Typewriter Tarot-Scopes: September 2023
By Cecily Sailer
September begins in the middle of Virgo season, immediately following a blue super moon in the sign of Pisces, the water sign that sits opposite Virgo on the zodiacal wheel.
Virgo is an Earth sign, known for its attention to detail, structure, efficiency, and service. Following the big playful summer energy of Leo season, Virgo ushers in a time for straightening up, getting a bit more serious (back-to-school vibes!), and pulling together strategy and structure to carry us through the fall.
Virgo’s Tarot card is The Hermit, an archetype that models the development of inner wisdom through connection with Self, ancestors, nature, and the cosmos. Virgo then, ideally, takes this wisdom into the world through service-oriented work, offering support or guidance that become vectors for wisdom to transmit across the collective.
Pisces, on the other hand, is a water sign associated with intuitive knowing, deep feeling, fluid movement, and a willingness to peer into the emotional depths and crevices of experience and memory. Its Tarot card is The Moon, the archetype of nonlinearity, dream-like visions, feeling your way through, and marveling at the disjointed symbolism along the path.
And so we begin this month dancing in the tension between the two signs — wanting to lean toward order, structure, and planning, but feeling simultaneously submerged in emotion, barraged with intuitive hits, and surrounded by strangeness. Such is life, no?!
In our three-card reading for the collective this month, which you can watch here, I share a message (as I see it) from the Fifth Spirit Tarot Deck, “a queer and inclusive deck for a world beyond binaries.” The message in this reading — guided by the Five of Swords, Eight of Swords, and King of Cups — is very much about moving from the head to the heart, and I include a short meditation at the end of the reading to help us feel in the body the difference between head-centeredness and heart-centeredness.
This month’s Typewriter Tarot-scopes were pulled from the Fifth Spirit deck as well, and for each sign I focused on how the card offers guidance for connecting more deeply and fully with the heart-space this month. Each Tarot-scope includes a creative ritual you can try on your own to personalize the message and enhance the medicine. I also created a playlist for the month, which you can play as you conduct your rituals!
The Moon, Nine of Swords, and The Sun from the Fifth Spirit Tarot Deck.
VIRGO — The Moon: Coming into your heart-space might require getting lost or losing your bearings, getting tossed into the swamps for a long, dark night of the soul. I respect that Virgos love empiricism and structure (and, shall we say, a wee bit of control?), but this month it’s time to practice the art of surrender. How can you surrender to other ways of knowing, to what your heart wants, what your intuition has to say? Let yourself wander this month. Let yourself not know. Let yourself stand in the mystery, instead of thinking your way through, or trying to manipulate the outcome. Try feeling your way forward, “thinking” with your body and its watery wisdom, and letting yourself be shown. Your creative ritual: In a meditative visualization, let yourself wander through a watery space of some kind. Feel how the water moves according to its nature. Notice how your heart softens in the presence of all this water. Implant that feeling firmly into the seat of your heart. For a Tarot pull, you might ask — What can be gained when I surrender to the waters of the moon?
LIBRA — 9 of Swords: Your brain is so tired of thinking, brainy Libra. Too many data points to digest, so many problems to solve, so many what-ifs to game out. Each thought, on its own, feels sharp and necessary, but I worry you’ve amassed a mountain of knives at your feet! After you bandage your bloody ankles, I’d like to recommend a meditation practice this month. With your eyes closed, watch your thoughts float across the field of your mind like clouds, moving on and moving on, receding out of view. Finish by focusing on a cloud that surrounds your heart. Imagine this cloud’s color and hue. Watch how it rains refreshing and loving waters down through your body, dissolving the knives at your feet, and nourishing the ground below. Your creative ritual: Draw a picture of your heart as a cloud raining down things you love. Keep it where you’ll see it more than a few times. Sometimes, when you look at the image, close your eyes and recreate the feeling of the image inside your body. For a Tarot pull, you might ask — What does the cloud of my heart want to rain down?
SCORPIO — The Sun: To help you connect to your heart this month, sultry Scorpio, I invite you to repeatedly conduct this thought experiment in as many situations as possible, even situations where you feel bored, frustrated, hurt, annoyed, or downright pissed. In these moments, I encourage you to ask yourself — where is the levity in this, where is the laughter and absurdity? You might picture yourself resting atop a flying carpet in the sky looking down on the situation you find yourself in. What’s ridiculous or hilarious about it? I’m not asking you to laugh at your own expense, but I am nudging you to connect your heart to glimmers of joy and levity, even in the hard moments. You might even ask yourself — what if this levity were enough for now? What if the non-joy stuff is just a distraction that keeps me from the juicy joy part? And what if I refuse to let it? Your creative ritual (to perform as often as you like): In addition to the thought experiment described above, find a video or meme that delights you (here’s an option, or another, or another), or remember a story that makes you laugh no matter how many times you hear it or tell it. Or dance to this song at the end of this month’s playlist. And pull a card as often as you like, asking — where is the levity, humor, or light in this moment?
Two of Pentacles, Page of Swords, and Eight of Pentacles from the Fifth Spirit Tarot Deck.
SAGITTARIUS — 2 of Pentacles: You know that game-slash-magic-trick called “Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board” (featured prominently in the 1996 film The Craft)? In that movie, four witchy friends play a game and test their magic, lifting one member of their newly formed coven from the floor using only their middle and index fingers, plus total focus and a repeating mantra. This approach, brave Sagittarius, is how I’d like you to connect with your heart this month. How can you hold your dreams, responsibilities, passions, and projects in a way that’s as light as a feather and stiff as a board? What if floatiness and weightlessness + substance and strength = new levels of balance? Maybe take stock as summer draws to a close — what feels light as a feather in a good way? And what might be floaty that needs more weight? Conversely, what feels stiff as a board, in a good way? But what might be overly rigid, or too fixed? Your creative ritual, is to journal about the preceding questions. If you like, pull cards for some or all of them, and also one for these 2 questions — What wants to be light right now? What wants to be stiff?
CAPRICORN — Page of Swords: Perhaps you’ve been feeling the summer doldrums, dear Capricorn — a sense of slowness, or muddiness, of nonmovement and reduced action. But I know you become grumpy when you don’t have a proper outlet for all your hard-working-ness. Sea goats need rest too, however, and perhaps the dog days of summer provided a little cover so you could taste more slowness than you usually allow yourself. I hope you soaked it up! And I hope you remember — and your body remembers! — the value in moving at a more languid pace. But I sense the tides are shifting, and as fall arrives, you’re becoming more and more ready to dig in. When the rains come, plant your fall garden. When you feel the energy rising, ride the wave. You’re ready to make a commitment that requires experimentation, curiosity, and one of your favorite things — learning! Your creative ritual: Write a short statement about your love of discovery. Then write a list of things you’re excited to learn through the experiments you see down your path. Pull 3 cards in response to this question — what am I ready to learn next?
AQUARIUS — 8 of Pentacles: This month, let’s think of your heart like a worker bee. Honestly, in a literal sense, it’s the biggest worker bee in your entire body, contracting more than 100,000 times per day! It’s never not working (or you would not be reading this Tarot-scope!). But let’s turn to your heart metaphorically — as the energetic space of your emotions and the house where love resides. Consider, what does your worker-bee heart want you to work on now? Is it the capacity to feel, the ability to be vulnerable, the work of receiving, the practice of playfulness? Your creative ritual: Sit quietly with your hand over your heart for several minutes, feeling how your breath moves around and through this space inside you. Begin a dialogue with your heart and ask — what can I work on next, on your behalf? Then pull a Tarot card asking the same.
The Star, The Hanged One, and Nine of Wands from the Fifth Spirit Tarot Deck.
PISCES — The Star: A card almost as watery as you are, mystical Pisces. This month, I feel your heart wants to sing. And by that I mean: your heart wants you to literally sing. Sing in the shower, chant and hum in meditation, let your desires, sorrows, aches, and loves find harmony and expression through the vibrations of your voice. Imagine your throat, your vocal chords, your mouth and lips like a trumpet through which your heart can speak its truth, and lead you towards greater balance for the fall months ahead. Your creative ritual: Close your eyes and tap into the vibrations of your heart. Let your voice begin to animate the sounds your heart wants to speak. (This might mean making weird sounds you’ve never made before, and that is GREAT!) Sit in the vibrations that arise within you and move them out of you through your mouth-trumpet. I believe, through this practice, new visions will emerge of what you’re ready to shed and what you’re ready to call in. You might also use this month’s playlist to help you move sound through your body. Any time you sit in this practice, pull a card afterwards, asking: What does my heart want to sing today?
ARIES — The Hanged One: No big surprise here, bold Aries, but your heart craves new vistas, altered perspectives, and enhanced ways of seeing. Which has me wondering if it’s possible for you to make a tiny pilgrimage this month? Or spend an entire weekend wandering through the stanzas of abstract poems? Or walk alone through the quiet galleries of a museum you’ve been meaning to visit? The Hanged One invites us to step away from the routines and patterns of the everyday so that we can venture into some kind of wilderness where our understanding of ourselves and the world can become revised and remade. Your creative ritual: Craft an artistic field trip for yourself. Create a few prompts in advance, by writing several big questions you can hold as you explore your chosen field-trip environment. To help you create these prompts, pull three cards, asking — What questions can I hold? For each card, create a question you can use as a lens for new ways of seeing.
TAURUS — 9 of Wands: I wonder if your heart’s been waiting for something — quietly and patiently (with a level of mastery only a Taurus knows!). I suspect you’ve been keeping the fires lit as you work and dream in the stillness of night or the suspended hours of early morning. As the work adds up, I sense your heart is holding anticipation, a readiness to see how it all comes together, how your work makes waves in the world, how others receive what you’ve been crafting. The time is coming, brave Taurus, and the call will be answered before too long. But for now, keep the candles lit as reminders that energy moves in its own right time. Your work in supporting your heart, I think, is trust — that what you’re building is powerful, potent, and lasting. Your creative ritual: Choose a single candle in your collection (or buy a new one) and bless it with the spirit of trust by sitting quietly, holding the candle (unlit!) in your hands or lap. As you do this, close your eyes and call to mind anything and everything that engenders trust in you, including the ways you already trust yourself. Then craft a short mantra about trust that you can use when you light your candle at the beginning of a work or visioning session, and when you extinguish your candle at the close of a session. Do this until the candle is fully consumed. To assist you, pull three Tarot cards as reminders of what trust is made of.
Seven of Wands, Two of Wands, and The Chariot from the Fifth Spirit Tarot Deck.
GEMINI — 7 of Wands: Your heart aches for you to claim your creative territory, thoughtful Gemini, and to claim it BOLDLY, unapologetically. Claiming yourself in this way means taking into account all the victories, battle scars, and mundane moments that came from exercising your creative power throughout your lifetime. Your heart is tired of bearing questions related to your worthiness, ability, or relevance. It wants to shine its imperfect and blessed beauty for all the world to see, haters be damned! And you’re the only person who can help your heart in this way. Your creative ritual is to make a list, over the course of the month, cataloging all the creations that have brought you pride, and the ones that felt like duds, plus the projects you poured your heart into then walked away from, along with all the skills you’ve acquired and mastered, and the skills you’re beginning to hone now. Let this inventory help you see yourself as a warrior for creative vitality and a powerful creation in your own right, borne from trial and error, desire and aversion. Then practice standing in this powerful energy and moving from it. You might also ask your Tarot deck: How can I see myself as a Creative Warrior?
CANCER — 2 of Wands: Your heart is ready to find focus, sweet Cancer. You’ve been holding dreams, visions, and ideas for quite awhile, waiting for a proper time. But I think your heart is ready to move and act. You don’t need to know all the steps, and you absolutely cannot know the outcome. But you do get to envision all the different shapes and forms your dream can take. The more you let yourself see, the more you’ll know the next right action. Following these actions, one after another, is THE WAY you’ll discover what shape the dream will take. Your creative ritual: spend some time feeling into the energy of what you want to create or pursue or experience. Once you locate the feeling associated with this calling, imagine all the people, places, and experiences that make it possible for you to hold this dream — ancestors, teachers, adventures, and even false starts and dead ends. Then make a list of three to five questions you need to answer in order to keep moving forward, and use this month to focus on creative answers to those questions. This will help you chart the rest of the path. For a Tarot pull, you might ask — What kinds of questions do I need to answer? Or, where should I focus my actions?
LEO — The Chariot: Perhaps Leo season brought you fully back into yourself, bold spirit! Now that you’re reconnected to your powers, charms, and magic, I think your heart is ready to see what’s possible when you channel that energy through the remaining months of the year. (It is a Chariot year, after all!) I recommend you spend this month making sure you have the right containers, vehicles, and vessels for channeling your energy effectively and efficiently. Where are there loose ends or energy leaks? What needs a systems upgrade or patch job so you can travel the distance without catching drag or ending up in a two-day pit stop? You’re itching to move, but how can you support those movements by ensuring everything’s locked and loaded and ready to roll? Your creative ritual: Draw a map of the ecosystem you’re working within, whether for a gardening project, home repair, big stage performance, or business refresh. Draw connecting lines to visualize how different parts connect, feed, and support each other. Then take a hard look. Where is there redundancy, excess, or missing pieces? What do you want to re-jigger, or recalibrate? Where do you need more support? Look for a heart-centered feeling of doability, or security, or confidence that comes when the map of the ecosystem makes sense. For a Tarot pull, you might ask: What is the spirit, energy, or purpose infused throughout my ecosystem?
SUPPORT OUR BOOKSHOP
If you’d like to purchase the Fifth Spirit Tarot, featured in this post, we invite you to do so via this link, or other links in the post, which are hosted through our Bookshop.org affiliate page. This is our online book shop, featuring decks and books to support your growth, inspiration, creativity, and magic — hosted through Bookshop.org, a company that directs revenue and other support to independent bookstores across the United States. When you purchase from our Bookshop.org affiliate shop, a portion of your purchase supports Typewriter Tarot as well, helping us continue and expand our work. In our bookshop, you’ll find curated collections on Tarot, creativity, psychology, social justice, ecology, and more — hundreds of books to bring more magic to your life and your library. If you choose to purchase from our shop, we thank you!
CREATIVE SUPPORT IN YOUR INBOX
If you’re a Creative Spirit — as we suspect you might be since you’re here! — we have a lovely gift for you when you sign up for our newsletter (an almost weekly love letter featuring creative rituals, inspiration, and personal essays on magic, Tarot, and creativity). This free gift is a fun, magical, reflective workbook that will guide you into new facets of your relationship with creativity. To receive it, simply sign up for our newsletter down at the bottom of this page.
About Cecily sailer
Cecily Sailer is the creator and founder of Typewriter Tarot. She’s a creative magic coach and mentor, Tarot reader, witch, bird-lover, and writer based in Austin, Texas.