New Moon Energy Reading

New Moon May 16, 2026

I would not normally intro any reading by saying, “This is a complete experiment!” and throwing my hands up while crazily shimmying my shoulders, but I’ve been on vacation.

This will be totally intuitive, is what I mean. Although I always read intuitively, it’s still hard to shake off the old learning of “this position means this, this position reflects this influence, this is the best possible outcome” and sometimes I find myself swerving back into that lane without realizing it.  Even when those old structures have been set aside, the ego wants to be right, and looks for patterns to support the odds of that happening. Every reader, in any system, wants to be right. If you are right, then at best it means you have some mastery over your craft, and at worst it provides a cozy ego boost.

Maybe it’s the vacation, or maybe the movements of the planets as they grind out of one gear and into another this time of year, but I would rather test myself and try new things than stick in the old rut, even with its record of being fairly often right.

There are a million ways to be wrong in a reading, though, and have it still be fine. There is truth in any well-intentioned reading, even if it does goes askew as to details. This is a fluid universe, and people (and their energy) are not test subjects preselected for how well they fit into the profiled requirements for the reading. In perfect circumstances, a reader and the person being read for would be sympathetic in intelligence, world view, and spiritual grounding. When that happens, by lucky chance, it amplifies a reading because both parties make a harmonious circuit, and information flows almost effortlessly.

In the meantime, in the real world, some lady who loves Tarot tries to divine a world’s worth of energetic forecasting for a new moon and posts it for friends on a blog. Take what resonates, wave off the rest. The only way a reading could be wrong, and have it not be fine, would be a reading offered with negative motives, and that’s not something I’ve ever had to worry about.

Our new moon influences, in absolutely no particular order this time, are:

• Strength
• 9 of Pentacles
• 4 of Wands reversed
• 2 of Cups reversed
• 10 of Pentacles reversed

Three reversed cards? Never something we want to see, but then that Strength card introduced this and she knows what she’s doing; so we have to assume the next two weeks will be manageable if we put on our game faces and be prepared.

The form of that preparation? 9 of Pentacles. If the next two weeks are lacking the energy of wins, fellowship, and prosperity, we are directed back to the reassuring personal environment we create and cultivate only for ourselves. (If you don’t have one of those, it’s time you did.)

It won’t be a group project, getting through the next two weeks; it’s choppy waters and feeling no motivation to gather or find enjoyment with others. And that’s not bad. The 9 of Pentacles reminds us that sometimes we are our own best company.

In traditional illustration, 9 of Pentacles is shown in a garden lush with plants and animals. What would that surrounding do for you? Wouldn’t it be healing and restorative? If the world is inhospitable, there would be no better place for a retreat. And not a hidey-hole in some dank cellar; instead, a beautiful place of calm and nurturance.

That’s a place where a lady could tame a lion, and definitely not with a whip and a chair. The lady in the Strength card is calm despite the untamed wildness that confronts her, and her refusal to give into panic and fear allows her to manage the threat with presence and self-possession. We see those same qualities mirrored in 9 of Pentacles.

I would say the message from Tarot about the two weeks of new moon energy is this: remain calm and recharge yourself. It would not surprise me if there was an uptick in fear mongering and the clickbait that lures with alarm and threat, increasingly playing on our worries about maintaining harmonious communities and potential scarcity. The Strength card and the 9 of Pentacles refute this and direct us back to our own steady centers. We can wait it out and you will probably feel better if you decide to surround yourself with things that uplift you, rather than listening to bad news and tales of disaster.

We choose every day whether to live in the dank cellar or the beautiful garden; regardless of what is coming in the future, we will be in better shape to meet it if we’ve filled our minds with positive influences, rather than stuffed them full of negative images and hostility propagated by doom scrolling our phones.

I asked The Siren’s Song Lenormand to weigh in on the most likely energies drawing our attention over the next two weeks and got this:

• Fish
• Whip
• Tree
• Cat (particular to this deck)
• Letter
• Ring
• Moon

Right off the bat – there is our worry over scarcity, when the abundance (Fish) is abruptly corrected by the Whip! I think the heart of the Whip is in communications, or a breakdown in communications. In this pairing, particularly negative communications attack our sense of plenty.

This creates stress, because it plays on the sense of draining resources (Tree) and yet! Hope is on the way in the form of the Cat. In traditional decks, this is a Dog but the Siren’s Song offers both a cat and a dog, and I heartily approve.

We have a domestic animal in either case, a companion and a source of loyalty and unconditional love. What I really like for our reading is that we get the Cat to represent this, and cats are more solitary while dogs are pack animals.

So this supports our Tarot reading, as backup in stressful circumstances where we worry about provision is provided by our efforts to step out of the fray and not run, baying, with the pack.

If we can do that, then we’ll be in the right frame of mind to receive information. (Letter.) This brings news of harmony and agreement (Ring) and emotional resolution and elevation (Moon.)

I also love getting that Letter, which in this lineup is bracketed by the reassuring influence of the Cat and the Ring. So it is a positive balance to our harsh Whip, the card of negative or difficult communication. It redeems the earlier appearance of the Whip.

Take heart if the next two weeks are filled with just as much, or even more, anger and upset in the world. I hope you shut the door without apology, and curl up with a good book or throw yourself into a personal pursuit that brings you great satisfaction and joy.

The dogs bark but the caravan moves on. It will all be fine.