Step into your season of care
An excerpt from The Tarot Spreads Yearbook to help you approach the rest of the winter with warmth
Hi little coven. I’d hoped to provide an audio recording for today’s letter, but I’m been fighting a cold since NYE and it’s just not meant to happen. I hope you’ll forgive me and enjoy this special excerpt from The Tarot Spreads Yearbook anyway.
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My first book, The Tarot Spreads Yearbook, guides readers through four seasons of the soul, and includes a tarot spread for every week of the year. The book is designed so that readers can begin at any time of year, but it’s true that each of the four phases drew inspiration from the Earth’s seasonal rhythm, too. Winter is represented in the Season of Care. Given that we’re deep in the throes of winter now - and I’m caring for myself through a nasty cold and a nastier suite of deadlines - I can’t think of a better time to share some of my musings on care with you.
Read on for an excerpt from the Season of Care chapter1 in The Tarot Spreads Yearbook, and for a peek at the first spread of the season.
Want to enrich your soul’s Season of Care through a community-based journaling experience? On 14th January, I’m hosting a FREE Care-themed tarot journaling event. Drop-in journaling sessions throughout the rest of the winter season will follow.
The tarot is a tool for knowing yourself, and knowing yourself is the first step to caring for yourself. At least that’s the idea that Plato posits in his Socratic Dialogue, Alcibiades I. “Care for your psyche,” he writes. “Know thyself, for once we know ourselves, we may learn how to care for ourselves."
This season, we’re following Plato’s advice, and then some. We’re tapping into the tarot in order know ourselves, so that we can care not only for ourselves, but for the people in our lives, and for the world around us.
Exploring care is a big task, because the word covers a wide umbrella: Care is getting a good night’s sleep, eating a balanced meal, spending quality time with the people we love, giving back to our community. Care is being a citizen of the earth. Care is giving time to our passions, investing in our future.
Care is seeking mental health resources when - and even before - we find ourselves in need of them. Care is saying no to some things and yes to others. Care is relieving pressure, rejecting stereotypes that don’t feel good to us. Care can mean leaving, or staying. For each of us, in every moment, the care we need, and the care we have to offer, is completely unique to us.
For that reason, one of the best ways to kick this season off in a spirit of care, is to define what care means to you right now. Like Plato said, you’ve got to know yourself to care for yourself – so let’s dig deep into what you know about your personal relationship with care, as it stands right now.
Spend a few minutes journaling out your feelings about care – all the good and the bad that come with the word, and then ask yourself these questions:
What makes me feel cared for?
How do I care for myself?
How do I want to care for others?
If I could improve one thing about my relationship with care this season, what would it be?
Care in the tarot
Care is a pervasive theme throughout the tarot.
In its own way, each suit is dedicated to care.
Pentacles prioritise care of the body, the earth, and our resources. As we saw already in the Season of Growth, cards like the Seven and Eight of Pentacles are particularly good illustrations of a caretaking energy. In the Seven, we see a farmer contemplating his crop. The Eight puts care in action, offering an example of what it looks like to do our work with care. Even a card like the Four of Pentacles captures an aspect of care – the figure may simply be trying to care for more than they have the realistic resources to give.
The Cups depict what it means to care for our own emotions, and to hold space for the care of others. The King and Queen of Cups are paragons of caring leadership, while the Six of Cups is a beautiful ode to community care. The Four and Five, meanwhile, encourage us to make space and offer care to ourselves and others in the midst of difficult times.
The Wands capture the care and feeding of our spirit. The early cards in this suit, like the Two, Three, and Four, are nods to dreaming big and celebrating our achievements – essential forms of care for our creative side. The later cards, especially the Nine and Ten warn against what happens when we stretch ourselves too thin, and forget to prioritise what brings us joy.
And the harrowing journey through the Swords suit is a reminder that we need to balance our hard times out with care. The Four of Swords is a call for rest and retreat, while the Three, Six, and Ten all acknowledge in their own ways that self-care is hardly a picnic. Doing what we need to do for ourselves can be a gnarly business, and no suit embraces that truth more than the Swords.
The Major Arcana as a whole is a journey toward deep, soul care – but a few particular cards stand out when we talk about care. The Star is the quintessential care card within the tarot. It’s a literal illustration of what it means to fill your own well – and how, in doing so, you create new depths to draw on and gain strength to bring back into the world.
If the Star is a card about giving care to ourselves, then the Empress is a card that captures the energy of giving care to others, and receiving care from them, too. The Empress is typically represented as an earth mother or divine feminine archetype. In one of my favourite tarot decks, Ari Wisner’s genderless Transient Light Tarot, the Empress is renamed and simply titled “The Nurturer.” It's illustrated by a pearl cushioned in the protection of an oyster – a reminder that care offers the conditions for beauty.
Another important Major card when it comes to care is Strength. This card, which traditionally depicts a feminine figure taming a beast, illustrates the duality implicit in the act of giving care – the essential combination of gentleness and pure grit. In French, the card is titled “La Force,” and even more than strength, I think this captures the sheer willpower that care requires. To care for ourselves, and to care for others, is not for the faint of heart.
Reminder
This season is all about care, and whilst you’re learning about your relationship to how to give and receive care, make a special effort to care for yourself as you move throughout the season.
You may find that by diving deep into getting a better understanding of what care means for you, you have less time to give care to others. You may need more time to yourself for discovery and change, which naturally results in less time for others. When guilt creeps in, remind yourself that this season is an investment in your long-term relationship with care, and that your loved ones will benefit from you taking this time.
Audre Lorde said it best when she called self-care a form of self-preservation. While her words have been twisted in recent years to sell commercialised versions of self-care, you can take the liberty right now to reclaim them. To think about self-care as an act that is ultimately in service of the care you offer others. You can’t pour from an empty cup – look no further than the suit of Cups to tell you that much – so make sure yours is full to the brim, and never forget you deserve that.
The Season of Care Intentions Spread
This spread is all about helping you start off your Season of Care on the right foot. It’s designed to help you define what care will look and feel like for you this season, so that you can get down to the task of doing care instead of thinking about care.
To set intentions for the Season of Care using this spread, shuffle your deck and lay three cards out before you, according to the following prompts:
1 – How can I care for myself this season?
2 – How can I care for others this season?
3 – What is the biggest lesson I need to learn about care?
By drawing cards for this spread, you’ll look at three crucial aspects of care you need to get clear on as you move into this season: the care you give yourself, the care you give others, and your overarching relationship to what it means to care and be cared for.
Whether you use this spread once or fifty times, the most important thing is that you carry out the care you’ve learned that you, and the people in your life, need. Any time you pull cards for this spread, take five minutes to draft a list of small actions you can take to prioritise care in the coming hours, days, or weeks.
Join me on 14th January to journal through this spread live, and have the chance to ask me questions about the cards you pulled, your Season of Care journey, or other broader tarot topics. Click here to sign up.
Join the conversation in the comments:
What did this piece bring up for you? I’d love to know:
What does Care mean to you?
How will you step into your own Season of Care?
What tarot cards help you to prioritise care?
Anything else you’d like to share?
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This excerpt has been adapted, with some amends and cuts, from The Tarot Spreads Yearbook, published in April 2023. For the full reading experience, order a print or digital copy of the book here.