Welcoming Spring
Dear ones,
The affirmation I am working with this Spring comes from Heart Water, XX Awakening, and IV The Emperor:
“I am tender, grounded in the power of my agency, wide awake to Truth.”
In my yoga training, we are reading Yoga of Discipline by Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, and she includes this prayer:
Thank you for being here to practice looking, to practice discovering beauty.
At the Winter Solstice, I launched my Patreon page and a series of monthly Circles: a ritual to call in the New Moon, a class on Tarot, and an Art workshop centered around the Zodiac of the month.
If you have been looking for a space that is creative, spiritual, and educational, join us.
This letter is in four parts:
Part 1: Personal stories
Part 2: Discovering Beauty Tarot
Part 3: The Spring
Part 4: Ways to connect
Please feel free to skim, to just look at the pictures, to file this away for a later time.
Part 1: Paris, Ashtanga yoga, artmaking
One year ago this month, I moved myself and my familiar, Persephone, to Paris.
This last year has been the greatest adventure of my life. I have learned so much about myself and my deep fears and greatest hopes. I have re-met myself as a little girl, as a teenager, as an adult woman.
Discovering Beauty Tarot entered the world late last summer.
This past Fall, I began a yoga training program with a beloved teacher in New York.
I began practicing yoga asana as a little one, and I am constantly humbled by the opportunity to gain more mastery in my spiritual and physical practices.
This Spring, I have started language school, and feel like my roots are beginning to sink a little deeper as the words find home in my mind and mouth.
From our Adar Art Circle
I have been working at a cooperative grocery store, refilling bulk foods alongside others and reveling in the familiar smells that echo New York.
I have found favorite paths in the park, and huge old trees I say hello to and wrap my arms around.
This Winter, I have also been practicing my artmaking. I have been journeying through an Oracle deck partnership with a dear old friend, working in watercolor. My mom and I have launched into another Oracle project, exploring matriarchs in acrylic.
I have been sketching, painting, and making art to teach in Art Circles.
A sketch of Bethsabée au bain tenant la lettre de David by Rembrandt at le Louvre
Journaling has been a constant in my life, and in my morning ritual practice, I work inside my journal in conjunction with meditation, prayer, and pulling Tarot.
This year, I am working to formalize the design for a journal/planner, which I dream of printing and sharing.
From personal growth to professional…
Part 2: Discovering Beauty Tarot, 1st edition and 2nd edition
I am nearly out of first edition copies of Discovering Beauty Tarot.
I have standard decks available in the US, and standard decks, mini decks, and guidebooks available through Etsy for those elsewhere.
I also have a list of retailers who carry my deck across the world.
I recently compiled reviews of the deck.
I am eagerly awaiting paper samples from my printer, which will help me move forward in a design for the 2nd edition of Discovering Beauty Tarot.
My current plan is a standard-sized deck on black backgrounds, a French edition, and a limited edition with a larger-format guidebook. I am hopeful to launch the Kickstarter for the 2nd edition this Summer.
Which leads us into the heart of this season’s Tarot…
Part 3: The Spring
We are in a New Lunar Cycle that began March 19th, with the Moon turning to New in the Sign of Pisces.
We ushered in the Spring Equinox (in the Northern Hemisphere) on March 20th, which also welcomes in Aries season (March 20th - April 19th).
Aries begins the wheel of the Zodiac, and the month in which it begins in the Jewish calendar, Nisan, is the first of the months.
In mystic Judaism, each month is given different attributes. For the month of Nisan, the letter is Hei (ה), symbolizing G-d creating Heaven and Earth. The controlling body part is our right foot (moving forward), the sense is speech, and the zodiac is Aries.
Aries is a cardinal Fire sign, known for independence, action, leadership, passion, and beginnings. Aries is ruled by the planet Mars, a planet that teaches us about taking action, confrontation, directness, and courage.
I pulled Heart Water at the center for this Spring season and this New Moon in Pisces, with XX Awakening and IV The Emperor on either side.
Heart Water is a card about deep and enduring tenderness towards our own emotions and those of others. She represents an abundance of love, a safe space to exist as emotional creatures in our lives.
She is the ability to bear witness to the beating heart inside and know that the emotions flowing within are not a weight to bear, but something to bear witness to.
Heart Water is the safe and strong Mothering we all deserve and can offer ourselves, with patience and forgiveness.
So this Spring, may we start here: deeply tender, forgiving, gentle with ourselves and with others as we face it all.
XX Awakening was, aptly, the next card that came out in my pull for Spring.
Awakening is a card about being reborn into a truer version of ourselves, reclaiming past versions who have been cast out. Awakening is about coming back home to our own power, authoring our own narratives, and refusing to be defined by anything other than our own hard-won knowing.
She asks us for the strength to trust that we are coming out the other side, born anew.
And then, IV The Emperor, which is the Tarot card associated with Aries. The Emperor is a card about power and asks us to look at what arises in us when we hear this word.
In Discovering Beauty, The Emperor is an ancient Sequoia tree. Massive, rooted in this Earth for thousands of years. Her power does not come from rapid action, but from her own ancient knowing of her place, her purpose, her environment. She is bold and strong, containing her own knowing and the collective knowledge of the forest.
Here are some journaling questions you might sit with:
What does it mean to hold my emotions/the emotions of others with tenderness?
How can I become intolerable to forces that want me to stay small and quiet?
How can I step into my agency, my positive power?
& here is the spread we worked with in our Tarot Circle for the month:
Part 4: Ways to connect
If you feel called, you can begin by joining a Circle this month.
I offer virtual Tarot readings via Zoom, hand-written and mailed readings, and emailed PDF readings.
If you are in Paris, I also have in-person readings available. Reach out to me over email to schedule an in-person reading.
I am over on Instagram and TikTok, and also post at the New and Full Moons over on Substack.
I also have the pleasure of working in illustration and do commissioned work, creating paintings of pets and loved ones, logos for businesses, all sorts of wedding illustrations, package and book designs. Send me a note. I would love to collaborate.
Thank you for reading. Here is a poem, which I discovered through this beautiful review of Discovering Beauty by the incredibly Lucy Neville of TarotCake, that she linked back to Awakening in Discovering Beauty:
I will reach out through this newsletter again around the Summer Solstice in late June.
With all of my love and gratitude,
Sophia
PS, here are some rituals to work with as we call in abundance and crack open to the Spring:
Calling in and letting go
Find a small seed, a stone, or a shell. Sit with it awhile and think about what wishes and dreams you are germinating. Say them out loud to this small object if you feel comfortable, or practice this with a friend and tell one another. Place this object under a welcoming tree, in the planter of a plant in your home, or in a flower bed. Touch the dirt if it is possible, and offer your wish to her. Make it a wish of beauty and peace, for yourself, for our world.
In another moment, or before or after calling in, at a body of water, in the shower, during a bath, by pouring out a cup of water onto the Earth for a plant to drink, forgive yourself or someone else for something. Let something go, speaking it out loud, so it can be swept back up into the cycle of water around us.
Calling in abundance through giving mutual aid
The card for mutual aid, as I see it in the Tarot, is X Earth, the 10 of Pentacles. It is a card that reminds us that abundance is our Earthly right, that stories of scarcity are lies that we have been sold by systems that would serve to pit us against one another. To fight these systems, mutual aid is a brilliant practice. Give and watch yourself receive.
Here are some possibilities, but the opportunities are endless:
A drawing from our Shevat Art Circle
Counting the Omer
This is a practice that I have learned from Mark Horn, a beloved Tarot reader. He has a book called Tarot and the Gates of Light: A Kabbalistic Path to Liberation, which explores this 49-day practice that begins this Lunar Cycle, on the first night of Pesach, the Full Moon, April 2nd. I will be sharing about my own practice over on Patreon and invite you to check out Mark’s work to learn more.
PPS the comic I made for my partner in honor of one year of meeting:
