Growing Season: a tarot spread for Summer
Inspired by the Cancer New Moon and Jupiter in Cancer
Hello, Friends!
It’s been a minute since I’ve been on to write about tarot, so thank you for hanging with me during an especially busy culminating season in my life as a schoolteacher. This spring, it seemed like my Google calendar was even more crammed with meetings, special events, and whatnot than usual. I also had a graduating senior this year, so that was part of the busyness. On top of that, I discovered a long-lost sibling this spring! It’s not an exaggeration for me to say that 2025 has been one of the most full and strangest years for me. The dust began to settle on Tuesday (that was my last day of school), and so my plan for this summer is to devote more time to my own projects, and this newsletter is one of them.
Today, I thought I would write about a spread that I am working with in order to help me direct my attention to what matters this summer. First, I’ll give you spread design and then walk you through a personal reading I recently gave myself while using this spread. Feel free to use it while reading for yourself or others!
FYI: I created this spread using the New Moon in Cancer and the Jupiter Cazimi in Cancer from this week as inspiration. This New Moon occurred yesterday, and it is one of the most auspicious new moons for starting new projects or commitments, or to re-dedicating yourself to something that you have let fall by the wayside. A few reasons for this: the moon is in its home sign in Cancer, which means that it is extra-effective in that sign. Second, Cancer is one of the four cardinal signs (along with Aries, Libra and Capricorn), which lend themselves naturally to initiating new things. It’s great “starter” energy. Finally, Jupiter, the planet of expansion and magnification just entered Cancer earlier this month and will be there for a year. In traditional Hellenistic astrology, Jupiter is exalted in Cancer, meaning, it does really well—if we meet it halfway and put in the work, this is a great year for healing energy, community care, emotional growth, and treating everyone like family. All that said, the through-line is that this next month, and the next year are an opportune time to make big changes and to nurture growth in our lives. The winds are favorable for good sailing right now (this is also true collectively if we want to foment new ways of caring for each other and treating everyone as if they actually matter, but many others have written about better about that than I could).
So, without further ado, the spread:
Photo: The Magician, The Eight of Wands, and the Ten of Wands from the Aquarian Tarot.
Card 1: What are you planting? What projects, commitments, behaviors, or practices are you initiating, laying the groundwork for? What harvest are you hoping to reap six months from now, or a year from now?
When I drew my first card, I pulled the Magician. This was definitely relevant for me this summer. The Magician is all about using all of your resources to transform yourself or an aspect of your life. The Magician is pictured with the four symbols of the Minor Arcana—they are holding the sword, which represents the mind and mental acuity, and on their work table, there is the pentacle (physical resources and the results of behavior made visible), the cup (relational connection, love, compassion, mercy), and the wand (vision, intuition, and creativity.) It is up to the Magician to use all of their resources and to decide how to blend them. They have complete freedom and complete responsibility.
Right now, I want more mental and creative freedom. Part of that, I’m sure, has just been a longing for summer, where I get to control my schedule. The other part is wanting more mental freedom and quiet, to be free from doom-scrolling and our news cycle, freedom to decide what I let into my head. It takes responsibility to create that freedom, as well as some discipline. So, over the next couple of months, I’m working to read more print books, to leave my phone at home when I can, and to spend more time without any input from the outside world.
Card 2: What are you tending to, watering, or nurturing?
In my own reading, I drew the Eight of Wands, a card that I really love and which also has a few different shades of meaning. In the Eight of Wands, we see eight staves flying through a clear blue sky. Wands represent divine spark, vitality, and inspiration. This card specifically is about something literally being on its way or up in the air, and its message is really about trust and faith. Trusting that the right information or inspiration will come when the time is right, and that the right puzzle pieces are on the way. The Eight of Wands is also about the transmission of ideas and insight, and how when we communicate directly and honestly, our words and message have more momentum. I think of the Elvis Costello lyric, “My aim is true.” Or an arrow hitting its target. Part of pulling the arrow back and shooting your shot means you have to have a little faith that it’s going to get where you want it to go. You need to be steady.
Personally, the Eight of Wands means that I need to keep doing what I’m doing, consistently with the trust that eventually the work that I am doing will meet the people who need it. When you teach, or write creatively, or put your work out in the form of a newsletter, all of which I do, it can be hard not to give up, or just mentally check out when you don’t get immediate results. Creative writing, especially, is lonely work that involves a lot of disciplined faith and trust. We live in an instant gratification world, and that runs counter to a lot of the pay-off that comes from the kind of teaching or writing work that I value most. For example, when I am teaching a yoga class, sometimes students will look serious or kind of remote simply because they are having their own experience, or breathing through a specific pose, and I don’t tend to get a lot of immediate positive feedback. At first, it was daunting to teach a class because I had no idea whether or not anyone liked what I was doing or even if I was hurting them until the very end of class. It was truly an Eight of Wands situation, and I had to believe that I was doing the right thing to the best of my ability and to let go of the results or any need for outside validation.
Card 3: What are your pruning? What do you need to trim back, cut out, or dial down in your life?
For this last card, I pulled the Ten of Wands. When I did, I just had to laugh, because I have pulled it often this year. In the card, you can see a figure with their head down carrying a large and unwieldy bundle of wands. You can’t see the figure’s face, and I believe that this is really the key to understanding this card.
The Ten of Wands is the story of what happens when you are a people-pleaser and you say yes to too many people, too often. I would say that a lot of women have this problem, especially white women (speaking from my own experience). I am in a “helping profession,” and if I had to pick one tarot card to represent elementary school teachers, the Ten of Wands would be it. There is so much to hold, so many conflicting demands and different stakeholders who want you to do what is best for them, that it is easy to lose sight of why you may have entered the profession. Personally, the reason I decided to teach was to help students increase their sense of self-efficacy, to grow their confidence by mastering things that seem too challenging at first, to experience the elation and freedom of “Wow, I can actually do that!” However, when I feel bogged down in minutiae that has nothing to do with building toward that vision, it’s easy to feel demoralized.
When you nurture and carry other people’s vision at the expense of your own, you abandon yourself, and lose your own spark and along with it, your own creative identity. At worst, you may even lose your integrity. The antidote is saying, “No thank you,” as often as you are able, to getting used to letting it roll off your tongue. In saying now, you avoid getting weighted down and hobbled by being nice and accommodating. Be kind to yourself first so that you can be kind to others, be direct, don’t be nice. Then, you don’t have to stagger to the finish line in someone else’s race. This is the message of the Ten of Wands.
So, that it! That’s my sample reading! To recap, the Growing Season Spread goes like this:
Card 1: What are you planting? What projects, commitments, behaviors, or practices are you initiating, laying the groundwork for? What harvest are you hoping to reap six months from now, or a year from now?
Card 2: What are you tending to, watering, or nurturing?
Card 3: What are your pruning? What do you need to trim back, cut out, or dial down in your life?
Thank you as always for reading! I appreciate you all! Please let me know if you use this tarot spread and how it lands for you!
Layla