Tarotscope

The Tarot’s representative for the sign of Pisces and for Pisces season is The Moon, the 18th macrocosmic card. 1+8 = 9, and so some Tarot readers and deck creators consider The Moon to be the “shadow” of the 9th macrocosmic card, The Hermit. And as a reminder, we are in a collective 9 year (2+0+2+5 = 9).

The Moon is a nighttime card, often thought of as relating to our dreams, to our subconscious, to our intuition. I can’t help but think of the tides, and the tidepools that get revealed when the Moon has pulled the tide out. In this special time, those of us who live close to water get to see some of what usually is hidden from our view. 

Imagine being outside during a full moon, when the nighttime activities of the space around us are briefly illuminated, allowing us to witness what is typically hidden or obscured under the cover of darkness. Remember the ways our bodies are designed to adjust to lower light, to “see” the very same things differently than we are used to seeing them when the sun is up. When the lights go out, our other senses heighten – which must be at least part of why we like to do sexy stuff in the dark, why we go dancing at night, why we are so excited by the thought of being invited to something “underground”, why we tend to our magic at night, and so on.

As someone with a history of debilitating insomnia and horrifying nightmares, I have spent many, many nights completely awake, sitting in darkness, practicing stillness and praying and listening to the space around me as I drew or baked or journaled or zoned out to something stupid on tv. The Moon is a kind of dreamy-but-awake state, sort of like a trance, within which we can sense (and then later know, in a real and conscious way) our deepest, most well-guarded truths. The kind of intuitive information that helps us know who we really are, what we really want. The Moon pulls that deeper stuff all that much closer to the surface, and will continue to do so, cycle after cycle, season after season, until we can accept it into the realm of what we know intellectually as truth.

The Moon represents a phase of a cycle when what is typically relegated to the realm of the unknown becomes known, when the subconscious becomes conscious, when subculture becomes culture. Anyone even remotely watching the headlines these days might recognize this energy – the underworkings of oppression, the mechanics of white supremacy, settler colonialism, ableism, economic oppression, anti-queer and anti-trans hate are all coming out into the open. Again.

But, we can be assured the Moon’s pull is working on ALL of us, including those of us who resist fascism, who insist on love-driven leadership, and who deeply desire liberation for all and a return to right relationship with the lands, the skies, and the waters that nourish us and give us life.

The Moon’s tidal pull works on all of us, tugging our internalized and deeply rooted feelings and desires up into our consciousness. This includes our internalized oppression as much it does our deep yearning for love, belonging, and liberation. Ultimately, Pisces season is one for what has been buried to be unearthed.

In traditional western Astrology, Pisces is ruled by the planet Jupiter, corresponding to The Wheel of Fortune, the Tarot’s 10th macrocosmic card. Sagittarius is also ruled by Jupiter, and so I wrote about The Wheel of Fortune back in late November, 2024.  Here is what I wrote then:

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 would be 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.

In modern western astrology, Pisces is ruled by the planet Neptune, corresponding to Suspension, traditionally known as “The Hanged Man”, the 12th macrocosmic card of the Tarot. (Before Neptune was recognized astrologically, the 12th macrocosmic card corresponded to the element of water itself.)

I first starting thinking of this card as “Suspension” through Cristy Road’s Next World Tarot deck and guidebook, which says, “Suspension relies on grounding – you are surrounded by a new shape of chaos and the only way out is straight through it; gracefully and cautiously.” 

A friend recently gave me a copy of the new Lineages of Change Tarot (thank you!) which acknowledges a both-and of this card’s energy: we feel an urgency or an energy that says go go go, but we simultaneously “may feel as if the universe is made of molasses…could this be the time for getting still and hearing the next move—can you find the adaptation that allows you to be still, find the calm available in the wait?” 

I also appreciate the take by the radical queer artists who made the Collective Tarot (no longer in print, sadly, and also given to me by a dear friend – thank you!), and who renamed this card “Intermission”: “If you draw Intermission, you may feel as though outside forces prevent you from taking action, but most often it is the psychological weight of perceived forces that stymie action with this card.”

Suspension asks us to be present with ourselves in the space between feeling moved to take action and the doing part, the part where we are taking action. The Suspension card asks us to pause here, either because there isn’t clarity about what action to take or because we are being stopped by some force which may or may not be outside of our control. While it may feel counterintuitive or counterproductive to pause in such difficult, fast-paced times, Suspension reminds us that we need to be grounded and calm enough to discern which of those things is going on before we press on. If there is no clarity of action, it is right to wait and allow this tension, this pressure to build, trusting that the clarity will come through the tension itself.

If there is clarity of action but a force beyond our control preventing us from moving forward, again we will benefit from pausing, gathering together and allowing our desires for action and change to mingle with each other, bounce off each other, and like gas molecules, heat each other up as we gather and crowd and press against the walls that cage us, feeling for the weak spots.

Some of those walls will be built by external forces (like oppression), but some of them will be internal. Many of us, myself included, have ancestors who might try to move us to act in ways that don’t align with our current beliefs and deeply held values. If we don’t give ourselves the chance to pause, we are very likely to act according to old blueprints. If we pause, if we let our ideas bounce off each other, we will be more likely to act from a place of integrity. If we can pause here and feel what moves us without actually moving, if we can stay alive and alert and awake in this suspense, we will be more likely to, when the time is right, act more precisely, more in alignment with our values, and in the direction of our wildest dreams.

Both the Ace and Page of Swords cover the quadrant of the sky centered on fixed Air, or the sign of Aquarius. The cards’ reach extends one sign in each direction, spanning Capricorn – Aquarius – Pisces (T. S. Chang). 

Aces are the phase of a change process when we open ourselves to the very idea that change is even possible. If the Tarot “pips” (the Ace – 10 cards of each Minor Arcana, or microcosmic suit) signify transformative processes, then the Ace is the moment at which we first open ourselves to whatever change we are hoping to make. 

If, for example, all our lives, every single day we wake up to an alarm, because this is what we were taught is the correct and best way to wake up, and after a lifetime of doing it this way we have come to believe that if we don’t set an alarm it won’t be possible for us to wake up in time to do the things we are supposed to do. We set an alarm even though we don’t really love it, because this is what we have always done, and maybe everyone we have ever lived with has also always done this. And then one day we meet someone who never sets an alarm and seems to wake up just fine.  And we think, “huh, maybe someday I could wake up without setting an alarm…” – this “huh, I wonder if…” moment is an Ace moment.

The suit of Swords is associated with Air energy, which I in turn associate with ideas, consciousness, thinking, theories, language and the expression of thoughts, intellect, truth, and the mind, among other things. We could interpret the Ace of Swords as “open to a change of mind”. As a seasonal card to guide us through all of winter (in the northern hemisphere), the Ace of Swords is a swirling rush of cold, crisp wind that lifts and clears away any old, scattered debris still cluttering our minds. The “debris” might be the broken shards of old, painful thought patterns, things we used to believe were the truth but have since learned otherwise, and still we sometimes find ourselves acting according to old, tired scripts. 

There is a period of time, before we embrace a new way of thinking or a new truth, where we waffle back and forth between the old thinking and the new. The Ace of Swords wants to help us clear the old way so we can make space for laying out a new thought pattern.

A Tarot Spread (or journal prompts) for Ace of Swords:

1 – what is one old belief ready to be cleared this season?

2 – what is one action I can take to support clearing my mind?

3 – what is one truth I am now ready to integrate?

Both the Ace and Page of Swords cover the quadrant of the sky centered on fixed air, or the sign of Aquarius. The cards’ reach extends one sign in each direction, spanning Capricorn – Aquarius – Pisces (T. S. Chang). 

The Page of Swords represents an intersection or exchange of earth (material) and air (intellectual) energies. All Pages, as earth carriers, give physical shape, body, and structure to their suit. The Page of Swords gives body and structure to ideas, thoughts, beliefs, theories, frameworks, etc. A Page of Swords season could be interpreted as a period of time for new ideas to take root.  Or it could be about being uprooted (or, maybe, uplifted) by an exciting new idea, some hard-won clarity, or the revelation of a liberatory truth. 

The Page of Swords wants us to notice that we can both be grounded and rooted in our bodies, our communities, and our homes, and still be open to new ideas, to revising long-held beliefs, to changing our minds. In fact, the Page of Swords knows that in order to have an open mind with the capacity to learn and, therefore, to change, we must trust that we are resourced. As a tree stretches its branches upward, it also reaches deeper into the earth. As we reach for new consciousness, for greater awareness, and for the changes that can come through learning, we also must reach deeper into that which helps us feel steady, rooted, and nourished. 

The Page of Swords heralds a season for becoming aware of embodied patterning, of attending to the shapes our ideas and beliefs take in the physical world, and of wrestling with the material realities, results, and consequences of our theories applied in real life. As we become aware of these realities, we may be motivated to change some of our thinking, to adjust our theories and apply them in new directions. 

The Page of Swords wants us rooted firmly in something steady and nourishing enough to let a strong wind shake information from our muscles and bones. This Page reminds us that we can draw truth from our bodies, if we find that sweet spot between loose and steady as the winds of change howl and swirl around us.  If we can sway without uprooting, if we can bend without breaking, we can weather any storm. 

A Tarot Spread (or journal prompts) for Page of Swords:

1 – what can I trust to resource, nourish, and steady me this season?

2 – what new ideas am I ready to bend toward?