January 2026: turning the wheel
Behave like someone who loves you is watching. —Elena Solano
Here in the Catskills, it’s snowing + cold…rainy + cold…gray + cold. In the midst of it all, the creek changes her face every day: frozen, frothy, turquoise, steel gray. I wonder how this turning of the calendar is finding you?
Here’s what I’m up to in the next couple months:
- I am thoroughly delighted to be joining my friend + conspirator Martha Crawford for a Community Discussion: Talking to the Dead on Saturday, January 24 at 2pm est—we’d love to see you there!
- I’ll also be offering Using Tarot to Work with the Dead on Saturday, February 7 at noon est
- There’s a new Study Tarot Series cohort beginning in February: get in on it!
- Elena Solano + I will start up a new Symbolic Lab in March… 🤓
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 😷
Listen to this month’s offering as a podcast
PSA: flu is really taking people out right now. it’s always the perfect time to put a mask back on 😷
you might be interested
- my dear friend + conspirator Karin Connelly is offering a 6-week Mind of Psychic-Mediumship mentoring group on Wednesdays at 5pm est starting January 14: “Teachers and mentors often encourage students to Get out of the way, Surrender or Just allow. If you ever find yourself unsure of how to do this, please join me in exploring the ways we somehow hold ourselves back from what we deeply want to express in our lives, our work, our relationships.”
- Human Hands Making Things: an account that celebrates what makes art art! Watch at your own speed, in silence, or with your own music selection + maybe be inspired to pick up a brush yourself! ❤️🔥
- Cory Nakasue + I talked Capricorn season on The Cosmic Dispatch, + we were joined halfway thru by Jhody Polk + chinyere okafor from the Jailhouse Lawyers Initiative to talk about time: watch or listen
resistance + refusal
- Bobby Nunez interfered with the arrest of a member of his community by towing an ICE vehicle. He was charged with theft of government property + faced up to 10 years in federal prison. He was acquitted by a jury of his peers
- Photographer Christopher Anderson’s portraits of the ghouls in the white house #theroleoftheartist; this analysis is by Cassandra Klos
- Community members activating rapid-response teams in Kenner, Louisiana
- Students walked out of school at Burnsville High School in Minnesota to protest Trump’s ICE gestapo terrorizing their community
- all the many regular-degular people all over the country who continue to gather in living rooms + libraries + church basements to learn about relational organizing, recruitment, direct action + emergency rapid-response; who continue to organize campaigns like #TeslaTakedown, boycotts + walkouts; + who believe that our neighbors + communities are worth fighting for
what’s inspiring me now
- the Study Tarot Series community ❤️🔥
- “How to Be Alone” by Pádraig Ó Tuama, a poetry film by Leo G Franchi (h/t Elena)
- Sheila Hicks: We’re Crying for Softness: “Can you imagine what color can do to your life?”
- Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russel: “Not many people allow themselves the full extent of their complexity.” (h/t Quinn 🙏🏻)
- OBSESSED with this whole situation
- George Washington Carver’s Secret Life as an Artist: “Most people do not know that Carver started as an artist and really his art is central to his scientific practice and vice versa.”
- Episodes 5 + 6 of Heated Rivalry #uglycrying
- Hilary Hahn on Mister Roger’s Neighborhood
- “Clay letters from ancient Mesopotamia are alive with idiom, sayings and everyday language that I love.”
THE MOON AND THE YEW TREE
by Sylvia Plath
This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs at my feet as if I were God,
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility.
Fumy spiritous mists inhabit this place
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to.
The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky —
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection.
At the end, they soberly bong out their names.
The yew tree points up. It has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness —
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.
I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars.
Inside the church, the saints will be all blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness — blackness and silence.
—listen to the legendary Patti Smith read this poem (h/t Beth Howard)
revolution: the wheel of fortune
We are entering a collective Wheel of Fortune year: 2 + 0 + 2 + 6 = 10, + the Wheel of Fortune is Major Arcana 10.
The power of revolution, a great change, a turning. Sussing out cracks + fissures, becoming a student of + participant in patterns + movements. Intergenerational solidarity meeting a turning moment: experience + long views knitted with courageous, on-the-fly responsiveness.
There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.* Riding change, surfing upheaval, recognizing I’ve been here before. Participating in life’s wild unfolding.
Not getting to the phone in time, saying yes instead of no, turning left instead of right, meeting the person who shifts our life track. Getting quiet to hear our inner voice amidst the roil. Trusting life, doubling down on faith in life itself.
Chance, taking risks, spinning the wheel, tempting fate, up one minute down the next. Getting off the seesaw of success + failure, fame + blame, winning + losing + getting on the field where the real game is taking place. Living laboratories, life-as-experiment, daring to lean on the wheel.
Pivoting from Why is this happening to me? to: Where is power here? Studying process + context, not being seduced by content. All-at-once, precipitous moments, clawing up to get a view + falling down to the humble earth. Learning to keep our heart fixed on the still point of the turning world.
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this is a distillation from 78 Faces of Power: the Elemental Tarot Zines
Find out more about my tarot work
WHAT’S INSPIRING YOU NOW?
