Wings in water. The body knows how to pour.
She keeps showing up.
I pull a card about work. Temperance. I pull a card about a job. Temperance. I ask about direction, money, next steps. Temperance. At this point I'd like a second opinion — but no, she's committed.
This week I sat with Temperance properly. Not trying to interpret the card into something useful, not turning it into a neat takeaway. Just sitting. Letting it land in the body.
Temperance is card fourteen. Sitting between Death at thirteen and The Devil at fifteen, which is not exactly a relaxing neighbourhood. Death has already been through — clearing things out, ending what needed to end, whether you felt ready or not. The Devil waits downstream with the old patterns, the sticky bits, the places you'll slide straight back to if you haven't actually integrated anything. And in the middle of that? Temperance. Mid-pour. Calibrated.
She keeps showing up.
I pull a card about work. Temperance. I pull a card about a job. Temperance. I ask about direction, money, next steps. Temperance. At this point I'd like a second opinion — but no, she's committed.
This week I sat with Temperance properly. Not trying to interpret the card into something useful, not turning it into a neat takeaway. Just sitting. Letting it land in the body.
Temperance is card fourteen. Sitting between Death at thirteen and The Devil at fifteen, which is not exactly a relaxing neighbourhood. Death has already been through — clearing things out, ending what needed to end, whether you felt ready or not. The Devil waits downstream with the old patterns, the sticky bits, the places you'll slide straight back to if you haven't actually integrated anything. And in the middle of that? Temperance. Mid-pour. Calibrated.
“She is not calm. She is calibrated. There is a difference.”
XIV Temperance, Magical Hours Tarot
A poised angelic being stands at the centre of the card, wings outstretched and curving upward in an arc of quiet power. The figure holds two golden vessels, one in each hand. Pouring golden liquid. Behind the figure, a Magnolia tree is in full early bloom — its flowers open and luminous, petals unfurling without a single leaf in sight.
The somatic truth
What I hadn't really let land before is that this archetype is something you feel your way through.
Look at the angel — one foot in water, one on land, arms moving between vessels. She isn't theorising about balance. She is adjusting it in real time, in the body, with her hands. There is something deeply physical and embodied in that, and it connects directly to what this coming new moon is asking of us.
The word temperance comes from the Latin temperare — to mix, to bring to the right temperature. Not abstinence, not cold restraint. The living warmth of things coming into right relationship. The temperature is right at this time, and the invitation is to bring things together — vision and action, ideal and embodied reality.
She has wings, which is the detail I kept skipping over. She is air — visionary, idealistic, carrying the long Sagittarian arrow aimed at the far horizon. And yet her hands are in the water. That is the whole teaching. The ideal coming all the way down into the body and being known as felt wisdom, not thought wisdom. Air that learns itself through water.
In the Magical Hours deck, the Magnolia tree stands behind — a plant that blooms before its leaves arrive, before it is structurally ready, before the conditions look right. It flowers anyway, these little cups shining in the evening light. Something about that feels exactly right for right now.
Temperance also carries a long association with health and holistic flow — the body's own intelligence finding equilibrium, the whole system coming into harmony. And she understands delayed gratification in a way our culture largely doesn't. The slower pour is often the richer one. What arrives in its own time, at the right temperature, carries more nourishment than what is seized too quickly.
Earlier this year I wrote about Temperance in relation to Chiron — the wounded healer — and the path that moves through vulnerability rather than around it. That thread is still live. This is the card that asks: what in you is finding its way toward wholeness right now? Not fixed. Not resolved. Simply moving, steadily, toward flow.
Pouring between two vessels
Before we go further — a moment to feel into this image rather than think it.
Temperance holds two vessels and pours between them. Not emptying one into the other. Blending. Finding the temperature of the mix. This is the gesture at the heart of the card, and it is available to all of us right now as a genuine practice.
Consider your own two vessels. They might be obvious or they might surprise you. The straight line and the curve. The land and the air. Structure and flow. The vision and the felt body. What has ended and what is still forming. The work you show and the work you feel inside.
The Sagittarian archer (Temperance is associated with the zodiac sign Sagittarius) draws the bow — both arms wide, held in total mutability between earth and sky, muscle and release.
You are not torn between two worlds. You are the string that connects them.
Sit with your two vessels before the new moon. Name them. Feel what is moving between them — not in your thoughts but in your actual body, your chest, your hands, your wrists. What is the temperature of the blend right now? What would it mean to trust that the body already knows how to pour, even when the mind is unsure?
A figure stands alone at the water's edge, back to the viewer, facing the open expanse of sea. Their arms are outstretched wide, fingers spread and reaching, as though receiving something from the horizon or offering something to it — the gesture sits beautifully between surrender and embrace.
Image source
Enter: Aries New Moon and the Mars cluster
There is something else worth naming — the sky itself is amplifying all of this in an unusual way.
Mars is doing laps in its home sign of Aries right now, full of urgency and opinions. The Emperor card rules Aries, and his energy is very much in the room — all forward thrust, initiation, bold assertion of self and direction. It is very decide and go. A significant stellium, a cluster of planets gathered in Aries, makes this one of the more potent lunations in recent memory.
And yet the new moon on 17th April falls at 27 degrees Aries — the third decan of the sign, ruled by Venus, and associated in tarot with the Four of Wands. A card of celebration, of homecoming, of something built with real effort being recognised and honoured. There is arrival in that card. A gathering. The fire of Aries refined into something worth raising a glass to.
Temperance sits in the middle of all of this not as a counterforce to the Aries fire — but as its refining intelligence. The Emperor initiates. Temperance calibrates. The fire is real and it is needed. She simply asks that we pour it with intention, feel the temperature, and let the blend happen rather than forcing the flame.
So yes — look to Mars in your chart. Think about what commitment you are ready to make. The stellium including Saturn is asking for a stable, embodied response. Not just vision. Action that has been felt first.
27 degrees Aries. The Four of Wands. A homecoming that has been earned.
Plant something real under this moon.
"The Emperor says: I will build this. Temperance says: now let it flow."
The duet — Emperor and Temperance
There is a structural reason why these two cards feel so inseparable, and it goes beyond their shared Fire attribution energy.
In Alejandro Jodorowsky's reading of the Major Arcana, the cards move in two parallel series — one through ten, and eleven through twenty — where each card in the second series is the evolved expression of its numerical partner in the first. The Emperor is card four. Temperance is card fourteen. Four plus ten. A duet.
The Emperor represents the materialisation of structure — power made solid, form established, authority grounded in the world. They build the container. Jodorowsky understood Temperance as the dynamic evolution of that same energy — what happens when rigid structure learns to move, when power becomes fluid mastery, when the container learns to pour rather than simply hold.
The Emperor says: I will build this. Temperance says: now let it flow.
One without the other is incomplete. Structure without flow becomes rigidity. Flow without structure becomes formlessness. Together they describe something whole — the architecture that breathes, the form that moves, the life built with both intention and grace.
Under this Aries new moon, with the Emperor's energy saturating the sky, Temperance is the quiet calibrated intelligence inside the fire.
That feels worth sitting with.
With love and a little less force,
Fi 🜂
Celebrating International Women’s Day in Brighton & The High Priestess
The High Priestess, the representation of female authority in the tarot deck, exists as her autonomous self, navigating her own journey and in many deck depictions sits between two pillars, guarding the entrance to hidden knowledge.
But what I find most alluring is the swirling water imagery. In some versions, her feet touch the water, the edge of her deep blue robe in the Rider Waite card seems almost to flow into it, as though the fabric itself were part of the tide. She is quietly, completely connected to this element
Standing in the sea at Kemptown Beach evokes a similar feeling. The mind is still soft from sleep, the body alert in the cold water, and for a moment the world feels stripped back to something elemental. It is a very High Priestess state of being.
In the Magical Hours tarot deck, that I use in my readings, The High Priestess represents that threshold moment where creativity and intuition meet. She embodies the early morning hours, a time of heightened intuition and subtle insight, a space where ideas gestate before they manifest in the world.
Which is a similar feeling I experience during my morning ritual swim; a suspension of conscious rationality, moving into the expanse of the ocean - something in me surrenders to a divine feminine principle, to the watery Anima depths of wisdom and receptivity.
Honouring the High Priestess on International Women’s Day
Here in Brighton, sea swimming has become a way many women gather to mark International Women’s Day. Now in its fourth year, this remarkable event brings together around 1,000 women for the UK’s largest sea swim, raising funds for the environmental charity Surfers Against Sewage. It feels like a fitting tribute to both women and the waters themselves a collective moment of courage, community, and care for the sea, I plan to join the swimmers next Saturday to celebrate this year’s Big Swim. I have washed my beach towel in anticipation, a small but encouraging step.
Whilst we are still moving through Pisces season, with the ruling card for this month being The Moon, tomorrow on March 8, 2026, the Moon is in the Waning Gibbous phase, the ebbing tide following the intensity of the Full Moon. This phase invites us to pause, process lessons, and release what no longer serves us. It aligns beautifully with the High Priestess archetype: cultivating detachment, reflection, and examination of the shadow realms. There is a certain grace in self-containment.
As I write this, I am tucked into my book nook, what once was my making cupboard is now my writing cave, asking myself how I intend to honour the High Priestess this month?
How will I embody the High Priestess this month?
Enter a state of suspension, where one is open to receiving wisdom from the depths.
The High Priestess waits in the quiet spaces of our own depths.
Reflections for the journal:
This is a card of subtlety — notice what is unspoken.
Are you inhabiting the two worlds of dream and reality?
Attend to the quiet signals in dreams and subconscious thoughts.
Cultivate creative inner work — intuition leads.
Tarot’s High Priestess inspired later divinatory arts like Lenormand, translating mystical insight into applied intuition. Whether quietly cultivating your inner seeds or navigating public rituals, this is a time for observation, reflection, and mindful action.
Watching the Channel 4 documentary Dirty Business reminded me how crucial it is to protect our oceans. Lies and deception persist when profits are placed above the Earth’s basic rights. There is much work to be done to safeguard water for future generations, quiet activism, mindful living, and personal rituals all count.
Final Reflection, Quiet Power
As the High Priestess stands with her robe flowing into water, we are invited to step into our own quiet power. Whether alone in the early morning sea or alongside thousands of women in celebration, we honor intuition, reflection, and care for the world around us.
If you’re near the water this week, pause, notice, and consider how you can support the oceans, or take a quiet moment to observe the subtle impressions of your own intuition.
Fi x
Why Your Juno Matters More Than Venus in Love
I’ve always been fascinated by love that sticks… and the love that traps us. This evening, after watching Wuthering Heights again, it hit differently. Not because of sizzling romance, but because of pattern.
I’ve always been fascinated by love that sticks… and the love that traps us. This evening, after watching Wuthering Heights again, it hit differently. Not because of sizzling romance, but because of pattern.
It was great to be back in the Duke of Yorks, Brighton, for my first cinematic viewing of the year, having been mesmerised by Emerald Fennel’s Saltburn. Waiting patiently for her Wuthering Heights adaptation was a lesson itself in commitment. Dashing from work and with anticipation I’m glad we chose the earlier screening.
Why Juno
Many of us obsess over Venus and how the partner's Mars activates our natal goddess of love — do you know your relationship synastry (you can go to astro.com to find out). We wonder about the chemistry, comfort and desire factors inherent in our relationships. But Juno? Juno reveals what we bind ourselves to, the patterns we unconsciously honour.
Music can elicit powerful love feelings. When I met my partner, I remember feeling, and hearing, the size of his heart because of his chosen playlist on the drive home after our first dates. I felt myself falling in the space of these words as he sang along to“Give a Little Bit”
‘‘Now's the time that we need to share
So find yourself, we're on our way back home’’…
Yes, Supertramp fans… my Venus in Cancer and Juno in Libra had found the tune to my heart.
What I felt was there’s solid maturity about this man, and a deep buoyant warmth in his energy, he’s a true Leo with a Cancerian moon, the tarot court card, the King of Cups, surmises his emotional energy well, looking back during that first drive, It was subtle, but my Juno lit up in recognition of the consistency and loyalty message I was attuning to.
Who is Juno and Why She Matters
Juno, daughter of Saturn and queen of the gods, is loyal, discerning, and unyielding in matters of commitment. In mythology, she kept score of Jupiter’s legendary infidelities and protected the sanctity of marriage.
Astrologically, Juno functions like the daughter of Saturn in our birth charts, reflecting enduring patterns and the relational blueprint we unconsciously honour. While Venus shows desire, attraction, and comfort, Juno shows staying power, boundaries, and the patterns we might repeat over and over in love.
My Personal Reflection
When I met my current partner, it was calm. Grounded. Almost suspiciously easy.
My Juno in Libra is held beautifully by his Mars in Scorpio (wide orb, ~4°). This consistent, powerful energy is subtle, stabilising, and keeps me feeling secure without chaos.
Previous partners had other dynamics, for example, his Juno in Gemini conjunct my Mercury in the fifth house created a deeply intellectual, sapiosexual connection.
Wuthering Heights Through a Juno Lens
Heathcliff isn’t about romantic fantasy — he’s a Juno wound beyond the grave.
Cathy marries for comfort, security, and status (Venus energy), though she didn’t marry Edgar purely for love. She married into status, safety, refinement, this is Venus in its social, material expression and because it was the 18th Century and Cathy was partly forced into it.
Heathcliff isn’t Juno simply because he’s intense. He represents a distorted bond, a relational imprint that outlives logic, morality, even death.
Heathcliff embodies obsession, possession, and intensity (the Juno wound).
Recognising your Juno pattern helps you see the kind of bond you instinctively take seriously —
and whether you’re entering it consciously.
Venus is attraction.
Juno is covenant.
Venus is chemistry. Juno is covenant.
Venus says, this feels good. Juno asks, can you build here?
And when you learn to read both in your chart, you stop calling repetition fate, and start calling it choice.
This weekend, watch the love stories you admire, then check in with your own chart.
Who do you desire?
Who do you stay with?
Most importantly… what patterns are you choosing to repeat?
Share this with your cinema date… or your Galentine, because love isn’t just what we choose. It’s what we’re built to live with.
Fi x
The Fire Horse Threshold: Judgement, Temperance & the Turn of the Wheel.
The Fire Horse year of 2026 is a potent time for reflection and transformation. Using tarot guidance, we explore how Judgement, Temperance, and the Wheel of Fortune illuminate this energetic threshold.
When I was two, plonked atop a horse at the races, I wriggled uncomfortably, wondering if I might fall off this immense creature. I wanted nothing more than to get down, clamouring for my dad to take me. My toddler self was just as surprised as terrified. That image isn’t just nostalgia, it’s a wordless bodily sensation. The animal beneath me breathed with a rhythm older than language. I wanted to get down. And yet — I was already in motion.
This year is a reckoning with raw and primal energy. That sensation — being carried forward before you understand your courage — is the energy of a Fire Horse year.
Understanding the Fire Horse Year in Chinese Astrology
In the Chinese zodiac, 2026 marks the Year of the Fire Horse (Bing Wu) — part of the 60-year elemental cycle that combines the twelve animals with the five elements.
Fire Horse years have historically been associated with volatility, intensity, and cultural shift. In Japan, during the last Fire Horse year in 1966, it was so widely believed to produce strong-willed and “dangerous” daughters that the national birth rate dropped by approximately 25% compared to surrounding years (Statistics Bureau of Japan, 1966). That demographic dip remains one of the most significant culturally-driven fertility declines in modern Japanese history (Retherford & Ogawa, 1986).
The archetype carries heat. Movement. Consequence. Find ways to regulate and find a steady canter, preferably one that listens, adjusts, and so endures. Accepting this new race at a gentler pace, and trusting the horse’s courage — is how the fire stays lit through 2026.
The Fire Horse New Lunar Year formerly arrives on February 17, although it’s already been with us since early Feb, coinciding with the conjunction of Saturn and Neptune in 0’ Aries (February 20). This potent celestial shift is a rare alignment marking structural redefinition (Saturn) fused with dissolving idealism (Neptune). Saturn enters Aries for the first time since 1996; Neptune for the first time since 1861 (NASA Planetary Data Archives).
This period ushers in energetically refined ground — fertile for visioning, initiation, and the sense of stepping onto a new journey. Horses, across cultures and mythologies, are deeply bound to initiation rituals, representing the threshold between known and unknown. This new Lunar New Year will have me reaching for Tarot decks and symbols that resonate strongly with the magnificence of the year ahead.
Desire: The Tarot Triad as Psychological Weather
Considering the tarot as psychological weather patterns of the soul, these three tarot cards offer powerful focal points for meditation and reflection. Research on behavioural change shows that intentional reflection increases follow-through by 42% compared to unstructured intention (Dominican University Study, 2015).
Judgement — The Call to Consciousness
Judgement, the ultimate fire card in the deck; "fire that breaks you to make you," — the summons that calls us into awareness and a shift into our higher power, a rite of passage, with the unconscious finally demanding acknowledgment. Carl Jung described individuation as the integration of unconscious material into conscious awareness (Collected Works, Vol. 9). This year mirrors that process — what has been dormant demands recognition.
Temperance — Alchemical Integration
The Temperance Tarot card is significant for the Fire Horse Year 2026
Temperance - a disciplined tempering of scattered fire into direction.
Temperance, linked with Sagittarius and the alchemical blending of forces, mixing fire and water— inviting integration and flow. (If you feel into the archetype expansively, it may also echo *Chiron, the wounded healer engaging opposites in service of wholeness.) Temperance echoes what psychologists call emotional regulation — the ability to integrate instinct and intention (Gross, 1998, Stanford University). Fire without containment burns out; blended with awareness, it becomes direction.
The Wheel of Fortune — Cyclical Momentum
The Wheel of Fortune, the card resonant with 2026 itself — the turn of cycles and the momentum we cannot unsee once it begins. A card also connected to expansion and the fiery planet Jupiter, highlighting moral imagination, and risk. During the Fire Horse New Moon, Jupiter moves through Cancer, emphasizing emotional intelligence and protective growth. Expansion tempered by care.
This matters. The Wheel does not spin blindly; it responds to how consciously we meet its turning. Our Jupiter nature, and the house it occupies in our birth chart, shows us where we are invited to grow, and to participate as co-creators rather than spectators. This year asks us not to wait for life to happen to us, but to cross thresholds with intention, designing a life that reflects what we truly value and are willing to tend.
Together, this triad speaks not simply of change, but of activated transformation: the ignition of inner truth (Judgement), the disciplined tempering of fire into direction (Temperance), and the unfolding momentum of fate’s turn (Wheel of Fortune).
*Chiron complicates this Fire Horse year in an important way. Half mortal, half divine, he lived with the ache of embodiment while remaining tethered to a deeper, untamed intelligence. His psyche was equine — instinctual, roaming, uncontainable — yet his wound kept him conscious of limits, pain, and consequence.
This year does not ask for transcendence. It asks for integration.
Not spirit over body.
Not freedom over responsibility.
But instinct brought into awareness.
When that integration occurs, fire becomes sustainable.
Meeting the Turning — How to Act on This Energy
So what does this mean for you?
This year is not about prediction.
It is about participation.
Ask yourself:
Where is my instinct outrunning my integration?
What threshold am I resisting?
If the Wheel is already turning, how consciously am I meeting it?
Pull a card. Journal a decision. Name one action aligned with growth rather than impulse.
The Fire Horse does not wait.
But it does listen.
There’s a kind of knowing that happens before logic — like being lifted onto a horse too young to name your courage. That instinctive forward motion is the energy of this Fire Horse year: you are held in motion before you can explain it.
Fi x
Want to explore the Fire Horse energy for yourself? Book a Spark & Shift Tarot Reading in Brighton or online and discover your personal path forward.