Jun
6
2024

New Moon Gateway: The Courage to Love

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For Seekers – Moonthly Renewal – Practices for Soul & Spirit – Sanctuary

This moonth we are invited to walk the path of The Lovers, the card associated with this new moon’s arrival on Thursday, June 6 at 8:37 am ET (time zone converter) in the astrological sign of Gemini.

When we fall in love our heart becomes the blooming rose. A profusion of petals opening wider and wider under the kiss of the sun. We feel the rose in our chest expanding from the inside out to meet our beloveds.


From Ellen Lorenzi-Prince’s Greek Goddess Tarot
The suit of Cups focuses on Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love
We don’t fall forever. We have to land. Once on earth we grow and change so our love must, too. When we flow with this shifting love, the heart becomes a snake.The snake is a shapeshifter, moves forward with sinuous motion, sometimes curving its body entirely into nested circles. To grow it sheds its skin, leaves its no longer needed layers behind. Across time and cultures, this behavior has imbued the snake with symbolic meanings of healing, renewal, transformation, and even eternal life.


From Ellen Lorenzi-Prince’s The Minoan Tarot
When our hearts are snakes, we are blessed with renewing love. This is a love that changes. A love that has both times of dark and light, but that renews itself over and over again. In renewing love, the beloveds grow and change, letting each expand as they need.But even as our snake hearts sustain our love, they challenge us as along the Lovers’ path. Because, for many of us, snakes are scary!

They are my own phobia creature. As a little girl I could not even look at a picture of a snake, and they still appear in nightmares. My snake phobia was surely influenced by the snake’s other meanings through time: evil, darkness, deception.

Snakes can be death bringers; many are venomous, others could squeeze us to death. But growing up in the suburban Northeast of the US, I rarely encountered snakes at all and certainly not deadly ones. My feelings about snakes were a 9 of Swords experience. I didn’t face any immediate real threat, but my fears were still powerful.

a 1909 card scanned by Holly Voley and retrieved from Sacred Texts. Deck available from US Games
I now practice to be more accepting of snakes. Garter snakes visit my porch to sun themselves and I welcome them. I know they are good for the garden, eating up pesky critters. I’ve found beauty in the yellow strips along their backs swirling. They still startle, but in my relationships to snakes, I am  working on“feeling the fear and doing it anyway.” Here I am mirroring the Knight of Swords: committed to the quest and ready to move through any fears and negative thoughts.

Witch = Knight in Ellen Lorenzi-Prince’s Tarot of the Crone
My story about snakes could also be applied to love. Love is scary!When we risk love, we make ourselves vulnerable to others. Like a snake sheds its skin, we must take off our defenses and show our true selves: the beauty at our center, but also the shadows we’ve been trying to hide.

In mutually loving relationships, we open to the fullness of the other person and also to the fullness of ourselves. All become more Whole. And once we’ve lived and loved in this way, we can’t go back. Even if the relationship ends – by mutual decision, one-sided break up, or death – the skin we had to shed to love no longer fits. Love changes us. And to live, we must change.

REFLECTION QUESTIONS / READING FOR THE MOONTH

These questions are offered for reflection and to spark practice throughout the moonth. Pulling Tarot and oracle cards in connection to these questions is appropriate, but not absolutely necessary. You might carry a question with you on a walk for example and observe what is happening in the natural world as a way to find insight into the answer to the question.

LOVE: How is love calling me to live this moonth?

FEAR: What fears or obstacles might I encounter as I answer love’s call?

FORWARD: How can I “face my fears and do it anyway” to meet love’s call?

I do offer this as an e-reading in my collaborative initiative format for $32.  Sign up with Pay Pal or email me about sending a check. When I receive notification, I’ll be in touch to let you know about when to expect to receive your reading by email. I generally have openings to do these readings on Mondays and Saturdays

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