The height of this moonth’s cycle comes with the full moon arriving early morning on Friday, the 19th (exact at 3:57am ET), and offers a revelation about how the lunar energies initiated on the November 4th new moon are developing. The new moon, guided by its association with Death, the 6 of Cups, and King of Cups invited us to align and balance Life and Death during the days of ancestral remembrance from October 31 to November 11th.  Out of the full moon revelation about this developing energy, we are issued an invitation to return a gift to the world in the final weeks of the lunar cycle.  

The exact moment of the moon’s fullness comes in the sign of Taurus associated with the Tarot’s 5th Major Arcana card: the Hierophant. When the Hierophant encounters Death, the structures and beliefs that uphold religious and spiritual institutions are called to change. This call has been echoing through the whole year amplified by numbers (we are in 5 year 2+0+2+1=5) and celestial happenings (eclipses happening in the cards associated with 5, the Hierophant and Temperance, 1+4=5). In my overview of the year, I asked:

With institutions so broken by the Tower experience and the need of a grieving planet so great, we will need many spiritual leaders to help us  through and birth the next becoming. The patterns of the year inspire me to believe that is possible if we will answer the call. We all have a part to play. How will you answer the call to a new kind of spiritual leadership in 2021? 

Under this full moon is a good time to reflect on how you have been answering this call through the year.

If you don’t think of yourself as a spiritual leader, I still urge you to do this reflection. The new leadership we need will not look like the old, will not be defined by the past so what you are doing in taking care of your family, screaming for change, creating art, pushing the envelope at work, or being kind to a stranger may really be what reflects the spiritual leadership we need.

If you do wear some kind of spiritual leadership hat (maybe you read Tarot for one or 10 or a hundred people this year), you might look at the shadow ways you have been developing as a leader by considering what you learned from making a mistake or how a failure has become a fertile area for growth.

You could, of course, pull cards as responses to any of these questions. You may want to engage in Visio Divina to find the layers of wisdom within the cards.

There is more than one way to be a Hierophant as the Teacher of the Gaian Tarot, the Singer of the Minoan Tarot and the Messenger of the Next World Tarot show

For further exploration of these themes, you are invited to one, some, or all of these practices:

• Moon bathe by sitting or lying under a window or outside on the ground. Let go of your thoughts and soak in the light.
• Take out any reading or your reflections from the new moon and look at them in a new light. How does your understanding of the cards shift now that time has passed and light has shifted? (If you haven’t done a reading yet, no problem, just do it now under the light of the full moon. You can try the one from the new moon.)
• Bring out your Death and Hierophant cards from your Tarot deck and connect them to your new moon reading / reflections. You could place/imagine these cards on either side of your reading or above and below, and then look at how they add meaning into the story your original cards offered you.

When you are done, remember to offer gratitude for what you have received. Consider what gift you now want to return to the world. Pulling a card for guidance on the gift is always a fine thing to do. In the coming weeks and before the moon returns to dark around December 2 (Oooo, seeing this makes me realize that there will be a dark moon birthday for me!) offer your gift to the world.

If you would like to gather in circle with these new kind of spiritual leaders, you are invited to join us for the 7th year of Descent and Return of the Light, a virtual retreat-in-everyday-life for connecting with the wisdom of the Winter Solstice season. We being 4 weeks of themed-reflections (gratitude, connecting with the ancestors, dark nurture, and release & renewal) on Monday, November 22nd as we wait in the dark for the light’s return. Full details and registration are here.