Looking Foolish is Perfectly Acceptable
There are a lot of cups in this reading and not much else.
Love is in the air and trying to get our attention—I’m here, I’m here—ironically in a month in these parts with the most marital celebrations (due to optimal June weather, but still an interesting coincidence).
In the weeks ahead, we’re feeling stuff—deeply.
That’s nice.
But the watery suit is pouring out in buckets in readings I’ve done for myself and others lately, which could indicate our emotions are sort of … taking over. And some of us (I’m not naming any names) don’t like to feel too much.
If you fall into that camp (ie: you are a master at using any number of distractions to skim over difficult currents and/or you tuck your more confusing feelings into small boxes and throw them under the porch), you may be intrigued by the insight that follows.
Spoiler alert: feeling stuff is perfectly acceptable, and you are allowed to show it.
Where We Are
I’m listening to Pablo Casals and Yo-Yo Ma while I write this. It seems appropriate.
The first card out, from a deck I recently acquired called Lotería Remedios Oracle, is The Cello.
Musicians believe the cello’s range, of all the instruments, most closely matches the human voice, and El Violoncello is calling you to reclaim your own expression, to put a voice to what’s deep inside, that it’s ok to say that stuff out loud, or write it down, or make something with it.
So, the voice is important in the days ahead. Got it.
From the guidebook for this card:
Unlike other instruments you can carry around with relative ease, the cello asks the musician to pull up a chair and embrace it. Whatever music you must make right now requires your full attention and guidance.
The large body of the cello leans on a fine point on the body of the player, so some weighty work is required—emotional or spiritual—and reaching the right notes might require a bit of a balancing act.
The Cello asks that you do whatever it takes to find what you need to express—and there is not just one way to do so. (Note that you may need to dig deep.)
From the descriptive blurb for Bach’s Cello Suites, Yo-Yo Ma says about the composer’s timeless work, that he “experiments not just with the capabilites of the cello itself, but with the music’s power to express the inexpressible.”
Have you got something circling inside that feels “inexpressible”? If so, the first half of June is the perfect time to just be out with it.
From The Floral Tarot, the 3 of Cups appears next and it’s the first cup card to arrive in a hearty line of love-y cups to come.
Three of Cups is about friendship and community. Among those in your immediate world these days you may be feeling like your truest self, OR you’re thinking about your true self in relation to those around you—and why those relationships feel good and loving (or why they don’t).
Clarified by the Ace of Water from The Rosebud Tarot, the Universe is watering the seeds of your day-to-day and turning the sky a lovely pink, and your environment feels like fertile ground for something new that attracts you, whether it’s a person, a group of people, a project, or an adventure.
The traditional Ace of Cups depicts a hand coming out of the clouds to offer you a new beginning in love (paired with the 3 of Cups it’s likely friendship love)—out of nowhere.
It feels nice and it’s unexpected, and the folks around you support this growth—and if they don’t seem to feel that way, you could take this opportunity to have that heart-to-heart.
(Because FYI, they do have the capacity to support your growth, but maybe they don’t know how to do that, and you aren’t letting them know what you need.)
So, we kick things off in June with warm, fuzzy feelings with friends and the potential for new ways to connect :)
What’s Coming In
The King of Cups is genuinely lovely. Intuitive, compassionate, this figure is the poster boy for depth and maturity.
But the king is clarified by the 7 of Cups — which adds a bit of complexity to things.
Mingling on the emotional high road we’ve run headlong into these shrouded ladies with a snake, scorpion, and spider respectively at their feet, and what do they represent?
In the traditional Rider-Waite-Smith deck, this card presents seven cups which each hold something different: a laurel wreath, a snake, a castle, jewels, a human head, a dragon, and a shrouded glowing figure. Its message is that we may be falling into wishful thinking and lack focus, flitting between too many options without intentional follow-through.
We may be a little ‘out of touch with reality,’ daydreaming perhaps about the things we want (gee, wouldn’t that be great). The risk, here, is that—because you aren’t actually moving toward what you want in any tangible way—your runaway imagination may just be draining you.
With the King of Cups presiding over this predicament, the challenge falls in the realm of our emotional desires. Numerous cups are on offer with people, activities, or projects you deeply love, but bringing these aspirations into reality could feel tricky.
How do you maintain and honour how you feel without getting out of emotional balance by all of the possibilites and the information swirling around you? (The shrouded ladies seem a bit frozen by it all too.)
What kind of actions would our courtly king figure in this situation take?
When you find yourself choosing one thing over another in the coming weeks, get deliberate and compassionate with yourself.
Emotional maturity will be required, but you have the emotional wisdom to navigate this.
You really do.
(Ya, but how?)
The Advice
(This is how.)
The Fool, the zero card, the very first card in every tarot deck (and thus, the beginning of every journey) is the only major arcana card in this reading.
So it’s speaking louder than everyone else.
It wants you to know three things:
No need to get your panties in a wad.
Don’t take yourself so seriously.
Just leap.
The original version of this card shows a figure on the brink of a precipice. Wearing a feather and embarking with a satchel and a little dog, they appear to be happily about to leap off a cliff, and they don’t care who says what about it.
They are full of innocence and go bumbling into this new phase in life, wearing bright funny clothes with an open heart.
Clarified by the 2 of Air (which is technically the 2 of Swords), our advice for the first half of June is particularly around decision-making.
Two of Swords suggests that there may be a decision that has to be dealt with and it isn’t all that fun. However, in the advice position, this card hints, not so much at a predicament but at a method of approach.
We are guided to think about ‘third place solutions,’ that the answer is not necessarily this or that but something else not previously considered. And the ‘answer’ is not at all about ‘winning.’ (Unlike in tRump’s world, there doesn’t have to be a winner and a loser.)
The advice is very simply: be innocent and open. You DON’T already know what the outcome will be. You, in fact, have no idea.
To get through moments of indecision, when you feel blind with reticence, just start, and move through it at a pace if you have to, before your mind gets in the way.
It’s good to remember, too, that most decisions are not life or death.
And that we’re in the midst of a whole lotta of flowers. Which is great—look at what we’ve grown!. Blooms that show us we’ve come a long way and it’s pretty beautiful here.
So please don’t go snipping at the roses like the sorry soul on this card out of indecision and fear.
Last Thoughts
To cap things off, we sort of circle back to the start. I love how the practice of pulling tarot and oracle cards often does this.
First, a card from Deborah Koff-Chapin’s Soul Cards, which shows us a figure with many arms protecting an egg. There are no words on these cards and there is no guidebook, so we’re asked to ‘feel what we think the card means.’
And The Oyster, from The Wild Unknown Animal Spirit by Kim Krans, in which an oyster seems to hover in the same cosmic soup we saw earlier on the 7 of Water.
The Oyster reinforces the watery emotional elements of the reading, our incredible patience, as well as the idea that we all carry an ‘inner treasure.’
From the guidebook:
Oyster types often take their inner gifts for granted. They become shy or doubtful and this can lead to withdrawing or protecting their deepest desires and life’s work.
What is it you’ve been hesitant to share? The world is waiting to see.
And if we look back on the Fool card, the tree roots (which would normally be hidden underground) are visible here.
Maybe, up until now, we didn’t know how to show our hidden feelings (or even why we hide them) but—no matter—they want to come to light now.
Even if you may feel a wee bit foolish, it’s a perfect time to emerge.
Resources
Gonzalez, Xelena. Artwork by Sotelo Yamasaki. Loteria Remedios Oracle. Soulful Remedies & Affirmations from Mexican Loteria. Hayhouse Inc., 2024.
Harper, Diana Rose. Illustrated by Amanda Lee Stilwell. The Rosebud Tarot. Red Wheel/Weiser, 2023.
Koff-Chapin, Deborah. Soul Cards. Produced by the Center for Touch Drawing, 1995.
Krans, Kim. The Wild Unknown Pocket Animal Spirit. HarperCollins, 2022.
McMahon Collis, Diana. Illustrated by Nina Pace. Floral Tarot. The Quarto Group, 2024.
