s l o w t a r o t

🌑 Dark Moon Reading ~ 28º Libra | Oct 21, 2025 🌑

A spread to carry us from the Libra dark moon through Scorpio season.

This spread shows the Fool crossed by the 6 of Swords in the center. Left to right are the Magician and the Emperor. Below is the 4 of Swords, and above is the 7 of Cups.

This new Libra moon asks us to attune to what is in the midst of this journey – as we travel between agency and oppression, hope and despair. It calls on us to deepen and recommit to our most deeply held values and feel our desires to see those values enacted through the webs that we are connected to in ways that influence the entire collective. This spread asks us,

how do we accept what is real in this moment, and orient ourselves to the practice of hope?

How do we not become hardened, defensive, and overly protective, based on our desires for safety and certainty? How do we accept the threat and danger that we face and deepen into possibility for a future that aligns with our values, a future beyond our imaginative capacity?

I invite you to recreate this spread with your own deck while you listen, using my words as a beginning point for your own explorations. Slow down with me into this present moment and let’s wander through all the complexity it has to offer.

🌓 first quarter square: moon in aquarius 🌓

Squares inherently bring tension. The square between Scorpio and Aquarius is the tension between all that’s happening above the surface and all that lies beneath, unspoken and unseen.

Laying out these cards again today, I was struck by the tense divide that is so evident between pairs in this spread.

The Fool and the Six of Swords: before the journey and in the midst of it. The tension between open and cautious; hope and reality; breaking free and seeking refuge.

The Magician and the Emperor: Interconnection and domination; manifestation (collaboration) and demand; spell-coaxing spell-casting and coercion; imagination and foundation; creation and stability.

The Four of Swords and the Seven of Cups: restoration and dreaming; prayer and possibility.

What I am feeling into right now in this spread is the way it speaks to a process of restructuring our dreams. The world many of us were conditioned into – it was always a facade – it’s collapsing all around us. Some of us have always known the rot beneath the surface, and for others, this is wholly destabilizing. This is a time for questioning everything we assume to be true, for pulling those threads and unraveling the past we know and the future we don’t.

The 4 of Swords reminds me of the restoration that sleep provides, the way our systems take our conscious processing power and direct it towards other necessary ends, opening the way for dreams to emerge while the rest of us recalibrates. As a collective, as we witness and respond to mass corruption, violence, chaos and collapse, we must also make time and space to restore; dropping the narratives that carried us this far, and making way for a new foundation to emerge.

Within collapse, there is possiblity that didn’t exist before.

If the whole house crumbles, we get to build something entirely different, if we so choose. We may have dreams that feel no longer possible, individual paths that were laid that we have to mourn and adapt. None of us want to be where we are, but perhaps from here we can go to places we didn’t even dare to dream. This is the promise of the Fool, that possibility defies expectation.

We know the foundations that those emperors in power are building their ballrooms upon: violence, colonialism, white supremacy, fear, cruelty, extraction… These are rotten pillars, they cannot bear the weight of the future. What shall we build upon instead? Can you follow the threads of your thoughts, the beliefs that guide your dreams, to other values? Our minds have been shaped by the foundations that others laid for us, there is no shame in realizing that and becoming conscious of beliefs that are not our own. The possibility opens when we do the work of letting those beliefs fall away and laying a new foundation in their place. This is the process of the Six of Swords, this is our journey, now.

🌕 Full Moon Reflection: 13º Taurus 🌕

The full moon in Taurus coincided with a collective expression of values, an alternative path made manifest. We can respond to this moment by rooting and standing firm in our beliefs, instead of compromising. In the face of violence, assault, and dehumanization,

we can choose humanity.

Our collective power comes from our ability to be hopeful in the face of the politics of nihilism, cruelty, and domination. The restructuring force of the Four of Swords is working beneath the surface, as we further decondition from establishment and overculture beliefs. The rejection of status quo establishment compromise in favor of values-based, humanist politics in New York City is a spark that can light radical possibility for all of us.

May we be bold in our ability to act in the face of horrific authoritarianism and remain true to the values we want to see more of, in this world.

This is the way of the Fool, radical hope as a force of disruption and change.

🌗 Last Quarter Reflection: moon in Leo 🌗

This season has shown us collectively the highs and lows of this spread. Moments of hope and change amidst a deepening awareness of state violence and systems collapse. Heeding the call of this spread in this Scorpio season, I am efforting to remain attuned to hope, wherever it arises.

I see hope in the communities of neighbors banding together with whistled codes and resisting bodies against the terror and violence of ICE. I am finding hope in the words of Judges who read poetry and speak to unconscionable actions of masked men. I am deriving hope through the kind actions I encounter on a daily basis as we navigate the incomprehensible, together, and I hope you are, too.

My guess is that this Mercury retrograde through Sagittarius and Scorpio, dancing with Mars and Uranus, will bring more revelations into our collective consciousness. As we continue to see institutions and tepid individuals with power fold and acquiesce to authoritarianism and corruption, may we also continue to rise, individually as needed, but also collectively, meeting this moment by boldly leveraging the power we have, in service of possibilties we can only dream of;

may our dreams continue to grow as we shed the memories of what we once believed to be true.