This new moon, our collective card is the
II of Pentacles
We're in a very hot air balloon moment right now, between Libra season and Mercury retrograde, each corresponding with the
element of air, but neither with the calm and ease we might want during this retrograde. This week's card grounds us, asking,
Can you just roll?
In my most extended metaphor yet, let's talk about bowling. Without bypassing how much it sucks to be losing the whole life game, there's also a chance for temporary surrender if you roll sideways into the gutter. You've got one direction to go, some momentum helping you get there, even a sort of bumper making sure you stay on course. Above all, no amount of strategizing is gonna hop that ball back into the lane. Can that clarity be itself a kind of support? This card reminds us that even when the bowling ball hits the fan, we still have resources around us. It just might take some release to turn and see them.
If you want to hear more...
Episode Transcript:
Hello and welcome to the Ecstatic Rabbit Podcast, a space for esoteric exploration, heartfelt insight, and expansive curiosity. I'm your host and the founder of Ecstatic Rabbit Tarot and Coaching, Sarah Corbyn Woolf. It's spooky season, a term that I am somewhat bashfully drawn to right now, which you will see plenty of if you're on my newsletter list, which you should be if you aren't.
We're in Libra season. So all things justice and beauty and balance, and also this sort of aspect of communication has been striking me in a new way and the actual give and take and back and forth of communication rather than the, like, speak-your-needs, sort of individualistic, one sided approach to communication. You know, for all the talk that we have about boundaries, there's not as much about the person on the receiving end of those boundaries. And that may be because they aren't worth your thought or time. But also, let's not forget that sometimes we put up boundaries with those we love because we love them in order to be able to love them better. More sustainably. In a way that we can manage and stick to and in which we can be generous and loving. Can you tell I've returned to Canada? So Libra season. New moon in Libra.
We are also surviving and/or thriving in a Mercury retrograde at the moment. As always, I will remind you that retrograde is like a tarot reversal. It's not inherently bad or a problem. It really just means a different direction, the other direction. So this could be a big moment of realization and, you know, a new clarity. With this air sign that we're in right now, new clarity placed around a situation at hand. Or, you know, it could go the opposite way if you have been sort of plugging along and then that opposite direction is like everything falling apart. Who knows? For all that I'm always like, "Oh, Mercury retrograde can be nice," I also experienced a broken phone, a broken computer, both totally mysterious during grad school in November of 2019. So it can also be exactly what pop astrology makes it out to be. So all I'm saying is maybe it's not that thing, but also maybe it is. That's for you to know. Okay. I am going to scootch you into an ad and meet you on the other side to see what card pops out.
(Commercial Break)
The II of Pentacles. This has a lot of personal meaning for me in terms of my own journey with this podcast and with this place that I'm in now again. But let's dive into what this might mean a little more collectively. I mean, to state the obvious, we have the twos, right? So for that to be in a Libra moment with again, this idea of scales and balance and exchange like duh, basically. And then what I love is that the Pentacles brings us down to Earth, so it's really balancing this season.
The nugget catchphrase of the II of Pentacles for me is finding balance through motion. The idea that harmony, balance, equilibrium does not happen in stillness. It is not finding and holding a position. It is having instead the mobility and availability to find your flow and sustain through that. Because what is balance for, right? Is it inherently good? Some might think so. But I think that what makes it good or useful or helpful or valuable is that it helps us with sustainability. It helps us to continue. It helps us to survive and hopefully thrive.
I also think this is leaning hard into grounding because we're in Libra season, so that's Air, and Mercury retrograde, which is also, you know, Mercury corresponds with the element of air. So to have this pentacle presence that's reminding us about our resources, about our livelihood, about what we have to call upon in times of struggle, in times when that balance may be hard to strike, like, it's right there. It's right there. We know where to find it. We just have to remember that it exists.
Something I often see during Mercury retrograde in both clients and friends is that-- and it's so normal. I've been there myself. And it's not just during retrograde. But when something really habitual goes haywire, it logically follows that we might lose track of the other resources available to us. So if our phone breaks, we might forget that we have other ways of communicating, or that we might not need the immediacy that our phone provides all the time. So in this discussion of let's call it under-estimated resources, I'm going to offer a really weird extended metaphor because you know that's my jam.
You're a bowling ball, okay? You're a bowling ball and you're rolling down the alley and the bumpers are up, and so you know that even if you're a little off kilter, you'll make your way where you want to go right? You'll achieve the goal of the game and make your way towards those pins. But what happens if, as you are rolling, the bumpers slowly go back down? And now, if you're a little off kilter, you might fall into the gutter. And according to the rules of the game, that is bad. That is a gutter ball. You don't hit any pins, you don't get any points. According to the rules of this game, that sucks. But remember those bumpers? Once you, this bowling ball, fall into the gutter, you've got bumpers again. You have this guidance, you have the stability and support that is like sending you in a particular direction.
And once you hit that gutter, the rules of the game become moot. It is not possible for you to go from the gutter back onto the surface of the lane, right? Whatever efforts you might make to strategize or optimize or fix or solve, you can't even engage with the game in that way anymore. There's this, like, surrender of just seeing that ball roll down the gutter, knowing that the turn you just took will not hit any pins, no matter what happens, no matter what you do, no matter how hard you think or how clever you get.
And clearly, this is where the metaphor starts to fall apart, because yes, this is going to detract from your ability to win the game. And that sucks, and I'm not here to bypass that. But the ball is still rolling. And I think that that's the part of the metaphor that I really want you to walk away with. Even if you are out of the game, even if there's, like, no amount of strategy that will help you win this game, that doesn't mean you don't still have a resource around you. So you've got the sort of guidance, right? On either side of the bal going down that gutter. You've got the literal support that keeps it rolling. You've even got the sense of direction because there's kind of only one way forward. I think this metaphor has officially reached its stretch capacity. Thank you for rolling with me and good luck out there. Stay safe. I'll see you next month. Until then.