Isaiah and I somewhat regularly do tarot readings on the New Moon. I read somewhere sometime that the new moon is the time of the month when it’s best to set intentions–something about the absence of light being the space to imaginally fill with what you hope could come to be (or something).
Obviously, upon learning this probably from Pinterest or something, I started to get a little bit neurotic on the day of and days surrounding the new moon; if I did the wrong thing then I was manifesting the wrong thing for my whole month. This usually would send me into a state of anxious paralysis, practically ensuring I would watch YouTube Shorts all day. Then I would think, great, now I’ve manifested YouTube Shorts brain. And repeat. (I highly recommend, if you accidentally start to believe in manifestation, that you also somehow manage to believe that only positive manifestation is possible.)
This has lessened somewhat as I have finally figured out a way to log myself out of my phone reliably and regularly (phone in greyscale, black background, apps all hidden from home screen, and the most important, an app called Foqos that blocks all the apps you ask it to in a way that you can’t bypass without a QR code that it generates for you–they recommend you print it out and put it somewhere, I have Isaiah keep mine on his phone). I want to write soon about what this has felt like and done to my brain (spoiler: it’s good), but for now the point is that I can’t accidentally manifest short form video content of the mind because I can’t watch it. Now, the worst thing I could do on a new moon is spend all day looking at job listings for the field that I may imminently be joining and have some anxiety about the job prospects therein, better and in some ways more avoidable but still not the best.
Anyway, sometimes doing a tarot pull that day is helpful, sometimes it is not, but can be useful and fun to think through, as the pull lays out, where you are now, what’s blocking you, what you need to know, what intention you should have for the month ahead, and what might emerge.
On Sunday, we each did this pull, and I am self-centeredly (my blog) going to focus on mine.
Here is my spread:
Sort of a crazy one! The 7, 8, 9, 10 of cups, and Death.
Where I am now: 7 of cups reversed.
I hate this card. Partly I’m just in a bad mood this morning, but it reminds me of myself when I’m trapped in the world of either positive or negative fantasy, neither of which feel very good. I am, in general anyway, much more prone to negative flights of fancy and feeling hunted by some poorly sketched, unreal and only half acknowledged fear lurking just below the surface. This card makes me think of having 100 tabs open, in a bad way. Really though, in its current position and reversed, I’m taking it as a good place to start (I was in a better mood when I pulled it, too). Sometimes a reversed card can be either an emerging or a fading away of the energy, and I’m particularly hopeful that it is a fading away. I can get really stuck with 100 tabs open in a bad way, doing obsessive job outlook research, going down 100 paths in my mind, each becoming more overwhelming with the addition of the potential next, and even good or interesting or exciting things can cease to be so in this environment. I’ve been becoming more and more aware of this tendency in the past few weeks and months, and I hope this means that I’m starting to step away from it.
What’s blocking me: Death
Scary! But as we also know, not. Often just described as a card of transformation, I think it’s also interesting to think of as the difficulty of, or maybe even resistance to, change. In this case, I’m taking it as the card of, “old habits die hard.”
What I need to know: 8 of cups reversed
This is the one I have the least well fleshed out thoughts about. There is a somewhat uncomplicated interpretation of the imagery in the traditional reading of the card, which is usually something about leaving behind what no longer serves you. This surely applies, there are all of those messy cups from the 7, there I go, turning away; the reversal confuses things a bit, if only because I’m never sure exactly how I want to read them, it’s easy for me to get caught up in the potential double negatives (is it this or the opposite of this? If you pull a reversal in a blocked position… etc.). Often I lean towards the idea that reversed cards point to something internal as opposed to out there in the world, and I suppose that fits too. It feels a bit too neat to me, but that might just be me being difficult.
A thought I’m just now having is about the path of the traveler in this card, up into the mountains, into the unknown. This feels a little deeper and a little stickier because it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot. The 100 tabs are open because I’m trying to gather information, because I’m afraid of not knowing what lies ahead of me. The path away from them is into the unknown.
Intention needed: 10 of cups
That’s nice! I think it’s useful to compare the 10 to the 7 here since in some ways their activity is the same: looking up at cups. But where the 7 is specific and somewhat threatening (or is that just me), the 10 is broad and open. Here, the figures are not swallowed up by the fantasies of the cups, but given equal weight, living in the light of them, gazing up, but not at the expense of the broader world. This is helpful. I recently have been thinking a ton about the idea of “knowing what you want,” what this asks of you, whether it’s possible, at least in specific terms, whether it’s even useful (at least, I guess, to me). Potentially more on that to come soon, but for the time being it’s enough to say that I have found the demands to know what I want, with specificity, and to figure out from there how to get it, to be what leads me down the 7 of cups path. Suddenly I have a truly impossible number of looming 5 year plans and no way of knowing which is “right.” But if you ask me what I want, what I really want, and I don’t have to be specific at all, it’s easy. I want to be happy; I want to be interested in my life; I want to sit in the sun; I want to be serious but not too serious about my work; I want to think, alone and with other people; I want to feel capable; I want depth and breadth, both. This feels like the promise of the 10 of cups and what it is telling me it is OK to want, and this card seems quite importantly broader than the seven.
And then, I’m not sure it’s even a card of wanting. In the 10, you already have it; really, it feels like a card of basking and acknowledgement more than desiring at all. I had a conversation with Isaiah’s mom when we were in Michigan about how I had been thinking that I needed some way to signal to myself that I had accomplished things day to day, because I often feel by the end of the day that everything I’ve done is nothing (the sinking hopelessness of the evening), and I’d been pulling the four of wands a lot, a card that is often described as a card of celebration. I had gotten stuck on the word celebrate–it’s the kind of word used in a lot of self help-y, self love content and I can’t quite make it feel sincere. She told me that she likes the word acknowledge better and that she had recently looked up its meaning: to accept that you know. This might be the ten of cups here, an acknowledgement, look what you already have.
What will emerge: 9 of cups reversed
I mean, look at him! Great news. For me, this reversal could be internal or emerging, both seem right enough. What feels important is a confident turning away from the cups themselves. Where in the seven the cups are bright and gaudy and the figure is dark, here the cups are solid but not overbearing, and the figure sits in front, facing away, in the light. Who do you get to be when you aren’t afraid anymore, aren’t seeking desperately, when you know you have what you need?