Dive into this month’s medicine for your sign with our Numinous Tarotscopes December 2018, cast by Melinda Lee Holm. Artwork: Prince Láuder
SAGITTARIUS // SAGITTARIUS RISING
Six of Cups
Happy solar return, Sagittarius! You’re closing out the year and another journey around the Sun with a little congratulatory pat on the back – centered right over your heart center. Something tells me that ring of Fire you jumped through last month really boosted your intuitive powers, fueling the empathy needed to earn this achievement in the realm of Water. Sixes generally indicate a reversal of fortune after the chaos of the five, a hard-earned win after a long struggle. And because of that I always read in them a deep appreciation for the accomplishment they assume and a deep empathy for those who have not yet made it there. It’s like coming in out of the cold and looking back out onto the street, hoping those still walking are mere steps from their own warm solace.
Maybe what you’re looking out at is another part of yourself that hasn’t made it in, some piece of your heart that can’t quite catch its breath yet, still steeling against the wind. This month, find forgiveness and empathy for all those parts of yourself so you can lift them up and integrate this new emotional lift and use it to help others do the same. If you’re the type that doesn’t care much for birthday celebrations, make an exception this year. Have dinner with a few close friends. Allow them to celebrate the very fact of your existence on the anniversary of your entry into this world and as you do, really feel in turn how grateful you are that they’re here with you.
Sagittarius stone for December: Green Apophyllite. Green Apophyllite helps to cleanse and heal the heart through the power of the natural world, while its attunement to the energy of the Earth grounds our perspective.
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CAPRICORN // CAPRICORN RISING
Five of Wands
Lay down that magic wand you’ve been wielding, Capricorn! The time for action has hit a distinct pause. All that glorious conjuring that served you so well last month will not likely get you where you think it will this month. It is time to step back to reflect and observe. And look, I know the Fives have a bad reputation. We (me included!) tend to think of them as unwelcome bumps in the road, barriers to our progress. Let’s turn that around this month. I’ve got a Five this month too (Sun in Cancer), so I’m giving myself the same pep talk I’m giving you. Let’s spend the last month of the year changing our relationship to these challange points, welcoming them with open arms.
All December, I invite you to REVEL in disconnecting from taking action, from creating, from reading all the messages between the lines. You’ve accomplished enough for now. Sit back and enjoy the view. Even better – barely notice the view. Let the whole world roll past you and over and through you as you become very quiet and still. So still that you hear sounds within you never knew were there, the music of your body serenading you, blood pumping through veins and breath steadily moving in and out, cooling and warming as it goes. You can choose to be frustrated by this moment or you can take advantage of it as an opportunity to fine tune your inner frequency without any guilt around slowed productivity, with the knowledge that when you do make moves again, you’ll be wiser and better equipped.
Capricorn stone for December: Grape Agate. Grape Agate provides a safe haven to get settled, centered, and refocused. It calms the mind and body, allowing superficial stressors to take a backseat to more urgent needs.
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AQUARIUS // AQUARIUS RISING
Ten of Wands
It’s full steam ahead for you this month, Aquarius, so strap on your coziest work boots and get ready to feel utterly brimming with creative potential. These moments don’t come along often and when they do, there can be outside factors that make them a little sticky. With Mercury stationing direct on the 6th, and following up on all that great interior work you did last month, I feel you’re going to have a really nice period of productivity that will have you wondering how you got it all done. We usually need to slow down on our own projects when the holidays come around, but you are well positioned to elegantly navigate family and social obligations while bringing your own creative visions to life.
Exciting times! My guess is that something blew into your orbit in November that rekindled a previously forgotten desire of your heart, some long lost goal or creative dream. Now is the time for you to bring that dream into reality, into a form that you can see and taste and feel. If you’re unsure what this dream project is, call on the intutive aspect of Wands to guide you. Sit quietly with your eyes closed and ask for clues to be sent into your view that will point toward the most fertile areas of growth. Even if you spend all month doing this once a day without taking action, it would be a month very well spent. We can only make our world as big and lush as we can dream it. Dream big, Aquarius. You have the power to make it reality.
Aquarius stone for December: Shiva Lingam. Shiva Lingam stimulates the physical and energetic bodies, infusing both with the vibrancy and stamina needed to bring crazy dreams into reality through hard work.
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PISCES // PISCES RISING
Ace of Swords
Oh, Pisces, this is quite a Solstice gift for you! Your highly tuned empathic sense is the envy of the zodiac, but it can also lead to a murky sense of truth. After all, our perspective and experience determine what we see as real and if you’re able to tap into the perspective and experience of others with such ease, that reality can shift around quite a bit. But this month, you have the great gift of clarity both received and expressed. All of that careful assessment you got into last month is going to be rendered in super sharp focus, high definition realness. Be ready to accept what you see and trust yourself to speak to it. This Divine gift of reason and communication is precious, especially this time of year, coming off a string of retrogrades!
Your gorgeous sensitive heart may be made uncomfortable by what you can see now or by the directness of the words that come to carry your expressions. That’s ok. Instead of trying to avoid or suppress any discomfort, embrace it and turn this x-ray vision you’ve been gifted to the task of seeing where it’s coming from, what it’s rooted in, and what that tells you about yourself. Be kind and patient with yourself, offer yourself shelter, and hold always in your heart the joy of growing and evolving as a spiritual being and a human. And make sure you’re surrounded by your nearest and dearest on New Years. Something tells me you’ll improvise a speech that will leave no dry eye in the house.
Pisces stone for December: Opal. Opal inspires independent thought and action through a connection with one’s innate and deeply held personal truth. It offers the freedom to express oneself openly and honestly.
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ARIES // ARIES RISING
Page of Swords
You’re turning over a new leaf to close out the year, Aries! There must have been some beautiful and profound revelations that came out of the heart explosion you went through last month, and now you can get a better grasp on their meaning. You are stepping into a completely new style of communication with yourself and with others, forgetting all the rules you adhered to before. It’s a wonderful way to really feel the integration of all the lessons of not just last month, but the past year. The freshness of the Page energy can sometimes be seen as naive, but here it feels like an achievement, a sign of wisdom, an indication that you’ve gotten all you could out of the previous path and yearn to walk a new one, to learn more.
Allow December to be a clean slate. If there are stories that you’ve been telling yourself about who you are or can be or are capable of, let them go. In your relationships with others, step out of automatic repsonse styles and really consider what you want to communicate befoe your words come out. Open yourself to the wide open expanse of options in your thoughts, your intellectual frameworks, and your verbal and non-verbal expressions. Think of the whole world as your cosmic thesaurus, showing you variations on themes you never knew existed. And whatever you do, resist like hell any urge to fall into old patterns in your interactions with family over the holidays. That is your richest area for growth opportunity this month.
Aries stone for December: Optical Calcite. Optical Calcite offers the opportunity to see things, people, and situations through a different lens, challenging our own perspectives and opening understanding.
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TAURUS // TAURUS RISING
The Sun
Well, Taurus, here we are. You made it through all of 2018 digging around in Earth and Major Arcana and I have to say, I am deeply impressed. It’s a beautiful thing to see a year tied together like this and I truly hope you are feeling the culmination of lessons around creating the world around you in collaboration with the Divine Universe. And if you’re not yet, you will this month! December holds a beautiful illumination for you, a chance to see and believe as you haven’t been able to before. Your world is about to take on new form and color, new meaning, as you take in this landscape that has developed over the past year. Take time to drink it in and enjoy it.
December can often bring a tendency to overcommit, overschedule, and overindulge. Resolve early to not bite off more than you can chew – literally or metaphorically. You want to maintain a nice, calm center from which to survey your world – especially with the revelations of these retrogrades still waiting to be understood and integrated. It’s been quite a journey for you this year. What you see this month will bring it all into focus, revealing how far you’ve come and giving you hints about how to begin planning for the next year. Don’t forget – the other aspect of The Sun is that it provides the energy needed to grow fruit from the Earth. Takes notes on what seeds find their way onto your path this month.
Taurus stone for December: Garnet. Garnet grounds passion in reality, ensuring that we take an optimistic, yet realistic, view of our personal potential in a given set of circumstances.
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GEMINI // GEMINI RISING
Seven of Pentacles
December is bringing you a lesson in patience and your own power, Gemini. Be ready to encounter many opportunities to confront limiting beliefs about yourself and your productivity. While these may seem harsh or painful at first, know that they are here in the service of showing you how much you truly are capable of and to bolster your trust in your own ability to create. Sevens are about overcoming doubt, and you cannot overcome doubts you cannot name. Before they are named, we just think they are part of the fabric of our reality, a truth that tells us the boundary of our capabilities. So strap in and start digging early in the month. The more you can uncover, the greater the bounty of this work will be – and just in time for a fresh new year!
You know how everyone gets all excited when Mercury stations direct because things can start moving again? Well … don’t get too excited. Not about that anyway. What I want you to try to focus your excitement on instead is the action and process of work itself, the experience of it, feeling how capable your hands and mind are to create and build. The output isnt important right now, your trust in your own ability and your faith in the eventual outcome of that ability is. If you have difficulty with this, give yourself small reminders – set realistic daily goals, put one foot in front of the other, and see them completed by the end of the day. Trusting yourself is a practice. Keep working at it and let it unfold.
Gemini stone for December: Vanadinite. Vanadinite clears blocks to creativity and productivity, particularly those coming from within ourselves. It can unlock hidden potential and artistic avenues of exploration.
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CANCER // CANCER RISING
Five of Cups
Ok, Cancer, don’t freak out. I feel your deep sighs reverberating through the cosmos. Trust me, they were mine too when I pulled this card for us. What a way to close out the year, right? But then I challenged myself to push past those feelings and consider more deeply the implications of this mournful, chaotic energy, and now I am honestly stoked about it! That Page energy last month really stirred the emotional pot. Feelings were coming fast and furious, creating surprising reactions and the potential for huge transformation. We’re not who we were before. No one can be after making themselves so radically vulnerable and open, and we wouldn’t want to be. And now we have the chance to mourn the loss of our old selves before we step into the new year.
So often we are told we’re being dramatic or negative if we express a sense of loss when our situation changes or we evolve as people. We’re not supposed to admit attachment to lifestyles or mindsets that we’ve outgrown. But if we don’t acknowledge the attachment, we can never be released from it. So, let’s do this, Cancer! Ruminate on who you no longer are, make a shrine to your old self, write yourself letters, and be ready to gather it up and let it all go. I’ll give you extra credit for ritual disposal of an item that is symbolic of who you used to be – and EXTRA extra credit if you do it on the Solstice.
Cancer stone for December: White Calcite. White Calcite helps to gently cleanse and revitalize the energetic body, removing debris from past woundings and traumas from this life, previous lives, and inherited trauma.
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LEO // LEO RISING
Five of Swords
All this big cosmic power has got you a little mixed up, Leo, but it’s no reason to panic. While this month may feel unrelentingly confusing, you can greatly soften the experience by eliminating one little phrase form your repertoire: “figure it out.” Our human brains are obsessive little things. They like order, categorization. They are made uneasy by ambiguity. In other words, they like to get things figured out. However, there are very few things in life that we actually NEED to figure out in order to get through our day to day. Where the keys are so you can leave the house? Yes. What exactly your sister meant by that comment on social media? Not so much. You following me?
Stick to the basics this month. Don’t figure anything out. Practice the art of purposeful naivety. That guy who cut you off on the freeway? Maybe he has a family emergency! You’ll never know for sure anyway, so why not believe it and spare yourself the churning anger of road rage. If you feel called to it, read up on the Buddhist concept on nonduality. Try on the idea that good and bad do not exist, that everything in the world is neither and also both. If you need to make decisions this month, rely on your gut instinct and your heart. Air is in chaos, but Fire and Water should serve you well. Play your cards right in this energy and you’ll be the most content person at every holiday gathering of the season.
Leo stone for December: Rainbow Hematite. Rainbow Hematite encourages mental clarity and focus while removing stagnant energy and helping to raise consciousness and psychic abilities.
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VIRGO // VIRGO RISING
The Chariot
You are riding off into the sunset of this year with style, my dear Virgo. You’re packing up only what you need and allowing the fruits of your labor to sweep you off your feet and into your future. And with the serious amount of internal balancing and excavation you’ve been up to over the past couple months, it should be a very easy task deciding what it is you want to carry forward into this next chapter. Allow the last few days of Mercury’s retrograde trip to shake off before you make final decisions, but don’t stall too long. You’ll want to be moving before the holidays hit. Make the Solstice on the 21st your deadline for any decisions on what you want the landscape of 2019 to look like.
The Chariot is about the vehicle, not the driver. The message here is to pay attention to what it is that you are allowing to carry you. My guess is, you’re in good shape, but do take time the first half of the month to check the metaphorical oil and the tire pressure on the container you’re driving through life. Sometimes we get on automatic pilot, we forget to check our navigation closely, to get that squeaky hinge oiled up. Look around your life and make sure that everything that you trust to keep you moving forward is in good working order – for YOU. And then sit back and enjoy the ride. It should be a beautiful journey into the new year.
Virgo stone for December: Pink Tourmaline. Pink Tourmaline is a particularly soothing heart stone, creating a safe environment for the heart to open and be nurtured and healed by oneself, loved ones, and the Divine.
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LIBRA // LIBRA RISING
Two of Swords
Ah, Libra, do you hear that? It’s the sound of your mind quieting down after all that cosmic balancing out last month. As we shift out of the retrogrades and into the last lap of 2018, you’re hitting that runner’s high clarity where everything sort of pops into focus and the pieces that have become irrelevant fall away like dead leaves from a hibernating tree. Allow the gentle breeze of your native element to sweep through every fiber of your being, coaxing out any dust that may have become lodged in the corners, leaving you renewed. This is a time for a fresh start, for getting back to basics. The seed of wisdom in the element of Air is settling itself into your consciousness. Your task is to make sure it has a healthy place to grow.
Take care to free your mind of clutter this month. I am big proponent of regular meditation for everyone all the time, but for you, this month, it is crucial. Twenty minutes twice a day is my preference, but if you can get even five in I’ll take it. Don’t get bogged down in which style of meditation is “correct” – that’s just your brain cleverly distracting you. Pick one and go. Change it up if you need to. Just be disciplined and do it daily. Trust me, you’ll thank me when the Soltice rolls in and you find you have a crystal clear vision of how you need to proceed with your work and life in the new year.
Libra stone for December: Bismuth. Bismuth transforms through providing a hard reset on connection with others, the environment, and our true selves, inspiring a push for positive change and growth.
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SCORPIO // SCORPIO RISING
King of Wands.
You’ll be the belle of the ball this month, Scorpio, and not (just) because of your good looks and charm! You’re going to have an almost psychic ability to plan and execute on your obligations, freeing you to truly enjoy the social time you schedule and earn. Kings represent the Air of their suit, and when that mental clarity and vision is combined with the magick and intuition of Fire it creates quite an enviable atmosphere of laser-focus and deft execution. You’ll have a supernatural ability to know exactly where and with whom your energy is best spent. If you have a tendency to feel dragged down by draining holiday events, rejoice and look forward to a month spent surrounded by inspiration.
In order to get the full benefit of this energy, you have to have great boundaries in place. Boundaries – not retaliatory meaures. Keep the stinger under wraps and your focus on making sure you don’t feel the need to use it in the first place. If this sounds overwhelming, spend the last few days of Mercury’s retrograde run asking for guidance on how you can let go of anything standing in the way of your embracing the power of a loving “no.” Sometimes even just acknowledging you have an issue will be enough for you to clear it. You cannot deny what you choose to see. Light a candle, throw rocks in the sea, let it go. And then shine up your dancing shoes. You have a a lot of reveling to do.
Scorpio stone for December: Nuummite. Nuummite activates powerful internal magick and self-mastery. It reveals areas of weakness so they can be molded into strengths and shows us how to reach our full potential as creative beings.
