Virgo 2 - Nine of Pentacles - "Free Black Gxrlz and Free Palestine" by Aurielle Lucier

      

The Nine of Orbs card from the Spirit Keeper's Tarot (Revelation Edition). A depiction of Venus hovers over a scene of daily life in the card's center, eyes closed and hands upraised. On the ground, three women in traditional garments tend to the harvest (of green melons?) and to each other.

On September 2, 2024, the Sun moved into the second decan of Virgo, that ruled by Venus, who–being in their fall when in Virgo–receives the least support and resources of any Venus sign-placement. The Nine of Pentacles card is often depicted as one of the most beautiful cards in the minor arcana: a woman centered in intimate communion with a bird in the safety of a garden, clothed and surrounded by abundance. As a mutable sign, Virgo is double-bodied, embodying multiple realities beyond what is first apparent. Thus, when I contemplate the image of beauty evoked by the Nine of Pentacles, I also reckon with these questions:

What are the true, oppressive costs of my access to material comfort?

And who is paying the price?

My keywords for the Nine of Pentacles and Venus in Virgo were: Love requires discretion, rejection, criticism, and uncompromising standards of care. Love requires that we risk loss of pleasure. Love is, among all things, risk of discomfort.

And a crucial work that exemplifies this process of collective responsibility and care is an essay written by Aurielle Lucier, published in The Offing in May 2023, “Free Black Gxrlz and Free Palestine”.

Virgo 1 - Eight of Pentacles - "Uprisings are Just the Beginning", STILL ON LEAVE

Well, I missed this decan's work, too, having needed to be on my weird medical leave: lots of practical, constant, unsung taskwork to prepare for a surgery that was suddenly rescheduled, a development which generated yet more Eight of Pentacles responsibilities, and reminders of the privilege I have to take care of such needs/work as a housed, fed United States citizen with health insurance.

I hope to come back and write more this post in the future, focusing on this poignant piece from Hammer & Hope, "Uprisings Are Just the Beginning".

"How do we put back together a society that has broken apart? How do we build solidarity within a culture of individualism, punishment, and accumulation when we are constantly repairing ourselves in the face of various forms of daily heartbreak?

If we lend ourselves to the emergent struggles of our times — against Cop City; for Black history, abortion rights, trans liberation, widespread debt cancellation, climate justice, access to land, and alternative food systems; in solidarity with actors and writers on strike and so many others — drawing connections and showing up is where we should start and return to again and again. Now is a time for experimentation and discipline alike." 

-- Hammer & Hope, Issue #2, Summer 2023

 

Links and other reading:

Please help support the Municipality of Gaza, who are working to restore water and other life-saving infrastructure to Gaza: https://gaza-city.ensany.com/campaign/6737

Leo 3 - Seven of Wands - EVALUATING EFFORT, TAKING A LEAVE

      

The Seven of Wands card from the Tarot of Pagan Cats. An orange cat stands on a grassy hillock, back arched, tail puffed. The cat hisses at six wooden staves being brandished at the cat by unseen attackers. Behind the cat, a seventh wooden stave is planted on the hillside with a small red flag hanging from the top (with the alchemical symbol for fire on the flag). 

No post here and now–I am on temporary medical leave, and while I was really hoping to dig down and fight through to write something earnest for this decan’s subject–suburbia’s outcast White queen Shirley Jackson and her heart-wrenching novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle–one of the lessons the Seven of Wands and Shirley Jackson has taught me is to observe and honor the costs of fighting through, and to retreat when doing so is required to regain strength.

Hopefully, I will come back and write this post in the future. For now, I continue to dedicate my heart to all of you who are resisting oppression and injustice in all its forms, in as many creative ways as are within your power to wield.

Links and other reading:

https://gazafunds.com/

Support the Municipality of Gaza, working to restore water to Gaza: https://gaza-city.ensany.com/campaign/6737

Leo 2 - Six of Wands - "Every Throne Will Fall" by Vajra Chandrasekera

     

The Six of Wands card from The Fountain Tarot. A person wearing a white shirt is lying horizontally on their back, held aloft by the hands of multiple people whose forms are not visible. The bottom of the image is flooded with bright red. Five white wands surround the raised figure and the people lifting them. The raised figure holds a sixth white wand in their raised hand. The expression on their face is intense, activated.

What is publishing for?

*     *    *

On August 1, 2024, the Sun entered the second decan of Leo, that ruled by Jupiter. My keywords for the Six of Wands and Jupiter in Leo are: philosophies of visibility, vectors of privilege, and the tiny benevolent dictator who lives within. 

Today, I would like to read Jupiter specifically as a planet of politics. Like Jupiter, political reality connects us to each other, generates vast ideas, and champions the creation of dynamic conceptual frameworks and spiritual practices. Jupiter helps us commit to what is greater than the individual self. Jupiter excites the soul to make more space for all people. Jupiter tests the margins; Jupiter creates the conditions for the nourishment of those who have been forced to survive at the margins. Jupiter is political. 

And Leo is loud, proud, unapologetic of personal triumph. The sign that is ruled by the Sun, and in which Saturn experiences deprivation, says No to shame, says Yes to the individual’s motion to take up space, to show what they’ve got, to ask an audience to listen to what they have to say. Leo knows that the gift of a performance cannot be delivered without asking the group to sit down and grant the person on the stage the time and space to do their work in the spotlight.

In particular, I am thinking about publishing. This is the topic because I think about publishing all (too much of) the time, but publishing is also Jupiterian, involving the expansive deliverance of knowledge and worldview. Publishing, much like the ruler of thunder and lightning, can deliver a really shitty experience, but also has the potential to be politically and personally transformative if its radical potential for connectivity, as opposed to its profitability, is centered by those who participate in its cycle, its system, its impactful events.

The text I am spotlighting for this decan is Vajra Chandrasekera’s blog post, “Every Throne Will Fall”. This post, published on November 8, 2023, delivered two distinct and inseparable revelations for me as a reader: one, this post shared the official announcement that Chandrasekera’s second novel, Rakesfall, would be published in June 2024 (it is in the world, it is in the world!!!); and two, this post was the first example I had ever seen of a successful author choosing to use their book announcement to amplify a statement of resistance of the genocide of the Palestinian people.

This wasn’t the first time Chandrasekera had done this (and since November 2023, he has often paired announcements of his award nominations or wins with renewed calls to support and amplify Palestinian liberation). It was just the first time I had witnessed such an act of publication, and the one that forever changed my understanding of authorship–what authorship is for, what publishing is for, what any of this is for.

As a result of reflecting on this text, as well as others that have been published by other authors in the last year, for this decan I consider the idea that in a world worth living in, personal success is responsible to political relations.

Leo 1 - Five of Wands - "The Ones Who Stay and Fight" by N. K. Jemisin

    

The Five of Wands card from the Modern Witch Tarot. Five people stand in a group, each facing another person, who is not necessarily facing them. Each person is wielding a large wooden staff in a pose of combat. Two of the people are wearing face masks.

What is citizenship for?

*     *    *

On July 22, 2024, the Sun moved into the first decan of Leo, that ruled by Saturn, the lord of difficult lessons that can take a lifetime to learn. Leo is the solar sign, and in the domain of self-expression and instinctive confidence, Saturn’s gifts can feel more alienating than affirming to bear. I always think about that feeling when I look at the Five of Wands–why, I wonder,  would I look upon an image of all-around conflict and want to do anything but avoid it? As a Libra Rising with a loudly debilitated Mars placement, my first instinct when involved in a conflict is not to engage with a healthy application of personal power, but to people-please myself into an early grave. 

Saturn is also the lord of death, and the hard truth is that how we choose to respond to conflict–which I also think of  as the dilemmas inherent to power struggles–does have life or death consequences.

The text I read and wrote on for this decan is a story by one of the writers who has most meaningfully impacted my adult life, N. K. Jemisin. Her short story “The Ones Who Stay and Fight” is not a single defined answer to the painful questions that arise from the topic I raised. It’s a response–and yes, the story is definitely a response to Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”, but I find that the story carries a living energy of responsiveness to continual moments of urgent, existential grief that have more to do with the world we live in today and tomorrow than with Le Guin’s original text. Maybe this is the singular gift of “The Ones Who Stay and Fight”--that the story’s organic responsiveness echoes its call to the reader to use our privilege to be responsive to harm, as opposed to using our privilege to merely broadcast our disapproval of harm.

Thanks to the powerful, dynamic ethics and philosophical catalyst that Jemisin created in this story, I have been thinking of the Five of Wands and Saturn in Leo in the terms of collective struggle and creative expression as inseparable from conflict.

Cancer 3 - Four of Cups - Resting

If you are reading this, thank you so much for being here. This blog is a project that I enjoy working on because tending it has become a deepening source of solace, meaning-making, and oddball pleasure within the cycles of my daily/weekly/monthly life. If you've found any portion of solace, meaning, or pleasure while here, if only for a moment as you stopped by on your way to elsewhere, then thank you, sincerely, for your time.

I'm going to rest for this post. I have been learning from the Four of Cups--not just during this decan (July 11 through 22, 2024) but, in many ways, through this summer. I am full-up with life (a privilege, to have both life and enough relational responsibilities to worry about "keeping my head above water"); I am "at capacity"; I am needing to sit the hell down and be still, for better or for worse, and for periods of time that are not convenient. I am having to pause pretty significantly before accepting the chance to tell the world and, more uncomfortably, myself, that I can of course do that thing and take it on and process it like business as usual. 

The Moon--the planet ruling this decan--is in domicile in Cancer, and I think one signification of this placement is getting comfortable with making things uncomfortable if doing so is what is necessary to provide the care. Tending to what is needed is nourishing in the same way that water is nourishing to life--which is to say, not optional.

BRB. With love, care, and hope for a tomorrow where all people are afforded their rightful access to safety, water, and a chance to live.

The Four of Cups card from Tarot of the Magical Forest. A rabbit sits underneath a tall, thin tree. Three cups are lined up in the front of the image. A small white cloud with a hand extended out of it is holding out a fourth cup towards the rabbit, who has their eyes closed and their paws down on the ground.

Relevant links:

Donate to Life for Gaza (The Gaza Municipality Project):

“The Gaza Municipality is tasked with providing vital services such as water supply, waste management and sewage treatment. However, the widespread destruction in Gaza City has severely hampered the Municipality's ability to deliver even the most basic necessities to its residents. With limited access to water, the population faces a dire health and environmental crisis, especially affecting children.

By joining forces in this initiative, we cultivate hope and solidarity, fostering empathy and collaboration across communities while easing the hardships endured by those in Gaza. This collective effort reassures them that they are not alone in their struggle. The Gaza Municipality earnestly appeals for your support to help reinstate essential services, currently the foremost priority. In the northern regions of the Gaza Strip alone, over 500,000 individuals urgently require these services.”

Cancer 2 - Three of Cups - Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich

   

The Three of Cups card from Shadowscapes Tarot. Three mermaids are suspended in the center of the image, gathered in a circle of current, their tails entwined together. Each mermaid holds a large cup, which is filled with water, and each holds it out towards the other.

Who are you a grateful descendant of? 

What connects you to these ancestors? Is your relationship to them biological, philosophical, artistic, spiritual, or/and purposeful? 

What values do your ancestral relationships ask you to honor in your relationship to the world?

*     *    *

On July 1, 2024, the Sun moved into the second decan of Cancer, that ruled by Mercury, planet of translation, liminality, and voice. 

Mercury in a water sign is considered mute, a quality that can color the realm of communication with shades of intrigue, subtext, and non-traditional languages. What is body language, and how does it feel to speak it? What is love language, and what does it mean to understand it? What is it like when you need not say a word to be properly comprehended by the one you love (or the one you loathe)? Today, I am dreaming of a place and time when we break down the gates of connection, busting through laws we assumed were “natural” and casting aside the false value we once thought they had, and thus move through to the other side, to a new world where we need not share common language or preference or perspective or experience to hold each other as precious, and move together through the magic of our shared existence, as if in a dance.

Such a place is literally fantastic, a fantasy I have. But it is also possible and existent. This place may be embodied by many types of relational systems but one system that I know already embodies these values is that of the ancestral world, which is not exactly a location but more a practice of locating ourselves in relation to those who came before us, and those who will come after. The ancestral world is not a waystation, but a way of life. 

Lots of things that we might have considered impossible can exist in this deep, watery, mercurial place. What we owe to each other can take root in the dirt of this place. What we struggle to disinherit from each other can trace its history in the waters of that world. What future might be built from the ashes of our childhoods can rise from the shores of the underworld and find a way into the light.

My keywords for the Three of Cups and Mercury in Cancer are ancestral relationality and celebration of the mysteries of care. In addition, and in general: love requires dynamic multiplicity, and our survival is interdependent.

Therefore, the book I read for this decan is the indescribably great novel Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich.

The book cover of the novel Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich.

This book, this book, this book. Louise Erdrich has natal Mercury in Cancer, and I would argue that it shows in this, her debut longform work, a book that weaves many voices of two families together and apart, against and between, away and through each other. The novel (written while Erdrich was in her twenties) writes elders with utter compassion (heavy and deep as an ocean) and intention (sharp as a blade of moonlight). If you’ve read and loved this book, you already know; if you have not, yet, below are three excerpts that center the three core female elders of Love Medicine: June Kashpaw, Marie Lazarre, and Lulu Nanapush.