Tarotscopes April 2019
By Brandon Alter:
I don’t know about you, gurl, but child, I have not been loving 2019 so far. Honestly, it’s felt pretty much the same as 2018 . . . maybe even a touch worse. Luckily, all that is about to change, because Astrological New Year has arrived. Happy New Queers, babies! Can you feel that big change in the air? You see, Aries is the first sign of the Zodiac, and he brings the beginning of the year with him.
Each year, when the Sun clicks into Aries from Pisces (on the Equinox), our collective cycle starts over. Ordinarily that feels like a great wind sweeping us clear. But this year, Mercury was retrograde during that shift, which made that great wind feel more like a great wail. And with so many planets still in Pisces (I’m looking at you Neptune, Mercury ,and Venus), our fresh start is certainly feeling a little muddy. But all is not lost! The New Moon in Aries is here to give us the initiatory boost we need.
Aries energy is initiating energy. It’s the seedling sprouting up through the soil. The sperm racing to fertilize the egg. When you have to be first in line, or wake up to see the sunrise, that’s Aries. Aries energy is impulsive, sometimes reckless, but it is the vital force required to blast off to new horizons. When we fully surrender to the Aries spirit, we speak before we think, we act before we plan. And that’s not a bad thing. Sometimes the truth needs to be blurted out. Sometimes too much thinking can impede our progress. This New Moon is here to push you forward before you can second guess yourself. And guess what, it’s already here! The official New Moon happened this Friday morning at 12:50 A.M. But the portal is open all weekend!
Remember that the Moon is our heart. It rules over our needs. She is the ultimate queen of our emotions. The Sun, on the other hand, is our ego. He rules over our work, our purpose, our striving, and our mind. When the Sun shifted into Aries, we KNEW the year was starting over. But with this New Moon in Aries, we can finally FEEL that new beginning. This is an extremely auspicious time for you to begin again. This moon, more than any other, is a supercharged reset button on your whole life. But you have to press the button, no one can do that for you. So, if you have been craving your bigger, better life, this is the time to sacrifice who you have been to the great goddess of who you are meant to become.
For this cycle’s Tarotscopes, I felt compelled to pull cards exclusively from Tarot’s great masterpiece, the Major Arcana. Why? Because I consider these cards to be the leaders of the Tarot. And Aries season is all about leadership. Aries is known to be a trailblazer, and these cards serve as the mile markers for your own journey. Also, Aries energy is Cardinal Fire, potent and powerful, and these cards are the just that. As a means to inspire you to pick up your own power, I separated these monoliths of the Tarot apart from the rest of the deck and then picked blindly. I also felt called to use the original Rider Waite Smith deck for this reading. While this deck is undeniably heteronormative and rife with white supremacy and patriarchy, it was the first deck to sear into the modern consciousness. And since Aries is all about being the first, I felt there was no other deck to be used for this New Moon in Aries Tarotscopes.
The Major Arcana is a map. It charts our journey from innocence to enlightenment and back again. In the same way that we can prepare for the weather by knowing what season we are in, the Majors give us a context for where we are in our own process of awakening. But these cards can be used for more than just our lives, they speak to the archetypal phases of becoming. Essentially, these are the twenty-two seasons of existence, and we cycle through these seasons many times in our lives. Whether you are seeking the frame of reference for your life in general, a creative project, or a relationship, the Major Arcana can immediately pinpoint where on the path you are.
In the spirit of Aries, there is no collective card this cycle. Aries is the sign of the self. The key phrase for Aries is: I AM. This moonth isn’t about the collective, it’s all about you. And that’s exactly how an Aries would want it!
Read for your Sun sign and consider it as a forecast for your next Astrological year.
Read for your Rising sign and/or your North Node as a forecast for this next moonth.
ARIES
Judgement
This is the second-to-last card in the entire Major Arcana. It is the moment in your journey where you’ve fully awakened to the truth of your soul. In Judgement, we receive a felt understanding of our purpose here on Earth, the work you really came here to do. Judgement appears to say, "Hey girl, you’ve changed. You are not the same. The old version of yourself was burned to the ground many cards ago." Now you stand here, raw, exposed, and wholly alive. You are fully ready to begin your life again as this brand-new, upgraded being. We might even retitle this card "Upgrade." Because that is exactly what you have done, inspiring Aries, you’ve upgraded your whole self.
When I think of the Judgement card, I actually think “No Judgement.” Because this is when you look back at your whole life and you understand why every pitfall and poison arrow was necessary. When you see why you had to go through everything you went through, you realize how to love your journey in its entirety. Because all the break ups, the break downs, the breakthroughs . . . they led you here. Take a moment and pat yourself on the back for surviving your quest. Receive your progress!
The work around this phase of becoming is to not fall back into your old habits. This is the NEW YOU, remember that. Now you must call in the new ways of relating to yourself and others. You must seek new paths that align with who you are now. Be vigilant with yourself. Don’t allow the old to creep back in. Imagine Judgement as a portal, a cosmic doorway that leads to a brand new existence—all you have to do is step through it and never look back.
TAURUS
The Star (reversed)
The crisis is over. Take a deep breath and let yourself exhale completely. You are out of the dark woods of the Tower (the card which precedes this one) and now you can begin to heal. The Star serves as a gateway to a realm of cosmic medicine. Through starlight, all injuries mend magically. And this card has appeared as a sign to let you know the worst is truly behind you. But the wounds exposed during this recent dark night of the soul are what need your immediate love and care.
Healing happens because you intend for it to happen. Your desire and willingness to become whole is the most important factor in any healing work. The Star combines the three archetypes of the sacred feminine: the maiden, the mother, and the crone. In Star energy, you have access to all three of these states of being. You have the purity of the maiden, the passion of the mother, and the wisdom of the crone. Allow these three facets of your own soul to merge and shimmer. Another way to think about this is that your wounded child (the maiden) has been revealed to you and needs your attention. Through your connection to your own maternal quality (the mother) and the wisdom of your ancestors (the crone) you have ALL the tools you need, right now, to achieve some deep and profound healing.
The work around this phase of becoming is to pull yourself out of your regular life so that you can attend to the more numinous aspects of your being. The fact the card came in upside down is likely speaking to your resistance around this deep invitation toward self-care. You may feel like you don’t have time or money to really take this on right now. You may feel like you don’t have the resources. But those are all just false stories. he Star will find you wherever you are, so long as you can get quiet and still. Take a mini vacation, take a half day off, or just take lunch alone and call the Star into your heart. She will bathe you in her healing waters if you let her.
GEMINI
The Fool
Don’t take it all so seriously, gentle Gemini! It’s just life! The Fool has arrived to invite you into playfulness and possibility. The only limitations you are bound by are the ones you have agreed to. You see the Fool isn’t even the first card in the Major Arcana; the Fool is the ZERO card. This means that Fool energy exists before conditioning, before right and wrong. The Fool is the cosmic egg of unlimited potential, and your willingness to take risks and leap headlong into your life will unleash the magic of this archetype.
Fool energy generally appears when we are starting a new project, a new job, navigating a new city or relationship. But sometimes it just means you need to take a new approach to the same old shit. Remember that the Fool is impervious to societal expectations and categorization. Try not to impede your happiness with what other people think. Fool energy is here to shake up your entrenched ideas of how things are supposed to go. Crazy logic is your guide now—don’t assume anything. The Fool is present and receptive, without baggage from the past or cares toward the future. They have a wholehearted trust that the cosmos will always provide for them.
The work around this phase of becoming is to allow yourself to be moved by nature, the universe, the goddess (whatever the hell you call the larger cosmic forces at work). The Fool knows themself to be a vessel for spirit, and they let themselves be carried through their lives without judging or classifying. To the Fool, all is joy, all is pleasure, all is of value. Shake down the old structures of your life and give over to serendipity, magic, and above all FUN.
CANCER
The Hanged Man (reversed)
This is one of those cards that has a pretty bad reputation on just name alone. I get it: nobody wants to be hanged. It’s a brutal image, and yet the Hanged Man looks beatific—he even has a halo. This is what happens when we give our life up to the highest power and trust that we are actually being taken care of all the time (even when it doesn’t seem like it). The Hanged Man is connected to Neptune, who rules over dreams and visions, and the invitation around this card is to become quite spiritual in your ability to accept your circumstances and allow your life to happen to you.
The key word here is surrender. Are Cancers good at letting go? I know you can flow with your own tears, but can you flow with the cosmic river? You see, surrender has two directions: One is inwards, surrendering to your own authenticity, your needs and passions. The Hanged Man encourages us to stop negotiating our needs and rather claim them as part of our unique medicine. But the other direction of surrender is external. You can’t control the people around you, you can’t control time. This is a season of letting all that go. The work around this phase of becoming is to give up your need to control how your life is supposed to unfold. That’s not really your business right now. There’s a time for manifestation and making things happen and then there’s a time for throwing yourself into the wind and trusting it will deliver you to safety. This next chapter of your life is about the latter. Pay attention to the invitations in your life and the mystical connections that will affirm that you are in fact on the right track.