Monday, April 21, 2025
Waning Moon
No Retrogrades
We are in a very brief period without retrogrades, so it’s good to set track for the rest of the year. Part of that is clearing out, since we are in waning moon. The sun just moved into Taurus, which means we are also focused on comfort and home. In other words, many I know are into serious spring cleaning right now and working on their homes. I’m doing it, too, and my landlord’s painting the exterior of the building, which is great!
This week’s reading has three court cards and two minor arcana. It builds on what was set out over the past few weeks.
This month’s deck is the wonderful Mystic Mondays deck by Grace Duong. It’s modern, bright, and colorful, a great way to jump into spring. A fellow writer recommended this deck to me, and I fell in love with it. It reads very well, and the artwork itself communicates with strength and clarity. If you want to read more about Grace’s work (she has several decks and gives workshops), and buy the deck, you can do so here.
If you’re new to the weekly readings, this is a spread of mine. It’s read from left to right, 5 cards. Any card that needs more interpretation can be built into further, above and below, with either more tarot cards, another tarot deck, or an oracle deck.
These interpretations are mine, based on my experience, intuition and responses to the artwork. You may have a different experience. This is an overview of the week as it stands now; every decision we make from the moment of the reading can change the outcome. If there’s something in the reading that worries you, you have the information ahead of time so that you can plan, make better choices, or handle it differently than predicted for a better outcome. Tarot sets out possibilities, which you change through your choices and actions.
Left to right, the positions are as follows:
1. The Collective Energy of the Week
2. The Week’s Challenge
3. The Week’s Opportunity
4. The Week’s Stretch
5. The Week’s Comfort
The Collective Energy of the Week – Knight of Swords
The Knight of Swords is about intellect, good judgment, and fair decisions. It ties into last week’s Ace of Swords, which was in the challenge position. Last week’s new ideas have formed well enough to take out into the world. Let’s bring our new ideas to the table, discuss them, and find strong ways to move forward together.
The Week’s Challenge – 10 of Cups
This is an odd card to have in the challenge position, because it is such a positive card, and we tend to see challenges as negatives or obstacles. This is a card of emotional fulfillment and strong bonds, and creative expansion into fruition. How can that be a challenge? In this particular reading, there’s always the risk of fearing you will lose the 10, instead of realizing that the 10 opens the way to even more expansion. Because the 10 is often seen as the end of a cycle, people sometimes get scared a loss is about to come, and they start to hold tighter or try to shrink themselves so no one notices how lucky they’ve been. In this position this week, the 10 reminds us that we can be both grateful for what we have, and use it as the foundation for even more creative expression and fulfillment on a greater level than just our own. It ties into the community aspect – ten cups, let’s share! It also ties into the collective energy of the previous card, the Knight of Swords, about bringing new ideas – CREATIVE ideas (cups) to the table and sharing them (cups).
The Week’s Opportunity – Queen of Swords
The Queen of Swords learns from her mistakes and applies that knowledge moving forward. She is fair, often blunt, and knows how to balance the intellectual with the emotional. This week’s opportunity is to make a different, stronger, smarter choice from something where you mis-stepped before. Break a pattern that did not serve you. Make a smarter choice. Use what you’ve learned not just from your own experience, but from the new ideas brought to the table in community in the previous two cards.
The Week’s Stretch – 5 of Swords
The 5 of Swords is about intellectual conflict and argument. The stretch part this week is to remember that different ideas and opinions don’t have to be a negative experience. Respectful, lively debate can bring ideas further into being. If you practice deep, active listening and integration, rather than being reactive and feeling that disagreement means you have to switch into survival mode, different opinions can offer positive progress. That doesn’t mean acquiescing to those who are speaking or acting in bad faith. But it means taking the best of each genuine argument and shaping it into something that serves a greater good.
The Week’s Comfort – Queen of Pentacles
The Queen of Pentacles is about comfort, nourishment, enjoyment, abundance, and safety. Let’s take comfort that these new ideas and lively discussions, processed through what we’ve learned, will create a safer, more abundant community space. We can do this for each and create it WITH each other, rather than waiting for some unnamed source beyond us and beyond our community to do it for us.
Did anything in this reading resonate with you? Or do you have a different interpretation? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!