Weekly Forecast: Oct 24-30
There’s some sneaky and shifty energy afoot this week that seems fitting since Halloween is nearly upon us. You may find yourself lingering around the edges of an issue, being overly evasive, or feeling defensive. You might not even know why. We’re often the best at hiding from ourselves.
To be wild is to be wily. Surviving means living in the moment with just the goal of getting by. But we can’t live in this state forever. We need to thrive. Eventually we must let our guard down and roll over to reveal our soft underbelly. Life is stagnant without tenderness and vulnerability.
Say you get close to one of these opportunities to open up and grow. It feels alarming to let go and show your soft side. You’ve been told all your life to be alert and watchful. You could get hurt, you could get rejected. These are not neutral associations! Your alarm bells go off. This is the deep-seated creature part of us. It does not speak in nuanced tones. Run! Get out! Fight back!
Some of us hear these alarm bells before the moment is directly in front of us. We can smell the danger far off. Someone is going to ask me to show up. I’m going to have to take a risk. I might need to ask for help. We learn to head off these situations by keeping our spines pointed outwards in all directions.
And let’s be real. Spines look cool. You might see someone particularly spiky and think, “Man, they really have it together. I mean, look at those solid boundaries!” They appear calm, cool, and collected, but that’s because they keep the world at spine’s length.
This is what I mean when I say that there’s a shifty, wily, maybe even naughty tendency highlighted for this week. Your spines are up. And I mean this with a lot of tenderness and affection.
I have a huge soft spot for the seven of swords. It depicts the self-satisfaction that comes with getting away with something. The thrill of escaping an unpleasant situation. The glee of knowing something that others don’t.
"No one can even get close to hurting me!" we boast. I can’t help but love the trickiness inherent in all of us.
The Wild Unknown’s version of this card also highlights the restlessness that comes with constantly having to guard what you have. In this case, a trove of swords that suggest you’re holding back what you really think in order to protect yourself.
The fox, a symbol of cunning, peeks out from behind its bushy tail with one eye open. You must be eternally vigilant to keep your true self hidden. You feel you must carry your anxiety with you like a talisman: "I must constantly worry about slipping up otherwise I won’t be protecting myself," you say. This is exhausting.
And what are we hiding behind these bushy tails? Our spines? This week’s reading gives us a beautiful answer: The Star.
The Star is as luminous, inspiring, and comforting as it seems. We look to the stars for inspiration and to sense our smallness. We are also reminded of our place in the universe. Though a black expanse of space separates us over an unfathomable distance, we are made of the same matter.
The ten of wands shows us that if we continue as is, ignoring our need to grow in vulnerability and express our true thoughts, we’ll get lost in the woods. We see the brambles and branches of the ten of wands looming ahead. They tangle over each other and the light behind them is dim. This is a card of losing sight of goals, of being lost in tasks and in details.
As a symbol of our own divinity, The Star points us back to our inherent magic and the gift that we have to give to the world. If the stars can shine across the darkness for millennia undaunted, we can muster the courage to let down our spines, peek out from behind our tails and let our true selves shine through.