June 29, 2026
I haven’t mentioned before that, when I sit down to do a reading, it’s spontaneous. I don’t do the reading first, noodle it around, smooth off the edges, and then write it up as an artful post. It all happens at once, because I think it keeps me from editing the reading or overthinking. It’s a strategy to get in front of my left-brain side that wants everything to be orderly and make sense.
So our cards for the Full Moon and the two weeks to follow are just as big a surprise to me as they are to you. This is referred to as the Strawberry Moon, and we’ll find out together if it is as sweet as it promises to be, and comes with cake and ice cream. The cards are as follows:
All reversed. Better put that ice cream back in the freezer.
Okay, what about clarifiers? Sometimes you add a “clarifying” card to a spread when a card is not clear; in this case, I can’t do a thing with five reversed cards! Our clarifiers, then, are:
- 8 of Cups
- 10 of Pentacles
And this is very interesting, because the weekly reading for this week was heavy with Cups and the King of Pentacles.
These two cards seem, on first glance, in opposition to each other. The 8 of Cups is a card of emotional resignation; it is facing the fact that all efforts to reach someone’s heart have failed and there is nothing more to be done. Those efforts can continue, of course, but they will be as effective as trying to nail Jello to a wall. Best to just walk away. A certain level of result has been reached (that’s your 8) and it will go no further. And Cups is our suit of feelings, emotions, spiritual life, and the nonphysical aspects of our lives.
Compare that to the hearty 10 of Pentacles! The race has been run, and celebrations are in order. The punch list is completed, the sale has concluded, and now we enjoy the new house, prosperity, fellowship, stability for our loved ones. It’s a card of achievement and pride.
How do these two cards meet up and give us any coherent direction for the Full Moon, unless we ask ourselves, “What fruitless endeavor am I ready to walk away from in order to have the security and community I have been working toward?”
That’s pretty plain speaking. And it is interesting in light of the weekly reading, which had that King of Pentacles and urgent cautions to hold on to your own King energy, and not be swayed, begged, guilted, or forced into doing things that are hasty or not thought out.
And it’s Mercury Retrograde, too. Mercury Retrograde is the primo time for having decisions go wrong and outcomes turning sideways, because it’s not a time of doing; it’s a time of checking and checking again. It’s a time of locking everything down, and becoming ready to act when the time is right.
Mercury Retrograde is a great time to let things go. Subtract, don’t add, for the next two weeks, at least. You might find in simplifying your life, you ultimately give it room to expand.
