Finding stability during eclipse season + retrogrades

The 4's in the tarot keep the secrets to creating and maintaining a stable foundation.

This week feels like the energetic send-off into whatever new reality we’ll be in by the end of March.

If you read my trusty transit toolkit for March, then you already know:

This Thursday, March 13, there will be a Lunar Eclipse in the sign of Virgo, and the day after, on March 14, Mercury will station retrograde in the sign of Aries.

(Not to mention the current Venus retrograde, political antics, and our own microcosms of chaos.)

The swirl of energy right now is a frenetic melange of intense eclipse build-up and the friction-filled recalibration of retrogrades.

So how can we work with this energy? What the hell is it asking of us?

I initially asked these questions for myself, because, to be candid, my life feels like a total shitshow right now. I know that the planets aren’t to blame for the chaos; they’re just a reflection of what needs to be excavated, explored, and perhaps lit on fire. But it still fucking sucks, doesn’t it?

I share this as a reminder that, even though I’m an astrologer, I’m also a human trying to navigate all of *waves arms around* this, just like you. My wisdom in this moment doesn’t come from serenity or balance—it comes from being in the fucking trenches with no other choice but to alchemize the pain, anger, and hardship into something meaningful.

So, human to human, let’s dive into the cards I pulled for us this week. Maybe together we can help each other feel less alone in whatever tf is going on right now.

Our cards for the week: the Four of Cups, and the Four of Swords.

There are so many layers and synchronicities here.

The first point of interest is that they seem to be reflective of this week’s astrological events:

Cups are associated with the element of water, water represents our emotions, which are the domain of the Moon—hello Lunar Eclipse this week.

Swords are associated with the element of air, air represents the mind, which is the domain of Mercury—hello Mercury retrograde this week.

The Fours

The fact that both of these cards are fours stood out to me immediately. In the tarot, four represents structure, stability, and definition.

Think of a house having four corners to anchor it to the ground and support its structure; we use four seasons to structure time, an incredibly abstract construct; four cardinal directions (north, east, south, west) to locate us within space; four elements (fire, water, earth, air) that the Ancient Greeks used to define the multitudes of the world around them; four suits in the tarot to help us shape the journey through the human experience.

Four represents structure, stability, and definition. Image by Edward J. Woolsey

Four defines the undefinable vastness. Four delineates boundaries that give shape to what we thought was amorphous.

Our human brains have a hard time with nebulous chaos. Definition helps us create structure, and structure helps us find stability. So four helps us create the conditions we need for stability.

Thus, in the tarot, the Four of Wands, Four of Cups, Four of Swords, and Four of Pentacles each offer insight on how we create stability and strong foundations for ourselves (or not.) Consider them each a corner of a stable house we’re building, each corner with its own wisdom and challenges.

The stable house we’re building together. From Howl’s Moving Castle.

In this spread, we have two out of four corners.

Four of Cups

In this card, a man is offered a cup, while three other cups sit in front of him. It’s not clear if he’s ignoring the hand with the cup or not. Maybe he’s meditating and just doesn’t see it. Maybe he sees it but is hesitant to grab it.

Four of Cups from the Waite-Smith tarot deck.

This card is about being emotionally present with what’s in front of us. Instead of seeking advice, solutions, or distractions, can we first sit with what is here now?

And let me not be vague here. Emotional presence means feeling your damn feelings—not talking about them, thinking about them, writing about them, or psychoanalyzing them. Just feeling how they move through your body. Not just the bad feelings, either. Joy, happiness, awe, excitement, etc. ALL deserve their moments to shine through you.

With its outstretched hand, this card is a reminder that emotional presence is actually a gift (even when it doesn’t feel like it) you can offer to yourself. Because allowing yourself to feel your emotions is the first step in being able to identify them. And, as I mentioned earlier, four teaches us that being able to identify and define something helps us create stability.

Once I let myself feel my anger instead of just cussing out people in my head, then I can identify it: “I’m fucking angry.” What are my needs now that I’ve felt my anger and named that I’m angry? How can I take care of myself and process this anger?

Just knowing you have some kind of process like this with yourself can actually empower you to embrace the fullness of your emotional spectrum because you know how to walk yourself through it. This is how we create an internal emotional system that welcomes all of us, and doesn’t threaten to shake our foundation.

The Four of Cups, one corner of our stable house, tells us that our foundation is only as strong as our willingness to sit with what is emotionally present.

Any Moon related transit (so this week’s Lunar Eclipse) is going to make you feel things. That’s just the language of the Moon. So this week, notice what emotions show up for you, and how you respond or react to them. Notice where you might need to create more space for your emotions to breathe and flow through you.

Four of Swords

In this card, an effigy of a knight is lying down, with three swords hanging above him on the wall, and one sword beneath him. The stained-glass window above him depicts someone kneeling before Jesus Christ, and over Jesus’ head is a halo that reads pax, the Latin word for peace.

Four of Swords from the Waite-Smith tarot deck.

This card tells us that creating a sustainable foundation requires us to carve intentional space for rest. And when I say rest, I don’t just mean sleep.

The Swords as a suit represent the mind, as I mentioned earlier. With the current state of the world and constant onslaught of horrifying news, it’s a lot for your brain to take in. How do you offer rest to your mind? What’s your equivalent of taking your brain out of your head and wringing out all the gunk from it? How does your mind communicate with you that it needs to take a break?

Of course we need sleep, but our brains also need us to have boundaries in order to rest. That looks like interrupting a doomscroll that’s just you consuming all of the terrible things happening in the world. It looks like cutting yourself off from obsessing over a situation you have no control over. It looks like not engaging in a conversation with someone who is hellbent on misunderstanding you.

The Four of Swords, another corner of our stable house, tells us that our foundation is only as strong as our firmest boundary around taking a damn break.

This week, I want you to think about what really feels restful for you. What makes you feel like your load suddenly got lighter? What makes you walk with a little extra pep in your step? What makes you feel refreshed and blissed tf out to be living another day of this weird and wonderful life? Create more space for that this week, in any way you can.

Together, these cards tell us that sometimes stability requires us to do hard things, like feel how fucking sad you are, or curb your phone addiction so your brain can get out of fight or flight mode. Stability doesn’t have to rely on your external circumstances, but is something we can each cultivate within, by the small, everyday decisions to choose our wholeness over self-abandonment.

Thanks for reading, I hope this helps, and I hope your foundations stay solid this week. We’re in this together, okay? Oh and paid subscribers: Please feel free to leave your comments and questions for me!