s sitting inside or outside? Where do I want to be in this current arrangement of humans? Where does the vibe feel right for me? Who would I like to connect with in this moment? Where is there space? Relations, Libra teaches, require great attention, curiosity, and balancing of the inner and outer — reflected in the scales of Justice.

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🌀 Creative Channel — my six-week guided journey to reclaim, refresh, and revitalize your Creative life and practice (with Tarot!) — is open for enrollment. The journey begins September 1, and Monday, August 25 is the last day to sign up. Virgo season is the perfect time to recalibrate, reconfigure, and reestablish a grounded and expansive creative practice. Learn more and sign up here.

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Welcome to Virgo Season…

The hottest fires of summer begin to fade as Leo season draws to a close, and we settle into the earth energy of Virgo. After Leo’s playful, magnetic, and passionate energy, it’s time to get back to business. The colder months are coming soon, making it time to clean house, tidy up, think practically, and set ourselves up in advance so the future isn't so chaotic and challenging. Or, when it is all, we have an easier time responding because we’re somewhat prepared.

Back-to-school days are very Virgo in nature — going down the check-list and gathering supplies, restocking pencils and underwear and socks and shoes, getting our notebooks labeled for various classes. Virgo likes order. It appreciates the elegance of a good system. (If you’re watching The Bear, a Virgo would have a field day / hard-on / meltdown in that kitchen!)

Virgo is also the rooted, settled feeling of returning home after a long summer vacation. We’re ready to be in our own space and gather our energy back after romping through summer music festivals or family reunions or hikes up a distant mountainsides. It’s the desire for more routine and consistency, the desire to be held within space that feels fortifying.

Virgo & the Virgin

Virgo is associated with the maiden, “the virgin,” and is sometimes connected to the goddess Persephone, who was lured to the underworld where she rules as queen half the year and returns to Earth the other half. Sometimes the Virgo maiden is connected to Persephone’s mother, the goddess Demeter, who searched the earth trying to find her daughter and bring her back from Hades’ realm. Fueled by grief and rage, Demeter deprived the earth of growth and light, causing death and deprivation. She returned the light (and the harvest) only when her daughter surfaced from the underworld each spring.

Virgo is also associated with the goddess Astraea, daughter of Zeus and Themis, who tried to play savior to humanity-in-decline but ultimately grew frustrated, gave up, and fled to the stars, becoming the constellation we see today.

Regardless of which goddess is invoked for Virgo — Osiris or Isis included — it’s worth noting that earlier definitions of the word “virgin” had more to do with “not belonging to a man” than with “sexual purity” (a tool of the patriarchy).

Virgo Energy…

Virgo is a mutable sign because it falls at a time when the seasons are changing — in this case, in the Northern Hemisphere, from summer to fall. Virgo is ruled by Mercury, the planet of communication, transmission, technology, and information. And Virgos like a good research project, they learn to communicate effectively so their messages inform and guide others with clarity. Virgos will speak up for the benefit of the collective, or write the guidelines that keep a community safe, functioning, and flourishing.

But Virgos are also known to be somewhat demanding and fastidious. (Capricorn calling the kettle black!) But my Virgo ex had a beloved label-maker and went on a very Virgo bender in our kitchen one weekend. Five years after our break-up, I still have jars labeled “quinoa” and “rolled oats,” even though I’m not keeping quinoa or rolled oats in either jar. (The stickers seriously don’t come off!) At the time, I thought the see-through nature of jars made it possible to know immediately what’s inside, but… here we are. This same ex worked in restaurants (and wrote about food and restaurants — very Mercury!). So any time we went out to eat, he’d have a full run-down on why the restaurant ran well, or poorly, and what would make it run better.

I knew another Virgo who would nearly strike you down you if you sat on her bed with your “street clothes” on. And another Virgo who published a wonderful book that did pretty well (by market standards), but the author was disappointed because it hadn’t become a NYT bestseller or Oprah pick.

Perfectionism can plague a Virgo as much as it helps them achieve excellence.

The energy and wisdom of Virgo helps us cultivate the right environment where we can grow and nurture life — our own and the life that surrounds us. My present-day, non-Virgo boyfriend and I are finally getting closer to setting up the vegetable beds we should’ve planted long ago to prepare for [ahem!] societal collapse (and because gardening is great!). We need to learn how to grow our own food and resource ourselves in different ways, but we can only learn through application and making the attempt, then learning from the results so we can do better next season.

Virgo also helps us decide and discern as we think about how we want the coming seasons to unfold. While we can’t control the future, we can lovingly shape it by thinking, imagining, and planning ahead, and doing the work that seems most pressing, most needed, most beneficial.

Bernie Sanders is a Virgo. So is Beyoncé. And Adrienne Marie Brown. Their work is challenging — for them and others. Their careers reveal a trajectory of increased skill. All are communicators. And their work is centered around communal aims and imagining a future that takes humanity in a better direction.

From Maiden to Wise Elder…

Although Virgo embodies “the maiden,” Virgo’s Tarot card presents an opposite sort of figure — The Hermit, the elder and crone, the aged wizard or monk wandering the night. As Christopher Marmolejo points out in their study of Tarot and the astrological decans (which we’ll get into shortly), perhaps The Hermit is Demeter searching for Persephone, wandering alone, but rooted in her power and determination.

2025 is a Hermit year, numerologically (2 + 0 + 2+ 5 = 9, the Hermit’s number), so Virgo season this year brings a double-Hermit energy — The Hermit season of The Hermit year. Which is doubled again by the fact that this year’s Virgo season contains two new moons in the sign — the first at 0 degrees and another right near the end of the season. In between, on the full moon, we’ll have the first in a series of eclipses that will occur along the Virgo / Pisces axis (these two signs sit opposite each other on the zodiac wheel). The lunar nodes, which determine where eclipses will occur, shift every 18 months and moved into Pisces / Virgo in January this year, so there’s lots of Virgo up in this Virgo. (Let’s make the most of it!)

With Virgo ruled by Mercury, The Magician (Mercury’s Tarot archetype) enters the mix. In the spirit of Mercury, we see The Magician using the technology of the wand to channel the energy of the cosmos through earth, air, fire, water, and Spirit, transmitting something new into this reality through thought, intention, and action. Mercury is the shape-shifter and psychopomp, just like The Magician is interested in creating unexpected change and using the mundane to make something extraordinary and surprising.

So if we turn to the Tarot side of Virgo, we get wisdom, philosophy, steadiness, steadfastness, sacrifice, and service in The Hermit. And strategy, bridge-building, messaging, and critical thought in The Magician.

We can work with the energy of this season, in the spirit of corresponding cards and stars and planets, when we do things like:

• Prepare fall gardens — begin to clear dead summer brush (but leave some on the ground so bugs and bees can nest and shelter through the winter), start seedlings of fall vegetables, get ready to plant new seeds.

• Prepare and reset spaces used for work, rest, and connection; clear out what can go, and shuffle things around to support the person you are right now; do you need school supplies, too?

• Get practical — close out something that’s been lingering in “the life department” (paperwork, bills, legal documents, buying one of those hand-held solar-powered radios, writing down all your friends’ phone numbers, renewing your passport).

• Tend to your body, your earthly vessel — give it some of the work and play that feels meaningful; rest and feel the earth holding you; break bread with your beloveds, light candles, and talk about how the world will someday be a better place, describing that future world in detail.

• Be discerning — where do you want to pull back, what are you ready to let go of, where do you want more space, what are your red lines in the sand, your deal-breakers, your no-gos?

• Admire and share your excellence — notice how you’ve refined your skills over time and appreciate this, notice how you’re refining your skills now, let yourself teach about what you know in ways that feel good and natural, or share your skills somewhere they might be needed, even if for a short time.

• Make magic (and lists!) — the seasons are changing… start imagining how you want to change with them, write these things down and let yourself hold the grandest vision, even if it seems impossible; light candles, work little rituals, cast your spells in poetry and journal entries.

A Tarot Spread for Virgo Season

You can use the spread below to explore how Virgo wants to work with you this season. I recommend journaling about each of the prompts in the spread and the cards that shows up for you. What are the energies, actions, and areas of focus you want to latch on to? Where do you feel supported by this Virgo energy?

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✨ If 3 more folks become paid subscribers before the Lion’s Gate event, I’ll also host a free workshop called Creative Enterprise, where we’ll talk about the complexity and challenges of bring our creative gifts into the marketplace. I’ll share what I’ve learned in eight years running a strange little creative business, and offer you tips, strategies, and perspectives for sharing your creations in exchange for money! Thank you to everyone already supporting this work with your hard-earned dollars. Your contributions keep me going! 💖

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🫶🏻 I refer to Christopher Marmolejo a couple times here. I’m studying the decans in Christopher’s TENZ series now, and love being in their teaching presence and the community they create. Christopher’s foundational, decolonial Tarot course Thresholds starts this Leo season (Aug 11!). Details here!

Welcome to Leo season, cosmic travelers. This sign of fixed fire is embodied by the regal lion, an archetype known for its boldness, power, ferocity, bravery, and pride. In the Tarot, the energy of Leo is expressed through the archetype of the Strength card, with a strong connection to The Sun and the middle section of the Wands suit (the five, six, and seven).

In these monthly posts, we explore the energy of the current astrological season, and look to the Tarot cards (Major and Minor) associated with the sign we’re moving through. Along the way, I create bridges for you to feel into and work with the sign of the times, offering Tarot and reflection prompts, as well as everyday practices to channel the cosmic forces of the stars into your embodied life. Multiple Tarot pulls included (for tomorrow’s new moon in Leo as well), and lots to consider!

Leo season brings us into the height of summer (in the Northern Hemisphere) — this is what gives Leo its “fixed” quality. The transition into summer is over, and the transition out of summer is yet to come. The season is fully baked, pun intended!

Here in Central Texas, the shift from Cancer to Leo season feels rather stark. In watery Cancer (June and July), we saw unseasonably heavy rains and tremendous (deadly) flooding [climate disaster] in parts of the area. As we transition into Leo, the clouds are fewer and further between, and it’s considerably hotter. In the Midwest this week, a phenomenon called “corn sweat” — where corn growing in the fields releases moisture into the atmosphere — is driving up humidity across much of the U.S., bringing “feels-like” temperatures to 115 degrees in some places.

Closer to home, my sunflowers are beginning to wither under the intensity of the star they worship. The dark, red wasps, with their fiery stings, are building copious nests along the eaves of the house (I try to let them live). The other day, someone on Nextdoor posted a video of a giant red spider wasp dragging a (large!) dead wolf spider up a doorframe to feed its young (I am still haunted). My little Leo neighbor who’s staring first grade next week comes knocking on my door multiple times a day as I’m writing this, asking if she can pet my dog or where I got the rocks that sit atop the privacy fence (cute, sweet, persistent, and a bit irritating). And the grasses are giving off sticker-burrs. So it’s easy to become inflamed, scratched, itchy, drenched, exasperated, or prodded if you open your door and step outside.

Internally, the transition also feels fraught. I’m processing big feelings of insecurity, failure, scarcity, and unworthiness. But this is exactly the nature of deeply feeling Cancer giving way to the call of the lion. We can’t step into Leo’s unabashed self-possession without first reckoning with thoughts, beliefs, and feelings that keep us small and hidden. We can’t glory in our personal fire, can’t channel our magnetism onto the stage of life without acknowledging the tenderness of shame, vulnerability, visibility, and wounds of past rejection and abandonment.

One of our wonderful members in the Creative Magic Collective shared this beautiful Tarot spread for the transition from Cancer to Leo (which officially happened Tuesday). With her permission, I proudly present it here. (There are lots of Tarot pulls in this post — use what you feel called to!)

Leo’s Tarot card — Strength — offers a guide for what it looks like to process the pain so we can stand proud.

In Arcana 8, we see a goddess-type figure — the Empress risen from her throne, perhaps? — dressed in a white gown, with a floral chain around her waist, a floral crown upon her head, and the lemniscate (or infinity symbol) hovering overhead (as we also see in The Magician). She leans over a lion whose back is arched, its dangerous jaws open between her hands. Her face appears calm and loving, suggesting she’s tamed the lion not through brute force, but a softer kind of courage that respects the lion’s strength and “lion-hood.” She knows more can be accomplished through closeness, patience, and trust than with domination, demands, or whips and chains.

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I don’t write about TV much (or ever), but The Americans enthralled me, and I felt called to write about what it stirred up. The piece is ultimately a statement on creativity as a means of thawing the calcified self (particularly under a domineering State entity) to create pathways for more authentic living. This one’s behind the paywall because it’s a bit of a tender experiment for me. Thank you to paid subscribers for supporting this work! If there are 3 more paid subscribers in the next month, before the Lion’s Gate event on August 8, I’ll host another free workshop on running or launching your own creative enterprise.

My boyfriend and I just finished watching all six seasons of “The Americans” about two Russian spies (played by Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell) living (and spying!) in Washington, D.C., during the the Cold War of the 1980s.

It’s been 12 years since the show originally aired in 2013 (which was also the last time Jupiter was in Cancer, as it happens). This was the year when Nelson Mandela died, when two men bombed the Boston marathon, and Edward Snowden leaked classified information about the American government secretly spying(!!) on its own people. It was the year the federal government shut down for 16 days, the Affordable Care Act went into effect, and the Supreme Court overturned bans on gay marriage.

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