Cancer: 3:55 Leo: 8:48
Virgo: 12:09
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, Sarah Corbyn Woolf.
And here we are, folks, back for another quarter. To recap how the structure of this podcast is working, this year, I'm doing a quarterly episode that covers three astrological seasons. In each episode, those are split apart so that you can listen to all of them at once, or listen to them one at a time as each season rolls around. There will be timestamps in the show notes so that you can navigate more easily if you'd like to spread this information across the coming seasons, rather than listening to it in one fell swoop. So today we'll be taking a look at our summer signs, starting with Cancer, whose season began today, moving through Leo, and then finally, as we approach autumn, at least here in the northern hemisphere, through Virgo season and our big back to school energy.
Summer has traditionally been a difficult season for me -- a sense of aimlessness, a sense of untethered-ness that has always felt very uncomfortable for my Capricorn moon. I think, though, that the longer I live, the the more I wish to embrace it. I think this goes hand in hand with my movement towards my rising sign being a fire sign and a general shift in the direction of embracing heat and all the blessings and potential that it carries. But I'm still a little uncomfortable here, right? I'm coming at you from the middle of a heat wave, for one thing, although my air conditioning unit is putting in the work, and you will probably hear it in the background of this audio.But you can tell that things are starting to kick up this time of year. The the the pressure cranks up to be outside. It becomes even more important to hydrate and put on your SPF, right? There's there's so much raw energy I find during this time of year, and it can be exhausting. It can be draining as much as it can be nourishing.
So I think it's an extra important time to really pay attention to our own levels, uh, and make sure that we're in good shape, right? Make sure that we are looking after our needs as well as our desires. Checking that water. You know, checking our rest, making sure we get get the sleep that we need, despite the heat, despite the long day. It's always funny, just like the winter solstice begins the lengthening of the days, even before we hit the dead of winter, the summer solstice offers the lengthening of night even before we really hit summer. I think I think of summer solstice as being like a midsummer event. I equate them in my head, which is inaccurate. It's the beginning. I don't know if this is the case for anybody else out there, but there's some interesting sort of scheduling acrobatics available for us as we as we move into and through the coming season. So let's get into it, starting with cancer season.
The change between seasons is also often a time for change in our priorities. The weight that we place on different aspects of our lives may shift. This starts for many of us in our childhood, with a shift from focus on school towards focus on a summer job, or going to a summer camp, or travel, or even just finding ways to pass the time through these dog days, as they call them. Our card for Cancer season is the Ten of Wands. So what does the Ten of Wands have to do with this recalibration of our priorities, this reorientation of our focus? The Ten of Wands is the burnout card with the capital B, right? This is where we see someone carrying too much, unsustainably. And both of those parts are important, right? Too much and unsustainably. They correspond with each other. So the invitation from this card is to put everything down. Just put it down. Drop it, drop it. And see what's there, and find a new way to carry sustainably.
What's important here is that we're focusing on sustainability rather than quantity, right? I think that oftentimes when I share my interpretation of this card, people immediately jump to saying, okay, what do I need to give up? What do I need to quit? What do I need to leave behind? What do I need to let go? But that, I think, assumes a sort of false binary that we either carry something or we don't, that it's all or nothing, whereas I think that this card is really inviting us towards the more complex question of how we carry what we carry, how do we carry our cares, our passions, our projects? How do we carry our adventures and our ambitions and our passions? So the question is not what do I let go of? What do I leave behind? The question is, how do I pick these back up in a way that can be long term, long range, in a way that will join me in the direction that I'm headed towards the destination where I'm going. Now that may mean leaving some things behind, but that's not the that's not a foregone conclusion, right? That's not the message of the card. It's not a card of letting go. It's a card of regrouping.
So I think the challenge posed to us during cancer season by this card is the tenderness we deserve as we go through this process, right? This being a fire card and a ten, we're at the apex of that heat, right? And heat can carry so many things with it. Heat is a shared core between shame and anger and desire and creativity and things that have negative connotations and things that have positive connotations, and all of those are, you know, neither, neither positive nor negative when it really comes down to it and all of this stuff. But like this heat, this apex of heat in our Ten of Wands card is in really, really stark contrast to me with the softness of Cancer season.
Now let's not forget the softness of cancer season is also a protected softness. It's not as exposed and vulnerable as something like Pisces. Um, so. If you find yourself in this recalibration and this reorientation of your priorities and, um, the how. With which you move through the world and carry your passions. Um. Remember to be gentle. Remember not to assume that you need to defend yourself. While also knowing that you can if it turns out that you do need to. But above all, I think remembering that this call towards dropping everything and picking it up in a new way. Is a call towards tenderness rather than a threat.
It's pretty on brand for Leo season to make demands and insist on having its way. And I mean that in the best way possible. So we have two cards for this particular pull. The Eight of Wands popped up and something in me said, what else? And so I cut the deck, which is what I usually do to pull these cards, and the star came out and I thought, "That makes sense." So let me let me explain. The Eight of Wands. First off, a second wands card in the heat of summer. So we're like fire, fire, fire everywhere, right? So the Eight of Wands is a card of kinetic energy. The upshot is, "It's already happening." It's already happening. The arrows have been loosed and are flying through the air. There's also a connotation of of, you know, everything coming at you, right? Information and data and opportunities and excitement flying, flying right at you.
And so how do you open to receive that? How do you filter it? Do you have a choice? How do you exercise your consent and agency? And then we have the Star, which is all about reconsidering our assumptions about what is comfortable and what is familiar and asking, is the uncomfortable the familiar thing, and is the unfamiliar thing perhaps more comfortable? And by comfortable, I also mean safe and pleasant and nice and satisfying. So I think there's a crux here between opportunity and that comfort, that sense of personal ease and availability and openness, a comfort that allows us to be our full self. Does the whirlwind of the Eight of Wands leave us feeling out of sorts because it's unfamiliar, or does it actually leave us feeling excited because it's unfamiliar?
And for that matter, what is exactly the difference between feeling out of sorts and feeling excited? This sort of reminds me of the Esther Perel sort of human paradox of our simultaneous cravings for safety and for danger, essentially for risk, for the unknown. So in the flurry of activity that may come your way, our way. Uh, this Leo season, I think the question in the face of that flurry is, am I sticking with what's familiar simply because it's familiar, or am I taking the risky step into the unfamiliar? Because that may be where comfort lies.
I can't help but chuckle at our card for Virgo season, because I don't know what's more Virgo than this. We have the Eight of Pentacles, and if you're familiar with this card, I invite you to join me in a collective eye roll. I love this card. The eye roll is not at the card, it's just how incredibly on the nose this particular pull seems to be. This is a card all about practice. This is a card about repetition. This is a card that explores the expertise that can be gained through iteration, through experimentation, through minor, minor, minuscule experimentation. What if I shift the angle of my tool two degrees in this way? How does that micro change affect the macro result?
Pentacles. It's Earth. So we're moving slowly. We're being deliberate. We're being methodical. Maybe we're taking notes on every single change we make. Or maybe we're trusting our muscles and our body to recall the trajectory, the journey of our experimentation. Whenever this card comes up, I always think of the Wild Unknown, Kim Krans' interpretation of this card, which is a spider at the center of their web. And that, to me, is such a powerful and evocative image of a creature that creates over and over and over again, the same structure. And yet that structure -- no two can be the same because they are inherently built in response to their environment. So during Virgo season, a time of seeking clarity and order and a sort of deep fundamental understanding of the best way of going about something, how funny to have the card of practice.
Now, I think there's a couple invitations with this card. Trite but true, Virgo energy is susceptible to perfectionism. And the Eight of Pentacles. While a card of practice is not, the card of practice makes perfect, I don't think the Eight of Pentacles is interested in perfection. I think the Eight of Pentacles is interested in each new change. What if I did it this way? What if I shifted it that way? It's almost more-- you know, journey versus destination. It's more about noticing the effects that each little shift can have, rather than making those shifts towards a particular goal. We see here the craft of practice for practices sake. And any expertise that accompanies that is a bonus. So as we make our transition from summer into autumn and again encounter the shifting tides of our priorities and our allocation of time and energy, maybe there are small iterations available to you, little experiments for you to explore and delight in rather than any big, massive overhaul of how you go about the systems of your life.
So thank you once again for joining me in this ongoing experiment of a podcast. I hope that these three-- well, four cards over these three seasons offer you some clarity, some guidance, just a couple hints as to what might be asking for your focus as you move through our summer season here in the North. Not much housekeeping out of Ecstatic Rabbit headquarters other than our shift transforming Tarot Thursdays to Tarot at Iconica, now taking place monthly on second Saturday afternoons. For information on that, you can almost always find the details in my newsletter or on my Instagram account. Booking private readings is also available, and there's now a handy dandy form that you can fill out with some information and your preferences around that reading. And once it's submitted, I'll respond to you with my availability and we can go from there in terms of scheduling, what works for you.
Thank you always for your time and your trust, and I'll see you next time. Until then.
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