Scorpio Full Moon | 6 of Swords

[Image Credit: Shawnie Hamer]

Where in your life are you being too polite (with yourself)?

One of my favorite Scorpio poets, Samiya Bashir, once said during a reading at Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program: politeness is a form of self-denial.
​
Notice your shoulders, now. Notice what binaries you gravitate to upon hearing this. Polite/rude is not a two-sided coin. It is a prism. Politeness is a multifaceted construction, built on many things, but the biggest being power. There are many forms of politeness that exclude—genders, races, classes. There are forms of politeness that even oppress, that tell us we have to perform in a certain way to be accepted or loved.

And our relationship with ourselves is not impervious to these constructions.

Politeness is often rooted in deception and inauthenticity. Most of all, when it comes to ourselves, it is often rooted in fear. We paint on a smile and say, I’m fine, thank you, when everything inside is saying otherwise. We are terrified to wear our complexities, our edges, even our joys or desires, because they might not be received.

What if we gave ourselves permission to be impolite, not mean or harsh, but completely honest, outside of performance, outside of expectations?

Scorpios have a reputation of being sharp or severe with their honesty, but this is just the shadow side of the sign. Scorpios are also incredibly loving and supportive with their honesty. They can help you see things buried under the debris with new eyes. But the truth is, we aren’t always ready to see or hear this kind of honesty, because it challenges us to fully step into ourselves, to fully love ourselves the way we know deep down we deserve.

I watched a film last night called Spotlight, and at one point, Liev Schreiber’s character says, “I think it’s important to remember that we are stumbling around in the dark. And when the lights come on, it’s easy to assign blame.”

This Scorpio Full Moon asks us to switch on the lights within ourselves. To look at the ways we dole out blame, which is to say, how we give away our power to others. To search the room and identify what brings us pain, what triggers us, what brings us delight.

Where in the room do you desire to be? What do you want to do there?

And most importantly, this moon asks us to see the room for what it really is: a safe place. This is our room and we have the power there. We don’t need to say we’re okay if we’re not. Here, we don’t have to pretend. We can simply be. Is there a better, more freeing feeling that exists?

Give some space to this tender, honest full moon to shed the weight of politeness. Be truly honest with yourself and others. Only you have the agency to go inside this room, to curate it, to clean out the things that do not serve.

And as you go through this process, always come back to this affirmation: Love will not leave me for simply being who I am.

Love will not leave me for simply being who I am.
​
And with this mantra, with the vulnerability of this full moon, feel your body begin to shed the weight. 

​Tarot Reading | 6 of Swords

[ Mary El Tarot ]

The 6 of Swords is a card of quiet transformation, of looking within to find the places of grief and pain that we’ve been forced to accept. These pains have often been with us for so long that we have adapted ourselves around them. And though they do not sink our ships or cause us to fall apart, they do weigh us down.

This harkens back to our room. If we can calmly begin mourning and letting go of these pains that have grown like wily roots in the corners of our hearts' chambers, we can start to see new light fill in through the windows. As Rachel Pollack writes of this card, “The Six of Swords is a Gate. Looking at it with sensitivity and then entering the picture will produce first a quieting effect on the mind and then later, slowly, a sense of movement within the self” (223).
​
This self-exploration and honesty doesn’t need to be rushed, nor does it need to happen only for this full moon. Give yourself the space and time to make this journey with reverence. The key is to gently create a shift, a movement, and to clear out the stagnancy that politeness often fabricates.

Happy spring cleaning, dear ones. 

Bibliomancy | “Carnot Cycle” by Samiya Bashir  

Only sometimes does homegrown bedrock glow moneygreen.
     Sometimes rock whines mommy. Sometimes rock coos baby.
     Sometimes rock calls late with the mortgage. Sometimes rock
     knits shoulder blades right where you can’t pluck.
 
Early mornings something doesn’t sit right over the sink. Sits crooked.
     Slumps askew. Body doesn’t lay the way you left it. Squinting gets
     you nowhere. You squat to the floor and feel around. Stop. Smell
     for it. Shrug. Still some dangling something modifies you.
     Smackdab midchest you feel lumpy empty. Sniff. Sniff.
 
Shrug.
 
Like those days we grab our own pickaxes and head down to the
    mine. We hum worksongs. We sing hymns. We chip worry stone.
    We gather moss. We lie flat. We scratch at the mineshaft. Not
     toward exit but deeper to the core.
 
Source: ​Poetry Foundation