On the Decans of Mercury
Register for a Subscriber Exclusive Class on the Cards of Quicksilver, & other updates
Reminders:
June Consultations are Open: Book here
Auguring the Animal class open for registration: Enroll here
Join me Sat. June 29 at 1pm pst for a subscriber exclusive online class breaking down the decans of Mercury through the minor arcana.
Register Here
Greetings reader,
Early Monday morning Mercury ingressed into Gemini, joining Jupiter, Venus and the Sun. Soon enough the Moon will join this stellium and the cycles keep spiraling, and we keep struggling to survive, keep striving to thrive.
While I was in Oakland a couple weeks ago, wrapping up my Red Tarot Tour while in conversation with some amazing partners at the Mechanics Institute and the California Institute of Integral Studies, I stopped by Walden Books and walked out with Gathering Blossoms Under Fire, a compliation of four decades of the Journals of Alice Walker. This wasn’t the only book I procured, but its one I knew I couldn’t leave without. I’ve only had the time to read some of entries in a bibiliomantic manner, but I’m in awe simply holding it. Obviously it is a treasure to have, read, and be led by the private archive of one the most impactful, inimitable writers to ever pick up a pen. Any page I turn to makes me deeply emotional and its 506 pages long! That’s a whole lot of feeling to flip through and I couldn’t cherish it more.
Mercury is the bound ruler of both of my luminaries, and my midheaven and my south node is in Gemini. I’ve always had the notion that my private journals would be kept for posterity. Is this the hubris of a writer? Or is it just the innate knowing that if I don’t keep a record of my existence, of the interiority of my world kept in words, then as much or as often as I’ve felt unknown and estranged in my living, I’d be all the more erased in my death. So that I am not known by the brief moments of my external accomplishments, I’ve kept the company of a journal.
Alice Walker inspires me to keep recording. Over recent years my daily journaling has been replaced with the records of my daily divination and my “mundane” journal is more a grief prayer. Anyhow I hope with all this Gemini energy that you are writing and reading your own archive as well.
And with the Gemini New moon this week I figured I’d invite you to a subscriber exclusive class on the decans of Mercury. I shine red light on each of the cards so that they may be more critically considered as guideposts in our contemporary context. If you want to dive deeper into this red decan reading, then check out my classes on each decan set here, whereas if you become a paid subscriber you can catch up on this class series where I dictate the decans via their planetary alignment, and get access to this class playback in case you can’t make it live:
As always, here’s a reminder of what these classes cover in case you’re new here (welcome!):
A break down of the nature of Mercury
A diagramming of the Mercury decans
How Mercury's elementary nature becomes distinctly emphasized and emblematic in the syncretized tarot arcana.
Spirits and powers associated with each Mercury decan / arcanum
What and how these cards / decans signify in a reading and how to heed their advice.
A custom Mercury spread for writing a new world
The Venus class playback is coming in a couple days, but I’ve got some more treats to share with you.
As mentioned earlier I had the pleasure of speaking about Red Tarot At CIIS and the conversation is now live. Check it out and let me know what you think:
It was such a pleasure to meet readers in person and sign copies of their books before their smiling faces that I’m all the more excited to let you know I am now selling a limited number (about 20) signed copies of Red Tarot directly from my website. If you’d like a personalized message and my signature on your copy but haven’t been able to attend one of my live events, then now’s the chance!
And lastly lovely reader,
I am still enrolling students for Auguring the Animal.
We begin June 26 and will be attempting to be undone by a queer untamed ontology. We will become once more as bewildered bodies. Jack Halberstam inspires this teaching as they write:
Enroll if you wish to read like a beast.
I will leave you with suggestions for animal altars so as to restore the reverence, respect and spiritual communion with animals that was disrupted by the settler project which used these modes of relation as evidence of the savagery of Indigenous peoples. You will leave certain of non-human animals as knowledge-holders, council, independent actors, symbol and signified by the cards of the tarot.
This course offers a decolonial ethic that accounts for animal bodies as resurgent bodies. The tarot will be our counterpoint to create a circuit of coherence amongst the various cultural layers, significations, and vantages that coexist within the cards animal references. No prior experience with tarot required but always welcome. Payment plans are available and I am here if you have any questions.
The world makes me so weary and so I’ll leave you with the opening namesake poem by Alice Walker to her journals which feels like a Five of Pentacles balm.
While Love is Unfashionable
While love is unfashionable let us live unfashionably. Seeing the world a complex ball in small hands; love our blackest garment. Let us be poor in all but truth, and courage handed down by the old spirits. Let us be intimate with ancestral ghosts and music of the undead.
While love is dangerous let us walk bareheaded beside the Great River. Let us gather blossoms under fire.
Hope to see you soon dear reader,
Christopher