Beloveds, today the Full Moon is in Aquarius, and the Sun is in Leo, and I have done a tarot reading for all of us. Yes, you, whoever you are, reading this. This is for you.
Here in Richmond, Virginia it is pouring rain as I write this. I, like the grey and billowing sky, was also able to weep today for the first time in ages. Everything is changing, has changed a thousand times since March. With each quake, we have adjusted and found a new balance, even on the precipice of towering cliffs. But oh, August...It is something about this heat... this half return to the world after months of cave-like solitude, the fear that comes barreling in with stepping out into the unknown, the uncertainty of finances after safety nets taken away, the confrontation of our most hellacious demons and our ancestral traumas--both individually and collectively... I know that many of us have been teetering on this edge, trying to find a foothold, trying not to let our fingers slip.
Here we are, my loves, in Leo season, and I, for one, have been feeling like the cowardly lion, longing to retreat into a cave until this year is over. I have been hearing this sentiment from so many of you lately. We are overwhelmed, exhausted, traumatized, afraid, and shaken to our cores.
I am thinking of the goddess Inanna.
If you don't know the story of this goddess, it is worth some research, but I will share a tiny summary of her story here.
Inanna, Queen of Heaven, feels the drumbeat call to the Underworld to undergo an initiation. But, when she tries to descend through the gates, she is told she must surrender a piece of her royal clothing at each gate. Inanna enters the Underworld stripped of her glory, her worldly identity, all the trappings she thought gave her power. She chooses to continue anyway because something in her knows she is about to be transformed. She is left exposed, naked, and vulnerable. It is in this state that she is sentenced to death by her sister, Queen of the Earth and Underworld, Ereshkigal.
Inanna's descent into the Underworld feels like an Autumn/Winter story. A Scorpio season story. A tale we tell when we are faced with the deep underground call of winter, the solitude that comes with it, and the death that comes before resurrection in the spring.
But this year has been a winter year. We have endured immense solitude as we are physically distanced from each other. We have been inside baking bread, reading books, and zooming all of our connections. And in the depths of this long winter we have been asked again and again to surrender our hopes, our plans, our ideas of normalcy, our illusions of who we thought we were individually and collectively. We are being asked who we are outside of the powers we thought we had. We, individually and collectively have been confronted with the worst of our demons, the darkest of our shadows, the exposure of our investment in systems of inequality and oppression. We have faced this darkness, and we have longed and fought to create something new.
After Inanna's death in the Underworld, she is brought back to life, and returns utterly transformed by her ordeal, imbued with the powers of the owl, and understanding her own strength and source of power in an entirely new way.
This Resurrection, this coming of Spring, however, cannot come, Beloveds, until we let die what needs to die. Patriarchy, capitalism, white supremacy, individualism, all systems of oppression, our tight grip on what was and what we thought was the only way--all must die before we can create a new world. Here in Leo season with the moon in Aquarius, we are asked to look at where our true inner power lies divested from our allotted "power" within this system. One of my loves Sonya recently posed this:
This is an initiation. And this reading, dear ones, is FULL of Queens to assist us. They came bearing the most delicious gifts and requiring the deepest bow, the greatest surrender.
Here at the opening we encounter the Queen of Wands who meets us on the edge. Mxtress of the Storm, bringing us back to our senses, our fiery hearts, our yearning, and our vision. When we are in the dark of the underworld, what future can we see before us ? This Queen lights up our third eye, our clairvoyance, our ability and desire to see beyond and through the shadow. What can we dream up? What can we create from our wildest imaginations, our deepest desires? What kind of world do we long to inhabit when we rise again?
Dream it up, Beloveds, and keep it before you as you place all that you thought you were on the altars at the gates.
The Great Gift for you here, the Knight of Cups says, is the surrender. These next two weeks as the moon wanes, Spirit want us to dig deep and engage with these questions: What trauma needs to be cleared from my body? From my ancestral line? What do I need to bury at the crossroads? What am I willing to give up so that I can be in right relationship with this planet? With others? What do I need to surrender to be in right relationship with myself?
Our Queen of Cups assists in our transformation, asking us to be mutable, changeable, as willing as the river to flow and flow and flow. To feel all of our feelings, to take what feels like tragedy and transmute it into something beautiful. We are capable of great beauty. We are capable of a "great big unsayable love" (Meggan Watterson).
Like Inanna, we will be transformed in this surrender.
The Queen of Pentacles joins with our Ancestors, bringing us the gift of embodiment, of healing beyond time and space. They help us to expand our vision to one outside of binary thinking, outside of what we think is possible. They, outside of time, celebrate us and our journey because they can see what is on the other side of our dark night! They ask us to Heal our Past, Embody the Present, and Believe in the hope of our Future.
This is what the Queens are saying to me now:
Place your right hand on your belly, your left hand on your heart. Breathe in deep and let your hands rise and fall with your breath.
Lie down on the earth, spreading your limbs out wide. Surrender what you cannot carry. Let it be absorbed by the sun above, by the deep soil below. Say to the Earth below and the Sun above that you are willing to be utterly and completely transformed.
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