The Short Version
For anyone who wants the news and not the lesson:
The Sun is on the Five of Cups, the mourning card, Mars’s decan, from today until Monday the 2nd of November. Every day for the dead (Halloween, All Saints Day, Day of the Dead) falls within it.
Venus has been on that same card for three weeks, reversed. Tonight the Sun reaches her, the exact middle of her retrograde, and on Sunday she backs into Libra and lies down on the Four of Swords reversed, where she rests until the 13th. Grief, then rest.
Mercury (the Trickster) turns retrograde tomorrow on the Seven of Cups, which turns over with it, and backs onto the Six of Cups on Tuesday. Read everything twice. The big signature can wait for the 13th. Beware; there are boobie traps in your choices.
The Full Moon rises on Sunday night in Taurus on the Five of Pentacles, straight across the table from the Sun. With Pluto standing upright on the Five of Swords since last Thursday, that makes three Fives on one board: the heart, the field and the purse.
The rest of the board holds: Mars on the Six of Wands, Jupiter on the Seven of Wands, Saturn and Neptune sharing the Two of Wands, both reversed, and Uranus on the Eight of Swords reversed.
Homework, if you want it: take out the Five of Cups, name the three cups that went over and the two still standing, and set a place for someone on the otherside of the veil on the 31st, the 1st, or the 2nd.
Your sign’s line comes next; the Moon’s card is in my Notes, and the next issue arrives on the morning of the 2nd.
A line for your sign
The Sun is in Scorpio, so the Five of Cups lands in a different house for each sign. Read your Sun sign because we are following the Sun with the Tarotscopes.
Aries. The Five of Cups in your house of shared money, endings, and the dead: the estate, the joint account, the person you still talk to in the car. Stop crying over spilled milk and count your blessings. Your ruler, Mars, holds the Six of Wands in the second decan of Leo, so victory is yours if you can focus on the future, while the grief sits in the next room. Let it sit. It has a chair.
Taurus. The Five of Cups in your house of partners: what the relationship lost this year gets said out loud, and said gently. Your ruler, Venus, meets the Sun tonight opposite your sign and backs into Libra on Sunday; Sunday night, the Full Moon rises in your own sign on the Five of Pentacles. Two Fives across one table, the heart and the purse, and you at the head of it. Say the true thing before the Moon is full; it is easier by candlelight.
Gemini. The Five of Cups in your house of work and the body: a loss at work, or in the body, gets its name. Your ruler Mercury turns tomorrow to the Seven of Cups and backs onto the Six on Tuesday, so the next three weeks are for reading things twice, and old clients come back the way old clients do. Anything with a soft clause in it can wait for the 13th.
Cancer. The Five of Cups in your house of pleasure, children and romance: the grandchild who moved away, the hobby that stopped, the romance that ended in the spring. Three cups are over, two are standing, and those are the ones to look at. The Moon, your ruler, crosses onto the Two of Wands this afternoon and rises full on Sunday night among your friends. Let them in. They have brought something.
Leo. The Five of Cups in your house of home and family: the empty chair at the table, finally named. Mars and Jupiter both stand in your sign on the Six and Seven of Wands, so the public season carries on while the private room grieves, the laurel and the loss in the same week, which is more common than anyone admits. The last quarter Moon falls in your sign on the 1st of November, on the Five of Wands: a push to let go.
Virgo. The Five of Cups in your house of conversation, siblings and the short drive: the brother who does not call, the neighbor who moved, the word on the tip of your tongue. Your ruler Mercury turns tomorrow, and for three weeks every message wants reading twice; the one that matters comes back round on the Six of Cups after Tuesday. Write the letter by hand. The dead read handwriting.
Libra. The Five of Cups in your house of money and worth: what was spent, what was lost, and what you are still worth without it, which is the same as before. Your ruler Venus meets the Sun tonight at the heart of her retrograde and returns to your sign on Sunday, landing on the Four of Swords reversed, where she rests until the 13th of November. The grief leaves Scorpio, and the rest comes to you. Let the accounts lie where they are until she turns; they are not going anywhere.
Scorpio. Your card, your decan, your birthday. The Sun on your own Five of Cups is the loss you are allowed to say out loud this year, and the Sun never reverses, so say it. Venus meets the Sun in your first degree tonight and leaves your sign on Sunday; Mercury turns backward in your sign tomorrow and walks through it until the 13th.
Sunday night’s Full Moon faces you across the table on the Five of Pentacles. A birthday season with three Fives in it asks a great deal of a person. Let someone else carry the cake.
Sagittarius. The Five of Cups in your twelfth house, the room behind the room: the grief you do in private before the Sun reaches your sign on the 22nd of November. Your ruler, Jupiter, holds the Seven of Wands, the high ground, all winter, and Mars joins it on the 3rd; you feel stronger in public than in private this decan, and both are true. Keep your counsel until the Sun has moved twice, then say it all.
Capricorn. The Five of Cups in your house of friends and groups: the friend who went quiet, the group that changed, the loss nobody in the room will name. Your ruler Saturn backed onto the Two of Wands on Wednesday and lies there reversed beside Neptune until the 10th of December. The plan is being costed, and the honest budget is your version of grief work; good days for the list with real numbers on it, and for ringing the friend.
Aquarius. The Five of Cups in your house of career and standing: a loss at work, or the public version of a private one. Pluto stands upright in your sign on the Five of Swords for the first full decan since May, and what went underground in the spring comes up for a fair decision. Have the conversation while the Sun lights the loss, because Venus’s decan asks that it be done fairly, and Pluto will see that it gets done one way or the other. Sunday night’s Full Moon squares Pluto in your sign. The cost shows, and so does the way out.
Pisces. The Five of Cups in your house of faith and far places: a lost belief, a journey that didn’t happen, a teacher who let you down. The Moon is in your sign this morning on the Ten of Cups, the lit house across the river, and crosses into Aries this afternoon to join your ruler Neptune on the Two of Wands, where Saturn now sits pricing the dream. The dream is real. December is soon enough, and Saturn will have the figures by then.
The Sun moved, and Venus was waiting
Good morning. The Sun slipped into Scorpio before dawn, as it always does, without asking anyone, and this is the first regular issue of Mystical Fortunes Tarotscopes: the Sun moved, so I am writing.
This morning, it stands on the Five of Cups, and it didn't find the room empty.
Venus has been lying on that card for three weeks, reversed, sulking a little, and tonight the Sun reaches the very degree she is on.
Once in every Venus retrograde, and only once, the two of them stand in the same place. Tonight is the once, and the board below is built around it.
A word about timing, since this issue has many comings and goings. The planets do not change cards on a watch. A planet crossing from one card to the next is a sunrise, a blend of light at each end: the new card’s light shows a little before the planet arrives, and the old card’s lingers a little after it has gone.
The clock times you will find in the almanacs are our human markers, and they are good for one thing: knowing which day to look. So I give you the days. The sky gives you the blend.
And what a week of comings and goings it is.
Mercury stops on the landing tomorrow and turns to go back the way it came, and the Seven of Cups turns over with it.
Venus leaves Scorpio on Sunday and backs into Libra, onto the Four of Swords.
The Full Moon rises on Sunday night in Taurus, on the Five of Pentacles, straight across the table from the Sun.
Mercury backs onto the Six of Cups on Tuesday.
After that, the board is quiet until some clocks change, and the Sun moves on Monday the 2nd.
I told you last time that the week after Libra would be the busiest the board has been all year. The cards kept my word for me, which is more than some people manage.
If this is your first issue, welcome, and pull up a chair. Every numbered card in the minor arcana, Two through Ten, has ten days of the year that belong to it, and the Sun is on the Five of Cups until the 2nd of November.
Your Tarotscope is at the top, so nobody has to scroll past the lesson to get to it.
Below is the card and a short lesson on it, then the board, where each planet sits on the card for the day it's in, upright when it is moving forward and turned over when it's retrograde.
No astrology required. We create a tarot reading (Tarotscope) from the cards the planets activate. I name every card as it lands, and the welcome post has the long version: [link to the welcome post].
The Decan: Scorpio I, the Five of Cups
The Sun crossed into the first ten degrees of Scorpio before dawn on Friday the 23rd and leaves them for the second phase on Monday the 2nd of November, the morning after some of the clocks change, which gives you an extra hour on this card whether you wanted one or not.
Those ten days belong to the Five of Cups. Its planet is Mars. Death presides over the whole of Scorpio, and the Queen of Cups, the sign’s own court card, keeps house for all three of its decans.
This is the first of hers. The Golden Dawn, who liked a title, called the card the Lord of Loss in Pleasure.
If your birthday falls between the 23rd of October and the 1st of November, this is your card. The Five of Cups is the minor arcana card of your birth decan, and the Sun is walking over it now, which may be why Scorpios born this week have a reputation for looking straight at the thing everyone else is avoiding. Somebody has to.
Now look at where these ten days fall in the year. Hallowe’en is the 31st. All Saints is the 1st. All Souls and the Day of the Dead are the 2nd, the very morning the Sun steps off this card and onto the Six of Cups, the memory card, as though the calendar had read the deck.
Samhain, the old turn of the year when the veil is said to be at its thinnest, sits right in the middle.
Every calendar the West has kept puts its days for the dead inside the ten degrees that belong to the card of mourning, and not one of the people who set those days was holding a tarot deck.
The dead keep better time than the living, and the calendar agrees. The year grieves here, every year.
The Sun comes down off the Four of Swords, the rest bed Jupiter made up for it, and walks straight into Mars’s house, and Mars’s house in Scorpio has three spilled cups on the floor, and nobody has swept.
The lesson: three spilled cups, and Mars at home
Every Five in the deck is a hard card, and the reason goes back to the old Qabalistic order, where the number five belongs to Geburah, the sphere of Mars: severity, the cut, the strength that takes something away.
The Five of Wands fights, the Five of Swords wins badly, the Five of Pentacles walks past the lit window in the snow, and the Five of Cups mourns.
They are the cards nobody wants to see on the table, and the ones that tell you the most.
This Five has more Mars in it than any of them. Scorpio I is Mars’s decan by the old Chaldean count we walked through last issue, and Scorpio is Mars’s own sign from long before anyone found Pluto.
So the card is Mars by its number, Mars by its decan, and Mars by its sign, three times over, all poured into the suit of water.
The Four of Swords, you may remember, was Jupiter twice and the steadiest card in its suit. This is Mars three times and the card in Cups where the cut goes deepest.
Mars cuts and water feels the cut, and because Mars is at home here, the cut is clean.
The loss on this card is real, and it has a name. Three cups went over, and they will not fill again. That sounds bleak, and it is the kind thing about the card: Mars in his own sign gives grief a spine. This is the grief that knows exactly what it lost, which is the only kind that ever lets you go.
In the Rider-Waite deck, the picture shows a figure in a long black cloak, head bowed, standing over three cups that have fallen, their wine spilling onto the ground. Two cups stand upright behind the figure, perfectly fine and entirely unnoticed.
A river runs across the middle of the card; a bridge crosses it on the right, and on the far bank stands a small house with a light in the window. The sky is grey. The figure has not turned round. That is the whole card.
Loss is in front; the two cups, the bridge, and the lit house are behind, and the picture captures the moment before turning, held for as long as it takes.
Upright, the Five of Cups shows loss clearly: mourning, regret, the friendship that failed, the pleasure that ended, all the Golden Dawn meant by Loss in Pleasure.
It is an honest card and, in its way, a kind one, because it insists on the two cups still standing even while the figure refuses to look at them. The deck never shows you a loss without showing you what survived it.
Reversed, as I read it, the grief goes inward, into the loss we stopped talking about and never stopped carrying. When a planet turns direct on this card, the reversal turns with it, and the figure finally looks round. You will see that happen in November, and Mercury will do the turning.
Next to other cards, it changes its weight. Beside the Six of Cups, its neighbor in Scorpio II and the card Mercury backs onto on Tuesday, the loss softens into memory, which is the way through for most of us.
Beside the Four of Swords, grief comes first, followed by rest, the exact order Venus walks this week.
Beside the Ten of Cups, the lit house across the river has been reached. Beside the Three of Cups, the friends have come round with a casserole. Beside Death, Scorpio’s own card, the loss is final, and the only road is through it.
This card holds more than fits in a letter: the Queen of Cups who keeps house for it, what it does in a money position, and how the three Scorpio decan read as one story, from the spilled cups to the cup of flowers to the seven cups floating in the clouds.
That is the Scorpio lesson in Teaching Tarot, the Magician tier on the Mystical Fortunes Tarot channel.
If you would like something to do with the card between now and the 2nd, here is what I do.
Take the Five of Cups from your deck and place it where you will see it. Then name the cups.
Three for what went over this year, out loud or on paper, each with its proper name, because a grief with no name moves into the spare room and never leaves.
Two for what is still standing, and say those aloud as well, since the whole card turns on whether the figure ever looks at them.
On the 31st, the 1st, or the 2nd- whichever is your day for the dead- set two cups on the table with a photograph between them and leave them overnight.
The veil is thin that week, and the ones you set a place for have never once missed an invitation. Then tell me in the comments what is in your two standing cups. I read every answer, and so, I suspect, someone on the far side of the river does, too.
This card has a long autumn. Venus has been on it since the 3rd and leaves it on Sunday. The Sun holds it until the 2nd. Mercury, moving backward, reaches it on the 6th of November, stops on it on the 13th, turns direct there, and leaves it on the 21st.
Three planets will have grieved on the Five of Cups by the time the year is done with it, and Mercury in November turns it around. We will come back to it then.
The board: which planet is on which card
Nine placements: the Sun, then the eight planets from Mercury to Pluto, each on the decan card it sits on on Friday the 23rd. For every card, you get the planet sitting on it, the planet that keeps the decan, and what the two make of each other. The visitor and the host.
Two things before you start, because this board has a pattern.
First, Mars keeps six of this decan's nine rooms. Six.
The Sun and Venus are in his decan in Scorpio
Jupiter is in his decan in Leo
Saturn and Neptune are in his decan in Aries
Moon is briefly in his decan in Pisces, then moves to his decan in Aries
Mars himself is out, at Jupiter’s house on the Six of Wands, accepting an award.
The landlord is away, and the tenants are grieving, holding a hill and redrawing their plans without him.
The other pattern is the Fives.
The Sun on the Five of Cups
Pluto on the Five of Swords
Full Moon on the Five of Pentacles on Sunday night:
The heart, the field, and the purse.
..and every Five is Mars’s number.
It is the week the Fives threw a party; nobody wanted the invitation, and everybody has to go.
As a tarot reader, how would you read this layout? (Other than yikes.)
