30 Nov 2025 5 min read monthly musings

December 2025: tending our creative fire

King of Wands from the Abstract Futures Tarot by Hilma’s Ghost

There are living, breathing people all around you who need your sense of decency to be made material. —Kelly Hayes

Listen to this month’s offering as a podcast

Dear Friends,

Here in the Catskills, winter’s palette has arrived: a study in browns + grays, cottony skies, the complex shapes of bare branches, the mountain once again showing her scalp. I wonder how this season of surreality is finding you?

Here’s what I’m up to in the next couple months:

There’s a new Study Tarot Series cohort beginning in February: get in on it!
Cory Nakasue + I have a new Correspondence offering: a 30-minute recorded Upcoming Transits + Tarot Prescriptions reading
Elena Solano + I bring this year’s Symbolic Lab to a close with Trust in Remembering Saturday, December 27 at 2pm est

My books are open for readings this month + it’s also easy to purchase gift readings for the people in your life. Zine box sets are still available!

Thank you to all of you who continue to support my work in so many amazing + generous ways 🙏🏻💚

Love + rigor,
shea in the catskills 😷

you might be interested

As part of my participation in Kening Zhu’s Labyrinth Library, I recently did a show + tell about my art practice
Cory Nakasue + I are creating a 2026 planner that starts at the spring equinox + travels thru the astrological decans of the year. You can sign up to receive more information about it + how to order…

study tarot series new cohort starts february 11 applications are open, meets online 2nd and 3rd wednesday at 6pm — *I recorded* *a new 8-minute video* *about this series…get a sense of what we really get up to in these cohorts!*

a black rectangular grave marker with an etched image of a figure standing on one leg with symbols throughout their body and the words Lore and Ardor — *made a pilgrimage to* *Rachel Pollack’s* *grave in Rhinebeck with friends. “Lore and Ardor”—what a summation of a life!*/

resistance + refusal

US postal worker charged with breaking man out of ICE custody on Long Island
Images of ICE attacking people projected onto Spotify buildings in LA
fiber artists join peaceful ICE protests in Portland, OR
I sure hope you’re not crossing a picket line to buy Starbucks! + we’re not shopping at Target, Home Depot or Amazon, right? (It’s so easy to support independent artists + esotericists instead!)
Faith leader Michael Woolf (pictured below): “People wanting to experience God are more likely to meet the Divine trying to shut down the Broadview, Illinois, ICE facility than we ever were in church...God does not live in our houses of worship, but...with those who are bearing the brunt of cruelty in this moment.”

a white bearded man wearing a cross and clerical collar looking directly at the camera while being arrested on the ground by uniformed agents — Michael Woolf, minister at Lake Street Church of Evanston, is detained by Illinois State Police during a protest against immigration actions, outside the Broadview ICE facility in Chicago, Illinois, November 14, 2025. photo: REUTERS/Jim Vondruska

Disability is not a “brave struggle” or “courage in the face of adversity.” Disability is an art. It’s an ingenious way to live.

—Alice Wong, March 27, 1974 - November 15, 2025

a watercolor painting of an Asian woman wearing red lipstick, a brightly colored graphic blouse, and a respiratory mask with a tube coming out of it, sitting in a wheelchair — “Death remains my intimate shadow partner. It has been with me since birth, always hovering close by. I understand one day we will finally waltz together into the ether. I hope when that time comes, I die with the satisfaction of a life well-lived, unapologetic, joyful, & full of love.” *painting by* *Molly Crabapple*

what’s inspiring me now

a friend sent the group chat a link to David Bowie & Gail Ann Dorsey (who I’d never heard of + who recently had a birthday) performing Under Pressure live + it is…EVERYTHING (thanks, Kelsey!)
teachings on GRIEF:
- 🌶️ Autumn + adrienne maree brown talk to Francis Weller about The Long Dark: “…what we expected and did not receive, that's a hole that we have to weep in for generations”
- 🌶️🌶️ tarotist Rashunda Tramble on the Scorpio new moon: “…go deep. Feel. Accept. Then return to the surface and offer those feelings as an intense prayer.”
- 🌶️🌶️🌶️ Dayna Lynn Nuckolls on establishing new emotional territory: “Revolution has to begin in the body because the body is where fascism and oppression begin. It begins with telling you who to be afraid of.”
Jesse Welles
this epic thread of historically interesting things
documentaries:WHAT’S INSPIRING YOU NOW?
- The Hermit of Treig: “Sometimes if you love the land, it loves you back”
- Come See Me In The Good Light about the poet Andrea Gibson—I don’t recommend watching this alone 😭

a bearded man in a black hooded winter coat standing amidst an outdoor crowd in front of a large monument — *the next mayor of New York City at a rally for trans youth on February 8, 2025, when he was polling in the single digits*

REVOLUTIONARY LETTER #46

And as you learn the magic, learn to believe it
Don’t be “surprised” when it works, you undercut your power.

—Diane di Prima

a gauzy round reddish circle with smaller circles inside of it floating in a black cosmic sky — *mood:* *Webb’s mid-infrared image* *shows four coiled shells of dust around a pair of Wolf-Rayet stars known as* **Apep** *(aka* *the Lord of Chaos**) for the first time*

an abstract tarot card with brightly colored spiky shapes forming a central column with a bright tomato red background against a dark wood surface — *King of Wands from the* *Abstract Futures Tarot* by *Hilma’s Ghost*

tending our creative energy: king of wands

The power of radical vision. Inspiring others. Invoking life. Organizing with passion wedded to discipline. Feeling the fullness of your power. Gathering + directing the power of 10 hearts, 100 hearts, 1,000 hearts pointed toward liberation.

Intentionally extending the horizon of what’s possible, dilating desire beyond the State’s demobilizing imperative to passively consume. Harnessing life force in service of liberation. Emboldening others beyond the overculture’s imagination.

Those living in apocalyptic conditions creating pockets of play + entertainment for children who have lost everything + everyone. Resistance forces continuing to fight, strategize + operationalize under unfathomable conditions of asymmetric violence.

The power of keeping Life alive, knowing fear + courage are equally contagious. Spurring others to joy thru embodied joy, calling others to resist mass death through devotion to Life. Knowing who + what we’re responsible for + tending our fire: banked, steady + strong. The incalculable, incandescent power of laughter, celebration + storytelling.
___________

this is a distillation from 78 Faces of Power: the Elemental Tarot Zines

Find out more about my tarot work

Crips for eSims for Gaza

In December 2023, Alice Wong, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, and Jane Shi started the “Crips for eSims for Gaza.” It encourages disabled people, who call themselves crips, to raise money for eSIMs. This project has raised over $3 million to help keep Palestinians in Gaza connected to each other + the world.

In addition to wearing a mask 😷, donating to Crips for eSims seems a fitting tribute to the life of Alice Wong.