As we nest into November…
This is a general collective reading of the energy of November. Below is my own interpretation of the cards that appeared before me. As always, take what resonates, and spook the rest!
Happy Halloween to all who celebrate. The veil is thin, the vibe is grim, and something is watching.
We are in the dark half of the year now. The days are shortening, the harvest is in, and the light is leaving earlier each evening. Nearly every culture that has lived through a long northern winter has marked this moment the same way. By turning toward the dead.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been dreaming of the ocean. In the first dream, I was running from heartache along a road the sea was slowly swallowing. Then I passed an offering the water had left behind on a rock jetty, a hand-painted piece of furniture, disassembled and set out for me to carry home and rebuild. My vessel.
Days later, I was on a boat with a bathtub that drained directly into the ocean (as one does). Out in the pitch-black water, two eyes looked up at me from the depths. Then the boat began taking on water and forced me ashore, where I learned it was going to sink. Later, a teacher appeared wearing a nametag that read Mr. Kama. He handed me an envelope of checks, and that was my ticket onto the beach. Just as the outstretched, disembodied hand of the Ace of Pentacles provides an offering, so too did I receive support.
The beach was crowded, shoulder to shoulder. I swam out past everyone and dove under the waves as they broke over my head, letting the white foam take over.
I woke up and looked up the nametag. Kama is the Sanskrit word for desire.
In Hindu philosophy, kama is one of the four aims of a human life, alongside dharma (duty), artha (wealth, the realm of Lakshmi), and moksha (liberation). It means longing, pleasure, love, and the life force that makes anything want to happen at all. A life without it is considered incomplete.
It is also a god. Kamadeva carries a bow of sugarcane strung with bees and arrows tipped with flowers. His banner bears the makara, a sea creature. When he aimed at Shiva during deep meditation, Shiva opened his third eye and burned him to ash. Kama was later reborn as Ananga, “the bodiless one,” desire without a form to hold it. In the oldest creation hymn of the Rig Veda, desire is the first seed of mind, the thing that stirs in the dark before anything exists.
The night before I was out at sea, I dreamt of a mountain lion. Two eyes caught the dark and held it steady, reflecting the light back at me. Later, it leapt, and I cowered in fear.
Darkness, water, and eyes that hold light. When an image visits this often, the subconscious has stopped sending polite “per my last email” reminders and started leaving voicemails. I suspect it isn’t only mine, seeing as the theme for the month ahead is that of the lustrous, water-loving Moon.
The sky follows the storyline of the November spread. Venus, the planet of Netzach and of Kama’s longing, has been retrograde through Libra since early October, which is the Knight of Cups reversed in planetary form. It’s very likely that in October we were rereading old chapters, looking back before we could move forward in some way. On November 9, a Scorpio New Moon drops us into water, depth, and shadow: the Moon card’s pool, the drain that opens to the sea, and the boat that was never going to stay afloat. Four days later, on November 13, Venus stations direct, and desire finally turns to face forward. The Knight of Cups welcomes the threshold. Then comes the Gemini Full Moon on November 24, conjunct Uranus, the dog and the wolf as twins, the tamed and untamed self. By then the Sun has moved into Sagittarius, a fire sign that aims its arrow ahead, like the Ace of Pentacles offering its coin after a month of looking back, and like Kamadeva aiming his arrow to awaken the five senses. We have spent weeks at the bottom of the sea. Now we are asked to carry something we shone light on up to the shore.
Theme: The Moon
The moon has no light of its own. It receives the sun’s and gives it back, the way the eyes of predator and prey alike return whatever light the night allows. On the card, the dog and the wolf gaze up at her, the tamed and the untamed self, conscious and subconscious, both a little unsettled. Between them, a crayfish drags itself from the pool, as fear does when it rises from the deep.
In Kabbalah, the moon corresponds to Yesod, the ninth sefirah, whose name means foundation. Yesod is the great channel of the Tree. It gathers the light of every sefirah above it, filters it, and passes it down into the physical world. It is the sphere of dreams, imagination, and the unconscious, the place where something unseen takes on enough shape to be noticed. Divinity is poured into the body.
At the end of that channel waits the Shekhinah, the indwelling divine feminine, the presence that dwells among us in the earthly realm rather than above us. Yesod is the doorway she arrives through. It is also the shape of the human soul as a receptive vessel, not the source of the light, but the one who holds and carries it. The vessel’s whole job is to stay open and clear enough to receive.
The soul reflects the light within when we are spiritually aware, when we lead from love, and when we stay in touch with our own intuition, our own feminine. The path of the Moon card drops from Netzach (desire) into Malchut, the physical world, so what we long for must finally take shape here. Kama’s flowered arrows do the same. They pull spirit down into matter.
In Hebrew, the word for eye, ayin, also means spring, a source of water. From the life-giving water of the feminine comes divine perception. The Moon asks us to face what we’ve buried and to give up the illusion of conscious control. In Hindu teachings, that illusion is maya, the veil we mistake for the room behind it. The vessel’s work is not to command the light but to receive it.
Past: Four of Pentacles, reversed
A figure sits clutching his coin, one on his crown and two under his feet. Reversed, the grip turns compulsive. We have been stingy with our time and hoarding our energy, and still feel unbalanced. We have a history of grasping for control. Four is Chesed, mercy and expansion, which makes this a clenched fist where an open hand belongs, and an open hand is thankfully where we are headed. Control is a fantasy. Reversed, it is also miserly.
We have been bartering our sovereignty for a quick thrill, and the patriarchal systems around us make illusion look like a bargain. But the feminine will not be managed. She arrives in waves, like a flash flood, and draws the crayfish out of the murky pool whether we’re ready or not.
Present: Knight of Cups, reversed
Upright, he rides forward with the cup held out like an offering. Reversed, he is overly emotional and has turned his horse, and his gaze, toward the past, not unlike the wolf. We have been circling old issues, scrolling the archive, and feeling tempted to look at what we lack. Still, a small stream runs through his desert. He is guided by feeling and is about to cross an emotional threshold, once he faces forward and accepts that control is an illusion.
Future: Ace of Pentacles
A hand reaches from a cloud, offering a coin, and beyond the garden gate stands a mountain. It is the same mountain at the end of the Moon’s long, winding road. The path through our fears and the gate to abundance lead to the same place, and it takes daily effort to navigate our fears and reach it.
This is pure potential, still unembodied. Abundance is an inner condition first.
The suit of pentacles belongs to Lakshmi, goddess of wealth in every form, including prosperity, grace, beauty, and good fortune. In the myth, she rose from the churning of the cosmic ocean, seated on a lotus. In other words, she is a gift from the sea. Her wealth is time, food, shelter, harvest, and community, along with honest conduct and detachment from material ego.
The divine brings us opportunities, or blessings, depending on how you look at it. They are earned, though not through will but through acceptance.
Numerology of the month: 35
Keywords: slow progress, the receiving vessel, water before earth, boundaries that hold, light made direct
Add the digits of 35 and you get 8, the number of the Egg of Life. In modern sacred geometry, this is the stage where the Seed of Life’s seven circles gain an eighth and form a cube, the blueprint for physical form. It is often paired with the eight-cell stage of early embryonic development, the moment potential begins to take a body. It is a fitting image for a month spent staring into dark water: the cosmic womb, the sea before the shore, a vessel not yet built but already implied.
In Hindu astrology, Shani is the planet and deity of Saturn. The son of Surya, the sun, and Chhaya, his shadow-wife, Shani was born of light and darkness together, which may explain his reputation as the great teacher of karma. He is said to deliver exactly what we have earned. Tradition holds that his gaze is so powerful that he is often pictured with his eyes lowered, and that his attention can feel like being closely observed in the dark. Shani is also the lord of the number 8, of discipline that doesn’t flatter, and of the work of rebuilding structures that can hold. He rewards those who endure with fairness rather than with gifts. In a month of watching eyes, a sinking boat, and a vessel waiting to be reassembled, he arrives as the teacher who asks us to look back and rebuild.
In the I Ching, Hexagram 35 is Jin, Progress, with the sun above and the earth below. Light rises over the land and everything it touches becomes visible. Spirit descends through the feminine, and divine light is met by a ground willing to hold it. It is the same gesture as the hand reaching from the cloud, offering a bright, round coin that, if you squint, might just be the moon. The light was never ours to generate. Our work is to be the earth that receives it. The Moon receives light, and Jin lets it shine in its own right.
Goodness in human nature is like the flash of two eyes in the dark. Just as the tide can swallow the path and the night can drown a reflection, greed, hatred, and other forms of self-absorption can submerge this goodness, this light. Be reminded that progress comes most easily when right action is taken without concern for immediate reward, like a swimmer who dives under the wave instead of fighting it, and when the path of the weaker aligns with that which is strong, the way the vessel yields to the current that carries it ashore.
In a world that moves quickly, choosing to pause, to reflect, to go internally, is no small thing. Whether you read every word slowly or skim what calls to you, I’m grateful you are here.
A Few Questions to Sit With
For those beholden of pen, the journalers…some questions to help guide you into the month.
- Where am I still gripping control, and what would I find if I opened my hand?
- What am I looking back at that I could be building from?
- If the shadow I fear is only light reflected back, what is it reflecting?
- Which of my fears is a wolf, and which is a very convincing dog?
- What did the ocean leave on my shore this year, and am I willing to carry it home and rebuild it myself?
- Where am I mistaking the paint for the house?
- What small, daily effort would take me one step along the winding road?
- What would it feel like to meet the thing watching me from the dark instead of hiding?
- What light is being offered to me right now, and how can I be the earth that receives it?
“See” you next month!
