What I’ve mainly written about in this space is tarot, enneagram, in the form of personal memoir. Lately I’ve wanted to integrate these topics with what I spend the majority of my life on: my book business, owning two book stores in Seattle, WA. The business of buying and selling used books is interesting on many levels: the material itself, the decision making process about what gets bought and what doesn’t, and probably more than the two previous reasons, the people we come in contact with when we are buying books.

We buy libraries of people who have either left the planet, or have had to downsize,or who just want to purge their homes, get cleaned up. Just this month we bought the books of someone who has become blind and his huge collection of Folio Society and Easton leather bound books are suddenly and sadly no longer of use to him. Just a few days ago we were contacted by the ex-wife of a long time ex-employee and customer, who had worked at and then shopped at our stores for decades, an English professor in his sixties, who now has dementia and cannot read. We are buying his collection tomorrow.

Most often the books we buy in large quantities are the books of dead people, and their grieving families are the ones selling them. Years ago one of my son’s favorite teachers, that English teacher who changes lives—we are all lucky if we’ve had one. Mine was Ms. Lechner, when I was a sophomore in high school—I still remember the Macleish poem she had us memorize: “A poem should be palpable and mute, as a globed fruit.” Ben’s teacher became ill, very very thin and then left school and we later found out she had passed away. She wasn’t even forty years old. It was a mystery what she died of, some said cancer, others said suicide or an eating disorder. I cried my eyes out at the memorial service.

A few months later a man made an appointment to bring in a large quantity of books, from his sister who had passed away. They were good books, classic literature, which is our mainstay. We go through each book, check for condition, check against our inventory and decide on a price. As I was leafing through a copy of Oliver Twist I saw here name written inside the front cover. These were Ben’s teacher’s books. I burst into tears. The man had gone away while we were working on the collection, and when he returned to get his offer and take away the rejects I was still really emotional. I told him I knew his sister and what a huge impact she had had on my son and so many others. He began to cry too and we hugged. That’s just one example of how used books have their own histories, the histories of the owners who have purchased them, treasured them, sold them, or kept them until death at which time their families kept or sold them.

A few years ago, we were contacted by a woman who said her sister had died and would we consider buying her occult collection, which totaled two hundred bankers boxes of books. We told her to bring them in in batches as our store can only handle thirty to forty boxes at a time without making the store completely unshoppable. It turned out that her sister Charla, had the best occult book collection we had ever seen. As the resident expert on the occult, I handled the collection and it took me literally months to get through it: basic books on astrology and tarot up to many thousand dollar texts which were literally unavailable and I held them in my hands. We paid for the collection over a period of many months as it turned out to be worth tens of thousands of dollars, and during the time I handled Charla’s books, I felt like she became a friend. The books of dead people—in some ways our libraries define us.

How does your library define you? My husband’s library consists of classic religious and anthropological texts, Greek and Latin literature, and a bit of science fiction in only the finest editions. My library is a moving object. I do keep a large collection of books on tarot, astrology and enneagram, and many tarot and oracle decks, as well as a large cookbook collection. My father is a novelist and we keep multiple editions of his books on the shelf. My grandfather was a writer and translator and we keep his books as well. But the rest of the library comes and goes based upon my interests (currently cults, intermittent fasting, kundalini and vedic astrology). I read the latest hot novels, and quickly return them for sale in the store. My library is less a collection and more a practical tool for daily use.

My mother’s book collection consisted of a vast array of cookbooks, most of which live on my shelves today. She loved Marcella Hazan and Elizabeth David. She loved Mishima, and Colette and Anais Nin. She was an undiagnosed dyslexic, who read very slowly and was chastised for it as a child. She was a very crafty woman, who published a book on how to make dollhouse furniture in the early eighties, which was quite a hit and even went to paperback. When I hold her books, I feel a vibration, a connection to her. The books we hold, which have been previously owned by others contain something powerful, unexplainable but there, as if a part of that person is left deposited in the book as it passes hands.

How do you use your books? Have you ever had to liquidate a family member’s library and also decide what to keep? Do you write in your books (which by the way will make them unsaleable in the used market.)? Are your libraries organized and neat, alphabetical by author or sorted into categories? Or haphazardly thrown on shelves with piles on the floor? Our books are objects which represent parts of our personalities, surround us and move with us—our last move included 78 boxes of books. If you’ve moved how did you decide what to keep and what would go? When you go to someone’s house, do you immediately check out their bookshelves, as it gives you a clearer idea about what interests them, i.e. who they are?

Those who predicted the death of the book with the ascendance of Amazon and Kindles were dead wrong, no pun intended. The book is alive and well, coveted and respected and well loved, and sometimes degraded, dogeared or destroyed with use. Traditional publishing’s outputs have doubled in the past two decades, meaning there are more used books to choose from in the market than ever before. Ultimately, for me, buying and selling books is huge fun. I still learn something new every day and that is not hyperbole. I’d love to hear about your relationship with your books.

xoHanna

I’ve been playing a pretty good game the past few months, one that goes against my nature. I’ve been going with the flow, sitting in a state of neutrality, awaiting change to wash over me versus acting to face and make change. In other words, I’ve been a little bit stuck. Sometimes it feels like the Two of Swords, peacefully meditating on a dualistic choice and deciding to just keep on waiting for the right decision to come to me. More often of late it feels like the Eight of Swords, trapped by a multitude of decisions, potential consequences, impacts. These two Swords cards have a lot in common: both blindfolded, both surrounded by water, both female figures, both swords (obviously). These are the only two cards in the Rider Waite Smith deck which show figures blindfolded. Swords, as we know are the seat of intellect, of communication, of curiosity, anxiety, the unhelpful monkey mind, even telling ourselves lies. The lie I’ve been telling myself, is that I am still in the Two of Swords mode when really I’ve turned into the Eight.

I tell people in readings to look carefully at the card when we draw the Eight of Swords. She is blindfolded and bound, with eight swords stuck in the mud on either side of her. At first it looks like she is physically trapped. But upon further consideration it becomes obvious that her blindfold and bindings are quite loose, and that the swords do not surround her completely. She is standing in muddy water. But she isn’t drowning. And the presence of water in both of the Swords cards, especially with the moon in the Two of Swords, reminds us that the connection between our minds and our hearts runs deep. This is the kind of mental ruminating which is at its heart emotional and intuitive.

With the Two of Swords, our figure is calmly holding the swords pointing in two directions. She sits with the water to her back on a stone bench. She is choosing not to be in the waters of confusion and emotional distress. She is blindfolded by choice, wearing white to emphasize serenity, taking her time to decide—the blindfold allows her to look inward. She is choosing not to see…yet. With the Eight, she is clothed in red, a color of inner turmoil, maybe even rage. She is bound but can release herself whenever she wishes, not unlike the chains we see in the Devil card. She is standing in the water, really the mud, and only she can get herself out. She is turned away from the city on a hill, her home, which is perhaps also her oppressor. She is between here and there. It is time to move. Who among us wants to remain standing in the mud?

I don’t know what she decides to do. The decision itself isn’t as important as the need to see what is really there, the muddiness of it all, and finally take action, even if the action isn’t so much physical movement but a mental and emotional change of perspective, a metaphorical removal of the blindfold. The idea of blindfolding makes me think of the children’s game, Pin the Tail on the Donkey. What makes the game amusing is the participant’s inability to see and moving forward to put that pin somewhere, seeing where it lands. If the tail ends up on the head…hilarious! When the Two of Swords evolves toward the Eight of Swords, it is time to take off the blindfold and stick the tail where it belongs, on the donkey’s ass (pun intended).

Rachel Pollack describes the Eight of Swords as what can happen when those in positions of power “train people to believe in their own helplessness,” with the blindfold signifying confusion, a kind of self-gaslighting. The Two of Swords is quiet, contemplative, peaceful, in control of both swords. The Eight must remove her blindfold and see clearly what is at hand, and it is hard. The Eight must pick a sword, any sword, and try it on for size.

I’d love to know what swords you are choosing right now, what makes it hard to decide, how loose or tight your blindfold feels right now. We’re in this together.

xoHanna

Figgy and Freya met on a dog dating site called Bark Happy, ten years ago. In a fit of impulsivity caused by events I won’t go into here, I had adopted an anxious but very sweet Newfoundland, and thought it would be fun to find her another Newfie to hang out with. Kristin answered my ad and as we always like to say”the rest is history.” Fig was six months and Freya was a year old when we first met up. At the time, I never would have guessed how how attached Figgy and Freya would become, or how important Chris and Kristin, her parents, would be to my life. They became sisters, moving back and forth between our houses during vacations and remodeling projects, sometimes just because we thought they’d enjoy it. Which they always did.

We joined an indoor dog park/bar called Dogwood Playpark, which also had a daycare they could attend. Dogwood became our almost daily hangout. We made other friends there, dog friends we called them: Merlot the Bernadoodle, Blanche the Frenchie, Tux the ancient Labradoodle who made it to seventeen, and many more. We had dog birthday parties, watching the Super Bowl, the Oscars, any excuse to congregate together with our dogs. Looking back, that time in 2017-2019 was such fun. The dogs and my dog friends brought me so much joy. My other friends would get a bit jealous, asking “Are you hanging out with those dog people again?”

This became really important when the pandemic hit in 2020. Suddenly everything closed down, masks were everywhere, there was confusion and uncertainty. But we still had dogs that needed to get out and get exercise and socialize. If I’m honest here, it was also us humans who needed the connection, the community. We formed a dog bubble. The dogs and their owners would come to my house and sit on the deck eating Taco Bell (Figgy’s favorite) and drinking beer (Freya’s favorite). We’d still go to Magnuson as a group and walk for miles, stopping at swimming spots along Lake Washington and traversing trails with blackberries. Figgy loved blackberries more than just about anything. She loved the accessibility of endless food. One time when I had her on my own, my son and I were walking with the two dogs and Figgy disappeared. We found her encased in a blackberry bush happily chomping away. Getting her out was an ordeal, involving lots of scratches to our skin. She was such a happy girl.

When we went out, Figgy and Freya always got a lot of attention. They were big and beautiful and as a pair became even more so. Figgy’s black versus Freya’s brown, Figgy’s more blockish head vs. Freya’s more dainty look, their beautiful fur, the way they walked along slowly, at ease, they looked like they belonged together. And they did.

Chris and Kristin took Figgy on lots of adventures, to Desolation Pass, up to the mountains. Figgy loved the snow, and she loved to carry giant sticks around in her mouth. She would fetch when she felt like it, especially enjoying fetching sticks out in the water. When she swam, she looked like an alligator. She didn’t bark too much, unlike sister Freya, but when she did it was this bog booming woof that made me smile.

Figgy and Freya shared a love of food. I spoiled them. While some dogs are picky, not those two. Figgy developed an allergy to chicken so we avoided that, but everything else was up for grabs. I think Figgy gained a couple of pounds after every week or two week stint at the McElroy residence. They were both so obedient and docile I never used collars or leashes. They just followed along and did as they were told. In spite of weighing 250 pounds between the two of them, they were easy to manage. Figgy drooled a lot. We were always wiping her mouth with a towel, or wiping the wall or the floor. I didn’t care. I loved that girl so much.

During 2025, Figgy began to slow down. She didn’t like to jump in the car any more, and it became obvious her joints were beginning to give her trouble. She turned ten in September. She became unable to make it to the park with the rest of the gang, who still went to Magnuson every weekend. Freya was also finding the car more difficult, but she was still eager to go so I got a special harness to help me lift her in and out. Even with the same harness Figgy just wasn’t interested any more. Chris and Kristin brought in the acupuncturist, red light therapy, joint shots, pain killers. They did everything they could to make her more comfortable. But on Tuesday, April 14th, they made the hard decision. Figgy was telling them she was ready. When Kristin called me on Tuesday night I couldn’t stop crying. I went to their house on Wednesday along with some other friends. We lay on the floor with her talking about the past ten years, how much it meant to us, how much she meant to us. As usual I was sneaking her snacks all night.

Figgy crossed the proverbial “rainbow bridge” (a term I’m not too fond of but whatever) on Thursday, April 16th at home after eating a big delicious steak,, with the same vet who had been coming to the house to give Fig treatments the past few months. I was asked if Freya was able to say goodbye, and the answer is no. It would have been too hard for her to get up the steps at their house. There is a theory that it is important for animals to see their friends after they pass so they understand. In this case Freya hadn’t seen too much of Figgy the past few months, and I’m not sure it matters.

I don’t have much more to say. The pictures above speak louder than my words ever could. I loved that dog. I love her mom and dad, my very close friends. I love the community of dogs we built, realizing they each would have to pass at some point. Tux went first. Then Barli the Berner last year, now Figs. As I write this, Freya and her new brother Cadet, an almost seventeen year old retired guide dog for the blind, lie on the floor snoring after breakfast. I don’t know how much time they have left. We too, have the acupuncture, the red light therapy, the joint shots, the painkillers. They seem content for now. This is all so hard. But with the hard comes the very real gift our pets give us, the gift of unconditional love that helps us get outside ourselves, and bridge the gaps between people to form real connection. Goodbye, Figgy Pudding. I love you a lot.

xoHanna

I returned to what I lovingly call Tarot Church yesterday morning, a six month journey through the Major Arcana, facilitated by Jessica Dore. The real name is Sunday meeting, which does have a bit of a churchy ring to it. This is my third round. I took a break last year, but this is Jessica’s sixth rotation. It is grounding and always eye opening, reminding me we never truly “learn” the cards. Voyaging with the cards is “a school in the art of learning.” (Meditations on the Tarot, Anonymous) The process operates on the idea that you can keep returning to the same texts (the cards) with different groups of people and always get a fresh perspective or new learning from the cards.

We start with The Fool, though in Meditations, the writer puts The Fool between Judgement and The World, and as the card is “zero,” it can really go between any of the cards, as a bridge or adjacency or vehicle. As I began to think about The Fool “anew,” I kept coming back to the idea of madness or a recklessness of spirit which can feel like losing a grip on reality. The Fool, or La Fou in French, El Loco in Spanish, in other words an intentional depiction of madness, and The Fool’s instability, his untetheredness almost requires he have cards on either side of him to help him remain of this world.

We can also consider The Fool and the role of The Trickster in world literature, a figure who turns “the truth” on its head, lightens the mood, reminds us of the folly of over-seriousness, and is in the words of the author of the Meditations “a mocking spirit.” The Fool in this respect is a rule breaker, and is not foolish at all, but exists to challenge societal structures, and to reveal the idiocy of those in charge.

A common interpretation of The Fool in a tarot reading is fresh starts, new beginnings, starting over, of freedom, but also of the illusion of freedom. This illusion of total freedom is both The Fool’s superpower and can also be his detriment. I gave a reading to a dear friend last night and at her base card in the Celtic Cross spread, the third position, was The Fool. I told her I’d been thinking a lot about this archetype and that in her situation it was important to find the balance between risking everything for an illusory freedom, and finding the cards to support The Fool on either side of her. In her case, The Hermit and The Star appeared, a beautiful trio for moving forward, hope and solitude, spiritual groundedness and balance.

In the Meditations, the writer addresses the freefalling nature of The Fool:

Now the Arcanum “The Fool” has a double meaning. Indeed it can be understood in two different ways: as a model and as a warning at the same time. For on the one hand it teaches the freedom of transcendental consciousness elevated above the things of this world, and on the other hand it clearly presents a very impressive warning of the peril that this elevation comprises—lack of concern, inadequacy, irresponsibility and ridicule…in a word, madness.

Meditations, p.603

So The Fool gives us a permission slip to think and behave unconventionally, to take risks, to have the courage to start over. But it also presents us with a warning to be careful of letting go of everything solid which tethers us to the world. A life must be balanced—freedom for freedom’s sake alone is a form of madness. A life of vagabonding may work well for some. But most would agree having a home is preferred, or at least a home base to return to after exploration and travel.

See you next week. Thank you for taking the time to read.

xoHanna

This morning I went out to the yard to the raised beds my husband and I built in 2022 after the pandemic, when I was searching desperately for some common ground, for something we might do together that didn’t cause political arguments, or worse, silence. I knew that he was concerned about food supply, that there might come a time in the future when food might not be available or might be completely unaffordable. I didn’t agree with him (although right now, who knows?), but I also liked the idea of growing vegetables as we did at our first house decades ago. He had begun stockpiling rice and beans in our pantry, which I thought was silly but essentially harmless. It was a time to choose my battles, as I suppose the dance of marriage always is. We built four raised beds with metal sides, screws which were really hard to finagle but ultimately we had a nice set up, and set to work planting greens and potatoes, peas and beans. We did it together. It felt good. In 2024 we expanded our garden to include raspberry bushes which my lab Cadet liked nothing better than to go out and pick the ripe berries with me, one for him, one for me, occasionally a few would make it indoors for Chris, and my Newfoundland, Freya.

Last year, Spring arrived and I was all alone. He had left me in a wild and furious frenzy and moved back to Ohio. My younger son moved back to Thailand weeks later to follow his heart to the woman he loved. My eldest was living close by but I felt more alone than I had in decades. I was in survival mode at work, trying to keep it all together, doing two jobs, and trying to come up with new systems I could manage myself. I finally got onto Quickbooks with the help of my accountant, who honestly became my work wife for the first six months of 2025. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without her. The last thing I wanted to do was garden. After work I would come home, eat frozen dumplings, drink wine and watch Netflix. Rinse and repeat. The quiet actually began to feel pretty good. It was pleasurable to do exactly what I wanted to do without having to check in with anyone, without having to meet anyone else’s personal needs. I had my house, my dogs, and though I was scared about what the future would hold for me, there was a certain peace that came with my solitude. No yelling, no arguments.

Ultimately six months later Chris returned and we began to put the pieces back together of a very long and what had become a very fractured marriage. What comes to mind is the Japanese ceramic form, Kintsugi, where broken pottery is put back together using gold to create something new and potentially more beautiful than it was before. Best case scenario for sure. For a variety of reasons I won’t recount here, we both decided to try again.

This morning I woke up and knew I wanted to turn the soil over, to take out the weeds and prepare to plant and tend to the gardens again. I went outside in my nightgown and Birkenstocks, with a sweatshirt thrown over me, as it is still around fifty degrees in the morning here in Seattle. I picked up the big shovel and dug in, getting to the bottom of the beds and heaving the heavy clumps of black soil up and over. Chris came outside and started weeding the raspberry bushes. We did the potato barrels together, then talked about what would go where. I raked the big branches while he weeded the delicate grass sprouts. I’m the big picture person, he is in the details, in all aspects of our lives. He told me how in Australia he saw a woman on You Tube who has chickens do the weeding under her berry bushes. Of course they get the low hanging fruit. Too bad I’m not a fan of owning chickens.

I’ll go to the nursery later, pick up some potato starts, pea seeds, kale and chard seedlings. Most gardening seasons I’m in a get it done mode, efficient and effective. This year feels a little different. I’m in no big hurry. A little at a time. A process, a hobby, not a chore. I want to feel joy in the garden again, like that first year when we created the beds and filled them with so much soil, who knew how much soil it would take to fill those damn things. It felt like a coming together after so much pain during the pandemic.

We enter the last decan of Aries this week, represented by the IV of Wands. It’s a happy card I think. The fours represent stability, the couple under the chuppah look celebratory, with the structure of the castle behind them and the fruit vine decorated wands in front. Nothing stays the same but for this moment they are united in purpose and feeling that bliss that comes from being present.

Turning over the soil is a beautiful metaphor for starting again, for seeing what needs tending beneath the surface. Next steps are planting seeds and seeing what will grow.

That’s all for now. I’m grateful for you sticking with me.

xoHanna

The year ahead tarot spread is a way to both set intentions and let the universe work the way it is going to whether you like it or not. When you choose your card for the year, which is going to be your north star, the months around it act as constellations all relating back in some way to your card.

I wrote last week about Death and how I think that may be my card for the year. But that strikes me now as too easy and also perhaps not very helpful for me. 2025 has been a Death year, a Tower year, a Devil year, the three cards we most fear. The card I chose last year was The Wheel of Fortune. Below are the notes I took from my own spread.

I realize I started my year with the Death card and in relation to my card of the year it makes so much sense—change was inevitable and so much of it was out of my control. It helps me to reflect back on where I was and how each card for the month allows me a meaning making experience, as I look back. For December 2025 I have the Ace of Wands which is a reason to put Death to the side and focus on the power of the future.

The Ace of Wands is a beautiful card for end the year because it is all about beginnings. It is the spark and inspiration of new projects and ideas. Wands are fire cards, and spirit cards, and power cards. Aces get us started on our paths. So having the Ace of Wands as my final card of the year reminds me of my inherent optimism in the future, my belief in creation, in creativity as a way out of pain.

I’m not completely committing right now, but the Ace of Wands may be my card for 2026.

If you are interested in learning more about year ahead spreads and how they can help you move forward and provide a compass for 2026, feel free to check out my web site or e mail me at hanna.mc@comcast.net. I love the new year, new beginnings, looking forward to what is known and cannot be known.

That’s it for now.

xoHanna

I had just finished reading Jessica Dore’s Offerings for December. I’ve been considering taking her eight week course on philosophical readings in grief, avoiding it quite honestly, but also feeling drawn to it. I’m in grief in so many ways. This year has been a grieving year for me. So many internal transitions yet the structure of my life is essentially the same—the structure has survived. It seems to me that we fear our grief for so many different reasons, but primarily because it is an open wound which isn’t ready to heal yet. Getting over it is not yet an option.

As we head into the end of the year, the death in some ways of 2025, a kind of rebirth in 2026, I land here, on the Death card. I often spin the Death card positively in readings, and for good reason. Death is change. Death is opportunity. Death is reconstruction. But Death is also pain, and grief, and often movement in an unknown direction. Death can also be fear. Where am I going?

This card is so chock full of imagery, and also refers back to other cards in the deck. The white horse ridden by the personification of Death, holding a flag with a white rose on it (reminiscent of The Fool). The papal figure imploring, not like the stern figure of The Hierophant, but reminding us of the structure of grief. The King is dead, his crown cast aside. The woman looks away denying her loss. The child gazing Death in the face, straight on, holding a bunch of flowers (reminding us of The Sun). The sun rises in the background between two towers (like the towers in The Moon), a ship sails in the distance. The card shows us the myriad ways we handle change.

As I write this, Freya lays by my side next to her snoring sixteen year old Lab best friend, Cadet, who is doing remarkably well. I often think about who will go first and what that will mean for the other, and for me. Right now I feel grounded. I won’t travel during this next stage will stay close to home to care for Freya, as I always have, but the difference is I no longer feel comfortable leaving her in another’s care. She’s a lot. Is this sacrifice? Yes. But this dog got me through so much and now it is my turn, to look up at her with a bunch of flowers in my hand, to gaze at her directly, and let her know that I am here, fully present, as we walk this foreign path together.

I’ve been doing these for years, and it is one of the most rewarding parts of my own personal practice, sharing this with you. It can provide grounding and structure, possibility, guidance and hope for the coming year. Trying this year to make this affordable for all, my sliding scale is $50-150, depending on what you can pay. I will never turn anyone away so let me know if you have a challenge with payment. E mail me at hanna.mc@comcast with questions or to set up a time. My website is www.hannamcelroy.com if you want more information. Spots fill up very quickly and it is nice to have this complete by mid January, so if you are interested, jump on it.

Now onto the King of Pentacles:

It only just occurred to me how important the King of Pentacles has been for me this year. At the beginning of 2025 I thought I might lose all my financial security and stability, what I’ve worked for in both my business and my home to create for decades. I thought I was headed for a nasty divorce, where all the assets would have to be liquidated and divided up. I envisioned myself with two giant dogs in a one bedroom apartment with no job, careening into my sixties. I also thought that by the end of 2025 I’d know where I stood, how my future world would play out. That’s not what happened.

I still own my business. My husband came home. I don’t fear for my security the way I did through April and May. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I can palpably feel the King of Pentacles energy flowing through me, the part of me that said no fucking way am I giving everything up, including my relationship. Things are messy and murky and unresolved. But the King of Pentacles in me, the producer, the promoter, the realistic adapter of material things, is right here. I’m not going anywhere. The bulls’ heads which adorn the throne of this king remind me that I am courageous and entrepreneurial, that I have earned what I have, and that I can be stubborn and that this is good.

The King of Pentacles, also called the King of Coins, reminds us that reaching a state of mental clarity and spiritual peace is made much easier with a few coins in one’s pocket, economic power. The back half of 2025 I regained my power. I realized that I get to write my own story, that no one is going to take away what I have worked so hard to build. I created an exit plan albeit a long one, four more years at this job in this place. Then, who knows? The King of Pentacles can retire if he wants to, he gets to choose. He channels the energies of Capricorn, Virgo and Taurus, common sense. Rachel Pollack, in Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom, reminds us that the King of Pentacles is the final card in the minor arcana, in the tarot deck. He is the seventy-eighth card. He represents the end of the adventure, and the beginning of the next, with the Fool.

I’m looking forward to my own year ahead spread. My card of the year will be The Fool, starting over, but not in a one bedroom apartment with two giant dogs and no job. The stability and security I’ve built will allow me to choose my own adventure. I am privileged. I am lucky. I’ve worked hard and will continue to. I am an enneagram type eight, and at heart I am a survivor who will not fold. While the type eight can be challenged by being “too much” at times, in 2025 this has been my superpower, like the King of Pentacles, who recognizes his worth, his value, and will not back down.

Next week we begin a new adventure.

xoHanna

“Honesty is not the revealing of some foundational truth that gives us power over life or another or even the self, but a robust incarnation into the unknown unfolding vulnerability of existence, where we acknowledge how powerless we feel, how little we actually know, how afraid we are of not knowing, and how astonished we are by the generous measure of loss that is conferred upon even the most average life.”

David Whyte, Consolations

In this third installment of reflections on the kings in the tarot, I want to remind us that Kings do not represent men in a traditional sense. They have masculine energy for sure, but I believe we all have the masculine and the feminine within us, the old yin and yang, in different measures at different times. What is most important to remember when we look at the kings in the tarot is their level of mastery, authority, and maturity, and this is highlighted most strongly with the King of Wands, the king of kings.

The wands are the suit of spirit and the element of fire, and fire shows up as flames on this king’s crown and with the presence of both the lion and the salamander on the back of his throne. The lion provides this king with his strength and the salamander his intuition. The two combine to give our king confidence and charisma, which make him a great leader, and an honest one as well. He is creative, a problem solver, and personifies success, and his success is based upon integrity above all else.

I went back and forth when thinking about the enneagram and this card because the positive aspects of both three and eight showed up for me. But I leaned into the three particularly in thinking about how we define success, what makes one person successful and another not, and how much of this is guided by perceptions and feedback from outside oneself. The type three is a heart-centered type (versus gut or head) but can have a hard time putting feelings before work and achievement—they sometimes don’t even know what they feel because they spend so much time looking outward and not enough time learning about their true selves.

Now the King of Wands personifies the elevated virtue of the type three, which is veracity. He has delved the depths of his heart and knows himself well. He knows that the way to lead and succeed is through what I would call his heart spirit, the closed circle of the salamander on the back of his throne, a symbol of completion.

But what to do with the rest of us mere mortals trying to learn to be honest with ourselves, to slow down and get off the hamster wheel of what is expected of us to be what society defines as successful? It is exhausting and leads us away from who we really are. In The Enneagram Guide To Waking Up Beatrice Chestnut describes type threes as “shape-shifters.”

“When she was around different groups of people, she could become the perfect example of whatever they viewed as admirable or successful. Like a chameleon, she could change her outward appearance depending on whom she was with and the situation she was in.” (p.65)

This is the shadow side of the Three, the fear of being who they really are, the fear of rejection and being judged as not good enough. The work of the Three is to slow down and not worry so much about others’ views of them, to ask themselves how they really feel, not how they think they should feel.

I think the Kings, and perhaps all the court cards in the tarot are idealized or aspirational versions of ourselves. Whereas the Major Arcana provide us with archetypes, and the Minor Arcana represent situations, the court cards are personifications in idealized form, personality types perhaps, like the enneagram, which is why it makes so much sense to me to draw parallels between the two. Both the tarot and the enneagram have elements of fluidity to them, insofar as you might feel into the King of Wands one day and not another, and though your enneagram type is fixed, there are so many daily (and even hourly!) fluctuations within our types, and how we engage other types (wings, arrows etc.). So this is an exercise in finding connections, but is certainly not exhaustive. It’s exciting to me because there’s always something more to think about, another angle to look at. Ultimately both systems provide us with ways to be more compassionate, to recognize and get in touch with our humanity, as we attempt to live with integrity in a world which can feel uncompassionate, inhumane, and dishonest.

That’s all for now.

xoHanna

For the past few months I’ve found it difficult to write. I’ve lacked the focus and intellectual energy to live in my own head enough to produce anything that doesn’t seem boring. But last week I began a practice of coworking with a group of people on zoom from 5am to 7am twice a week as a way to return to a routine, which I’ve hoped will kickstart my brain and get me going again. Getting up at 4:45am, feeding the dogs and letting them out, making coffee, taking my meds, and sitting down to do one thing: write. I’m guardedly optimistic that it seems to be working. I’m telling myself, if you want to write, you need to write.

The King of Swords represents that intellectual energy I’m reaching for. In Tarot For Change Jessica Dore speaks of the King of Sword’s message: “developing a level of mastery with our attention endows us with the power to give life to any situation, and also the power to take it away.” (p.345) The ability to choose where one’s attention goes, and to stay there even when it gets uncomfortable is the maturity this king represents. As The King of Cups represents emotional maturity, the King of Swords shows us what it means to be intellectually mature. He also reminds us of the price we pay when we commit to focus on one thing—there’s always another idea, or person, who won’t get the focus. We choose where our attention goes, and stays. It’s a judgement call. And when we look at the King of Swords, as depicted by Colman Smith, there is an air of judgement in his eyes.

In 78 Degrees of Wisdom Rachel Pollack describes The King of Swords as “remote” and this is where I see a connection to the Enneagram Type 5, the type who carefully carves out and protects their time to keep their intellectual goals their primary concern. The Enneagram Type Five, a head type (versus gut or heart type), puts their work, be it reading, writing, gathering information, above everything else, often above their relationships with others. Type Five can feel disconnected at times, because the choices they make, putting the work first, by definition means that their attention and focus is inward. A balanced Type Five recognizes this and gets in touch with their bodies through movement, and their hearts through connection with others. Yet there is always a palpable tension, between protecting their time, and giving it away in connection with their relationships.

The King of Swords, like the Type Five lives to be an authority in their intellectual area of study, think of the word “authority,” to be the “author,” from the Latin “auctor,” the master, leader, author of that which they deem important. I think where the superpower exists for these two is in their ability to remain focused and not distracted by all the possible inputs from this plugged in life. In some sense I think anyone who is somewhat conscious of the effects of our phones, e mail, and perpetual streaming opportunities, knows it detracts from our ability to be the author of our own lives. Where I’ve described the King and the Five as remote and disconnected, it is necessary to unplug. How will we know what we think if we are constantly being bombarded with others’ thoughts?

This coworking that I described at the beginning of this post is valuable in that it is a gathering of people together, who agree to stay focused on the work, whether it is writing a book, a Substack post, balancing their budget, applying for the grant. It is the ultimate private head space, but by doing it together, in silence, there is a heart connection, an opening, a support, which helps me feel balanced. If you want to write, you need to write.

I’d love to hear how The King of Swords shows up for you, especially if you identify as a Type Five.

Leave a comment

That’s it for now.

xoHanna

I was an angry little girl. I learned early on that I could get attention by throwing a shit fit. I also learned that my anger made me feel powerful and protected. As I grew

it became my go to emotion, for better or worse, often worse. I’ve been fearless, which is exciting, and also dangerous. I spent much of my adult life figuring out how to tamp down my anger, to be more emotionally conscious, to make myself calmer, to save my own life. Funnily enough I’ve become so good at not feeling anger, big anger, that I have a hard time accessing it, even when I really need to, to process what’s happened. My story is quintessential enneagram type eight. The eight learned how to protect herself, and then protected others, most often using the tool of aggression and anger to scare the monsters away. But being angry all the time can be hurtful to others and unhealthy for the self, so the eight works on being more vulnerable, accessing other emotions, and it makes for a much more fulfilling life.

The King of Cups is an emotional authority. He can dip his foot into the churning waters below him, but always stays above the fray. He is tuned in to others’ feelings but doesn’t get caught up in them. He has learned to balance and control his emotions but we know that water and all it implies are close to his heart (note the fish pendant around his neck, over his heart). But I’m not sure how vulnerable this King can be. He’s spent his whole life learning to rise above the waters to become fair and the embodiment of equanimity. Can he access the fire of Wand energy or can he only submerge the fire in water? Is he bland? In Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom, Rachel Pollack suggests this very idea: “Some commentators see the King as a person of troubled emotions, even anger and violence, who habitually suppresses these feelings even from himself, always maintaining a calm exterior.” (p.187)

When the enneagram type eight learns to soften, accepts that they no longer need to wear armor to protect themselves and others, they become lighter, more accessible and in this transformational development becomes paradoxically more powerful. This side of the eight attracts others not to defend them, but accessing their line to enneagram type two, who can help those in need, practicing deep empathy.

But what about the anger? Is it actually gone, dispersed as ashes in a fire gone out? If it isn’t gone, if it is merely buried because it is inappropriate to express it, where does it go? As Bessel Van der Kolk suggests, is the body still keeping the score? This paradox of fire and water, the active and passive are the quandary both the King of Cups and Enneagram Type 8 find themselves in. How to balance the fire and water which is present in all life, without losing one or the other.

It’s hard not to notice the differences between Pamela Colman’s depiction of the King of Cups in the Waite Smith deck, and Lady Freida Harris’ interpretation. As with most cards in the Thoth deck, less sublety and often a more sinister feel prevails throughout. What I do find interesting about Crowley’s Prince of Cups is the presence of a chariot rather than a throne. Throughout the tarot chariots represent action and movement, power and purposefulness. In Crowley’s Prince of Cups we notice the power of the combination of air and water, creating steam and movement of the chariot. This feels significantly different from the Marseille and Waite Smith more stable/static representations.

Back to anger as I close out today. How can we constructively express our anger so we can get it out, without creating destruction in our own and others’ paths? If we, like me, have worked with anger and learned to suppress it, how do we release it so it doesn’t block us any more, and learn to exist in better balance. The answer I think is enneagram eight’s superpower: vulnerability. Vulnerability comes from the Latin Vulnus, which means “wound.” Perhaps the answer is that the wound can be expressed in many different ways, and even in anger, if it is coming from a place of hurt and pain accessing the nature of the pain through vulnerability, can come through in a healing not harmful way. Is that the crux of emotional maturity? Accepting the fact that we are all wounded in some way, being able to express and release parts of it without causing harm to others.

xxooHanna

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To state I’ve been in a funk or a slump or a period of lack of creativity would be an understatement. What does it mean when getting out of bed to go to work, walk the dogs, take out the garbage, seems like more than enough? When getting through the day and being able to get back in bed is the prize? When every scheduled activity feels like a mountain to climb? I have never been a depressed person, anxious hell yes, but not depressed. As I write this it sure sounds like depression but I don’t think it is. I think it is the way I have been coping with an overwhelmed nervous system, as if my previous capacities have been recalibrated for survival. Who was that woman who got up at 5am each morning to write and give tarot readings before a full day of work in the bookstore? I can barely remember her, or remember her I can but she feels like an acquaintance not a friend.

Substack doesn’t feel that friendly to me right now. It is so slick and professional and teeming with folks who are using it as another social media outlet, a branding tool. But I don’t need to use it that way, my group of readers understand that I use this tool simply, always to communicate what strikes me as relevant right now. Always trying to just be honest.

What is relevant right now on a larger scale I’ll leave to Heather Cox Richardson and Aaron Parnas, among others I respect to help me analyze what is going on in this country and in the world. I know politics is impacting what I am calling my NOT depression. But it has been like a backdrop to a play or scene in a movie, the backdrop of those who are lucky enough to not be getting dragged away by ICE, or finding less cash in our SNAP payments, or living in a war zone. And yes I know my position of privilege has little and everything to do with luck.

The other day I gave myself a Celtic Cross reading, the first of the year. Mostly I pull a few cards at a time, at the beginning of the week or even daily, to give me some food for thought. But I recently felt I was due for a more comprehensive look at what is going on. I felt like feeding myself some of my own medicine.

The Celtic Cross spread first appeared in print in Waite’s Pictorial Key to the Tarot, and has become the most widely used comprehensive spread in the world of tarot to this day. It offers both internal and external views to the querent.

I’m not going to go through my whole reading but will focus on the cards that appeared in the first two spots, the significator and what crosses it, the heart of the matter. The same two cards appeared again two weeks later on the ferry to Paros, an island in Greece I’ve visited for a yoga and enneagram retreat for the past three years. I pulled three cards and there they were.

The cards were the Five of Cups and the Eight of Swords.

In a nutshell this is where I’ve been in the year 2025. There is no sugar coating it. Grief and anxiety. The cups as the seat of the emotions, shows I’ve lost a big piece of my heart and need to reconstruct my relationship on new terms, and the swords show how truly stressful this has all been. The fact the same cards showed up when I did a three card pull on the ferry solidified that I needed to face it in order to move through it. As an enneagram type 8, when in times of stress I tend to go inward and not express my vulnerabilities. When I got to Greece, after a few days, I was able to put down some, not all, of my armor. Miraculously, yes it really felt like a miracle, the pain lifted. I started to feel lighter, freer, hopeful.

When I landed in Greece I had no bandwidth to read cards for others. I knew it would come up snd I made it clear I had my own stuff going on and needed to rest. That was huge for me, saying no. But interestingly, two days in I began to feel as if space was literally being created inside and all around me. Floating in the Aegean, talking to old friends, no alcohol, fresh vegetarian food, yoga twice a day. I suddenly had capacity and wanted to give to others. So I posted some availability on WhatsApp and gave five mini readings and three full readings. It felt good. It’s my place there. I felt ok again, for the first time since Thanksgiving last year.

While in Athens before we flew out, my friend Elli took me to her “stone guy,” Harry. I thought I might pick up a crystal or two. I ended up with an almost garishly large handmade ring with an aquamarine stone mounted on it. I’m not much for jewelry but this ring just called to me from a case in the store. Harry doesn’t just sell stones. He speaks five languages and makes sure every purchase is made with a consultation. He told me the aquamarine represents freedom, luck, happiness, and protection. He told me next year I would encounter new projects which would lead to unexpected prosperity. What more could a girl want?

So there you have it. A little travelogue of my heart. The fact I can write a little and maybe even send this out feels good. I won't lie, it feels really vulnerable. I have to not care if it's well crafted or meaningful. For me, pushing publish is putting one foot in front of the other, acting as if I'm the woman I used to be, knowing change is inevitable, the creases in my forehead have deepened this year, but I am reclaiming my voice.

Cheers to all of you. You have my gratitude and I'm glad to be back.

xoHanna

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The Gemini decan has been really rough for me. The Eight, Nine and Ten of Swords are sharp and anxious and don’t sleep enough, worried about the future, caught in tangled mental threads, Gemini’s twin faces pressed together leaving bruises on each other’s foreheads. Gemini is ruled by Mercury, the planet of communication, mind, intellect, which is how it connects to the Swords of the tarot. The Lovers and The Wheel of Fortune are the Major Arcana which connect to this decan, both cards deeply rooted in the concepts of choice and fate.

What does one do with these cards? In all three you cannot see the figures’ eyes. Blindfolded, covered, face down, they all reflect what we will not or cannot face. These swords must face facts, make unbearable choices, and ultimately submit. In the Thoth Deck the three cards are named Interference, Cruelty, and Ruin and all reflect on the ways we allow our minds to self-destroy.

The Eight of Swords pretends not to have a choice, appears tied up and blindfolded, surrounded by water and swords. But the binds aren’t too tight, and the swords would be easy to walk away from, the water isn’t much more than a puddle. But she remains, trapped by her own inability to decide what to do. Some refer to this card as a temporary crisis, which does makes sense in its placement in the first decan of Gemini. It appears when we interfere with our very selves.

The Nine of Swords is insomnia brought on by anxiety and despair. When we know there is a decision to be made and cannot bring ourselves to make it. When our choices all seem impossible yet necessary, when we truly don’t know what to do. In the Thoth depiction, it is the cruelty we turn on ourselves when we overthink and overthink and overthink again. I love the blanket which covers our figure. It offers hope in the form of red roses (which ties back to The Lovers) and all the astrological symbols, which provide the possibility for balance and hearkan to the fateful nature of the stars. We cannot control everything.

The Ten of Swords however violent it appears, offers a certain flavor of hope in an unexpected way. Ten finishes up the suit—the end has come (hallelujah!). The connection between the Ten of Swords and the Wheel of Fortune expresses that there is no more capacity of mind. Mind is dead and fate takes over, fate and other suits which will bring us less torture. It’s not a pretty end but it’s a necessary to continue. Ruin, Crowley’s term, reminds us what needs to be put down in order for rebirth to occur. If we look at the position of our figure’s hand as they are prone facedown on the ground, there is another hint to the nature of fate and maybe more importantly faith. It is the hand symbol we see in the Hierophant, who places a blessing on his flock. Have faith it says.

One might think after reviewing these cards that we have no place for mind, intellect, or Mercury, that all our thought patterns bring us is despair. This isn’t true of course. The earlier cards in the suit help show this. But the danger comes from putting all your eggs in a basket made of swords. This is unbalanced and as we can see from this decan, a recipe for self torture.

I am most pleased to be leaving this decan in the next day or two. I’ve been deeply in this space for what seems to be much longer than merely a month.

Cancer season awaits.

xo Hanna

I think I’ve been avoiding this third decan of Taurus (thus the late post), because the Thoth deck’s card feels so different to me than how I’ve always seen the Seven of Pentacles in the Rider Waite Smith deck. I’ve been trying to reconcile the two which may in fact not be possible, and maybe more importantly may not be the point of the exercise.

Harris’s depiction, though beautiful, feels stark and cold, with faces of Taurus and Saturn on the seven disks. Saturn represents structure and responsibility, boundaries and restriction. Paired with our earthy and grounded Taurus, but then with the word Failure to guide us, perhaps reminds us that if we focus too much on money and material worth, we are bound in unhealthy ways to that which can make us feel like failures. We will never measure up or “succeed” as long as we use material wealth as our measuring stick. In my own life I’ve been quite focused of late on what I perceive my wealth to be, the structures and boundaries I put around it, and also a fear of what it would mean to lose it. Metaphorically, it can also translate to the ways we judge ourselves as imperfect, the critic who always tells us we aren’t enough.

When I look at Smith’s rendering of the Seven of Pentacles I’ve often thought of a job well done, looking at the work accomplished and taking a well deserved rest. In 36 Secrets however, Chang interprets the expression on our figure’s face as “affectless.” I’ve always seen it as contemplative, as a “now what do I do?” kind of face. Perhaps he is also wondering if what he did was enough. We can’t ignore the Taurean earth here, the agricultural element, which may help connect us to the Thoth interpretation in a circuitous way. Working the land, toiling in the earth, results in potential failure. We work hard but can’t be sure of the results. Will we succeed or will our plants die in spite of our hard work? The plants here, the pentacles, can represent any work we put our hearts into—there is always risk of failure, or what we perceive to be as failure. Much of the work we do is not guaranteed. And how we allow failure, if it does occur, to affect us, how we interpret failure as necessarily negative, is perhaps not the best approach.

The term radical acceptance keeps showing up in different places for me the past few weeks. Lately my world

has required quite a lot of radical acceptance. Accepting the ways things are, not the way I want them to be. I’ve had to relinquish any notion that I can control anyone else’s behavior and focus instead on my own behaviors and reactions to others. There is much I could spin as failure, but choose not to. In fact I refuse to. It would seem to be a death knell for my emotional regulation if I did. I feel in some sense like our figure in Smith’s rendition: contemplative, and accepting, and wondering what is next.

Short and sort of sweet this week. I’ll move on to the decans of Gemini next, sure to be complex, as we look at the Eight, Nine and Ten of Swords, the ways in which we let our minds take us on unpleasant journeys.

As always, let me know your thoughts.

xo Hanna

Taurus II, the fifth decan, is represented by the Six of Pentacles. Though Smith’s depiction in The Waite Smith deck is much more representational than Harris’ in the Thoth deck, they both speak to earthly transactions, what they mean between people, and how they can point either to a higher good or a potential downfall.

I’m a merchant by trade, and have been for over thirty years. I often say I’ve bought and sold almost every product available except for cars. I’ve been in the book trade for over twenty years now, and book merchants (except for Amazon, who doesn’t count) have a pretty good reputation. Books are likeable, lovable really, and we aren’t seen as greedy because there aren’t too many people who get really rich from buying and selling books. Most booksellers just love sharing books.

I see the man in the Six of Pentacles as a merchant, as someone who earns money and gives back to the poor with an even hand. Why else would he be holding a balance as he gives gold coins to the beggars? But the balance also represents the possibility of imbalance, the inevitability that some will have more, will be what we call successful, and others will have less, and with that comes the anxiety of scarcity in the Five of Pentacles we talked about last week.

Now Crowley calls it right out in the Thoth deck—the Six of Discs is SUCCESS. But as Austin Coppock says in his commentary about this decan, '“the altrusim pictured in the Six of Pentacles is a cosmic necessity. When the rich do not give to the poor, society breaks down. The greatest alms are not coins, though. It is the knowledge of how all success is achieved—passion and discipline merged in rhythmic union. All great works are brought to completion through its observance.” (p.73) From this I get the sense that Coppock sees success as a process/product everyone has the opportunity to achieve if approached correctly. Unfortunately I think this is short sighted in not taking into account basic inequalities which are driven by race, class, social position etc. People, at least in this society, don’t all start on equal footing, not even close.

And what success means, even in the earthly realm of the pentacle, can mean very different things to different people. I listened to an NPR story this morning about a school district in Missouri who has been buying food from organic farmers for their students’ lunches through USDA funding for a few years. Until last week. The program was cut, which hurts the small farmers as much as the kids they were feeding. This was a great example of real success without greed for profit—sustainable, balanced, symbiotic. Completely unlike a certain airplane and its new owner also in the news today.

For me, success has always felt like having enough to share. To be able to give to others is the gift itself. And while I don’t identify with our figure above, holding the balance in one hand and the coins in the other—he’s a little too fancy for me. I do identify with the sentiment: trying to balance out all the unfairness in the world with one simple action at a time.

There is a young unhoused man who lives in the neighborhood of one of my two stores here in Seattle. He comes around a couple of times a week, and asks anyone on the street he sees to buy him a book off our bargain carts, usually only $1. It never takes more than one or two people before he comes in with them to buy his book. I’ve given him plenty of books over the years but I can see it makes the passerby happy to provide one small and kind gesture.

How do you define success in this earthly plane? How many coins are enough?

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I watched it unfold from the sidelines, like that meme of a person gobbling up popcorn while watching a drama that doesn’t involve them but is hard to ignore.

When I saw that Glennon Doyle had joined Substack I didn’t really think much of it. I signed up for her unpaid content and got on with my day. I like Glennon fine, but am not a super fan, nor do I listen to her podcast regularly or hang on her every word. I read Untamed years ago and thought it was ok, but not refined or subtle enough for me. It did not change my life. But I know she is widely respected and loved by many, and was mildly interested in what she might have to say on this platform. I respect her ability to be honest about her addictions and recovery, and think she has helped a lot of people, particularly women.

But then things got weird. A few writers I really respect wrote about feeling sad, angry, annoyed, hurt, that Glennon would arrive here in our little Substack community, with her million followers and millions of dollars, and that her presence was going to take money out of their pockets, and change the platform negatively. Substack has never been a primary source of income for me, so I tried to put myself in their place, thinking there might be a finite amount of money available to spend on paid subscriptions, and Glennon’s arrival with a giant splash, a new community, many options for engagement, was going to divert income from other writers. When I first arrived here almost three years ago Substack was actually a small community of writers. It is now a big community of writers, serious writers, marketers, just another social media platform for some. It is different for sure. But my place in the community has remained essentially unchanged. My following has slowly grown for which I am so appreciative. But again, I never saw Substack as the place where I would generate my daily bread.

A week after Glennon arrived, she decided to leave. I received an e mail saying she didn’t feel good about the space, and some other stuff. It was a retreat. And whatever. We know Glennon and her million followers and her many more millions of dollars will survive to see another day. No biggie. I was actually kind of proud of the people who called out her arrival. I thought you can actually have an impact and protect the space.

But then the backlash happened. And boy did it ever. When I logged on to Substack this morning it was ALL ABOUT GLENNON. Defending her, berating those who were unhappy about her arrival, a veritable cornucopia of livestreams, opinion pieces, ALL ABOUT GLENNON. And here I am engaging as well. But then I remembered the fourth decan, and that this was my assignment this week and it all made so much sense.

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The Five of Pentacles is all about scarcity, worry that you don’t have enough, feeling less than. When this card comes up, it speaks to concern about having enough in the world, specifically money (pentacles). But also indicates an inability to see a bigger picture, focusing instead on the smallness of one’s life, what is lacking. I don’t have any idea how the Substack algorithms run, and perhaps when a big contributor lands it does take away from others. Maybe there is a finite pot of money to distribute to the different writers here. I don’t know. I do know that I specifically try not to pay to subscribe to authors who have a large presence outside of Substack. I figure they are well enough off without my help. Two exceptions are Roxanne Gay and Culture Study, both of which offer treasure troves of resources and beautiful writing. I also do not have content behind a paywall, which is how most writers here generate income. My content is available to you whether you pay or not, and if you choose to support me financially, thank you very much.

I do know that worry is a creative killer. I’ve experienced this a lot these past few months, wondering why I haven’t felt the abundance of creative energy I did last year. My therapist reminded me that worry takes a lot of energy and we do hinder ourselves creatively when we let it take over. T. Susan Chang prescribes a remedy to the worrisome Five of Pentacles: “The 5 of Pentacles points to a scarcity mentality, but I don’t think the solution is to simply meditate on abundance. I believe the solution is to use your brain, your intellect, your common sense right up to the point where they can go no further, and let faith take over from there. Perhaps that’s the only way Worry can stop grinding its gears.” (36 Secrets) Amen sister.

I hope this dies down quickly, and we can all get back to work. I’d be lying if I said I’m not at all fascinated by how a writer’s platform can morph into a social media battle in just a few days. But it has. The Five of Pentacles energy is real. As we move now to the fifth decan, the Six of Pentacles, we can look around and realize what the purpose of money really is in our lives, and open opportunities to glean it and more importantly share it with others.

xo Hanna

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I’m finding if I wait until I think I completely understand something to write about it, writing doesn’t happen. So appears to be this decan walk. I’m late to finish up our first triad, in Aries, and my roadblock seems to be my lack of previous immersion with the Thoth deck. I don’t think you have to understand the Thoth deck, and Crowley and the Golden Dawn, but ignoring it isn’t right either.

The Thoth Deck was developed bu Aleister Crowley in the 40’s, and like the Rider Waite Smith deck was illustrated by a woman, Lady Freida Harris. However, it didn’t receive wide distribution until the late 1960’s, after both Crowley and Harris were dead. The relationship between Crowley and Harris, and Waite and Smith couldn’t be more different due to the financial arrangements between the collaborators. As I’ve written about in the past, Pamela Colman Smith received little money for all her work on the Waite Smith deck, while Harris essentially funded and retained 33% interest in the Thoth deck. This is both an example of the complicated relationship between class, money and art, and is also reflective of the difference between turn of the century gender culture, and post WW II gender culture, and the roles of women.

The Four of Wands in both the Rider Waite Smith deck and the Thoth deck symbolize a sense of security, celebration and “completion.” If we look at the Thoth series, and refer back to my two previous posts, we see a cycle, moving from masculine (Dominion), through the duality of the Sun (Virtue), to a sense of safety, a feminine energy (Completion). I’ll be interested to see if the other triads follow a similar pattern.

For me, the Four of Wands is the first stop on this decan walk where I can rest and breathe and feel secure and stable in my year. There has been so much fire, and there still is, but the fire of Mars, as T. Susan Chang puts it in 36 Secrets, is passed through with Venus, who rules this decan and can reside in a “day palace…she has a chamber, an apartment, a pied-a-terre there.” And in her chamber, she will have a party. Chang points out, it is the wedding party not the long marriage, and I love that idea. It is a moment in time to celebrate, knowing it is impermanent.

Think of the idea of a party or a time of celebration. It is a fabrication outside of average living, a commemoration of where we have come though, a time to say yes, it is ok to have a good time, knowing that it will not last forever. It is somehow human to get together for births, deaths, graduations, weddings, to say we leave our regular lives to come together, and say this is important. We mark this day. It is both beginning and ending and as Crowley states, completion. I like this idea.

So as we move now to the fourth decan and Taurus season, a season rooted firmly in the earth, I’ll reflect on the fire of Aries season, the Martian battles I waged and fought, and recognize there can be

an end to them. There is no wedding, that’s for sure, but there is a sense that I am done fighting for now.

Here I’ll borrow from Chang who quotes a poem from Lucille Clifton I’d like to share with you.

Enjoy your week. I’ll be back soon with the Five of Pentacles.

xo Hanna

Thinking about this second astrological decan and what it means for me has been difficult this week, thorny. I’ve been avoiding typing it out, words on the screen, fingers tapping. My husband is a second decan Aries, his birthday yesterday, and I am fire and he is fire and we can burn each other up it seems. Ashes to ashes. I keep thinking about how he embodies this decan and how what has happened rings too true. For me right now, the best thing about these decans is that I get to keep walking.

The Aries II decan is described by Austin Coppock as “The Crown,” as “the individual [who] struggles with their potential—[discovering] what is truly royal inside them.” The idea of sovereignty we learned from Aries I then develops further into world making, reality making, which are defined by our habits, by our vices and virtues, which compose our own unique characters, and when exalted make us royal. The term royal is carefully chosen here, deriving from the concept of kinghood. What does it mean to become one’s own king, related of course to sovreignty? We look up at The Emperor beside the Three of Wands, and that is the king energy manifest. Coppock says that it may take a long time to get it right, or as Gloria Frederici Andromeda says, to “jailbreak” from an existing kind of life, but change is critical because freedom is what can’t be restricted in this second decan Aries. The Aries II may find themselves in a false reality for decades, which then needs to be deconstructed to build what feels royal to them, the true disclosure of their potential. They must become their own king.

The Three of Wands is the tarot card which correlates to Aries II, especially flanked by its conjunctions with the bright Sun and the powerful Emperor. The figure in the Three of Wands turns his back on the past and looks out over the horizon to the future in another land. But it isn’t so simple as just moving away. One hand is firmly holding a wand, in fact the wand may be helping him to stay standing, keeping part of him in his current reality. The other two wands are staying put. We all experience the power of threes in one way or another. The trinity. The three legs of a stool. Two parents and a child. When one is removed the balance becomes unsteady. The stool falls over. A family is broken. It takes courage to be willing to upset the apple cart like this. Courage, and that insatiable desire to discover what is royal within, how to become one’s own king. I wonder if our figure is taking the wand with him, leaving only two, or if he is strong enough to leave all three standing when he goes. That’s a good question. What do we leave and what do we take when we go? Is it easier to fill a van with books and photos and drive away, or to merely walk away with nothing, no memories, no material? And who do we leave behind? And is it worth it? And will you ever know the answer to that question?

That’s it for this week. It’s all I’ve got.

xo Hanna

We are in the first week of the new astrological year, the first of thirty-six decans, and as I forge ahead through and to what feels like an uncertain new world for myself, I am using the astrological calendar to help guide me, in conjunction as always, with the tarot. It is Aries season, ruled by the planet Mars, and this first of thirty-six decans is represented by the Two of Wands. This feels so auspicious for me now, the perfect time to look at my life from a zoom out (astrology) and a zoom in (tarot) perspective simultaneously.

The figure in the Two of Wands looks out over his dominion and holds the world in his hands. Aries is bold and powerful, shameless and fierce. But the Two of Wands is also about future planning, decisions, and perhaps most important, discovery. I can’t help but see an explorer when I look at the Waite Smith depiction, and what it means to be an explorer, a discoverer of that which is new or even possibly hidden. What does it mean to be willing to explore uncharted territory? To be willing to define a relationship unconventionally? To live in a way which might not make sense to everyone? I wrote about The Tower card a couple of weeks ago, and the energy here is more focused and resolute but has similarities. Aleister Crowley says the Two of Wands is “fire in its best form.” (Book of Thoth) Creation requires destruction. Out with the old, in with the new. I note that our figure holds one wand in his hand, a which he will use in his travels but leaves the other behind, the duality of staying and going both at once.

I’m thinking about this very much in terms of relationships and how they change over time, how they fade or die and whether they can be resurrected as something new and more powerful if the will and desire are present. Aries and Mars energy is about that will to create something new. I’m in process and in change like the figure with one wand out the door and one staying put. I still don’t have the security of a known outcome. But I do know more than ever that I have dominion over myself, sovreignty of my space. One breaks into two, and in my case four (with children), and then two again (when they grew up and left home), and now I find myself becoming one again. Maybe. The other wand is still here, present and accounted for.

Sovreignty is what I am now seeking, dominion over what is mine. It can feel greedy and selfish sometimes, unfair. But it isn’t greed which propels me. It is a visceral need to protect myself and what I’ve built over all these years, though notably not alone. But if alone can be a place, I live there now. And like our explorer above, if I play my cards right, I might just have the whole world in my hands. That’s some fiery Aries energy for you.

It has been a long cold winter, both literally and in my heart. To look at the future in terms of these decans, and in terms of Spring and the energy it takes to push the sprouts from the seeds through the earth to create new life gives me hope. Whether or not you are going through a big emotional upheaval or just looking at what is happening in the world and feeling hopeless, I think Spring must bring change, relentlessly, and we need to have faith zooming in and zooming out, that it will get better.

xo Hanna

It’s been a minute. It has been so hard, getting words on the paper screen, trying not to have my writing just be a hot personal mess of emptional outpouring. I’m putting these words down with trepidation, as I’m on new ground, new terrirotry, attached yet unattached, unmoored yet bound.

I’ve written about The Tower card here a few times, the card which provokes as much anxiety as any other in the deck (along with The Devil and Death). When The Tower card comes up, change is coming or has arrived, whether you like it or not. Something must change in order for new seeds to be planted, new ways of being to emerge. Although the representation in the Rider Waite Smith deck resonates back to the Tower of Babel story, I’ve only recently understood it more deeply in terms of the “Confusion of Tongues” Gustave Dore depicts above, the deep anguish which results from not being understood. The story goes that the people decided to build a tower so tall it would reach God in the heavens, so they could reduce the space between themselves and God. God didn’t like that and took them down a notch (or hundreds of feet) by making them speak in varied tongues. Where once they could all understand each other using one language, now there were many and the people were confused and humbled. They were unable to finish the building because they could not communicate with each other, scattered to new lands, and there we have the explanation for why there are different languages.

The Tower can also be a metaphor for people in relationship who have lost the ability to communicate with each other in healthy ways. Every conversation ends on a sour note. Each exchange is a misunderstanding. It’s exhausting and disheartening. Yet you keep coming back for more because you both believe there is something more to be said, confusion to clear, a desire for a happy ending. The Tower reminds us that sometimes you have to burn down the whole building, and try again. And what if you find you no longer have a common language? How do you build one? That is the fear and anguish in The Tower. The fear of what might not be possible.

I didn’t watch a single Oscar nominated movie before yesterday. After Anora received so many accolades I decided to give it a whirl. I’m glad I did. The desire for a common language is a central theme in the film, the desire to be able to communicate with ease in one’s mother tongue. In fact the event which sets the scene for the rest of the movie is a customer’s request for a girl (a stripper) who speaks Russian, his native language. This desire for easy communication, not fraught with misunderstanding is key to so many other themes in this film. The flip side of communicating with only those who know your language is key as well, shutting out those not in the know. I found it completely engaging.

I find myself wanting a new language. Not Italian or Japanese, but a language that can clearly communicate the alignment between my heart's desire and my mind's intention. Not easy stuff when I find it impossible to form the thoughts which lead to my speech, what it is I want to say but can’t. Sometimes it’s so much easier to speak what we don't want, how we don't want to live. What is untenable.

Right now I'm living alone with my three old pets: Freya the Newfoundland who is ten, Cadet the retired Lab guide dog, fifteen, and Junior, the eighteen year old “cat who won't die.” I'd be lying if I said it's not peaceful, quiet, alone with my thoughts as confusing as they themselves might be. I haven’t lived without another human since I was twenty-one years old. I'm going back to therapy in person on Monday, the first time since before the pandemic. Zoom is so easy and in some sense has made therapy too easy, but I think something is lost which I hope to find. I'm anxious about it though. It feels vulnerable. But I am brave.

What do I want? How do I want to live what’s left of my life? How is it possible these are my questions in 2025? That may be the hardest part, accepting the unmooring. Accepting that this must be happening for some cosmic reason I am not yet privy to. I’m studying with Heather Marie Morse right now, forty-two days of digging into the astrology of right now, the Venus and Mercury retrogrades, eclipse season, meditating on the alignment of desire (Venus) and communication (Mercury). Astrology is still so foreign to me, yet it is a container for faith, provides a reason why the unfolding is as it is, and this grounds me, as I learn to accept what is. This might sound glib or cliche but as a person who hasn’t spent a lot of time in faith or prayer, it is an opening for a practice of acceptance and not accepting the status quo all at once. I think confusion of tongues starts with a single solitary person alone, before I try to communicate with someone else. Untangling the confusion of tongues begins right here on this piece of screen paper. My dad says, just write. So here I am, untangling my confusion of tongues.

Love, Hanna xo