Magic Time: Let’s clean house

Happy Halloween!

My witchy treat for my friends today is a tarot reading! (Have I mentioned that I read cards? I think I may have.) This is just for general vibes and, of course, entertainment purposes. Take or leave it as you will, and make of it what you please.

Halloween heralds the transition from end of fall to beginning of winter with several days of cultural, religious, and secular celebrations. Here in the USA, this transition includes the end of Daylight Savings, knocking us into the dark season way too quickly, and Election Day, an even darker season this year.

So considering what we’re all doing and thinking about this week, I sat down and asked the universe how we might expect things to go, socially and personally.

Overall and surprisingly, not too bad.

This reading brings the energy of a major housecleaning. It’s about taking direct action to correct a disordered condition. It’s about breaking inertia and making that first progress step towards fixing something that’s been bothering you for a long time.

Is your house a persistent wreck (like mine)? Are you stuck in a dead-end job? Have you been struggling or hesitating to begin a near-and-dear project? Are you ready to vote the bastards out once and for all?

Now is a good opportunity to crack that wall, kick aside that obstacle, and get started.

8 of Wands x 10 of Cups (reversed) confronts the problem head-on. This is about recognizing that you are not happy. Maybe you feel you’re not living your values, your joy, your love, your self, and you’re choosing to do something about it as of right now. This far and no farther. You are determined to turn this shit around.

Motivation comes from being fed up to the gills with the status quo, per the 4 of Cups at the foundation. You’ve had enough of worthless, garbage options. You are hungry for something new, and you’re done waiting passively for someone else to deliver it.

So you step up and get to work. The Queen of Wands is you coming into your competence, skills, and leadership, applying them to practical matters. Balancing your accounts, paying the bills. Getting your ballot delivered on time, or getting yourself down to your polling place to cast your vote. Cleaning your garden, bringing in the harvest, getting it all mulched and bedded down for winter. Organizing, cooperating, planning, helping, doing the things, on your own or with friends, whatever suits your situation. You get what’s needed to do what you want to do, and you build your relationships and support system as you go.

The Queen is in the position of the recent past and present, indicating you’ve already begun this process. You have had it with this mess. You’ve burned through all the bullshit, and you are clear in your head about what you want and what is blocking you from having it.

The 3 of Pentacles tells us this is an institutional, foundational issue. This is about the institution of your home, your work, your community, your finances, your health, your politics, whatever you have going on, all of it. It’s both the what and the how.

Make no mistake, there are obstacles and opposition. You are fixing things that have been broken a long time. That in itself is difficult. You may come up against people who don’t want the situation to change. And you may have to confront old habits to stop sabotaging your own progress. None of that is easy or quick, even though the 8 of Wands says that, right now, you take quick action that brings quick results.

Those results, in the near future with the 4 of Wands, will be successful, but not the end of the matter. It’s a short-term win. Take it, enjoy it, celebrate it, and accept the benefit of it.

But understand, you are celebrating the opening of a road. Then you have to start your journey down that road, doing whatever you just cleared the way for.

This will be your chance to make sure that what you build and where you go next will support the life you want to live, the world you want to create. Now is your chance to actively express your values and your true self, rather than letting others dictate your reality, others who do not have your wellbeing in mind.

So, for example, if you’re doing fall cleaning this week (like me), don’t just dust and polish the existing junk. Think about what you want your space to be, how you want it to work and feel, and once you’ve decluttered and cleared out the closets, then be ready to start making it better.

Or if you’re voting in an election this week (early voting, yay!), do it with 2027, 2028, and the next decade in mind. As soon as that ballot is cast, start planning what you want to do with a new Congress once we’ve swept out the old one.

We’re reaching the end of many things. In almost every aspect of life, including big, public stuff, we have to do a lot of heavy lifting with no guaranteed outcome.

But this is a great time of year for that sort of thing, because Halloween is a gateway from one time cycle to another. Things end this week, and other things begin.

I invite you to consider Halloween week the first step towards the season of new years, the great winter reset of our seasonal, planetary, and celestial cycles. This is the demo phase of recreating ourselves and our world.

So c’mon, Queen of Wands, let’s identify the things we want to be rid of, and what we want to have instead. Let’s make a list, and let’s start scratching items off, one by frikking one.

-Jen

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Notes

This essay contains 973 words. According to western numerology, 973 reduces to 19, then 10, then 1. In tarot, 19 is The Sun, signifying light, liberation, and self realization. 10 is The Wheel of Fortune, signifying the working of fate, universal cycles, and luck. Opportunity is knocking. And 1 is The Magician who channels universal energy through skill and intelligence to make things happen in the real world. We are all Magicians here.

You really couldn’t ask for better omens, so get out there and vote!

I used the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot for two reasons. First, it’s my heart deck. I learned on this deck, and as an artist, the RWS system is natural for me. Second, Pamela Coleman Smith’s card art is in the public domain, so I can post these images with happy ethics. Expect to see more of my tarot work in future.

Additional illustrations are my original works, seasonally appropriate, a page from a pen and ink sketchbook and a detail from a crown of bats and moths.