This moonth—arriving on Monday, the 30th (exact moment at 5:27 pm ET, time zone converter)—we are once again invited to walk the path of the Tarot’s Devil.

As you may remember, we started the year with a January 11th Devil moon which offered the message of: Protect what is most important. Then during two full moon appearances this summer the Lovers and Chariot had Devil encounters inviting revelations about how we renew love as well as exercise personal and collective power. As you reflect on the year past, you may want to look for these themes in the happenings and ah ha moments of your life in 2024. What wisdom did your Devil encounters offer? How will you integrate these insights? And now how will use this Devil energy that flowed through this year to push off into the next?

Path of the Moonth

Yes, The Devil is a guardian at the gateway of this transition time.

In Western culture, we like to make our Devils simple, to have them be the singular repository of evil.

But the image of the Devil – in the Tarot and elsewhere – is complex and made of many parts: curved horns, bats wings, chicken feet. When we unravel the Devil’s parts and take a few moments with each’s origins and inspirations, we find positive power and potential layered into this image.

a 1909 card scanned by Holly Voley and retrieved from Sacred Texts. Deck available from US Games

Horns are markers of vital deities across cultures. Hathor, the great Mother Goddess of ancient Egypt, is shown with cow horns that hold a symbol of the sun she is said to give birth to each day. The Greek God Pan sports horns as he makes music through field and groove. Cernunnos, the Celtic God of fertility, rules over the natural, animal, instinctual, and sexual forces of life. So, peel back our first fearful reaction to the Devil, and we find horns calling us to notice the feminine, playful, and natural powers – and to reclaim these powers from how they have been demeaned and demonized in our culture.

Bats are classified as unclean and detested in the Bible, perhaps leading to an association with the Devil. I had a bat encounter where I admit I was afraid as one flew right for my face before swerving. But in many cultures what scares or is strange is not categorized as evil. North American Native Peoples honored the interconnection of all and observed bat behavior to find the teaching offered. They realized that bats can travel easily in the dark through a connection made by sound to its surroundings; bat then becomes a guide to dreams, intuitions, and vision. Bat is also associated with the Greek Goddess Persephone who descends to the dark of the Underworld for part of each year so that the new can be gestated in the womb of the earth. Aware of these associations, the Devil’s bat wings guide us away from our fear of the dark and the Divine Feminine to find our way toward their gifts. (Hmm, yes, this is the second instance of the Divine Feminine hiding within what is deemed to be bad and waiting for us to connect with her true power.)

The chicken feet remind me of The Raziel Tarot’s Devil. Drawn from Jewish lore, mystical teachings, and traditional stories, the Raziel offers a Devil who is a trickster but has limited power. Deck creator Rachel Pollack enlightens us about the difference between the Jewish and Christian conceptions of the Devil: “Quite simply, the idea of an all-powerful Devil … does not exist in Judaism …. No great Devil holds the souls of all humanity in its grip.” Pollack relates the tale of the Devil displacing and then masquerading as the wise ruler King Solomon. But Solomon sneaks back to court disguised as a beggar, reveals the Devil’s chicken feet, and regains his throne. The Devil can be defeated by the humble human; time to stop giving the Devils in our lives so much of our own power.

On the surface, the Devil is a mess, but below that strange puzzle of parts great powers waiting to emerge. And isn’t that frequently a reflection of each of us? We are an assortment of quirks and wounds, conflicting desires and internal voices, and addictions both small and large.

We may try to present a perfect face, but each of us is a part of the larger world, which, let’s admit it, is a mess. But if we dig into rather than fear these strange parts, we can move more fully into who we are. We can acknowledge the challenge of a part but instead of fighting it channel our energy toward developing the gift it contains. And as we do, the untapped power waiting within can emerge to support personal and even planetary healing. (FYI, we contemplate these themes in the first week of Tending the Returning Light, the second half of the Solstice-hinged retreat-in-everyday life that starts on Monday, the 30^th. Now, is a fine time to join us.)

So what is the part of you that seems ugliest, that you hide the most? During the moonth and the whole first half of the year, spend some time finding the gift in this part and encountering it as a tool for transformation.

Passage We May Encounter and Practice to Move Through

This moonth’s path takes us through the action of the Two of Pentacles. In the iconic Rider Waite Smith image, a figure stands – dances? hops? – on one foot while juggling two pentacles, the symbols of the suit of earth. This card offers up a mirror of us doing the busy juggle of our lives, often just barely balancing conflicting priorities but sometimes excited to find ourselves in the flow of task achievement.

a 1909 card scanned by Holly Voley and retrieved from Sacred Texts. Deck available from US Games

The Pentacles are connected by the lemniscate, a symbol of eternity also featured on the Rider Waite Smith Major Arcana cards of the Magician and Strength. The repetition of the symbol invites us to recognize a greater potential in the Two of Pentacles message. Perhaps our daily struggles that seem small are really part of something larger and more meaningful. Perhaps we just need the strength to recognize how we can make magic in the world with our daily actions. Then we can choose what actions to take and which priorities to focus on in alignment with the impact we would like to make on the world around us.

To cultivate that strength to make magic with your daily actions, you might begin your yearly planning or resolution-setting by focusing on what you most seek to serve – the Divine Feminine, Justice, increased civil discourse, greater creativity; these are just a few service examples – and then identify the action steps that support your focus. Pare away what does not serve your focus to avoid juggling too many things at once.

There is one final connection to make. In mathematics, the lemniscate can be called The Devil’s Curve. When we add the Devil into the mix, we can say that the Strength to make Magic comes from meeting and integrating all the strange parts of ourselves. This is no doubt a lifelong process. There is no ultimate state to reach because when we arrive at such a feeling the Devil will appear to show us something ugly that can help us grow.

Take your time with your focusing, integrating, and planning as we begin the year. In the Twos we practice discernment and patience. Remembering we are on the Devil’s path, we resist the critical/chaotic voices that want to keep us from grounding our actions in our inner wisdom and deep commitments. “Move at the pace of guidance” is a helpful adage I know from Joanna Powell Colbert.

Posture to Take on the Path

The Queen of Pentacles shows us that the place to manifest our strong magic is on the earth. This Queen sits amidst a lush garden; partnership with natural forces has brought forth abundance and beauty.

a 1909 card scanned by Holly Voley and retrieved from Sacred Texts. Deck available from US Games

Wearing red, the same color as the Magician’s cloak, the Queen of Pentacles’ loving gaze is directed toward the pentacle in a way similar to the gaze of Strength’s figure towards the lion. And the Queen’s crown is topped with … well, they rather look like horns!

When this Queen and us, too, when we follow this wisdom figure’s lead, unite these disparate energies within ourselves, the world blooms.

The Queen of Pentacles magic is elemental and manifest for the good of the Whole. We are invited into the same way of being.

Reading of 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.

MAGIC: What magic is yours to make at this time?

STRENGTH: How can you cultivate the strength to bring forth this magic?

MANIFESTATION: What will you be able to make real?

I do offer this as an e-reading in my collaborative initiative format for $32. Sign up with Pay Pal or contact 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. I will be doing readings after January 1 as I take a few days off at the end of the year.

Before the moon is made new on December 30th  (exact at …  5:27 pm ET, time zone converter), it returns to the place on the astrological Wheel where it began its moonthly journey. The energy gathered through the moonth now flows away into moonless nights. What will you send with this energy to be transformed in the dark?

The moonth we are concluding began and now ends in Sagittarius which corresponds to the Tarot’s Temperance card. In the Dark Goddess Tarot, Temperance is Brigid, the Irish Goddess of Craft, Art, and Healing. She is both a fire goddess found in the hearth and a water goddess experienced in sacred wells.  Ellen Lorenzi-Prince, creator of the Dark Goddess Tarot, description of her includes:

Although she is the Bright One, Brigid weds a dark figure, King Bress, whose progenitors are the Fomorii, the spirits of the evil dead. Together they have a trinity of sons, Day, Light, and Life. Brigid wails after finding her beloved son dead on the battlefield, initiating the practice of keening for grief and protest, a sacred gift of expression and power in dark days. 

Brigid ’s appearance is a call to embrace the divergent parts of ourselves, to be both fire and water. To dare to shine brightly, seeking to make real the best possible future for the Whole while also flowing with the tears of grief for the loss in our lives and in our broken open world. 

Guided by Brigid in this dark moon time, we are invited to surrender to achievements and the losses of a double ending.

First, we are ending the moonth that began on December 1st. Second, we are at the end of the calendar year. Along with releasing what we do not want to carry from the past 28 days, this dark moon time invites us to begin to release what we’ve seen must come to an end from trials and tests of this passing year.  Along with our personal surrender, we can bring the power of our intention and possibly our keening to ask for the transformation of what can no longer exist in its current state in our communities, countries, and the world. Our inner and ritual work to surrender these with Brigid’s help can compliment our outer and collective action work.

Reflection, Ritual, and Release

From 2:47 pm ET on Friday, December 27th through 11:37 pm ET on Sunday, December 29th, the dark moon returning to Sagittarius/Temperance is especially potent for supporting your transformation (but any time before the new moon’s arrival when you can fit it in is helpful). You are invited to engage in reflection and ritual to celebrate achievements of the moonth passing and release what you do not want to carry into the next lunation. 

• Ponder the happenings of the moonth. If you journal, you’ll have a handy record for your personal memories, but even just looking back at your appointment calendar or photos taken can jog your mind about what’s been going on in the past few weeks. 
• Let yourself appreciate what you remember as successes or gifts. Let your gratitude for them fill your heart. And/or you could pull a Tarot or oracle card to show you where you have shone brightly.
• Also open your heart to the memories and feelings of where you fell short of dreams or goals, experienced difficulty, or lost a connection to something once important. And/or you could pull a Tarot or oracle card to show you where you have been swamped by dark waters. As you shift through memories and feelings, let yourself become aware of what you are ready to release so you don’t carry it into the next moonth. 
• Create sacred space by, for example, lighting a candle, imagining that you are ringed with a circle of protection, and/or your usual actions.
• You can invite Brigid and/or the face of Greater Than that you have been serving this moonth to with you and aid you in this dark moon release. Spend as much time as you need connecting with Them. You might say a prayer something like: “Brigid, full of power, full of compassion, I trust you to take from me/us all that I/we do not need to carry into the next moon cycle/year.”
• When you are ready ask Brigid or your Guide to receive the first thing you want to release. You might imagine Them placing this release into a fire where it shifts form or placing it into water where it dissolves. Or both. Do this for each of your releases. 
• After you have completed your releasing, tune into your body, feeling it lighter. Re-center yourself by connecting with earth below you and the sky above you. Feel their energy mix in your heart. Offer gratitude. Be open to a blessing coming to you from Brigid  and/or your face of the Greater Than.

When the new moon arrives, you may want to make wishes for the moonth and/or year to come. Be sure to write them down to revisit in January for the making of concrete plans of action to make the wishes real and/or revisiting at the end of the moonth.

The height of this moonth’s cycle comes with the full moon arriving early morning December 15th (exact at 4:01 am ET, time zone converter), and offers a revelation about how the lunar energies initiated on the December 1st new moon are developing. The new moon, guided by its association with Temperance, 8 of Wands, and the Knight of Wands inspired us to stay on our path. Out of this 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 Gemini associated with the Tarot’s Lovers. When Temperance encounters the Lovers shining in the moonlight, a new consciousness about how love is created, tempered, and transformed as well as from where it springs may emerge.

Playing with the numbers associated with these cards makes an interesting connection appropriate to the timing of this full moon closest to the Solstice. Temperance’s 14 added to the Lover’s 6 = Judgement’s 20, also known as Awakening.

In the Overview Booklet for Descent and Return of the Light (Soul Path Sanctuary’s Winter Solstice-hinged virtual retreat) I write about Awakening, making a connection to the Winter Solstice that arrives in next week here in the Northern Hemisphere:

In the Gaian Tarot’s Awakening, a dark figure stands open-hearted before the Divine above the dark passage into Ireland’s Neolithic mound at Newgrange, the best-known monument in a complex of burial and astrological sacred sites known as Brú na Bóinne, home to the Celtic God of Love and Dreams Aengus.

Most of the year Newgrange’s interior lies in darkness, but on Winter Solstice morning a roof box at the entrance is arranged such that the rising sun is channeled to flood its passageway and chambers in light for 17 minutes.

In these moments, Dark and Light mix together. I imagine they rise and fall exuberantly like long separated lovers to conceive the next spiral of the world’s becoming. Dark and Light each need moments of their own fullness, but then their reunion on the Solstice creates that generative energy that the Italian poet Dante named so beautifully as the “love that moves the sun and other stars.”

The Dark does not actually birth the Light. The Dark and the Light – after times of separation – come together to conceive and birth Love. They begin a partnership of nurturance to bestow on Love their own best qualities that might be named as: intimacy, mystery, surrender, passion, growth, and joy. The inheritance of Love is both Dark and Light.

The Solstice season with its holidays of many traditions invites us to embrace this full-spectrum Love that excludes nothing and embrace all.

I have to admit that my conflicted relationship with the season, especially Christmas, has at times kept me from that Love. I’ve swung from childhood delight of gift-giving during my Christian childhood to fleeing traumatic holidays of family breakdown, mental health crises, and punishing expectations. For years, I boycotted Christmas, was a grinch. In these times, I stood either in the light or the dark, not letting them mix.

But one of the first things my late partner John said to me was: “I love Christmas! It’s a time to show your thanks to the good people in your life.” He already had my heart, but I didn’t know if I could embrace the holiday. Eventually, he won me over. His delight was infectious. He had a 20-foot Christmas tree in his loft (this is literally true, not hyperbole) and made candy sleighs to give to people at work. He celebrated the real sentiment of the season.

Still, we were not Christian. He had never been, and I wasn’t any more. The story and traditions of the holiday did not fit. But the Solstice’s return of the light did so we claimed this as the holiday we celebrated. Fortunately, we got to keep the tree, a pagan tradition adopted into Christianity—or as the comedian Stephen Colbert says, “a symbol so Christian it predates Christ.” I basked in the light of the Solstice season.

Then John died in November 2012. Yes, the dark descended. My body flooded with tears—how is it possible for one body to produce so much snot? Then the Solstice fell on the 49th day since his death; I felt his presence: a literal breath. A little light shimmered there in the darkness. (More of this story is in 49 Days to the Green Door of Death).

Since then I’ve been finding my way with trial and error and sometimes tipping between the Light and Dark to birth the Love. Descent and Return of the Light is one of the offerings to emerge from this journey. Each year we follow a similar weekly pattern because the sun follows a steady course. But the moon varies and gives each year a particular energy.

This year the moon will be descending out of its fullness along with the sun’s descent to the shortest day of the year on the Winter Solstice. It is a good time to contemplate this quote from Demetra George’s Mysteries of the Dark Moon:

If we correctly understand the dark, we can use the cover of darkness to learn the magic of our particular sacred rites, which can lead to a revitalized and replenished life.

The dark offers us the space to look inward and find our unique sacred rites. We might draw upon time-honored traditions—the tree, the candle, the song—but we don’t do them by rote; each year we imbue them with personal meaning and do what tends our souls. Or we might step outside traditions to create our own practices even if they seem strange in the eyes of others—reversing the weekly lighting of candles to invite the dark as we do in Descent or other personally created practices. These rites feed our soul, are freely chosen, emerge from the compost or our lives.

The deep dark and the soul-tending practice then lead us into the light of our revitalized and replenished lives.

What are your seasonal practices that mix the Light and Dark? I’d love to hear them; feel free to share in the comments below.

Or if you are feeling in need of new practices, I invite you to take some time going inward to tune into the callings of our soul, to sit with your longing, to imagine how you’d honor both Dark and Light. You could then do a little research on spiritual practices of the season to see what resonates and try it out. Because we are practicing, there is no need for perfection.

If you’d like to join in on Descent and Return of the Light, it is not too late. In fact, Monday, the 16th, will focus on release and renewal of all we don’t want to carry into the next solar year. That is great preparation for Solstice celebration on Saturday, the 21st, and then tending the returning light in January.

But before rushing off into the new year, may these full moon nights offer you a revelation about Love and how to best continue your journey of moonthly cycle and through the Solstice. To encourage the revelation, 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 Temperance and Lovers cards from your Tarot deck and connect them to any 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.
• Reflect on questions such as: What is love calling me to? How is my love fed by the dark? What light does my love bring into the world? How can I strengthen my love? How can I bring more love into the world? 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.

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 27th, offer your gift to the world.

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