Tarotscopes

(CW: brief mention of suicidality)

The Tarot’s representative for the sign of Sagittarius and for Sagittarius season is the Temperance card, the 14th macrocosmic card. It is a transitional card, sometimes depicted with a glowing crown or sun in the background, close to the horizon and toward the left/eastern edge of the card, signaling sunset. Sagittarius is a transitional season, sunsetting autumn to make way for winter in the northern hemisphere, where I sit with a blanket to cover my legs now that the sun has gone down.

Situated between Death (13 - Scorpio) and the Devil (15 - Capricorn), Temperance is the fire energy (life force, survival drive) that evaporates excess water energy (emotional experiences) to dry out, compact, and solidify earth energy (material realities, resources, and foundational patterns). Following Death, The Temperance card reminds me of the way I feel sometimes after a period of acute grief, or a deep depressive episode, or just a long stretch of general low-ness. There can be an exciting span of time where I feel reignited, as though a spiritual, sometimes sexual, usually creative and/or generative flame has been lit in the space where before there was mostly numbness, darkness, and lethargy. And now there is a fire surging from my very core. It feels like aliveness returning, like the core of the earth tapping me in, like Spirit trying to remind me that even as the nights get longer and the temperatures drop, spring will come again.  The Temperance card symbolizes this surge, and like fire it flares, sparks, and burns deep in my gut.

(If this card were a song, it would be Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now”. Go listen to it. I’ll be here when you get back.)

Of course, the Tarot and our Tarot practices are not exempt from the conditioning of white supremacy, capitalism, settler colonialism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and all other forms of oppression, and the very name “Temperance” reflects the ruling class’s fears of those it oppresses. The 14th card’s energy is about being awake, alive, free and resourced enough to pursue happiness, pleasure, and joy. It’s about feeling this in a big and strong enough way to motivate us through the next phase of macrocosmic change (The Devil – 15), where our agency is handed to us and Spirit asks if we really are committed to changing our material world or not. We’re going to need a hell of a lot of fire if we’re going to make it to the other side of the Devil card’s chain-breaking, pattern-busting work. We’re going to really need to remember the good times if we’re going to have the stamina we’ll need to rebuild in the time after these violent structures, systems, and patterns that stand between us and collective liberation finally fall.

The Temperance card is often read as it sounds – advising us to temper those flare-ups, to use our willpower to tamp down any fiery tensions, conflicts, or rebellions that might be smoldering under the surface. This read has never really set right with me, because I love the way Temperance’s fire feels, especially after a Death season, and I don’t want to tamp it down! Also, I think this life-force-returning energy is good for us, collectively. It reminds me of what I have learned through reading adrienne maree brown’s Pleasure Activism– that our movements for liberation thrive when they are rooted in pleasure. Without experiencing ecstasy, beauty, joy, and pleasure, when the shit gets really hard, we might not remember why we keep fighting.

(On a personal note, as a survivor of several suicide attempts, I know the importance of pleasure. I know I need to be present for my pleasure, to indulge and sometimes even exaggerate it, so that in the harder times, it’s a little easier to remember pleasure is possible, and to choose to keep going.)

In preparing to write this piece, I was reading about Temperance in Lane Smith’s excellent new book, 78 Acts of Liberation: Tarot to transform our world. There Smith invites us to think of Temperance less as a call to curb our tempers and more along the lines of adrienne maree brown’s concept of moderation, also from Pleasure Activism: “Pleasure activism is not about generating or indulging in excess… Pleasure activism is about learning what it means to be satisfiable, to generate, from within and from between us, an abundance from which we can all have enough.”

Aha – and there it is. Temperance, not as in “tamp down the fire” but as in noticing the membrane between enough and excess, and flexing an anticapitalistic muscle by saying no to the urge to overspend, overuse, overindulge, overreach.  Turning toward pleasure as turning away from excess. I’m so grateful for this shift in thinking! Now, the Temperance card becomes an incredible gift, an opportunity to get clear about what exactly “enough” feels like, in such a way as our pleasure is not diminished. Temperance is energy we can return to when we need reminding of why we keep fighting, building, and dreaming toward our best possible futures.

In traditional western Astrology, Sagittarius is ruled by the planet Jupiter, corresponding to The Wheel of Fortune, the Tarot’s 10th macrocosmic card. The Wheel spins, and spins, and spins, illuminating the cyclical passage of time, one constant energy that permeates every other part of our experience and that is absolutely, entirely out of our control. Time is one of the most mysterious players influencing our earthly experience. Time seems to be both linear and cyclical, so maybe it’s more of a spiral path. If we think of Jupiter as a planet that wants us to expand, disperse, & spread, moving along a spiral would do it.

The Wheel’s energy is fast. (If the Wheel card was a song, it would be Joni Mitchell’s The Circle Game, though I prefer Buffy Sainte-Marie’s recording from Fire & Fleet & Candlelight, because it’s faster.) It feels chaotic and wild, but also organized and somewhat predictable, like weather. It takes us for a spin, turns on us, whips us around, leaving us nauseous, dizzy, and unrooted. 

Many a Wheel card will include symbols for the four classical elements of earth, air, fire, and water in the corners, with something like a ship’s navigation wheel, compass, or a wheel of chance (think of the old game show of the same name as this card) dominating the center of the image. In times of fast, chaotic changes that have us feeling out of control and at the whims of sheer luck, we can reorient away from what is changing, what is inconstant and unknown, and toward the conditions, relationships, and traditions that remain constant. Doing so can give us something to focus on, to root into, to steady ourselves and re-center. This is a card that reminds us of the importance of ritual, of marking time so that we can create a thru-line, something constant from before the chaos through to something that will continue afterwards, and that allows the change to occur.

Prentis Hemphill said in a recent reel about the relationship between chaos and change: “The key inside of chaos, to releasing that energy or getting that boost, is that we have to remember what necessitated the chaos in the first place, and we have to remember where it is we’re ultimately trying to go. That doesn’t change. So, we can be inside of chaos with chaos happening, but remember where we’re going. Remember where we’re headed. Remember why we’re there. And we can find our bearings even inside of disruption.” This is an excellent way of applying of The Wheel of Fortune’s advice.

There are some thru-lines that are gifts from the Universe – the daily facts of sunrise and sunset, for example. The seasons, the phases of the moon. The horizon, the sky, the stars. The ocean, tides, currents. And there are some rituals that we create for ourselves and each other – our bedtime rituals, for example. The cup of coffee or tea we drink first thing in the morning. The annual harvest dinner we host every fall, the way we walk the exact same path through the woods every time we find ourselves there, the special way we lace and tie our shoes, the prayers we say when we feel lonely, the songs we sing to each other when we are afraid. 

In times of great, chaotic change, The Wheel asks us to reorient to our center, to root into a steady, constant thru-line we can return to over and over again as things start to spin out. If we aren’t sure how to do that, we are invited to, as Joni Mitchell says, “look behind from where we came” and remind ourselves of what hasn’t changed, of all the things that won’t change, no matter what lies ahead.

Both the Ace and Page of Cups cover the quadrant of the sky centered on fixed water, or the sign of Scorpio. The cards’ reach extends one sign in each direction, spanning Libra – Scorpio – Sagittarius (T. S. Chang).

The Page of Cups represents a combination of earth and water energies.  All Pages, as earth carriers, give physical shape, body, and structure to their suit. The Page of Cups gives shape and containment to water – the element associated with our emotional realm, the realm of feelings, heart-centered desires, and our capacity for offering and receiving love, empathy, intimacy, trust, vulnerability, and so on.  The Page of Cups is the Home of the Heart, posing questions like:

• What shape are my dreams taking?

• Which of my deepest desires are ready to materialize?

• Am I drinking enough water?

• Am I honoring the way my emotions want to flow through my body?

Both the Ace and Page of Cups cover the quadrant of the sky centered on fixed water, or the sign of Scorpio. The cards’ reach extends one sign in each direction, spanning Libra – Scorpio – Sagittarius (T. S. Chang).

Aces are reminders of all that is possible, all that is available to us if we can open ourselves to what lives outside the lines. The Ace of Cups is the Ace of Water, of Heart. This Ace reminds us that we already carry emotional oceans inside of us, and that if we choose, we can become host to even greater, wider, deeper connection, love, and wisdom than we have so far imagined.

The Ace of Cups cannot fathom our self-hatred, cannot understand why we judge ourselves and one another so harshly, and will not tolerate our self-defeating excuses as to why we guard our hearts.

Don’t you see, implores the Ace of Cups, you are the love you are looking for! The Ace of Cups shows us that the jar we use to receive and hold self-compassion is the exact same one we use to dole it out to others. We cannot give more than we let in, and we cannot receive without opening the jar, loosening some of that air-tight protection.

The Ace of Cups reminds us we are capable of more feeling and deeper connection, and encourages us to stretch our hearts open just a bit wider so we can let it flow in. The Ace of Cups knows we've been hurt, knows we are scared, and still encourages us to try, to err on the side of being too vulnerable, too trusting, too honest about our hopes, our dreams, and our deepest desires.