If you enjoy Sarah’s Cosmic Corner, it would mean the world to me if you invited friends to subscribe and read with us. If you refer friends, you will receive benefits that give you special access to Sarah’s Cosmic Corner.

How to participate

1. Share Sarah’s Cosmic Corner. When you use the referral link below, or the “Share” button on any post, you'll get credit for any new subscribers. Simply send the link in a text, email, or share it on social media with friends.

Refer a friend

2. Earn benefits. When more friends use your referral link to subscribe, you’ll receive special benefits.

• Get Musical Tarot Download for 3 referrals

• Get Inner Circle Preview for 5 referrals

• Get Personal Reading for 10 referrals

Visit the leaderboard

To learn more, check out Substack’s FAQ.

Thank you for helping get the word out about Sarah’s Cosmic Corner!

One chapter of my career is ending. I’m building something of my own that I’m incredibly excited about. I’m also looking at what else might be next.

And if I’m completely transparent, I don’t know yet what combination of those things will become my next chapter.

For someone who would very much like to know what the plan is, this is… uncomfortable. 😂

Which made Lindsay Mack’s September tarot spread, “Grounding in the Mist,” feel almost ridiculously well-timed when I sat down with my cards this morning.

The spread isn’t really about predicting what’s coming.

It asks something I think I need much more right now:

How do we ground ourselves when we can’t see what’s coming?

So I shuffled.

I pulled five cards.

Then, because apparently five cards weren’t enough for me this morning, I pulled oracle cards and messages from the Universe for additional clarification. 😂🔮

And the story that emerged felt a little too relevant to ignore.

^{My September “Grounding in the Mist” spread, with oracle and Universe clarifiers. Spread created by Lindsay Mack.}

🌫️ Grounding in the Mist

Spread created by Lindsay Mack

1. A card for the month ahead: Queen of Swords Reversed
2. How will I be invited to work with the month ahead?: Ten of Pentacles
3. The support I can call upon to help me do so?: Nine of Wands Reversed
4. What can I ground into when things feel misty and unclear?: Queen of Pentacles
5. How can I trust more fully in the unfolding and timing of things?: King of Wands Reversed

And apparently September would like to have a conversation with me about my career. 😂

⚔️ 1. The Month Ahead: Queen of Swords Reversed

Of course the card representing a month literally themed around navigating the mist would be a card about clouded clarity.

The Queen of Swords upright is discerning. Clear. Independent. She knows what she thinks and isn’t afraid to make the difficult decision.

Reversed?

There can be overthinking. Self-doubt. Harshness. Questioning your judgment. Replaying conversations. Allowing other people’s opinions to become louder than your own intuition.

And considering where I am right now, I understood this one immediately.

There are a lot of questions floating around in my head.

Did I make the right decision?

Can I actually build something of my own?

Do I need another full-time job?

Can tarot become a meaningful source of income?

What if I choose the wrong next thing?

What exactly am I doing?! 😂

Then I pulled the oracle card:

HARSHNESS.

Okay, tarot. Message received.

But underneath it came:

DESTINY

“You have a divine destiny to fulfill through your career path. Your work will help elevate the consciousness of this planet.”

And my message from the Universe was about releasing old doubts and fears, allowing necessary changes to happen, leaving the past where it belongs, and trusting that things will fall into place in divine timing.

The contrast struck me immediately.

Harshness vs. Destiny.

Maybe one of my biggest challenges this month isn’t figuring out my future.

Maybe it’s resisting the temptation to criticize myself for not having figured it out yet.

🪙 2. How I’m Invited to Work With September: Ten of Pentacles

When I first looked at this card, one word immediately came to mind:

Security.

The Ten of Pentacles is long-term stability. Financial security. Home. Family. Foundations. Wealth. Legacy. Building something capable of lasting.

And that feels incredibly significant right now.

Because it’s very easy, when something ends, to immediately think:

How do I replace what I just lost?

But the Ten of Pentacles asks a different question:

What am I building for the long term?

That doesn’t mean ignoring immediate financial realities. Quite the opposite. Pentacles are practical.

Bills exist. Money matters. Stability matters.

But perhaps September isn’t asking me to make every decision from fear about the immediate future.

Maybe I’m being invited to consider the larger life I’m trying to create.

What kind of work do I want?

What kind of financial life do I want?

What do I want my days to look like?

What am I creating now that could continue growing years from now?

And then I pulled my clarifier.

LEGACY.

I actually laughed.

Because apparently the Ten of Pentacles wasn’t obvious enough. 😂

The second oracle was RETREAT:

“Sometimes taking a break is the best thing you can do to gain clarity and a fresh perspective.”

And suddenly the message became even more interesting.

Think long-term. But don’t panic your way into the long term.

I don’t need to solve the rest of my life this week.

I can give myself enough space to determine what I’m actually trying to build.

🔥 3. The Support I Can Call Upon: Nine of Wands Reversed

This card surprised me.

Because when I think about support, I naturally think about something that helps me keep going.

But perhaps my support this month comes from recognizing when I don’t need to keep fighting.

The Nine of Wands is resilience. Perseverance. The person who’s exhausted but gets back up anyway.

Reversed, especially in this position, I see an invitation to put down some of the armor.

I don’t have to prove that I’m strong by exhausting myself.

I don’t have to apply for every job.

I don’t have to turn every Musical Tarot idea into a product tomorrow.

I don’t have to post constantly.

I don’t have to build an entire business overnight.

And I certainly don’t have to make September prove that every decision I’ve made was correct.

My clarifiers?

NURTURING

A reminder to care for myself and others in tangible, practical ways.

And then:

COMPETITION

“Remember that there is no competition, if you are truly original.”

Well.

If you’ve been following me for a while, you probably understand why that one hit.

Because I’m building Musical Tarot.

I’m taking two things I deeply love — tarot and music — and figuring out what happens when they speak to each other.

There will always be other tarot readers.

Other writers.

Other creators.

Other people building businesses.

But maybe my job isn’t to be better at being them.

Maybe my job is to become more fully me.

👑 4. What Can I Ground Into When Things Feel Misty? Queen of Pentacles

I mean...

Of course. 😂

I asked what I could ground into and pulled the Queen of Pentacles.

Earth energy.

Money.

Home.

The body.

Routine.

Resources.

Nurturing.

Practicality.

Security.

The Queen of Pentacles doesn’t need to know exactly what December looks like on September 2.

She asks:

What needs tending today?

When my Queen of Swords reversed brain starts spiraling into:

BUT WHAT IF—

The Queen of Pentacles brings me back to:

What do I actually know right now?

Look at the finances.

Do the work in front of me.

Complete the reading.

Send the application.

Write the article.

Build the next piece of Musical Tarot.

Eat something.

Rest.

Take care of myself.

Then get up tomorrow and tend to the next thing.

And I absolutely love the relationship between this card and the Ten of Pentacles.

Ten of Pentacles: Build the secure life.

Queen of Pentacles: Tend to today’s piece of it.

My oracle clarifiers added another layer:

NARCISSISM

and

PRESSURE

The Pressure card specifically asks me to consider how family influences and social pressures might affect career choices.

And that’s a question worth sitting with.

Because there’s a difference between:

What makes me feel secure?

and

What looks secure enough that other people will approve of it?

Those aren’t necessarily the same thing.

When things feel misty, perhaps my grounding can’t come from getting everyone else to agree with my choices.

It has to come from my own values, resources, reality and inner sense of stability.

🔥 5. How Can I Trust the Unfolding and Timing? King of Wands Reversed

Apparently...

Stop trying to control the clock, Sarah.

Rude. 😂

The King of Wands upright is visionary. Ambitious. Confident. Driven.

But reversed, that fire can become impatient.

Why isn’t this happening faster?

Why haven’t I heard back?

Why isn’t the business bigger yet?

Why don’t I know what’s coming?

When will I finally know that everything worked out?

And the question wasn’t:

How do I make everything happen?

It was:

How can I trust more fully in the unfolding and timing of things?

Maybe the answer is by recognizing the difference between vision and control.

I can have enormous dreams for Musical Tarot.

I can pursue other career opportunities.

I can build my Substack.

I can offer readings.

I can create.

I can apply.

I can experiment.

I can work toward greater financial security.

What I can’t do is demand that every one of those seeds grow according to my preferred timeline.

And then my oracle cards were:

STUBBORNNESS

followed by...

PROMOTION

“Elevated earnings come hand in hand with heightened responsibilities.”

Again with the career messages. 😂

But I don’t necessarily read “Promotion” literally.

Maybe elevation doesn’t look exactly like I thought it would.

Maybe success doesn’t arrive through the path I’ve traditionally associated with success.

Maybe greater earnings come from greater ownership and responsibility.

Maybe something I haven’t considered yet enters the picture.

I don’t know.

And perhaps that’s exactly the point of this entire spread.

🌫️ Maybe I Don’t Need to See Through the Mist

When I put the five tarot cards back together, I realized they tell an incredibly simple story:

Queen of Swords Reversed:
I can’t see clearly yet.

Ten of Pentacles:
So I’ll orient myself toward the secure, meaningful life I want to build.

Nine of Wands Reversed:
I won’t destroy myself trying to get there.

Queen of Pentacles:
I’ll take care of what’s actually in front of me today.

King of Wands Reversed:
And I’ll release the need to control exactly how or when the larger vision arrives.

Maybe that’s what grounding in the mist actually means.

Not waiting for the fog to lift before you move.

Not pretending you can see something you can’t.

Not asking tarot to hand you a detailed itinerary for the next six months.

Just finding the ground beneath your feet.

Taking the next step.

And trusting that when it’s time to take the one after that, there will be ground beneath that foot too.

I’m entering September without knowing exactly what my career will look like by the time I leave it.

And surprisingly, I think I’m okay with admitting that.

I have things I want to build.

I have practical things I need to take care of.

I have ideas that excite me.

And I have absolutely no idea exactly how all of those pieces will fit together yet.

Maybe September isn’t asking me to see through the mist.

Maybe it’s asking me to trust myself enough to keep walking through it.

🔮✨

And if you're navigating your own season of uncertainty and want to see what the cards might illuminate for you, you can get your own tarot reading with me.

I’m saving these five cards.

At the end of September, I’m coming back to this spread to see how each one actually showed up — because I’m learning that sometimes the story tarot is telling doesn’t become obvious until we get to look backward.

And something tells me September might have quite a story to tell.

Stay tuned. 🌙

Want to go deeper with me? 🔮

I’m opening up paid subscriptions here on Substack, where I’ll be sharing deeper tarot reflections, subscriber-only spreads and conversations, behind-the-scenes pieces of Musical Tarot, bonus content, and more of what happens after I put the cards down and start living the reading.

$5/month or $50/year. ✨

And yes — I’ll be coming back to this September spread at the end of the month.

Tarot is a tool for reflection and self-exploration. My interpretations reflect my personal experience with the cards and are not guarantees or predictions of future outcomes.

It gave me a threshold.

Looking back at the tarot spreads I pulled throughout the month, I’m struck by how consistently the same story appeared in different forms.

Something isn’t working anymore.

Something is changing.

I don’t entirely know what’s on the other side.

Part of me wants to rush there.

Part of me is afraid to let go.

And somewhere underneath all of that, something new is asking to be created.

At the beginning of August, I don’t think I could have articulated any of that quite so clearly. But spread after spread kept returning me to the same themes: change, surrender, beginnings, endings, creativity, independence and trust.

The cards weren’t giving me a roadmap.

They were teaching me how to exist in the space between where I’ve been and wherever I’m going next.

🦁 Lion’s Gate: I’m Already in the Change

My Lion’s Gate spread began with the Four of Cups and moved through the Wheel of Fortune, The Magician, Three of Pentacles and Nine of Pentacles.

When I first looked at the cards together, the progression was striking:

Disengagement → Change → Agency → Collaboration → Independence.

The Four of Cups asked me to acknowledge what no longer felt emotionally satisfying instead of assuming I needed to push harder to make myself want it.

Then came the Wheel of Fortune.

Not change is coming.

You’re already in the change.

That distinction stayed with me.

Sometimes we’re waiting for a dramatic moment that tells us a chapter has ended when, in reality, we’ve been slowly leaving it for months.

Our interests change.

Our priorities shift.

Things we once wanted stop fitting.

And sometimes our internal life changes before our external circumstances have caught up.

But then came The Magician, and the reading shifted.

The Wheel represents circumstances moving around us.

The Magician asks what we’re going to do with them.

The message we found in those two cards together was:

Change may open the door. Agency is what takes you through it.

I couldn’t control every change happening around me.

But I could participate in creating what came next.

And then the spread ended with the Nine of Pentacles.

Independence.

Autonomy.

Enjoying the garden you’ve cultivated.

Building a life and being able to look around and think:

I made something that actually feels like mine.

That became the first major question August asked me:

If I stopped trying to build the life I thought I was supposed to want, what would a life that actually felt like mine look like?

I didn’t have the answer.

But August wasn’t finished asking.

🌑 The Eclipse: The Ending and Beginning Can Happen Together

My New Moon and Partial Eclipse in Leo spread gave me:

Seven of Pentacles
Knight of Swords reversed
Seven of Swords reversed
Five of Cups
The Fool
Death

There is something almost comically direct about ending a spread with The Fool followed immediately by Death.

Beginning.

Ending.

Side by side.

The earlier cards had already prepared me for that threshold.

The Seven of Pentacles asked for patience.

The Knight of Swords reversed warned against confusing urgency with momentum.

The Seven of Swords reversed asked for honesty.

The Five of Cups asked whether I was willing to risk hoping again after disappointment.

And then:

The Fool.

Begin anyway.

I loved the intention that emerged from that card:

I give myself permission to begin before I know the ending.

Because immediately afterward came Death.

Not literal death, of course, but transformation. The shedding of something that has reached its natural conclusion and cannot accompany you into whatever comes next.

And suddenly Fool → Death didn’t feel contradictory.

It felt like the definition of being at a threshold.

Beginning and ending can happen simultaneously.

Maybe I don’t have to perfectly close one chapter, understand everything it taught me, tie it with a bow and place it neatly on a shelf before I’m allowed to become curious about another one.

Maybe becoming is messier than that.

Maybe sometimes we’re grieving and dreaming at the same time.

Releasing and creating.

Scared and excited.

Ending and beginning.

The reflection I wrote from that spread became one of my anchors for August:

I don’t need to know exactly where I’m going. I need to stop carrying what I already know I’ve outgrown, tend patiently to what matters, and trust myself enough to begin again.

🌿 Virgo Season: What Wants to Be Created?

Then the energy changed.

My Remember Your Magic spread for Virgo season brought:

Eight of Pentacles
The Hermit reversed
Temperance
Ace of Wands
The Empress

And suddenly August wasn’t only talking about what I was leaving.

It started talking about creation.

The cards formed another progression:

Mastery → Solitude → Integration → Beginning → Creation.

The Hermit reversed became especially interesting.

There is a difference between isolation and intentional solitude.

Sometimes we need teachers, books, advice, opinions and outside perspectives.

But eventually there comes a point when we have to get quiet enough to ask:

Okay. What do I think?

Then came Temperance.

And its message was beautifully simple:

Integrate.

Not choose.

Not discard everything that doesn’t fit neatly into one identity.

Integrate.

Music.

Tarot.

Writing.

Storytelling.

Creativity.

The different pieces don’t necessarily have to compete with one another. Sometimes the thing that makes our work ours is the combination.

Then came the Ace of Wands.

The spark.

The beginning.

Something asking to be tried before I know exactly what it will become.

And finally:

The Empress.

Creation.

Cultivation.

Nurturing something into existence.

By the end of that spread, I had another question to carry:

What am I ready to create if I stop needing to know what it will become?

That question feels particularly important to me.

Because maybe not everything meaningful needs an immediate business plan.

Maybe curiosity is enough reason to start.

Maybe something is allowed to exist because creating it makes me feel more like myself.

Maybe TRY is sometimes a more useful instruction than succeed.

🌕 Full Moon in Pisces: I Know I Can’t Stay Here

And then came my Full Moon in Pisces spread:

Two of Pentacles reversed
Six of Swords
Nine of Swords
Knight of Wands
Six of Cups
Death reversed

If Lion’s Gate told me I was already changing, the Full Moon showed me what it feels like to consciously recognize that change.

The Two of Pentacles reversed opened with:

I cannot keep balancing this.

Not necessarily drop everything immediately.

Just:

Stop pretending everything deserves to remain in the rotation.

Then came the Six of Swords.

Departure.

But not the dramatic kind.

More like:

I may not know exactly where I’m going, but I know I can’t stay here simply because leaving feels uncertain.

That distinction mattered.

My clarity didn’t have to be about the destination.

My clarity could simply be that I’m going.

And then, naturally:

Nine of Swords.

Fear.

What if I’m making a mistake?

What if this goes wrong?

What if I don’t find what comes next?

What if I regret it?

That card reminded me that there is a difference between planning around legitimate risk and mentally living through every possible negative outcome before any of them have happened.

Then the Knight of Wands showed the opposite reaction:

RUN.

Get out.

Do something.

Anything.

Just move.

But the spread didn’t seem interested in either extreme.

Not paralysis.

Not escape.

Deliberate movement.

The Six of Swords says leave thoughtfully.

The Knight of Wands says GET ME OUT OF HERE.

And my work is somewhere between the two.

Then came perhaps the gentlest card in the entire spread:

Six of Cups.

Remember.

Not necessarily return to the past.

Remember who you were before you started measuring everything by whether it was productive, practical, impressive or profitable.

What did you love?

What made you curious?

What made you feel like yourself?

Look backward—but only long enough to recognize what deserves to come forward.

And finally:

Death reversed.

After pulling Death upright earlier in the month, this felt significant.

The transformation hadn’t disappeared.

I was negotiating with it.

Death reversed can speak to resistance, attachment and knowing something needs to change while still having one hand wrapped around the thing you’re leaving.

And perhaps that’s the most accurate description of being between chapters I’ve found.

You can know something is ending and still grieve it.

You can know something isn’t right and still be afraid to leave it.

You can want what’s next and still miss what’s behind you.

Transformation doesn’t require certainty.

And courage doesn’t require the absence of fear.

🎧 So What Was August Really About?

When I put all four spreads together, I see one continuous story.

Four of Cups:
Something doesn’t fulfill me anymore.

Wheel of Fortune:
I’m already changing.

The Magician:
I can participate in what comes next.

Nine of Pentacles:
I want to build a life that feels like mine.

The Fool:
I don’t have to know where this leads to begin.

Death:
Something old cannot come with me.

Temperance:
I don’t have to choose between all the different parts of myself.

Ace of Wands:
Try.

The Empress:
Create.

Two of Pentacles reversed:
I cannot keep carrying everything.

Six of Swords:
I can move before I know exactly where I’m going.

Nine of Swords:
Fear is coming with me—but it doesn’t have to drive.

Six of Cups:
Remember who you are.

Death reversed:
And allow yourself time to let go.

That doesn’t feel like a prediction.

It feels like a conversation I’ve been having with myself all month.

✨ The Month Between Chapters

August taught me that becoming doesn’t always begin with knowing where I’m going.

Sometimes it begins with finally admitting where I can no longer stay.

I don’t need to rush toward the next chapter simply because I’ve outgrown the current one.

I can move deliberately.

I can be afraid.

I can remember what has always made me feel like myself.

I can experiment with what wants to be created without demanding that it immediately become something.

I can let things end without treating the ending as failure.

And I can begin without requiring a guarantee.

The ending and the beginning are allowed to overlap.

Maybe that’s what being between chapters really is:

No longer entirely who I was.

Not yet entirely who I’m becoming.

But finally willing to participate in creating her.

And for now, I think that’s enough. 🔮🌙✨

Not reinvent yourself overnight. Not burn everything down and start over. Not wake up one morning magically certain about what comes next.

I mean the much messier version of becoming—the space where you know you’ve outgrown something, but you haven’t completely stepped into whatever is waiting on the other side.

That’s where I seem to be right now.

There’s a strange space between knowing something needs to change and actually changing it.

I’ve been asking a lot of questions about what comes next. About work. About creativity. About security. About whether knowing that something no longer fits means I need to leave it immediately—or whether there’s wisdom in allowing an ending to unfold deliberately.

So under the Full Moon in Pisces, I decided to ask my cards about it.

I pulled six tarot cards, several supporting oracle messages, an angel number, and a message from the universe.

And because music has increasingly become one of the ways I understand tarot—and myself—I asked one final question:

If this version of becoming had a soundtrack, what would it be?

The answer was “The River” by AURORA.

But before I got to the song, the cards had something to say about how I was getting there.

🌕 1. What has reached completion?

Two of Pentacles — Reversed

The endless juggling.

The constant rearranging.

The belief that if I just become more flexible, more productive, more accommodating, more organized, I can somehow make everything fit.

Two of Pentacles reversed felt like permission to acknowledge that sometimes the problem isn’t that I’m failing to balance everything.

Sometimes there are simply too many things on the scale.

The accompanying oracle card was Imbalance.

Then I pulled angel number 470: Surrender, with the message to release a problem rather than continuing to grip it.

And another card told me:

Trust the lesson, not the pain.

That combination stopped me.

Maybe completion doesn’t always mean something disappears from your life overnight.

Sometimes completion begins when you stop trying to convince yourself something is sustainable.

🌊 2. What am I finally seeing clearly?

Six of Swords

This card felt almost painfully literal.

Its accompanying oracle was Departure.

The Six of Swords isn’t the dramatic, triumphant exit card I might have expected. There are no fireworks. No doors being slammed.

It’s quieter.

It’s the recognition that the shore behind you isn’t where you’re meant to stay.

And maybe that’s the clarity I’ve been looking for.

I don’t need to know exactly where I’m going to know that I’m ready for calmer waters.

I’ve spent so much time wanting the entire map before making the first move.

But maybe clarity isn’t always knowing the destination.

Sometimes clarity is simply recognizing the direction.

🧠 3. What am I holding too tightly?

Nine of Swords

Fear.

Of course.

The accompanying card was Anxiety, with the reminder that not everything I’m imagining is real.

That doesn’t mean my concerns aren’t legitimate. There are practical realities involved whenever we contemplate a major change.

But there’s a difference between planning for what could happen and mentally experiencing every possible catastrophe before any of it happens.

I’ve been learning that distinction.

Preparation asks, “What can I do?”

Anxiety asks, “But what if everything goes wrong?”

One helps me move.

The other keeps me awake.

🔥 4. What needs to be released?

Knight of Wands

This one surprised me.

Because I love the Knight of Wands energy.

Movement. Adventure. Passion. Let’s GO.

But that’s also precisely why I think it appeared here.

When I’ve decided I’m done with something, there’s a part of me that wants the ending immediately.

I want to leap over the uncomfortable middle.

The Knight of Wands reminded me that there is a difference between moving because I have chosen something new and running because I desperately want to escape something old.

I can know I’m leaving without needing to leave today.

I can be excited about what’s ahead without recklessly racing toward it.

And perhaps the thing I’m being asked to release isn’t my fire at all.

It’s my urgency.

🫶 5. What lesson should I keep?

Six of Cups

Remember yourself.

This card came with Nostalgia and Shape Your Future.

At first those messages almost seemed contradictory.

Look backward.

Shape forward.

But maybe that’s exactly the point.

I’m not being asked to return to an earlier version of myself.

I’m being asked to remember her.

What interested me before I worried whether it was productive?

What made me excited before I wondered whether it could become a career?

What did I create simply because creating it made me happy?

What parts of myself have survived every job title, every transition, every success and every disappointment?

The past isn’t necessarily somewhere I’m supposed to return to.

It can be somewhere I retrieve pieces of myself from.

Then I get to decide which pieces come forward.

🦋 6. What energy comes next?

Death — Reversed

I laughed a little when I saw it.

Because earlier that day, my horoscope had used one particular word:

Metamorphosis.

And then Death reversed appeared.

Not Death upright—the clean ending, transformation, rebirth.

Death reversed.

Transformation with resistance.

Knowing something is changing while part of you is still gripping the doorway.

The supporting messages made it even louder.

Attachment: You may be clinging to something that is already over.

Cultivate Courage: Courage isn’t the absence of fear; it’s the ability to move forward despite it.

And then my message from the universe reminded me that my time is coming, but I also have to meet the universe halfway—to hold a positive vision of what’s possible rather than allowing fear and insecurity to determine what happens next.

I don’t interpret tarot as a prediction that some predetermined future is guaranteed to happen.

But I do think cards can give us language for something we’re already experiencing.

And resistance to transformation feels like pretty good language for this moment.

I’m changing.

Some things around me are changing.

I know there are things I want to leave behind.

And apparently my work isn’t simply to transform.

It’s to stop fighting myself while I do it.

🎧 7. What song represents this Full Moon?

“The River” — AURORA

Once I looked at the entire spread, this song felt inevitable.

Pisces.

Water.

Six of Swords.

Departure.

Surrender.

Transformation.

“The River” feels like permission to let emotion move rather than contain it—to stop fighting the current long enough to discover where it might carry me.

And maybe that’s the lesson underneath this entire reading.

I keep wanting to figure out what happens next.

The cards keep bringing me back to what needs to happen now.

Simplify.

Move toward calmer waters.

Stop treating every fear as a prophecy.

Don’t confuse urgency with courage.

Remember who you are.

Release what you’re gripping.

Surrender.

🌕 The Soundtrack of Becoming

I don’t need to know exactly where I’m going to recognize what I’ve outgrown.

I can move toward calmer waters without running.

I can make practical decisions without letting fear make them for me.

I can remember who I am without returning to who I was.

And I can allow something to end without knowing exactly what will replace it.

Maybe metamorphosis isn’t just the moment when the caterpillar suddenly becomes the butterfly.

Maybe it’s this part, too:

The uncomfortable middle, when the old version no longer fits and the new version isn’t fully visible yet.

For once, I’m trying not to rush through it.

I’m learning to let the river carry me.

And maybe becoming someone new doesn’t require abandoning who I used to be.

Maybe it’s deciding what I’m taking with me.

The memories.

The creativity.

The curiosity.

The things that still feel unmistakably mine.

And letting the rest move downstream.

For now, that’s the soundtrack of becoming someone new. 🌊🌕✨

A question for you

What are you being asked to release right now?

And because every chapter deserves a soundtrack:

🎧 If this chapter of your life had a song, what would it be?

Tell me in the comments. I’d love to listen.

Or, as I’m beginning to realize, maybe I’ve been having an argument with my interpretation of them.

For a while now, themes of endings, beginnings, creativity, new directions, and following what lights me up have continued appearing in my readings.

And because career has been on my mind, I kept coming back to the same conclusion:

Are you trying to tell me to leave my job?!

Every ending became a potential career ending.

Every new beginning became a potential new career.

Every card about creativity became evidence that perhaps I was supposed to abandon the practical path and pursue something creative instead.

But last week, I did something important.

I asked someone else.

I Had a Professional Tarot Reading

I received a professional reading specifically about my career and the possibility of moving in a different direction.

Four cards were pulled:

Energy of staying with this career: Page of Swords

Energy of a new direction: Three of Wands

Focus for the next year: Two of Wands

Hidden influences: Knight of Pentacles

And the message wasn’t:

Leave.

Actually, it was almost the opposite.

The Page of Swords suggested that I’m still learning. I’m gathering information, having new experiences, and gaining insight.

The Three of Wands acknowledged that there is another direction calling to me — particularly something connected to creativity, passion, and authenticity — but this card represented the beginning stages of movement.

Small steps.

Exploration.

Not throwing one life away and immediately replacing it with another.

The Two of Wands asked me to plan.

And underneath everything sat the Knight of Pentacles: slow, deliberate, grounded progress.

The reader’s advice was essentially:

Stay. Learn. Explore. Plan. Build slowly.

She even described this as an “in-between stage.”

At the time, I understood what she was saying.

But I’m not sure I fully felt it yet.

Then I pulled my cards this morning.

And I Immediately Thought, “Here We Go Again.”

This morning I paired four tarot cards with oracle cards:

Ace of Swords + Freedom of Time

10 of Swords + Creator

Queen of Pentacles + Reckless

Knight of Cups + Believe

I looked at them and immediately started wondering whether we were talking about my career again.

There’s the Ace of Swords bringing a breakthrough.

There’s the 10 of Swords bringing an ending.

There’s the Knight of Cups asking me to follow my heart.

And “Creator” literally told me:

“Your creativity is your superpower on your path to prosperity.”

Well...

That certainly sounds like a dramatic career reading when you’re already wondering whether you’re supposed to change careers.

Except there was a problem.

It didn’t quite fit the reading I’d received last week.

So instead of immediately deciding that one reading must be right and the other must be wrong, I looked at today’s cards again.

And something clicked.

What If the Ace of Swords Isn’t About a New Job?

Ace of Swords + Freedom of Time suddenly felt very different.

Maybe the breakthrough isn’t:

I need a different job.

Maybe the breakthrough is:

What do I actually want my life — and my time — to look like?

That’s a much bigger question.

My career is part of my life.

It isn’t my entire life.

And perhaps I’ve been expecting my career to answer questions that actually belong to me.

What If the 10 of Swords Is Ending an Old Story?

Then came the 10 of Swords + Creator.

I’d been seeing an ending and wondering what external thing needed to end.

But what if the thing reaching its conclusion isn’t a job?

What if it’s a belief?

A version of myself?

An old definition of success?

Maybe something really is ending.

But endings don’t always require resignation letters.

Sometimes we stop believing a story we’ve told ourselves for years.

And sitting directly underneath that card was the message:

“Your creativity is your superpower on your path to prosperity.”

Maybe I’m not being asked to destroy one thing so I can create another.

Maybe I’m simply being asked to create.

Then the Queen of Pentacles Had Something to Say

This pairing might have been the one that changed the entire reading for me.

Queen of Pentacles + Reckless.

The Queen of Pentacles represents such grounded energy to me: stability, resources, abundance, nurturing, practicality.

And the oracle card beside her warned:

“Uncontrolled spending habits and impulsive purchases are making your financial journey harder than it has to be.”

That’s not exactly the combination I’d expect to say:

Quit everything tomorrow and hope your dreams pay the bills.

If anything, I hear:

Build the dream. But don’t destabilize yourself trying to rush it.

Take your creativity seriously.

Take your financial stability seriously, too.

Those things don’t have to contradict each other.

And suddenly I could see the Knight of Pentacles from my professional reading sitting right beside the Queen of Pentacles from this one.

Both grounded.

Both practical.

Both asking me to build something sustainable.

And Then There’s the Knight of Cups

My final pairing was:

Knight of Cups + Believe.

This is the part of me that wants to dream.

Create.

Explore.

Follow the thing that makes me excited.

Believe that something I’m building could become much bigger than it is today.

But here’s what I’m beginning to understand:

Taking a dream seriously doesn’t mean I have to gamble everything on it immediately.

I can believe in something and build it carefully.

I can dream like the Knight of Cups and move like the Knight of Pentacles.

Maybe I need both.

Maybe I’ve Been Asking Every Card the Same Question

And this might be the biggest lesson tarot taught me this morning.

Cards don’t exist in a vacuum.

Neither does the person reading them.

I bring my fears, hopes, expectations, experiences, and current preoccupations to every reading.

If I’m worried about my career, it’s incredibly easy to look at every 10 of Swords and think:

Career ending.

Every Fool becomes:

New career.

Every Wand becomes:

Creative career.

Every Eight of Cups becomes:

Time to leave.

But maybe sometimes the cards are trying to have a completely different conversation with me.

And I’m so busy waiting for them to answer one particular question that I can’t hear it.

That doesn’t make tarot useless.

For me, it makes learning tarot even more interesting.

I’m learning that interpretation isn’t simply memorizing 78 definitions.

It’s learning how to listen without immediately forcing the cards into the story I already expect them to tell.

Maybe I Don’t Have to Choose

When I put the professional reading beside this morning’s cards, I don’t see two contradictory messages anymore.

I see one.

Page of Swords: Learn.

Three of Wands: Explore.

Two of Wands: Plan.

Knight of Pentacles: Build slowly.

Ace of Swords: Change the way I’m thinking.

10 of Swords: Let an old story end.

Queen of Pentacles: Build something sustainable.

Knight of Cups: Believe in the dream.

Maybe tarot isn’t telling me:

“Leave your job.”

Maybe it’s telling me:

“Your job doesn’t have to be your entire path.”

And wow.

Those are two very different messages.

I’ve spent so much time thinking in terms of either/or.

Stability or creativity.

A traditional career or a creative life.

Security or the dream.

Maybe this chapter isn’t asking me to choose yet.

Maybe it’s asking me to build.

To experiment.

To learn.

To create.

To see what grows.

And to allow myself to exist in the in-between without treating uncertainty as proof that I’m doing something wrong.

Because maybe stability isn’t standing in the way of the dream.

Maybe stability is what gives the dream somewhere safe to grow.

And for now?

I think that’s enough of an answer.

Today I sat down with a Virgo Season tarot spread from Lindsay Mack, one of my favorite tarot teachers and readers. I listen to Tarot for the Wild Soul both publicly and as a member, and one of the things I appreciate about Lindsay’s approach is that tarot isn’t necessarily about predicting what happens next. It’s about listening.

And apparently, I needed to listen today.

My five cards were:

1. My card for Virgo season — Eight of Pentacles: Mastery
2. How best to work with it — The Hermit reversed: Isolation
3. A message from my magic — Temperance: Moderation
4. How can I reopen the door to my magic and let it into my life more fully? — Ace of Wands: New Beginnings
5. What am I being invited to pay attention to most this Virgo season? — The Empress: Creation

At first, I saw exactly what you might expect from Virgo season in that Eight of Pentacles: work, practice, refinement, learning, getting better at something.

Mastery.

But the more I sat with the spread, the more I realized that mastery wasn't really asking me for perfection.

It was asking me for devotion.

There is such a difference between “I need to be good enough before I do this” and “I become better at this because I keep doing it.”

I've been learning tarot by studying it, journaling about it, pulling cards, connecting cards to music, writing about what I discover and allowing myself to be curious.

Maybe mastery isn't the destination.

Maybe it's what happens when we keep showing up.

The Hermit reversed complicated the message.

The Hermit is so beautifully connected to Virgo energy already, which made pulling it in a Virgo Season spread feel significant.

But mine was reversed: Isolation.

My first thought was that I was being reminded not to disappear into the work. Don't study so much that I forget to experience. Don't convince myself I need to know everything before I'm allowed to share anything.

Then I opened my horoscope.

It told me:

“The silver resonance of your inner voice is currently striking a chord that will dismantle the calcified habits hindering your creative evolution.”

And then:

“Step boldly into the silence you have been avoiding, for it is within that quiet void that the blueprint for your next great achievement is waiting to be realized.”

Suddenly, I looked at the Hermit reversed differently.

Maybe I'm not being told to avoid solitude.

Maybe I'm being asked to learn the difference between isolation and intentional solitude.

There are times when we need other voices—teachers, friends, books, podcasts, community.

And then there are times when we need to turn all of them down long enough to ask:

What do I think?

What does my intuition say before I look for someone else to validate it?

What wants to emerge when I'm quiet enough to hear it?

Then came Temperance.

My question was simply:

What is the message from my magic?

And Temperance answered.

Integrate.

This might be the part of the spread that resonates with me most.

I'm increasingly realizing that the things I love don't necessarily need to exist in separate boxes.

Music. Tarot. Writing. Storytelling. Creativity. Spirituality.

Maybe my magic isn't found by choosing which one I'm supposed to pursue.

Maybe it's found in what happens when I mix them together.

Temperance takes separate elements and creates something new from them.

Maybe we're not always supposed to choose between the different versions of ourselves.

Maybe we're supposed to discover what only exists when we allow them to meet.

And then the spark.

I asked:

How can I reopen the door to my magic and let it into my life more fully?

Ace of Wands.

New Beginnings.

Sometimes tarot gives you an answer that doesn't require much decoding.

Start.

Try.

Follow the thing that makes you curious.

You don't need to know what it becomes before you're allowed to begin it.

And sitting beside my tarot cards today was an angel card I'd pulled:

752 — Try.

Not master it.

Not make it successful.

Not figure out where this will be five years from now.

Just:

Try.

There is something incredibly freeing about that.

Because I think sometimes we kill our own creativity by demanding that a spark explain what kind of fire it's going to become.

The Ace of Wands doesn't know yet.

It just knows something has been lit.

And finally, The Empress.

My final question was:

What am I being invited to pay attention to most during Virgo season?

The Empress answered:

Creation.

And that's when the whole spread clicked for me.

My horoscope had already used the words “creative evolution.”

My tarot spread begins with Mastery and ends with Creation.

That feels important.

The Eight of Pentacles asks:

What am I practicing?

The Empress asks:

What am I nurturing?

Maybe Virgo season isn't only about becoming more disciplined, organized or productive.

Maybe it's about creating the conditions in which something can actually grow.

Because there's a danger in constantly trying to improve ourselves.

We can become so busy tending the garden that we forget to notice what's blooming.

So perhaps my work this season isn't to figure out exactly what I'm creating.

It's to notice what keeps asking for my attention.

What ideas keep returning?

What makes me curious?

What gives me energy?

What part of myself becomes louder when everything else gets quiet?

My Virgo Season message

When I put the entire spread together, this is what I hear:

Get quiet enough to hear yourself.

Follow the spark.

Try before you know exactly where it's going.

Nurture what begins to grow.

Practice without demanding perfection.

And trust that the seemingly unrelated pieces of yourself may actually belong together.

My journal reflection for this season is:

Virgo season invites me to quiet the outside noise, trust my inner voice, follow the creative spark, and nurture it through consistent practice rather than perfection.

I don't know exactly what the Ace of Wands is beginning yet.

And maybe that's the point.

The season begins with mastery.

But it ends with creation.

So the question I'm carrying with me into Virgo season is:

What am I ready to create if I stop needing to know what it will become?

🌿✨

Spread inspired by Lindsay Mack and her Virgo Season tarot offering.

Cards pulled from the Arcanum Tarot deck.

Learn all 78 cards.

Understand the symbolism.

Recognize the patterns.

Get better at trusting my intuition.

And eventually, I’d look at a spread and just…know.

I’m realizing now that tarot might actually be teaching me the exact opposite.

Maybe I’m never supposed to have all the answers.

And maybe that’s the whole point.

I really like knowing what’s next.

I am a planner.

I like knowing where I’m going, what I’m doing, what the plan is, and preferably what Plan B is if Plan A doesn’t work.

Uncertainty?

Not exactly my favorite thing. 😂

When something in my life feels unsettled, my instinct is usually to figure it out.

What does this mean?

What’s going to happen?

What should I do?

What’s the right decision?

And when I started reading tarot, it would have been very easy to turn the cards into another way of trying to control uncertainty.

Just pull another card.

Still confused?

Pull a clarifier.

Don’t like that answer?

Maybe another clarifier.

And suddenly you’re six cards deep trying to get the universe to hand you a detailed itinerary for the next three months.

I’ve definitely had to catch myself doing that.

Because the more I’ve learned tarot, the more I’ve realized:

The cards aren’t necessarily here to tell me what’s going to happen.

Sometimes they’re simply asking me to pay attention to what’s happening right now.

There’s a difference between guidance and certainty.

That’s probably one of the biggest lessons tarot has taught me so far.

I can ask:

What energy am I bringing into this situation?

What am I not seeing?

What am I afraid of?

What deserves more of my attention?

What might I need to release?

Those questions open something.

But when I ask:

Tell me exactly what’s going to happen.

I’m trying to close something.

I’m looking for certainty.

And tarot doesn’t always give me that.

Sometimes I finish a reading with more questions than I had when I started.

Strangely, I’m beginning to think those might be some of the best readings.

I’m learning to sit with the card.

There was a time when pulling a card I didn’t immediately understand made me uncomfortable.

I’d reach for the guidebook.

Google the meaning.

Pull another card.

Try to make it make sense.

Now I’m trying something different.

I’m letting the card sit there.

What do I notice first?

What part of the imagery am I drawn toward?

What emotion does it bring up?

Does it remind me of something happening in my life?

What does my immediate reaction to the card tell me?

Sometimes I’ll understand it later that day.

Sometimes a week later.

Sometimes another card appears and suddenly the first one clicks.

And sometimes?

I still don’t know.

I’m becoming increasingly okay with that.

The same thing is happening with Musical Tarot.

One of my favorite parts of building Musical Tarot has been discovering that there isn’t always one perfect song for a card.

A song can completely change depending on whether I’m looking at the card upright or reversed.

A lyric can suddenly make me understand an aspect of a card I hadn’t considered before.

Someone else can hear the same song and connect it to an entirely different card.

And none of us necessarily has to be wrong.

That’s been such an interesting lesson for me.

Because I’m not just learning tarot.

I’m learning how much meaning depends on perspective.

The card isn’t changing.

The song isn’t changing.

I’m changing.

And therefore, what I see in them changes too.

Maybe that’s why the cards keep meeting us differently.

I’ve already had cards appear repeatedly during different periods of my life.

And every time, they seem to have something slightly different to say.

Not because the traditional meaning suddenly changed.

Because I did.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons tarot can’t simply be memorized like vocabulary words.

You can learn the foundations.

You can study symbolism.

You can understand the traditional interpretations.

But eventually, you have to have a relationship with the cards.

And relationships evolve.

I’m also learning that not every synchronicity needs to become a prediction.

This has been another big one for me.

A tarot card appears.

Then a song plays.

Then I see a phrase somewhere that sounds suspiciously similar.

Then another card echoes the same theme.

And my brain immediately goes:

OKAY BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!

😂

I’m trying to replace that reaction with:

Interesting. Let me pay attention.

Because noticing a pattern doesn’t mean I have to immediately decide what it’s predicting.

Maybe it’s simply highlighting something I’m already feeling.

Maybe it’s encouraging me to explore something.

Maybe it’s asking me a question.

Maybe I’ll understand it later.

Or maybe it’s just a meaningful coincidence that made me stop for a moment and reflect.

I don’t have to turn every sign into an instruction.

That’s harder than it sounds.

Because having an answer feels safe.

This is going to happen.

This is the right decision.

This is where I’m supposed to go.

There’s comfort in certainty.

But life doesn’t really work that way.

We make decisions with incomplete information.

We change our minds.

Opportunities appear that we couldn’t have planned for.

Things we were convinced we wanted turn out not to fit anymore.

Things we never imagined become incredibly important to us.

And maybe tarot isn’t supposed to protect us from that uncertainty.

Maybe it’s teaching us how to move with it.

I’m starting to ask different questions.

Instead of:

What’s going to happen?

I’m trying:

What should I pay attention to?

Instead of:

Is this going to work out?

Maybe:

What can I learn from this situation?

Instead of:

Am I making the right decision?

Maybe:

What part of myself needs to be heard before I decide?

And instead of:

What does this card mean?

Sometimes:

What does this card make me wonder about?

That last one might be my favorite.

Because wonder leaves room for something I don’t know yet.

Maybe intuition isn’t about knowing everything.

I used to think being intuitive meant getting the answer right.

Now I’m starting to think intuition might have much more to do with being willing to listen.

To notice.

To stay curious.

To trust a feeling without immediately needing to prove it.

To acknowledge that something is shifting before you know exactly what it’s shifting into.

And to sometimes say:

I don’t know yet.

There’s actually something incredibly freeing about those four words.

I don’t know yet.

Not:

I’ll never know.

Not:

I’m completely lost.

Just:

I don’t know yet.

There’s still possibility inside of yet.

Maybe that’s what tarot is teaching me.

Not how to predict every turn in the road.

Not how to avoid uncertainty.

Not how to make the perfect decision every time.

But how to sit at the crossroads without panicking because I haven’t chosen a direction yet.

How to listen before acting.

How to notice before deciding.

How to let a question remain a question for a little while.

And how to trust that I don’t need to see the entire path to take the next step.

For someone who would very much like the universe to occasionally send her a detailed PowerPoint presentation explaining exactly what’s happening and what she should do next…

That’s a pretty big lesson. 😂

But I’m learning.

One card at a time.

So this week, instead of ending with an answer, I want to end with a question:

Where in your life are you trying to have all the answers right now?

And what would happen if you gave yourself permission to say:

I don’t know yet. ✨

Allowance.

The message was essentially that all of the intuition, manifestation, and “woo-wooery” in the world eventually comes back to the same thing: allowing.

Allowing something different.

Allowing something unexpected.

Allowing yourself to loosen your grip on what you thought was supposed to happen.

And apparently the universe decided I needed that message repeated a few more times before I’d actually listen.

Then I pulled my cards.

My tarot spread was:

Three of Wands Reversed.
The Tower.
Page of Cups.
Temperance Reversed.

I stared at them for a minute.

Because lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about work and what comes next for me.

I’m currently working under an independent contract that ends September 22. There has always been the possibility of continuing beyond that, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to make this opportunity successful.

What do I need to do?

What should I be building?

How do I make this work?

But looking at those four cards this morning, another question entered the conversation:

What if “making it work” isn’t the only thing I’m supposed to be thinking about?

The horizon looks different from here.

The Three of Wands is a card I associate with expansion, looking toward the horizon, and seeing what’s possible beyond where you currently stand.

Reversed?

Maybe the future isn’t unfolding quite the way you pictured it.

Maybe there are delays.

Maybe the road ahead isn’t as clear as you expected.

Or maybe you’ve been staring toward one particular horizon for so long that you’ve forgotten you can turn around and look in another direction.

And then came The Tower.

I’ll admit it: The Tower will always make me go 😳 for approximately three seconds.

But I’m learning not to automatically interpret it as disaster.

Sometimes The Tower isn’t something crashing down around you.

Sometimes it’s an idea crashing down inside you.

A belief.

An assumption.

A version of your future that you’ve held onto because it made sense.

Maybe my Tower moment isn’t, “Something terrible is going to happen with my job.”

Maybe it’s simply:

“This doesn’t have to be the only option.”

And weirdly?

That thought felt freeing.

Then came the Page of Cups.

This might be my favorite part of the reading.

Because after all of that uncertainty, I didn’t pull a card telling me to immediately take action.

I pulled curiosity.

The Page of Cups feels like an invitation to wonder.

What about this?

Have you ever considered that?

What would happen if you followed this little idea just to see where it went?

There doesn’t have to be a five-year plan attached to it.

There doesn’t even have to be a decision.

Maybe I can browse jobs without deciding I’m leaving mine.

Maybe I can have conversations.

Maybe I can explore completely different industries.

Maybe I can continue building the creative things that have unexpectedly become important to me.

Maybe I can think differently about what work, income, stability, and success could eventually look like.

Maybe curiosity itself is enough for right now.

And apparently tarot wasn’t finished with me.

I pulled some oracle cards afterward.

Rough Road.

Gentle Release.

Trust Yourself.

Ignite Ambition.

Okay.

I hear you. 😂

And then another deck gave me:

Retirement.

Dream Job.

Fear of Failure.

Passive Income.

At that point, subtlety had apparently left the building.

But one pairing stood out more than anything else:

Dream Job + Fear of Failure.

Oof.

Because how often do we stay focused on what’s practical because exploring what we actually want requires us to acknowledge the possibility that we might fail?

Or that we might change our minds?

Or that the thing we thought we wanted isn’t actually the thing we want anymore?

Sometimes certainty feels safer than curiosity.

Even when we’re not particularly happy with the certainty.

And that’s where I came back to the word that started this entire morning.

Allowance.

Maybe I don’t need an answer yet.

September 22 is coming.

I don’t know exactly what happens after that.

And for someone who really likes knowing where she’s going, that’s uncomfortable.

My instinct is to figure it out.

Create the plan.

Make the decision.

Know what happens next.

But maybe that’s not what this moment is asking from me.

Maybe I’m not being told to quit anything.

Maybe I’m not being told to stay, either.

Maybe I’m simply being given permission to look.

To notice what excites me.

To follow the strange opportunity.

To consider the job I wouldn’t normally consider.

To continue building something creative even if I have absolutely no idea where it’s going.

To imagine that there might eventually be more than one way I earn a living.

To ask myself what I actually want instead of immediately asking what makes the most sense.

And perhaps most importantly:

To trust that exploring another road doesn’t mean I have to abandon the one I’m currently walking.

I can look.

I can wonder.

I can ask questions.

I can change my mind.

I can stay.

I can go.

I can discover an option I don’t even know exists yet.

That’s allowance.

So I’m changing the question.

Instead of asking:

“What am I supposed to do next?”

I’m going to try asking:

“What am I curious about next?”

That’s a much less frightening question.

And maybe that’s the Page of Cups lesson I needed today.

You don’t always need to know where something is going before you’re allowed to explore it.

Sometimes you just have to turn toward a different horizon and see what’s there.

So I’ll leave you with the question I’m sitting with myself:

What would you allow yourself to explore if you didn’t have to know where it was going?

I’d genuinely love to hear your answer. ❤️

Page of Pentacles.
Four of Wands.
Nine of Swords.

And sitting at the bottom of the deck?

Eight of Cups.

Well... okay then. 😂

If you’ve been following along with me for a while, you know that I’m still learning tarot. That’s actually one of the reasons I started sharing all of this in the first place. I’m fascinated by the way 78 cards can somehow give us a completely different language for things we’re already feeling.

And lately, one of the things I’ve been thinking about is my career.

When you’re asking a question without actually asking it

I didn’t sit down this morning and ask the cards:

“Should I leave my job?”

This wasn’t even supposed to be some dramatic career reading.

But sometimes you pull cards and immediately know what part of your life they’re making you think about.

That’s what happened today.

The Page of Pentacles immediately made me think about being a student again — learning, building, trying something new and figuring out what has the potential to grow.

Then came the Four of Wands, a card I associate with stability, celebration and that wonderful feeling of home.

And that made me wonder:

What does it actually mean to feel at home in your career?

Is it being good at what you do?

Being financially secure?

Feeling appreciated?

Being excited to wake up and do the work?

Or is it something else entirely?

And then tarot apparently decided I’d had enough pleasant introspection because out came the Nine of Swords. 😂

Is it intuition... or is it anxiety?

This might be the part of the reading I’m sitting with the most.

The Nine of Swords is worry. Overthinking. Those thoughts that become approximately 700% louder when you’re lying in bed at night.

And career questions can bring out ALL of that.

Am I where I’m supposed to be?

Am I building toward something?

What if I’m supposed to be doing something completely different?

What if I leave something too soon?

What if I stay somewhere too long?

And maybe the hardest one:

How do I know whether something is my intuition speaking or simply my anxiety looking for certainty?

Tarot can’t hand me a resignation letter and say, Here you go, Sarah. I’ve handled everything.

Honestly, I’m glad it can’t.

Because I’m realizing more and more that I don’t want tarot to make decisions for me.

I want it to help me ask better questions.

And then there was the Eight of Cups...

Of course there was.

Sitting quietly at the bottom of the deck was the Eight of Cups — the card of walking away from something in search of deeper fulfillment.

Very subtle, tarot. 😂

It would be incredibly easy to look at that card and immediately think:

I’M SUPPOSED TO LEAVE.

But that’s not actually how I’m reading it.

Because what if the thing I’m eventually supposed to walk away from isn’t a job?

What if it’s an old definition of success?

What if it’s the belief that my career needs to follow one perfectly straight line?

What if it’s the idea that every job has to be the job instead of allowing certain chapters to teach me something and lead me somewhere else?

Or maybe the Eight of Cups really is pointing toward a future change that I can’t see yet.

I don’t know.

And strangely, I think that’s the point.

Maybe clarity isn’t knowing what’s next

The story I see when I put these cards together isn’t:

Quit your job.

It’s much more interesting than that.

Page of Pentacles: Learn.

Four of Wands: Figure out what belonging and fulfillment actually look like to you.

Nine of Swords: Don’t let fear make the decision.

Eight of Cups: Be willing to pursue something deeper when you understand what you’re looking for.

Maybe I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be right now.

Maybe this chapter is preparing me for another one.

Maybe there’s an entirely different path quietly developing alongside this one.

I’m not sure yet.

But I think there’s something really beautiful about allowing yourself to be in the middle of the story without demanding to know the ending.

And that’s becoming one of my favorite things about learning tarot.

The cards don’t necessarily give me the answer.

Sometimes they give me a better question.

What question have YOU been carrying? 🔮

One of the reasons I’ve loved sharing my tarot journey here is hearing how differently these cards show up in each of our lives.

And lately I’ve been thinking...

Maybe it’s time to start pulling some cards for you, too.

I’m opening a small number of personalized tarot readings for anyone who has a situation they’ve been thinking about and wants another perspective on it.

You can choose from:

🔮 One-Question Tarot Reading — bring me the question that’s been taking up space in your head.

🎴 In-Depth Tarot Reading — a deeper multi-card exploration when the situation is a little more complicated.

🎶 Musical Tarot Reading — tarot with the twist that started this whole journey: your cards paired with songs that help tell their story.

I’m keeping the number of readings limited while I experiment with this because I want to be able to give each one the attention it deserves.

GET YOUR PERSONALIZED READING

And whether you book one or you’re simply here reading, listening and learning alongside me — thank you.

There are somehow 2,000 of us on Instagram now, which is absolutely wild to type.

I’m still learning.

Still pulling cards.

Still finding songs.

Still asking questions.

And I’m really happy you’re here for it. ❤️

Tarot is a reflective tool and readings represent interpretation rather than guaranteed predictions or outcomes.

Light Seer’s Tarot by Chris-Anne. Used with appreciation and credited to the creator.

Songs we associate with certain people.

Songs that immediately transport us back to a specific summer, car ride, relationship, apartment, job, breakup, vacation, or version of ourselves.

And then there are the songs that seem to find us.

The ones that somehow appear at the exact moment we’re finally ready to understand them.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately — probably because I’ve spent so much time pairing music with tarot cards for my Musical Tarot project. The more I’ve done it, the more I’ve realized that I’m not necessarily choosing songs because of what they objectively mean.

I’m choosing them because of what they feel like.

And maybe that’s what we’ve been doing with music our entire lives.

The same song. A completely different meaning.

Have you ever heard a song you’ve known for years and suddenly thought:

Wait. Has that lyric always been there?

Of course it has.

You just weren’t the same person the last time you heard it.

I think that’s one of the strangest and most beautiful things about music. The recording doesn’t change. The lyrics don’t change. The singer doesn’t suddenly sing a different note.

We change.

And suddenly we’re able to hear something we couldn’t hear before.

A love song becomes a breakup song.

A sad song becomes hopeful.

A song you once associated with someone else somehow becomes about you.

Something you casually sang along to at 22 can bring you to tears years later because you’ve finally lived enough life to understand what the person who wrote it was trying to say.

Maybe the song didn’t change at all.

Maybe you finally caught up to it.

Sometimes the timing is almost creepy.

Then there are the songs you’ve never heard before.

You’re driving.

You’re scrolling.

Spotify shuffles into something random.

Someone sends you a song and says, “I think you’ll like this.”

And within thirty seconds you’re wondering how this complete stranger somehow wrote a song about the exact thing you’ve been carrying around inside yourself.

Those are the moments that fascinate me.

Because logically, I know what happened.

An algorithm recommended something. A friend happened to send a link. A playlist shuffled.

But emotionally?

Sometimes it feels a little more magical than that.

Like the universe slipped something into the queue and said:

Here. You’re going to need this one.

Music gives feelings somewhere to go.

There are things we don’t always know how to explain while we’re experiencing them.

Grief.

Heartbreak.

Hope.

Fear.

Loneliness.

Falling in love.

Starting over.

Missing someone.

Missing an old version of ourselves.

Wanting something we can’t quite name yet.

And then somebody sings one sentence and suddenly there it is.

That’s it. That’s what I’ve been trying to say.

Maybe that’s why certain songs become so important to us during major chapters of our lives.

They give language to something that didn’t have language yet.

They let us feel something without having to explain it.

And sometimes they simply sit beside us while we’re figuring it out.

Maybe this is why I’ve fallen so hard for Musical Tarot.

When I started pairing songs with tarot cards, I thought it would be a fun way to help myself learn the cards.

And it absolutely has been.

But somewhere along the way, I realized I was doing something else too.

I was exploring the way we attach meaning to music.

A tarot card can mean something completely different depending on when you pull it, what you’re asking, and what you’re experiencing.

So can a song.

You can hear the same song at two completely different points in your life and receive two completely different messages from it.

The card hasn’t changed.

The song hasn’t changed.

You have.

And suddenly the meaning meets you somewhere new.

Maybe that’s why music and tarot have started making so much sense together for me.

Neither necessarily tells you what to feel.

They give you something to hold up against your own life and ask:

Why is this speaking to me right now?

We leave pieces of ourselves inside songs.

There are songs I can’t hear without immediately becoming another version of myself.

I’m somewhere else.

I’m with someone else.

I’m remembering something I haven’t thought about in years.

Sometimes it’s comforting.

Sometimes it hurts.

Sometimes it’s hilarious that three notes can suddenly unlock an entire era of your life.

But that’s the magic of it.

We don’t just listen to music.

We attach memories to it.

We grow around it.

We leave little pieces of ourselves inside it.

And years later, a song can hand them back.

So now I want to know yours.

What’s a song that found you exactly when you needed it?

Maybe it helped you through something.

Maybe it made you feel understood.

Maybe it gave you permission to let go.

Maybe it made you brave enough to begin again.

Maybe you don’t even know why you needed it.

You just know that you did.

And maybe that’s enough.

Because I don’t think every meaningful thing needs a logical explanation.

Sometimes a song comes on.

You hear one line.

Something inside you recognizes it.

And for three or four minutes, somebody you’ve never met somehow understands exactly where you are.

Sometimes we find the song.

And sometimes, if we’re lucky, the song finds us. 🎧❤️

Sometimes they make immediate sense. Sometimes I have to sit with them for a while. And sometimes I pull something that makes me stare at the table and think:

Okay. I get it. You're trying to tell me something.

This morning was one of those mornings.

I pulled The Hierophant, followed by The Chariot.

Then I looked at the bottom of the deck.

Death & Rebirth.

Three Major Arcana cards.

Whenever that happens, I pay a little more attention. Major Arcana cards tend to feel less like commentary on the tiny details of the day and more like something bigger happening underneath them — lessons, transitions, turning points, the chapters that shape us.

And these three together?

They felt loud.

The Hierophant: What Have I Been Taught?

The Hierophant is interesting for me because it can represent tradition, structure, teachers, belief systems and the rules we've inherited about how life is supposed to work.

There can be comfort in that.

There's something reassuring about having a roadmap.

Go to school. Build the career. Make the responsible choices. Follow the path. Reach the milestone. Move on to the next one.

But I've started to wonder how often we continue following a roadmap simply because someone handed it to us.

How many of the things I believe about success, happiness, relationships, work — even who I'm supposed to be — are actually mine?

And how many did I inherit?

The Hierophant doesn't necessarily ask us to throw tradition away.

Sometimes I think it simply asks us to examine it.

What do I still believe because it feels true — and what do I believe because I've never stopped long enough to question it?

The Chariot: Okay. Now Move.

Then came The Chariot.

If The Hierophant asks what I believe, The Chariot feels like the moment where I'm asked what I'm going to do about it.

This is movement.

Direction.

Willpower.

Choosing the reins and deciding where you're going.

But there's an important distinction between movement and momentum.

You can be incredibly busy and still not be moving toward the life you actually want.

You can accomplish things.

Check boxes.

Keep pushing.

And one day realize you've become really good at driving down a road you aren't sure you chose.

So maybe The Chariot isn't simply telling me:

Go.

Maybe it's asking:

Where?

Because determination isn't particularly useful if you're determined to reach a destination you don't actually want anymore.

And then came the card underneath all of it.

Death & Rebirth: Of Course It Was.

At the bottom of the deck was Death & Rebirth.

Because apparently subtlety wasn't on the agenda this morning.

Death is one of those tarot cards that looks terrifying until you actually understand what it's saying.

It's rarely about literal death.

It's about endings.

Transformation.

Shedding.

The moment when something has completed its purpose and you're being asked to stop resurrecting it simply because you're afraid of what comes after.

And then I noticed another layer.

Death is associated with Taurus.

I'm a Taurus Sun.

Okay, universe. Cute.

But it got weirder.

I've been building my Musical Tarot series by pairing tarot cards with songs that capture their energy.

For Death & Rebirth, I chose:

“Closing Time” by Semisonic.

Mostly because of one lyric:

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.”

Which happens to be...

my high school yearbook quote.

I actually laughed when I realized it.

Of all the songs I could have associated with this card, I chose a lyric that apparently teenage me had already decided was important enough to leave underneath my yearbook photo.

And now, years later, here it is again.

Attached to a card about endings and beginnings.

Associated with my Sun sign.

Sitting underneath two other Major Arcana cards asking me to examine what I believe and decide where I'm going.

Sometimes tarot is very subtle.

And sometimes it hits you over the head with your own yearbook quote.

Maybe That's the Message

When I put these three cards together, I don't think they're three separate messages anymore.

I think they're a sequence.

The Hierophant: Examine the story you've been taught.

The Chariot: Decide where you actually want to go.

Death & Rebirth: Accept that getting there may require letting an old version of your life end.

And maybe that's why this particular pull landed so strongly for me.

Transformation sounds beautiful when we talk about it after the fact.

We say things like:

Everything happens for a reason.

It led me where I needed to go.

That ending created a new beginning.

But living through the middle part?

That's different.

Because before something becomes a beginning, it usually feels like an ending.

Before something feels like freedom, it can feel like losing control.

Before you know where the road leads, you have to decide you're willing to leave the familiar one.

Maybe that's what these cards are reminding me today.

I don't have to know exactly what the next chapter looks like.

I just have to recognize when the previous one has finished.

Because apparently I've believed the same thing since I was seventeen:

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.

Maybe I'm finally learning what that actually means.

A reflection for you

If these cards found their way to you today too, maybe ask yourself:

What belief am I ready to question?

Where am I actually trying to go?

And what might I have to let end in order to get there?

Sometimes the cards don't predict what's coming.

Sometimes they simply show us the story we're already living.

And then there are readings where you turn over the final card and suddenly realize the entire spread has been telling you one story.

That happened to me this morning.

For the New Moon, I pulled six cards around beginnings, energy, release, risk, intention, and the chapter ahead.

And apparently, the cards had some things to say.

What am I being invited to begin?

Seven of Pentacles

Patience.

Which is admittedly not the most exciting answer when you’re asking what you’re supposed to begin.

The Seven of Pentacles isn’t about the rush of planting the seed. It’s about what happens afterward—when you’ve done the work, but there’s nothing to harvest yet.

It made me wonder how often I decide whether something is “working” based on how quickly I can see results.

Maybe I’m not being asked to begin something entirely new.

Maybe I’m being asked to begin trusting what I’ve already planted.

What deserves my energy?

Knight of Swords — Reversed

Well... apparently not running around at approximately 900 miles per hour trying to figure everything out.

Noted.

The Knight of Swords reversed immediately made me think about urgency—the feeling that every idea needs to become a plan, every question needs an answer, and every opportunity needs to be pursued immediately.

But paired with the Seven of Pentacles, the message felt pretty obvious:

Cultivate instead of chase.

There are things worth pursuing.

There are also things worth allowing to unfold.

I’m learning the difference.

What should I stop carrying forward?

Seven of Swords — Reversed

Another seven.

And this one felt a little more uncomfortable.

The Seven of Swords reversed can point toward honesty—particularly the kind we owe ourselves.

The stories we keep telling ourselves.

The things we’ve quietly outgrown.

The ways we’ve learned to protect ourselves that might not actually be protecting us anymore.

Maybe the question isn’t only What am I leaving behind?

Maybe it’s:

What do I already know I’m ready to leave behind but haven’t admitted yet?

Where should I take a risk?

Five of Cups

This card surprised me.

Because the Five of Cups is so deeply connected to disappointment, grief, and focusing on what didn’t work out.

So what exactly is the risk?

I think it’s turning around.

It’s allowing yourself to notice what’s still standing.

It’s risking hope after disappointment.

Risking excitement after something didn’t work.

Risking attachment when you know things can change.

Risking wanting something again.

Sometimes hope requires far more courage than pessimism does.

What intention wants to be planted?

The Fool

Of course it was The Fool.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about The Fool—the beginning of the tarot journey, the leap before you know exactly where you’re going, the willingness to experience something without demanding guarantees first.

And here it was again.

The intention I’m apparently planting during this New Moon isn’t about having the perfect plan.

It’s curiosity.

Openness.

Trust.

The willingness to say:

I don’t know where this is going, but I’m willing to find out.

The Fool is numbered zero.

Not one.

Zero.

The moment before the story even begins.

And then I turned over my final card.

What represents this next chapter?

Death

Okay, tarot.

Message received.

Death isn’t about literal death. It’s the archetype of endings, shedding, transformation, and the space created when something has finally run its course.

And sitting directly beside The Fool, it stopped me.

The Fool is beginning.

Death is ending.

Apparently, my next chapter contains both.

Maybe that’s what transformation actually looks like.

We tend to imagine beginnings as these clean little dividing lines. One thing ends, we process it, tie it neatly into a bow, and then—when we’re completely ready—the next thing begins.

Life rarely works that way.

Sometimes you’re grieving and becoming at the same time.

Sometimes you’re still figuring out what you’re releasing while something new is already knocking.

Sometimes you don’t realize an old version of yourself has disappeared until you notice you’re responding to life differently.

And maybe that’s what this spread was trying to tell me.

The Seven of Pentacles says be patient with what’s growing.

The Knight of Swords reversed says stop rushing toward the answer.

The Seven of Swords reversed says stop carrying what you know isn’t true anymore.

The Five of Cups says risk hoping again.

The Fool says begin anyway.

And Death says:

Let the beginning change you.

That’s the part I’m sitting with today.

Maybe a new chapter doesn’t require knowing exactly where you’re headed.

Maybe it requires being honest enough to recognize what can’t come with you.

So my intention for this New Moon is simple:

I don’t need to know exactly where I’m going. I need to stop carrying what I’ve outgrown, tend patiently to what matters, and trust myself enough to begin again.

And maybe that’s enough for now

.

Which, historically, seems to be exactly when signs like to show up.

I was getting ready for a quick work trip to New York when I decided to pull some tarot cards before I left. Tomorrow night, Broadway Plus—the company I recently joined—is celebrating its tenth anniversary with a big party, and there’s something inherently reflective about walking into a celebration of everything a company has already built while still being relatively new and figuring out where you fit into what comes next.

So, before the airport and the meetings and the celebrating and the general chaos that comes with a couple of days in New York, I shuffled.

And I pulled:

King of Wands.
The Hierophant.
Four of Pentacles.
The Emperor — reversed.
Four of Swords — reversed.
Ace of Pentacles — reversed.

Interesting.

Not necessarily alarming. Not necessarily earth-shattering.

But interesting.

Then I opened my horoscope.

“The silence of your internal compass is not an absence of guidance, but a rare signal to mute the external world's noise and listen to the hum of your own magnetism. By trusting this quiet recalibration, you will perceive that the resources you feared were dwindling are actually rearranging themselves into a structure of unexpected abundance.”

Okay, universe.

Subtle.

When completely separate things start telling the same story

One of the things I've been trying to practice as I learn tarot is looking at the cards before immediately reaching for someone else's interpretation.

What do I notice?

What story do they seem to be telling together?

What words, images or feelings keep repeating?

And looking at this spread, one word kept coming back to me:

Structure.

The Four of Pentacles.

The Four of Swords.

The Hierophant.

The Emperor.

These aren't exactly free-floating, whimsical cards.

They're cards concerned with foundations. Systems. Security. Institutions. Authority. Stability. The structures we build around ourselves because they help us understand where we belong.

And then I went back to the horoscope.

“…rearranging themselves into a structure of unexpected abundance.”

There was that word again.

Maybe it was coincidence.

I'm actually okay with that.

Because I think sometimes we get too caught up in asking whether something is a sign that we miss the more interesting question:

Why did it resonate so deeply when we encountered it?

The King of Wands: Who am I when I stop asking permission?

The first card was the King of Wands, and I couldn't think of a better energy to carry into New York.

He's confident. Creative. Passionate. Magnetic.

But what I love most about him is that he doesn't seem particularly concerned with convincing everyone else that he belongs in the room.

He just does.

Maybe there's a lesson in that for me.

Walk into the room.

Talk to people.

Be curious.

Share ideas.

Take up the space you've been invited to occupy.

Stop worrying quite so much about whether you're doing it correctly.

The Hierophant: The paths we're told to follow

Then came The Hierophant.

Tradition. Institutions. Teachers. Established systems.

And considering I'm traveling to celebrate the tenth anniversary of a company, the symbolism isn't exactly difficult to find.

But I've also been thinking a lot lately about the structures we inherit without realizing we've inherited them.

What does a successful career look like?

What does financial security look like?

What does adulthood look like?

What are you supposed to have accomplished by a certain age?

What's the next rung on the ladder?

And perhaps most importantly:

Who decided?

There's comfort in established paths. There are people who have walked them before us, lessons we can learn and wisdom we don't have to discover entirely on our own.

But there's a difference between learning from a path and believing you're required to follow it.

Which makes the next cards particularly interesting.

The Four of Pentacles: What am I afraid of losing?

If you've ever seen the imagery on the traditional Four of Pentacles, it's not particularly subtle either.

Hold on.

Protect.

Conserve.

Don't lose what you have.

There's wisdom in that.

But there's fear in it, too.

And that question has been sitting with me:

What am I holding onto because I'm genuinely protecting something valuable—and what am I gripping because I'm afraid there won't be enough?

Enough money.

Enough opportunities.

Enough time.

Enough security.

Enough certainty.

Maybe abundance isn't always about acquiring more.

Maybe sometimes it's about loosening your grip enough to realize that what you have isn't disappearing.

It's changing shape.

Which brings me back to that strangely specific horoscope:

“The resources you feared were dwindling are actually rearranging themselves…”

The Emperor reversed: Maybe I don't need the blueprint

This might be my favorite card in the entire spread.

The Emperor upright likes a plan.

Structure. Authority. Order. Control.

He builds the thing and knows exactly how it's supposed to operate.

Except mine showed up upside down.

And lately I've been wondering whether I've spent too much time believing that somewhere out there exists a blueprint for how my life is supposed to unfold.

Career.

Money.

Home.

Relationships.

Family.

Creativity.

Purpose.

Step one. Step two. Step three.

Except real life doesn't seem particularly interested in following the itinerary.

Maybe the reversed Emperor isn't asking me to abandon structure entirely.

Maybe he's asking:

What happens if you stop trying to control the architecture before you even know what you're building?

I don't know exactly what the next ten years of my life look like.

I'm starting to think that's less of a problem than I once believed it was.

Four of Swords reversed: My brain would still like a meeting

Of course, there's one small obstacle to all of this enlightened surrender.

My brain.

My brain would very much like an agenda.

Preferably with bullet points.

And deadlines.

And perhaps a color-coded spreadsheet.

The Four of Swords is traditionally associated with rest, retreat and stillness.

Mine was reversed.

Which feels…accurate.

There are times when I become so determined to figure something out that I create enough mental noise to drown out whatever my intuition was trying to tell me in the first place.

What should I do?

What's next?

Is this right?

What does this mean?

Where is this going?

Perhaps that's why the opening line of my horoscope stopped me:

“The silence of your internal compass is not an absence of guidance.”

Maybe intuition doesn't always arrive as a booming voice announcing the next five steps.

Maybe sometimes it's quiet because there isn't anything we're supposed to do yet.

Ace of Pentacles reversed: What if the opportunity isn't missing?

And finally:

Ace of Pentacles reversed.

The Ace of Pentacles is the seed.

A tangible beginning.

A new opportunity.

Something that has the potential to become real and substantial if it's nurtured.

Reversed, it's easy to look at it and think:

Missed opportunity.

Something isn't happening.

Something isn't working.

But what if that's not the only interpretation?

What if the seed simply hasn't broken through the soil yet?

We don't dig up seeds every morning to make sure they're growing.

We plant them.

We water them.

We give them light.

And then, for an uncomfortable amount of time, we stare at what appears to be absolutely nothing.

Maybe there are seasons when progress is happening somewhere we can't see it yet.

Two fours, one reversed Emperor, and a lot of questions

What I keep coming back to are those two Fours.

Four is associated with foundations and stability in tarot.

And they're sitting in a spread alongside the Hierophant and Emperor—two archetypes deeply connected with systems and structure.

Except the Emperor is reversed.

The Four of Swords is reversed.

And the Ace—the potential new material beginning—is reversed.

Which makes me wonder whether I've been asking the wrong question.

Maybe the question isn't:

How do I make my life more secure?

Maybe it's:

What kind of life would actually make me feel secure?

Because those aren't necessarily the same thing.

We can build lives that look incredibly stable from the outside and still feel restless inside them.

We can also find ourselves in periods that look uncertain from the outside while quietly building something much more aligned underneath.

Maybe that's the “recalibration.”

Tomorrow, I'm going to a birthday party

Tomorrow night I'll walk into a room celebrating ten years of something that, at one point, didn't exist.

Before the anniversary parties and clients and employees and successes and stories, there was simply someone willing to begin.

A seed.

An Ace of Pentacles, if you'll allow me the metaphor.

Nobody standing at the beginning gets to see exactly what year ten will look like.

They begin anyway.

And perhaps that's the part of this entire strange little synchronicity that I needed.

I don't know what my own next ten years look like.

I don't know exactly where every decision I'm making right now leads.

I don't know which opportunities will grow, which will change shape and which ones will eventually lead me somewhere I haven't even considered yet.

And maybe I don't need to.

I've always thought of intuition as something that should provide answers.

I'm beginning to wonder whether that's asking too much of it.

Maybe intuition isn't supposed to hand us directions.

Maybe it's only supposed to give us a compass.

And sometimes the compass goes quiet.

Maybe quiet doesn't mean we're lost.

Maybe things are simply rearranging themselves.

So for the next couple of days, I'm going to try something different.

I'm going to New York.

I'm going to work.

I'm going to celebrate.

I'm going to talk to people.

I'm going to notice what excites me.

I'm going to pay attention to what I naturally move toward when I'm not forcing myself to decide where everything needs to lead.

And maybe that's enough guidance for now.

🎴 A question for you:

If you stopped trying to make your life look secure, what would actually make you feel secure?

I'd genuinely love to hear your answer.

The first song you play after getting good news. The playlist you make before a road trip. The song blasting through your headphones as you walk into something that terrifies you. The music you listen to after quitting a job, moving somewhere new, falling in love, starting over, or finally deciding to do the thing you’ve been talking yourself out of doing.

We give our beginnings soundtracks.

And the more I’ve been studying tarot—and especially as I’ve been working on my Musical Tarot series—the more I’ve realized that The Fool might understand this better than any other card in the deck.

Because The Fool is standing at the beginning of everything.

And I think they deserve a really good playlist.

Meet The Fool

The Fool is numbered 0 in the Major Arcana.

Not 1.

Zero.

Before the journey has really even begun.

Traditionally, we see The Fool preparing to step forward with very little baggage, seemingly unconcerned about what might be waiting ahead. There’s possibility, curiosity, optimism, freedom, spontaneity, and maybe just a tiny bit of recklessness.

The Fool doesn’t have a five-year plan.

The Fool hasn’t made a spreadsheet comparing every possible outcome.

The Fool hasn’t waited until they feel 100% qualified.

They just know something is calling them forward.

And they go.

As someone who would personally prefer approximately seventeen signs from the universe, a detailed itinerary, and confirmation that everything is going to work out before taking a major leap, I find The Fool both inspiring and mildly terrifying. 😂

But maybe that’s why I love this card.

The Fool reminds me that we rarely get certainty before we begin.

Sometimes we have to take the first step and discover the path afterward.

So…What Does The Fool Sound Like?

This is the question that started becoming an obsession for me as I began associating tarot cards with songs.

When I look at a tarot card, I don’t just want to memorize:

The Fool = new beginnings, spontaneity, freedom, innocence.

I want to understand what that actually feels like.

And music helps me do that.

So when I think about The Fool, I hear songs that make me want to throw open the door and GO.

Songs about possibility.

Songs about starting over.

Songs about trusting yourself.

Songs that sound like driving down a highway with the windows open toward somewhere you’ve never been.

Songs that make you feel, even for four minutes, like absolutely anything could happen next.

So naturally...

I made The Fool a playlist.

🎧 The Fool’s Playlist

🎵 “Unwritten” — Natasha Bedingfield

If The Fool had an anthem, this might be it.

The rest is still unwritten.

That’s the entire beauty of card zero.

Nothing has happened yet.

And instead of seeing the blank page as something frightening, Unwritten treats it as possibility.

You don’t need to know the ending before you’re allowed to begin.

🎵 “I Lived” — OneRepublic

There’s something beautifully Fool-like about choosing experience over certainty.

This song makes me think about what happens when we stop trying to construct a perfectly safe life and instead ask ourselves:

Did I actually live it?

The Fool isn’t necessarily asking whether the leap will work.

They’re asking whether you’ll regret never taking it.

🎵 “Breakaway” — Kelly Clarkson

Sometimes beginning means leaving.

Leaving the place you’ve outgrown. Leaving an old version of yourself. Leaving behind expectations about who you’re supposed to become.

There’s a moment in every Fool journey when staying where you are becomes scarier than stepping into the unknown.

Breakaway feels like that moment.

🎵 “The River of Dreams” — Billy Joel

Maybe you don’t completely understand what you’re searching for yet.

You just know you’re searching.

That’s another part of The Fool I love.

We tend to think we need a clearly defined destination before we start moving, but sometimes curiosity itself is enough.

You follow the thing pulling at you and figure out why later.

🎵 “Wide Open Spaces” — The Chicks

Few songs make me picture The Fool card more vividly.

Space.

Freedom.

Independence.

The excitement and fear of figuring things out for yourself.

There’s an entire world beyond what you already know—and at some point, you have to leave familiar territory if you want to discover it.

🎵 “Go Your Own Way” — Fleetwood Mac

The Fool’s journey isn’t necessarily the journey everyone else would choose for you.

And that’s important.

Sometimes taking the leap means realizing that the path that makes sense to everyone around you doesn’t make sense for you.

There’s freedom in choosing your own direction—even when other people don’t understand it yet.

🎵 “A Million Dreams” — The Greatest Showman

Of course I had to get some musical theatre onto this playlist. 🎭

This song captures one of my favorite qualities of The Fool:

the ability to imagine something before it exists.

Every creative project starts this way.

Every career change.

Every adventure.

Every new relationship.

Every dream.

At some point, you’re believing in something that isn’t real yet.

And then you decide to see what happens if you move toward it.

Maybe We All Need a Fool Song

This is where tarot gets especially interesting to me.

Because eventually the cards stop being pictures on a table and start becoming questions.

And The Fool asks a pretty big one:

Where in your life are you waiting for certainty before allowing yourself to begin?

Maybe there’s something you’ve been thinking about doing.

Taking a class.

Starting a creative project.

Changing careers.

Traveling somewhere alone.

Learning something completely outside your comfort zone.

Writing something and actually letting someone read it.

Starting the Substack.

Picking up the tarot deck.

Making the weird little Musical Tarot series because your brain keeps associating cards with songs and you want to see whether anyone else finds it interesting.

Sometimes the thing doesn’t need to make perfect sense yet.

Sometimes curiosity is enough.

That has actually become one of my favorite parts of learning tarot: allowing myself to be a beginner.

I don’t have to know every card perfectly.

I don’t have to immediately understand every symbol.

I can pull a card, write down what I notice, study it, read different interpretations, ask questions, change my mind, and keep learning.

There’s something incredibly freeing about saying:

I don’t know where this is going yet. I’m just interested enough to follow it.

That’s Fool energy.

Why Every Journey Needs a Soundtrack

Music does something interesting to memory.

Sometimes I’ll hear the opening notes of a song I haven’t listened to in years and suddenly I’m not just remembering a period of my life.

I’m back there.

I remember where I was.

Who I was with.

What I wanted.

What I was worried about.

Who I thought I was becoming.

Songs become little emotional bookmarks.

And maybe that’s why we instinctively reach for music when something is changing.

We aren’t just choosing songs.

We’re scoring the scene.

We’re saying:

This matters. I want to remember how this felt.

And someday, months or years later, that song might come on unexpectedly and transport us right back to the person standing at the edge of that particular cliff.

Before we knew what happened next.

Before the adventure.

Before the mistakes.

Before the plot twists.

Before we became whoever that journey was going to turn us into.

Just us.

Standing there.

Card zero.

Ready to begin.

🎒 Your Turn

So I want to build a bigger Fool playlist.

Imagine you’re about to start an entirely new chapter of your life.

You don’t know whether it’s going to work.

You don’t know exactly where you’re going.

You have your metaphorical little bag over your shoulder, the road ahead of you, and absolutely no guarantee about what happens next.

You put your headphones on.

What song do you play?

Tell me in the comments. 🎧👇

I genuinely want to know.

And maybe we’ll build The Fool’s Playlist together.

Until next Saturday,

Sarah 🔮🎶

P.S. If tarot + music sounds like your particular brand of weird, stick around. I’m working my way through the deck and exploring what happens when we stop asking only “What does this card mean?” and start asking “What does this card sound like?”