It's been six months since I last wrote to you, and the first thing I want to say is that it is good to be back in your inbox.
You signed up for Mystical Mondays. What arrives now is called Tarotscopes; it has a new home here on Substack, and it is still me and still the cards, read the way I have always read them for you.
If this letter landed somewhere new, that is the new address, and adding it to your contacts keeps the next one out of the promotions tab. If the letter is no longer for you, the link at the bottom lets you go gently, and I will think well of you anyway.
Here is what is different. I used to pull a card for each sign once a week. Now I read the cards the way the sky reads them.
Every numbered card in the minor arcana, Two through Ten, has a planet and ten days of the year that belong to it.
The Sun spends about ten days on each card, which is called a decan, and I write to you on the morning it moves.
For the rest of the deck, I lay the planets out on their cards. When a planet sits on a card, that card is speaking.
When a planet goes retrograde, its card turns over.
That is the whole system: tarot first, with a chef’s kiss of astrology, and you need no astrology at all to follow it, because I name every card as it lands and tell you what it means in the lesson.
If that sounds like a lot, not to worry. I posted a video walking through the new structure, and once you watch it, this letter's shape will feel familiar:
Today, two cards move, which is why this first letter comes on a Thursday.
Late this morning, Mars moves off the Five of Wands and onto the Six of Wands, the card of being seen after a stretch of testing.
And tonight Pluto, the slowest planet on the board, stands still and turns forward, so the Five of Swords, which has lain reversed since May, stands up. I could not have picked a better day to come back, and the cards picked it for me.
Each issue has the same shape, so you know what you are holding.
The card the Sun stands on, and the days that belong to it.
A lesson on that card, so that over a year you learn the whole minor arcana one card at a time, without ever signing up for anything.
Then the board: every planet on its card, upright or reversed, and what it means for the ten days.
Then a line for each sign.
This first letter gives you everything, along with the onboarding video above, so you can watch the cards move before you read about them.
The Decan: Libra III, the Four of Swords
The Sun crosses into the last ten degrees of Libra and leaves for Scorpio on Friday the 23rd. These days belong to the Four of Swords. Its planet is Jupiter. The Major Arcana Justice presides over all of Libra.
If your birthday falls between the 13th and the 22nd of October, this is your card. The Four of Swords is the minor arcana card of your birth decan, and the Sun is now walking over it.
The day before this decan began, on Monday morning, the Sun crossed 19 degrees of Libra, the degree of its fall and its weakest point in the whole zodiac. Libra III is where the year lets the Sun lie down. Jupiter, the planet of plenty, keeps watch over that house, which is why the card shows a bed and a chapel, and why the rest it offers has a roof over it.
The lesson: how a decan works, and why this card is Jupiter twice
A decan is ten degrees of a sign. Each sign holds three, so the wheel has thirty-six, and the Sun crosses one in about ten days: a little under in December, when it runs fastest, a little over in June.
The Egyptians watched thirty-six stars rise through the night to tell the hours, and those stars became the decans.
The Greek astrologers who inherited them called them faces, and gave each face a planet.
The planets run in the old Chaldean order, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, beginning with Mars at the first degree of Aries and repeating round the whole wheel.
Libra’s three faces fall to the Moon, to Saturn, and to Jupiter.
The tarot came to the decans in the 1880s, when the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn assigned each face a numbered card, Two through Ten, in order.
Aries I is the Two of Wands, Aries II the Three, Aries III the Four, and the suit follows the element of the sign.
Libra is air, so its cards are Swords: the Two of Swords for the first face, the Three for the second, the Four for the third. Every card from the Two to the Ten has a sign, a decan, and a planet, and the Four of Swords is Libra III, Jupiter.
That is the rule the whole board runs on: the decan's planet is the card's planet.
The Four of Swords has Jupiter in its blood because Jupiter rules the ten degrees it was made for. In the old Qabalistic order, the number four also belongs to Jupiter, making this card Jupiter twice over and the steadiest in the suit.
In the Rider-Waite deck, the picture shows a knight laid out on a tomb inside a chapel, hands folded in prayer, with three swords hanging on the wall above him and one carved into the stone beneath, and a window of colored glass over his head.
He is alive. He is resting.
The card comes directly after the Three of Swords: Libra’s second face, Saturn’s face, the Lord of Sorrow, the heart pierced by three blades.
Jupiter’s face is the recovery bed after the wound: convalescence, a truce, prayer, the sleep that mends what the Three cut. The strife is over.
The rest is the work. Jupiter in Libra reads as plenty in the sign of balance, the court under Justice that grants a recess.
One more rule, and it is mine. A retrograde planet turns its card reversed.
The Sun never reverses, and the eight planets from Mercury to Pluto are the ones laid out.
The Moon moves too fast for a letter: it changes card about every twenty hours, so you will find the Moon’s card in my Notes here on Substack, and each Note points back to the issue for the whole reading.
Today, for instance, the Moon steps onto the Ten of Wands at 10:46 this morning, Mountain time, and is on the Two of Pentacles before breakfast tomorrow. A planet turning is a card turning, as it does at 8:40 tonight.
What to do with the Four of Swords between now and the 23rd: take it out of your deck and stand it where you will see it. Then choose one rest that has a shape.
A fixed hour. A closed door. A nap at the same time each afternoon. A phone that sleeps in another room after eight.
The Four is a structure, four walls and four posts of a bed, and rest with edges is the kind that mends. Rest that leaks into everything is tiredness with the lights on.
This card has a second act.
Venus, retrograde since the 3rd, backs out of Scorpio into the last degrees of Libra on the 25th and lies down on the Four of Swords reversed, where she stays until she turns direct on November 13, just short of 23 degrees of Libra, still on the card.
Rest refused, then rest accepted. 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 card of the decan it occupies today, Thursday the 15th. For every card, you get the planet sitting on it, the planet that rules the decan, and what the two do to each other.
The visitor and the host.
The Sun on the Four of Swords, upright
Libra III, Jupiter’s face. Until the 23rd.
The Sun is the visitor, and Jupiter is the host, and the Sun arrives tired: Libra is the sign of its fall, and it passed the exact degree on Monday. Jupiter answers a tired Sun with hospitality. The planet of plenty makes up a bed for the planet of life, and for ten days the sky itself convalesces. Good days for sleep that keeps a schedule, for a truce, for prayer, for letting a decision wait until the Sun reaches Scorpio. The Sun never reverses, so this card stands upright for everyone, the one placement on the board that is a gift with no conditions.
Mercury on the Six of Cups, upright
Scorpio II, the Sun’s face. Until the 20th.
Mercury sits at 17 degrees of Scorpio today, slowing, on the Six of Cups: the Lord of Pleasure, the card of childhood, memory, and the cup of flowers handed over a garden wall. The host is the Sun, so Mercury’s messages come lit from inside. An old friend’s name in the inbox, a photograph surfacing from a drawer, a song in a shop, someone from the past saying what you needed to hear. If you listen for the people you have lost, this is a listening week: the Sun’s face warms the channel, and Mercury is moving slowly enough to be heard. Mercury steps onto the Seven of Cups on the 20th, turns retrograde on the 24th at 21 degrees of Scorpio, and walks back across all three Scorpio cards reversed until November 13. Say the important thing before the 20th.
Venus retrograde on the Five of Cups, reversed
Scorpio I, Mars’s face. Until the 25th.
Venus turned retrograde on the 3rd at 8 degrees of Scorpio and has walked backward over the Five of Cups ever since: the Lord of Loss in Pleasure, three cups spilled, two still standing, the figure in the black cloak who has not yet turned round to see them. Reversed, the card is grief gone inward, the loss we stopped talking about and never stopped carrying. The host is Mars. Venus in Mars’s face, in her sign of detriment, has no cushion here; she feels what Mars makes her feel: the edge of what was lost. The interaction is the lover in the soldier’s hall. Mars would have her fight the loss, Venus would have her grieve it, and retrograde says the ground is ground already walked: an old relationship, an old resentment, a love set down in the spring. Hold the new romance and the expensive purchase until she turns direct on November 13. What is already yours is safe to tend, and the call you have been meaning to make is exactly the kind of going back this retrograde is for. Check on your people this week. On the evening of the 23rd, the same day the Sun reaches Scorpio, Venus meets the Sun on this card at the heart of her retrograde, and by the 25th she is back in Libra, lying reversed on the Four of Swords. The grief card, then the rest card. That order is kind.
Mars on the Six of Wands, upright
Leo II, Jupiter’s face. From this morning until November 3.
Mars crosses from the Five of Wands to the Six at 9:49 this morning, Mountain time, the second card to change today. For two and a half weeks Mars sat on the Five of Wands in Saturn’s face, the Lord of Strife, five young men swinging staves at nothing in particular: effort that met friction, and arguments that went nowhere. Today it steps into Jupiter’s face and onto the Lord of Victory, the rider with the laurel and the crowd that finally sees him. Mars is the visitor and Jupiter the host, and Jupiter is the kindest host Mars ever gets: the warrior given room, luck and an audience. What you pushed for since the end of September gets its nod. Good days for asking for the raise, posting the thing, entering the contest, being seen. Jupiter’s face enlarges whatever Mars carries in, pride included, so wear the laurel and skip the speech.
Jupiter on the Seven of Wands, upright
Leo III, Mars’s face. Since October 3, through the winter.
Jupiter crossed 20 degrees of Leo on the 3rd, the same morning Venus turned, and settled onto the Seven of Wands, the Lord of Valor: one figure on the high ground, staff in hand, six staves coming up the hill at him. Jupiter visits Mars’s face, the mirror of the card above. There Mars sits in Jupiter’s house; here Jupiter sits in Mars’s. Jupiter brings conviction and size, Mars’s face asks for courage and a stance, and together they read as the faith to hold a position you have already won. The hill is yours. The work is to stay standing on it, and Jupiter supplies the stamina to do that with good humor. Jupiter keeps this card upright until it turns retrograde on December 12, so this is the backdrop for the whole season: whatever you claimed this autumn, you will be asked to defend it well into winter, and you will be able to.
Saturn retrograde on the Three of Wands, reversed
Aries II, the Sun’s face. Until the 21st, then the Two of Wands.
Saturn has been retrograde since July 26, when it turned at nearly 15 degrees of Aries, and it has walked back across the Three of Wands reversed: the Lord of Established Strength, the merchant on the cliff watching for ships that have not come in. Saturn is in its fall in Aries and feels uncomfortable there, and the host is the Sun, so the visitor and host disagree about timing. The Sun’s face wants the ships home now. Saturn says the sea takes what it takes. Reversed by the retrograde, this is the long wait, and the venture is rechecked before the ships go out again. On the morning of the 21st, Saturn backs over 10 degrees and lands on the Two of Wands, Mars’s face, the Lord of Dominion, the man with the globe in his hand looking out over what he could do with it. Reversed, the plan returns to the drawing board, and Saturn in Mars’s house is the brake under the accelerator. Neptune is already waiting on that card. From the 21st until Saturn turns direct on December 10, the two slowest planets on the board share one card, both reversed: a dreamer and a builder in the same bed, both facing the wall. Patience with anything launched in the spring. Good days for the quiet second draft.
Uranus retrograde on the Eight of Swords, reversed
Gemini I, Jupiter’s face. Through February 8.
Uranus turned retrograde on September 10 at nearly 6 degrees of Gemini and holds the Eight of Swords, the Lord of Shortened Force: the bound woman, the blindfold, eight swords planted round her in a fence loose enough to walk out of, if she knew. Reversed, the card loosens. The blindfold slips; the ropes were never tied as tightly as they felt. Uranus is the visitor and Jupiter the host, one of the friendlier pairings on the board: Uranus frees things, Jupiter widens them, and on a card about being stuck they read as the exit you could not see opening on its own at an odd moment. Retrograde turns the breaking out inward, so you question the belief that bound you before the situation does. Watch for the sudden, uncomfortable thought that is correct. The card stays reversed until February, so this is a slow freeing, one knot at a time.
Neptune retrograde on the Two of Wands, reversed
Aries I, Mars’s face. Through December 12.
Neptune has been retrograde since July 7 and sits at 2 degrees of Aries, on the Two of Wands reversed: the plan that has not left the castle, the globe held and not yet traveled. Neptune is the dreamer, Mars’s face wants the first step, and the interaction is familiar: a vision too large and too misty to become a list of things to do on Tuesday. Reversed, the dreaming goes inward, where it belongs for now. The whole world has been on this card with Neptune since January, imagining a new beginning and not quite starting it. Saturn arrives on the 21st to ask what the dream costs, which is uncomfortable and useful. Draw the picture of what you want. Leave the dates off it until December.
Pluto on the Five of Swords, reversed until October 16, then upright
Aquarius I, Venus’s face. From November 2024 until spring 2029.
This is the card at the heart of the issue. Pluto has held the Five of Swords since it settled into Aquarius in November 2024, and it will hold it until 2029. The Lord of Defeat: a man gathering up the swords of the two who walked away, the sky torn behind him, a win that cost him the field. Venus is the host, and that is the card's whole lesson. A Five, the number of struggle, sits before the planet of peace and fairness, and Venus asks the only question that matters afterward: what did the fight do to the relationship? Pluto, the visitor, is power, what is buried, what will not stay buried, and the transformation that comes when it surfaces. Pluto in Venus’s house is the power struggle inside the marriage, the family, the friendship, the country. Fairness used as a weapon. Since May 6 the card has lain reversed, and reversed the Five of Swords is conflict driven underground: the fight nobody names, and the loss we agreed to call a draw. Tonight at 8:40 Mountain time Pluto stands still and turns forward, and the card turns with it. Upright, the fight is visible again, and so is the choice the card has always offered: pick up the swords, or walk off the field with your integrity. Both figures in the picture survived. Only one of them is holding anything. Over the coming months, what went quiet in the spring comes back up for a decision. Good days for the honest conversation that has been waiting since May, and for walking away from an argument you cannot win without becoming someone you wouldn't like. Venus’s face asks that it be done fairly. Pluto makes sure it gets done.
A line for your sign
The Sun is in Libra, so the Four of Swords lands in a different house for each sign. Read your Sun sign, and your rising sign if you know it.
Aries. The rest of the card lies in your house of partners: let the other person carry this week, and notice who is willing. Your ruler, Mars, steps onto the Six of Wands today, and the argument you had in early October becomes the thing you are known for.
Taurus. The Four of Swords in your house of work and the body: the goal is a lighter week, and the bed is a tool. Venus, your ruler, is retrograde on the Five of Cups opposite your sign; an old attachment comes round for review, and reviewing is all it needs.
Gemini. Rest in your house of pleasure and children: quiet fun, the puzzle, the grandchild asleep on the couch. Your ruler Mercury sits on the Six of Cups until the 20th; someone from your past has your number.
Cancer. The Four of Swords in your house of home: your house is the retreat this decan. The first quarter Moon on the 18th falls in your house of partners, so you may need to negotiate the rest. Negotiate it.
Leo. Rest in your house of conversation: fewer words, better ones. Mars moves onto your Six of Wands today, and Jupiter already holds your Seven; this is your visible season, and the quiet you keep this week makes the laurel look earned.
Virgo. The Four of Swords in your house of money: let the accounts rest where they are. Your ruler Mercury slows toward its turn on the 24th, making next month a reading month: statements, old invoices, and the client who comes back round after the 27th.
Libra. Your card, your decan, your rest: the Sun on your own Four of Swords is the truce you have been owed since the Three of Swords days at the start of the month. Venus, your ruler, is retrograde on the Five of Cups and will land on your Four of Swords on the 25th; the grief and the rest are being kindly reshuffled.
Scorpio. The Four of Swords in your twelfth house, the room behind the room: the ten days before your birthday season are for sleep and for keeping your own counsel. Venus is reversed in your sign, and Mercury turns on the 24th; hold your heart and your tongue until the Sun arrives on the 23rd, then speak.
Sagittarius. Rest in your house of friends: the group can run without you for ten days. Your ruler Jupiter stands on the Seven of Wands; you hold the high ground somewhere, and the work is to keep it with good humor, which is your best at.
Capricorn. The Four of Swords in your career house: a week to step off the ladder and let it stand. Your ruler, Saturn, backs onto the Two of Wands on the 21st, reversed, and the big plan goes back to the drawing board for improvement. The first quarter Moon is in your sign on the 18th: a push, held.
Aquarius. Pluto turns upright in your sign tonight, the only card on the board changing direction, and what went underground in May comes back up for a fair decision. The Four of Swords rests in your house of faith and far places: let a belief lie down before you argue it.
Pisces. Rest in your house of shared money and endings: a pause on the paperwork, the estate, the joint account. Your ruler Neptune lies reversed on the Two of Wands and Saturn joins it on the 21st; the dream is real, and December is soon enough for the dates.
Next time: the Sun moves on the 23rd
The Sun reaches Scorpio at 3:37 on the morning of Friday the 23rd, Mountain time, and lands on the Five of Cups, Mars’s face, with Venus lying reversed on the card. That issue is the first regular one. The Sun moved today, and it arrives that morning. Venus meets the Sun on the card that evening, Mercury turns retrograde in the small hours of the 24th, and the Seven of Cups turns with it, Venus backs into Libra on the 25th, and the Full Moon rises in Taurus the same night. The week after this decan ends is the busiest the board has been all year, and the Five of Cups issue will walk through it.
See you on the 23rd.
~Shanta
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My dog died on my birth day last tuesday... He was going on eighteen I have a hard time to concentrate Everything is complicated to understand for now, I guess I'll be back
Thank you Shanta