This new moon, our collective card is the
II of Wands
The suit of wands begins differently than the other suits, at what can look like the end of a journey. This illustrates their perpetual motion. Ever growing. Ever reaching. But the II gives us a liminal moment to ask,
What lies between
inspiration and preparation?
What goes up must come down. This card has one foot lifted and one foot fully rooted to the ground. We don't know yet how that lifted foot will re-meet the earth: a stomp, a step, a leap, a bound. So what can we learn about ourselves as we live in the potential energy of our creativity?
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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. We are here for our new moon and Virgo, a.k.a. Rosh Hashanah, which is the Jewish New Year. As you can read in my newsletter, my experience of Judaism has been really potent this summer. So that's kind of my qualifier to let you know that a lot of what I have to say today is very much informed by this idea of a new year happening on this new moon.
I'm going to throw a little bit of oversimplified astrology your way. I'm going to draw a very clear connection between the start of the academic school year, the sign of Virgo, and back to school shopping. I love stationery. I love office supplies, and what I love, honestly, more than those supplies are the little organizational cubbies and drawer inserts and compartmental thingies and, like, Poppin trays that you use to organize those office supplies. It's like that episode of 30 Rock where Liz goes to the Container Store. I think it's a cold open. And she's like, my whole life is going to be completely new and better and fresh now because I have containers. I think the joke kind of carries through the rest of the episode. But, like, yeah. Same.
So why is this relevant? What does this have to do with anything? What does this have to do with Judaism? What does this have to do with the new year? Something I love about the high holidays, which is how many people refer to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (Yom Kippur being by some traditions, the second most important holiday in the Jewish calendar, only second to Shabbat, which happens every week), [is] these two holidays take place on either end of 10 days, referred to as the Days of Awe. And I wrote about this in my newsletter that we have these 10 days in which to parse the year that came before and prepare for the year to come.
Yom Kippur is a day of atonement. It's a day when we ask forgiveness from our community, from each other, from ourselves, from God. And the 10 days following this New Year celebration and leading up to that day of asking for forgiveness and sort of owning up to our shit is such-- it's such a gift to have time for that. You know, as I said in the newsletter, it's not a ten second countdown to midnight. It's 10 whole days to be in consciousness. To be in noticing. To be in mindfulness. To be perhaps in meditation. To be with ourselves and to ask that question of, "How did we do it this far and how do we want to do it from here?"
And there's something of the pro con list to it, you know? Like, one column for what I leave behind, one column for what I carry forward. A column for the, like, thumbs up, nailed it. A column for the thumbs down, let's figure out who we need to apologize to. And this is where that, like, Virgo comes in. You know? That-- that sense of perspective. To some degree, of organization, but also, you know, Virgo as self ownership. Right? That the idea of virginity, whatever its modern connotations, and a long modern, its origin story, virginity, is about claiming one's self.
And what is more self-sovereign than true accountability? Taking responsibility for your actions. And not just the things you fucked up. Definitely the things you fucked up, but also the things that you nailed or the things that you tried your hardest at. All of it. All of the actions. Everything that has made up your year. This is super overwhelming, which is why those little trays are so helpful. So whether you observe the Days of Awe or not, whether you're part of the Jewish faith or not, I think what I'm getting at here is find your liminal space in which to clean out and rearrange and organize that stationery drawer, that pen collection in a way that helps you be your best self. Your most self self.
Find those 10 days, or whatever, that liminal space. But a space. Space and time in which to look back at what's come so far and look ahead at what may come and find a way to arrange yourself and your life as best you can in this moment in a way that will support you and your community as the season shifts. Okay. Go take an ad break and I will see you soon for our card pull.
[Ad Break]
The II of Wands. Hmm. Yeah. Okay. Harmony and fire. Something I love about the suit of wands is that it goes in a really different cycle than the other suits. Its beginning gestures to the end of a story or the end of a cycle of ambition. And I think the reason that that happens is because it illustrates how driven this suit can be. How perpetually it is in motion. How constant its growth is. So the two is this moment of like, "Aha," in a way that is not necessarily so in the other suits. It's a little more established. And then things kind of start to break down while in the other suits, things start to grow roots, become steadier, sturdier, clearer.
So our dear darling two of wands. I mean, I love it for this time of year because it truly is about standing on all that has come before and looking out at what may come next. It's the step before planning, though. And I think that's really, really important for us and may be the key to this card popping up for us today is that it is the step before preparation. It is that moment between inspiration and preparation. What can happen in that space between having the idea and beginning to activate the idea?
And this is what it does share with the other twos is that they are the first step into something. And I would say that this to of wands is not even the first step. This is the, like, lifting of the foot, because the thing with wands is that the minute that foot hits the ground, boom, you're off. Off to the races, right? So in this moment of balance and harmony, there is a kind of stillness that does not really come through any other part of the suit of wands. In the minors we're talking. In ace through ten.
And was I not just talking liminal space? Right? Like, that-- that lifted foot going, "Okay, I know I'm going to take a step." Or, hmm, let's even pull it back. What goes up must come down. If the foot comes up, odds are it's going to come down. It could come down right in place. What we might call a stomp. It might come down a few inches in front of the other foot. It might extend into a leap or a bound that breaks into a run. We don't know. So what is the magic of that unknowing? Of that potential energy? That potential energy for all of our creativity, our ambition, our drive, our passion, our visible, outward, vocal, visceral... heart-ness?
The wands correspond to fire, which I correspond to the heart. And I think that even though it's close to the mind and close to the swords, it can be the most difficult suit to apply language to. You can apply language to the cups. It just may not make any sense. You can apply language to earth. It just may take a while. But applying language to fire, with the wands, like, it's just too quick. Like, as soon as it's out of your mouth, it's not quite right. But here with the two, we have this blessed little moment these 10 days with our foot lifted to go, "Okay, what do I need to notice about my surroundings before this foot comes down? Before we start off on this journey at whatever pace that might be happening?"
But I'm going to pull back to one other thing about this that I mentioned when I first pulled this card out before I close us out for the day, which is that the two also brings with it a very strong sense of stability coming from that balance. It's not quite the structural support of the threes, right? That's a little different. That's a little more pragmatic and literal. With the two, it's more about that self-awareness, right? That sense of self. That sense of balancing parts of oneself.
And, you know, if we look back at the Rider-Waite-Smith, which I'm not pulling from today, but if we look back at that illustration, you know, we see someone dressed real nice standing on these battlements, on these ramparts, like, looking at this whole globe. So there's sort of this world-is-your-oyster vibe, which to me is a reassurance that wherever you are standing with that one foot in the air, the foot that is on the ground is, like, good to go. You don't need to worry about that other foot. Your balance is here. Your stability is here. Everything may be about to go into motion, but right now you've got total stability and total potential simultaneously living in your body.
Let's leave it at that. Little bit of housekeeping. Show notes will include a link to some of my-- the beginnings, I think, of my musings on Judaism in my practice, which you'll find in the newsletter, but if you're not signed up for the newsletter, which I guess I understand, you can find it on my blog. So that link will be there. You will also find a link to the YouTube video of that 30 Rock scene I referenced, because I am nothing if not methodical and diligent, especially during Virgo season. I think that's it. If you're celebrating these holidays, I wish you the happiest of holidays. If you are heading back into school, I wish you all the best. If your life is going through any type of transition, I send you all the perseverance. And if your life is just kind of plugging along right now, I send you a big, deep breath of fresh air. Okay. See you next time. Until then.