Tarot for the New Moon – February 23, 2020

This is a tarot divination for the New Moon in Aquarius which occurs Sunday February 23, 2020.

The New Moon in Aquarius answers to the newly minted Saturn in Capricorn. Saturn entered Capricorn on January 23, 2020 for the first time since 1993. It will remain there until January 2023.

Aquarius and Capricorn are both Saturn’s signs. Capricorn is the sign of material reality. Aquarius is the sign of conceptual/ideological reality. This New Moon is about the human capacity to disidentify with external authority and power structures for the sake of self-determination and personal sovereignty.

(8 of Pentacles)
Queen of Pentacles
9 of Cups
Fool

Stewardship is the art of recognizing value, honoring worth, and tending to the well-being and sustaining of what you are responsible for. Your belongings, your skills and talents, and your body are all under your stewardship. Your children, your home, and your Self are under your stewardship, too.

Systems of power impose value systems that define for you what you “should” value and where you “should” find worth. Self-determination and personal sovereignty are the realm of Aquarius. At this New Moon in Aquarius, taking a risk looks like abandoning the familiarity of those imposed value systems.

When we align our identities with authority figures we sacrifice personal sovereignty for the illusion of wielding power over others. You know when you leave a group of kids, they fight for dominance so that one or few move into the seat of power left by the absent adult. Proximity to power and identifying with authority figures feels like a legitimate way to claim agency, except that it requires you to suppress your organic perceptions and intuitive judgments of yourself and your world. You end up valuing what your oppressor values, and you articulate your worth in the language and framework of your oppressor.

The FOOL is a disruptor. They disrupt by abandoning a given path, taking a risk to change, and going with the flow rather than towards predetermined expectations. The FOOL divests from the need to get results from past efforts rooted. They have the courage to walk away without perceiving as a loss.

The FOOL provides the opportunity for you to liberate yourself. But it requires you to choose freedom over conforming. That means liberating the Self from performative measurements of worth, those meant to accrue social currency.

  • How are you conceiving of a world and a self that doesn’t replicate oppressive power structures, that don’t require you to define yourself in reference to harmful authority figures and leaders, and that neglects the gaze of those who have othered you?
  • How can you liberate yourself from imposed value systems that strip you of the authority to name value and claim worth on your own terms?
  • How are you identifying the ways you’ve sacrificed personal sovereignty in the name of being validated by oppressive power structures and hierarchies?
  • What authority figures have you identified with in your life? (Bosses, parents, teachers, etc)
  • How has using authority as a reference point for your identity defined your values for you? (that might mean seeing yourself as someone’s child, carrier of their name, national identities, religious identities, etc)
  • What do your values look like when you detach from those identities?
  • Where is the cornerstone of your worth when you conceive of yourself in new terms?