Week of August 31 · Virgo Season · Jupiter Trine Saturn · After the Eclipse

Before we get into the cards, I want to hold some space for the weight of the last week or so. The tragic event in Nepal and Tibet has taken lives and left families waiting for news of people they love, and that kind of loss sits in the collective field whether we are geographically close to it or not. If you have been feeling heavier than usual, more tender, more aware of how fragile things are, that’s you being human and connected.

And then there is Dolly Parton. A woman who spent her entire life being exactly who she was, without apology, without performance, without pretending to be something more acceptable. She stood so completely in her own values and her own warmth that the whole world felt it. Grief like that, for someone you never met, is real grief. Let it be.

Now. This week’s sky.

Jupiter and Saturn form a trine on September 1, which is one of the more genuinely useful planetary combinations available. Big vision meets long-term structure. Optimism meets patience. It is not a flashy transit, but it is the kind that actually gets things built. The eclipse in Pisces from August 28 is still reverberating through the collective, asking us to revisit what it stirred up before we charge forward. And the Sun and Mercury in Virgo are asking us to be honest, practical, and precise about what we are actually doing with our time and energy.

Right, next bit. September 1 is carrying both the Jupiter Saturn trine AND the Mars Saturn square simultaneously, which is a genuinely unusual combination. Jupiter trine Saturn says build something that lasts. Mars square Saturn says the building is going to feel like pushing through wet concrete. Both planets in their signs of fall too, which is the last time this happened being 1996 and before that 1968. Mars in Cancer wants to protect what is familiar. Saturn in Aries wants to strike out and build something independent. They are pulling in opposite directions and the tension between them is real.

The zodiac cards this week are genuinely beautiful. The Sun, the Star, Justice, the Hanged Man, the 3 of Cups, the 2 of Cups, the 9 of Pentacles. This is one of the most luminous spreads we’ve had for a bit and after the week that was, this makes me feel a bit hopeful for the weeks ahead. Yes, there is a 9 of Swords in Capricorn. But look at what surrounds it. The 9 of Swords in a week like this is the anxious mind standing in the middle of a garden it has not yet looked up long enough to see. The medicine is right there in the rest of the reading.

The 9 of Cups at the bottom of the deck as the overall is the wish card, the fullness card, the card of genuine emotional satisfaction. That is the foundation of this week. Whatever you are navigating, that is what is holding you up from underneath.

Read your Sun, your Rising, your Moon, in your natal chart and also find where Pisces is to help you understand the theme from the eclipse.

I spent the last two weeks holding space in that energy - it felt huge. The headaches always get me at eclipse time. I also have my moon in Pisces so this one was very heavy for me, then the things that happened in one of the most spiritual places on earth - together with the nut jobs causing wars and putting people last - it all felt and still feels very unfair to me. We can’t control it, but we can honour any feelings that are coming up for us, even if, as I mentioned above, we aren’t directly in the path or know someone personally.

Anyhoo, please remember to drink plenty of water and we have all these signs in our birth chart, so you can read more than just your top three if you like, it will give you a story for your week ahead.

Aries · 9 of Pentacles

Aries, the 9 of Pentacles is a quietly magnificent card to receive in a week when Jupiter is trining Saturn and asking us all to look at what we have actually built. This is the card of genuine self-sufficiency, of someone who has created a life they can inhabit with ease and real pleasure, who carries their own abundance rather than waiting for someone else to bring it to them. After everything Saturn retrograde in your sign has been asking about where you have taken on responsibility that was never really yours, the 9 of Pentacles is both a reflection and a reward. Something is yours. Something you made. Let yourself feel that properly this week rather than immediately planning what comes next.

The shadow is the isolation that can creep into the 9 of Pentacles, the self-sufficiency that becomes a wall. Jupiter trine Saturn this week is specifically about building connections that last. The 9 of Pentacles knows how to tend herself beautifully. This week is asking whether she also lets people in.

Overall energy · 9 of Cups

Taurus · 6 of Wands

Taurus, the 6 of Wands this week is the recognition you have been quietly working toward, and it is here now. This is the card of being seen for what you have done, of the moment when the effort gets acknowledged by the people around you in a way that actually lands. With Chiron retrograde still doing its deep work in your sign asking about whether you are valued for who you are rather than what you produce, the 6 of Wands arriving this week is doing something interesting. It is asking whether you can receive the acknowledgement. Not just accept it graciously. Actually let it in and let it mean something.

The shadow is the Taurus tendency to deflect the recognition back to the work, or to the team, or to a shrug that says it was nothing really. The Chiron work in your sign right now is specifically about learning to receive. The 6 of Wands is the practice ground. Stand in it this week without shrinking.

Overall energy · 9 of Cups

Gemini · The Hanged Man

Gemini, the Hanged Man arriving in your house during eclipse aftershock week and a Jupiter Saturn trine is not asking you to miss the action. He is asking you to see it from a completely different angle before you act on it. The eclipse in Pisces last week touched your career and direction, and something is still settling. The Hanged Man is the deliberate pause before the response, the willingness to suspend the usual way of looking at things long enough for something genuinely new to appear. With Uranus in your sign still bringing sudden insight, what you see from upside down this week could be the most useful information you have received in a while.

The shadow is the Gemini restlessness that treats the pause as a problem rather than a gift. The Hanged Man chose to hang. He is not stuck. There is a difference worth feeling this week, between the deliberate inward turn and the avoidance dressed up as reflection.

Overall energy · 9 of Cups

Cancer · Knight of Pentacles

Cancer, the Knight of Pentacles this week is offering you something that the eclipse and Mars in your sign and the emotional weight of the collective moment all genuinely need right now: steady, methodical, reliable forward movement. Not fast. Not dramatic. Just the kind of consistent showing up that actually gets things done over time. The Jupiter Saturn trine on September 1 is specifically supporting this kind of energy, big vision meeting patient structure. You are not behind. You are not slow. You are building the way things that last actually get built.

The shadow is using the Knight of Pentacles steadiness to avoid the emotional processing that Mars in Cancer has been stirring up this week. The Knight keeps his head down and his hands busy. That is a gift. But sometimes the most important thing to tend is not the task.

Overall energy · 9 of Cups

Leo · The Sun

Leo, the Sun in your house this week while Jupiter is in your sign and the South Node is asking you to gently release the performance of your light is one of the most beautiful and clarifying placements in this entire spread. The Sun is not the performed version of radiance. It is not the curated version. It is just the thing itself, warm and present and completely unself-conscious. That is what this card is asking of you: not the managed shine, just the actual warmth of who you are when nobody is assessing it. Jupiter in your sign is expanding this. Let it expand toward something genuine this week rather than something impressive.

The shadow is the old South Node in Leo pattern one more time, because it is worth naming it every time it appears: needing the warmth to be seen before you trust that it is real. The Sun does not need an audience. Neither do you. This week, shine without checking whether anyone is watching.

Overall energy · 9 of Cups

Virgo · 3 of Cups

Virgo, the Sun and Mercury are both in your sign this week, and the card that arrives to meet all of that practical, clarity-seeking Virgo energy is the 3 of Cups. Joy. Connection. The particular nourishment of people who know you and choose you anyway. There is something worth celebrating in your world right now, and this card is asking whether you are letting it be celebrated properly or quietly ticking it off the list and moving to the next task. With Venus in Libra making everything a little warmer and more beautiful this week, the 3 of Cups is the specific invitation to stop being efficient about happiness and just have some.

The shadow is Virgo managing the joy rather than feeling it. Being the one who makes the gathering happen beautifully while standing slightly outside the warmth of it. This week, put yourself inside the 3 of Cups rather than organising it from the edge.

Overall energy · 9 of Cups

Libra · 2 of Cups

Libra, Venus is in your sign this week, and the card in your house is the 2 of Cups, which is about as aligned as the deck gets. This is the card of genuine mutual connection, of two people meeting each other honestly and choosing each other from that honest place. The eclipse aftershock may have brought something into clarity about a relationship or partnership, and the 2 of Cups is asking you to bring that clarity into the connection itself rather than just sitting with it internally. Real reciprocity. Real honesty. Real choosing. Venus in your sign is supporting all of that with unusual warmth this week.

The shadow is the Libra tendency to keep the connection in the idealised version rather than the real one, to smooth the rough edges rather than name them. The 2 of Cups during eclipse aftershock week is specifically about the honest version of the connection. That is the one worth choosing.

Overall energy · 9 of Cups

Scorpio · The Chariot

Scorpio, the Chariot this week is landing in your house with a clarity that feels like a relief after what has likely been an intense eclipse season. The direction is clear. The competing inner forces have been harnessed. You know where you are going. The Jupiter Saturn trine on September 1 is specifically supporting this kind of directed, purposeful movement, big vision with a real foundation under it. Whatever you have been working toward is not too far now. The Chariot in this spread, surrounded by as much light as this week holds, is the signal to move with confidence.

The shadow is the Chariot momentum running ahead of the emotional information that the eclipse may have surfaced in your intimacy and transformation sector. Move, yes. But check that what you are moving toward is what you actually want now, not just what you decided you wanted before the eclipse showed you something new.

Overall energy · 9 of Cups

Capricorn · 9 of Swords

Capricorn, here is the thing about the 9 of Swords this week. Look at what surrounds it in this spread. The Sun. The Star. Justice. The 3 of Cups. The 2 of Cups. The 9 of Swords in Capricorn during a week of Jupiter trine Saturn is the anxious mind standing in the middle of a garden that is genuinely beautiful, staring at the ground. The thoughts are circling, as they do in the small hours, and some of them are about things that are real. But the 9 of Swords almost always amplifies what it touches, making the worry feel larger than the actual territory it covers. The medicine for a 9 of Swords week is the rest of this reading. Look up.

Write them down. Get the thoughts out of the circular loop and onto the page. In daylight, on paper, they are almost always more manageable than they were at 3am. Jupiter trine Saturn this week is specifically about lasting progress. The anxiety is not the plan. It is the noise around the plan.

Overall energy · 9 of Cups

Aquarius · The Star

Aquarius, the Star arriving in your house during a week when Jupiter is in your partnership sector and the eclipse has been doing deep relational work is quietly extraordinary. This is the card of hope that has been tested and survived, of the gentle restoration of faith after something genuinely hard. With the North Node in your sign asking you toward innovation and the future, the Star is not about going back. She is about trusting that what is ahead is worth orienting toward. Something in you that contracted during the eclipse season, some quiet place of belief, is beginning to open again. Let it.

The shadow is the Aquarian tendency to intellectualise the hope rather than feel it. The Star is a water card. She pours. She does not analyse the angle of the pour. This week, let the restoration be felt in the body rather than assessed in the mind.

Overall energy · 9 of Cups

Pisces · Justice

Pisces, Justice in your house during eclipse aftershock week is pointed and honest. The partial lunar eclipse was in your sign just days ago, illuminating something in your relationships and partnerships with unusual clarity. And now Justice arrives, which is the card of truth, of things being brought into their proper balance, of the honest accounting that makes genuine forward movement possible. Something has been seen clearly that perhaps was not before. Justice is not asking you to act on it immediately. She is asking you to let the seeing be complete before you decide what the seeing means.

The shadow is the Pisces tendency to soften the verdict that Justice has delivered, to find the compassionate reframe before the honest one has been fully sat with. Justice is not unkind. But she is accurate. Let her be accurate this week before you start translating her findings into something more comfortable.

Overall energy · 9 of Cups

Sagittarius · 3 of Wands

Sagittarius, the 3 of Wands in your house this week is one of those placements that just feels right. This is the card of standing at the edge of the horizon watching your ships come in, and for your sign that is almost always the natural posture anyway. Something you have been building or working toward is arriving. The Jupiter Saturn trine on September 1 is specifically about lasting progress, big dreams meeting real structure, and the 3 of Wands is the evidence in your house that the structure is holding. The next voyage is already being planned. But first, watch the ships dock. Really watch them. This one matters.

The shadow is the Sagittarian habit of already being half-gone toward the next horizon before this one has been properly honoured. The 3 of Wands asks for presence at the arrival. Be there for it this week. The next adventure will still be there after you have stood still long enough to receive this one.

Overall energy · 9 of Cups

· Collective Consciousness ·

· The Topic Reading · Week of August 31·

Before you read these cards, a reminder of what I mentioned up at the beginning: here is something worth knowing about September 1. Yes, Jupiter trines Saturn that day, which is the big vision meeting patient structure energy we spoke about in the intro. But Mars is also squaring Saturn on the same day, and both planets are in their signs of fall, which means neither is operating at their easiest. Mars in Cancer wants to protect what feels familiar and safe. Saturn in Aries wants to build something new and independent. They are pulling in opposite directions simultaneously. The last time Mars and Saturn squared in their signs of fall was 1996 (I finally got the strength to leave my abusive first husband - it took me five years to stop being frightened of him and his threats to unalive me everyday. I had to walk away from absolutely everything, but I was only 25, so I knew I could start again). Before that, 1968. This is not a casual transit. It is the friction that genuine building sometimes requires.

So September 1 is holding both at once. Big vision meeting lasting structure. And the effort meeting the wall. That tension is real. These cards speak directly to it.

Three of the four cards fell out of the deck together while shuffling. When that happens, it means the deck considers them a single message rather than three separate ones. Bring something with you. A situation, a relationship, a decision. Set yourself into it and read on.

Cards: Page of Swords · 3 of Swords · Knight of Wands (fell together) ·
BOD: Knight of Swords

Page of Swords · 3 of Swords · Knight of Wands — arriving together

When three cards fall out of the deck at once, the deck is saying they cannot be separated. They are one message arriving in three parts, and the parts only make sense when you hold all of them at the same time.

The Page of Swords is sharp, curious, and looking for truth. She is not afraid of hard information. She would rather know than not know, even when the knowing is uncomfortable. She is the part of you that has been asking the right questions, the ones that are inconvenient, the ones that have been harder to ask than to avoid.

The 3 of Swords is what the asking has revealed. There is hurt here. Real hurt, the kind that has a name and a source and deserves to be named honestly rather than managed into something more socially acceptable. In the context of the Mars Saturn square on September 1, where Mars in Cancer is asking what genuinely needs protecting and Saturn in Aries is asking what needs to be honestly built or rebuilt, the 3 of Swords is the honest accounting of what the situation has actually cost. Not the version you tell other people. The version you know in the body.

And then the Knight of Wands. Right there alongside the grief and the truth-telling. Fire. Forward momentum. The part of the situation that is absolutely not done, that has somewhere to go, that is being called toward something with real creative and passionate energy. The Knight of Wands falling alongside the 3 of Swords is the deck saying something important: the hurt and the fire are not separate things happening in sequence. They are happening at the same time. You are grieving and you are alive with direction simultaneously. That is not contradictory. That is exactly what it looks like to be genuinely in the middle of something that matters.

The Mars Saturn square on September 1 is the cosmic version of this exact experience. One planet wanting to protect the tender things, the other wanting to strike out and build. Both pulling at once. Both real. The three cards that fell out together are not asking you to choose between the grief and the fire. They are asking you to carry both, honestly and at the same time, because that is what the situation actually contains.

Bottom of the Deck · Knight of Swords

The Knight of Swords at the foundation of this reading is the fourth time it has appeared at the bottom of the collective consciousness spread, and by now the deck has made its position clear. He is the clarity that has been there the whole time, the understanding that is already present underneath everything, the direction that is already known even when the emotions or the circumstances make it feel uncertain. He rides toward what is true. Fast, and without hesitation, and without stopping to check whether it is convenient.

Underneath the Page of Swords asking her hard questions, underneath the 3 of Swords naming what it has actually cost, underneath the Knight of Wands alive with fire and direction, the Knight of Swords is sitting with the thing you already know is true in your situation. The thing the Page was asking about that you already had an answer to before she finished asking. The thing that the grief of the 3 of Swords is partly made of, because part of what hurts is knowing something you have not yet fully acted on.

Jupiter trine Saturn on September 1 is the transit that rewards this kind of clarity. Big vision meeting lasting structure. What the Knight of Swords knows is both of those things. It is the direction that is genuinely yours, and it is built on something real.

The cards as one voice

Here is the single message underneath all four cards, on the week of a Jupiter Saturn trine and a Mars Saturn square arriving on the same day.

You are in the middle of something that is genuinely hard and genuinely alive at the same time. That is not a contradiction. That is just the truth of where you are.

The hurt is real. The 3 of Swords is not exaggerating it or softening it. Something in your situation has caused genuine pain, and the Page of Swords has been sharp enough to look at it clearly rather than look away. That took something. Name it honestly, to yourself at least, because the Mars Saturn square this week is specifically asking what genuinely needs protecting and what genuinely needs to be built. You cannot answer either of those questions clearly if you have not first been honest about what the current arrangement has actually cost you.

But the Knight of Wands is right there. Alive with fire. Pointed at something that matters. And the Knight of Swords underneath everything is the clarity that has not wavered through any of it, the part of you that has known all along where this is heading and what it is going to require.

September 1 is holding tension and possibility in the same breath. So is your situation. So are you.

The Jupiter Saturn trine is asking for big vision with lasting structure. The Knight of Swords already has it. The Knight of Wands already has the fire to move toward it. The 3 of Swords is the honest acknowledgement of what it is costing to get there. And the Page of Swords is the part of you that was brave enough to keep asking the right question even when the answer was hard.

That is not a person who is stuck.

That is a person who is ready.

And so it is.
Amanda x

Subscribe now

As always, I use my own process on my self and my life and this massive element just came up after waking up from a dream this morning after being diddled with a coffee at the markets. The dream was very specific and the next journal item you want to add when you do the 18 year cycles is:

WHAT DID THIS TIME COST ME.

Thank you, you may now return to your normal programming.

Good-bye
Amanda

PS if you are only seeing this, go and see the other posts I’ve done for the Eclipse workbook with the questions to go through for this season two of eclipse season 2026.

Subscribe now

Drum roll please…. I’ve just finished recording Session One for Eclipse Season Two and the overriding theme that showed up by the 2nd section of the healing is conditioning and the way it presented in the healing is profound - how the images I was shown joined in unison to provide a very clear healing and the emotions going with it. The one thing, it’s OLD.

Here’s the workbook again for you to journal on that theme and then if you do want the recording, it will still be PWYCA for another 24 hours.

PWYCA - PAYPAL

PWYCA - SQUARE

WORKBOOK

Eclipse Cycle Life Review Journal

Part 1: The Facts

For each year (2026, 2008, 1990, 1972, 1954, 1936), explore:

Age & Life Stage

• How old was I?

• What stage of life was I in?

• What words would describe that version of me?

• What was most important to me then?

Home & Place

• Where was I living?

• Who lived with me?

• What did my home feel like?

• Was I settled, moving, arriving or leaving?

Work & Learning

• Where was I working?

• What was my relationship with work?

• Was I studying, training or learning something important?

• What skills was I developing?

Family

• Who were the most important people in my life?

• Was I partnered, single, dating, married or separated?

• Did I have children?

• How old were they?

• Was I caring for parents or elders?

Health & Wellbeing

• How was my physical health?

• How was my emotional health?

• What was I carrying that nobody knew about?

• What brought me joy?

Part 2: Looking Beyond Yourself

For younger participants:

The Parent Inquiry

If I wasn’t born yet:

• How old were my parents?

• Where were they living?

• Had they met?

• What challenges were they facing?

• What dreams were they pursuing?

• What was happening in their relationship?

The Grandparent Inquiry

• How old were my grandparents?

• What country or town were they living in?

• Were they raising children?

• Were they working?

• Had migration, war or economic changes affected them?

• What beliefs about life and survival might they have carried?

Part 3: The Soul Questions

These are often where the magic happens.

What was beginning?

• What new chapter was opening?

• What opportunity appeared?

• What seed was being planted?

What was ending?

• What had run its course?

• What needed to be released?

• What disappeared from my life?

What was I learning?

• What life lesson was front and centre?

• What challenge kept repeating?

• What truth was trying to emerge?

What was healing?

• What old wound was being addressed?

• What support appeared?

• Where was I becoming stronger?

What was breaking apart?

• What identity was dissolving?

• What relationship changed?

• What dream no longer fit?

Part 4: Spotting the Pattern

After reviewing all the years:

• What themes show up repeatedly?

• What keeps changing every 18 years?

• What keeps staying the same?

• What strengths have followed me throughout my life?

• What unfinished business keeps returning?

• What gifts keep returning?

Part 5: The Eclipse Question

For the upcoming August solar eclipse:

• What is ready to be seen clearly?

• What am I no longer willing to carry?

• What old story is ending?

• What truth is asking to be acknowledged?

• What am I being invited to become?

• If this cycle closes a chapter begun 18, 36, 54, 72 or 90 years ago, what wants to be completed now?

A Powerful Final Reflection

Looking across 1936, 1954, 1972, 1990, 2008 and 2026...

What is the story my life, my family and my lineage have been trying to tell?

And what is the next chapter waiting to be written?

That last question alone can produce extraordinarily deep responses in a healing circle.

Subscribe now

Hello Friends,

It’s Eclipse Season and for those of you who have been with me for a lot of years, you will know that I use this time to demank the energy of the last 18 years, and then look for themes back through further 18 years. You know how much I do love a pattern.

This is season two, six months since we had season one, and as always, there’s two eclipses per season. Our first one is a solar eclipse next week on the 12th of August and then the lunar eclipse two weeks after that.

For this article, I’m going to share the information about the eclipse series and then global patterns from 1936 → 1954 → 1972 → 1990 → 2008 → 2026 - then I’ll give you some prompts to go through your own life to see what themes might have been showing up for you.

In the last six months we have had some pretty big astrological transits and the world has appeared to go to hell in a handbasket thanks to a group of evil old men who live in a sense of deluded entitlement that we have seen …. surprise surprise surprise (in my best Gomer Pile voice) 1936.

Please ensure you’re sitting down:

1936

Theme: The Gathering Storm

Some major world developments in 1936:

• Adolf Hitler remilitarised the Rhineland, directly challenging post-WWI agreements.

• The Spanish Civil War began, becoming a precursor to the larger ideological conflicts that would erupt in World War II.

• The world was still wrestling with the aftermath of the Great Depression.

• Political extremism was rising across multiple regions.

Healing Archetype

What has been ignored can no longer remain hidden.

The energy feels less like resolution and more like a pressure build-up. The fault lines were already present. Humanity was approaching a reckoning.

1954

Theme: New World Order Emerging

Some of the most influential events of 1954 include:

• The Battle of Dien Bien Phu ended in French defeat and dramatically accelerated the end of French colonial rule in Indochina.

• The Geneva Conference dealt with the aftermath of the Korean War and First Indochina War and reshaped Southeast Asia.

• Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine entered mass trials and inoculations, marking a major public-health breakthrough.

• The first nuclear submarine, USS Nautilus, was launched, symbolizing a new technological era during the Cold War.

• The U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision challenged racial segregation in education.

Healing Archetype

Breaking inherited structures. The old colonial and social orders were beginning to crack.

1972

Theme: Truth Revealed

Major events included:

• The Watergate break-in began the scandal that eventually led to President Nixon’s resignation.

• President Nixon made a historic visit to China, opening a new phase in global diplomacy.

• The Munich Olympics attack shocked the world and changed international security forever.

• Apollo 17, the final Apollo Moon mission, marked the end of an iconic phase of space exploration.

• Bloody Sunday intensified conflict in Northern Ireland.

Healing Archetype

The mask comes off. Authority, trust, and truth became central collective issues.

1990

Theme: The End of One World, Beginning of Another

Important developments:

• German reunification symbolized the collapse of Cold War divisions.

• The Soviet system was entering its final phase before dissolution. The decade is widely associated with the end of the Cold War and the emergence of a new world order.

• Globalization accelerated.

• The Internet era began to gather momentum, helping reshape communication and commerce during the decade.

Healing Archetype

Liberation and reintegration. Walls, both literal and symbolic, were falling.

2008

Theme: Systemic Shock and Reset

Major events included:

• The global financial crisis intensified, with the collapse of Lehman Brothers becoming one of its defining moments.

• Barack Obama was elected the first African-American President of the United States.

• The Beijing Olympics signaled China’s growing global influence.

• The Large Hadron Collider began operation, opening a new chapter in fundamental physics.

• Kosovo declared independence from Serbia.

Healing Archetype

Collapse of unsustainable structures. The world’s financial, political and institutional assumptions were tested.

2026

Where the Pattern Appears to Be Heading

I want to be careful here because this is interpretation, not historical fact.

Looking at the sequence:

Year Collective Theme

1954 Breaking old structures
1972 Revealing truth
1990 Reunification and transition
2008 System reset
2026 ?

From a symbolic healing perspective, 2026 could be viewed as:

Integration after disruption.

The previous cycles repeatedly show humanity confronting:

• outdated power structures,

• hidden truths,

• identity shifts,

• technological transformation,

• collective uncertainty.

Viewing the Whole Chain

When I look at it this way, the story has a natural progression:

1936

The fracture exists.

1954

The fracture becomes visible.

1972

The truth behind the fracture is exposed.

1990

The walls separating people begin to fall.

2008

The systems built on old assumptions fail.

2026

A choice point emerges:

• repeat old patterns

• or build something different

An Interesting Secondary Pattern

Notice how each of these years contains some version of:

Power being challenged.

• 1936: old international order destabilized.

• 1954: colonialism and segregation challenged.

• 1972: political corruption exposed.

• 1990: Cold War structures collapse.

• 2008: financial institutions shaken.

• 2026: we are living through questions about AI, governance, identity, trust, institutions and social systems.

The same broad motif keeps appearing: the evolution of collective authority and human consciousness.

A Healing Journey Around These Years

1936 - The wound emerges
1954 - The wound is acknowledged
1972 - The truth is spoken
1990 - Separation begins to heal
2008 - False foundations collapse
2026 - Integration and renewal

And from an eclipse perspective, there’s something poetically fitting about arriving at 2026’s Saros 126 eclipse after tracing those 18-year echoes backward through ninety years of collective history. The sequence almost reads like a long human initiation: from crisis, to truth, to liberation, to reconstruction, and finally to conscious choice.

Expert Notes: Things Eclipse Chasers Care About

• Saros Family 126

• 48th eclipse of 72

• Total solar eclipse

• Maximum totality 2m 18s

• Greatest eclipse over the North Atlantic near Iceland

• Path crosses Greenland, Iceland and Spain

• First mainland-European total eclipse since 1999

• Very unusual polar geometry

• Perseid meteor shower peaks the same day, making 12 August 2026 one of the most remarkable astronomical dates of the decade.

Eclipse Cycle Life Review Journal

Part 1: The Facts

For each year (2026, 2008, 1990, 1972, 1954, 1936), explore:

Age & Life Stage

• How old was I?

• What stage of life was I in?

• What words would describe that version of me?

• What was most important to me then?

Home & Place

• Where was I living?

• Who lived with me?

• What did my home feel like?

• Was I settled, moving, arriving or leaving?

Work & Learning

• Where was I working?

• What was my relationship with work?

• Was I studying, training or learning something important?

• What skills was I developing?

Family

• Who were the most important people in my life?

• Was I partnered, single, dating, married or separated?

• Did I have children?

• How old were they?

• Was I caring for parents or elders?

Health & Wellbeing

• How was my physical health?

• How was my emotional health?

• What was I carrying that nobody knew about?

• What brought me joy?

Part 2: Looking Beyond Yourself

For younger participants:

The Parent Inquiry

If I wasn’t born yet:

• How old were my parents?

• Where were they living?

• Had they met?

• What challenges were they facing?

• What dreams were they pursuing?

• What was happening in their relationship?

The Grandparent Inquiry

• How old were my grandparents?

• What country or town were they living in?

• Were they raising children?

• Were they working?

• Had migration, war or economic changes affected them?

• What beliefs about life and survival might they have carried?

Part 3: The Soul Questions

These are often where the magic happens.

What was beginning?

• What new chapter was opening?

• What opportunity appeared?

• What seed was being planted?

What was ending?

• What had run its course?

• What needed to be released?

• What disappeared from my life?

What was I learning?

• What life lesson was front and centre?

• What challenge kept repeating?

• What truth was trying to emerge?

What was healing?

• What old wound was being addressed?

• What support appeared?

• Where was I becoming stronger?

What was breaking apart?

• What identity was dissolving?

• What relationship changed?

• What dream no longer fit?

Part 4: Spotting the Pattern

After reviewing all the years:

• What themes show up repeatedly?

• What keeps changing every 18 years?

• What keeps staying the same?

• What strengths have followed me throughout my life?

• What unfinished business keeps returning?

• What gifts keep returning?

Part 5: The Eclipse Question

For the upcoming August solar eclipse:

• What is ready to be seen clearly?

• What am I no longer willing to carry?

• What old story is ending?

• What truth is asking to be acknowledged?

• What am I being invited to become?

• If this cycle closes a chapter begun 18, 36, 54, 72 or 90 years ago, what wants to be completed now?

A Powerful Final Reflection

Looking across 1936, 1954, 1972, 1990, 2008 and 2026...

What is the story my life, my family and my lineage have been trying to tell?

And what is the next chapter waiting to be written?

That last question alone can produce extraordinarily deep responses in a healing circle.

Q: What is a demanking®

I developed a process for the collective consciousness that I invite people to participate through a pay what you can afford event (PWYCA) and when you do that, you give me permission to bubble your energy and then put you into the collective consciousness mix. I then tap into that energy and describe the wounds that are stuck in the collective. The single biggest bit of feedback I receive for these sessions is “I felt like you were just talking to me” - it’s beyond weird how the information that I speak can resonate to what you’re wanting to release from your energy - AND - we are all part of the collective, so it works. When you buy in and I protect your energy, that means this work is great for empaths and sensitives because no ones energy touches anyone elses - it’s a very safe group healing practice.

If you would like to order the session - it’s one payment for two audio files and you will receive them on the 12th of August (Australian EST) and then the 27/28th August (Australian EST).

There’s two buttons below - one for people who are ok to use PayPal and then the other one where Square is a better option - there’s choices there for a value, but also the ability to add your own amount in there too. Each are available in AUD.

This button for PAYPAL

This button for SQUARE

Welcome to this week’s card pull and collective consciousness reading (down the bottom). I knew it was Monday yesterday and I knew I was to sit and put this email together, but didn’t get a push for a ‘topic’ and then this morning good old Alex Myles to the rescue with her post on Chiron Retrograde. I’m one of those people who has been through their Chiron return since 2018. My Chiron is 5° of Aries and holy dooley Batman, the conversation she has in her post about Chiron in Aries and currently Taurus - it brought up a lot. I’m still in my ‘job hunting’ phase and it’s been one of the most character building phases of my life. Every interview has been pipped at the post. The last interview I had, I walked out of the building believing to the core of my soul they were going to offer me the job and the people felt like my people. They were honest, authentic, weren’t keeping up appearances and they all knew the business well, not pretending they did. Then crickets.

How could I have missed the cues?

Anyway, this is what Chiron’s job is, it’s in our lives to help us dig deep on the wound that we carry the longest and give ourselves every opportunity to heal it. My wound is people pleasing. When you give enough you earn worthiness. It has been in my life since 1972 when my sister arrived and I had to go to the highest lengths to perform for love and attention.

Find where Chiron is in your chart. It looks like a key. Then click the show transits button and find early Taurus and what house that is in, then go from there.

Drink a lot of water and remember next week the first eclipse is on and if you’re an energy sensitive, you will feel it building right now. I will be doing the PWYCA session on Wednesday 12 August evening Australian EST. If you would like to put your energy into that session, click on the PWYCA and please make sure you put your email in the comment section if it’s different to the one you have used. Remember also, it’s one payment, and you will receive two audio sessions for both the eclipses in season two for 2026. A reminder - it is and has always been a very true Pay What You Can Afford offering. I’ve been doing these sessions that long, it’s always been a fulfilling time for this people pleaser (garfsnort) knowing that there’s no barriers to anyone having an energy session.

Oki dokes….let’s trot!
Amanda

ORDER THE ECLIPSE HEALINGS

Chiron Stations Retrograde · August 3, 2026 · The Wound Becomes the Wisdom

Chiron stations retrograde today at the very first degree of Taurus, and it will stay retrograde until January 6, 2027, moving back through Taurus until September 17 before returning to Aries for a final review. What that means in plain language is this: the healing that has been quietly underway for the last eight years is entering its most interior phase. The buffer between you and the original wound gets thinner. Things you have been staying busy enough to avoid are going to get closer.

This is not a punishment. It genuinely is not. Chiron retrograde is the sky’s way of saying the surface work is done and what is left requires you to go all the way in.

Alex Myles, one of the finest writers on this transit anywhere, puts it this way: your wound and your calling are the same doorway viewed from opposite sides. The pain that shaped you became the gift you now offer the world. That is Chiron in a sentence. Taurus asks the tender version of the question: are you valued for who you are, or only for everything you hold together for everyone around you? And Aries, where Chiron returns from September, asks the harder one: have you been choosing yourself? Honestly?

Here is the most useful thing you can do with this transit right now, besides feel it. Pull up your natal chart and find where Taurus begins in your houses. That house is where Chiron is doing its deepest work on you personally over these next five months. Read your Sun, your Rising, your Moon sign below. And then go looking for your Taurus house. Whatever life area it governs is the one asking for the most honest attention between now and January.

The 10 of Cups is sitting at the bottom of this entire deck as the overall energy. That matters. Because the destination of all this healing is not more suffering. It is wholeness. It is the full cup. It is the life that is genuinely nourishing from the inside rather than just functional from the outside.

Chiron came to get you there. Let it.

Aries · 10 of Swords

The 10 of Swords opening this spread in your house on the day Chiron stations retrograde is blunt in the way the best medicine sometimes is. Something is over. And after eight years of Chiron in Aries asking you to choose yourself, to trust your instincts, to stop apologising for taking up space, what is over is the old story you have been telling about who you are when no-one is watching. The version of you that survived by making yourself indispensable, by earning love through effort, by staying useful so the connection would hold. That story has run its course. The 10 of Swords is not a tragedy here. It is a release.

The shadow is staying in the aftermath longer than the wound actually requires, replaying what happened rather than letting the sun that is always rising in the background of this card do its work. Chiron retrograde is asking Aries to feel the completion of this chapter fully and then, genuinely, let it be done.

Overall energy · 10 of Cups

Taurus · Page of Swords

Taurus, Chiron has just arrived in your sign and then immediately turned retrograde at your very first degree, which means the wound it came to work with is the one sitting right at your threshold. Fresh. Possibly unfamiliar. The Page of Swords arriving alongside it is one of the most useful energies you could have for this moment, someone sharp and curious and willing to look at the situation from a completely different angle, asking the questions that need asking rather than the ones that feel safe. Chiron in Taurus is asking about worth, about whether you believe you are valuable beyond what you produce and give. The Page of Swords is asking you to be genuinely curious about where that belief came from.

The shadow is using the Page of Swords sharpness to intellectualise the wound rather than feel it. Chiron retrograde specifically removes the buffer between you and what hurts. The Page can look at it clearly, yes. But she also has to let it land.

Overall energy · 10 of Cups

Gemini · 6 of Cups

Gemini, the 6 of Cups during Chiron retrograde is not a coincidence. This is the card of something returning from the past, a memory, a feeling, a connection, and Chiron retrograde is specifically designed to surface exactly that. Something from a long time ago is relevant to what Chiron is asking you to heal right now. It arrived early, the pattern of making yourself easy to love by making yourself easy to be around. The 6 of Cups during this transit is an invitation to go back and find the younger version of you who made that arrangement, not to stay there, but to retrieve something they left behind. A need. A voice. A version of yourself that stopped asking.

The shadow is romanticising the past rather than learning from it. The 6 of Cups can tip into nostalgia that keeps you looking backwards when Chiron retrograde is asking you to take what you find there and bring it forward into the life you are living now.

Overall energy · 10 of Cups

Cancer · 8 of Cups

Cancer, the 8 of Cups during Chiron retrograde in Taurus is one of the most honest and quietly courageous placements in this spread. This is the card of walking away from something that still looks fine from the outside but has stopped nourishing you from the inside. And Chiron retrograde is asking the specific question that makes this walk possible: what have you been staying in because being needed there felt safer than being truly known somewhere else? The 8 of Cups during this transit is the permission slip. Whatever you have been tending out of habit or obligation or the fear that leaving makes you selfish, Chiron retrograde is asking whether it actually feeds you.

The shadow is the Cancer tendency to carry the guilt of the leaving rather than the relief of it. Chiron retrograde in Taurus is specifically asking about your right to receive nourishment, not just provide it. Walking away from what drains you is not abandonment. It is the beginning of the healing.

Overall energy · 10 of Cups

Leo · The Chariot

Leo, the Chariot during Chiron retrograde is asking something that gets to the heart of what Chiron in Aries has been working on for eight years: where is the direction actually coming from? The Chariot is the card of the person who has aligned their inner competing forces and is now moving with genuine will and purpose. But Chiron retrograde is asking whether the will driving the Chariot belongs to you, the real you, or to the version of you that learned to perform and shine in order to stay safe in the world. The South Node is in Leo right now too. The retrograde and the Nodal energy together are doing the same work: finding the difference between your genuine creative fire and the performance of it.

The shadow is momentum that has become its own justification, moving so consistently in the same direction that stopping to ask whether it is the right direction feels like failure. Chiron retrograde is the stop. The Chariot will still be there on the other side of it.

Overall energy · 10 of Cups

Virgo · 3 of Cups

Virgo, the 3 of Cups during Chiron retrograde is bringing something that your sign sometimes forgets it is allowed to have: genuine, unmanaged, unscheduled joy in the company of people who see you. Not the you who holds everything together. The you who shows up with nothing to offer except yourself. Chiron retrograde in Taurus is asking whether the people in your closest circles know you beyond your usefulness. The 3 of Cups is saying yes, some of them do, and this transit is a good time to let those people in closer rather than keeping your struggles at a careful distance from the warmth they want to extend to you.

The shadow is the Virgo reflex of managing the connection rather than being in it, of making the gathering run beautifully while missing the beauty of the gathering itself. Chiron retrograde in Taurus is about receiving. The 3 of Cups is offering you exactly that. Put the clipboard down and let people celebrate you, not just everything you do.

Overall energy · 10 of Cups

Libra · Ace of Wands

Libra, the Ace of Wands during Chiron retrograde is a genuinely energising and surprising placement, and a hopeful one. This is the pure spark of a creative or passionate new beginning, and it is landing in your house during a transit that is asking you to look at where you gave your fire away in order to keep the peace. Chiron retrograde in Taurus for Libra is specifically about the relationship between your own desires and the habit of accommodating everyone else’s before you get to yours. The Ace of Wands is what becomes available when that pattern is examined. A genuine creative impulse. Something that is entirely, unapologetically yours.

The shadow is the Libra tendency to immediately check whether the spark is appropriate, convenient, or acceptable to the room before allowing it to be real. The Ace of Wands during Chiron retrograde is not asking for the room’s opinion. It is asking whether you trust yourself enough to follow it.

Overall energy · 10 of Cups

Scorpio · The Hierophant

Scorpio, the Hierophant during Chiron retrograde is landing in your house with a question that your sign is particularly well-equipped to examine: which of the beliefs and structures you have been operating inside were actually chosen, and which were inherited? Chiron retrograde asks us to go back to where the wound began, and for many Scorpios that means looking at the rules and systems and expectations that shaped the early experience of what it meant to be safe, valued, and connected. The Hierophant is not asking you to burn the structures down. He is asking you to know which ones you are choosing consciously and which ones you are simply carrying because you never stopped to question them.

The shadow is the Scorpio intensity that can turn the examination of inherited beliefs into a verdict on the people who passed them on. Chiron retrograde heals most effectively when the understanding replaces the judgement. You can see clearly what shaped you without making it a story of damage.

Overall energy · 10 of Cups

Sagittarius · 4 of Pentacles

Sagittarius, the 4 of Pentacles during Chiron retrograde in Taurus is placing its hand on your shoulder and asking a very specific question: what are you holding so tightly, and when did holding it start to feel like the only safe option? Chiron retrograde in Taurus is about the wounds around worth and security, and for Sagittarius it tends to land in the area of beliefs, philosophy, and the stories you have been telling yourself about what you are allowed to have, how much space you are allowed to take up, how far you are allowed to go. The 4 of Pentacles during this transit is the grip on a version of safety that may have protected you once and is now just limiting you.

The shadow is mistaking the grip for wisdom. There was a time when the caution served you. Chiron retrograde is asking whether that time is now, or whether the grip has simply become habit. Open the hands slightly. See what happens.

Overall energy · 10 of Cups

Capricorn · Queen of Wands

Capricorn, the Queen of Wands during Chiron retrograde is one of the most powerful and clarifying placements in this week’s spread. This is the archetype of someone who is fully inhabiting their own fire, who knows who they are without needing the room to confirm it, who is warm and magnetic and absolutely certain of their own worth. Chiron retrograde in Taurus is asking about worth, and the Queen of Wands in your house is showing you what genuine worth looks like when it is not earned or performed or maintained through constant usefulness. It just is. You just are. This transit is asking Capricorn to try that on for size and see how it fits.

The shadow is the old Capricorn belief that visibility and authority have to be earned before they can be inhabited, that you have to prove the worth before you can own it. The Queen of Wands during Chiron retrograde is asking you to reverse that sequence. Inhabit it first. Watch what that makes possible.

Overall energy · 10 of Cups

Aquarius · Knight of Wands

Aquarius, the Knight of Wands during Chiron retrograde is bringing a particular kind of energy that is both exciting and worth examining: the impulse to move, to begin, to follow the creative spark with everything you have. With the North Node now in your sign asking for innovation and future-oriented thinking, and Chiron retrograde asking you to look honestly at what has been holding you back, the Knight of Wands in your house is the energy of what becomes possible when those two things meet. The fire that was dampened by the old wound around worth and identity, the creative impulse you learned to qualify and justify and shrink before expressing, that fire is ready to move again.

The shadow is using the Knight’s momentum to outrun the Chiron retrograde process rather than move through it. The wound Chiron has come to address in your situation will follow you at speed if it is not given its proper attention first. Burn well, by all means. But know what is fuelling the fire.

Overall energy · 10 of Cups

Pisces · Ace of Pentacles

Pisces, the Ace of Pentacles closing this spread during Chiron retrograde is one of the most grounded and quietly hopeful placements the deck could have offered. The Ace of Pentacles is the seed of something genuinely new in the material and practical world, a beginning that carries real potential. And it is arriving in your house during a transit specifically asking about your right to receive, to be resourced, to inhabit your own worth without having to perform it endlessly in advance. The Ace of Pentacles during Chiron retrograde is not asking you to earn the beginning. It is asking you to receive it. To let the new thing arrive and be tended with the same care you extend to everything and everyone else.

The shadow is the Chiron wound showing up exactly as the Ace arrives, the old voice that says this cannot really be for you, that there must be a catch, that you should wait until you are more ready or more deserving. You are ready. You are deserving. Receive the Ace.

Overall energy · 10 of Cups

ORDER THE ECLIPSE HEALING

The Topic Reading · Collective Consciousness · Chiron Stations Retrograde

We are not as separate as we think we are. Collective consciousness is the idea that underneath our individual experiences, there is a shared field of energy and emotion that we are all moving through at the same time. You might be navigating something that looks completely different to the person next to you, but the underlying themes, the push and pull of it, are often strikingly similar across all of us at once.

This week that shared field is sitting inside the day Chiron stations retrograde at the first degree of Taurus, asking all of us to look honestly at where we have been earning love rather than receiving it. Before you read on, bring something with you. A situation, a relationship, a decision that has been taking up space. Set yourself into it. Then read these cards as a voice speaking directly to what you are carrying. This was pulled for the field we are all swimming in right now, which means it was pulled for you.

Cards: Page of Wands · 8 of Cups · 2 of Wands + 7 of Wands · BOD: 8 of Wands

Page of Wands

The Page of Wands opens this reading and she is so right for a Chiron retrograde day. This is the original spark. The creative impulse before it got shaped by disappointment or practicality or the weight of what did not work out last time. She is curiosity before it becomes caution, and desire before it becomes strategy. In the context of whatever you are sitting with right now, the Page of Wands is asking a question that Chiron retrograde in Taurus is also asking, just in different language: what did you want, before you learned to want less? What was the thing you were quietly certain about before the world’s opinion of it began to matter more than your own? That thing. That spark. It is still there. It has been there this whole time, underneath the adapting and the accommodating and the very long season of making yourself useful enough to stay in the room. The Page of Wands arrived today specifically to remind you of it.

8 of Cups

The 8 of Cups arriving after the Page of Wands is naming what Chiron retrograde in Taurus is asking of a lot of people right now, and it is one of the more quietly courageous things the deck ever asks: walk away from the thing that stopped nourishing you, even though it still looks like something from the outside. The 8 of Cups is not a dramatic exit. There is no confrontation in it, no explosion, no moment where everything comes apart publicly. It is the person who finally acknowledges, in the deep and private place where all genuine decisions actually happen, that what they have been tending has not been feeding them for a long time. Maybe it used to. Maybe it looked like it should. But the body knows. It has been knowing for a while. And in the context of your situation, the 8 of Cups is asking you to trust that knowing rather than override it one more time with the story about why you should stay.

2 of Wands + 7 of Wands

These two arriving together is the most layered and specific moment in this reading, and the deck knew exactly what it was doing by sending them out together. The 2 of Wands is the card of the person standing at the threshold of a real choice, holding the world in their hands, looking at the horizon and deciding which direction to move in next. And the 7 of Wands is the card of someone holding their ground under pressure, defending a position they have worked hard to reach, maintaining their truth when the pressure to abandon it has been sustained and coming from multiple directions. Together these two cards are describing something that will feel very familiar to anyone who has been doing the kind of work Chiron retrograde is asking for. You are standing at a genuine choice point, and at exactly the same time, you are still having to hold your ground against the forces that have been pushing back against you getting here. The choice and the defence are happening simultaneously. The 2 of Wands says choose from vision. The 7 of Wands says you have already earned the right to stand here. Both are true at once.

Bottom of the Deck · 8 of Wands

Four wands cards in this reading. Four. And the 8 of Wands at the foundation of all of them is the most kinetic card in the entire deck, the one that means things are finally moving after a period of blockage, that what has been held in place is releasing, that the acceleration is not something you are chasing but something that has already begun underneath everything. Sitting at the bottom of the Page of Wands and the 8 of Cups and the 2 of Wands and the 7 of Wands, the 8 of Wands is telling us what the Chiron retrograde on this same day is also telling us, just in the language of fire instead of the language of wounds. The spark is real. The walking away is clearing the runway. The choice and the defence are the last moment before the launch. And underneath it all, the movement has already started. You are not waiting for something to begin. It already has. You are catching up to what the deeper part of you set in motion a while ago, when you finally decided, quietly and without announcement, that the spark deserved more than the life it had been living in.

The cards as one voice

Here is what all five cards are saying together, as a single message to the collective field on the day Chiron stations retrograde.

There is a spark in you that has been waiting. The Page of Wands has been holding it carefully through everything that has happened, through the season of defending and accommodating and staying useful, through all the times you chose the connection over the calling. She has not let it go out. She would not. It is too important.

The 8 of Cups is the permission you have been waiting for someone to give you. Nobody is going to give it to you. That is the thing Chiron retrograde in Taurus has come to make clear: the permission to leave what is not feeding you, to stop performing your worth, to walk away from the arrangement that has required you to be endlessly useful in exchange for staying in the room, that permission lives inside you and always has. The 8 of Cups is you giving it to yourself.

The 2 of Wands and the 7 of Wands arriving together are the honest description of where you actually are right now. Standing at a real choice. Still having to hold your ground to be here. Both things happening at once. That is not a problem. That is what this moment looks like for most of the people reading this column right now, and it is worth naming it honestly rather than making it sound tidier than it is.

And the 8 of Wands underneath all of it is the thing Chiron retrograde does not often get credited for: it is not only about going inward. It is about what happens when the inward work finally completes. The movement underneath this reading is real. The spark the Page has been holding is about to have somewhere to go.

Chiron came to heal the wound that made you believe the spark was not for you.

It was always for you.

It still is.

ORDER THE ECLIPSE HEALINGS

Welcome to this week’s session, especially for the full moon. The nodes changing has also created some interest in my world - the last time they were in this place, the last two most recent ones, life was good and I’m keen to implement what I learned from that time and what I’ve learned from the last 18 months with this employment palaver.

Crikey Moses it’s taken me to some interesting places - there’s always wounds that creep out of the cracks to try and convince you how to stay safe. An interesting conversation about karma came up in my world today too - and I’ve had two examples of things outside of me that help explain it. There are people who have been through it because of other people out of integrity, and those people who have been out of integrity are having things start to land in their lap or news of the landings are starting to arrive out in public. I say this because some folks haven’t started seeing things yet, and because of these two happenings that made it to the news in the last couple of days, it’s helped me to understand what the karmic outcomes will be looking like.

Anyway, do your best to stay in the positive, keep pushing and don’t give up if you know in your heart of hearts you are in the right mind about what you want in your life. You have the evidence, don’t let the fear shortchange you.

Let’s trot
Amanda

Subscribe now

· Full Moon in Aquarius · July 29, 2026 ·
A Cosmic Egg Cracks Open

Tomorrow’s full moon is not a quiet one. It rises in Aquarius on July 29 conjunct Pluto, which is already an intense and evolutionary combination, and two hours before it reaches its fullness, Jupiter has its annual cazimi, meeting the Sun at the exact same degree in Leo. That is an extraordinary amount of energy compressed into a single morning: the planet of expansion meeting the Sun at maximum brightness, directly opposing the Moon conjunct Pluto in Aquarius, all of it happening on the Leo-Aquarius axis for the first time in roughly nineteen years.

Three days ago, on July 26, the Lunar Nodes shifted into Aquarius and Leo for the first time since 2009, beginning an eighteen-month chapter that will run through March 2028. The North Node in Aquarius is calling us toward innovation, collective consciousness, and the parts of ourselves that belong to the future rather than the familiar. The South Node in Leo is asking us to bring compassion to the inner child who learned that love came through performing, shining, and proving. It is asking us to remember that the heart does not need an audience to be real. The heart does not need to be exceptional to be sacred.

Jupiter is also in Leo right now, expanding and illuminating the very sign the South Node is asking us to gently release our grip on. This is a complex and tender combination: be the light, and also stop needing the light to be seen before you trust that it is real.

This week’s deck holds the World, the Tower, the Hierophant, and Strength at the bottom holding it all up. This is a spread about completion, disruption, structure being questioned, and the inner resource that makes all of it navigable. Read your Sun, your Rising, your Moon, and find the house the moon is in for you in your natal chart. And find where Leo and Aquarius fall in your natal chart. The Nodes will be working those houses for the next eighteen months.

Aries · 5 of Pentacles

Aries, the 5 of Pentacles opening this spread on the eve of a full moon conjunct Pluto in Aquarius is the deck naming something with honesty and without softening: there has been a genuine experience of lack, exclusion, or being without the resources the situation requires, and it has been harder than you have been letting on. With Neptune retrograde in your sign continuing to dissolve old illusions and Saturn retrograde asking for honest accounting, the 5 of Pentacles is not a prediction of more difficulty. It is a compassionate acknowledgement of what has already been. The full moon in Aquarius is illuminating community and connection, and the detail the 5 of Pentacles always carries is the one most often missed: the door to warmth is right there. The figure is standing beside it. How close are you to asking for help?

The shadow is the Aries tendency to manage alone past the point where managing alone is serving you. The North Node has just moved into Aquarius, the sign of the collective and the community. The eighteen-month chapter beginning this week is specifically asking Aries to practice interdependence. The 5 of Pentacles is where that practice starts.

Overall energy · Strength

Taurus · 7 of Cups

Taurus, the 7 of Cups at a full moon asking for clarity and illumination is naming something the Full Moon is specifically equipped to address: the fog of too many options, visions, and possibilities that has been making clear direction feel almost impossible. The full moon in Aquarius conjunct Pluto is a powerful light in a sign known for clear, future-oriented thinking, and it is shining directly onto the 7 of Cups fog in your house. Something will become clearer this week that has not been clear before. The full moon does not tolerate the 7 of Cups indefinitely. It tends to illuminate which of the floating visions is actually real and which is wishful thinking.

The shadow is the Taurus tendency to prefer the safety of potential over the risk of commitment, to keep all options floating because choosing one means the others become unavailable. The North Node in Aquarius is asking all of us to move toward the future rather than hover at the threshold of it. The 7 of Cups is the hovering. The full moon is the light that ends it.

Overall energy · Strength

Gemini · 10 of Swords

Gemini, the 10 of Swords at the Full Moon in Aquarius is the deck marking a completion in your house with the bluntest card available, and at a full moon conjunct Pluto that is specifically about evolutionary mutation and new emergence, that bluntness is a gift. Something is over. Completely and without negotiation. With Uranus still in your sign bringing sudden shifts and the Nodal axis now activating your ninth and third houses, the 10 of Swords is clearing the ground in your house of communication, local environment, and day-to-day thinking for what the new eighteen-month Nodal chapter is bringing. The sun is rising in the background of this card. It always is. Let the ending be complete so the rising can begin.

The shadow is the Gemini tendency to narrate the ending rather than feel it, to analyse what happened rather than grieve what is gone. The 10 of Swords during a Pluto-conjunct full moon is asking for the felt experience of completion, not the intellectual processing of it. Let it land in the body before you move on to what comes next.

Overall energy · Strength

Cancer · King of Cups

Cancer, the King of Cups at a full moon illuminating the Leo-Aquarius axis is one of the most meaningful placements in this week’s spread. The South Node has just moved into Leo, asking all of us to release the pattern of needing to perform our love and worth in order to feel safe. The King of Cups is the archetype of emotional mastery that does not need an audience, of someone who has done enough inner work that their emotional depth is a resource rather than a performance. After the long Cancer season Mercury retrograde just completed, you have earned this archetype more fully than you perhaps realise. This full moon is asking you to inhabit it.

The shadow is the Cancer version of the South Node in Leo pattern: the emotional over-giving that is secretly a performance of worthiness, the nurturing that secretly asks to be seen as exceptional. The King of Cups gives from genuine fullness rather than from the need to be needed. This full moon is asking you to feel the difference in the body.

Overall energy · Strength

Leo · Page of Pentacles

Leo, the Page of Pentacles in your house at the week of the Full Moon with Jupiter cazimi in your sign and the South Node now in Leo is an interesting and grounding placement. The Page of Pentacles is the student who picks something up with genuine curiosity and studies it carefully, who is interested in mastery rather than performance. With Jupiter expanding everything in your sign and the South Node asking you to gently release the need for your light to be seen before it is real, the Page of Pentacles is the energy that serves you most this week: genuine, grounded, curious, not performing. Begin something with care rather than with fanfare. The seeds planted now in Leo will grow into something that lasts precisely because they were tended quietly.

The shadow is the South Node in Leo pattern most relevant for your sign: the need to be exceptional before you begin, to wait until the thing is impressive enough to share. The Page of Pentacles does not wait for that. She begins, and in the beginning, discovers the mastery. The Full Moon is asking Leo to start before it is ready to be seen.

Overall energy · Strength

Virgo · Temperance

Virgo, Temperance arriving in your house at the Full Moon in Aquarius is one of the most quietly powerful placements in this entire spread. The full moon is conjunct Pluto and explosive with evolutionary energy, and into the middle of all of that intensity arrives Temperance: patient, deliberate, unhurried, integrating. After eighteen months of the North Node in your sign asking you to develop discernment, healing, and the refinement of what is genuinely useful, the Nodes have just shifted and the Virgo karmic chapter is completing. Temperance is the energy of what that completion looks and feels like: the slow, careful blending of everything you have learned into something that is more whole than either ingredient was alone.

The shadow is the Virgo tendency to rush the integration in favour of the next task. The Nodal chapter just completing in your sign has produced genuine wisdom. Temperance is asking you to feel that wisdom settle into your bones before you throw yourself into the new chapter beginning in Aquarius. The alchemy needs time. Give it some.

Overall energy · Strength

Libra · 6 of Pentacles

Libra, the 6 of Pentacles at the Full Moon illuminating the Leo-Aquarius axis of individual and collective is a deeply relevant and clarifying placement. This is the card of generosity in flow, of giving and receiving in a cycle that is genuinely balanced, and the full moon in Aquarius is specifically asking about your relationship to community, to collective belonging, and to how you participate in the group. The 6 of Pentacles in the context of a Nodal shift into Aquarius is asking whether your giving and receiving in the groups and communities you belong to is genuinely mutual, or whether you have been performing generosity as a way of belonging rather than actually belonging.

The shadow is the Libra version of the South Node in Leo pattern: giving in order to be needed rather than giving from genuine abundance, or managing the dynamic of the exchange rather than actually being in it. The North Node in Aquarius is calling toward authentic community. The 6 of Pentacles during this full moon is asking which version of generosity is operating in your situation right now.

Overall energy · Strength

Scorpio · The World

Scorpio, the World arriving in your house at the Full Moon conjunct Pluto, which is your ruling planet, is the most complete and extraordinary placement in this entire spread. The World is the final card of the Major Arcana, the card of genuine completion, of the full cycle fulfilled, of the person who has arrived at the end of a significant journey and is standing in the fullness of what that journey produced. With Pluto conjunct this full moon activating transformation and evolutionary mutation in the collective, and the World in your house at the same moment, the deck is saying something unambiguous: something in your life is genuinely, magnificently complete. Not ending in the painful sense of the 10 of Swords. Complete in the triumphant sense of the dancer at the centre of the laurel wreath. Receive this.

The shadow is the Scorpio tendency to immediately look for what comes after the completion before being fully present to the completion itself. The World is not a stepping stone. It is a destination. Stand in it. Feel it. Let the full moon illuminate it fully before you move to the next chapter.

Overall energy · Strength

Sagittarius · The Hierophant

Sagittarius, the Hierophant at a full moon that is specifically asking about individual versus collective, personal authority versus institutional structure, is landing in your house with a question that is very relevant for the sign of the seeker and the philosopher: what wisdom from the established traditions is worth carrying into the new era? The North Node has just shifted into Aquarius, asking all of us to innovate and move toward the future. The Hierophant in your house at this lunation is not asking you to defer to authority. It is asking you to distinguish between the wisdom that has stood the test of time and the institution that has merely accumulated power. They are not the same thing.

The shadow is the Sagittarius tendency to reject the traditional wholesale in favour of the new and the free. The Hierophant during a Nodal shift into Aquarius is asking for discernment rather than revolution. Some of what the old structures hold is genuinely worth carrying forward. You are wise enough to know which parts. Trust that.

Overall energy · Strength

Capricorn · 9 of Wands

Capricorn, the 9 of Wands at the Full Moon is the deck honouring something before it asks anything more of you: you have been through a great deal and you are still standing. Still holding the line. Still showing up with the particular endurance that this card carries, which is not the endurance of someone who has not been tested but of someone who has been tested thoroughly and has not broken. With the Nodal axis shifting and a new eighteen-month chapter beginning, the 9 of Wands is acknowledging the chapter that is closing. It asked a great deal of you. You delivered. This full moon is the completion of that delivery.

The shadow is the hypervigilance that can calcify in someone who has been holding the line for too long, the bracing that continues even after the pressure has eased. The North Node moving into Aquarius is beginning a chapter that is going to ask for collaboration and community rather than solitary endurance. The 9 of Wands is the last stand before that shift. Let the full moon mark the end of the solitary holding.

Overall energy · Strength

Aquarius · The Tower

Aquarius, the Tower landing in your house at your own full moon, conjunct Pluto in your sign, with the North Node just arrived in your sign for the first time in nineteen years, is the most significant and electrically charged placement in this entire spread. The Tower is not here to punish. It is here because the full moon is shining its brightest light directly onto what could not hold, and what cannot hold in your house is falling precisely because the North Node has arrived to show you what needs to be built instead. The cosmic egg the Sabian Symbol describes as being born this week is cracking open in your house specifically, Aquarius. What is emerging is genuinely new, and it has never existed in quite this form before. The Tower makes room for it.

The shadow is the impulse to stabilise immediately, to rebuild before the dust of the Tower has settled. The North Node in your sign for the next eighteen months is asking for conscious, intentional, future-oriented building rather than reactive reconstruction. Let the full moon illuminate what fell and why before you lay the first stone of what comes next.

Overall energy · Strength

Pisces · 3 of Pentacles

Pisces, the 3 of Pentacles closing this zodiac spread at the week of the Full Moon is a genuinely beautiful and forward-looking placement after what has been an eighteen-month North Node chapter in your sign asking a great deal of you. The 3 of Pentacles is the card of skilled collaboration, of the work that becomes genuinely better because of who you are doing it with, of the satisfaction of bringing your particular gifts into a room where other people are bringing theirs. With the South Node now leaving your sign and the karmic chapter of the past eighteen months completing, the 3 of Pentacles is pointing toward what the next chapter holds for you: the relief and the joy of not having to carry the weight alone, of building something with people who are genuinely worth building with.

The shadow is the Pisces tendency to dissolve into the collaboration rather than bring a distinct and sovereign self to it. The 3 of Pentacles works because each person brings something genuinely their own. The North Node chapter just completed in your sign has been developing exactly that: the clearer, more boundaried, more discerning version of yourself that is now ready to collaborate from wholeness rather than from the need to merge.

Overall energy · Strength

Subscribe now

The Topic Reading · Collective Consciousness · Full Moon in Aquarius

We are not as separate as we think we are. Collective consciousness is the idea that underneath our individual experiences, there is a shared field of energy and emotion that we are all moving through at the same time. You might be navigating something that looks completely different to the person next to you, but the underlying themes, the feelings, the push and pull of it, are often strikingly similar across all of us at once.

This week that shared field is sitting inside the Full Moon in Aquarius conjunct Pluto, the Nodal shift into Leo and Aquarius, and Jupiter cazimi in Leo, one of the most electrically charged and evolutionarily significant weeks this column has written into. Before you read on, bring something with you. A situation, a relationship, a decision that has been taking up space. Set yourself into it. Then read the cards below as a voice speaking directly to what you are carrying. This was pulled for the field we are all swimming in right now, which means it was pulled for you.

Cards: 10 of Swords · 4 of Pentacles · Page of Swords · BOD: The Wheel

10 of Swords

The 10 of Swords opens this collective consciousness reading at the week of the Full Moon with the most unambiguous statement in the deck: something is over. Not winding down. Not transitioning. Over, in the absolute and complete sense that the 10 of Swords always carries. At a full moon conjunct Pluto in Aquarius, with the Nodal axis shifting and a new eighteen-month collective chapter beginning, the 10 of Swords as the opening card of this reading is doing something important: it is naming what the full moon is illuminating in your situation, the thing that has run its full course and cannot be extended any further by effort or hope or the sheer force of not wanting it to be done. Whatever you have brought to this reading, there is something inside it that this full moon is marking as complete. The sun is already rising in the background of the 10 of Swords. The Wheel at the foundation of this reading confirms it: what feels like the end from where you are standing is the bottom of a turn that is already beginning its upswing. But the ending has to be named honestly before the upswing can be felt.

4 of Pentacles

After the absolute ending of the 10 of Swords, the 4 of Pentacles arrives and names the collective response to it with a precision that will feel uncomfortably familiar to most people reading this: the grip. When something ends that we were not ready to let go of, or that we are not sure we can afford to lose, the instinct is to hold everything else more tightly. The 4 of Pentacles is that response, the protective, sometimes fearful, sometimes exhausting grip on what remains after the loss. In the context of the Full Moon illuminating the Leo-Aquarius axis of individual identity versus collective belonging, the 4 of Pentacles is asking a very specific question about your situation: what are you gripping right now, and is the grip protecting you or preventing you? There is real intelligence in knowing what to hold. The 4 of Pentacles carries genuine wisdom about self-preservation and boundaries. And there is also a moment, and the Wheel at the foundation of this reading is suggesting this is that moment, when the grip becomes the thing that keeps the new turn from reaching you.

Page of Swords

The Page of Swords arriving after the ending and the grip is the energy that the Full Moon in Aquarius and the newly shifted North Node are trying to deliver to the collective, and it is one of the most clarifying and useful energies available right now. The Page of Swords is the young thinker who approaches a situation from an unexpected angle, who asks the questions others have not quite been willing to ask, who sees what everyone else has been too close to notice. She carries her sword ready but she is not attacking. She is looking. She is curious. She is approaching the situation in your reading with the fresh eyes of someone who has not yet decided what everything means, and in that freshness is the beginning of the new perspective the Nodal shift into Aquarius is calling for. The North Node in Aquarius is specifically about innovation, about the willingness to think differently about what we have been thinking about for too long. The Page of Swords is that willingness in human form. Let her look at your situation. What does she see that you have been standing too close to notice?

Bottom of the Deck · The Wheel

The Wheel of Fortune at the foundation of this entire reading is not a surprise given the week we are inside, but its placement underneath the 10 of Swords and the 4 of Pentacles and the Page of Swords is telling us something specific and important about the relationship between those three cards and the forces that are larger than all of them. The Wheel is the great cycle turning, the momentum of something that is genuinely in motion and cannot be stopped by the grip of the 4 of Pentacles or extended by resistance to the 10 of Swords or interrogated into a different direction by the Page of Swords. It turns because it is time for it to turn, because the Nodal axis has shifted and Jupiter has met the Sun in a cazimi and the Full Moon is rising conjunct Pluto and the cosmic egg is cracking open. The Wheel at the foundation of this reading is the most generous thing the deck could have placed there: the confirmation that what is happening in your situation right now, however it feels, is part of a turning that is going in the right direction. The 10 of Swords is the bottom of the Wheel. The Page of Swords is the new angle available as it begins to rise. And the 4 of Pentacles is the only thing that could slow you down: the grip on what the Wheel has already turned past.

The cards as one voice

Here is what all four cards are saying together, as a single message to the collective field at the Full Moon in Aquarius.

Something has ended in your situation, and the ending is real. The 10 of Swords is not asking you to reframe it or find the lesson immediately or move quickly to gratitude. It is asking you to let the ending be what it is: complete, final, and the floor of a descent you have already survived. The sun is rising. You do not have to manufacture the sunrise. It is already happening.

The 4 of Pentacles is naming what the collective does in the aftermath of a real ending: it grips. It holds more tightly to what remains. It protects against the next loss before the current one has been fully processed. That instinct is human and it is understandable and it is also, at the week of the Full Moon and the Nodal shift and the Barbault Basket still reverberating through the collective field, the one thing that could keep the Wheel’s upswing from reaching you. The grip is the only obstacle left.

The Page of Swords is the invitation the North Node in Aquarius is extending right now to everyone in the collective: look at your situation with fresh eyes. Not the eyes that have been carrying the weight of this situation for months or years. The eyes of the curious, sharp, unencumbered thinker who asks what everyone else has been too tired or too invested to ask. What is actually true here? What are you actually holding? What would you see if you looked at this from a completely different angle?

And the Wheel underneath all of it is the answer to the fear that makes the grip feel necessary. The turn is already happening. The direction is already set. The Nodal axis has shifted, Jupiter has met the Sun, the cosmic egg is cracking open, and the Wheel is turning in the direction of something genuinely new. Your situation is part of that turning, not outside of it.

Open the hands. Let the Wheel carry what needs to be carried.

The new angle is already here. The Page of Swords can see it from where she is standing.

So can you.

Drink a lot of water!

Happy Monday Team,

This week’s zodiac tarot and collective consciousness reading is smack bang at the peak of the well spoken about Basket. 4’s are coming out of our charts in amazing ways. I decided to go and have a look at the houses the planets were sitting in mine and was pleasantly surprised to see they were in the houses 10, 8, 6 and 4. Now, I’m an even numbers girl, and also that they were in descending order of how the planets show up. All the houses are relevant to what’s going on for me in my individual life. So, then curiosity pushed me to check my lovey’s and kids’ charts too and while we all have a mixture, one thing we all do have is a planet in the 4th. We are absolutely, as a family sitting in an era where future planning for changes as the boys finish their degrees this year, and what comes next for them, my lovey finishing his job after 37 years and what comes next for him, and then me looking for my next gig to grow old in for my career after the experiences of the last three years. It’s why I love Astrology so much - then linking to a message from the Tarot to help you build a picture. There’s no fortune telling, but there are energies and descriptors that help you see why you’re going through the things you are. We are also at the hallway leading to the second eclipse season coming up in August and Mercury going direct this Thursday.

Like, pwar… so much. Because of the basket, read the Tarot card for the sign each four of those planets are in - Leo, Gemini, Aries and Aquarius. Let me know too if any of those are you Sun, Moon or Rising as well.

Anyway, let’s trot!
Amanda

Barbault’s Basket · July 19–21, 2026 · The Architecture of a New Era

Something rare is happening in the sky this week, and it deserves your full attention.

Between July 19 and 21, four outer planets, Jupiter in Leo, Uranus in Gemini, Neptune in Aries, and Pluto in Aquarius, all align at exactly 4 degrees of their respective signs, forming a geometric pattern on the zodiac wheel known as Barbault’s Basket. This configuration is named after French astrologer André Barbault, who spent his lifetime tracking the long cycles of the outer planets and their relationship to collective human history. He predicted that this period would mark the end of the long chaotic cycle that began around 2020 and the beginning of something genuinely new. He called the broader 2026 alignments the most benefic configuration of the century. He died in 2019. He did not live to see it unfold. But he knew it was coming.

This is not a moment of instant transformation. It is a pivot. The tide has turned. The energy that has been breaking things down since 2020 is now available for building things up, in the world and in your own life. The seeds planted during this window, in your intentions, your choices, your relationships, your creative work, your healing, are seeds that may not be fully visible until 2029 when they become culturally and personally legible. But they are real, and they are being planted right now whether you are conscious of it or not.

Here is the most useful thing you can do with this alignment personally: pull out your natal chart and find where 4 degrees of Leo, Gemini, Aries, and Aquarius fall in your houses. Each of those houses is being activated by one of the four outer planets this week. The houses tell you where in your life this new era is trying to take root. Every person reading this will have a different combination, a different map of where the building is beginning. Find yours. The pattern you discover will be more personally relevant than any generic horoscope, including this one.

Temperance sits at the bottom of this deck as the overall energy, which is exactly right for a week of this magnitude. The alchemy of a new era does not happen overnight. It happens through the patient, deliberate, steady work of integration. Read your Sun, your Rising, your Moon, and as mentioned above the basket planets too.

Aries · 4 of Pentacles

Aries, the 4 of Pentacles at the opening of a week that is asking for conscious participation in building a new era is the deck placing something important in front of you: an honest examination of what you are holding and why. With Neptune at 4 degrees of your sign as part of the Barbault Basket, the outer planet activating Aries this week is the one associated with imagination turned into action and the letting go of an old identity. The 4 of Pentacles is the counterpoint to that: it is asking what you are gripping so tightly that Neptune cannot dissolve it. There is a version of security in your world right now that is more about the familiar past than the possible future. This week is asking you to feel the difference.

The shadow is the Aries tendency to protect resources and positions with the intensity that belongs to survival mode even when survival is no longer the actual context. Neptune at 4 degrees Aries is dissolving the old identity story. The 4 of Pentacles is the part of you that is gripping it. The new era being seeded this week has more room in it than the grip allows. See if you can open the hands just slightly.

Overall energy · Temperance

Taurus · Justice

Taurus, Justice arriving in your house during the week of the Barbault Basket is one of the most significant placements in this entire spread. Justice is the card of truth, accountability, and the restoring of genuine balance after a period of imbalance, and it is landing in Taurus, the sign of values, worth, and what we build our lives on, at the very moment when the outer planets are seeding a new collective era. The question Justice is placing in your house this week is a structural one: is what you have been building aligned with what you actually value? Not what you have been conditioned to value. Not what looks valuable from the outside. What you genuinely, in the body, know to be true about what matters.

The shadow is the Chiron in Taurus wound making the Justice question feel like a verdict rather than an invitation. Justice is not asking you to condemn what has been. It is asking you to align what comes next with what is actually true for you. The Barbault Basket is opening a new era. Justice is asking you to enter it with your values intact and examined.

Overall energy · Temperance

Gemini · 3 of Wands

Gemini, the 3 of Wands during the week of the Barbault Basket is one of the most energising and well-timed placements in this spread. Uranus is at 4 degrees of your sign right now, the planet of sudden insight and new ideas breaking loose, and the 3 of Wands is the card of the person standing at the edge of the horizon watching their ships come in while already planning the next voyage. You are at the edge of something genuinely new, something that has the quality of vision and possibility and the particular excitement of a direction that feels genuinely right. The Barbault Basket is amplifying that signal enormously this week. What is coming in on the horizon for you right now is worth the full attention you can give it.

The shadow is the Gemini tendency to be so excited by the horizon that the ships coming in right now do not get properly received. Uranus in your sign is bringing disruption and sudden insight. The 3 of Wands is asking you to stand still long enough to actually witness the arrival before you are already planning the departure. Let this one land.

Overall energy · Temperance

Cancer · Queen of Cups

Cancer, the Queen of Cups at the week of the Barbault Basket is a deeply fitting and powerful placement. This is your season, Mercury has just gone direct on July 23 after its long retrograde through your sign, and the emotional processing of the past several weeks is now available to be expressed rather than simply felt. The Queen of Cups is the archetype of emotional mastery and genuine intuitive authority, of the person who holds depth without drowning and leads from feeling without being swept away. The new era being seeded this week needs people who can hold that kind of emotional intelligence. You are one of them. This is a week to let that capacity be visible.

The shadow is the over-giving that can come with the Queen of Cups energy, particularly after the emotionally saturated Mercury retrograde season just completed. The new era the Barbault Basket is seeding has space for your emotional intelligence as a genuine contribution, not as an endless resource for others to draw from. Tend yourself this week as well as you tend everyone else.

Overall energy · Temperance

Leo · 2 of Wands

Leo, the 2 of Wands at the week of the Barbault Basket with Jupiter at 4 degrees of your sign is one of the most exciting and directional placements in this entire spread. Jupiter in Leo is the planet of expansion and confidence in the sign of creative authority and visibility, and it is operating at full power this week as part of the Barbault Basket. The 2 of Wands is the card of the person holding the world in their hands at the threshold of a genuine choice about where to go next. With Jupiter amplifying everything in your house of self and identity, the Barbault Basket is specifically asking Leo: what direction are you choosing to build in for the next era? This is not a small question. The choice you orient toward this week is a seed that may not be fully visible until 2029. Choose from vision.

The shadow is the Leo tendency to choose what looks most magnificent rather than what is most genuinely true. Jupiter in your sign can amplify both the authentic self and the performed self simultaneously. The 2 of Wands during the Barbault Basket is asking which one is holding the world in its hands this week. The answer matters for the next three years.

Overall energy · Temperance

Virgo · 4 of Wands

Virgo, the 4 of Wands during the week of the Barbault Basket is the most affirming placement the deck could have offered you at this moment. This is the card of the threshold, of homecoming, of the milestone that deserves to be genuinely celebrated before the next phase of building begins. With the North Node moving into Aquarius this week, activating the Virgo-Aquarius axis in a new way, and the Barbault Basket seeding a new collective era, the 4 of Wands is telling you something specific: you have done enough of the preparation. Something has been completed. The threshold is here. Walk through it with some celebration in your step rather than immediately turning your attention to the next list of things to do.

The shadow is the Virgo habit of minimising the milestone in favour of the next task. The Barbault Basket is a genuinely significant opening in human history, and the 4 of Wands is telling you that you are standing at your own personal version of that opening right now. Something has been built. It is worth a moment of genuine acknowledgement before the next era begins.

Overall energy · Temperance

Libra · 2 of Pentacles

Libra, the 2 of Pentacles during the Barbault Basket week is the deck being honest about where you are finding yourself at one of the most significant astrological moments of the century: still balancing, still juggling, still finding the rhythm between competing priorities. And that is not a problem. The 2 of Pentacles during a Barbault Basket is actually a useful place to be, because it means you have not over-committed to any one direction yet, which means the new era being seeded this week has room to find its way into your life without displacing something that matters. The question is whether the current juggling is intentional or habitual. The Barbault Basket is asking you to make it intentional.

The shadow is the Libra tendency to keep all options in play indefinitely because choosing means closing doors. The North Node is moving into Aquarius this week, beginning a new karmic chapter. The 2 of Pentacles during this week is asking which ball can be set down so the hands are genuinely free for what the new era is bringing.

Overall energy · Temperance

Scorpio · The Hermit

Scorpio, the Hermit at the week of the Barbault Basket is the deck placing the most inward card in the spread at the most outwardly significant moment in the calendar. That is not accidental. The Hermit is the archetype of the person who goes inward to find what cannot be found in the noise, who carries their own light into the dark places and returns with the kind of wisdom that only comes from genuine solitude. The Barbault Basket is a collective turning point, but the Hermit in your house is asking what your personal turning point looks like from the inside. Before you can participate consciously in the new era, you need to know what you are bringing to it from your own depths. This week is for that knowing.

The shadow is using the Hermit as a way of avoiding participation in the collective opening the Barbault Basket is creating. The Hermit goes inward and returns. The going in is not the destination. What you find in the solitude this week is meant to be brought back and contributed to the new era being built. Go in. But plan to come back out.

Overall energy · Temperance

Sagittarius · Page of Pentacles

Sagittarius, the Page of Pentacles at the week of the Barbault Basket is bringing something that your sign does not always embrace readily: the invitation to learn something new slowly and carefully, with genuine attention rather than enthusiastic overview. With Jupiter, your ruling planet, now in Leo and operating at full Barbault Basket power, the expansion energy available to you this week is extraordinary. The Page of Pentacles is asking how you are going to ground that expansion into something real and lasting. The new era being seeded requires both the vision that Sagittarius carries naturally and the patient, careful attention to craft and detail that the Page of Pentacles embodies. Both are needed. This week is asking you to develop the latter.

The shadow is the Sagittarian tendency to get the gist of something and move on before the real depth has been reached. The seeds planted during the Barbault Basket window are generational in scale. The Page of Pentacles is asking you to treat them accordingly: with the kind of careful, sustained attention that actually makes things grow.

Overall energy · Temperance

Capricorn · The Wheel

Capricorn, the Wheel of Fortune arriving in your house at the exact week of the Barbault Basket is the most perfectly aligned placement in this entire spread. The Wheel and the Barbault Basket are speaking the same language: the great cycles turning, the long arc of history pivoting from one era to the next, the forces that are larger than any individual situation but that move through every individual life simultaneously. What the Wheel in your house is telling you specifically is that the shift happening in the world this week is also shifting something in your personal life, in the area of career, legacy, and public contribution that Capricorn governs. Something that has been building for years is arriving at a new position on the wheel. That position is more aligned with where you are meant to be than where you have been.

The shadow is the Capricorn tendency to try to control the direction of the Wheel rather than read it. The Barbault Basket is a turning that cannot be managed, only participated in. The Wheel in your house this week is asking you to let the cycle complete and trust that where it stops is where it needed to stop. Your job is to show up with something in your hands when it does.

Overall energy · Temperance

Aquarius · King of Cups

Aquarius, the King of Cups in your house during the Barbault Basket week, with Pluto at 4 degrees of your sign as part of the alignment, is a genuinely profound placement. Pluto in Aquarius is the planet of deep transformation at the structural level operating in the sign of collective intelligence and future vision, and the King of Cups arriving alongside it is asking something that Pluto rarely gets asked to consider: how does the transformation feel? The King of Cups is emotional mastery, the person who has done enough inner work that they can hold the full depth of what is happening without being swept away by it. As one of the signs most activated by the Barbault Basket this week, Aquarius is being asked to bring that emotional steadiness to the collective shift. Your capacity to stay centred inside enormous change is a genuine resource right now.

The shadow is the Aquarius tendency to engage with the Barbault Basket as an intellectual event rather than a felt one. Pluto in your sign has been doing structural transformation. The King of Cups this week is asking you to feel what that transformation has produced in you, not just analyse it. The new era needs your emotional intelligence as much as your visionary thinking.

Overall energy · Temperance

Pisces · Ace of Swords

Pisces, the Ace of Swords closing this zodiac spread during the week of the Barbault Basket is one of the most electric and clarifying placements the deck could have offered. The Ace of Swords is pure breakthrough clarity, a truth that arrives suddenly and cuts cleanly through the fog. With the North Node moving into Aquarius this week and the Nodal axis shifting away from the Pisces-Virgo polarity that has been active for eighteen months, this is a significant moment of release for Pisces specifically. The karmic chapter that began when the North Node entered Pisces is completing, and the Ace of Swords is the clarity of what was learned through it. Name it. Write it down. This understanding is the contribution you are bringing from the old era into the new one.

The shadow is the Pisces tendency to let the breakthrough dissolve back into feeling before it has been fully formed into words. The Ace of Swords arrived at the close of the zodiac for a reason: it is the final word of this particular chapter. Let it be a word, not just a sensation. The Barbault Basket is opening a new era. The clarity you have earned through the Nodal chapter just completing is one of the seeds you are planting in it.

Overall energy · Temperance

Subscribe now

The Topic Reading · Collective Consciousness · Barbault’s Basket Week

We are not as separate as we think we are. Collective consciousness is the idea that underneath our individual experiences, there is a shared field of energy and emotion that we are all moving through at the same time. You might be navigating something that looks completely different to the person next to you, but the underlying themes, the feelings, the push and pull of it, are often strikingly similar across all of us at once.

This week that shared field is sitting inside one of the most significant astrological openings of our lifetime, the Barbault Basket, a moment when the tide turns from breakdown to building and the seeds planted now are generational in their reach. Whatever situation you are bringing to this reading is being held inside that extraordinary context. Before you read on, bring something with you. A situation, a relationship, a decision that has been taking up space. Set yourself into it. Then read the cards below as a voice speaking directly to what you are carrying. This was pulled for the field we are all swimming in right now, which means it was pulled for you.

Cards: 7 of Pentacles · 10 of Swords · King of Cups · BOD: The Lovers

7 of Pentacles

The 7 of Pentacles opens this collective consciousness reading at the week of the Barbault Basket with the most grounded and honest question the deck could ask at a civilisational turning point: what have you actually been growing, and is it what you intended? This is the card of the person who has been working, who has invested genuine time and energy and care into something, and who is now standing back to look at what the ground is actually producing. At a moment when the outer planets are seeding a new era and asking all of us to participate consciously in what comes next, the 7 of Pentacles is the prerequisite: the honest assessment of what the last chapter produced before you plant in the next one. In the context of whatever you have brought to this reading, this card is asking you to stand back and look clearly at what your effort has actually yielded, not what you hoped it would yield, not what you told yourself it was yielding, but what is genuinely growing in the ground of your situation right now. That assessment, done honestly and without self-criticism, is the most useful thing you can bring to a Barbault Basket week.

10 of Swords

After the honest assessment of the 7 of Pentacles, the 10 of Swords arrives and names what the assessment has revealed: something is completely, finally, irrevocably over. The 10 of Swords does not deal in ambiguity. This is the card of the absolute ending, of the thing that has run its full course and cannot be revived or revised or renegotiated back into relevance. At the week of the Barbault Basket, when the outer planets are pivoting from a long cycle of breakdown toward a new era of building, the 10 of Swords in this position is not a tragedy. It is a completion that the new era required. What is ending in your situation right now, whether it is a belief, a dynamic, a way of operating, a relationship pattern, or an entire chapter of your life, is ending because it needed to end before the new thing could have genuine room. The sun is already rising in the background of the 10 of Swords. It always is. This is not the end of you. It is the end of a version of your situation that the Barbault Basket has been clearing space for.

King of Cups

The King of Cups arriving after the honest assessment and the absolute ending is the emotional resource that makes it possible to move through both of them without being destroyed by either. This is the archetype of the person who has done enough genuine inner work that they can hold the full weight of what is happening, the grief of the ending, the discomfort of the honest accounting, the enormity of the turning point the Barbault Basket represents, without being swept away by any of it. The King of Cups does not suppress what he feels. He feels it fully and remains centred. In the context of your situation, this card is asking you to bring that quality of presence to this moment: not detachment, not management, but the genuine emotional steadiness that comes from having done the work. You have done more of this work than you perhaps realise. The King of Cups in this reading is not a goal. He is a description of who you already are when you are fully inhabiting yourself.

Bottom of the Deck · The Lovers

The Lovers at the foundation of this entire reading, holding the 7 of Pentacles and the 10 of Swords and the King of Cups up from underneath, is the most significant bottom of deck placement this collective reading has produced since the Sun appeared in the same position several weeks ago. The Lovers is not simply a card about romantic love, although it can be. It is fundamentally the card of the most aligned choice available, of the moment when you are being asked to choose what is most deeply true for you rather than what is most convenient or expected or familiar. And it is sitting underneath everything in this reading, which means it is the foundation of all of it. Underneath the honest assessment of what you have been growing. Underneath the complete ending of what needed to end. Underneath the emotional steadiness required to hold all of that. There is a choice. A real one, made from the most genuine and true part of who you are, that this entire process has been in service of. The Barbault Basket is the most significant astrological opening of our generation. The Lovers at the bottom of this reading is saying that the most significant opening in your personal situation right now is the same: a moment of true alignment, a choice from the deepest truth, a direction chosen because it is genuinely right rather than merely available.

The cards as one voice

Here is what all four cards are saying together, as a single message to the collective field at the week of the Barbault Basket.

You have been working on something for a long time, tending it with genuine effort and real investment. The 7 of Pentacles is asking you to look honestly at what that effort has actually produced, because the Barbault Basket, this extraordinary turning point in the collective tide, is asking everyone to bring consciousness to what they plant next. You cannot plant consciously in the new era if you have not honestly assessed what the previous season grew.

The 10 of Swords is naming what the honest assessment reveals: something is done. Completely and without negotiation. The ending may feel sharp, and the sharpness is real, but the 10 of Swords always carries the sunrise in its background, and the Barbault Basket this week is the largest sunrise this column has written into. The ending is not the story. It is the clearing that makes the story possible.

The King of Cups is the quality of presence this moment asks for: not detachment from what is ending, not management of the grief, but the genuine emotional steadiness of someone who can hold all of it, the assessment, the ending, the turning point, with their centre intact. You have developed this capacity through everything this column has walked through with you. It is real and it is yours.

And the Lovers underneath everything is the reason any of this matters. The Barbault Basket is not asking the collective to build something impressive or efficient or practical. It is asking the collective to build something true. And the Lovers at the foundation of this reading is asking you the same thing about your situation: when the honest assessment is done and the ending is acknowledged and the emotional steadiness is found, what is the choice that is most genuinely, most deeply, most truly yours?

That choice is the seed you are planting in the new era this week.

Plant it from love. Plant it from truth. Plant it from the part of you that knows, underneath everything, exactly what is right.

The Barbault Basket will do the rest.

Mark your calendar to be ready for the Eclipse Season healings. They are always a PWYCA offering - for years now - (pay what you can afford) - there will be two sessions for your one payment - August 12 and August 27, 2026 - Australian EST.

Subscribe now

Ha, look at me forgetting what day it is again. Lucky I cottoned onto the fact I missed yesterday, but got today with the new moon in Cancer.

It’s been interesting, my emotions have been hella negative and I’ve had to check myself because I realised how much I was focussing on the annoying, bad, etc. If you read my CLEAR post last week, that was probably the start of it. Sometimes, we do have to make a choice about the energy we’re allowing to dictate the the vibe - even if stuff is making you feel like sheee-it.

I hope you enjoy this week’s zodiac tarot and then the collective consciousness reading down the bottom.

Let’s trot!
Foy.

New Moon in Cancer · July 14, 2026 · Mercury Retrograde · The Revisit, Review and Re-feel New Moon

Today’s new moon is one of the most emotionally layered lunations of the entire year. The new moon arrives at 21 degrees Cancer with Mercury retrograde sitting right alongside the Sun and Moon in an exact conjunction, which flips the usual new moon energy completely. Normally a new moon is about planting fresh seeds and charging forward. This one is asking something different and something deeper: revisit, review, and re-feel. Before you plant anything new, the invitation is to return to what was already planted and understand what it has been trying to grow into.

Three planets are retrograde simultaneously at this lunation. Mercury retrograde in Cancer is slowing communication and asking us to revisit, reconsider, and feel before we speak. Neptune retrograde in Aries is dissolving illusions we have been maintaining about ourselves and our paths. Saturn retrograde is handing back the lessons we rushed past so we can integrate them more fully. Together they are creating a powerful inward pull, closing the door on outer distraction so there is no choice but to sit with what is actually happening inside.

This is not a comfortable new moon. It is a necessary one. Cancer is the sign of emotional memory, of the patterns we learned early in life about how to ask for care, whether we ask at all, whether we shut down when something hurts, whether we overgive so nobody can accuse us of being selfish. The Mercury retrograde sitting right on top of this lunation is asking all of those patterns to surface. Not to shame them. To see them clearly, understand where they came from, and decide consciously which ones belong in the next chapter and which ones are ready to be released.

The Ace of Cups sits at the bottom of this deck as the overall energy, which is the most perfect placement the cards could have offered. The new emotional beginning that this lunation is capable of producing is not at the top of the spread. It is underneath everything. It is what all of the revisiting and reviewing and re-feeling is in service of. The seed of something genuinely new and emotionally true has been there the whole time, waiting for you to clear enough space to receive it.

Read your Sun, your Rising, your Moon, and the sign that holds Gemini in your natal chart. And if old feelings surface today, let them. That is the work.

Aries · 7 of Wands

Aries, the 7 of Wands arriving in your house at a new moon asking for emotional honesty is the deck acknowledging something that deserves to be named: you have been holding your ground, again, under sustained pressure, and you are still standing. With Saturn retrograde in your sign adding extra weight and seriousness to this lunation, and Neptune retrograde dissolving the illusions that have been softening the edges of what you are dealing with, the 7 of Wands is not asking you to fight harder. It is asking you to notice what you are actually defending, and whether that thing is still worth the energy it is costing you. This new moon in Cancer is the moment to feel into that question rather than push through it.

The shadow is the hypervigilance of someone who has been in defensive mode for so long that the bracing has become the default, even when the immediate threat has eased. Saturn retrograde is asking Aries to account for where the energy is going. The 7 of Wands during this particular new moon is asking you to consider: what would it feel like to set the watch down, just briefly, and let the Cancer new moon tend to you instead of the other way around?

Overall energy · Ace of Cups

Taurus · King of Pentacles

Taurus, the King of Pentacles at a Cancer new moon that is asking for emotional revisiting and review is a grounding and stabilising placement. This archetype knows what has been built, tends it with quiet confidence, and does not panic when the emotional weather gets complicated. With Jupiter in Leo expanding your home and family sector for the first time in over a decade, and Mercury retrograde in Cancer asking you to revisit conversations and rewrite old narratives in your communication sector, the King of Pentacles is the steady presence that holds the material foundation while the emotional recalibration does its work. You do not have to choose between the structural and the emotional this week. The King holds both.

The shadow is using the King of Pentacles solidity to avoid the emotional processing this new moon is specifically asking for. The revisit, review, and re-feel energy of this lunation is not a threat to what you have built. It is the process by which what you build next becomes more genuinely yours. Let the Cancer new moon in alongside the King.

Overall energy · Ace of Cups

Gemini · 9 of Pentacles

Gemini, the 9 of Pentacles at a Cancer new moon with Mercury retrograde is one of the most quietly affirming placements in this week’s spread. The 9 of Pentacles is the card of someone who has built something genuinely abundant through their own competence and effort, who inhabits their own life with ease and self-possession. With Mercury retrograde in Cancer activating your values and security sector and the new moon asking what helps you feel genuinely held in your own life, the 9 of Pentacles is both a reflection and an intention: you have built more than you have been giving yourself credit for, and this new moon is asking you to feel that in the body rather than simply acknowledging it in the mind.

The shadow is the isolation that can accompany the 9 of Pentacles, the self-sufficiency that has become a wall rather than a resource. Cancer new moon energy is specifically about emotional belonging and genuine nourishment. The 9 of Pentacles knows how to tend herself. This lunation is asking whether she also lets others tend to her.

Overall energy · Ace of Cups

Cancer · Page of Wands

Cancer, this new moon is in your sign, which means the reset is landing directly in your identity and your emotional foundation. And the card that arrives to meet it is the Page of Wands, which is one of the most interesting and energising placements this new moon could have offered you. The Page of Wands is the original spark, the creative impulse before it has been shaped by fear or practicality or the weight of what did not work before. With the new moon asking you to revisit a dream or a project or a calling you quietly set aside, the Page of Wands is the energy through which that revisiting is happening: fresh, curious, genuinely excited, and completely unintimidated by starting again. This new moon is your new moon. What spark are you ready to pick back up?

The shadow is the Cancer tendency to let the emotional weight of what happened last time prevent the Page of Wands energy from moving. Mercury retrograde is specifically asking you to revisit and rewrite old narratives, including the one about what happened when you tried this before. That story is not the whole story. The Page of Wands is the rest of it.

Overall energy · Ace of Cups

Leo · The Chariot

Leo, the Chariot at a Cancer new moon with three planets retrograde is the deck holding the tension honestly: the direction is clear and the will is aligned, but the conditions right now are specifically asking for internal consolidation before external momentum. Jupiter has just entered your sign for the first time in over a decade and is building toward something genuinely significant at the full moon on July 29. The Chariot is the vehicle for that. The Cancer new moon and the retrograde energy surrounding it is the fuel stop before the acceleration. Let this lunation be the moment of inner alignment that the Chariot needs before it moves.

The shadow is the frustration of Chariot energy in a retrograde that is designed to slow forward movement. The new moon in Cancer with Mercury retrograde is not blocking the Chariot. It is asking it to feel the direction as well as see it, to make sure that what is being driven toward is genuinely what the heart wants and not just what the ego has decided. The Leo full moon on July 29 is coming. Let this new moon be the preparation.

Overall energy · Ace of Cups

Virgo · Knight of Wands

Virgo, the Knight of Wands in your house at a Cancer new moon asking for revisiting and re-feeling is a striking and useful tension. The Knight of Wands wants to move, to begin, to follow the creative impulse at speed. The new moon is asking for the slower, more inward version of that same energy: the revisiting of a project, a creative direction, a calling that was set aside. With the North Node moving into Aquarius later this month and Uranus still activating your sign, this lunation is a specific moment to reconnect with something that was genuinely yours before the world got very loud about what you should be doing instead. The Knight of Wands inside a revisit new moon is asking you to pick something back up with fresh fire.

The shadow is the Knight of Wands energy pushing to start something entirely new when this new moon is specifically asking you to return to something already begun. Mercury retrograde and Cancer new moon together are saying: the answer is not ahead of you. It is behind you, waiting to be picked back up with new eyes.

Overall energy · Ace of Cups

Libra · 4 of Cups

Libra, the 4 of Cups at a Cancer new moon asking for emotional honesty is the deck naming something that is quietly true for many people in the collective right now, and perhaps particularly true for you: a kind of inward withdrawal, a flatness, an inability to fully feel excited about what is being offered even when what is being offered is genuinely good. With Mercury retrograde tangling everything with old emotional patterns and the new moon asking you to revisit and re-feel, the 4 of Cups is not a problem to be solved. It is a signal to be read. What is the withdrawal actually about? What is underneath the flatness? That is the new moon question for Libra this week.

The shadow is the Libra tendency to manage the flatness rather than feel into it, to find the socially acceptable version of not being quite okay rather than sitting with the real version. The Cancer new moon with three planets retrograde is the most inward and honest of lunations. This week, the flatness is information. Let it speak.

Overall energy · Ace of Cups

Scorpio · 3 of Cups

Scorpio, the 3 of Cups at a Cancer new moon that is activating emotional memory and genuine connection is a beautiful and nourishing placement. This is the card of joy in good company, of being genuinely seen and celebrated by people who actually know you. With Mercury retrograde resurfacing old connections and the new moon asking what and who makes you feel truly held, the 3 of Cups is pointing toward the relationships in your life that are worth investing in, celebrating, and consciously choosing again. Something worth marking is present in your relational world this week. Let it be felt fully rather than moved past.

The shadow is the Scorpio tendency to hold the depth of feeling that the 3 of Cups generates at a careful distance, to observe the warmth rather than be in it. The Cancer new moon is specifically asking about emotional belonging. The 3 of Cups is one of the clearest answers in the deck. Let yourself belong to the people in this card this week.

Overall energy · Ace of Cups

Sagittarius · 2 of Pentacles

Sagittarius, the 2 of Pentacles at a Cancer new moon with three planets retrograde is the deck being honest about where you are: still balancing, still juggling, still finding the rhythm between competing demands and priorities. With Jupiter, your ruling planet, now in Leo and activating your adventure and expansion sector, the temptation is to throw yourself into the new opportunity. The 2 of Pentacles and the Cancer new moon together are asking you to find your footing first. You cannot step fully into what Jupiter in Leo is offering if you are still mid-juggle with what came before. This lunation is the moment to get the balance honest before the next big thing begins.

The shadow is the Sagittarius tendency to add more to the juggle rather than setting something down. Mercury retrograde in your intimacy and transformation sector is specifically asking you to release what is no longer serving the next chapter. The 2 of Pentacles during a revisit new moon is asking what can be put down so the hands are free for what Jupiter is bringing.

Overall energy · Ace of Cups

Capricorn · The Hermit

Capricorn, the Hermit at a Cancer new moon that is asking all of us to go inward is one of the most perfectly aligned placements in this entire spread. The Hermit does not arrive accidentally during the most inward and emotionally honest lunation of the year. He is here because your work this week is specifically the work of solitude, of turning the considerable Capricorn intelligence inward rather than outward, of finding in the quiet what cannot be found in the noise. With Mercury retrograde potentially resurfacing a past connection or an old wound in your relationship sector, the Hermit is asking you to process that in solitude before you respond to it in the world.

The shadow is the Hermit becoming a permanent residence rather than a deliberate retreat, the Capricorn who uses solitude as a way of avoiding the emotional vulnerability that the Cancer new moon is asking for. The Hermit chooses to go inward. He also chooses to return. This new moon is the going in. Make sure you also plan for the coming back.

Overall energy · Ace of Cups

Aquarius · 8 of Cups

Aquarius, the 8 of Cups at a Cancer new moon asking for revisiting and re-feeling is doing something very precise: it is naming a departure that is either underway or overdue. Something in your world has run its course, and the 8 of Cups is the wisdom to know that, even when what is being walked away from still has people in it who matter, even when the leaving is not dramatic, even when the thing being left behind looks functional from the outside. With the North Node moving into Aquarius later this month beginning a brand new eighteen-month karmic chapter, the 8 of Cups is clearing the ground for what that chapter needs. You cannot fully step into the new karmic direction while still standing in what is complete.

The shadow is leaving without completing the emotional processing the Cancer new moon is asking for. The 8 of Cups walks away with genuine acknowledgement of what is being left, not with avoidance. Let the grief of this departure be real before the next chapter begins. The new karmic direction will be built on more honest ground if you do.

Overall energy · Ace of Cups

Pisces · 6 of Cups

Pisces, the 6 of Cups closing this zodiac spread at a Cancer new moon with Mercury retrograde is the most fitting placement the deck could have offered this week. This is the card of the past returning, of memory and nostalgia and the particular sweetness of something that was genuinely good once. Mercury retrograde is already resurfacing old connections, old feelings, and old patterns, and for Pisces this week that resurfacing has the quality of the 6 of Cups: something from the past is arriving not to pull you back but to offer you something you did not fully receive the first time. A feeling. An understanding. A piece of yourself that was left somewhere behind and is now ready to come home.

The shadow is the Pisces tendency to idealise the past that the 6 of Cups brings, to let the sweetness of what was become more real than the truth of what is. Mercury retrograde and the Cancer new moon are asking for emotional honesty, not emotional nostalgia. What from the past is genuinely worth retrieving? And what is the mind presenting as sweet that the body knows is finished?

Overall energy · Ace of Cups

Subscribe now

The Topic Reading · Collective Consciousness · Cancer New Moon · Mercury Retrograde

We are not as separate as we think we are. Collective consciousness is the idea that underneath our individual experiences, there is a shared field of energy and emotion that we are all moving through at the same time. You might be navigating something that looks completely different to the person next to you, but the underlying themes, the feelings, the push and pull of it, are often strikingly similar across all of us at once.

This week that shared field is sitting inside the Cancer new moon with Mercury retrograde right alongside it, asking all of us to revisit, review, and re-feel rather than push forward. Whatever you are carrying right now is being held inside one of the most inward and emotionally honest lunations of the year. Before you read on, bring something with you. A situation, a relationship, a decision that has been taking up space. Set yourself into it. Then read the cards below as a voice speaking directly to what you are carrying. This was pulled for the field we are all swimming in right now, which means it was pulled for you.

Cards: Queen of Pentacles · The Hanged Man · The Wheel · BOD: Knight of Swords

Queen of Pentacles

The Queen of Pentacles opens this collective consciousness reading with the particular warmth of someone who knows how to make things nourishing, not just functional. She is the archetype of grounded abundance, of the person who tends what matters with genuine care and competence, who creates environments of real warmth rather than performative comfort. In the context of whatever situation you have brought to this reading, the Queen of Pentacles is opening with a question that the Cancer new moon is also asking: are you nourishing yourself as well as you are nourishing everything and everyone else? She is not asking you to stop giving. She is asking you to look honestly at whether you are also receiving, whether the care you extend so readily to others is finding its way back to you, whether the environment you are so skilled at creating for other people is one you are actually living inside yourself.

The Hanged Man

The Hanged Man arriving after the Queen of Pentacles is the most perfectly timed card the deck could have placed here, in the middle of a Cancer new moon that is specifically asking for the revisit, review, and re-feel rather than the push forward. The Hanged Man is the deliberate suspension, the chosen pause, the person who has stopped striving in order to see from a completely different angle. He does not hang because he is trapped. He hangs because he has understood something that the driven, forward-moving version of himself could not access: that the perspective available in stillness is not available any other way. With three planets retrograde and Mercury sitting right alongside the new moon, the Hanged Man in this reading is not a warning about being stuck. He is the instruction for this particular season. Stop. Suspend. Let the new angle arrive. What you see from upside down this week is the thing you have been moving too fast to notice.

The Wheel

The Wheel of Fortune arriving third in this reading, after the Queen of Pentacles has asked whether you are nourishing yourself and the Hanged Man has asked you to suspend and see from a new angle, is the confirmation that what is happening right now is not incidental. The Wheel is the card of the larger cycle turning, of the forces that are bigger than any individual situation but that move through every individual situation simultaneously. In a collective consciousness reading at a Cancer new moon with three retrograde planets, the Wheel is naming what the collective is inside: a genuine turning point. Not a small shift. A cycle completing and a new one beginning, and the particular quality of this turning is that it is happening emotionally and internally rather than externally and visibly. The ground is moving underneath everything. The Queen of Pentacles and the Hanged Man together are the advice for navigating it: stay grounded, stay nourished, and change your angle before you try to change your circumstances.

Bottom of the Deck · Knight of Swords

The Knight of Swords at the foundation of this entire reading is the third time this card has appeared at the bottom of a collective consciousness reading in this column, and the deck is being very deliberate about placing him here again. The Knight of Swords is pure mental clarity in motion, the person who has identified what is true and is moving toward it at speed. And he is sitting underneath the Queen of Pentacles and the Hanged Man and the Wheel, which means he is the engine underneath all of the grounded nourishment and the deliberate pause and the great turning. Underneath the instruction to stop and see from a new angle, there is a clarity that has already arrived. Underneath the Wheel turning, there is a direction that is already known. The Knight of Swords at the bottom of this reading is not waiting for the retrograde to end or for the pause to be over before he knows where he is going. He already knows. He has known for a while. He is simply waiting for the Hanged Man to finish seeing what needs to be seen before he acts on it.

The cards as one voice

Here is what all four cards are saying together, as a single message to the collective field at the Cancer new moon.

You are being asked to do something that every instinct you have may be resisting right now: stop. Not permanently. Not passively. But with the deliberate, chosen quality of the Hanged Man who understands that the stopping is the work, that the new angle available in suspension is the very thing that makes the next move genuinely effective rather than just repeated effort in the same direction.

The Queen of Pentacles at the opening of this reading is asking whether you are tending yourself with the same quality of care you are extending to your situation. The Cancer new moon with three retrograde planets is the most inward of lunations, and the Queen is asking the most inward of questions: are you actually nourished right now? Not coping. Not managing. Nourished. Because the Wheel is turning and what comes next is going to need you resourced, not depleted.

The Wheel in the middle of this reading is not here to frighten. It is here to contextualise. The difficulty or complexity or uncertainty in your situation right now is part of a larger turning. The cycle that is completing needed to complete. What is beginning needed what is ending to end first. The Wheel does not ask for your permission. It asks for your conscious participation.

And the Knight of Swords underneath all of it is the most important thing this reading has to say: the clarity is already there. You do not need more information. You do not need the retrograde to end or the emotions to settle or the Wheel to finish turning before you know what is true in your situation. You already know. The Hanged Man is not asking you to find the clarity. He is asking you to let the suspension confirm what you already know from a perspective you could not access while you were moving.

Stop. Nourish yourself. Let the Wheel turn. Trust what you already know.

Mercury goes direct on July 23. The Knight of Swords will be ready to move the moment it does. So will you.

Subscribe now

In the era we’re living in - globally and here in Australia - we’re watching corruption, deceit, lack of competence and a complete lack of fairness play out in real time. People with the power to challenge wrongdoing are letting things slide through to the keeper, people with the power are unqualified, underqualified or straight up incompetent and it’s becoming a pattern we’re all exhausted by.

Every year, three times a year, NSW and QLD come together for arguably the best sporting event in this country. State of Origin isn’t just football. It’s identity. It’s history. It’s the story of two states who see the world differently. And for Queenslanders, it runs deeper because for decades NSW players were favoured in representative selections. It’s why we can openly say, “NSW just don’t get it.”

But we Queenslanders do.

I’m always the first to say “well done” when NSW genuinely outplays us. If they win fair and square, I’ll acknowledge it. But this series wasn’t that. In Game One, they were handed advantages that shut the door on Queensland before we even had a chance to settle. They won with us having one arm tied behind our back.

And last night? Ashley Klein and the bunker were despicable in their inability - or refusal - to do their job or like so many men who have the say in the world these days, were they incompetent employees who should never have been rostered on to do the job they get paid way too much for?

Because of the era we’re living in, my mind went straight to: this has to be a stitch‑up. The blatant incorrect calls. The forward passes let go. The zero ten‑in‑the‑bin for contact with the head. The absolute sham of ignoring six‑agains while NSW held players down and slowed the ruck. It was bias dressed up as officiating.

If Queensland ever received the advantages NSW got last night, I’d be embarrassed. I’d be the first to say “sorry about that.” There is no way I’d celebrate a series win without acknowledging how many calls went our way.

Momentum matters in rugby league. When officiating rips momentum out from under you, it changes the entire game.

Queensland might have tears today - but they’re tears of frustration. Because just like the reason Origin was created in the first place, we were dealt a biased hand last night. And it’s left me angry.

Then, leaving a comment on a local politicians page and the male NSW supporters responses to it - read them here- toxic masculinity anyone? I scrolled through to see if they said the same things on men’s comments. Together with Fox League asking Connor McGregor who he thought would win. Are these male decision makers in this sport dumb?

I am so tired of the lack of awareness and the incompetence.

One thing before I wrap up - NSW turned on their own team so hard this season. So profoundly hard it was barbaric. Even Laurie Daly stuck it to the jounro’s who were being so kind and proud of him that his team won the series. NSW will never get it, they will cheer when they win, rip throats out when they lose, have legends of the game crucifying the coach, but will never take up the job to coach themselves.

They are awful. Then, that’s the NSW Rugby League fan in a nutshell.

Yes, we move on. There’s always next year. The stats will never reveal the stitch‑up that occurred. But I’m tired - tired of cheaters, tired of liars, tired of dickhead players who think playing dirty is the only way to get an advantage. So profoundly tired of the incompetence.

Foy out.

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

Mercury Retrograde in Cancer · Week of July 6, 2026 · Feeling Your Way Through

We are in the deep heart of Mercury retrograde in Cancer right now. Mercury stationed retrograde on June 29 and does not go direct until July 23, with the cazimi, the moment when Mercury sits exactly between the Earth and the Sun in a kind of reset point, arriving on July 12. That means this week is the most inward, reflective, and emotionally saturated phase of the entire retrograde. Mercury in Cancer is tangling thought with emotion and the past with the present, which sounds disorienting, and it can be, but it is also offering something genuinely valuable: the opportunity to understand what your emotions have been trying to show you before you make your next move.

Neptune also stations retrograde in Aries this week on July 7, which adds a dissolving, clarifying quality to everything. The illusions we have been maintaining about ourselves and our situations are becoming harder to sustain, and that is not comfortable, but it is useful. What Neptune retrograde reveals tends to be what we most needed to see.

Meanwhile, Jupiter has just entered Leo, bringing its first full month of expansion, creativity, and visibility energy to a sign that has been quietly waiting for its turn. The promises and growth that Jupiter in Leo is building toward will peak at the full moon on July 29, when the Sun meets Jupiter in what astrologers are calling joyful and triumphant. That energy is coming. This week is the preparation for it, the clearing and the feeling through that makes the next chapter actually sustainable.

This week’s deck is full of potential and capacity. Two aces, the Magician, the Queen and King of Swords, Strength. This is not a spread of stuck or depleted people. It is a spread of capable people navigating a retrograde that is asking them to slow down and feel before they act. The 7 of Cups at the bottom of the deck as the overall is the Mercury retrograde fog sitting underneath all that capability, the field of too many feelings and visions and possibilities that the retrograde generates. The work this week is to stay with the feeling long enough to find the clarity inside it, not to push through the retrograde to get to the action, but to let the feeling be the navigation.

Read your Sun, your Rising, your Moon, and the sign that holds Cancer in your natal chart. Remember to also drink a shit-tonne of water too - these are emotional times - we need to keep our fluids up.

Let’s trot…

Amanda

Aries · Knight of Wands

Aries, the Knight of Wands during Mercury retrograde in Cancer is a tension worth sitting with honestly. The Knight of Wands wants to move, to begin, to ride hard toward whatever is calling. Mercury retrograde in your home and family sector is asking you to feel before you act, to let the emotional processing of Cancer season complete before you commit the direction. Jupiter has just entered Leo and is activating your creativity and visibility sector for the first time in over a decade, which means the momentum you are feeling is real and the direction matters enormously. This week is about knowing which direction the momentum is actually pointing before you give it everything you have.

The shadow is the Aries refusal to slow down for a retrograde that is specifically asking for slowness. Neptune stationing retrograde this week is dissolving illusions, including the one that says moving fast is the same as moving well. The Knight of Wands and Mercury retrograde together are asking: what are you actually riding toward, and have you felt it in the body, not just decided it in the mind?

Overall energy · 7 of Cups

Taurus · The Magician

Taurus, the Magician arriving in your house during Mercury retrograde in Cancer is one of the most significant placements in this week’s spread. The Magician is the archetype of all tools present, all capacity available, and the absolute readiness to begin. With Chiron in your sign continuing its work of surfacing old wounds around worth, the Magician this week is holding up a mirror: everything you need is already in front of you. The retrograde is not blocking your capacity. It is asking you to look clearly at what is already in your hands before you reach for something else. The tools are there. The question is whether you trust yourself enough to use them fully.

The shadow is the Mercury retrograde fog making the Magician’s table look emptier than it is, the retrograde amplifying the old Chiron wound that says your resources are insufficient or your timing is wrong. They are not. Look at the table again, clearly, and count what is actually there.

Overall energy · 7 of Cups

Gemini · Ace of Pentacles

Gemini, the Ace of Pentacles in your house during Mercury retrograde is asking you to receive something new in the material world with patience and genuine attention rather than the speed your sign usually prefers. An opportunity, a resource, a practical beginning is making itself available, and Mercury retrograde is specifically asking you to slow the evaluation down rather than making a quick decision about it. This is not the retrograde blocking the Ace. It is asking you to feel into it properly before you commit. The seed is real. The ground is good. Take the time to understand what you are planting.

The shadow is either moving too fast on the Ace because the excitement outpaces the discernment, or hesitating too long because Mercury retrograde has made every decision feel risky. Neither extreme serves the Ace of Pentacles energy. This one requires measured, grounded attention. Give it that and it will grow.

Overall energy · 7 of Cups

Cancer · 10 of Wands

Cancer, the 10 of Wands during Mercury retrograde in your own sign is the deck honouring something real before it asks anything of you: you have been carrying an enormous amount, and the retrograde is landing right in the middle of all of it, asking you to slow down and feel what you are carrying before you take another step. Mercury retrograde in Cancer specifically deepens reflection, sensitivity, and inner processing, and for you that processing is happening at the same time as a genuinely heavy load. The 10 of Wands figure can see the destination. You are close to setting some of this down. The retrograde is asking you to take that final stretch slowly and consciously.

The shadow is the Cancer tendency to keep carrying rather than asking for help, particularly during a retrograde that is heightening emotional sensitivity and making every exchange feel more loaded than usual. Mercury retrograde in your sign will resurface past patterns around asking for support. Notice which ones come up this week.

Overall energy · 7 of Cups

Leo · 8 of Wands

Leo, the 8 of Wands during Mercury retrograde is one of the most interesting tensions in this week’s spread. The 8 of Wands is the most kinetic card in the deck, the energy of things finally clearing and accelerating after a period of blockage. And it is landing in your house exactly as Jupiter enters your sign for the first time in over a decade, bringing its own massive expansion energy. The retrograde is the only thing tempering all of that momentum, and it is doing so deliberately. The 8 of Wands says something is about to move very quickly. Mercury retrograde says: not just yet. Make sure everything is in order before the acceleration begins, because once it does, there will not be time to go back and check.

The shadow is the frustration of holding 8 of Wands energy during a retrograde that is specifically designed to slow things down. Jupiter in your sign is building toward something genuinely significant on July 29. The retrograde is the preparation, not the obstacle. Trust the timing.

Overall energy · 7 of Cups

Virgo · Queen of Swords

Virgo, the Queen of Swords during Mercury retrograde in Cancer is one of the most clarifying and useful placements in this entire spread. Mercury is your ruling planet, and its retrograde through Cancer is asking all of us to feel our way through rather than think our way through. The Queen of Swords is the archetype of clarity deployed with warmth, of the person who has lived through enough to know what is true and does not confuse it with what is merely comfortable. During a retrograde that is tangling thought with emotion, the Queen of Swords is your greatest resource: the capacity to name what you are actually feeling rather than what you think you should be feeling. She is the clarity inside the emotion, not instead of it.

The shadow is using the Queen of Swords clarity to bypass the emotional processing that Mercury retrograde in Cancer is specifically asking for. The retrograde is not a problem to be solved with sharp thinking. It is a feeling to be moved through. Let the Queen hold the sword and also let herself feel what she knows.

Overall energy · 7 of Cups

Libra · Strength

Libra, Strength arriving in your house during Mercury retrograde in Cancer is the deck offering you something quietly essential: a reminder of what your actual power looks like when you are not performing it. Strength in the Light Seer’s Tarot is not force. It is the gentle, centred authority of someone who can hold something wild and frightened with enough steadiness that it calms. During a retrograde that is heightening emotional sensitivity across the collective, your card is asking you to be that quality of presence, for others and for yourself. The emotions surfacing this week, yours and the ones you are absorbing from around you, do not need to be managed. They need to be held with the kind of compassion this card embodies.

The shadow is the exhaustion underneath the composure, the Libra who is holding it together so beautifully on the outside while running on empty underneath. Mercury retrograde is asking for honesty about that. Strength is sustainable only when it is sourced from genuine inner resource rather than from the performance of having it together.

Overall energy · 7 of Cups

Scorpio · King of Swords

Scorpio, the King of Swords sitting alongside the Queen of Swords in neighbouring houses this week is a remarkable placement during Mercury retrograde in Cancer. The King of Swords is sovereign mental clarity, the person whose thinking is no longer clouded by unprocessed emotion, who can see what is true and act from that seeing with precision and without hesitation. During a retrograde that is tangling thought with emotion and the past with the present, the King of Swords is your north star: the clarity that remains available when you have done enough of the emotional processing that Cancer season is asking for. You are not there yet. But this card is showing you where the retrograde is taking you.

The shadow is using the King of Swords to bypass the Cancer season emotional processing entirely, treating the retrograde as an inconvenient obstacle to mental clarity rather than as the path toward it. Jupiter is now activating your career and legacy sector. The clarity this retrograde is building toward is the exact clarity that what comes next is going to need.

Overall energy · 7 of Cups

Sagittarius · 4 of Wands

Sagittarius, the 4 of Wands during Mercury retrograde in Cancer is a genuinely welcome placement. This is the card of the threshold moment, of homecoming, of the milestone worth marking before the next phase of building begins. With Jupiter, your ruling planet, now in Leo and activating your expansion and adventure sector for the first time in over a decade, the 4 of Wands is asking you to honour what has been completed before you throw yourself into what comes next. Mercury retrograde in your intimacy and transformation sector is doing its own quiet work of releasing what no longer belongs in the next chapter. Let it. The 4 of Wands says there is something here worth celebrating first.

The shadow is rushing past the completion to get to the Jupiter in Leo excitement. The retrograde is specifically asking Sagittarius to use this period to revisit, release, and reflect in the intimacy and transformation sector before the next adventure begins. The celebration is real. So is the releasing. Both deserve their time.

Overall energy · 7 of Cups

Capricorn · Ace of Swords

Capricorn, the Ace of Swords during Mercury retrograde in Cancer is one of the most striking placements in this week’s spread. The Ace of Swords is pure breakthrough clarity, a truth that arrives suddenly and cannot be unfelt once it has landed. Mercury retrograde in Cancer is specifically asking all of us to slow down and feel before we act, and the Ace of Swords arriving in your house during this retrograde is not asking you to act on the clarity immediately. It is asking you to receive it, to let the breakthrough be a breakthrough before you turn it into a plan. This is a week for understanding something new about your situation with genuine depth. The action that follows this clarity will be more precise because you waited.

The shadow is either moving on the Ace of Swords clarity too quickly during a retrograde that specifically asks for reflection before action, or dismissing it because the timing feels off. Mercury retrograde in Cancer is not blocking this clarity. It is ripening it. Let it ripen.

Overall energy · 7 of Cups

Aquarius · 6 of Pentacles

Aquarius, the 6 of Pentacles during Mercury retrograde in Cancer is asking you to look honestly at the exchanges in your life right now, at what is flowing in both directions and whether the flow is genuinely mutual. With Jupiter newly in Leo activating your relationship and partnership sector for the first time in over a decade, the 6 of Pentacles is specifically relevant to how you are showing up in the connections that matter most to you. Are you giving from genuine abundance or from the need to be needed? Are you receiving with genuine gratitude or with the weight of obligation? Mercury retrograde is the perfect time for this audit because it strips away the performance and shows what is actually happening underneath.

The shadow is the Aquarius tendency to intellectualise the exchange rather than feel into it. Mercury retrograde in Cancer is asking for emotional honesty about the give and take in your relationships. The 6 of Pentacles is balanced when it is felt as well as managed. This week, feel it.

Overall energy · 7 of Cups

Pisces · 2 of Wands

Pisces, the 2 of Wands closing this zodiac spread during Mercury retrograde in Cancer is a genuinely interesting placement. The 2 of Wands is the card of the person standing at the edge of their own map with the world in their hands, in a genuine moment of choice about where to go next. With Neptune, your ruling planet, stationing retrograde in Aries this week and dissolving illusions that have been maintaining themselves quietly, the 2 of Wands is asking you to choose from what is actually real rather than from what you have been hoping is real. Mercury retrograde will resurface the past. Neptune retrograde will dissolve the fog. Together they are doing the clearing that makes this choice possible.

The shadow is the Pisces tendency to let the 2 of Wands moment become a prolonged gazing at the horizon rather than an actual choosing of a direction. Mercury retrograde does not demand action. It demands clarity of intent. Know which direction you are pointing before the retrograde ends on July 23. The 2 of Wands can wait that long. The clarity cannot.

Overall energy · 7 of Cups

Subscribe now

The Topic Reading · Collective Consciousness · Mercury Retrograde in Cancer

We are not as separate as we think we are. Collective consciousness is the idea that underneath our individual experiences, there is a shared field of energy and emotion that we are all moving through at the same time. You might be navigating something that looks completely different to the person next to you, but the underlying themes, the feelings, the push and pull of it, are often strikingly similar across all of us at once.

This week that shared field is sitting inside the deep heart of Mercury retrograde in Cancer, the most inward and emotionally saturated phase of the retrograde, where thought and feeling are tangled together and the past keeps arriving in the present. Before you read on, bring something with you. A situation, a relationship, a decision that has been taking up space. Set yourself into it. Then read the cards below as a voice speaking directly to what you are carrying. This was pulled for the field we are all swimming in right now, which means it was pulled for you.

Cards: Ace of Cups · 9 of Cups · 5 of Pentacles · BOD: The Sun

Ace of Cups

The Ace of Cups opens this collective consciousness reading with something the collective has been quietly waiting for: a genuine emotional beginning. This is the pure overflowing of a heart that is opening again, the very first moment of receptivity returning after a period of contraction and processing and carrying too much for too long. In the context of whatever situation you have brought to this reading, the Ace of Cups is not describing something that is coming. It is describing something that is already happening, an opening that is already underway whether you have fully registered it yet or not. Mercury retrograde in Cancer has been doing its deep emotional processing work, tangling thought with feeling and past with present, and the Ace of Cups at the opening of this reading is what that processing is producing: a heart that is beginning to be ready to receive again. You do not have to force this open. You just have to notice that it already is.

9 of Cups

The 9 of Cups arriving immediately after the Ace of Cups is one of the most generous and affirming sequences the deck could have placed here. Where the Ace of Cups is the beginning of emotional abundance, the 9 of Cups is the fullness of it, the wish card, the card of someone who looks at what they have and feels, genuinely and in the body rather than just in the mind, that it is enough. More than enough. Together these two cards are telling us something important about what is available in the collective field right now, even inside a Mercury retrograde that has been generating fog and feeling and the resurfacing of old things: the emotional abundance is real. The satisfaction is real. The opening and the fullness are both genuinely present. The question the 9 of Cups is placing alongside the Ace is this: can you feel it? Not can you acknowledge it intellectually. Can you actually feel it in your situation right now, underneath whatever difficulty or depletion has been present?

5 of Pentacles

After two cards of genuine emotional abundance, the 5 of Pentacles arrives and names what is preventing it from landing. This is the card of the people standing in the cold outside the warmly lit window, of the feeling of being left out or left behind or without the resources the situation requires, of the isolation that becomes self-reinforcing when the habit of managing alone has become more familiar than the vulnerability of asking for help. In the context of Mercury retrograde in Cancer tangling everything with the past, the 5 of Pentacles is asking a specific question: is the scarcity or exclusion you are feeling in your situation right now actually current, or is it an old feeling that the retrograde has resurfaced and is presenting as present-tense? The 5 of Pentacles always carries the detail that gets missed: the door to warmth is right there. The figure is standing next to it. The distance between the cold and the warmth is smaller than it appears from where you are standing.

Bottom of the Deck · The Sun

The Sun at the bottom of this reading is the second time in recent weeks that this card has sat at the foundation of our collective consciousness reading, and that is not a coincidence. The deck keeps placing the Sun underneath everything because the collective keeps needing to be reminded of the same thing: the light is not coming. It is already there. It has been there the whole time, underneath the Mercury retrograde fog and the emotional processing and the 5 of Pentacles cold and the question of whether you can feel the abundance that the Ace and the 9 of Cups are describing. The Sun at the foundation of this reading is the most honest statement the deck can make: underneath your situation, underneath the difficulty and the depletion and the old feelings the retrograde has resurfaced, there is warmth and radiance and the particular joy of being genuinely, unapologetically alive. That is what is holding everything up. That is what the situation, in all its complexity, is ultimately in service of.

The cards as one voice

Here is what all four cards are saying together, as a single message to the collective field in the deep heart of Mercury retrograde in Cancer.

Something is opening in you. The Ace of Cups is not a future promise. It is a current reality. The emotional capacity that has been contracting through a long season of carrying and processing and defending is beginning to open again, quietly and without fanfare, the way the best things tend to arrive during a retrograde: not loudly, but genuinely.

The 9 of Cups beside it is telling you that what is available in your situation right now is more abundant than the 5 of Pentacles feeling has been letting you believe. And the 5 of Pentacles is naming that feeling honestly and without judgment: there is a place in your situation where you have been feeling cold, excluded, without enough. That feeling is real. And the retrograde has been amplifying it by tangling it with every past moment you have ever felt the same way, making the current cold feel like a permanent condition rather than a temporary one.

Here is what the Sun at the bottom of this reading is saying, for the second time in our column, because apparently the collective needed to hear it again.

The warmth is not behind the window. You are not standing outside it. The door the 5 of Pentacles figure is standing next to has always been unlocked. The abundance the Ace and the 9 of Cups are describing is not something you need to earn your way back into. It is the ground state. It is what is actually true underneath the retrograde fog and the old feelings and the habit of standing in the cold because it is familiar.

The Sun has been at the foundation of this collective reading for two weeks now. It is not going anywhere. It is waiting for you to stop looking at the window and look at the door.

Open it. Walk in. The warmth is yours.

Subscribe now

Happy Sunday from SEQ my friend,

You may have been feeling the build up to this full moon in Capricorn happening tomorrowish - depending where you are in the world and it’s opposite some of other transits in Cancer - so maybe you have the irrits, maybe life couldn’t be dreamier, maybe you’re hermitting so hard and loving it, you might be negotiating with yourself that never peopling again is a potential option for you.

Whatever you’re living at the moment, I do hope this week’s reading and particularly the collective consciousness reading below fills you with some peace and or a direction you know you have to go in.

One theme that is on repeat and loud is that we MUST cut loose our old stories - they’re not relevant anymore. Now I know when it comes to trauma and how it drives your nervous system, that is easier said than done, so just become a savant at grace for self and if you fall back a step, love yourself anyway and take another step forward.

Alrighty then my friend,
Let’s trot….
Amanda

Subscribe now

The Strawberry Full Moon in Capricorn · June 29, 2026 · The Cosmic Audit

Tomorrow’s full moon has one of the sweetest names in the lunar calendar and one of the most no-nonsense energies. The Strawberry Full Moon peaks on June 29 at 28 degrees Capricorn, the first full moon of summer and a significant midyear marker. Its name comes from the Indigenous peoples of North America, who used it to mark the brief and precious ripening of wild strawberries, a reminder that sweetness is seasonal, that abundance has a timing, and that you have to show up for the harvest or miss it entirely.

Capricorn is ruled by Saturn, the planet of structure, discipline, long-term thinking, and honest accounting. This full moon is not interested in your vision board. It is interested in your output. It is illuminating the Cancer-Capricorn axis, which is the axis of home and heart on one side and career and legacy on the other, and it is asking all of us to look honestly at whether we are building something that can hold both. Not choosing between the private self and the public self, but finding a way to structure a life that genuinely supports them together.

Saturn in Aries is squaring this full moon from a third corner, adding pressure and asking for honest accountability. Mercury stations retrograde in Cancer on the same day, meaning the emotional themes that have been surfacing during the pre-shadow period are now entering a deeper phase of reconsideration. Former partnerships may resurface. Old wounds that need mending will make themselves known. And Neptune in Aries is adding a layer of ambition and dream-illumination to the whole picture, asking us to look within for what genuinely makes us happy, possibly something that began as a childhood dream and is still waiting to be fully claimed.

The Emperor sits at the bottom of this deck as the overall energy, which is Saturn’s own archetype in tarot, the embodiment of structure, authority built from genuine experience, and the long view that does not flinch from what needs to be done. The deck and the sky are in complete alignment this week. This is a reading that does the audit with you. Read your Sun, your Rising, your Moon, and the sign that holds Gemini in your natal chart.

Aries · Knight of Wands

Aries, the Knight of Wands opening this spread on the eve of a Capricorn full moon is a compelling tension to sit with. The Knight of Wands is all fire and forward momentum, the part of you that wants to move, begin, and ride hard toward the thing calling you. The Capricorn full moon is asking: is that movement building something real, or is it burning energy without structure? With Saturn in your sign squaring this lunation, the full moon is landing directly in your world with a specific question about the relationship between your passion and your discipline. The Knight of Wands energy is genuine and worth honouring. The full moon is asking you to put a structure around it that lets it last.

The shadow is the restlessness that mistakes movement for progress. Saturn in Aries squaring this full moon is asking Aries specifically to grow up in the best possible sense of that phrase, to take the fire and build something with it that can withstand more than one season. The Knight is the beginning of the King. This full moon is asking when you are ready to make that transition.

Overall energy · The Emperor

Taurus · 4 of Wands

Taurus, the 4 of Wands during a Capricorn full moon is one of the most genuinely affirming placements in this week’s spread. This is the card of the threshold moment, of homecoming, of the milestone that deserves to be marked and celebrated before the next phase of building begins. With Chiron newly in your sign opening questions about worth and what you genuinely value, the 4 of Wands is telling you something important: something has been completed. Something worth acknowledging. The Capricorn full moon is the midyear audit, and for Taurus the audit is showing a genuine result. Let yourself feel that fully before the next season of effort begins.

The shadow is the Taurus habit of minimising what has been built, of checking the list of what is still unfinished rather than standing in what is done. The 4 of Wands is a threshold card. You cannot enter the next phase fully if you have not honoured the completion of this one. Stand in the doorway for a moment. You earned it.

Overall energy · The Emperor

Gemini · 9 of Swords

Gemini, the 9 of Swords arriving in your house on the eve of Mercury stationing retrograde in your neighbouring sign is the deck being exceptionally honest about what is happening in the mental and emotional landscape right now. The 9 of Swords is the card of the anxious mind in the small hours, of the thoughts that amplify and spiral when the daylight structures that usually contain them are absent. The light here is that the Capricorn full moon is specifically a midyear audit, a moment of grounding and honest assessment, which is precisely the medicine for 9 of Swords energy. The thoughts are not reality. The full moon is asking you to write them down and assess them with Capricorn’s clear, structural eye.

The shadow is the Gemini tendency to generate more thoughts about the anxious thoughts, the analysis of the anxiety becoming its own form of amplification. Mercury retrograde in Cancer begins tomorrow. Before it does, write down what is actually worrying you. Get it out of the spinning mind and onto the page where it can be seen clearly. The 9 of Swords loses most of its power in daylight.

Overall energy · The Emperor

Cancer · Queen of Wands

Cancer, the Queen of Wands landing in your house as the Sun sits in your sign and Mercury stations retrograde here tomorrow is one of the most powerful and clarifying placements in this entire spread. The full moon in Capricorn is illuminating your axis directly, shining its light on the tension between your private emotional world and your public creative authority. And the Queen of Wands is answering that illumination with complete confidence: you are allowed to be both. Warm and fierce. Emotionally deep and creatively certain. The Cancer-Capricorn full moon is not asking you to choose between the softness of your sign and the fire of this card. It is asking you to integrate them, and the Queen of Wands shows you exactly what that integration looks like.

The shadow is the old story stepping forward as Mercury retrograde begins in your sign, the one that says you have to earn the right to be this visible, this certain, this unapologetically yourself. Mercury retrograde is going to revisit a lot of old stories over the next few weeks. This is one worth looking at directly and deciding you are done with it.

Overall energy · The Emperor

Leo · The Chariot

Leo, the Chariot during a Capricorn full moon that is being squared by Saturn is one of the most energising and well-timed placements in this week’s spread. The Chariot is the card of directed will, of the person who has brought their inner competing forces into alignment and is now moving with genuine purpose toward a clear destination. The Capricorn full moon is doing the audit on your output and trajectory, and the Chariot is the evidence that the direction is right. You know where you are going. You have harnessed what needed to be harnessed. Now the full moon is asking you to move with the sustained commitment that Capricorn energy rewards rather than the burst of energy and pause cycle that Leo can fall into.

The shadow is the Chariot energy becoming force rather than direction, the Leo will pushing so hard toward the destination that the people alongside you in the vehicle get left behind or run over. Saturn in Aries squaring this full moon is asking about sustainable structures. Make sure the way you are moving is something you can maintain, not just something you can initiate.

Overall energy · The Emperor

Virgo · The Star

Virgo, the Star arriving in your house during a midyear audit full moon is the most tender and important placement in this entire spread for you personally. After what astrologers are noting as a particularly intense period for Virgo given the Nodal activations in your sign, the Star is not a small card to receive. This is the card of hope that has survived genuine difficulty, of the quiet restoration of faith after something genuinely hard. The Capricorn full moon is doing the audit, and the Star is your audit result: what you have been tending, the inner work, the showing up, the maintaining of integrity through a demanding season, has produced something real. You are more oriented toward something worth moving toward than you have felt in a while.

The shadow is the Virgo tendency to intellectualise the hope rather than feel it, to assess the Star rather than stand under it. This is not a card for analysis this week. It is a card for receiving. Let the restoration be real in the body, not just acknowledged by the mind.

Overall energy · The Emperor

Libra · 10 of Swords

Libra, the 10 of Swords during a Capricorn full moon that is being called a cosmic midyear audit is the deck doing something important: it is naming a completion that the full moon is here to officially mark. Something has ended. Something that perhaps went on longer than it should have, or that concluded in a way that was more painful than expected, but that is now genuinely, completely, irrevocably done. The Capricorn full moon is not asking you to revisit it. It is asking you to release it under this lunation and direct the considerable Libra intelligence and relational gift toward what comes next. The sun is already rising in the background of the 10 of Swords. It always is.

The shadow is the Libra tendency to keep the ending socially palatable, to manage the story of it rather than fully acknowledging what it actually cost. The full moon is asking for honesty, not performance. Let the 10 of Swords be what it is: a real ending that deserves real acknowledgement before you move on.

Overall energy · The Emperor

Scorpio · 2 of Cups

Scorpio, the 2 of Cups arriving in your house during a full moon illuminating the Cancer-Capricorn axis of home and legacy is a genuinely beautiful placement. This is the card of real mutual connection, of two people or two parts of a situation meeting each other honestly and choosing each other from that honest place. With Mercury stationing retrograde in Cancer tomorrow, the emotional themes of genuine reciprocity and the question of who truly sees you are coming into sharp focus. The 2 of Cups in this lunation is asking about the real connections in your life, the ones built on genuine mutual recognition, and whether you are tending them with the attention they deserve.

The shadow is the Scorpio intensity that can either go very deep in connection or stay completely hidden behind the surface, with not much in between. The 2 of Cups asks for the middle ground: genuine openness without dissolution of self. Mercury retrograde may resurface a connection worth revisiting. This card says it is worth being open to that.

Overall energy · The Emperor

Sagittarius · King of Pentacles

Sagittarius, the King of Pentacles during a Capricorn full moon midyear audit is landing in your house with the particular authority of someone who has been doing the long, patient, consistent work of building something that lasts. This is the archetype of material mastery, of the person who knows how to tend what has been created with quiet confidence and genuine competence. Neptune in Aries is illuminating ambitions and childhood dreams during this lunation, and the King of Pentacles is asking which of those dreams you are willing to build toward with the steady, grounded commitment this archetype embodies rather than just the inspiration of them.

The shadow is the Sagittarius restlessness that can treat the King of Pentacles as a limitation rather than a resource. The full moon audit is asking: are you building from your genuine values and long-term vision, or are you chasing the next horizon before the current one has been fully developed? The King of Pentacles has a very specific answer to that question. So do you.

Overall energy · The Emperor

Capricorn · 9 of Cups

Capricorn, this full moon is in your sign, which means the lights are on brightest in your house this week, and the card that arrives to meet that illumination is the 9 of Cups, the wish card, one of the most genuinely satisfied cards in the entire deck. This is the card of someone who looks at what they have and feels, deeply and truly, that it is enough. That it is more than enough. On the night of your own full moon, during a midyear audit that is specifically asking whether you are building something that supports both your emotional life and your professional legacy, the 9 of Cups is the answer: you are. Something in your world right now is genuinely fulfilling in a way worth pausing to register. Let yourself feel it.

The shadow is the Capricorn habit of turning even genuine satisfaction into a launchpad for the next achievement before the current one has been fully inhabited. The 9 of Cups is not asking you to stop building. It is asking you to feel what you have built before you begin the next phase. The full moon is the moment for that feeling. Be in it.

Overall energy · The Emperor

Aquarius · 7 of Cups

Aquarius, the 7 of Cups during a Capricorn full moon that is specifically asking for honest assessment and clear-eyed accountability is naming something directly: the number of visions, possibilities, and directions you are currently entertaining is making the kind of grounded, structural decision that this full moon requires genuinely difficult. The 7 of Cups is not a criticism. It is a diagnosis. And the Capricorn full moon is the perfect medicine for it: not another vision, but an audit of the ones already in play. Which of them is actually real? Which has roots? Which is you, and which is the fog?

The shadow is the Aquarius tendency to treat the proliferation of ideas as a sign of vitality rather than as a signal that discernment is needed. Pluto in your sign has been asking for years what is genuinely worth transforming toward. The Capricorn full moon is asking you to apply that same Plutonic depth to the 7 of Cups this week. Choose one. Build it. Let the others be what they are: interesting thoughts that were not the direction.

Overall energy · The Emperor

Pisces · The Tower

Pisces, the Tower closing this zodiac spread on the eve of a Capricorn full moon midyear audit is the most significant placement of the week, and it deserves to be received with the full respect the card carries. Something is falling or has fallen, and the Capricorn full moon is the light under which you are being asked to look clearly at what is coming down and why. The Tower does not arrive to punish. It arrives because what was built on an unsound foundation could not hold, and the clearing of it is the only way to reach the ground that can actually support what wants to be built next. Neptune in Aries illuminating ambitions and childhood dreams during this lunation is telling you what the Tower is making room for.

The shadow is the Pisces impulse to spiritualise the Tower before the practical reality of it has been fully acknowledged. What has actually fallen? What does the cleared ground actually look like? The Capricorn full moon is asking for the honest, structural assessment before the visionary one. Get the audit done first. Then dream.

Overall energy · The Emperor

Subscribe now

The Topic Reading · Collective Consciousness · Strawberry Full Moon in Capricorn

We are not as separate as we think we are. Collective consciousness is the idea that underneath our individual experiences, there is a shared field of energy and emotion that we are all moving through at the same time. You might be navigating something that looks completely different to the person next to you, but the underlying themes, the feelings, the push and pull of it, are often strikingly similar across all of us at once.

This week that shared field is sitting inside the Strawberry Full Moon in Capricorn, a midyear audit asking all of us to look honestly at what we are building and whether it is serving the whole of who we are. Before you read on, bring something with you. A situation, a relationship, a decision that has been taking up space. Set yourself into it. Then read the cards below as a voice speaking directly to what you are carrying. This was pulled for the field we are all swimming in right now, which means it was pulled for you.

Cards: 10 of Pentacles · 4 of Cups · Ace of Cups · BOD: Page of Cups

10 of Pentacles

The 10 of Pentacles opens this collective consciousness reading with the longest view in the deck. This is the card of legacy, of something built across time that is now standing fully in its own weight, of the question that the Capricorn full moon is also asking in its own way: what are you building and who is it for? The 10 of Pentacles is not just about personal abundance. It is about what persists beyond the individual, what you leave behind in the world and in the people who come after you. In the context of whatever situation you have brought to this reading, this card is asking the deepest version of the question available: is what you are doing here part of something that matters beyond this moment? Does it connect backward to what you came from and forward to what you want to leave? The Capricorn full moon audit and the 10 of Pentacles are asking the same thing in different languages. Not are you busy. Not are you productive. Are you building something worth having built.

4 of Cups

After the expansive legacy question of the 10 of Pentacles, the 4 of Cups arrives and names something that is quietly true for a lot of people in the collective right now: a kind of inward withdrawal, a flatness, a sitting with arms folded while something is being extended and not quite being able to reach for it. This is not ingratitude. It is not depression exactly. It is the particular emotional exhaustion of someone who has been carrying a great deal and whose capacity to receive has temporarily contracted. With Mercury now stationing retrograde in Cancer and the Capricorn full moon illuminating what has and has not been built, the 4 of Cups is naming the emotional weather underneath all of that structural assessment: some of us are too depleted right now to feel excited about what is being offered, even when what is being offered is genuinely good. The 10 of Pentacles asked about legacy. The 4 of Cups is asking whether you have enough left in you to want it.

Ace of Cups

The Ace of Cups arriving after the withdrawal and depletion of the 4 of Cups is one of the most significant card sequences this collective reading has produced. The Ace of Cups is pure emotional beginning, the overflowing of a heart that has opened again after a period of contraction, the very first moment of genuine receptivity returning after it has been absent for a while. This is not a forced or manufactured opening. It is the organic return of the capacity to feel, to receive, to be moved by what is actually available. In the context of whatever you are sitting with, the Ace of Cups is telling you that the opening is happening. The depletion that the 4 of Cups named is not permanent. Something new is beginning to flow, and it has the quality of grace rather than effort. You do not have to manufacture this. You just have to be willing to let it arrive.

Bottom of the Deck · Page of Cups

The Page of Cups at the foundation of this entire reading is holding the 10 of Pentacles and the 4 of Cups and the Ace of Cups up from underneath, and what she is holding them up with is something the collective has been in danger of forgetting during a long season of structural challenge and sustained effort: wonder. The Page of Cups is the part of us that is still genuinely curious about what we feel, still willing to be surprised by our own emotional life, still open to the possibility that something tender and unexpected is about to arrive sideways and change everything. She is the emotional innocence that sits underneath the legacy question and the depletion and the returning receptivity. She is the reason any of this matters. The Capricorn full moon is doing the audit. The Page of Cups is the thing the audit is in service of: the living, feeling, wondering self that all of the building and legacy and structure is ultimately meant to protect and nourish.

The cards as one voice

Here is what all four cards are saying together, as a single message to the collective field under the Strawberry Full Moon in Capricorn.

You have been building something that matters. The 10 of Pentacles at the opening of this reading is not a wish or a future state. It is a recognition of what is already real, of the legacy energy that is already present in what you have created and contributed and become. The Capricorn full moon sees it clearly even when you cannot.

But the 4 of Cups names what has happened to you in the process of all that building: you have become too depleted to fully feel what you have made. The offering that the world is extending, the warmth, the recognition, the genuine nourishment that is available, is not landing because the capacity to receive it has temporarily contracted. This is not a character flaw. It is what sustained effort without sufficient restoration produces in a human being.

The Ace of Cups is the turning point of this reading. Something is opening again. The receptivity is returning. Not because you forced it or worked for it, but because the human heart has its own timing and its own resilience, and the Page of Cups at the foundation of everything is the proof of that: underneath the depletion, underneath the withdrawal, underneath even the legacy and the long view, there is still a part of you that is curious, that is open, that is genuinely willing to be surprised by what comes next.

The Strawberry Full Moon in Capricorn is doing the audit. The Page of Cups is reminding you what the audit is for.

Not the legacy in the abstract. Not the structure for its own sake. But the feeling self at the centre of all of it, the one who wonders and receives and begins again, who is still here, still open, still holding the cup up toward whatever arrives next.

Let it be filled.

Subscribe now

Welcome to this week’s session.

Three big cheers for my lovey today. It’s his birthday and he’s on the doorstep of a big life change as he goes on long service leave in a couple of weeks to take him into official retirement in 2027. I can’t help but notice the big changes in the astrology we are all living through at the moment and how life choices and events show up, even for those who don’t follow astrology.

I have had a few lessons again about what it looks like when I ignore my higher voice and how that pans out for me when I do ignore it and also going within when it comes to apply for my next full time job and searching for a place where my values and passion belong. It’s been hard not to go into old story and stay in faith and trust, and that’s what this era is asking of us. Let go of the old history, the old thoughts, the old wounds. They aren’t relevant anymore, unless we make them relevant. You know that favourite saying of Brene Brown’s - don’t look for evidence of where you don’t belong, you’ll always find it. It’s the same thing with other wounds - don’t look for evidence of [enter your story to date], you’ll always find it.

A few things worth noting about this zodiac tarot spread. The cups concentration is extraordinary, Ace of Cups, 5 of Cups, 6 of Cups, plus the Moon and the Star, this is one of the most emotionally saturated decks we have pulled in this column. Completely aligned with Cancer season and a Mercury retrograde shadow that is all water this year. The Star in Aquarius after months of Plutonic intensity in that sign is genuinely moving, the deck giving Aquarius a moment of real restored faith. And the Knight of Wands at the bottom holding all that water up is the engine of this season: the forward impulse that sits beneath even the most tender and inward of moments.

Anyway, let’s get into the session and don’t forget to scroll for the collective four card reading - I’m going to be reading back over it myself with my query to see if it’s speaking to me in how to progress through the week ahead.

Let’s trot!
Amanda

Subscribe now

Cancer Season · Mercury Rx Shadow in Cancer · Chiron into Taurus · Week of June 22, 2026

Welcome to Cancer season. The Sun moved into Cancer on June 21 at the solstice, and with it came a collective exhale, an invitation to come home, to soften, to feel what has been accumulating beneath all the fire and momentum of the past few weeks.

The sky this week is doing something worth paying close attention to. Mercury is already in its pre-retrograde shadow in Cancer, which means the emotional themes surfacing right now are the exact themes that will be revisited and deepened when Mercury stations retrograde on June 29. What you are feeling this week is not random. It is a preview of the inner work that the retrograde is preparing you for. All three Mercury retrograde periods in 2026 are in water signs, which means this entire year is designed around deep emotional recalibration rather than the usual logistical frustrations people associate with retrogrades. The disruptions this season are more likely to be emotional than practical: heightened sensitivity, the resurfacing of past relationships, and a deep psychological processing that asks more of you than a delayed flight ever could.

Chiron, the wounded healer, moved into Taurus on June 19 after years in Aries. This is significant. Where Chiron in Aries asked us to heal our relationship with identity and personal power, Chiron in Taurus is now surfacing wounds around worth, security, and abundance, particularly those that come from family conditioning and ancestral patterns. The question Chiron in Taurus is asking all of us is this: do the values you are living by actually belong to you, or are they inherited patterns that have never been consciously examined? Your healing in this area becomes medicine for others walking the same path.

This week’s deck is overwhelmingly emotional. Cups dominate the spread alongside the Moon, the Star, and some of the most tender and honest minor arcana in the deck. The Knight of Wands at the bottom holding it all up is the only significant fire in the reading, the restless forward energy sitting beneath all that water, reminding us that even in the softest seasons, something in us is still moving. Read your Sun, your Rising, your Moon, and the sign that holds Gemini in your natal chart.

Aries · Ace of Pentacles

Aries, the Ace of Pentacles opening this spread during Cancer season and Chiron’s first week in Taurus is one of the most grounded and promising placements you could have received. The Ace of Pentacles is the seed of something genuinely new in the material world, a beginning that carries real potential rather than wishful thinking. With Chiron freshly in Taurus activating questions of self-worth and what you genuinely value, this card is asking you to receive a new opportunity or resource with both hands and with the understanding that you deserve what is being offered. The Ace is not asking you to earn this. It is asking you to begin.

The shadow is the Chiron in Taurus wound stepping forward at exactly the moment the Ace arrives: the belief, perhaps inherited, that abundance is not quite for you, that the thing being offered must have a catch, that you should wait until you are more ready or more worthy. You are ready. Receive the Ace.

Overall energy · Knight of Wands

Taurus · 3 of Wands

Taurus, the 3 of Wands in your house during Chiron’s first week in your sign is a genuinely encouraging placement. Chiron in Taurus is beginning its work of surfacing old wounds around worth and security, and the 3 of Wands is the card of the person who has already done enough of that work to be standing at the edge of the horizon watching their ships come in. Something you have been building is arriving. The effort is paying off. And Chiron’s presence in your sign is not here to undermine that arrival. It is here to ensure that what you build next is built on a foundation of genuine self-worth rather than inherited scarcity thinking.

The shadow is the Chiron wound whispering that the ships on the horizon are not really for you, that something will go wrong before they dock. Notice that voice. It is old and it is not yours. The 3 of Wands says the ships are real. Let them land.

Overall energy · Knight of Wands

Gemini · King of Pentacles

Gemini, the King of Pentacles arriving in your house during Cancer season and Mercury retrograde shadow in your neighbouring sign is a deeply stabilising placement. This is the archetype of mastery in the material world, of someone who has built something lasting through patient, consistent, deeply competent effort. With Mercury about to retrograde through Cancer, the invitation for Gemini right now is to trust what you have already built rather than second-guessing it. The King of Pentacles does not panic during a Mercury retrograde. He knows what he has made and he tends it with quiet confidence.

The shadow is the rigidity that can come with the King of Pentacles energy, the holding of what has been built so carefully that there is no room for anything new to grow alongside it. Mercury retrograde in Cancer is asking all of us to feel our way through the next few weeks rather than manage them. Let some of that King of Pentacles certainty soften enough to let the emotional information of Cancer season in.

Overall energy · Knight of Wands

Cancer · 5 of Swords

Cancer, the Sun is in your sign and Mercury is in its pre-retrograde shadow here too, and the card that arrives to meet all of that is the 5 of Swords, which is honest and which you can handle. There has been a conflict or a tension in your world, something that has left people holding things they did not expect to be holding when it started. The 5 of Swords during Cancer season and Mercury retrograde shadow is doing something very specific: it is asking you to look at what was said or done, clearly and without the emotional amplification that Cancer season can bring, and decide consciously what you are going to carry forward from it.

The shadow is the Cancer tendency to hold the wound of the conflict longer than the conflict itself lasted, to replay it in the emotional memory with the volume turned up. Mercury retrograde shadow in your sign is going to revisit these themes whether you plan for it or not. Better to look at them clearly now than to be ambushed by them on June 29.

Overall energy · Knight of Wands

Leo · 4 of Pentacles

Leo, the 4 of Pentacles during Cancer season and Chiron’s fresh move into Taurus is asking you something that the Chiron transit is amplifying considerably: what are you holding, and is the holding coming from genuine wisdom or from an old wound around security? The 4 of Pentacles carries real intelligence about boundaries and self-preservation, and in the context of a Chiron in Taurus opening questions about inherited values and self-worth, this card is asking you to examine whether what you are protecting is genuinely yours or whether you are guarding something that someone else convinced you was scarce a long time ago.

The shadow is the grip that has become so habitual it no longer feels like a choice. Cancer season is specifically about coming home to what truly nourishes. What you are holding so tightly right now, does it nourish you? Or has it become the thing that prevents the nourishment from reaching you?

Overall energy · Knight of Wands

Virgo · The Moon

Virgo, the Moon landing in your house during Cancer season and Mercury retrograde shadow is one of the most significant placements in this entire spread. The Moon is the card of the subconscious, of what moves beneath the surface of the rational mind, of the intuitive knowing that exists in the place logic cannot quite reach. With Mercury about to retrograde through Cancer, the emotional and psychological processing that is happening underneath your usual analytical clarity is the most important information available to you right now. Something is surfacing, and it has been trying to surface for a while. Cancer season is creating the container for it to finally arrive.

The shadow is the Virgo habit of trying to analyse what the Moon is showing rather than simply feeling it. The Moon does not yield to analysis. She yields to presence and to the willingness to sit in the not-quite-knowing without immediately categorising it. This week, let the feeling be the information.

Overall energy · Knight of Wands

Libra · 7 of Cups

Libra, the 7 of Cups during Cancer season and Mercury retrograde shadow is naming something gently but clearly: the number of options and possibilities and visions you are currently holding is making it very difficult to feel anything clearly, which is the opposite of what this emotional season is asking for. The 7 of Cups during a Mercury pre-retrograde is not asking you to choose from the fog. It is asking you to let the fog settle first. Cancer season is the season of feeling your way home. You cannot feel your way home when every possible home is floating in front of you simultaneously.

The shadow is the Libra tendency to hold all options open indefinitely, the comfortable paralysis of too much possibility. Mercury retrograde shadow in Cancer is going to revisit every unresolved decision from the past few weeks. Do yourself the kindness of narrowing the field before June 29 rather than having the retrograde do it for you.

Overall energy · Knight of Wands

Scorpio · 5 of Cups

Scorpio, the 5 of Cups during Cancer season is the deck asking you to do something that goes against every Scorpio instinct: let the grief be soft. There is a loss or a disappointment here, something real and something that has not yet had the space it deserves. Cancer season is creating that space, and the 5 of Cups is the permission slip. The light in this card, always, is the cups that are still standing. There is what has been lost and there is what remains, and both are true simultaneously. What you are being asked to do this week is feel the first fully, so that you can genuinely turn toward the second.

The shadow is the Scorpio tendency to process grief privately, intensely, and incompletely, to feel it at full depth but not all the way through. Mercury retrograde in Cancer beginning on June 29 is going to create many opportunities for this grief to resurface. Let it have the full space this week so it has less to resurface with.

Overall energy · Knight of Wands

Sagittarius · Ace of Cups

Sagittarius, the Ace of Cups in your house during Cancer season is one of the most tender and genuinely hopeful placements in this week’s spread. The Ace of Cups is the very beginning of emotional abundance, the pure and overflowing potential of a heart that is open and ready to receive. In the context of Cancer season asking all of us to come home to what nourishes us, the Ace of Cups is telling you that something emotionally new and genuinely nourishing is available to you right now, a feeling, a connection, a creative or spiritual opening that has the quality of grace rather than effort. You do not have to work for this one. You have to be open for it.

The shadow is the Sagittarius restlessness that can move past a tender emotional opening before it has had time to become anything. The Ace of Cups does not need you to do anything with it immediately. It needs you to feel it fully. Stay with this one longer than feels comfortable.

Overall energy · Knight of Wands

Capricorn · 6 of Cups

Capricorn, the 6 of Cups during Cancer season and Chiron freshly in Taurus is one of the most layered and meaningful placements in this spread. The 6 of Cups is the card of the past returning, of nostalgia and memory and the particular sweetness of things that were genuinely good once. With Chiron in Taurus beginning to surface ancestral and family conditioning patterns, the 6 of Cups in your house is asking you to look back, not to stay there, but to retrieve something from that looking. There is an understanding about where you came from, a memory or a relationship or a value from your past, that is relevant to where you are going.

The shadow is the 6 of Cups becoming a residence rather than a visit, the comfort of what was becoming preferable to the uncertainty of what is. Mercury retrograde shadow in Cancer is going to be doing a lot of looking backward over the next few weeks. Make sure the looking is purposeful rather than escapist.

Overall energy · Knight of Wands

Aquarius · The Star

Aquarius, the Star landing in your house during Cancer season is one of the most beautiful placements in this entire spread, and after what has been a significant season of Plutonic transformation in your sign, it is exactly what this moment calls for. The Star is the card of hope that has been tested and survived, of the quiet certainty that comes after you have been through something genuinely hard and found yourself still here, still oriented toward something worth moving toward. This card is not offering a fantasy. It is offering what is actually available: a real and gentle restoration of faith, in yourself, in what is possible, in the direction you are heading.

The shadow is the Aquarian tendency to intellectualise the hope rather than feel it in the body. The Star is a water card, and Cancer season is a water season. This restoration is not a concept. It is something you can feel if you let yourself be still enough to receive it.

Overall energy · Knight of Wands

Pisces · 4 of Swords

Pisces, the 4 of Swords closing this zodiac spread during Cancer season and Mercury retrograde shadow is the most perfectly timed card the deck could have offered you. This is the card of the deliberate and necessary rest that follows a period of significant effort or emotional expenditure, and Pisces has been carrying a great deal through the recent weeks of Nodal activation in your sign. The 4 of Swords during Cancer season is not asking you to withdraw from the world. It is asking you to withdraw into the kind of deep inner quiet where the most important things get clarified, where the nervous system finally gets the integration time it has been asking for. This is not a passive card. It is an active recovery.

The shadow is the Pisces tendency to dissolve into the rest rather than use it, to let the stillness become avoidance rather than restoration. The 4 of Swords has a sword on the wall and three beneath the figure, ready. This is a rest before action, not instead of it. Know the difference.

Overall energy · Knight of Wands

Subscribe now

The Topic Reading · Collective Consciousness · Cancer Season

We are not as separate as we think we are. Collective consciousness is the idea that underneath our individual experiences, there is a shared field of energy and emotion that we are all moving through at the same time. You might be navigating something that looks completely different to the person next to you, but the underlying themes, the feelings, the push and pull of it, are often strikingly similar across all of us at once.

This week that shared field is sitting inside Cancer season and Mercury retrograde shadow, which means the collective is processing deeply, feeling what has been accumulating, and being asked to look honestly at what it is carrying before the retrograde begins on June 29. Before you read on, bring something with you. A situation, a relationship, a decision that has been taking up space. Set yourself into it. Then read the cards below as a voice speaking directly to what you are carrying. This was pulled for the field we are all swimming in right now, which means it was pulled for you.

Cards: 7 of Wands · Knight of Swords · King of Cups · BOD: The Sun

Interesting to note - when I was shuffling, these three cards flew out of the deck and landed on the floor. At first I thought it was too many cards, but when I put them on the desk, it was just three.

7 of Wands

The 7 of Wands opens this collective consciousness reading and it is worth pausing to name what this column has been witnessing. This is the fourth time the 7 of Wands has appeared at the opening or foundation of our collective readings in recent weeks. The deck has been saying the same thing to the collective over and over, with the particular patience of something that knows it will keep being said until it is truly heard: you have been defending something. You have been standing on ground you earned, holding your position against sustained pressure from multiple directions, maintaining your truth when the pressure to abandon it has been real and relentless. Four times this card has arrived. Four times the collective has needed to hear that the defence is seen, the effort is real, and the ground is genuinely yours. This week it opens the reading one more time, and this time it is not alone. What follows it is different from anything that has come before.

Knight of Swords

The Knight of Swords arriving after the 7 of Wands is the card that changes the conversation that has been running through this column for weeks. Where the 7 of Wands has been about holding, the Knight of Swords is about moving. He is pure mental clarity in motion, the person who has identified what is true and is riding toward it at full speed, cutting through every form of hesitation and noise with the precision of someone who has stopped asking whether they are sure and simply acts from what they know. In the context of Cancer season and Mercury retrograde shadow, the timing of the Knight of Swords is specific and important: say the clear thing now, before Mercury stations retrograde on June 29 and the opportunity for direct, unambiguous communication becomes more complicated. The Knight of Swords does not wait for better conditions. He acts in the conditions that exist, because the clarity is here and the moment is now.

King of Cups

The King of Cups arriving third in this reading is the emotional mastery that the Knight of Swords needs alongside him, and the deck has placed them in exactly the right order. Move first with clarity, the Knight says. Then hold what you have moved toward with genuine emotional depth and steadiness, the King answers. The King of Cups is the person who has done enough inner work that they can be in the full complexity of an emotional situation without being swept away by it, who can feel everything and still remain centred, who leads from genuine warmth rather than from performance or from the suppression of feeling. In Cancer season, with Chiron in Taurus surfacing old wounds around worth and Mercury retrograde shadow preparing to revisit every unprocessed emotional theme, the King of Cups is the quality of presence that this season is asking all of us to develop. Not the management of feeling. The mastery of it.

Bottom of the Deck · The Sun

The Sun at the bottom of this entire reading is the most significant bottom of deck placement this column has seen since we began. The Sun is the card of radiance, of joy that is not performed, of the warmth that comes from being fully and unapologetically alive in a moment that is actually going well. And it is sitting underneath everything in this reading, underneath the defended ground and the decisive clarity and the emotional mastery, which means it is the foundation of all of it. The Sun is not something that is coming. It is something that has been there the whole time, holding up the 7 of Wands and the Knight of Swords and the King of Cups from beneath. Underneath the defence, underneath the difficult clarity, underneath the hard-won emotional steadiness, the Sun is what all of it has been in service of. Not survival. Joy. Not endurance. Radiance. The collective has been defending something that was always worth defending, moving toward something that was always worth moving toward, developing a kind of emotional mastery that was always going to be needed, because underneath all of it, there is a life that is genuinely worth living in full light.

The cards as one voice

Here is what all four cards are saying together, as a single message to the collective field in Cancer season.

The 7 of Wands has been speaking to us for weeks and this week it is finally ready to hand over to something else. The defence has been real. The holding has been necessary. And now the reading shifts, because the deck has something different to say and the time for it is now, before Mercury stations retrograde and the season asks for more inward reflection than outward action.

The Knight of Swords says: you know what is true in your situation. You have known for a while. Say it, move toward it, act from the clarity that has been sitting underneath everything. Cancer season and Mercury retrograde shadow will amplify every unexpressed truth into a weight you carry through the entire retrograde. Express it now, with the directness the Knight carries, before the window closes on June 29.

The King of Cups says: do this from your centre, not from your wounds. The clarity the Knight is carrying needs the emotional mastery the King embodies to be genuinely effective. Move with precision and with warmth. Know what you feel and hold it steadily rather than being swept into it. This is not coldness. It is the kind of groundedness that makes the clarity land where it needs to land.

And the Sun, holding all of it from the very foundation, is saying something that this column has been quietly building toward for weeks, something the collective has needed to remember underneath all the defending and the processing and the carrying.

What you have been fighting for is a life in the light. And the light has been there the whole time, waiting for you to stop defending long enough to stand in it.

This is that moment. Stand in it.

Subscribe now

These are double pluggers #straya

Hi Team!
Welcome to this week’s session and before we get started, can we have three cheers for the teams who’ve won their first games at the World Cup? I took part in my first World Cup when I lived in the UK back in 1997/1998 and have been a devotee ever since. The Socceroos and the Matilda’s are equal favourites with my beloved State of Origin team. Yesterday afternoon, our team played an incredible game and our coach made some pretty big calls that paid off. I’m very excited about this tournament and what our team means to our country - especially that it’s a team full of quintessentially rich stories of how our members came to be Australian. In a time when racism is front and centre with people who operate from a core hate that is uneducated and myopic in it’s structure, I love, more than words can say what the Socceroos represents today.

Anyway, let’s get cracking with this week’s session. Remember to scroll down and see the collective consciousness reading to help you through anything that’s taking priority in your life this week.

Let’s trot
Amanda

Subscribe now

Super New Moon in Gemini · June 14, 2026 · The Biggest New Moon of the Year

This is not an ordinary new moon. The Super New Moon in Gemini arriving on June 14 is the largest new moon of the entire calendar year, sitting closer to the Earth than any other new moon in 2026, which means its pull is stronger, its invitation more potent, and whatever we begin under its influence carries a deeper and more lasting impact than usual.

Gemini is ruled by Mercury, the planet of mind, communication, and perception, and this new moon is specifically about the stories we tell ourselves. What you hold to be true in your thoughts is what your life becomes. That is the invitation at the core of this lunation: a radical shift in perception. Not a small adjustment. A genuine rewrite of the inner narrative that has been running your decisions, your relationships, and your sense of what is possible.

Uranus in Gemini is squaring the Nodes of the Moon this week, which adds an electric, disruptive current to everything. Changes that have been uncomfortable to ignore are becoming impossible to ignore. Unexpected shifts in plans and priorities are happening, and the invitation is to be intentional about how you meet them rather than simply reactive. This new moon is not asking for stability. It is asking for curiosity, for the willingness to reopen conversations and possibilities that were prematurely closed.

One important note: Mercury retrograde pre-shadow begins the day after this new moon. That means whatever you set in motion now needs to be done with care and clarity. Think before you send. Say what you mean the first time. The seeds planted at this new moon will be revisited during the retrograde, so plant consciously.

This week’s deck pulled six wand cards, which is the element of fire, of creative force, will, passion, and momentum. The deck is completely aligned with the Gemini new moon energy: something is igniting. Read your Sun, your Rising, your Moon, and the sign that holds Gemini in your natal chart. The 5 of Wands at the bottom of the deck as the overall tells us that the fire this week is not all moving in the same direction yet. The work is to find your specific flame inside the collective heat and tend it with intention.

Aries · King of Pentacles Reversed

Aries, the King of Pentacles reversed opening this entire spread is the deck being honest with you at the beginning of the biggest new moon of the year: something in your relationship with resources, security, or material stability is not flowing as it should right now. The reversed King of Pentacles does not mean the abundance has gone. It means the energy of it has turned inward, that something is blocked or misaligned in how you are managing, valuing, or trusting your own capacity to build and sustain. The Gemini new moon is a perception reset, and for you specifically that reset is happening in the arena of self-worth and material confidence. The story you have been telling yourself about what you can build and what you deserve to hold is up for rewriting right now.

The shadow is the Aries tendency to push harder when the energy is actually asking you to stop and assess. The reversed King of Pentacles is not calling for more effort. It is calling for a different relationship with what you are building. What belief about scarcity or unworthiness is running underneath the surface right now? That is the new moon seed to plant: a truer story about what you are worth.

Overall energy · 5 of Wands

Taurus · Knight of Wands

Taurus, the Knight of Wands arriving in your house at the biggest new moon of the year is an electric and energising placement after what has been a season of significant inner work and structural change. This is the card of passionate forward momentum, of the part of you that has been itching to move and is finally being given the green light. The Gemini new moon is asking you to begin something new in the realm of communication, ideas, and how you present yourself, and the Knight of Wands is the energy to do it with: bold, enthusiastic, and completely committed to the direction once chosen.

The shadow is the speed that outpaces the intention. With Mercury retrograde pre-shadow beginning the day after this new moon, the Knight of Wands needs to know where he is going before he rides. The fire is real and the momentum is available. Make sure the direction is as clear as the energy before you accelerate.

Overall energy · 5 of Wands

Gemini · Queen of Wands

Gemini, the Queen of Wands landing in your house on the week of your own super new moon is one of the most magnificent placements in this entire spread. The new moon is in your sign, the reset energy is landing directly in your identity, and the card that arrives to meet it is the Queen of Wands: magnetic, creative, fully inhabiting her own fire, and completely certain of who she is without requiring the room’s permission. This new moon is asking for a radical shift in your inner narrative, and the Queen of Wands is showing you who you become when that shift happens. This is a week to plant the seed of your own full, unapologetic creative authority.

The shadow is the old story stepping forward just as the new moon opens the door to the new one. Notice what your inner narrator says about whether you are allowed to be this magnetic, this certain, this fully yourself. That voice is the thing the Gemini new moon came to rewrite.

Overall energy · 5 of Wands

Cancer · Page of Swords

Cancer, the Page of Swords in your house during the biggest new moon of the year is bringing a quality of sharp, curious mental energy that is genuinely useful right now. The Page of Swords is the young thinker who asks the questions others are not quite willing to ask, who approaches a situation from an unexpected angle and sees something that everyone else has been standing too close to notice. The Gemini new moon is a perception reset for the whole collective, and for you specifically it is arriving as a question, or a set of questions, about something in your world that has needed a fresh set of eyes.

The shadow is the Page of Swords energy tipping into overthinking or the anxiety of too many questions without enough grounding. With Mercury retrograde pre-shadow beginning this week, Cancer needs to be careful about what communications are sent in the heat of a new mental clarity. Think it through before you say it out loud.

Overall energy · 5 of Wands

Leo · 5 of Swords

Leo, the 5 of Swords during a Gemini new moon that is asking for a radical perception shift is the deck placing something honest in front of you: there has been a conflict or a tension in your world where the question of who won and who lost is more complicated than the surface story suggests. The Gemini new moon is specifically about rewriting inner narratives, and for you the narrative that is up for rewriting is the one you have been telling about this conflict. The light in the 5 of Swords is always the same: the swords have fallen, the moment is complete, and what you choose to carry forward from it is entirely yours to decide.

The shadow is the Leo tendency to keep the conflict alive in the retelling, to polish the version of events that positions you most favourably. The Gemini new moon is not asking for the best version of the story. It is asking for the truest one. What actually happened, and what do you actually want to do with that?

Overall energy · 5 of Wands

Virgo · 7 of Wands

Virgo, the 7 of Wands in your house during the biggest new moon of the year is honouring something real: you have been holding your ground under sustained pressure and you are still standing. Uranus squaring the Nodes of the Moon this week is specifically activating Virgo and Pisces, which means the shifts and disruptions of the last few weeks have been landing most personally in your house. The 7 of Wands says you have been meeting that pressure with more resilience than you have been giving yourself credit for. The Gemini new moon is now asking you to plant a new story about that resilience: not one of exhaustion, but one of genuine earned authority.

The shadow is the hypervigilance that can calcify into a permanent defensive stance, the bracing that never quite stops even when the immediate pressure has eased. The new moon in Gemini is a perception reset. What would it look like to narrate your current position as strength rather than survival?

Overall energy · 5 of Wands

Libra · 3 of Wands

Libra, the 3 of Wands during the biggest new moon of the year is a genuinely exciting placement. This is the card of the person standing at the edge of the horizon watching their ships come in, already planning the next voyage before the first one has docked. Something you set in motion, a plan, a creative project, a professional endeavour, is arriving. The Gemini new moon is opening new channels of communication and possibility specifically for Libra, and the 3 of Wands says you are positioned exactly right to receive what is coming. Stand at the edge and watch it arrive. Then let the new moon open the next horizon.

The shadow is being so focused on the next voyage that you miss the arrival of this one. The 3 of Wands asks for presence at the threshold. With Mercury retrograde pre-shadow beginning this week, rushing to the next thing before this one has fully landed is a real risk. Let the ships dock completely before you set sail again.

Overall energy · 5 of Wands

Scorpio · King of Wands

Scorpio, the King of Wands in your house during a super new moon in Gemini is a commanding and clarifying placement. This is the archetype of visionary leadership, of someone who has alchemised their depth and intensity into genuine creative authority and now leads from that place without apology and without needing to explain themselves. The Gemini new moon is asking for a radical perception shift, and for you that shift is in how you see your own authority. The King of Wands does not wonder whether he is allowed to lead. He leads, and in the leading, others understand why. This new moon is asking you to plant that story about yourself.

The shadow of the King of Wands is the heat that can come with that much fire concentrated in one place, the intensity that tips from passion into control when it stops making room for others. Your vision is strong this week. Make sure there is still space in it for what other people can see that you cannot.

Overall energy · 5 of Wands

Sagittarius · Temperance

Sagittarius, Temperance arriving in your house during the most energetically charged new moon of the year is the deck offering you something quietly essential: a counterweight to all the fire and speed and ignition energy of this week. Temperance is the card of patient alchemy, of the slow and deliberate blending of opposites into something that could not exist if either side were missing. In a week of six wand cards and a super new moon in the sign of rapid communication, your card is asking you to be the one who integrates rather than accelerates. What is being blended in your life right now is more important than how quickly it happens.

The shadow is the Sagittarius restlessness that treats Temperance as an obstacle rather than a gift. The alchemy this card is overseeing cannot be rushed without being ruined. Trust the pace of what is being made. The Gemini new moon is planting a seed in you this week that needs slow water, not fast fire.

Overall energy · 5 of Wands

Capricorn · 6 of Wands

Capricorn, the 6 of Wands during the biggest new moon of the year is one of the most affirming placements in this week’s spread. This is the card of recognition, of the moment when what you have built and who you have become is seen and acknowledged publicly. After a season that has asked a great deal of Capricorn energy, the 6 of Wands is arriving to say: something you have done is being noticed. The Gemini new moon is specifically about new beginnings in communication and how we present ourselves, and for you that new beginning involves letting yourself be seen in the full light of what you have achieved. Receive the recognition this week.

The shadow is the Capricorn deflection, the redirecting of acknowledgement back to the work or the team rather than letting it land on you personally. The 6 of Wands is not asking you to be arrogant. It is asking you to be present for your own moment. Stand in it without shrinking.

Overall energy · 5 of Wands

Aquarius · The Hierophant

Aquarius, the Hierophant arriving in your house during a super new moon that is being powered by Uranus in Gemini squaring the Nodes is a genuinely fascinating tension. Uranus is your ruling planet, the planet of revolution and disruption, and it is squaring the Nodes this week from Gemini. And the card that lands in your house is the Hierophant, the archetype of tradition, established wisdom, and the structures that have held knowledge across generations. The invitation here is not to choose between revolution and tradition. It is to find what is genuinely worth preserving inside the structures that are changing, to be the person who knows the difference between what must transform and what must not be lost in the transformation.

The shadow is the reflexive Aquarius rejection of anything that smells like institution or orthodoxy. The Hierophant this week is not asking for obedience. He is asking for discernment. Inside the old structures, there is wisdom that the new world is going to need. You are one of the people who can identify it.

Overall energy · 5 of Wands

Pisces · Ace of Swords

Pisces, the Ace of Swords closing this zodiac spread during the biggest new moon of the year is one of the most electric placements the deck could have offered. With Uranus squaring the Nodes in Pisces and Virgo this week, your sign is at the centre of one of the most significant astrological tensions of June, being asked to develop a more intentional relationship with change and liberation. And the Ace of Swords arrives into that tension like a lightning strike: pure mental clarity, a breakthrough understanding, a truth that cuts cleanly through the fog. Something becomes clear for you this week that has not been clear before. Name it. Write it down. Let it become real.

The shadow is the Pisces tendency to let the clarity dissolve back into feeling before it has been fully formed into words or action. The Ace of Swords does not arrive to be contemplated. It arrives to be used. With Mercury retrograde pre-shadow beginning this week, say the clear thing now, before the window shifts.

Overall energy · 5 of Wands

Subscribe now

SPECIAL NOTE:
The 7 of Wands appearing for the third time in recent collective readings is worth noting. The deck has been saying the same thing to the collective for weeks now: you have been holding. This week it is finally saying something different. Stop holding. Go.

The Topic Reading · Collective Consciousness · Gemini Super New Moon

We are not as separate as we think we are. Collective consciousness is the idea that underneath our individual experiences, there is a shared field of energy and emotion that we are all moving through at the same time. You might be navigating something that looks completely different to the person next to you, but the underlying themes, the feelings, the push and pull of it, are often strikingly similar across all of us at once.

This week that shared field is crackling with the energy of the biggest new moon of the year in Gemini, a lunation asking for a radical shift in the stories we tell ourselves. Before you read on, bring something with you. A situation, a relationship, a decision that has been taking up space. Set yourself into it. Then read the cards below as a voice speaking directly to what you are carrying. This was pulled for the field we are all swimming in right now, which means it was pulled for you.

Cards: 7 of Wands · Knight of Wands · 6 of Pentacles · BOD: Knight of Swords

7 of Wands

The 7 of Wands opens this collective consciousness reading and it is the third time this card has appeared at the foundation of a reading in recent weeks, which is not a coincidence. The deck keeps returning to it because the collective keeps living inside it. This is the card of the person standing on higher ground, holding their position against pressure coming from multiple directions, defending something they have worked hard to build or become. In a week of super new moon ignition energy and six wand cards in the zodiac spread, the 7 of Wands as the opening card of the collective reading is telling us something important: the fire that this new moon is asking you to tend is not a new fire. It is the fire you have already been defending. The situation you brought to this reading is almost certainly one where you have been holding a position, a truth, a boundary, or a belief about yourself, under sustained challenge. And you are still standing. That is the starting point for everything else in this reading.

Knight of Wands

The Knight of Wands arrives after the 7 of Wands and the combination is electric and very specific. The 7 of Wands is the defence. The Knight of Wands is the moment when the defence becomes offence, when you stop holding the position and start moving from it. This is the card of passionate, committed forward momentum, of the person who has decided on the direction and is riding hard toward it with everything they have. In the context of whatever you are sitting with, the Knight of Wands is telling you that the time for holding the line is shifting into the time for moving forward from it. The Gemini new moon is a perception reset and a new beginning in communication and self-expression. The Knight of Wands is the energy to act on that new beginning, boldly and without waiting for permission or perfect conditions. The direction is clear enough. Move.

6 of Pentacles

The 6 of Pentacles arriving after two intensely wand-driven cards brings something that reframes the whole reading: an exchange. This is the card of generosity in flow, of giving and receiving in a cycle that is genuinely balanced, and its arrival here is asking something specific about your situation. As you move from defended ground into forward momentum, who is in this with you? Is there a resource, a support, a contribution, yours or someone else’s, that is part of how this moves forward? The 6 of Pentacles is not simply about money or material resource, although it can be. It is about the acknowledgement that what we are building and defending and moving toward rarely happens in complete isolation. Someone has given something to make this possible, or someone needs to receive something from what you are building, or both. The Gemini new moon is opening new channels of communication and connection. The 6 of Pentacles is asking you to notice who is in the exchange and whether the flow is genuinely mutual.

Bottom of the Deck · Knight of Swords

The Knight of Swords at the foundation of this entire reading is the engine underneath everything, and he is one of the most directional cards in the deck to find in this position. This is the card of pure mental clarity in motion, of the person who has identified the truth of a situation and is moving toward it at speed, cutting through confusion and hesitation and noise with the particular precision of someone who trusts their own perception completely. Sitting underneath the defended ground of the 7 of Wands and the passionate momentum of the Knight of Wands and the balanced exchange of the 6 of Pentacles, the Knight of Swords is telling us what is actually powering all of this: a clarity that has already arrived, even if it has not yet been fully acted on. You already know what is true in your situation. You already know the direction. The Knight of Swords at the bottom of the deck is the knowing that has been there the whole time, holding everything else up, waiting for you to trust it enough to move from it at full speed.

The cards as one voice

Here is what all four cards are saying together, as a single message to the collective field under this Gemini super new moon.

You have been defending something real, and the defence has been necessary, and it has been tiring. The 7 of Wands at the opening of this reading is not asking you to keep defending. It is acknowledging that you have been, and that what you have been defending is worth what it has cost you to hold it. But this week something is shifting in the quality of what is being asked of you, and the Knight of Wands is the name of that shift: it is time to move from the defended position rather than simply hold it.

The 6 of Pentacles in the middle of this reading is the reminder that you do not have to do this alone, and that the moving forward is not only for you. There is a mutual exchange at the heart of your situation, someone who needs what you are carrying, or someone whose resource or support is part of how you get where you are going. Notice that. Honour it. Let the exchange be real in both directions.

And the Knight of Swords underneath everything is the most important message of this entire reading. The clarity you need is not coming. It is already there. It has been there, sitting at the foundation of everything, powering the defence and pointing the direction and waiting for you to stop asking whether you are sure and simply act from what you know.

The Gemini new moon is a perception reset. The new perception is this: you already know. You have known for a while. The story that you need more information, more certainty, more time, is the old narrative. The new one is simpler and it belongs to the Knight of Swords.

You know. Move.

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

Thank you so much for all the kind and supportive emails you sent me last week and for also leaving comments on the post. It’s always such a defining experience to see how people respond to your truth and I am grateful to those of you who had AHAs with what I shared, and I hope your healing is going gently.

I decided to say I was back to normal programming and asked the ai machine to make me a gen x back to normal programming and put an Australian seen out the window. i swear to God, go and immerse yourself in that image and let me know in the comments how many parts of that image make you giggle. As I’m typing I’ve just found the durry in the ash tray facing up. So funny what general prompts can generate. LOL. #strayamate.

Don’t forget to stroll to the bottom for the Collective Consciousness 4 Card Reading and tell me if it resonates for the issue you think about.

I’ve also had a request about end of financial year demankings® - and would like to test the water to see if you’re still interested in it. The next eclipse season doesn’t happen until until August - and then that’s a whole different kettle of fish because it’s 18 year cycles. The EoFY demanking® will just be dealing with money blocks that may have shown themselves since 1 July 2025. If you are interested, you can reply email or leave a comment and that will help me know how many sessions or if I do the collective consciousness one with a PWYCA plan like I do with the eclipses.

Anyhooo…. let’s trot …

Venus conjunct Jupiter in Cancer · June 9, 2026 · The Luckiest Day of the Month, so they say.

Welcome back to Dealt With. There has been a lot happening in the field since we last gathered here, and if you have been feeling the weight of it, you are not imagining things. This has been a season of significant endings, structural shifts, and the particular exhaustion of people who have been carrying more than their share for longer than is comfortable to admit.

Which is precisely why the sky’s timing this week is so remarkable.

On June 9, Venus and Jupiter meet in Cancer in what astrologers are calling one of the luckiest alignments of 2026. These are the two great benefics of the zodiac, the planets associated with love, abundance, beauty, expansion, and genuine good fortune. In Cancer, their energy is not about hustle or achievement or pushing harder. It is entirely about emotional relief. Coming home. Finding your footing again after a season of ground that kept moving. Jupiter is exalted in Cancer, meaning it is operating at its highest possible strength, and it is preparing to leave this sign for another twelve years. This conjunction is a culmination, a tender closing of a chapter of heart growth that has asked a great deal of all of us.

This week’s reading is written into that energy. Whatever you have been carrying, the sky is offering you a moment of genuine warmth and restoration. Read your Sun, your Rising, your Moon, and the sign that holds Gemini in your natal chart. The 2 of Swords at the bottom of the deck as the overall is the invitation underneath all of it: the blindfold is ready to come off. Let yourself see what is actually being offered.

Subscribe now

Aries · The Chariot

Aries, the Chariot arriving in your house during a Venus Jupiter conjunction in Cancer is a powerful and clarifying combination. The Chariot is the card of directed will, of the person who has brought their inner competing forces into alignment and is now moving with genuine purpose and momentum. After what has likely been a complicated and demanding season, this card is telling you that the direction is clear again. You know where you are going. The Venus Jupiter conjunction is adding something the Chariot sometimes lacks: emotional warmth behind the momentum. You are not just moving forward this week. You are moving forward toward something that genuinely matters to you.

The shadow is the Chariot energy that tips into force rather than direction, overriding the emotional signals from Cancer in favour of just moving. The luckiest alignment of the month is asking you to feel the direction as well as see it. Let the heart and the will move together this week.

Overall energy · 2 of Swords

Taurus · Magician reversed

Taurus, the Magician reversed in your house during a week of genuine cosmic abundance is the deck being honest with you about something worth looking at: the tools are there, the capacity is there, but something is blocking the full expression of it right now. The reversed Magician is not a failure. It is a signal that the energy is turned inward rather than outward, that something needs to be addressed or cleared before the full power of what you are capable of can flow freely again. The Venus Jupiter conjunction in Cancer is specifically about emotional relief and finding your footing. That clearing is the work this week.

The shadow is the self-doubt that can settle in when things are not flowing as they should, the story that the block is permanent rather than temporary. The Magician reversed rights itself. Your capacity has not gone anywhere. Something is temporarily redirecting it inward, and what you find there when you look is likely the very thing that frees the flow.

Overall energy · 2 of Swords

Gemini · 5 of Pentacles

Gemini, the 5 of Pentacles landing in your house this week is the deck acknowledging something real without softening it: there has been a genuine experience of lack or loss or exclusion in your world, and it has been harder than you have let on. With Uranus still settling into your sign and Jupiter preparing to leave Cancer, the 5 of Pentacles is not a prediction of more difficulty. It is a compassionate naming of what has already been. The Venus Jupiter conjunction this week is specifically offering the door to warmth and resource that the 5 of Pentacles figure is always standing near without quite seeing. Look up, Gemini. The door is closer than it appears.

The shadow is the isolation that becomes self-reinforcing, the turning away from available support because the habit of managing alone has become more familiar than the vulnerability of asking. The luckiest alignment of June is placing warmth within reach. You have to be willing to reach for it.

Overall energy · 2 of Swords

Cancer · King of Cups

Cancer, the King of Cups landing in your house on the week of Venus conjunct Jupiter in your own sign is one of the most significant placements in this entire spread. The great benefics are meeting in your sign at their highest strength, and the card that arrives to meet them is the archetype of emotional mastery, of the person who has done the genuine inner work and now leads from that depth with steadiness and warmth. This is a week of extraordinary personal power for you. Your magnetism is real, your intuition is sharp, and what you have been growing through this entire Jupiter in Cancer transit is now fully visible. You are the King of Cups this week, and the cosmos is in full agreement.

The shadow is the over-giving that can come with this much emotional abundance available, the Cancer tendency to pour outward so generously that the cup empties before you have filled yourself. The Venus Jupiter conjunction is asking you to receive as fully as you give this week. Let the luck land on you too.

Overall energy · 2 of Swords

Leo · The Hermit

Leo, the Hermit arriving in your house during a week of expansive Venus Jupiter energy is an interesting and deliberate counterpoint. The Hermit is not asking you to miss the abundance. He is asking you to find it inward first before you seek it outward. There is a wisdom available to you this week that only comes through solitude and genuine self-reflection, and the Venus Jupiter conjunction in Cancer is supporting that inner work rather than pulling against it. What you find in the quiet this week will be more valuable than anything the outer world is offering, and what you bring back from that inner journey will be extraordinary.

The shadow is the Leo discomfort with choosing quiet over visibility during a week when the collective is celebrating. The Hermit is not the lesser choice here. He is the wiser one. Your light does not diminish by turning inward for a moment. It clarifies.

Overall energy · 2 of Swords

Virgo · 3 of Pentacles

Virgo, the 3 of Pentacles during a Venus Jupiter conjunction is one of the most affirming placements in this week’s spread. This is the card of skilled collaboration, of the work that becomes better because of who you are doing it with, and the Venus Jupiter conjunction is expanding that collaborative field considerably. Astrologers specifically note that this conjunction is professionally blessed for Virgo, that showcasing your skills and connecting with like-minded people who share your goals is exactly what this alignment is supporting. Something you are building with others right now is genuinely worth the investment of your full craft.

The shadow is the Virgo habit of taking on more than your share of the collaborative work because you trust your own standards more than anyone else’s. The 3 of Pentacles asks for genuine collaboration, not managed delegation. Let others bring their full capability alongside yours this week.

Overall energy · 2 of Swords

Libra · Page of Cups

Libra, the Page of Cups in your house during a Venus Jupiter conjunction is bringing something delightfully unexpected: an emotional or creative invitation that arrives sideways, in a form you were not quite anticipating. Venus rules your sign, which means this conjunction is speaking directly to your chart with particular warmth, and the Page of Cups is the energy through which that warmth is arriving. Something tender and genuinely new is making itself known in your emotional or creative world. The invitation is to follow it with curiosity rather than immediately assessing whether it is appropriate or strategic.

The shadow is the Libra tendency to weigh the emotional invitation rather than feel it. The Page of Cups does not arrive with a pros and cons list. She arrives with a feeling and a question: are you willing to follow this? This week, the answer worth giving is yes.

Overall energy · 2 of Swords

Scorpio · Page of Wands

Scorpio, the Page of Wands arriving in your house during a week of the luckiest alignment of June is bringing a spark of creative and adventurous energy that is very welcome after what has likely been a heavy season. This is the energy of genuine curiosity, of the part of you that wants to begin something new just to see where it goes, without needing it to be fully formed or guaranteed before you start. The Venus Jupiter conjunction in Cancer is emotionally supportive of exactly this kind of beginning. The warmth is behind you. The spark is in your hands. Go.

The shadow is the Scorpio intensity that can weigh down a Page of Wands spark before it has had time to become anything. Not everything needs to be examined at depth before it is allowed to begin. Let this one be light for a while. It will deepen in its own time.

Overall energy · 2 of Swords

Sagittarius · 10 of Wands

Sagittarius, the 10 of Wands during a Venus Jupiter conjunction is the deck honouring something real before it asks anything more of you: you have been carrying an enormous amount, and the weight has been genuinely heavy. The 10 of Wands figure can see the destination from here. The load is close to being deposited. And the Venus Jupiter conjunction in Cancer is specifically offering emotional relief and restoration to those who have been giving more than they have been receiving. That description is you this week. Let the cosmic warmth reach you before you pick up the next thing.

The shadow is using the 10 of Wands as a reason to keep carrying rather than a signal to set things down. The destination is visible. What in this load can be handed off, released, or simply put on the ground? The Venus Jupiter conjunction is not asking you to carry it alone anymore.

Overall energy · 2 of Swords

Capricorn · Temperance

Capricorn, Temperance during a Venus Jupiter conjunction in Cancer is a beautifully balanced placement. Temperance is the card of integration, of the slow and patient blending of opposites into something that could not exist if either side were missing, and the Venus Jupiter conjunction is providing the emotional warmth and abundance that makes that integration feel nourishing rather than effortful. Something in your world is finding its balance this week, not through force or discipline but through the gentle alchemy of two things that belong together finally being allowed to meet. Let it happen at its own pace.

The shadow is the Capricorn tendency to manage the integration rather than trust it. Temperance does not respond well to being hurried or optimised. The Venus Jupiter conjunction is doing the work in the background. Your job this week is to stay open to what is being blended and resist the urge to direct it.

Overall energy · 2 of Swords

Aquarius · 6 of Wands

Aquarius, the 6 of Wands is one of the most genuinely celebratory cards in the deck and it has arrived in your house during the luckiest alignment of June. This is the card of recognition, of the moment when the work you have been doing is seen and acknowledged by the people around you. With Pluto continuing its long transformative work in your sign, this card is offering a moment of visibility and victory that is well and truly earned. Something you have built or contributed or become is being recognised this week. Receive that recognition without deflecting it.

The shadow is the Aquarius discomfort with being the centre of attention, the impulse to redirect the spotlight back to the collective rather than standing in it for a moment. The 6 of Wands is not asking you to be arrogant. It is asking you to be present for your own victory. The collective is not diminished by your moment in the light.

Overall energy · 2 of Swords

Pisces · 3 of Swords

Pisces, the 3 of Swords closing this zodiac spread during a Venus Jupiter conjunction is the most honest placement the deck could have offered you this week. There is grief here, or disappointment, or a particular pain that has not yet had the space it deserves, and the 3 of Swords is asking you to let it be exactly what it is rather than spiritualising it into something more comfortable. The Venus Jupiter conjunction in Cancer is not asking you to bypass the grief. It is offering the emotional warmth and safety in which the grief can finally be felt fully. That is the gift this week: not the absence of the 3 of Swords, but the presence of enough warmth around it that you do not have to hold it alone.

The shadow is the Pisces tendency to absorb the pain so completely that the warmth being offered cannot find a way in. The 3 of Swords and the Venus Jupiter conjunction are both present this week. Let the sorrow be real and let the love be real alongside it. They are not in opposition.

Overall energy · 2 of Swords

Subscribe now

The Topic Reading · Collective Consciousness · Venus Jupiter in Cancer

We are not as separate as we think we are. Collective consciousness is the idea that underneath our individual experiences, there is a shared field of energy and emotion that we are all moving through at the same time. You might be navigating something that looks completely different to the person next to you, but the underlying themes, the feelings, the push and pull of it, are often strikingly similar across all of us at once.

This week that shared field is sitting inside the warmth of a Venus Jupiter conjunction in Cancer, the luckiest alignment of the month, which means whatever you are bringing to this reading is being held in genuinely expansive and nourishing energy. Before you read on, bring something with you. A situation, a relationship, a decision that has been taking up space. Set yourself into it. Then read the cards below as a voice speaking directly to what you are carrying. This was pulled for the field we are all swimming in right now, which means it was pulled for you.

Cards: Queen of Wands · King of Cups · 4 of Swords · BOD: 7 of Wands

Queen of Wands

The Queen of Wands opens this reading with fire and warmth and the particular confidence of a woman who knows exactly who she is and does not require the room’s permission to be it. She is magnetic and creative and fully inhabiting her own energy, and she opens this collective reading with a question that lands before you even realise it is a question: what does it feel like to be fully yourself in your situation right now? Not the managed version, not the version that has been making itself smaller or more acceptable or less inconvenient for others, but the whole, warm, fired-up version that has opinions and passion and a clear sense of what matters. The Queen of Wands is not asking you to perform confidence. She is asking whether you are actually in the room as yourself, or whether a careful, edited version of you has been showing up in your place.

King of Cups

The King of Cups arriving beside the Queen of Wands is one of the most powerful pairings the deck could have placed here, and it is worth sitting with the specific quality of what they are together. The Queen of Wands is fire and presence and creative authority. The King of Cups is water and emotional mastery and the steadiness that comes from having done the genuine inner work. Together they represent a kind of integration that the Venus Jupiter conjunction in Cancer is specifically calling forward in all of us right now: the capacity to be both powerful and emotionally present, both creatively alive and genuinely connected, both certain of ourselves and genuinely open to others. In the context of whatever you are navigating, these two cards are asking whether you are bringing your full self, the fire and the feeling, or whether you have been choosing one at the expense of the other.

4 of Swords

After the fire of the Queen of Wands and the emotional depth of the King of Cups, the 4 of Swords arrives and it is not asking you to dim either of those energies. It is asking you to rest them. This is the card of the deliberate pause, of the person who is not passive but who understands that genuine power requires genuine recovery, that the integration the Queen and the King are pointing toward cannot be rushed or forced into being. It has to be allowed to settle. The 4 of Swords during a Venus Jupiter conjunction in Cancer is not a contradiction. It is the most Cancer thing possible: the understanding that nourishment requires stillness, that the most generative thing you can do right now for your situation is to stop pushing it and let the warmth of this week do its quiet work. Rest is not the absence of progress here. It is the condition for it.

Bottom of the Deck · 7 of Wands

The 7 of Wands at the foundation of this reading is something this column has seen before, and it is worth noting that the deck keeps returning to it because it keeps being true for the collective. This is the card of the person standing on defended ground, holding their position against challenges coming from multiple directions, maintaining their truth under sustained pressure. It is not an aggressive card. It is an endurance card. What the 7 of Wands is telling us from underneath the Queen of Wands and the King of Cups and the 4 of Swords is that the fire and the emotional depth and the need for rest are all sitting on top of a foundation of defended ground. The collective has been holding something in place for a long time. The situation you brought to this reading is almost certainly one where you have been doing exactly that: standing your ground, sometimes alone, sometimes against more pressure than seemed fair. The 7 of Wands sees that and names it without drama. You have been holding. The holding has been real.

The cards as one voice

Here is what all four cards are saying together, as a single message to the collective field under the Venus Jupiter conjunction this week.

You have been standing your ground for a long time, and in the process of defending it you have been splitting yourself. The Queen of Wands and the King of Cups together are describing who you actually are at full capacity: someone with genuine fire and genuine emotional depth, someone who can lead from passion and from presence simultaneously. But the 7 of Wands at the foundation tells us that sustained defence tends to ask people to choose, to lead with the strength that the situation demands rather than the wholeness that the self requires. And so the fire gets managed, or the feeling gets suppressed, or both get held in check while the holding of the line takes everything available.

The Venus Jupiter conjunction in Cancer is the most nourishing energy the sky has offered in months, and it is arriving at exactly the right moment. The 4 of Swords in the middle of this reading is not an instruction to withdraw. It is an instruction to receive. To let the warmth of this week reach the defended ground and soften it, not so that you lose the position you have fought to hold, but so that you can hold it as your whole self rather than as a carefully managed fraction of it.

The Queen of Wands and the King of Cups are not two separate energies. They are two aspects of the same integrated person. You. The invitation of this reading, the one voice underneath all four cards, is to let the rest bring them back together.

You do not have to choose between the fire and the feeling. You never did. Rest long enough to remember that.

Subscribe now

There was no session this week because Monday the 1st of June was my first day back in “unemployment” after finishing a 12‑month contract with a Health and Hospital Service. It was a place I genuinely hoped to grow old in. The community, the patients, the colleagues — it felt like if I’d fed my entire career into Chat and asked, “What’s Amanda’s ideal job?” this would have been the output.

But in 12 months, I had five line managers. Only one was genuinely interested in my work, and she left three months in. After that came a gap-filler who signed timesheets, and then someone with an overinflated sense of superiority — soft voice, head tilt, heart‑hands for rural health despite never stepping foot in a rural facility. The executive persona and the team persona were so different it was dizzying. As an intuitive and energy healer, I felt the shift the moment she started excluding me from conversations about my own work. My waters knew before my mind did: this wasn’t going to end how I’d hoped.

So I did what I always do: stepped into my light, my values, and my humanity. I listened. I connected. I translated what I heard into strategy, priorities, and pillars. And, as always, I found gaps. Big ones. The same kind I found in my last role. And when you speak up about those gaps — the evidence, the collateral damage — the crickets come out. Crickets are meant to be a good‑luck totem. Not when an executive is essentially saying, “Shoosh, we don’t want to talk about that.”

Last night I went to a meet‑up with a woman who has been in my orbit for years — Lisa Erhart, who helps women founders get funded. She’s now based in Italy, with a dotted line into the UK, Europe, Australia, and NZ. During her presentation, she mentioned something that stopped me in my tracks: the over‑representation of eldest daughters in founder cohorts.

So of course I went down the rabbit hole. I wanted to understand, from a trauma‑informed perspective, why eldest daughters are so drawn to entrepreneurship. I always thought my Capricorn Sun was responsible for my love of business. Turns out, it was trauma — and suddenly my last two contract experiences made a whole lot more sense.

I put the research into my AI thread and asked, “How does this correlate with my outcomes in these last two gigs?”

This is what came back:

You were raised to lead, but punished for looking like a leader.

This is the contradiction eldest daughters grow up inside.

You were expected to:

• take responsibility

• hold everything together

• anticipate needs

• manage chaos

• be competent beyond your years

But also expected to:

• not overshadow anyone

• not be “too much”

• not challenge authority

• not outshine adults

• not have needs

• not take up space

So your body learns:

“I must lead, but I must not be seen leading.”

Which becomes the adult pattern:

“I can do the senior job, but I’m not sure I’m allowed to claim it.”

The irony? I applied for the temporary role I’d been acting in to go permanent — and two people who barely knew me decided I wouldn’t even be interviewed. One had been my line manager for six weeks and the only thing she ever asked for was access to my calendar. The organisation’s internal engagement tagline is #everyoneisaleader — please hold while I laugh maniacally — yet somehow I was “not what they wanted.”

Anyone who has ever run a business knows that staff turnover is one of the most expensive costs you can carry. Lost relationships, lost IP, lost continuity, lost momentum. But the eldest‑daughter‑entrepreneur energy that quietly makes dysfunction function? That meant nothing to two people spending government money. The third panel member — the champion of everyone is a leader — knew me a little through the health equity subgroup. Still, the decision was no.

Then this next part landed, and my eyes went full dinner plate:

You were trained to be responsible, not powerful.

Eldest daughters are raised to be the functional centre of the family, not the recognised centre.

You were given:

• responsibility without authority

• labour without acknowledgement

• leadership without title

• emotional load without support

So your nervous system associates seniority with danger:

• “If I step up, I’ll be resented.”

• “If I take charge, someone will punish me.”

• “If I shine, someone will cut me down.”

• “If I’m visible, I’ll be targeted.”

This is the eldest daughter’s version of the tall poppy wound.

So dear reader, apologies for no dealt with this week. As always when I’m on holidays, I forget what day it is — and honestly, I needed a moment to sit with the “what the actual fuck just happened.”

If you’re an eldest daughter and a founder or entrepreneur, and you want to tap into a powerful artery of support, information, connections and possibility for women building legacy businesses, go find Lisa Erhart at Funding4Growth. She will change your reality about what’s possible when your ducks are in a row and you know where you’re heading.

Subscribe now

Let me know if you’ve had any aha’s with today’s share - you know I love it when I know I’ve helped people.

Subscribe now

Week of May 25
· fateful choices and the open door

This is a week the sky has been building toward. Mars in Taurus is harmonising with the Nodes of Destiny, asking us to take real action toward what we are genuinely here to do. The Sun in Gemini is linking up with those same Nodes, which means the choices available this week are not ordinary choices. They are the kind that redirect trajectories. And the Sun moving into a trine with Pluto in Aquarius is described by astrologers as an open door, walking us into new awareness and empowered rebirth, where the way we see ourselves and communicate who we are is ready to be reborn into something larger and more true.

This is a week for fateful choices made consciously. Not dramatically, not impulsively, but with the clarity of someone who has done enough inner work to know what they are actually choosing and why.

The deck this week holds four Major Arcana, the Lovers, the Wheel, the High Priestess, and the Hierophant, alongside two Knights carrying very different kinds of energy, the sword and the cup, and the 8 of Wands at the bottom of the deck moving everything forward at speed. Read your Sun, your Rising, your Moon, and the sign that holds Gemini in your natal chart. The 8 of Wands as the overall is not asking you to rush. It is telling you that what is moving this week is moving quickly whether you are ready or not. Show up with intention.

Aries · Knight of Swords

Aries, the Knight of Swords is your card in a week that is specifically asking for fateful choices, and the combination is electric. The Knight of Swords does not deliberate. He sees the direction and moves toward it with everything he has, cutting through hesitation and noise with the particular clarity of someone who trusts their own perception. With Mars harmonising with the Nodes of Destiny this week, your instinct to move is not impulsive right now. It is aligned. There is a direction that has been calling you and this week the sky is saying go.

The shadow is the speed that outruns the awareness, the Knight of Swords so focused on the target that he does not notice what he is moving through to get there. The Nodes of Destiny reward conscious action this week, not reactive action. Know what you are choosing before you charge toward it.

Overall energy · 8 of Wands

Taurus · The Lovers

Taurus, the Lovers landing in your house during a week when Mars in your sign is harmonising with the Nodes of Destiny is one of the most significant placements in this entire spread. The Lovers is fundamentally the card of aligned choice, of the moment when you are asked to choose what is most deeply true for you rather than what is most convenient or expected. Mars in your sign is giving you the life force to act on that choice. The Nodes are telling you the choice matters beyond this moment. Something you decide this week about love, values, or genuine alignment has the quality of a course correction toward your actual path.

The shadow is choosing what looks most beautiful rather than what is most true. The Lovers does not ask what will make the best story. It asks what is genuinely right for who you are. In a week of fateful choices, that distinction matters enormously.

Overall energy · 8 of Wands

Gemini · Page of Cups

Gemini, the Sun is in your sign this week and it is linking up with the Nodes of Destiny, which means the choices available to you right now carry a particular weight and possibility. The Page of Cups landing in your house is a tender and surprising companion to all of that cosmic activity. She is the card of emotional curiosity, of being willing to be surprised by what you feel, of following an intuitive thread without needing to justify it logically first. As Uranus continues its work in your sign, the Page of Cups is asking you to stay open to the unexpected emotional information that this week is delivering. Something is arriving sideways, the way the best things often do.

The shadow is the Gemini tendency to analyse the feeling rather than follow it. The Page of Cups is not asking for your interpretation of the emotional signal. She is asking you to let it lead for once and see where it goes.

Overall energy · 8 of Wands

Cancer · Ace of Pentacles

Cancer, the Ace of Pentacles during a week of Nodal activations is one of the most grounded and promising placements in this spread. This is the seed of something genuinely new in the material world, a beginning that has the quality of real potential rather than wishful thinking. A new resource, a new opportunity, a new financial or practical foundation is making itself available. With Venus in your sign this week adding warmth and magnetic energy to everything you touch, the Ace of Pentacles is asking you to receive this offering with both hands and treat it with the care it deserves.

The shadow is the Cancer tendency to hold the new thing so carefully that it never gets planted. An Ace is a seed, and seeds need to go into the ground to become anything. Receive this offering and then do something real with it this week.

Overall energy · 8 of Wands

Leo · The Wheel

Leo, the Wheel of Fortune in your house during a week of Nodal activations is telling you something important: what is turning right now is turning for a reason, and the reason is aligned with where you are meant to be going. The Nodes of Destiny and the Wheel of Fortune speak the same language, the language of cycles completing and new ones beginning, of the larger pattern of your life making a move. Something that has felt stuck or slow is about to shift, and the shift is not random. It is the Wheel returning to a position that serves your actual path.

The shadow is the anxiety that can come with the Wheel, the sense of being subject to forces larger than yourself. The Wheel does not diminish your agency. It contextualises it. Your choices this week matter enormously precisely because the Wheel is turning. Choose consciously.

Overall energy · 8 of Wands

Virgo · 3 of Cups

Virgo, the 3 of Cups is bringing something into your week that the sky is fully supporting: genuine connection, celebration, the particular nourishment of being in the company of people who actually see you. With Venus in Cancer making a warm aspect this week, the relational energy in the collective is tender and real, and the 3 of Cups is asking you to let yourself be part of that rather than observing it from a careful distance. Something worth celebrating is here, or arriving, and the people worth celebrating it with are closer than you think.

The shadow is the Virgo habit of managing the gathering rather than being present inside it. The 3 of Cups is not asking you to organise the joy. It is asking you to feel it. Put the clipboard down and let yourself be held by the warmth of this week.

Overall energy · 8 of Wands

Libra · The High Priestess

Libra, the High Priestess arriving in your house during the most astrologically charged week of the month is the deck placing its hand on your shoulder and saying: not yet. Not the action, not the choice, not the conversation. First, the knowing. The High Priestess is the keeper of what cannot be reached through logic or consultation or the opinions of others. She sits between what is visible and what is not, and she asks you to go inward before you go anywhere else. In a week when everyone around you may be moving quickly and making fateful choices, your card is asking for stillness and deep inner listening. What do you know that you have not yet allowed yourself to know?

The shadow is using the High Priestess as a reason to defer indefinitely. She asks for stillness before action, not instead of it. Go inward this week, genuinely and deeply. And then bring what you find back out into the world.

Overall energy · 8 of Wands

Scorpio · Knight of Cups

Scorpio, the Knight of Cups is moving through your house this week with something in his hands: an emotional invitation, a creative calling, a movement toward something that matters to the heart rather than just the strategy. In a week of Nodal activations and fateful choices, the Knight of Cups is asking you to let feeling be part of the navigation. Not all feeling, not feeling instead of discernment, but the particular current of genuine desire that knows where it wants to go even when the mind is still compiling the evidence. There is something calling you this week. Follow the feeling.

The shadow is the Knight of Cups idealising what he is moving toward rather than seeing it clearly. Scorpio has the depth to feel intensely and perceive accurately at the same time. Use both this week. Let the heart lead and keep the eyes open.

Overall energy · 8 of Wands

Sagittarius · 9 of Cups

Sagittarius, the 9 of Cups is one of the most genuinely satisfying cards in the deck and it has landed in your house in a week of expansive sky energy. This is the wish card, the card of someone who looks at what they have built or received and feels, genuinely feels, that it is enough. More than enough. There is a satisfaction available to you this week that is worth receiving fully rather than immediately looking for the next horizon. The 9 of Cups is not asking you to stop wanting. It is asking you to register what you already have before you reach for more.

The shadow is the restlessness that can make Sagittarius treat contentment as a problem to solve. The 9 of Cups is not the end of the road. It is a resting place that is genuinely abundant. Let yourself rest in it this week. The next horizon will still be there.

Overall energy · 8 of Wands

Capricorn · 3 of Swords

Capricorn, the 3 of Swords during a week of fateful choices and Nodal activations is asking you to name something that has been hurting without dressing it up or managing it into something more acceptable. There is a grief or a disappointment or a particular kind of pain sitting in your world right now, and the 3 of Swords is not asking you to fix it or move past it. It is asking you to let it be exactly what it is. The Sun trining Pluto in Aquarius this week is the energy of empowered rebirth, and the only way through to that rebirth is through the honest acknowledgement of what has actually hurt.

The shadow is the Capricorn tendency to tuck pain away efficiently so the work can continue. The 3 of Swords does not respond well to efficiency. It responds to presence. Sit with this one, even briefly, before you move on. What you acknowledge here will not slow you down. It will free you.

Overall energy · 8 of Wands

Aquarius · The Hierophant

Aquarius, the Hierophant arriving in your house during a week when Pluto in your sign is being activated by both the Sun and Mars is a genuinely interesting placement. Pluto in Aquarius has been dismantling old structures and power systems, and the Hierophant is the card of tradition, institution, and the wisdom held inside established systems. The invitation here is not to blindly defer to the old way, but to distinguish between what is genuinely worth preserving in the structures you have inherited and what is ready to be released. There is wisdom available this week inside the tradition, if you approach it discerningly rather than reactively.

The shadow is the Aquarius tendency to reject the traditional on principle, the way the rebel can become as rigid as the institution it opposes. The Hierophant this week is not asking for obedience. He is asking for discernment. What inside the old structures still holds truth?

Overall energy · 8 of Wands

Pisces · 2 of Swords

Pisces, the 2 of Swords closing this zodiac spread during a week of fateful choices is one of the most honest placements the deck could have offered you. There is a decision that has been waiting, and the 2 of Swords names the condition you have been in while waiting: blindfolded at the crossroads, holding two competing options steady, unable or unwilling to look at what choosing one actually means. The Sun trining Pluto this week is an open door into new awareness and empowered rebirth. The 2 of Swords is standing right in front of that door. The clarity you need to take the blindfold off is available this week in a way it has not been before.

The shadow is the Pisces capacity to dissolve into the in-between space so completely that the crossroads becomes a home rather than a threshold. The 2 of Swords is not a permanent state. It is a moment before a choice. This week, the moment is ready to end.

Overall energy · 8 of Wands

Subscribe now

· Collective Consciousness ·
~week of fateful choices~

We are not as separate as we think we are. Collective consciousness is the idea that underneath our individual experiences, there is a shared field of energy and emotion that we are all moving through at the same time. You might be navigating something that looks completely different to the person next to you, but the underlying themes, the feelings, the push and pull of it, are often strikingly similar across all of us at once.

This week that shared field is sitting inside a sky of fateful choices and Nodal activations, which means the situation you are bringing to this reading is not incidental. It is part of the larger pattern of what you are here to work through. Before you read on, bring something with you. A situation, a relationship, a decision that has been taking up space. Set yourself into it. Then read the cards below as a voice speaking directly to what you are carrying. This was pulled for the field we are all swimming in right now, which means it was pulled for you.

Cards: King of Cups · 5 of Pentacles · 2 of Cups · BOD: The Devil

King of Cups

The King of Cups opens this reading with the archetype of emotional mastery, of the person who has done enough inner work that they can hold their own depth without being pulled under by it, who can be present for the emotional reality of others without losing their own centre. This is not a cold or detached energy. It is the warmth of someone who has earned their steadiness through genuine experience rather than through suppression. In the context of whatever you are sitting with right now, the King of Cups is asking you to bring that quality of presence to your situation. Not the managed version of yourself, not the performance of being fine, but the genuinely grounded, emotionally available version that knows how to stay in the room with hard things without flinching. That is the energy this situation is asking for at the opening of this reading.

5 of Pentacles

The 5 of Pentacles arriving after the King of Cups names something that the King’s composure may have been holding together on the outside: there is a real experience of lack or loss or exclusion somewhere in this situation. The 5 of Pentacles is the card of the people in the cold outside the warmly lit window, of the feeling of being left out, left behind, or without the resources that the situation requires. In the Light Seer’s version of this card that quality of isolation is palpable, and it deserves to be named honestly rather than managed. With the Nodes of Destiny active in the sky this week, what feels like scarcity right now is part of a larger cycle, and the 5 of Pentacles always carries the detail that tends to get missed: the door to warmth and resource is closer than it appears. The question is whether you can see it from where you are standing.

2 of Cups

The 2 of Cups arriving third in this reading is the door that the 5 of Pentacles was standing outside of. This is the card of genuine mutual connection, of two people or two parts of a situation meeting each other honestly and choosing to move toward each other from that honest place. After the isolation and lack of the 5 of Pentacles, the 2 of Cups is not offering a fantasy. It is offering what becomes available when the scarcity story is set down and real connection is allowed to land. Something in your situation has the potential for genuine reciprocity, the kind that nourishes rather than depletes. The 2 of Cups is asking whether you are willing to walk through the door toward it, which means being willing to be seen as well as to see.

Bottom of the Deck · The Devil

The Devil at the foundation of this entire reading is the most honest card the deck could have placed here, and in the Light Seer’s Tarot he is particularly worth looking at closely. The figures in this card are not chained by force. The chains are loose. They could remove them if they chose to. The Devil is the card of the pattern that has us rather than us having it, of the belief or the behaviour or the relational dynamic that we return to not because it serves us but because it is familiar, because the discomfort of the known feels safer than the uncertainty of what happens if we actually choose differently. Sitting underneath the King of Cups and the 5 of Pentacles and the 2 of Cups, the Devil is naming what is holding the whole situation in place. There is a binding here. Something that keeps the emotional composure from becoming genuine vulnerability, that keeps the scarcity feeling alive even when resource is available, that keeps the door of real connection slightly out of reach. And the binding is not external. It never is with the Devil.

The cards as one voice

You are more emotionally capable than the situation you are in has been requiring you to be. The King of Cups at the opening of this reading is not describing someone else. It is describing you at your most integrated, the version of you that can hold depth without drowning, that can stay present for hard things without losing yourself in them. That resource is real and it is available.

But underneath the composure, the 5 of Pentacles is naming something true: there is a place in this situation where you have been feeling outside the warmth. Left out, underresourced, cold in a way that is hard to admit when you are also holding yourself together so well. And the 2 of Cups is showing you what is on the other side of that feeling: genuine connection, real reciprocity, the warmth you have been standing outside of actually being available to you.

The Devil at the bottom of all of this is the only honest question that matters this week: what is the pattern that keeps you standing outside rather than walking in? Not the story about why the door is closed. The actual pattern. The familiar binding that feels like protection but is functioning as a wall.

This week of fateful choices and Nodal activations is asking you to name it. Not to shame it, not to fight it, but to see it clearly the way the figures in the Devil card could see their chains if they just looked down. The chains are loose. They have always been loose. The choice to remove them has always been yours.

Walk through the door.

Subscribe now

Subscribe now

New Moon in Taurus · · Portal Between Two Eras

Yesterday’s new moon in Taurus is not a quiet one. This is a supermoon, which means it is sitting closer to the Earth than usual, amplifying everything it touches. It is also the first new moon since Uranus left Taurus and entered Gemini, making it a genuine portal between two eras, the closing of the door on the last seven years and the first breath of the seven years ahead.

Taurus is the sign of the body, the earth, self-worth, and what we are genuinely building with our lives. This new moon is asking you to plant seeds in all of those areas, not with urgency, but with the slow and deliberate intention that Taurus understands better than any other sign. What do you want to be true about your life by the time this lunar cycle completes? What do you want to have built, said, chosen, or released?

This new moon also aligns with Algol, one of the most intense fixed stars in the sky, connected to the myth of Medusa. Algol does not arrive to frighten. It arrives to ask you to look directly at what you have been afraid to face, and to discover, as Medusa’s story ultimately tells us, that what lives on the other side of that fear is not destruction but transformation. The things you have been holding in, the truths you have not quite allowed yourself to acknowledge, this new moon in close alignment with Mercury is asking you to find the words.

The Ace of Wands at the bottom of the deck as the overall energy is the seed beneath all of this. Pure creative life force. The thing that is trying to begin. Read your Sun, your Rising, your Moon, and the sign that holds Gemini in your natal chart. Then plant something.

Aries · 7 of Cups

Aries, the 7 of Cups at the opening of a Taurus new moon is asking you to do something genuinely difficult: choose one thing and mean it. The 7 of Cups is the card of the overwhelmed imagination, of too many visions and possibilities floating in front of you, each one compelling, none of them yet real. The Taurus new moon is the perfect medicine for this energy because Taurus does not dream in abstractions. It plants. It tends. It builds. The invitation for you right now is to take one of the visions you have been holding and bring it down from the clouds into the ground beneath your feet.

The shadow is the comfort of keeping everything as potential, where nothing can fail because nothing has been fully committed to. The Taurus new moon is asking for a real seed in real soil. Pick one thing, Aries. The Ace of Wands holding this whole reading up from underneath is waiting for you to choose.

Overall energy · Ace of Wands

Taurus · 10 of Cups

Taurus, this new moon is in your sign, which means the reset energy is landing directly in your house of self and identity. And the card that meets it is the 10 of Cups, one of the most genuinely abundant cards in the deck. This is the card of emotional fulfilment, of the life that feels nourishing from the inside rather than just impressive from the outside. On the day of your new moon, this card is both a reflection and a seed: a reflection of what is genuinely good in your world right now, and a seed for more of the same. Let yourself feel how much of this you have already built. Then plant with that feeling as your compass.

The shadow is the Taurus tendency to protect what is good rather than let it grow. The 10 of Cups is not asking you to hold tightly to what you have. It is asking you to trust that abundance is your natural state, and that opening your hands does not diminish it.

Overall energy · Ace of Wands

Gemini · Queen of Swords

Gemini, the Queen of Swords is your card for this new moon and she is exactly who you need right now as Uranus settles into your sign and the pace of your life accelerates. The Queen of Swords has lived through enough to know what is true and what is performance, and she does not confuse the two. She speaks clearly, sees clearly, and holds her own counsel without requiring the approval of the room. As everything around you speeds up, her clarity and her willingness to name what is real is your greatest resource. This new moon is asking you to plant seeds of honest, courageous communication.

The shadow of the Queen of Swords is the sharpness that can come when clarity is deployed without warmth. Your words carry enormous power right now, particularly with Mercury strongly placed in this new moon. Use them with the precision this archetype is known for, and with the care that precision deserves.

Overall energy · Ace of Wands

Cancer · 7 of Swords

Cancer, the 7 of Swords during a Taurus new moon aligned with Algol is asking you to get honest about something you have been managing around rather than through. There is a situation in your world where the full truth has not quite been on the table, either because you have been protecting someone, protecting yourself, or simply because naming it felt like more than you could hold. The Taurus new moon and its alignment with Mercury is creating a genuine opening for the honest version of this conversation, with yourself first, and then with whoever needs to hear it.

The shadow is the rationalisation that the partial truth was kinder. The Algol alignment this week is specifically asking us to stop fearing what lives on the other side of full honesty. What you are protecting by not saying the whole thing may not need as much protection as you have been giving it.

Overall energy · Ace of Wands

Leo · 8 of Cups

Leo, the 8 of Cups during a Taurus new moon is one of the more quietly powerful placements in this week’s spread. The Taurus new moon is about planting, and the 8 of Cups is about what you need to walk away from before the planting can happen. Something in your world has run its full course. It still looks like something from the outside. It may even have people in it who care about you. But you know, somewhere in the body that Taurus is asking you to come home to this week, that it is complete. The new moon is asking you to honour that knowledge with a real decision.

The shadow is the Leo loyalty that can keep you in a story past the point where the story is serving you, because leaving feels like abandoning rather than completing. The 8 of Cups walks away with grace, not with drama. Let this be a graceful departure.

Overall energy · Ace of Wands

Virgo · 7 of Pentacles

Virgo, the 7 of Pentacles during a Taurus new moon is a deeply aligned combination. Both are earth energy, both are asking about what is actually growing from the effort you have been putting in. This new moon is your moment to stand back from the work and do an honest assessment. Not a critical inventory of everything that is not yet right, but a genuine accounting of what has taken root, what is flourishing, and what the next season of this particular garden needs. The Taurus new moon wants you to plant with intention. The 7 of Pentacles wants you to do that planting from real evidence rather than from anxiety.

The shadow is the Virgo habit of seeing the gaps more clearly than the growth. Before you make any decisions about what needs to change, spend genuine time with what is already working. It is more than your inner critic has been letting you believe.

Overall energy · Ace of Wands

Libra · 4 of Pentacles

Libra, the 4 of Pentacles during a new moon that is specifically asking about self-worth and what we are genuinely building is pointing at something real in your world: there is a resource, an energy, a part of yourself that you have been holding very carefully, perhaps too carefully, and this new moon is asking whether that protection is still serving its original purpose. There is real wisdom in knowing what to guard. And there is a moment, and this may be it, when the guarding becomes the thing that prevents the growing.

The shadow is the fear that releasing control of what you are holding means losing it entirely. The Taurus new moon is the most grounded, stabilising energy in the zodiac calendar. What you release now does not disappear. It gets to grow.

Overall energy · Ace of Wands

Scorpio · 9 of Wands

Scorpio, the 9 of Wands during a Taurus new moon is the deck acknowledging something that deserves to be acknowledged: you are tired, and you have been at this for a long time, and you are still standing. The Taurus new moon opposite your sign is illuminating your axis of self and other, of what you carry alone and what you allow to be carried with you. The 9 of Wands is not asking you to push through again. It is asking you to notice that the line you have been holding is held, and that you are allowed to plant something new from this place of hard-won ground rather than from the exhaustion of constant vigilance.

The shadow is the hypervigilance that has become so habitual it no longer feels like a choice. The Taurus new moon is specifically about coming home to the body and to safety. What would it feel like to set the watch down for a moment and let the new moon plant something in the ground you have been defending?

Overall energy · Ace of Wands

Sagittarius · The Chariot

Sagittarius, the Chariot during a Taurus new moon is a genuinely energising placement. The Chariot is the card of directed will, of the person who has harnessed the competing forces within themselves and is now moving with real purpose and momentum. Taurus asks for slowness and intention, and the Chariot says yes, and also: move. There is a direction available to you right now that has the quality of genuine alignment, where your ambition and your values are pointing the same way. The new moon is asking you to plant a seed in that direction and then trust the momentum.

The shadow is the Chariot energy that becomes force rather than direction, pushing through obstacles rather than understanding what they are trying to show you. The Algol alignment this week is specifically about facing rather than overriding. Make sure you know what you are moving toward, not just what you are moving away from.

Overall energy · Ace of Wands

Capricorn · 9 of Swords

Capricorn, the 9 of Swords during a Taurus new moon aligned with Algol is the deck being exceptionally honest with you this week, and it deserves the same in return. The 9 of Swords is the card of the anxious mind in the early hours, of the thoughts that circle and magnify in the dark. The Taurus new moon is specifically offering the medicine for this: the body, the earth, the breath, the physical grounding that anxiety most needs and most resists. The light in the 9 of Swords is always that the dawn comes. The thoughts are not reality. The body knows the difference, if you let it speak.

The shadow is the Capricorn tendency to intellectualise the anxiety rather than move through it somatically. You cannot think your way out of a 9 of Swords week. You can breathe your way out. Walk barefoot. Put your hands in the earth. Let the Taurus new moon do what it came here to do.

Overall energy · Ace of Wands

Aquarius · The Moon

Aquarius, the Moon arriving in your house during this particularly layered new moon is a stunning placement. The Moon is the card of the subconscious, of what moves beneath the rational surface, of the intuitive knowing that exists in the place your mind cannot quite reach. With Pluto still doing its long transformative work in your sign, the Moon this week is surfacing something from very deep, something that has been moving in you without quite making it into words yet. The Taurus new moon aligned with Mercury is offering you the language for it. Let it come up. Let it be named.

The shadow is the confusion and disorientation that can come with the Moon card when what is surfacing is unfamiliar or uncomfortable. The Algol alignment is asking all of us to face what we fear rather than retreat from it. What the Moon is showing you this week is not a threat. It is information that has been waiting for you to be ready for it.

Overall energy · Ace of Wands

Pisces · The Tower

Pisces, the Tower closing this zodiac spread during a Taurus new moon aligned with Algol is the most significant card placement of the week. The Tower does not arrive to punish. It arrives because something has been built on a foundation that could not hold, and the ground is being cleared for what can. In the context of a new moon that is specifically about planting seeds of genuine worth and real stability, the Tower is not the opposite of that. It is the prerequisite. What is coming down had to come down for the new thing to have room. The Ace of Wands holding this whole spread from the bottom is the confirmation: underneath everything that is falling, there is a spark of something genuinely new.

The shadow is the impulse to rebuild immediately, to fill the space before you have truly understood what the falling was showing you. The Taurus new moon is slow and deliberate by nature. Let the dust settle. Let the Algol wisdom do its work. What you plant in the cleared ground will be the most structurally sound thing you have ever built, if you give yourself time to understand what the Tower came to teach.

Overall energy · Ace of Wands

The Topic Reading · Collective Consciousness · Taurus Supermoon

We are not as separate as we think we are. Collective consciousness is the idea that underneath our individual experiences, there is a shared field of energy and emotion that we are all moving through at the same time. You might be navigating something that looks completely different to the person next to you, but the underlying themes, the feelings, the push and pull of it, are often strikingly similar across all of us at once.

This week that shared field is sitting inside the energy of a Taurus new moon, which is asking all of us to come home to our bodies, our values, and what we are genuinely building. Before you read on, bring something with you. A situation, a relationship, a decision that has been taking up space. Set yourself into it. Then read the cards below as a voice speaking directly to what you are carrying. This was pulled for the field we are all swimming in right now, which means it was pulled for you.

Cards: 4 of Cups · 2 of Swords · Page of Pentacles · BOD: 7 of Wands

4 of Cups

The 4 of Cups opens this reading with a mood that many of us will recognise: a kind of inward withdrawal, a sitting with arms crossed and eyes turned inward while the world offers things that do not quite land. This is not depression exactly, and it is not ingratitude. It is the particular flatness that comes when you have been processing something significant and the usual sources of nourishment have temporarily lost their colour. In the context of the Taurus new moon asking us to plant something new, the 4 of Cups is naming what is true for a lot of people in the collective right now: the appetite for the new has not quite returned yet. Something is still being digested. And the Taurus new moon, slow and patient and deeply respectful of natural timing, is not rushing that. What the 4 of Cups is asking is simply this: notice what is being offered, even if you are not quite ready to reach for it yet. The cup being extended is real, and it will still be there when you are.

2 of Swords

The 2 of Swords arriving next names the specific quality of the stuckness that the 4 of Cups was sitting inside. This is the card of the person at the crossroads with the blindfold on, holding two swords crossed over her heart, unable or unwilling to look at what is in front of her because looking means choosing, and choosing means one of the options closes. There is a decision in your situation that has been waiting, possibly for a long time, and the 2 of Swords is not judging the waiting. Sometimes the waiting has been necessary. Sometimes the timing was not right. But the Taurus new moon, aligned with Algol and Mercury, is specifically creating the conditions for this blindfold to come off. Not because the choice will be easy, but because the clarity is now available that was not available before. The 2 of Swords does not ask for certainty. It asks for the willingness to look.

Page of Pentacles

After the withdrawal of the 4 of Cups and the frozen crossroads of the 2 of Swords, the Page of Pentacles arrives and she is carrying something genuinely hopeful: a new thing worth learning, a beginning worth taking seriously, a direction that has the quality of real curiosity rather than anxious striving. The Page of Pentacles is the student who picks something up with both hands and studies it with honest attention, not to perform competence but because she is genuinely interested in what this thing could become. In the context of whatever you are sitting with, this card is telling you that on the other side of the decision the 2 of Swords has been holding you at, there is something worth beginning. Something practical and real and grounded in the earth energy that this Taurus new moon is asking all of us to return to. The Page of Pentacles does not need the whole plan. She needs the first step and the genuine willingness to take it.

Bottom of the Deck · 7 of Wands

The 7 of Wands sitting at the foundation of this entire reading is naming what the collective has been doing, quietly and without much acknowledgement, for longer than is comfortable to admit. This is the card of the person standing on higher ground, holding their position against multiple challenges coming from below, defending something they have worked hard to build or become. It is not an aggressive card. It is a card of sustained defence, of the energy required to keep standing in your own truth when the pressure to abandon it has been constant and coming from multiple directions at once. What the 7 of Wands is telling us from underneath the 4 of Cups and the 2 of Swords and the hopeful Page of Pentacles is this: the ground you are standing on is yours. You have earned it. The defending has been real and it has been tiring. And the Taurus new moon is now asking you to plant something in that defended ground rather than just continuing to hold it.

ALL TOGETHER NOW

Here is what all four cards are saying together, as a single message to the collective field under this Taurus supermoon.

You have been holding your ground for a long time, and the holding has cost you something. It has cost you some of your appetite for what is being offered, some of your willingness to look clearly at a decision that has been waiting, some of the energy that would otherwise be available for beginning something new. The 7 of Wands at the foundation of this reading is an acknowledgement. The defence has been necessary. The ground was worth defending.

But here is what this Taurus new moon is bringing to that defended ground: permission to plant. Not to stop defending, not to abandon what you have built or become, but to shift the primary activity from holding to growing. The 4 of Cups is the emotional weather of someone who has been in survival mode long enough that the invitation to thrive feels slightly unreal. The 2 of Swords is the decision that has been waiting for the right moment to be made, and this new moon, with Algol asking us to face what we fear and Mercury asking us to find the words, is that moment. And the Page of Pentacles is what becomes available when you take the blindfold off and make the choice: something genuinely new, something grounded and real and worth your full attention.

The one voice of these four cards is gentle and it is clear. You have done the hard work of holding. Now it is time to do the quieter, slower, more patient work of growing. The Taurus new moon planted a seed in the ground you have been defending. Trust it. Tend it. Let it become what it is trying to become.

EXTRA BIT NOTICED

Every single figure in this spread is looking away from what is directly in front of them. Not one of them is facing forward. And they are all women.

Here is what I think the deck is saying with that.

The 4 of Cups is looking away from the offered cup, turned inward or sideways, not ready to receive what is being extended. The 2 of Swords is blindfolded, deliberately unseeing, facing toward the 4 of Cups as if the two of them are in quiet conversation about all the reasons not to look. The Page of Pentacles is looking down and to the left, absorbed in what she is already holding, studying the known thing rather than lifting her eyes to the horizon. And the 7 of Wands has her eyes closed and her gaze turned downward toward the Page, as if she is watching over the younger energy, protecting it, but also not looking up herself.

Four women. Four averted gazes. All of them in relationship with each other directionally, as if they are in a circle of mutual not-quite-looking.

The message underneath the individual card meanings is this: the collective right now is not only stuck at a crossroads or withdrawn or defending hard-won ground. It is specifically avoiding direct sight. There is something in front of the collective that everyone in this field is finding a reason not to look at squarely. Not out of weakness. The 7 of Wands is strong and the Page of Pentacles is genuinely curious and the 2 of Swords is holding herself steady. But not one of them has lifted their eyes to meet what is actually there.

The Taurus new moon and its Algol alignment is the thing asking them to look up.

Subscribe now

Seven Major Arcana · A threshold week

Seven major arcana in twelve cards. That does not happen often, and when it does the deck is not making small talk. The major arcana are the cards of soul-level experience, of the forces and archetypes that operate beneath the surface of daily life and shape the deeper current of what we are moving through. Seven of them landing in a single weekly spread means the collective is at a genuine threshold, not a minor adjustment but a real turning point, the kind that looks ordinary from the outside and feels enormous from the inside.

The Fool and The Lovers sitting in the same spread as The Hanged Man is a complete story in three cards: something new is beginning, a significant choice is at the heart of it, and right now everything is suspended while that choice is being made. The Sun and Strength following are the promise inside the suspension: clarity and quiet power are what come next, for those willing to sit inside the not-yet-knowing long enough to let the answer arrive properly.

Read your Sun, your Rising, and your Moon sign. Read the sign that rules the house Gemini occupies in your natal chart. The Wheel at the bottom of the deck as the overall is the confirmation: something is turning, and the turning is not accidental. You are exactly where you are meant to be inside this moment, even if it does not feel that way yet.

A reminder I put the demanking® energy on when doing these cards and the interpretation - so make sure you drink plenty of water as you read, journal and mindmap the information.

As always, I’m extra needy and would love your feedback if these messages resonated this week or last week’s did having lived through the week we did.

Be in charge of your world my friend.
Amanda

Subscribe now

Aries · 7 of Pentacles

Aries, the 7 of Pentacles is asking you to do something that does not come naturally: stop and look at what you have been growing. You have been in motion, investing energy and effort into something that matters to you, and this card is the gentle but firm tap on the shoulder that says the most useful thing you can do right now is not push harder but assess honestly. What is actually coming through from the work you have been putting in? In a week this loaded with major arcana energy, the 7 of Pentacles in your house is grounding the collective intensity into something practical and personal: a real stocktake of where your effort is actually landing.

The shadow is the impatience that can make assessment feel like wasted time. You are not stalling, Aries. You are gathering information you genuinely need before the next move. This is not the week to charge forward on instinct alone.

Overall energy · The Wheel

Taurus · 5 of Swords

Taurus, the 5 of Swords is naming something in your world that needs to be named honestly: there has been conflict, or a situation where the terms of engagement have not been equal, and the question this card is sitting with is what you are going to do with that now. The light here is that awareness of an unfair dynamic is itself a form of power. You are not required to keep playing a game whose rules were never designed to serve you. The 5 of Swords in a week of this much major arcana energy is asking you to make a deliberate choice about what you are still willing to pick up and what you are ready to put down.

The shadow is the Taurus tendency to hold on to grievance long after the moment of conflict has passed, to carry the swords even when the battle is over. Notice whether you are still fighting something that has already finished.

Overall energy · The Wheel

Gemini · 2 of Cups

Gemini, the 2 of Cups is landing in your house with Uranus still fresh in your sign, and the combination is interesting. Uranus is shaking up how you connect and communicate, and the 2 of Cups is asking you to notice which of your connections are surviving that shaking and which ones are revealing their true quality under the pressure. This is the card of genuine mutual recognition, of a bond that is real on both sides. In the middle of a week with this much threshold energy, the 2 of Cups is your anchor: something in your relational world is solid and true. Let it hold you.

The shadow watches for the tendency to idealise a connection rather than see it clearly. The 2 of Cups at its most grounded is mutual and honest. Make sure what you are calling genuine recognition is not just the reflection of what you want to see.

Overall energy · The Wheel

Cancer · The Fool

Cancer, The Fool is one of the most significant cards you could receive in a week this loaded with major arcana, and it has landed in your house. This is the card of the absolute beginning, of stepping off the known edge into something that has no map yet, of the particular kind of courage that does not come from certainty but from willingness. Something genuinely new is available to you right now. The Fool does not ask you to be ready. He asks you to be open. In a week when the collective is standing at a real threshold, you are being handed a first step. Take it.

The shadow is the naivety that can come with The Fool when he is not paying attention to what is right at his feet. Openness and recklessness are not the same thing. Let the new beginning be genuine without abandoning your discernment entirely.

Overall energy · The Wheel

Leo · The Lovers

Leo, The Lovers arriving in your house this week is not simply about romantic love, although it may touch that too. This is the card of the significant choice, of the moment when two paths diverge and you have to decide which one carries your true values rather than your comfortable habits. In the context of a week with seven major arcana, The Lovers is sitting at the heart of the spread with something important to say: the choice in front of you right now is a values question. What do you actually believe in? What are you actually choosing, and from what place inside yourself are you choosing it?

The shadow is the choice made from what looks good rather than what is true. The Lovers does not reward the decision that impresses people. It rewards the decision that aligns with who you actually are at your core. This week that distinction matters enormously.

Overall energy · The Wheel

Virgo · 10 of Swords

Virgo, the 10 of Swords marks an ending that is complete, total, and final, and in the Light Seer’s version of this card the sun is rising in the background. Something has run its absolute course in your world. The light here is the same as it always is with this card: what falls here was always going to fall, and the ground beneath you is still yours. The ending is real. So is the dawn. In a week with this much major arcana energy moving through the collective, the 10 of Swords in your house is clearing the ground for something that could not have arrived while the old thing was still standing.

The shadow is the dramatisation of the ending, the story that makes this more catastrophic than it actually is. The 10 of Swords is the last card of the swords suit. After this, a new suit begins. Let it.

Overall energy · The Wheel

Libra · Knight of Swords

Libra, the Knight of Swords has arrived in your house and he has something to say, at speed and without much interest in softening it. In a week when the collective is being asked to make significant choices and sit inside uncomfortable thresholds, the Knight of Swords is your particular invitation to act on what you already know. You have clarity available right now. The card is asking you to trust it and move from it decisively, before the usual Libra process of weighing every possibility turns the window into a memory.

The shadow is the Knight of Swords moving so fast he outpaces his own wisdom. Decisiveness and reactivity are not the same thing. Check once that the clarity you are acting on is genuine discernment rather than impatience dressed up as certainty, and then move.

Overall energy · The Wheel

Scorpio · The Hanged Man

Scorpio, The Hanged Man is one of the most spiritually rich cards in the deck and it has arrived in your house in a week already thick with major arcana energy. This is the card of the willing suspension, of the person who stops trying to force an outcome and discovers that the pause itself is the teaching. Something in your world right now cannot be pushed forward, and the wisdom of The Hanged Man is that the resistance you are feeling is not the obstacle. It is the invitation. The new perspective you need is only available from this upside-down position. Stay in it long enough to actually receive what it is offering.

The shadow is the suspension that becomes avoidance, the hanging that is really just a refusal to choose dressed up as spiritual patience. The Hanged Man chooses to pause. Make sure this is still a choice rather than a default.

Overall energy · The Wheel

Sagittarius · Page of Pentacles

Sagittarius, the Page of Pentacles is bringing something grounding and genuinely useful to your week: the energy of the careful, curious beginner who picks something up with both hands and studies it properly before deciding what to do with it. In a week of enormous major arcana intensity across the collective, your card is asking you to slow down and learn something. There is a skill, a practice, a body of knowledge that is worth your patient attention right now. The Page of Pentacles does not rush. She invests. This is exactly the right energy for where you are.

The shadow is the Sagittarian tendency to skim the surface of something exciting before the next horizon calls. The Page of Pentacles is asking for depth this week, not breadth. Stay with one thing long enough to actually understand it.

Overall energy · The Wheel

Capricorn · The Sun

Capricorn, The Sun landing in your house in a week with seven major arcana is one of the most genuinely joyful placements in this entire spread. This is the card of clarity, of warmth, of something that has been growing in the dark finally coming fully into the light where everyone, including you, can see it for what it actually is. Something is thriving in your world right now, and The Sun is asking you to stand in that without qualification, without immediately turning to the next task or the next problem. Let yourself be lit up by what is working. You have earned this.

The shadow is the discomfort of being fully seen in your own success, the Capricorn habit of minimising the win before anyone else can. The Sun does not do modesty. This week, neither should you.

Overall energy · The Wheel

Aquarius · Strength

Aquarius, Strength is your card this week and she is exactly the right archetype for where you are sitting right now. This is not the strength of force or dominance. It is the strength of the person who has learned to work with their own nature rather than against it, who meets intensity with presence rather than resistance, who holds something powerful gently because they understand that gentleness is not weakness. In a week this charged with collective threshold energy, your particular gift is the capacity to stay soft enough to receive what is moving while being grounded enough not to be swept away by it.

The shadow is the exhaustion of someone who has been being strong for a long time and is not sure they have much left. Strength in the tarot is not about endurance without end. It is about sustainable power. Check in with what you actually need right now to stay genuinely resourced.

Overall energy · The Wheel

Pisces · Queen of Wands

Pisces, the Queen of Wands is bringing you something bold and warm and unapologetically present this week. She is the one who walks into a room and the energy shifts, not because she is performing but because she is genuinely, fully herself and that quality of presence is magnetic. In a week with this much collective intensity, your card is asking you to inhabit yourself completely, to stop making yourself smaller or quieter or more manageable for the comfort of others. The Queen of Wands does not dim. She is the invitation to stop dimming too.

The shadow watches for the performance of confidence rather than the real thing. The Queen of Wands is magnetic because she is genuine, not because she is loud. Make sure what you are bringing this week is actually yours and not a version of yourself you think people want to see.

Overall energy · The Wheel

Subscribe now

The Topic Reading · Collective Consciousness

We are not as separate as we think we are. Collective consciousness is the idea that underneath our individual experiences, there is a shared field of energy and emotion that we are all moving through at the same time. You might be navigating something that looks completely different to the person next to you, but the underlying themes, the feelings, the push and pull of it, are often strikingly similar across all of us at once.

This week the collective field is carrying the weight of seven major arcana across the zodiac readings, which means what is moving right now is not surface level. Before you read on, bring something with you. A situation, a relationship, a decision that has been taking up space. Set yourself into it. Then read the cards below as a voice speaking directly to what you are carrying. This was pulled for the field we are all swimming in right now, which means it was pulled for you.

Cards: Death / Rebirth · 4 of Swords · King of Swords · BOD: Page of Wands

Death · Rebirth

Death opens this collective reading and in a week already thick with major arcana energy, it is doing so with full authority. This is not the death of something small. Something in the field we are all swimming in right now is completing at a soul level, a way of being, a pattern, a version of a story that has been running for a very long time. In the context of whatever you brought to this reading, Death is naming the part of it that is genuinely over. Not struggling, not needing more work, not waiting for a better moment. Over. The gift that lives inside this card, and there is always a gift, is that nothing new can fully arrive while the old thing is still occupying the space. Death is the clearing. What you are being asked to release right now is making room for something that cannot yet be named but is already on its way.

4 of Swords

After Death comes the 4 of Swords, and the sequence is not accidental. The 4 of Swords is the card of sacred rest, of the deliberate withdrawal from noise and activity to allow something to integrate. In the tarot, this card traditionally depicts a figure lying in repose, swords set aside, in a posture that is not defeat but recovery. What this card is saying to the collective field right now, in the wake of whatever Death has just released, is that the next move is not immediate action. It is stillness. Not passive stillness, but the kind of intentional quiet that allows what has just shifted to actually settle before you pick up the next thing. This is a card that asks the body to rest and the mind to follow.

King of Swords

The King of Swords arriving after Death and the 4 of Swords is the card of what becomes possible once the release has happened and the rest has been taken. This is the archetype of the mind at its most sovereign, of clarity that has been earned through experience rather than inherited through certainty, of the person who can see what is true and say it without cruelty and without hesitation. In the context of your situation, the King of Swords is the version of you that emerges from the other side of this transition: clear, authoritative, no longer managing the truth but simply living from it. He is not a distant possibility. He is what the Death card and the 4 of Swords are preparing you to become.

Bottom of the Deck · Page of Wands

The Page of Wands at the bottom of this entire reading, holding up Death and sacred rest and sovereign clarity from underneath, is one of the most hopeful things the deck could have placed there. This is the original spark, the pure creative impulse that has not yet been shaped by what came before, the part of you that is genuinely curious about what comes next rather than grieving what is ending. The Page of Wands does not carry the weight of history. She is interested only in what is possible now. What she is doing at the foundation of this reading is reminding us that underneath the completion, underneath the necessary rest, underneath the clarity that is coming, there is something in us that is already excited about what is being born. That excitement is real. It is data. It is the part of you that already knows this ending is the beginning of something worth beginning.

The cards as one voice

Here is what all four cards are saying together, as a single message to the collective field this week.

Something is ending, and you know it. You have probably known it for a while. The situation you brought to this reading has a part inside it that is complete, finished, run its full course, and the reason it has been so heavy is that you have been trying to carry something that has already become dead weight. Death is not asking you to be ready for this. It is telling you it is already happening.

What comes immediately after the release is not a new plan. It is rest. Real rest, the kind where you put the swords down and stop strategising and let your nervous system register that the battle is over. The 4 of Swords is not a delay. It is the most productive thing available to you right now, because what you are becoming in the wake of this ending cannot be forced into shape. It needs space and quiet to arrive properly.

And what is arriving is the King of Swords: a version of yourself that is clearer, more grounded in truth, less willing to manage or soften or defer what you actually know. That version of you does not need to perform certainty. They simply have it, because they stopped pretending about the things that were already over.

The Page of Wands underneath all of it is the most important message of this reading. She is the part of you that is already quietly excited. The part that knows that once this is properly released and properly rested, something genuinely new gets to begin. That excitement is not premature. It is accurate. Trust it.

Drink LOTS of water. Over. Crrrrkkkkkkkkk
Foy out.

Subscribe now

Full Moon in Scorpio · The Flower Moon · May 1, 2026

This is the first of two full moons arriving in May 2026, which is itself a rare thing. A Blue Moon in Sagittarius follows at the end of the month, and together they form an extended arc of transformation that will carry us from the deepest depths of what we have been avoiding all the way out to the open horizon of what is possible next. But right now we are at the beginning of that arc, and the beginning is Scorpio.

Scorpio does not do surface. This full moon is illuminating the hidden architecture of your life, the emotional currents running underneath your relationships, the unspoken agreements you have been honouring without ever naming them, the fears and desires you manage quietly rather than acknowledging openly. Sitting opposite the Sun in Taurus, with Pluto in Aquarius applying pressure from the side, this lunation is not asking politely. It is turning the lights on in every room you have been keeping dark, and it is doing so with the particular intensity of a sign that understands that what we refuse to look at does not go away. It simply drives us from underneath.

The cards this week are carrying a significant concentration of sword energy, which is truth energy, clarity energy, the energy of things being named. That is entirely appropriate for a Scorpio full moon. Read your Sun, your Rising, and your Moon sign, and find the house Gemini occupies in your natal chart and read that sign too. The 7 of Wands at the bottom of the deck as the overall tells us something important: the ground you are standing on this week is yours, and it is worth defending.

Subscribe now

Please ensure you drink plenty of water - this collective session and the zodiac read have been zhushed with demanking® energy. Read the Rising, Sun and Moon signs, and probably read Gemini (Uranus) and Scorpio (Full Moon) to see if they resonate too. Find which house they are in in your natal chart.

Leave me a comment or heart if this session resonated.

Aries · The Wheel

Aries, the Wheel of Fortune landing in your house during a Scorpio full moon is a significant combination. The Wheel speaks to the turning of cycles, to the moment when what has been building beneath the surface finally tips into visible movement. This full moon is illuminating something that has been in motion for longer than you perhaps realised, and the Wheel is telling you that the timing of what is shifting right now is not accidental. Something is completing so that something else can begin. Trust the turn even if you cannot yet see where it is taking you.

The shadow here is the temptation to try to control the direction of the Wheel rather than ride it. The Scorpio full moon is bringing things to light that were always going to come to light. Your work is not to manage the revelation. It is to be present for it and let it show you what you need to see.

Overall energy · 7 of Wands

Taurus · 8 of Swords

Taurus, the Sun is in your sign right now, which means this full moon is sitting directly opposite you, illuminating your shadow self with the particular precision of Scorpio at full power. The 8 of Swords in your house this week is carrying a message that this full moon was always going to deliver: the limitation you are living inside is more constructed than actual. The bindings are real in the sense that you put them there, but they are not permanent, and the path out has always been available. The Scorpio full moon is offering you the courage to take the blindfold off.

The shadow is the Taurus tendency to stay in known discomfort rather than risk unknown freedom. This full moon is going to make the staying increasingly uncomfortable. That is not a punishment. It is the invitation.

Overall energy · 7 of Wands

Gemini · 7 of Swords

Gemini, the 7 of Swords during a Scorpio full moon is asking you to look honestly at where you have been less than fully truthful, with others or with yourself. This is not a card of condemnation. It is a card of honest inventory. Scorpio will surface what has been hidden, and the 7 of Swords in your house suggests that something you have been managing carefully, perhaps a situation you have been navigating around rather than through, is about to become visible. The light here is that naming it yourself, on your own terms, is always more powerful than having it named for you.

The shadow is the rationalisation that can come with this card, the very clever story about why the partial truth was actually the kind thing. The Scorpio full moon does not negotiate with clever stories. It simply shows what is real.

Overall energy · 7 of Wands

Cancer · Ace of Swords

Cancer, the Ace of Swords during a Scorpio full moon is one of the most powerful combinations in the deck for emotional truth-telling. The Ace of Swords is pure clarity, the kind that arrives suddenly and cannot be unfelt once it has landed. Something becomes clear for you this week, and it has the quality of a genuine breakthrough, a thought or understanding that cuts cleanly through what you have been carrying. The Scorpio full moon is the energy that surfaces it. The Ace of Swords is the form it takes: precise, clean, undeniable.

The shadow watches for the impulse to soften or delay what you now know. The Ace of Swords does not arrive for you to sit on. It arrives so you can use it. Say the true thing, to yourself first, and then to whoever needs to hear it.

Overall energy · 7 of Wands

Leo · 5 of Cups

Leo, the 5 of Cups during a Scorpio full moon is asking you to grieve something properly. Not to perform the grief, not to manage it into something more comfortable for the people around you, but to actually feel the weight of what has been lost or what has not gone the way you hoped. The Scorpio full moon creates the container for that kind of depth. The 5 of Cups is the permission slip. And crucially, in the Light Seer’s version of this card, there are still cups standing. What remains is real and worth turning toward, once the grief has had its space.

The shadow is staying fixed on what spilled rather than turning to see what is still full. The Scorpio full moon illuminates both, and your work this week is to do both: honour the loss, and then face the remaining abundance without guilt.

Overall energy · 7 of Wands

Virgo · Knight of Cups

Virgo, the Knight of Cups arriving in your house during a Scorpio full moon is bringing something tender and unexpected: an invitation to follow feeling rather than analysis for once. The Knight of Cups moves toward what calls to him emotionally, intuitively, without necessarily being able to justify it on a spreadsheet. This full moon is illuminating something in your emotional life that deserves more than your usual careful management. There is a call coming from somewhere deep, and this card is asking you to take it seriously.

The shadow is the idealisation that can come with the Knight of Cups, the tendency to be so moved by the feeling of a thing that you miss the reality of it. Let the Scorpio full moon show you what is actually there alongside what you wish were there. Both deserve your attention.

Overall energy · 7 of Wands

Libra · Death

Libra, Death arriving in your house during a Scorpio full moon is not subtle, and it is not meant to be. This is the card of necessary, complete, irreversible ending, and in the context of what Scorpio is illuminating right now, it is naming something you have probably been circling for a while: something is over. A relationship dynamic, a version of yourself, a story you have been telling about your life that no longer fits. The light in Death is always the same: what ends here was always going to end, and what comes after has been waiting for the space.

The shadow is the Libra pattern of negotiating with endings, of finding the compromise that lets you keep one foot in what was. The Scorpio full moon and Death together are not offering a compromise this week. They are offering a threshold. Walk through it fully.

Overall energy · 7 of Wands

Scorpio · King of Wands

Scorpio, this full moon is in your sign, which means the lights are on brightest in your house this week. And what is illuminated is the King of Wands: visionary, commanding, someone who has alchemised intensity into authority and leads from genuine fire rather than performance. This is who you are when you are fully inhabiting yourself. The Scorpio full moon is showing you your own power clearly and without softening. The invitation is to receive that reflection without deflecting it. You are allowed to be this.

The shadow is the heat that can come with the King of Wands energy when it is not fully integrated, the intensity that tips into control, the passion that stops leaving room for others. The full moon in your sign asks for full honesty. That includes honesty about where your fire has been burning something other than what you intended.

Overall energy · 7 of Wands

Sagittarius · 10 of Pentacles

Sagittarius, the 10 of Pentacles during a Scorpio full moon is asking you to look at what you have built and what it has cost, not to diminish it, but to see it in full. This is the card of legacy and abundance and the long view, and the Scorpio full moon is illuminating the emotional underpinnings of everything you have constructed. What has been built from genuine values and real love will stand clearly in this light. What has been built from fear or obligation will also be visible. Both pieces of information are useful.

The shadow is the avoidance of looking too closely at the foundations in case they reveal something uncomfortable. The Scorpio full moon is not going to let that avoidance hold this week. Better to look with your own eyes than to have it shown to you unexpectedly.

Overall energy · 7 of Wands

Capricorn · Knight of Pentacles

Capricorn, the Knight of Pentacles is your steadying presence during what is, for much of the collective, a turbulent full moon week. This is the card of slow, methodical, deeply reliable forward movement, of the person who does not rush and does not waver and ultimately arrives because they simply kept going. As the Scorpio full moon stirs up emotional depths around you, your card is asking you to maintain your pace and trust your method. Not everything needs to be transformed this week. Some things need to be tended.

The shadow is using the methodical energy of this card to avoid the emotional depth that the Scorpio full moon is genuinely asking for. The Knight of Pentacles is steady, not closed. Let this week show you something true even if it asks you to slow the work down briefly to feel it.

Overall energy · 7 of Wands

Aquarius · 4 of Pentacles

Aquarius, the 4 of Pentacles in your house during a Scorpio full moon is pointing directly at something worth examining: what are you protecting, and what is that protection actually costing you? Pluto is in your sign right now, adding its own transformative pressure to this full moon, and the 4 of Pentacles is naming the specific pattern that Pluto is working on in your life: the grip. The holding tight. There is genuine wisdom in discernment about what to protect. And there is something else underneath it that this full moon is asking you to look at honestly.

The shadow is the fear that lives inside the grip, the belief that if you release control of what you are holding, it will disappear entirely. The Scorpio full moon is asking whether that belief is actually true, or whether it is an old story that has outlived its usefulness.

Overall energy · 7 of Wands

Pisces · 9 of Wands

Pisces, the 9 of Wands during a Scorpio full moon is honouring something real: you have been through a great deal, and you are still here, still standing, still showing up even with the wounds visible. The 9 of Wands does not ask you to pretend the weariness is not there. It acknowledges it fully, and then asks you to hold the line one more time, not from depletion but from the particular kind of strength that only comes from having already survived what you were not sure you could survive. The Scorpio full moon sees all of it. Every scar. Every act of endurance. And it calls it power.

The shadow is the hypervigilance of someone who has been hurt enough times to expect it as a default. The Scorpio full moon is illuminating your defences this week as much as your wounds. Notice where the protection has become the prison, and whether it is still necessary.

Overall energy · 7 of Wands

Subscribe now

COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS READING

We are not as separate as we think we are. Collective consciousness is the idea that underneath our individual experiences, there is a shared field of energy and emotion that we are all moving through at the same time. You might be navigating something that looks completely different to the person next to you, but the underlying themes, the feelings, the push and pull of it, are often strikingly similar across all of us at once.

This week that shared field is being lit up by a Scorpio full moon, which means the collective is sitting inside something deep, something that has been beneath the surface for a while and is now impossible to ignore. Before you read on, bring something with you. A situation, a relationship, a decision that has been taking up space. Set yourself into it. Then read the cards below as a voice speaking directly to what you are carrying. This was pulled for the field we are all swimming in right now, which means it was pulled for you.

Cards: 7 of Pentacles · 5 of Swords · 2 of Cups · BOD: 5 of Wands

7 of Pentacles

The 7 of Pentacles opens this reading with a pause, and not a passive one. This is the card of the person who has been working, who has invested real time and real energy into something, and who is now standing back to look honestly at what is growing. In the context of whatever you are sitting with right now, this card is asking you to do the same thing: stop moving for long enough to assess. Is what you have been tending actually producing what you hoped it would? The Scorpio full moon is a powerful companion to this question because it strips away the stories we tell ourselves about our efforts and shows us what the ground is actually yielding. The 7 of Pentacles is not a card of despair. It is a card of honest evaluation, and honest evaluation is always the beginning of wise next steps.

5 of Swords

The 5 of Swords arriving next is the card this Scorpio full moon was always going to surface for the collective, and it deserves to be looked at without flinching. This is the card of conflict, of the aftermath of a battle where the question of who won and who lost is more complicated than it first appeared. In some versions of this story, someone has taken more than their share. In others, someone has walked away from a fight that was costing them more than any victory was worth. The 5 of Swords asks you to look at the conflict or tension alive in your situation right now, not to assign blame, but to get honest about what it has cost and whether continuing to engage on the current terms is actually serving anyone. Sometimes the most powerful move available is to put the swords down.

2 of Cups

After the assessment of the 7 of Pentacles and the difficult honesty of the 5 of Swords, the 2 of Cups arrives and it is carrying something the other two cards have been quietly pointing toward: the possibility of genuine connection on the other side of all of this. The 2 of Cups is the card of mutual recognition, of two people meeting each other honestly and choosing each other from that honest place. In the context of whatever you are navigating, this card is asking whether there is a relationship at the heart of it that is worth the vulnerability of real honesty. The Scorpio full moon illuminates what is real in our connections. The 2 of Cups says that what is real and mutual is worth protecting, even if getting there requires a difficult conversation first.

Bottom of the Deck · 5 of Wands

The 5 of Wands sitting at the foundation of this entire reading is naming something the collective has been living inside for a while now: a low-grade friction, a scattered and competing energy, the sense of pushing against resistance from multiple directions at once without any single clear conflict to resolve. This is the card of the crowd all moving in slightly different directions, of the effort that is being dispersed rather than focused. What the 5 of Wands is telling us from underneath everything else in this reading is that much of the exhaustion in your situation right now is coming not from one big battle but from the accumulated drag of too many small ones. The energy is leaking out in too many places at once.

The cards as one voice

Here is what all four cards are saying together, as a single message to the collective field under this Scorpio full moon.

You have been working hard on something for a long time, and underneath the effort there has been friction, conflict, and a dispersed kind of exhaustion that is hard to name because it does not come from one single source. The 5 of Wands at the foundation tells us this has been the weather for a while. The 5 of Swords in the middle of the reading names what that weather has produced: a situation where someone, possibly you, has been winning in ways that do not feel like winning, or losing in ways that are quietly costing more than you have acknowledged.

The Scorpio full moon is the moment when the lights come on over all of this. And the 7 of Pentacles at the opening is asking you to look at what you are actually growing inside this situation, clearly and without the story you have been telling yourself to make it more bearable.

But here is what the 2 of Cups is holding in the middle of all of this tension, and it is important: there is something genuine here worth saving. A connection, a collaboration, a relationship that underneath the friction and the fatigue still carries real mutual recognition. The one voice of these four cards is not telling you to walk away. It is telling you to stop fighting the way you have been fighting, put the swords down, get honest about what the effort has actually produced, and then turn toward the real thing, the genuine connection, the actual reason any of this has mattered to you.

That is what the Scorpio full moon came to show you. Not the wound. The reason the wound happened in the first place, which is that something here genuinely mattered. Start from there.

Please ensure you drink plenty of water - this collective session and the zodiac read have been zhushed with demanking® energy.

Subscribe now

\

Uranus enters Gemini · April 2026

Uranus has been sitting in Taurus since 2018. For seven years it has been doing what Uranus does in an earth sign: shaking the ground beneath our feet, disrupting what we thought was solid, rewriting our relationship with money, bodies, land, and the things we believed were permanent. If the last seven years have felt like the floor kept shifting, that is exactly what was happening.

Now Uranus moves into Gemini, and it will stay there until 2033. This is a once in a lifetime transit. The last time Uranus was in Gemini was 1941 to 1949. Before that, the American Civil War. When Uranus moves through the sign of the Twins, the disruption moves from the ground into the air: into communication, information, ideas, technology, the way we learn and the way we connect. The speed of everything is about to increase significantly.

This week’s cards are your personal navigation guide for the world we are stepping into. Read your Sun sign for your core identity, your Rising for how this lands in your outer world, and your Moon for the emotional and felt sense underneath. Then find which house Gemini sits in on your natal chart and read that sign too, because that is the specific area of your life where Uranus is about to do its most personal work.

The 3 of Wands sitting at the bottom of the deck as the overall is exactly right: we are standing at the edge of the horizon, watching something vast begin to come in. The ships are not here yet. But they are visible.

PLEASE ENSURE YOU HAVE YOUR WATER WITH YOU THIS
INTERPRETATION IS ZHUSHED WITH HEALING ENERGY

Subscribe now

Aries · 4 of Pentacles

Aries, the 4 of Pentacles is asking you something quietly urgent as Uranus shifts into Gemini: what are you holding onto, and why? This card lands in your house at a moment when the collective energy is all about releasing and adapting, which means your particular work right now is to notice where your grip has become a habit rather than a choice. There is genuine wisdom in knowing what to protect. The 4 of Pentacles carries real intelligence about boundaries and self-preservation, and that is worth honouring.

The shadow is the kind of holding that tips into hoarding, whether of resources, of positions, of identities that used to fit but have quietly become too small. Uranus in Gemini is going to be moving fast. Travelling lighter will serve you far better than arriving at the new world weighed down by everything you refused to set down.

Overall energy · 3 of Wands

Taurus · 2 of Pentacles

Taurus, you have just spent seven years with Uranus in your own sign, and if anyone knows what it feels like to have the ground rewritten beneath them it is you. The 2 of Pentacles acknowledges that you are still balancing, still juggling, still finding your footing after everything that has moved and shifted. The good news is that you are genuinely skilled at this now, even if it does not always feel that way. You have developed a flexibility you did not have before 2018, and that is the gift Uranus left behind in your sign.

The shadow here is the exhaustion of someone who has been adapting for a long time and is not sure they have anything left for the next round. You are allowed to rest before Uranus in Gemini asks something new of you. In fact, rest is the most strategic thing you can do right now.

Overall energy · 3 of Wands

Gemini · 4 of Cups

Gemini, Uranus has just arrived in your sign and it is going to be living in your house for the next seven years. That is significant, and the 4 of Cups landing here is interesting because it is a card of contemplation, of someone so absorbed in their own inner world that they nearly miss what is being offered. The light in this is that you are being asked to get clear on what you actually want before the speed of Uranus in your sign sweeps you up into pure reaction. This is a rare and valuable window: use it to get quiet and deliberate about what you are choosing.

The shadow is the risk of sitting so still inside yourself that you miss the extraordinary gifts this transit is placing right in front of you. Uranus in Gemini is bringing you a full system upgrade. The 4 of Cups is the reminder to look up occasionally.

Overall energy · 3 of Wands

Cancer · King of Swords

Cancer, the King of Swords is your guide into the Uranus in Gemini era, and that is a significant one. This is not your most natural archetype, which is precisely why it is showing up. The King of Swords leads with clarity, with logic, with the capacity to make decisions from the mind rather than solely from the heart. As Uranus begins accelerating information and communication in the world around you, your greatest tool will be your capacity to think clearly under conditions of constant change. You have more of this than you give yourself credit for.

The shadow is the detachment that can come when Cancer tries to operate entirely from the mind as a way of protecting the heart. The King of Swords is most powerful when he stays connected to what he actually values. Do not switch the heart off. Just let the mind lead for a while.

Overall energy · 3 of Wands

Leo · Queen of Cups

Leo, the Queen of Cups is your compass for the years ahead, and she is a beautiful one. As Uranus in Gemini accelerates everything in the mental and communicative realms, the Queen of Cups is asking you to stay anchored in emotional intelligence and deep intuition. In a world that is about to become very loud and very fast, the person who can feel what is true underneath the noise will have a significant advantage. That person is you, if you trust it.

The shadow watches for the tendency to absorb the emotional weather of the world around you rather than staying centred in your own. The Queen of Cups holds depth without drowning. As the pace of everything increases, your practice of coming back to your own emotional centre becomes more important, not less.

Overall energy · 3 of Wands

Virgo · Page of Cups

Virgo, the Page of Cups is a genuinely surprising and tender card to receive at the opening of a Uranus in Gemini transit. This is the card of emotional curiosity, of someone willing to be surprised by their own feelings, of creativity that arrives sideways rather than through planning. The invitation here is to let the next seven years bring you into a more playful, open-hearted relationship with your own inner life. Uranus in Gemini is going to disrupt a lot of systems, including the internal ones. The Page of Cups says that what emerges might be unexpectedly beautiful.

The shadow is the Virgo habit of analysing the feeling rather than having it. The Page of Cups is not asking you to be logical about your emotional life right now. She is asking you to be curious about it. There is a difference worth knowing.

Overall energy · 3 of Wands

Libra · 9 of Wands

Libra, the 9 of Wands is the card of someone who has been through a great deal and is still standing, still holding the line, still showing up even though they are tired. As Uranus moves into Gemini and a new era begins, this card is acknowledging something real: you have earned your place at this threshold. Whatever the last seven years have asked of you, you have met it. The 9 of Wands says that the endurance you have built, the quiet showing up, is exactly what the next chapter is going to call on.

The shadow is the hypervigilance that can come with this card, the expecting of the next blow before it arrives, the bracing that never quite stops. As a new era begins, the 9 of Wands is also asking whether you can put some of the guardedness down. The next seven years will ask for openness as much as endurance.

Overall energy · 3 of Wands

Scorpio · Justice

Scorpio, Justice arriving as your card for the Uranus in Gemini era is a powerful alignment. This is the card of truth, of accountability, of things being brought into their proper balance after a period of imbalance. As Uranus in Gemini begins disrupting how information moves and how communication operates in the world, Justice in your house suggests that you will be one of the people capable of seeing clearly what is actually true amid the noise. That discernment is a gift, and the world is going to need it.

The shadow is the shadow side of Justice, which is rigidity, the insistence on a particular version of what is right that leaves no room for nuance or evolution. Uranus in Gemini is going to be showing us multiple versions of truth simultaneously. The capacity to hold complexity without collapsing into certainty will serve you well.

Overall energy · 3 of Wands

Sagittarius · 10 of Wands

Sagittarius, the 10 of Wands is honest with you at the opening of this new era: you are carrying a lot. The load has been building, and this card is not pretending otherwise. The light here is that the 10 of Wands is not the end of the road. It is the figure who can see the destination from here, who is close enough to the threshold that the weight, while real, is almost deposited. Uranus in Gemini is bringing a shift in what you are being asked to carry, and the first move is setting down what has already been delivered.

The shadow is the tendency to carry everything yourself because no one else will do it properly. Uranus in Gemini is going to be offering new ways of connecting and collaborating. The 10 of Wands asks you to be willing to hand some of this to others.

Overall energy · 3 of Wands

Capricorn · 8 of Wands

Capricorn, the 8 of Wands is the most kinetic card in the deck and it has landed in your house at exactly the right moment. This is the card of rapid movement, of things finally clearing and accelerating after a period of feeling blocked or slow. As Uranus moves into Gemini and the pace of the world increases, you are going to find that you are more ready for this speed than you anticipated. Something that has been waiting is about to move, and it is going to move quickly. Be ready to act when it does.

The shadow is the Capricorn tendency to want to plan for every contingency before moving. The 8 of Wands does not wait for the perfect moment. It moves. Uranus in Gemini is going to reward the ones who can make decisions quickly with the information available, rather than the ones who wait until every variable is accounted for.

Overall energy · 3 of Wands

Aquarius · 8 of Cups

Aquarius, the 8 of Cups at the beginning of Uranus in Gemini is asking you to do something that takes real courage: walk away from something that has run its course, even if it still looks functional from the outside. As the planet of revolution begins its transit through the sign most associated with your natural element, air, you are being called to clear the ground for what is genuinely new. The 8 of Cups is not a card of loss. It is a card of the wisdom to know when something is complete.

The shadow is leaving without processing, moving on so quickly that the grief of what you are releasing does not get the space it deserves. Uranus in Gemini will be fast. The 8 of Cups asks you to be thorough before you are fast.

Overall energy · 3 of Wands

Pisces · 8 of Swords

Pisces, the 8 of Swords is the card of someone who is more free than they currently believe themselves to be. The figure is bound and blindfolded, but the bindings are loose and the path out is clear to anyone looking from the outside. As Uranus in Gemini begins its work of disrupting perception and expanding how we think and communicate, your card this week is a direct invitation: the limitation you are living inside right now is more mental than actual. The shift that Uranus is offering you is a shift in how you see your own situation.

The shadow is the comfort that can quietly settle into a familiar constriction, the way something known can feel safer than an unfamiliar freedom. Uranus in Gemini is going to challenge a great many stories we tell ourselves about what is possible. Yours is one of them. Let it be challenged.

Overall energy · 3 of Wands

Subscribe now

Your topic reading · the collective consciousness

We are not as separate as we think we are. Collective consciousness is the idea that underneath our individual experiences, there is a shared field of energy and emotion that we are all moving through at the same time. You might be navigating something that looks completely different to the person next to you, but the underlying themes, the feelings, the push and pull of it, are often strikingly similar across all of us at once.

Before you read on, bring something with you. A situation, a relationship, a decision that has been taking up space in you. Set yourself into it. Then read the cards below as a voice speaking directly to what you are carrying. This was pulled for the field we are all swimming in right now, which means it was pulled for you.

Cards: Temperance · The Magician · 3 of Cups · BOD: 7 of Cups

Temperance

Temperance opens this reading with a steadiness that feels almost countercultural right now. She is the card of integration, of the patient and deliberate blending of opposites into something that could not exist if either side was missing. In the context of whatever you are sitting with, Temperance is asking you to slow the pour. Not stop. Slow. There is a pace at which what you are working with can integrate properly, and there is a pace at which it just spills. This card is asking you to find the former. What you are dealing with right now is not something to be rushed through or fixed quickly. It is something to be alchemised, and that takes a particular quality of attention.

The Magician

The Magician arrives next and he is standing at his table with every tool in front of him, completely composed, completely ready. In the context of your situation, this card is making a very specific point: you already have what you need. The thing you are waiting to arrive, the resource, the insight, the permission, is either already present or already within you. The Magician does not look outside himself for his power. He looks at what is in front of him and begins. Alongside Temperance, he is saying: move with intention, not with urgency. The difference between those two things is everything right now.

3 of Cups

The 3 of Cups brings something that might be unexpected in a reading about a personal situation: it brings other people. Joy, connection, the particular nourishment of being genuinely witnessed by someone who cares. This card is asking whether you are letting anyone in to what you are carrying. The situation you brought to this reading, whatever it is, does not have to be navigated entirely alone. There is support available, warmth available, the grounding that comes from genuine human connection. The 3 of Cups is a reminder that isolation is not the same as strength, and that sharing what is real does not diminish it. Sometimes it is the very thing that moves it.

Bottom of the Deck · 7 of Cups

The 7 of Cups at the bottom of this reading is the foundation that everything else is resting on, and it is a revealing one. This is the card of the overwhelmed imagination, of so many options, visions, possibilities, and fears floating in front of us that clarity becomes almost impossible. It is the card of the person standing in front of a buffet of futures, unable to choose because every choice means closing a door. What the 7 of Cups is telling us, quietly from underneath Temperance and the Magician and the warmth of the 3 of Cups, is that the thing making this situation hard is not a lack of options. It is too many. The work is not to find more possibilities. It is to get honest about which one is actually calling you, underneath all the noise.

The cards as one voice

Here is what all four cards are saying together, as a single message to the collective field right now.

You are standing in the middle of more possibility than you know what to do with, and it is making you feel less clear, not more. You have the tools. You have the capacity. You even have people around you who would gladly help carry this if you let them. But underneath all of it, there is a fog of options and imaginings and what-ifs that is making it very hard to simply move.

The invitation of this reading, the one voice underneath all four cards, is this: stop trying to see the whole picture. You do not need to. Temperance asks for one steady, intentional step. The Magician asks you to use what is already in your hands. The 3 of Cups asks you to stop pretending you are fine doing this alone. And the 7 of Cups, holding it all from the bottom, is not a warning. It is a diagnosis. The overwhelm you are feeling is not a sign that something is wrong with you. It is a sign that you have been trying to hold too many futures at once.

Choose one. Move toward it slowly and on purpose. Let someone walk beside you. That is enough for right now. That is, in fact, everything.

Go well my dear community and thank you for being here. Drink plenty of water!
Please invite your friends, family or anyone you know who is ready to do the work.

Blessings
Amanda