A snake isn't worse than a rose if you are looking for a way to kill a character. A jewel isn't better than a tornado if you want to move the action of your story somewhere else.

We record this by leaving the work unfinished and unresolved. The absence is a space for grief.

Rachel Pollock writes that “in divinatory readings the moon indicates an excitement of the unconscious. We begin to experience strange emotions, dreams, fears, even hallucinations. We find ourselves more intuitive, more psychic.”

What happens if you think about your projects not in terms of word counts, but in seasons? Could you be guided by a full seasonal cycle, from solstice to solstice, or Samhain to Samhain? Or could you work with your solar return?

How do you use a year ahead spread in your writing?

Have you been feeling like you could use a change in your writing routine? Perhaps you would like to find a regular weekly slot to work? Or even something more drastic like a complete change in direction?

How do you build rest into your writing practice? When do you let the field lay fallow, and when do you let it grow wild? What is a writing sabbatical, and how can it support your creativity?

When we read a story, temptation only works when we agree to it. Like the two figures here, we must submit to story.

Story is a drug. Story is the reason we keep reading. We get high on the story to the point where we can forget our surroundings, the time, whatever else we're meant to be doing. Sometimes, a story can begin to feel more real to us than the mundane world.

The Five of Pentacles appears to be about stuckness, and scarcity, but it can teach us a lot about the luminous mysteries.

The Modern Witch card shows two figures wrapped against the cold. they echo each other's poses, hunched forward, driving into the snowstorm ahead. The colours of their clothes are complementary, with mint green, caramel, and black woven through each costume. They are in sympathy, but not communicating directly, each lost in their own struggle against the elements.

This week's card, The Ace of Pentacles, is a little reminder that to progress, to grow, and to succeed, sometimes we need to take a step back to listen to what the universe is sending our way. if we keep frenetically trying to force our way through the world, we will lose sight of the luscious opportunities being handed down from the clouds.

Happy Autumn Equinox to those of you who are in the Northern hemisphere. In the cycle of the year, this would traditionally be a time of bringing in our harvests, and withdrawing into a slower, quieter time in tune with the colder and darker months. Though this isn't possible for most of us in our electric-lit 24-hour universe, we can still find moments to tune in to that inner quietness, to harvest what we have planted, and to thank the universe for what we have.

The Hermit card in The Modern Witch deck came up in a recent collaborative reading with witch friends, and we were struck by the technological aspects of this card, where the laptop represented connectivity and knowledge, in contrast to the conventional ideas around hermitage being about withdrawing into solitude, and working through knowledge alone. The card in this deck offers so much comfort through that connection, modelling a form of self-knowledge that is formed through consultation of existing traditions, nurtured through understanding our place in a lineage, and strengthened through community.

In this card, the figure is older than some of the others in the deck, perhaps in her forties or fifties. Her serenity is apparent, the bird sitting peacefully on her head, the armful of produce, her calm view of the field, and a gentle hand on the pentacles, as though she isn’t too attached to them, doesn’t need to control them. There is plenty, she seems to tell us, there will be enough.

The most powerful aspect of a story is the transformation, and the most potent storytelling involves a reversal of fortune, or a point of no return, when everything the characters (and the reader) thought they knew is unsettled, or even shattered, and they must forge a new path. A story is about the moment of unstoppable inevitability of knowledge or action: think of Greek tragedies, folk tales, revolutions, mysteries. Humans are wired to be hungry for these kinds of stories, because they help us to understand a chaotic and sometimes brutal world.

When we are used to experiencing adrenaline, or the effects of trauma, rest and relaxation can feel counterintuitive: allowing our muscles to relax can give a stronger sensation than our familiar contractions. In pandemic times, for some of us, hunching over our screens has become powerfully connected to our “free” time. The Hanged One asks us to stop scrolling, to release ourselves from adrenalized patterns, and to trust ourselves to just be, with nowhere to go. We already know the destination, there’s no wrong way to get there.

Fours tend to represent stability and support, in the Modern Witch deck, the four wands have been made into a shelter, gateway, or portal decked with festive foliage. In the Wild Unknown deck, the wands are criss-crossed in a pattern that suggest structural integrity, without rigidity. Wands are associated with the element of fire. This combustible energy is there when we have the first spark of an idea for a project that lights us up, it is what drives us on with writing when we are tired, or ill, or dispirited.

The fractal theory of the universe (something I first came across through reading Jurassic Park as a teenager, and have been a bit obsessed with ever since) suggests that every action is a microcosm of a larger pattern of actions, these patterns repeat over time in history, but they also repeat in physical space (cut a rock in half and the pattern is an echo of the larger mountain it is cut from). By applying this fractal theory to humanity, Ford and Elliot claim that we are already in profound communion with all other humans, and each one of us is capable of the same range of dark and light behaviours, it is a matter of circumstance and context that determines the outcomes.

Tens represent the culmination of the energy of each suit, and the Ten of Swords is the associated with the intellect, and with air. In Lisa Sterle’s illustration, the black background is abyssal, cosmic, but the human figure lies comfortably on rocky ground, the mineral creep of her stone-grey hair blending with the terrain. The streak of pink in the sky, a symbol of the breaking dawn, echoes her clothes: there is a symbiosis between her body and the landscape. Her face is impassive as she withstands piercing blows that have already passed. This card is about processing trauma and finding a way through. We can also see how her body craves rest, but her mind is still active as she scrolls through her phone.

Of all the court cards, the page is the youngest and has the most raw and childlike relationship with their suit. Cups are the symbol of emotion, and the Page of Cups has an unfiltered relationship with their intuition. In this illustration, the Page of Cups stands on solid ground, with the choppy sea behind them, they have laced-up trainers, but instead of running they stand in an elegant, balletic pose. They are holding a pink chalice, from which a fish emerges. The Page of Cups looks at the fish with curiosity, not fear or discomfort, and accepts the surprise without judgment. This card asks us to consider where in our lives we feel like a fish out of water, or where we might recieve an unexpected visitor from the deep.