Three of Cups, July Fourth & the Mars-Uranus Conjunction

July 4th doesn’t feel like a party for me this year (or most years), and I wanted to say why without pretending it’s simple. In this episode, I’m riffing solo, unedited, exploring what the United States is celebrating at 250 years, what we’re ignoring, and what I wish we were celebrating instead.

As ever, I use Tarot and astrology as a framework for meaning-making, starting with the Three of Cups, the card associated with the part of the zodiac year that holds July 4th in Cancer season. In this card, three femmes dance with raised goblets, surrounded by the fruits of a shared harvest. This card is called the Lord of Abundance, sometimes described as the Walled Garden. 

In the context of July 4th, it raises a potent question: what would America feel like if safety, community joy, and plentitude were normal instead of rare? From there, I talk plainly about nationalism, white Christian nationalism, corruption, attacks on immigrants, and the steady erosion of public goods and public lands — because our creativity and our nervous systems live inside these systems.

I also talk about Cancer and the Chariot (emotion and forward motion), the moon and The High Priestess (intuitive knowing), and Mercury and The Magician (the possibility of honorable communication).

I hope you'll join me in imagining practical abundance during this weekend celebrating "freedom" — things like universal basic income, universal health care, well-resourced schools, more time to make art, and more local sharing that builds belonging. I also look at the Mars Uranus conjunction on July 4th as a charged, unpredictable transit and why it's important to slow down and stay grounded!

If this lands with you, send me a note via Fan Mail (link above), subscribe, share this episode with a friend, and leave a review so more Creative Spirits can find the show.

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Transcript

A Solo Riff On July Fourth

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Hello, creative spirits. Welcome to your creative and magical life, which is hopefully your real life, but is also this podcast. Just in case it's not your real life yet. We're working on that. Join me here to learn more. I'm your host, Cecily Saylor. I am a warrior for your creativity and your magic. And today it's just a solo episode. I am feeling called to riff a bit. I'm gonna try to do this in one take. I am not going to edit it. Yauza, I'm gonna toss it up there in the interest of time. And I have made some notes for myself, so hopefully this can be cohesive and coherent. I do have a Mercury in Sagittarius right next to Neptune. So, you know, it's always things can always slip off down a rabbit hole, down a time portal. Who knows? But I'll try to keep it on track. I have lots of Capricorn placements, so we do our best. We straddle, we straddle the duality, right? So today I am thinking about July 4th in the United States, and I'm thinking about the Three of Cups because the Three of Cups is the minor arcana card that is connected to the part of the zodiac wheel in which July 4th takes place. And I'll say more about that in a second. I first want to say because this is a you know straight take, you may hear my dogs, you might hear the laundry machine. I don't know. We'll see. Little ASMR for you in the background. But I'm not a big 4th of July person. It doesn't excite me that much. I don't actually get super excited about formal holidays. I think when you do them enough, when you have kind of a weird disjointed family, um, the holidays seem like a lot of pressure depending on the holiday. I do love Easter, even though I don't worship the Jesus. I like the Jesus. I'm interested in the Jesus, but I don't I don't call him my savior. But I do love spring. And more and more, as I've gotten more witchy, the holidays that interest me most are those that are connected to the seasons, the equinoxes, the solstices, the yeah, the spring equinox, which is really where Easter came from, things like that, the the holidays that feel connected to nature. But as someone who is an American citizen, who was born in America, who enjoys many American privileges and entitlements. And because it's the 20, 200, not the 25th, it's the 250th anniversary of the formation, the official formation of the United States of America. And because the United States of America is in a very strange moment right now, I'm just thinking about it a lot. I'm thinking about what the hell is going on. Um, and feeling both the weight and the heaviness of the changes that have been brought by the current administration, which have been built up to over, you know, decades. This didn't happen overnight. It was there was there were steps that led here. I'm thinking about that, and even though I'm not super excited about hot dogs and get-togethers and grilling and flag waving, there is a part of me that's very attached to and very much loves where I'm from, and it comes with a lot of complicated feelings, especially as someone descended from white settlers, colonizers, and with, you know, as a person with an awareness of how this nation came into being. It's fraught. But I also, there, you know, there are also things about this country, there are sentiments, there are ideas that are relatively unique to the United States, that have not achieved their fulfillment, that have not reached their full potential, but that are still alive and are still undercurrents in our social fabric. And that exists strongly enough that there are many people across the country who are coming out over the last couple years and you know, during the last administration as well, and during the Biden administration, frankly, particularly around the US support of Israel and the genocide happening in Gaza. So we're still seeing Americans come out and express these ideals of freedom of expression, freedom of speech, freedom to be who you are, and this notion that the government can be for the public good, can actually be a supporter of society and not an extractor from the people, which is where we're headed right now. So I'm just feeling these different things. I'm not doing anything for July 4th. I'm gonna be in my house. It is extremely hot here in Austin, it's hotter in other places, but we're getting into the triple digits now, and there will be a lot of fireworks in my neighborhood because everyone in this part of town thinks that they should just have their own firework show the whole weekend long. And one of my dogs will be a hot mess all weekend, so I'll be here with her trying to calm her down. Also thinking about all the wild animals that actually live outside that have to live in this heat 24-7. And we'll be exposed to the fireworks going off everywhere. So wherever you are, if you are doing fireworks, I just want you to consider the impact they have on other people. I just encourage you to keep your little firework show limited. Maybe like join up with your neighbors. Maybe you could do like a collective one. We're talking about the Three of Cups. You know, I know little explosions are fun. Um, yeah, I've got my rant ready to go on next door for the fireworks.

Fireworks, Heat, And Shared Impact

SPEAKER_00 7:30

But I haven't published it yet. We'll see. Anyway, so as I'm thinking about these things and the three of cups, I just think it's super interesting that July 4th falls during this time. As you may know, the Three of Cups is a card where we see three women, three Femmes dancing in a circle with their goblets held high. They are in a moment of celebration, and at their feet are the fruits of their harvest. There's the implication that they've been growing things together, and now they are reaping what they have sown, and what they have sown is abundance and plenitude and joy, and they are expressing that freely with a feeling of safety, and that's just not a super accessible kind of feeling around this July 4th. It is there. I do see it in people who are organizing and getting out there and speaking up against the autocracy, the autocratic direction that our country is taking. I also want to recognize that there are folks living in other countries. And I hope this feels somewhat relevant to you. Either maybe you're curious about what people in the United States think and feel or what we're doing, or you know, some of this may be relevant to your own thoughts about the national identity of wherever it is that you live. And thank you for tuning in and listening, listening

Meeting The Three Of Cups

SPEAKER_00 9:15

to an American. Appreciate it. Um, and I hope I get to see your homeland someday or wherever it is you're living or visiting. But as I said, I'm not very into nationalism. I find nationalism somewhat problematic. I am a proponent of a shared cultural sensibility, a shared, you know, a kind of cultural cohesion that people can unite around. This is a podcast about creativity, and creativity is something that produces culture at the collective level. And I think that's something that globally, that's one of our greatest, well, mixed bag, but um, some of our greatest products are cultural. And that's art, that's music, that's film, that's, you know, sometimes television shows. And those cultural references are ways that we, you know, relate to each other, and they are reflections of our own experience of living in our culture. So I'm definitely a proponent of a shared cultural um, yeah, sensibility, I would say. You know, I don't think culture should be fixed and rigid and have super hard boundaries around it. Um, but nationalism is is different. Nationalism is like very much associated with boundaries and often ethnicity. Not always, it depends on the place, but um I am old enough to have lived through the September 11th attacks. I mean, I I was just alive when they happened. I didn't like, you know, I wasn't there. I didn't have to live through them per se. But I was a young adult, I was finishing college at that time, and one of the things that really stood out to me then was the incredible amount of flag waving that happened immediately after 9-11. There was just like a huge market all of a sudden for everyone to have 17 flags either in their yard or on their car or both. And it was just like American flags everywhere. And I don't have a problem with the American flag, but it's kind of an empty gesture. It's like meant to, I guess, unite us, but it also felt like this aggressive, um, you know, we're American thing that did not contain any self-reflection around the larger implications of what was happening. And I'm not a believer that we, you know, anyone who died in the September 11th attacks was deserving of that, absolutely not, but those attacks didn't happen in isolation or separate from America's history of interference and meddling and extraction and war waging in countries all across the globe. You know, we're not, we act like we are a great democratic savior. And that's kind of a pasting over for what's actually been happening. And the flag waving felt like another papering over of that. And of course, that would be a precursor to um several wars that would last decades and cost millions, okay, not millions, uh, hundreds of thousands of lives, and disrupt uh the social and infrastructure, the social order, the infrastructure, the uh cultural formation of other nations very far away from where we live. And so that was one moment where you know national nationalism really stood out to me as suspicious. I also lived in Korea for a year, which is a very proud country, and I love Korea. Korea was really good to me, and I learned a lot and really immersed myself as much as I could in Korean culture as well. And it's one of the most ethnically homogeneous countries in the world, and has had a long history of being colonized or had or invaded by Japan and China at different moments, and of course, Japan and China have had more global recognition earlier, and Korea, you know, has a little bit of a like we got overlooked kind of um complex that creates some striving to be seen. And since I since I've lived there, which was now like 15 years ago, um, Korean culture has been embraced a lot more in the United States, and that's been really fun to see. But also living there in a very uh not insular in terms of closed off to the world, but insular in terms of its like cultural and ethnic identity and Korean pride. There were also, you know, there's there's always up and downsides to any kind of culture, but it has high standards, Koreans have high standards, and there's not a lot of flexibility for kind of eccentric identity formation, which has led to, you know, really high suicide rates, for example. I'm not here to critique Korea, that's not my place or my interests. Like I said, I love Korea, but that was just another experience for me about how um a kind of nationalism can also be a bit toxic. And then, of course, back here in America, what's happening

Nationalism After 9/11 And Korea

SPEAKER_00 15:20

is a more extreme leaning and deepening into white Christian nationalism. And we're seeing that as in my state, they're now gonna teach the Bible in public schools. And that's insanely fucked up. That is just crazy. And there have been attempts to do this in the past, but now it's working. And of course, we see this all over our government with the way that our leaders are talking about um Christianity as a central organizing principle in the United States when free exercise of religion is built into our founding documents, which is one of the things that the Fourth of July celebrates. And it's really dangerous. It's where like patriarchy and racism and capitalism get to calcify even further to create more control over the people. And it's rather scary to see, you know, just to kind of like run down where else we are 250 years into this American project, which started on very violent terms as people from Europe came to this land and began to, you know, began a decades-long effort to eliminate eliminate native peoples from the lands they had been living on for thousands of years. This included genocide on the buffalo. It included mass killing of wolves and the theft of land and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people who knew this land better than we did, and who did not deserve to be removed just because we wanted what they had. So that's where we started, and then of course came slavery, and from that was built a strong economy, and you know, it's been a tug of war ever since, or the entire time, you know, this ongoing conversation about what freedom means and this notion that America is a democracy, that America is a free nation, and we do get to exercise a lot of freedom here in America, but it's not democracy in the purest sense, uh, less and less so, as powerful people engineer our elections and claim more power over different aspects of our electoral process through gerrymandering, through control of the ballot box, taking voter rolls from states, uh, surveilling people, trying to suppress mail-in, voting, etc., etc. And, you know, at the same time, our three branches of government that are supposed to check one another are not doing that. Our Congress is just laying down and letting the president do whatever he wants. And he is doing whatever he wants. He made two billion dollars in cryptocurrency. Our current president, which is something that would have like made no sense to us like eight years ago. We've just been like, what, what, what is that? Like, how would that even work, you know? But that's happening, and he's taking gifts from other countries, he's making mining deals with other nations and letting his sons have that money. His sons are investing in companies that are winning defense contracts. It's wild, it's really wild. There's stuff going on we don't even know about. He's day trading, he's the man who knows what's about to happen in the world, and he's the man who can make stuff happen in the world, and he's just trading stocks on that. I'm laughing because it's fucking crazy. It's crazy. So we got that going on. The Epstein files, like wow, this has been amazing to see the extent to which, gosh, it's just hard to even talk about it. The extent to which rich men have found and engineered ways to satisfy their every whim financially and through the exploitation of women, turning women basically into slaves, sex slaves, and a gigantic cover-up around all of this that I hope will unravel before too long. Part of what is also happening around

White Christian Nationalism And Power

SPEAKER_00 20:30

the white Christian nationalism calcification or acceleration is this attack on immigrants. And, you know, we saw what happened earlier this year in Minneapolis with Renee Good and Alex Predi here in Texas just last week. Several people who are involved in a protest outside outside a detention center were sentenced to 30, 60, just incredible sentences. Um, one of the people sentenced and punished was not even at the protest. There was a police officer who was killed at this protest, and I certainly don't condone that, but we're seeing this crackdown on rounding people up without legal, real legal due process, or even without really legal basis. Like they're doing this illegally in many instances, and detaining them without sharing information about where they are, without giving them representation. ICE has just increased its quota for abducting people to 2,000 people every day, and they're they're pulling that off. I've seen reports in the last week that just an incredible number of people have been abducted and detained. The Supreme Court just revoked temporary protective status for. Haitian and Syrian immigrants who were allowed to come here after major devastation in their country and who have been living in the United States for more than a decade and integrating into their communities and doing jobs that Americans don't want to do, particularly caring for our elders as they are aging. This is going to be a huge thing in Florida if they begin deporting a lot of Haitians. And I don't think that these conversations should be framed entirely around economics because there's just this is just a question of human dignity. You know, um, not what they provide for our economy, though, you know, that's what everyone, you know, the economy is the thing that like everyone's always talking about, with like, oh, they're they're taking free stuff. They're using, they're getting free stuff with our tax dollars. Like, no, Donald Trump is getting free shit with our tax dollars. And the immigrants who come here largely are providing working in service-based jobs that keep the rest of our economy running, that allow us to like live our lives, which is a whole another critique we could have. But um, speaking of the Supreme Court, most of them have been bought off in some way, shape, or form and have some um profit to gain from the new engineering of the government toward art autocracy, the suppression of other people's rights, the increase of the executive powers, this will all benefit them as they, you know, pass contracts back and forth to their friends or share insider information so they can make investments that have gigantic returns. So after 250 years separating from the British colonies and declaring our independence and forming a nation around the idea of freedom, this is where we are. So, you know, that's like I've only become more and more aware of these things. Like since I was in college a long time ago, uh, I stay pretty connected to like what's really happening. And it's just gotten worse. You know, I'm almost 50 now, I'm 47, but um, when you're young, you think, oh, you know, like maybe the change is coming, like maybe things are gonna tip the other way. And there have been moments of hope, but you know, generally speaking, we're just like in this neoliberal capitalist order that is really flawed. And those flaws are really showing, and Donald Trump has really exploited them, and so that's where we are today. And while I just I have this in my notes too, I don't want to skip over it. The other the one part, maybe one of the parts of the United States that I feel most deeply attached to is the land. This is a beautiful country in terms of its nature, in terms of its geography, in terms of its biodiversity. And obviously that's complicated because like my ancestors were not native to these lands. So I get to call this my home because of settler colonialism, which is violent and genocidal. But it is where I was born, it is where generations of my family have lived. And I'm a Taurus rising, so just the land is always front of consciousness for me, and and the other beings that are part of the nature that we live amongst. And, you know, we have these incredible national parks, we have incredible ecosystems, we have a diversity of different landscapes that we can see and experience and explore, and our national parks are being gutted. The Trump administration wants to sell off uh public lands, they are deregulating environmental standards, endangered species protections are falling away. We've seen a lot of strikes of whales on the West Coast. Something like 50 whales have been killed this year by ships going too fast in the Pacific Ocean. And, you know, I really think of like the animals that live around us as part of the American identity. I'm not saying like those animals are American or we own them or something like that. I'm just saying like they're our neighbors, and the border wall is being extended and going up, which prevents animals from the migration that is natural to them. This is just absolutely horrifying. They're trying to build a wall, build the wall in Big Bend National Park, which is in south like west south Texas, is one of the most beautiful parks. Like I it's absolutely magical. And the Rio Grande River forms the southern border of the park and the southern border of Texas in that part of the state. And they're they're gonna they're trying to build the wall basically in the river. The dumbest, dumbest thing. And how are animals gonna get across? Like, what if they're thirsty? What if they're looking for food? What if, you know, they winter in Mexico and they summer in what is called the United States? So that's where we are, 250 years in. I also

Immigrants, Courts, And Detention State

SPEAKER_00 28:00

want to comment on the America 250 celebration that Donald Trump engineered. Last night I was up late. I was watching, um, I like to listen to the bulwark if you want to get political news. I do enjoy the bulwark. They have a number of podcasts, um, they're on YouTube as well, but they were showing some clips from this celebration. Like, no one is there, hardly. It's really, really hot. Some of the states aren't even showcasing their stuff in the little rooms of the state fair, or you go in and it's just like a couple chairs and a mural or something. Some of them are no longer air conditioned. The air conditioning was breaking down, so they just like closed them because it's too hot to be in there. The reflecting pole. Oh my god. Um, now it's now it's closed, it's gated off. They put a fence around it, so it's green, it's gated off, the ducks are dying in there. Like, it's just a perfect metaphor for everything this man touches goes to shit while he turns around and claims like he's the best ever, he's the greatest ever, like everything's more beautiful because he's putting gold on it. Bro, and they have these stages, you know, they've had these like right-wing podcasters come out on these stages where they don't even have chairs for people to stand to sit down. You just stand there. There's no one. There's no one there. And um, but a couple things, uh, one thing that was mentioned in this little, you know, inside peek into America 250 was this clip of this man named Michael Knowles, who I guess is like, you know, a conservative podcaster. I don't I had not heard of him before. I'm not following that stuff, but I do like the bull work because there is one reporter who's basically keeping tabs on all the MAGA influencers and like reporting about their dramas and the different infights they're having, and these people are kinky, they are weird, they are freaky, and they're so like mad at liberals, and it's like y'all are crazy, y'all are freaks to just like have more fun. Um, and don't be so creepy. But anyway, this guy Michael Knowles, I guess he has a podcast. They he was on one of these, you know, this little stage, and he was in sort of, you know, like a big kind of like comfy chair or whatever. He was sitting across. His his partner on stage was a 10-year-old boy. I don't know why. And what Michael Knowles is saying to this 10-year-old boy is that the Salem witch trials should have been more organized. He goes, you know, there were like some women here and there that were punished by like random judges. And he's like, I don't know if they were guilty or not, but you know, just like, what if it had been more organized? So he's basically like critiquing the Salem witch trials because they didn't kill more women more efficiently, regardless of whether they were guilty or not. And this is what he's saying to a 10-year-old boy at the America 250 celebration. And it's just like wow, like wow. And I was also noticing, um, I also get newsletters from an organization called The Lever. And this piece of reporting had to do with Trump tapping two war on terror veterans with histories of using warrantless searches, litigating Guantanamo Bay military trials, and arguing against civil rights protections. These two people have been tapped to run a new task force prosecuting anti-Americanism. This operation is called Joint Task Force Vanguard, and it emerged during the June 16th indictment of 15 protesters who organized community patrols in Minneapolis for assault on an immigration and customs enforcement agent and conspiracy to impede government operations. I'm quoting from the text now. Now, the lever has helped identify the operations leaders, this guy Brian Lynch, this guy Jason Kelhofer, alums of the country's long and brutal war against terrorists at home and abroad. Here's what I want to get to. Um, according to a press release from the Department of Justice, Joint Task Force Vanguard is designed to prosecute cases under the administration's National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, a September 2025 presidential memo labeling anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, extremism on migration, race, and gender, and other activities as evidence of support for terrorism. So even this capitalist critical podcast talking about witchy topics that do not honor necessarily Jesus as our savior, these are now, this is something that this new joint task force can pursue. I don't think I'll be high on the list, but you know, depending on how much time, how much money they have, how far they get, um, they love throwing people in detention. So this is where things are going 250 years in. And I know this isn't a political podcast, but these are things I

America 250 And Chilling Rhetoric

SPEAKER_00 34:00

think about a lot, even you know, when I'm not like it filters into some of the conversations in our teaching because, you know, when I'm teaching in my communities or leading workshops, because you know, partly because I have a lot of Capricorn placements, so I'm thinking about the systems we live in and how they impact us. And you know, one issue I sometimes have with therapy, while like therapy can be so healing, is that as a practice, as a healing modality, therapists aren't really trained to bring in the systemic factors. Like a social worker might. Um, but really it's about like helping the individual navigate their wounding or you know, recover self-love and empowerment. But there's not a lot of conversation about the systems that make it extremely difficult for us to access support, to connect with our communities, to feel a sense of belonging, to feel a sense of safety, to feel a sense of purpose, to feel like we can be resourced throughout our lives. Um, so that's, you know, today felt like a day to lean into the ways in which I do think about this all of the time. Because I also think that creativity and the and our experience of creativity is extremely impacted by our experience of capitalism and patriarchy and you know other systems linked into that. And I don't think it's that helpful to just like, oh, here's how your creative process can be more efficient or be more productive or successful when creativity just like is not a product of capitalism or patriarchy. It is pre-it is a pre-existing spiritual energy, and we need to remember that, and we need to remember that like in our bodies in order to have a more fulfilling relationship with it, which means noticing how the systems do impact us. So that's why I'm doing this, but I want to come back to the three of cups now. I wanted to lay that out like here's where we are. Not like you didn't know, but these are just like the different points that come up for me. And yeah, so all of this is happening July 4th, falls in the middle of cancer season. Cancer season is a water sign, it's a very mothering sign, it's a very nurturing kind of energy. It sits opposite Capricorn on the zodiac wheel. So where Capricorn may think about like traditions and systems, cancer's thinking about like care for the collective and care um, you know, within relationships and community. And the card for cancer is the chariot, which initially to me was kind of hard to connect to cancer. I was like, this looks like kind of like a hard driving card or like a really, you know, motivated, driven, focused kind of archetype. And it's not that cancer can't be those things or isn't those things, but just that kind of loving, emotional, uh, supportive sort of vibe of cancer was not something I really saw in the chariot. But what has helped me really see the connection is to think of the chariot as this vehicle, this container for the movement of life and the movement of the individual toward what we desire in life. And that vehicle of the chariot gives the charioteer a protective space. The charioteer is harnessing these different elements, the sphinxes, the energies of the universe, their own will and desire, their own connection to their emotional experience to move forward. And of course, cancer is also the crab, which has its hard shell on the outside of its body. So there's a kind of like protection and container theme around cancer. And I think containers are really important for emotion and emotional experience. And a lot of our experience emotionally inside this culture, inside American culture, at least, but in other cultures too, to different degrees and with different flavors, there's not a lot of cancer energy. There's not a lot of let's talk about our feelings. Like social and emotional learning was a thing for a little while. And I don't hear that talked about that much anymore. I didn't even mention the part about how public schools are being rated financially to create charter schools that move public school money, tax dollar money, into the hands of whoever applies for the vouchers. And there's almost no oversight or accounting for how people spend that money. So schools are public schools are closing, more special education children are coming into public schools because the charter schools can turn them away. The public schools have to support them with less money, fewer resources, fewer uh support specialists, etc. etc. That's another nightmare. So back to cancer, back to emotion. We're generally taught that emotion is something we should manage on our own, something that we should contain ourselves until there's an appropriate time and place for us to deal with that feeling uh privately. There are not many public containers for emotional expression except for sports and maybe church. Maybe. Uh sports is probably the big one. It's the place where you know many men get to emotionally express in one particular direction, like frustration and victory. But I think men actually have more feelings than that. I guess they feel some togetherness when they're with each other enjoying sports. And I know women enjoy sports too. I like baseball. Um, but anyway, emotion is something we don't get to freely express very much. So we contain it ourselves, which is usually toxic to the body and also um a clog to the creative channel. This is something we were talking about in Creative Channel this morning. I was hosting one of our iced mocha chats, which is a little gathering every other Friday where you can come in and we just talk about how things are going for us creatively. And I was talking about one section of creative channel where we practice moving emotion because when emotion is stuck in the body, creative energy is gonna get stuck behind it. That is my belief. And simultaneously, emotion is a carrier for creativity. Creativity is a place where we can express emotion, and emotion is an experience, like the emotional experience, the sensations we have emotionally in response to the world around us are things that we channel into our art. That is where art comes from. Art is emotional. Yes, you can make intellectual art, but by and large, most art traffics in the currency of the heart and feeling. And so here we are in cancer season, and cancer is ruled by the moon. Every zodiac sign has a planetary ruler, and cancer is the only sign ruled by the moon, and the moon in the tarot is the high priestess. This card of intuition and access to ancient wisdom and a kind of knowing that is embodied and old and felt, not just logical and scientifically tested. It is the kind of knowledge that just is there, it's present, we can feel it. And most of our culture discounts that kind of knowledge, especially, you know, in a patriarchy. Maybe you heard my dog shaking there. So we have the chariot, we have the moon representing cancer, and then you know, something we've been studying in my Creative Magic collective, we're doing a deck and walk. There's another episode on what a deck and walk is, it's

Creativity Versus Systems That Constrict

SPEAKER_00 43:30

a couple episodes back. And, you know, most astrologers talk about the signs and the planets, and those have received connection to the major arcana cards. But ancient, ancient astrologers really emphasized more so these. I mean, they did care about the signs and so forth, but they also really emphasized these 10 degree slices of the zodiac. Know each sign, each zodiac sign takes up 30 degrees, but then within each of those signs, there's three 10-degree segments, and for thousands of years, astrologers have been referring to those decans, you know, 10 degrees, decan, decade, and um, they're infused with a lot of meaning. And then when the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which is uh, you know, an esoteric mystical spiritual group in the early 1900s in Britain, came together. Alistair Crowley was part of this, Pamela Coleman Smith was part of this, Arthur Waite was part of this, they began to syncretize or mash up slash, you know, kind of appropriate different spiritual frameworks and try to find a unifying um order around them. And so they were tethering the tarot to astrology, and that's where you know those major arcana connections came from to the signs and the planets, but then they also did the same with these decans, these 36 decans on the wheel. And Pamela Coleman Smith illustrated the minor arcana based on the Deccans and the connotations, the associations, the correspondences, the layered meanings of the decans. Those all informed the look of the minor arcana cards. So what we're doing in the Deccan walk is like going through the card and the sign Deccan by Deccan and experiencing that in an embodied way. And this episode is a little bit in that spirit because right now the sun is in the three of cups deccan, the middle part of Cancer. So Cancer's three cards are the two of cups, the three of cups, and the four of cups. So, as I said, July 4th falls in that three of cups place. And yeah, this, you know, we have these three women, these three femmes dancing and celebrating in the Hermetic order. This card is called the Lord of Abundance. And another astrologer, Austin Kopic, calls it the Walled Garden because we have these women celebrating and dancing. There's no male figures in the card. They seem to be enjoying that feeling that women can have when there are not any men around. When we know there are no male ears listening, there are no male eyes watching, there is no male consciousness scrutinizing, where you know, our full femininity gets to be expressed, and we get to be in like the shared feminine energy and exchange with each other inside that sense of safety. And yeah, so I think it's really interesting that the birth of the United States of America falls in cancer season and in the three of cups.

Cancer Season, Decans, And Tarot Links

SPEAKER_00 47:10

And it has me thinking, like, what if what if it really felt more three of cups to be in America? What if we really moved in the spirit of abundance? And I don't mean like the Ezra Klein abundance, like I don't actually even know what he's talking about with all that. Um it sounds like just like another neoliberal appropriation of a word that is actually substantively meaningful. Um, but again, I haven't looked into it deeply. But yeah, what if our society and our government was built around this sense of plenty, this acknowledgement that there is ample resources for all of us and that we can share them? What if we had some kind of universal basic income so that we didn't have to orient our entire lives around working to make money, to support our children or to support our families and to support ourselves? What if we had more free time and less stress and could create things and could be in community together? What if we had more communal cohesion locally where, you know, I know farmers markets exist, but like what if in our little neighborhoods different people were growing vegetables and getting together? You know, I see our little free libraries, and like that's cute, or like the free fridges and that's great. But, you know, what if we came together to share these things? What if we weren't constantly working so we could buy the stuff that we need inside our individual survival compartments? You know, what if we shared more? What if we like we would actually have more? What if we had universal health care? What if our schools had what they needed? What if our children had what they needed? What if they weren't being like brainwashed by iPads and iPhones and 10,000 apps and games and Disney movies, but they actually got to play in nature? What if it wasn't so fucking hot all summer that our children couldn't play outside, that we can't play outside, that we only get to go outside before the sun comes up and after the sun comes down because it's so hot, it's actually dangerous and getting worse, you know, not getting better. What if we had the freedom to feel that sense of safety that the women in the Three of Cups feel to be who we are and to express ourselves freely, to be queer, to be black, to be brown, to be from whatever country we're from. You know, there is a history in this country of people celebrating the immigrants who live here. I was listening to something today, like there was some comment, I can't remember like the original source, but it's like America is one of the countries, at least where like for a while, wherever you were from, you could come and become an American. Like, and I don't mean that just in terms of citizenship, but you could come and feel like, yeah, I like America is in me. I am in America now, and I'm part of the fabric. It's like, you know, living in Korea, they might sometimes like treat me as like kind of like a Korean, like we adopt you, we accept you, but um it would be hard to like really feel Korean. It might take a really long time. I don't think that's the be-all-end-all of like being somewhere, belonging somewhere, but um, you know, America has that tradition too of like celebrating immigration, even though it also has a history of attacking immigrants and fear-mongering and xenophobia. What if what if we based policy and laws on kind of like an intuitive sense of what we need as a people? Like, yes, science, yes, research. But it's like you look around like climate change again as an example, it's like it's here, it's happening. It's really hot, like it's very evident that that's where things are going. And it's just amazing to me that this really doesn't get to even be, you hardly even hear about it in a presidential debate anymore. I think that's beginning to change as the conditions become more extreme. But what if that felt sense of our experience of life was something that was taken into account in terms of how we make policy and organize ourselves collectively? The decan, so you know I said each of the signs is ruled by a planet, each of the decans is also ruled by a planet. And the Deccan where July 4th happens, this Three of Cups Deccan is ruled by Mercury, which is the magician. So we've got the chariot, we've got the high priestess, we've got the magician. What if in the spirit of Mercury we practiced like honorable, dignified communication? What if communication in our country was illuminating? What if it was productive? What if it led to solving collective problems in a way that benefited a maximum number of people in the public? You know, obviously, like democracy is a negotiation, and there will always be dissenters, and there will always be like a majority that agrees on any given issue with variations and different perspectives, but like that's the point. What if we were able to communicate with each other without insane levels of anger and attack and labeling and dismissiveness and an inability to listen? So

Imagining Abundance As Public Policy

SPEAKER_00 53:50

I feel like this is most of what I have to say, and maybe you can hear the washing machine dinging, singing its little song. Um, that means it's time to probably start to wrap it up, and that feels true for me. So, you know, I just wanted to kind of like follow the calling to share this as I think about this, and to invite you to think about the Three of Cups as an archetype for this moment. And even though, you know, if you're living in the United States, even though it does not feel like the best of times here, um, it's important, I think, to continue to talk about the alternatives and the way that we wish it was. It's like we're so far away from that now that it's easy to just kind of like give up and feel like, you know, there's not much hope. And it is hard, but um creativity is one thing that helps us hold on to those visions and to express those visions in different ways through music or writing or visual art, you know, because just like talking about it or like, you know, getting up on a podium to talk about it or podcasting about it, um, you know, only does so much, and art only does so much too. But because it has that emotional valence, because creativity carries that for us, that's really powerful energy for the maintenance of hope and um expansiveness and like holding on to something that would be better, that would be more abundant in a true, real way. Like, one thing that was nice during the World Cup, as like many people were traveling from other countries to come here, is that reaction that, like, oh, Americans aren't as shitty as I thought. And yeah, a lot of us are really good people, or we're doing our best, we're trying, and you know, we do care about other humans, even though um our president definitely cares about only one dude. So I will close with this one thing I'm watching for tomorrow. So, astrologically speaking, well, just astrologically, the planet Uranus and the planet Mars are forming a conjunction tomorrow. And Mars, of course, is that warlike uh aggressive fighter planet, and Uranus is a planet of disruption and surprises, flipping things on their head, flipping tables. And this is happening on July 4th, which is pretty amazing. And I also want to note that uh this is happening in the sign of Gemini. Um, so you can check where Gemini is in your chart, you could check to see which house Gemini is. I recommend using a whole sign house system, which will put Gemini entirely into one house. And then you can look up the themes associated with that house. That's where you're having this Uranus transit, which is a longer transit, and Mars moves faster. Mars is coming up on um coming up on Uranus and meeting up tomorrow. And uh Donald Trump has Uranus in his natal chart in Gemini. It's not in the exact place where this conjunction is happening, but it is in the same sign. He also is a Gemini. And tomorrow, his plan is to give his longest speech ever outdoors on one of the hottest days of the year so far. It's supposed to feel like 107 degrees tomorrow. He's not doing the speech, I think, till like 9 p.m. So, you know, it probably won't be 107 then, but he's not he's not a young buck anymore. He's not the healthiest, the healthiest POTUS. Um, so I am really curious what this Mars Uranus conjunction in Gemini on the 4th of July when Donald Trump wants to make his longest speech that nobody wants to hear. I also think no one will be there. Um, or they won't be there for very long. Because again, I don't think there's any chairs. Uh, I don't think they're handing out waters. I don't think it's gonna be that interesting or uh attention grabbing, other than like it's the president trying to do this thing. It's this guy trying to do this thing. Um, I want to read you. I know I've still been going. I said we were almost done. We are. We are. But uh I have a little I I took a snippet from this newsletter, this astrology newsletter called Astro Dienst. I don't, it's a very strange word. I don't know why what that word means. Um, maybe my own ignorance. It's after the astro, it's D I E N S T. But here's here's the part I clipped for us. On July 4th, the conjunction of Mars and Uranus in Gemini becomes exact. It is a day full of high tension and sudden developments. The quality of time is highly charged, even unpredictable, speaking of breakthroughs, new ideas, and technological leaps. But it may also bring technical disruptions, nervousness, and an increased risk of injury. Be prepared for surprises, slow your pace, and avoid acting on impulse. That's why I'm staying inside, y'all. I went to the grocery store just a little while ago. Like, I got what I need. I'm not leaving. And then on July 5th, Mars is also in an exact shrink with Pluto and Aquarius, and in a sextile with Neptune and Aries. Words and actions now have a powerful effect. Consider the consequences before you speak or act, but also be prepared for the fact that some of the people around you may not have done so. There's more, um, but there's a lot of fire and air happening here, and I'll read this last paragraph. The quality of time during these days is high frequency, multi-layered, and full of surprises. Uh, some of the configurations point to rapid developments. Since all three collective planets are involved through Neptune, and Jupiter activates them all within a short period of time, we can expect the effects to be clearly visible and to have a strong influence on social life. The themes involved have been with us for several years already. The profound shift from an Earth era to an air era, and the associated changes in power relations. Y'all, I have a whole like a side door rabbit hole conversation I want to have about drones in the sky, satellites in the sky, surveillance in the sky. I was looking up at the sky last night, and there's enough city light here, and plus but it's also a full moon. But like some of the lights had, you know, like reddish, bluish, a little bit of a sparkly quality, which can happen with the star. But I'm like, which of these are all of these stars? Are some of these like surveillance drones from Elon Musk, now the world's first trillionaire? Anyway, during these days, it may become clear which paths humanity will take. As always, when Pluto is involved, this can also mean that something is coming to a definitive end. So take care of yourself. You know, notice what's going on, notice how it's affecting the collective and how it's affecting you. And of course, also like consider your capacity and what you have the bandwidth to be aware of or pay attention to. Um,

Mars Uranus Tension And Closing Invites

SPEAKER_00 1:02:36

yeah. And if you are still listening, bless you and thank you. I appreciate you, and I really hope there was something valuable here where there was something in my words or my thoughts that connected with something in you. And um, yeah, I'll just finish by inviting you to join my email list. I recently did a promotion on a new offer, which is a creative cosmology reading, where we look at your, we look at five placements in your natal chart to look at basically your creative nature, like how creative energy likes to find you and move through you, um, what your body needs, like your creative pacing. And I'm finding that folks are feeling really validated by these, like, oh yeah, I am living out my chart, but also feeling like some of the things that cross their mind that they tend to keep on the back burner are things they actually need to bring to the forefront that would really like open things up for them creatively even more. So, had you been on my email list, if you're not already, you would have got like the lowest price and then the next lowest price, and you know, you would have had that opportunity. So it's just a reason. I would love to be more timely in communicating with you here um and sharing with the offer, sharing with you the offers as they emerge, but it's hard for me to do the emailing and the podcasting and the substacking and the social media. So, but the email is where it all started. So there's a link if you want to join me. All right, my friends, there is also a link at the top of the show notes where you can send fan mail. And if you just click that and like type out a note, it's like a text for you. It's gonna come to my email box. And yeah, I'd love to know what you're thinking, uh, any thoughts or reflections on this episode. I did get a note from I did get a piece of fan mail from someone after, I wish I had said this at the very beginning, and I'm sorry, but um from someone who listened to the signs and synchronicities episode, and they said, this morning, while listening to your episode on signs and synchronicities, I was thinking of a sign to call in. And as I turned my head to look at the truck next to me, it read sign group. They made signs. Maybe the message was that we can make and manifest signs, we can make them materialize too. Happy to have found your podcast. I'm very happy, whoever you are, that you found your pod found uh my podcast also. And um, yeah, I love to hear, I love to hear about this. I love podcasting, but you know, I don't get the response, like I don't know how it's landing. So um I always appreciate your fan mail. If you want to sign your name at the end of your text, because it won't, you know, you can be anonymous, that's fine. Um, but I'll keep shouting these out on the pod as we go. I still have more episodes for you. But this one was rising up and coming through, and I will drop it in the feed. All right, y'all. Thank you. Be safe. Minimal explosions, Mars conjunction, Uranus and Gemini. Take care. Okay. And three of cups.