The King of Swords meets the world as it is: Reflection on eclipse season.

Full Moon Reflection: Braving the Torch of Our Rage

Slow Tarot invites us to root into a spread for the length of the moon's cycle. The cards for this cycle are Strength crossed by the Page of Wands, King of Cups, 3 of Cups Rx, the Tower, 5 of Wands. Recreate this spread while you listen, sit with it a spell. You can find all my contemplations about this spread, alongside invitations to go deeper, at highlowtarot.com/slow-tarot [https://highlowtarot.com/slow-tarot] The Scorpio full moon [https://highlowtarot.com/slow-tarot/-scorpio-moon-reflection-braving-the-torch-of-our-rage] illuminated the role of rage in this spread, for me. A millennia of oppression of our mothers and daughters has brought us to this moment in time. Their rage lives deep inside of us, alongside the memory that societies weren't always hierarchical power structures. Our blood and bones remember how to live in partnership with each other and all of life. The Tower falls when we each find the courage to integrate this deep, ancestral rage. Emotional intelligence and self-compassion (King of Cups) helps to shed the false selves conditioned by the patriarchy. This conditioning has shaped us through generations, and it’s time to burn it all away. In this reading I reference The Chalice and the Blade by Riane Eisler and the Emerald Podcast [https://www.themythicbody.com/podcast/] by Josh Schrei. The music underlying these readings is created by Beth Bradfish, reading by Julie Kelton.

Slow Tarot for the Aries Initiation

Reading by Julie Kelton, music by Beth Bradfish. Slow Tarot is an offering of a collective tarot spread for the month, wisdom to unfold with us as we meet this turbulent, beautiful world. We are well into Taurus season, now, with many planets lingering in Aries, which has been the site of so much activity this past couple of weeks. Are you feeling the spark? Are you letting your frustrations guide you? Are you learning to embrace the chaos? The spread for this month offers much to work with, Strength crossed by the Page of Wands, King of Cups below, 3 of Cups reversed left, The Tower right, and 5 of Wands above. Rooting into emotional intelligence and our hard-won practices of regulation can serve our hopeful visions, while things crash, bend, and break around us. With Uranus in Gemini, things are speeding up and the chaos of our information environment is becoming clear. How can you stay rooted in compassion and care, without getting lost in the undertow? We are living through a time of massive change, and at times it feels like too much to process. The time for superficial relationships, hollow parties, and meaningless busy-ness is behind us. There is too much at stake now, too much exposed and revealed. To go on with business at usual, now, when so much is exposed and crumbling, is to miss this moment entirely. What helps you tend to your fears, grief, and anger, so that the fiery, brave part of you can step forward, with a glint in their eye? Our work of self-knowing and healing isn't occurring despite the turbulence around us, but in conversation with it. A constant push and pull between self-steadying and outward-facing activity, between grieving the horror, devastation, violence, and injustice, and saying the thing, hearing the call, jumping at the chance to tend to the wound, with whatever medicine you have. The time is now, to stay steady, and be brave, friends. Love and reparent the wild creatures within you so they can guide us through the madness. More to come with this spread at highlowtarot.com/slow-tarot. [https://highlowtarot.com/slow-tarot.] Thank you for listening.

Closing Reflection: Dismantling & Hoping

This moon cycle has taken us through so much collective grief and fear, and so much turbulence. As we sit on the precipice of a new moon in Aries, I return to this spread to reflect on what has occurred over the past month. I talk about the idea of how courage isn't the absence of fear, but instead knowing our fear, and acting anyway. Similarly, grief can help us to know grace, to feel renewal, and to remember hope, even if it's a different hope. Together, these allies, grief, fear, and hope, can lead us into more aligned responses to this heightened moment. And this Aries new moon, tomorrow, it's all about action. This new moon conjoins Chiron, the wounded healer archetype, in the late degrees of Aries, inviting us into a deeper and more active relationship to our wounded sites, personal and collective. With Mercury, Mars, Saturn, and Neptune all hanging out at the beginning degrees of Aries, the focus is very much on our frustrations from lack of action and our desires for movement, maybe even a little "burn it all down" energy. The work of healing is manyfold and requires our mass participation. What is the healing work being whispered to you through your fears, your sorrows, and your soul? Find more slow tarot contemplations, practices, and prompts at highlowtarot.com/slow-tarot [https://highlowtarot.com/slow-tarot]

Dark Moon in Pisces: Our Grief Reshapes the World

A new spread for the new moon in Pisces, that carries us through Aries season and the beginning of spring. Music by the great Beth Bradfish. [https://bethbradfish.com/] The cards are The Tower Rx crossed by the Emperor Rx (center), 5 of Cups (below), the Star (left), 3 of Pentacles Rx (right), 9 of Swords Rx (above). The two upright cards in this spread are watery, grieving cards, the 5 of Cups and the Star. Allowing ourselves to feel grief for all we've lost and all the destruction we are witnessing returns us home, to our essence, and helps us to remember our radical hopes for another world, one that cares for and nourishes life. This is our birthright and essence, to love and care for one another, but to return there we have to reckon with and dismantle the over-culture of dominion and patriarchal violence, centered in the core of this spread. We are called to work within ourselves as part of this reckoning, to explore our relationship to the myth of toxic individualism (9 of Swords Rx), and find ways to release ourselves from its destructive bonds. This personal and collective deconditioning can return us to more communal states of care, interconnection, and relationality with all life. I will be working with this spread all month on my website, with prompts and a personal spread for you to go deeper with these collective offerings. Thank you for listening. Highlowtarot.com/slow-tarot [https://highlowtarot.com/slow-tarot]

The King of Swords meets the world as it is: Reflection on eclipse season.

This is a reflection on the Slow tarot spread for eclipse season, from the Aquarius dark moon (Feb 17, 2026) to the Pisces dark moon (March 18, 2026). As the moon wanes to dark again, I return to this spread in the context of all that's occurred these past few weeks. The two of wands crossed by the hermit seems to highlight the tension between the world we have and the world we so desperately need. The Seven of Swords and King of Swords offer to ways of responding to the present: evading the truth or acknowledging it, head on, with discernment. Astrologically, we are in a time (Saturn + Neptune) where structures can dissolve and reform. Acknowledging and honoring all of the truth of this present moment, tending to our grief for the world we have, helps us to keep an open heart. From this place, we can better seed a world rooted in care and love for life. May it be so. May we embody the Queen of Pentacles, nurturing the life that is here, rooted in our expansive love for it all. Find more about this spread, previous slow tarot readings, and prompts to go deeper with your own deck here: https://highlowtarot.com/slow-tarot [https://highlowtarot.com/slow-tarot]