New Moon Gateway: The Way of Imagination

New moon guidance + a reading inspired by the Tarot's Moon, 8 of Cups, & Knight of Cups. Also words of power, event reminders, & free resources for tending a loving flow between the living and dead.

Greetings, my fellow seekers!

I’m writing this on a bleak day. What’s left of once beautiful snow is a gritty dark mass flanking my driveway. There’s a headline: Our Rogue President. The small bit of ceasefire relief in Gaza hasn’t found its next step. Even the good news from Germany that the extremist, Nazi-apologizing/flirting Alternative for Germany (AfD) party didn’t have a surprise victory is muted by their surge in popularity.

What to do in this bleakness? Let’s imagine the impossible: the world of our values made real, recovery from catastrophe, joy and justice in the streets!

Yes, as we enter the moonth of the Tarot’s Moon (exact moment is Thursday, the 27th at 7:45 pm ET, time zone converter) let’s draw upon its imaginative energy to find our way forward. My full post and reading of the moonth are below.

As you may remember, since the election Rachel Pollack’s Moon guidance from The Raziel Tarot has been a touchstone. She tells us: “The situation is perilous. You must stay on the path.”

Our paths may be unique in their specifics, but Rachel calls us to a shared path of our deepest/highest values, the one that leads to our great aspirations, the one that connects us to the people in our lives and the earth under our feet.

For Rachel imagination is a vital force on the path. As we move through this moon of The Moon, we, too, can cultivate the imagination’s vitality in our lives and to renew the world.

Last Friday I attended a literary event with another visionary of the imagination: Olivia Elias, a poet of the Palestinian diaspora, born in Haifa in 1944, who writes in French but is recently translated into English.

In a 2023 interview in Arab Lit she spoke for the imagination, saying: My message is to refuse the mind-numbing constraints of the There is no other alternative (TINA) slogan, and bear in mind the horizon of another possible world.

Last Friday at the end of the reading, she began speaking about the power of the word and I started scribbling as fast I could to catch her wisdom. This is what I heard her saying:

When we write in a time of genocide we have to believe in the power of the word. The word is not inert. Words have energy, travel through air. When words are said energy is amplified and the energy of the word meets the energy of the heart.

We are more powerful than we think. Don’t underestimate your power to stand for existence, to stand for life.

She speaks as a poet and a Palestinian. Yes, inviting us to stand with her people. And also offering wisdom for our current struggles (I see them as all entwined anyway) where we seem to lack the power to make the changes desired.

In these times Elias calls us back to the power of our words to stand for the what is life-giving. We can use them to:

• Speak and write to our local, state, and national legislators. 5Calls keeps you up on US issues. Jewish Voice for Peace hosts a Power Half Hour for Palestine Solidarity with daily actions.

• Create signs and banners to take the streets.

• Write letters to the editor.

• Express the impossible becoming possible in our poems and stories.

We may not discern an immediate shift, but as we keep bringing our words into the public sphere the energy will build. We don’t know what word will be the tipping point so we keep offering to the collective. We dare to believe in the power of our words gathered together.

Is there a place for silence? Since I believe the Tarot’s great teaching is the synergy of seeming opposites, I say yes. Buy Nothing Day on Friday, February 28th, is an opportunity for silence. A time for action through inaction. The message is to not buy anything from midnight to midnight—especially not from large corporations. You can use cash at small, local businesses if necessary. You may want to just stay home, be quiet, play with your Tarot cards (a reading for them is below), and tune into the new moon just arrived.

I’d love to hear any moon messages that you receive!

New moon blessings to you,

Carolyn

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Events

April: Easthampton’s Poetry Month and my last as Poet Laureate. I will be in the Easthampton City Arts Gallery for the month with an opening reception during Art Walk on Saturday, the 5th from 4 pm to 7 pm. I will once again facilitate a group reading, Voices of Easthampton, on Saturday, the 26th at 2 pm in CitySpace’s Blue Room.

July: Omega’s Wisdom of the Tarot with me and Mary Greer July 21 to 25 in Rhinebeck, NY. This week is part-workshop, part retreat, and part community reunion. Each year the topics and activities emerge from the needs and interests of the group. Rachel Pollack and Mary did it together for 30 years and created some of their favorite Tarot practices during the week. For the past 3 years, I’ve been doing what I can to carry the torch for Rachel and bring my own Tarot takes. This year I am looking forward to expanding material on working with the magic inherent in the world. I attended this week in 1999 and it changed my life.

November 2026: Kingston Tarot Lenormand Conference November 13 to 15, 2026 in Ontario, Canada. Registration will open at the end of March to allow for a very economical payment plan.

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New Moon Gateway: The Way of Imagination

The arrival of the new moon stamps the moonth with an initiating energy that shifts and develops through a cycle of growth, fullness, and descent. Each moonth I look to the Tarot’s astrological correspondences of the new moon to find 3 cards (a Major, a numbered Minor, and a court/people card) to find guidance for soul tending, prompts for personal/spiritual practice, and creating a moonthly reading. The reading can be done any time, but ideally between the new and full moons. Revisit the cards you pull periodically up until the next lunation to gain new insight as the light changes. This new moon arrives on Thursday, the 27th (exact at 7:45 pm ET, time zone converter).

Path of the Moonth: The Moon

In the iconic Rider Waite Smith Moon image, a lobster rises from the sea where it has been walking the ocean floor’s dark depths. Its claws reach toward a golden path leading to the mountains. To reach the end of the journey, the tiny creature will have to pass by obstacles – the howling dog and wolf – and through a strange landscape – rolling hills as blue as the sea support twin doorless towers. Above the moon shines as brightly as the sun. These incongruous elements give the feeling of a dream. Meaning can’t be made with the rational mind about what is happening here. We are in the realm of the emotional, otherworldly, and unconscious. We’ll have to use our intuition as we travel the Moon’s path.

The Haindl Tarot’s Moon draws us even more deeply into the dream of this archetype. There’s a lobster here, too, and a path out of the sea. The path is not golden but watery and flows toward a unicorn with an enormous horn.

From The Haindl Tarot

While unicorns may be based on an actual animal - the extinct aurochs? - they exist today only because of imagination: our human ability to form images and concepts that are actually not present to the senses or exist in physical form. Our imaginations have imbued the unicorn with many meanings over the centuries.

Today pink sparkly ones are ubiquitous in cartoons and on children’s sneakers. But in centuries past the unicorn was a symbol of sacrifice representing Jesus Christ giving his life to protect a maiden embroidered onto tapestries of the nobility. The unicorn as symbol holds both delight and sacrifice, is found in commercial and creative spheres.

The Haindl’s unicorn undertakes an impossible feat: birthing itself out of ancient rock. The powerful horn extends beyond the image’s edge, breaking through into the beyond. When we take this unicorn as our wisdom guide, we are invited to break through to the:

• Impossible. Because most of what now exists was once thought to be impossible from social security to hand-held computers (i.e. our cell phones!); from women’s suffrage to same-sex marriage; from anything you have created to relationships with your chosen beloveds. What is your dream right now? If someone tells you that’s impossible, you can smile because that means it is on the way.

• Invisible. Because there is a realm beyond that we cannot see. We all conceive of, and make our connections to, this realm differently. You may know this as the place of ancestors, beloved dead, spirits, saints, or ley lines. None can be seen, but all offer support to us for walking the paths of our lives.

• Greater Than that goes by many different names: Goddess, God, Holy One, Universal Energy, the One that Holds the Whole.

Breakthroughs of the imagination open the way for the unreal to become real.

Passage and Practice: Eight of Cups

When we embrace the images, messages, and possibilities flowing from our imagination, our perspective on the world changes. What we were satisfied with before may no longer be large enough now. We may be called to move in a new direction. This is what happens when we walk the Moon path through the Eight of Cups.

In the Tarot of the Moors’ Eight of Cups, a figure walks along the edge of a desert dune away from eight small cups and toward a deep blue sky filled with a star constellation, the planet Saturn, and a full well of water.

From Tarot of the Moors - My favorite version of 8 of Cups!

The contents of the eight cups may have once satisfied and in a desert environment the certainty of water is not to be left behind lightly. But the stars are guiding the figure toward the well, a source of new and deeper refreshment. No matter how unrealistic it may seem, we must follow the spark of our imaginations toward that well.

Posture to Take on This Path: Knight of Cups

Our guide for tending that inner light on the Moon’s winding path this lunar cycle is The Knight of Cups. All knights are devoted to a cause greater than themselves. The Tarot’s knights serve and seek to expand the gifts of their element. The suit of Cups associated with the element of water offers us emotional range, creative connection, intuitive wisdom, and Love.

From the Massachusetts Tarot Society collaborative deck - my John!

Yes, these knights are dreamers, but they also take the action necessary to make the dream real through:

• creating art in the form of poems or dance or song;

• offering healing practices to those in the stress of uncertainty; or

• facilitating meetings where all ideas and emotions are expressed, for example.

Yes, they are lovers with a romantic streak, but their love is not limited to a romantic partner. Their watery, expansive selves feel the connection to even those they do not know. They do know that to love is to act for the good of the Whole—and they invite us to follow.

These Knights invites us to follow our path and practices with attitudes that support being in the flow of life while letting go of the need to control what is happening. With them as our guides we come to know that relinquishing control is not a passive activity, but rather a different, more aligned way of engaging with the world as it is.

The poet Rilke describes this approach to life as “no forcing, no holding back.” When we find this right balance between action and surrender, we are better able to ride on the wild waves of our emotions, our daily life, and any chaos that comes toward us. Our trust in self and world is strengthened, not because everything turns out the way we want but because we find we can move through the challenges that come our way.

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.

IMAGINATION: What wants to emerge from my imagination?

NEW DIRECTION: What new direction does my imagination invite me to explore?

ACTION: How to embrace the imaginative flow of the moonth?

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.

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Soul Path Sanctuary Library

These essays offer inspiration and practice prompts to support the loving flow between the living and the dead. They are available at no cost in the Soul Path Sanctuary library. Feel free to share with anyone who could use support on their grief journey. 

Broken Open Heart in the Imaginal Realm

Speak Soul-to-Soul

49 Days and the Green Door of Death

Eternity Box: Anniversary of a Death

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Soul Path Sanctuary Offerings

Question-Focused Tarot Sessions 

I am offering these 60-90 minute interactive sessions to explore a focus question by phone or Zoom. Cost: $100. If interested, contact me about timing and to receive your focus question prep sheet. 

Soul Path Mentoring 

Offered through on-going hour-long sessions usually at monthly or seasonal intervals. My studies and life experience make me a mentoring match for:

• Developing a spiritual practice

• Integrating Tarot into your spiritual practice

• Grief accompaniment 

• Embracing your creative process, especially for writers

• Moving through a life transition

Sessions are conversations guided by questions and can include Tarot (or not).

I’m happy to have a conversation with you about if you are interested in exploring this kind of soul support practice.