December Newsletter 2024

Happy Yule (Christmas/Saturnalia/Solstice etc)

What a year this has been.

Before reading this month’s content, I’d like to ask you to take a deep breath and give yourself a well deserved long exhale. How long can you slowly release your breath as your shoulders, neck, and jaw melt? Remember: When you extend your exhale, you slow your heart rate and a slow heart rate is a calm mind. I’m serious. Take that breath. Right now.

Doesn’t that feel better?

Just for this moment, just for as long as it takes you to read this Newsletter, can you allow yourself to feel completely at ease and relaxed? If there is anything that you are, you are a survivor. For now, let the daily stress release.

Join us on a journey to learn about this Holiday, receive the monthly December Tarot check in and learn about upcoming offers, events and classes with Three Cups Circle. Don’t forget this letter spreads by YOU. If you know someone who needs these words today, send them this letter.

If you had a gorgeous friend send you this: Welcome! Click below to make sure you receive this newsletter every month.

You have my sincerest gratitude for continuing to follow this journey (and reading my long newsletters 🤣). With recent events, I can see why now, more than ever, I have been brought to this path. I am indebted to and cherish this community for continuing to support me and my little dream. On to the fun things!

Con MUCHO amor,

Aster
Instagram

A Little about Yule …
Staying Grounded in Times of Darkness
Written by Vesper

For many of our ancient ancestors, winter was a real existential threat, a battle for survival in a way that many of us now thankfully will never know. The days grew short and cold, the land produced fewer and fewer resources, and they had to hope that what they had gathered in the fall would last them through the long dark until Spring brought new sources of food. It’s no wonder, then, that so many cultures celebrated the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year that also marked the beginning of the days growing longer again. Making it to the halfway point of this trying time was certainly worthy of a party.

From those ancient days to now, Pagans mark the Winter Solstice, or Yule, as the (re)birth of the sun. It brings the first glimmer of light in the dark, one that will grow with the Oak King’s rising power until Spring ushers in new life. We may not all face the same survival threats as our ancestors—and depending on where we live we may not even have much of a winter—but we all face the long nights, and these natural cycles still have much to teach us. We face our own threats, individually and together, and recent events have made the gathering darkness feel particularly poignant. 

In the depths of winter, it can seem like the summer will never return. In the midst of a long night, it can seem like the sun will never rise again. But everything is a part of an unending cycle, a constantly turning wheel. Change is the only constant. So we celebrate the glimmers of hope we can find, we celebrate our own stubborn survival, we celebrate longer and brighter days to come. The wheel keeps turning.

Traditional celebrations involved the warmth of fires, sharing food, making sweets, and decorating with bright colors and shiny baubles. These were things to bring us together, share abundance among the community, celebrate life, and remind us of the joy and warmth that still exists in the longest night. Sound familiar? A lot of these traditional practices have survived in the form of modern Christmas traditions, which many pagans participate in alongside more explicitly magical celebrations—Christmas trees, decorating with holly, kissing under the mistletoe, caroling and even gift giving were a part of pre-Christian pagan winter rituals.

This Yule season, however you celebrate or move through this time, we hope you find your own ways to connect with those around you and raise a fire to stave off the darkness. Celebrate the joy you can find right now, the blessing of your loud and wild survival against everything that has challenged you. And no matter how deep the darkness gathering now may feel, keep your eyes on the small sparks of light that will guide us out of winter into the longer, brighter days ahead.

The wheel keeps turning, after all. Have faith, and some eggnog.

Gift Cards!

I have been asked by several people how they can purchase our offerings as gifts and so I have launched Gift Card options for the collective. This takes the scheduling and planning aspect of the gift out of the picture and your loved one will be able to use a code to schedule with us whenever fits their schedule.

Aster - The Seer, The Bridge-Keeper, The Elementalist

Aster grew up a sensitive child. He jokingly states that he took the hypervigilance he developed as a child and turned it into a super power through years of shadow work. He picked up Tarot as a hobby at the age of 13 after receiving a deck for his birthday. While studying the images and symbols, he noticed that each card also carried an signature energy to it, and by using that information, he is able to assist clients in their spiritual understanding of incidents and in making choices for their highest timeline.

This sensitivity to energy has grown throughout his life and after becoming reiki attuned, he was able to fully see just how powerful this sixth sense could be by learning to communicate with guides, spirits, and landmasses. Land has been his most significant teacher and he has developed his own modality, Elemental Healing, as a way to channel these ancient and wise energies to his clients, leaving them feeling grounded and balanced. He offers Psychic Tarot, Psychic Reiki, Elemental Healing, Private Parties, Home Clearing, and Psychic and Metaphysical Coaching.

Currently, he is developing mediumship, as in his readings he noticed more and more that client’s ancestors and loved ones were appearing with necessary information. You can book his readings online and in person in Old Town Alexandria, VA.

Hey! Aster here, odds are we’ve met if you are reading this newsletter. As a two spirit soul, I occupy the air and water element within Three Cups Circle. I was raised in this spiritual world and my family line has countless stories of spirits, hauntings, and magic. The mystical side of life has been ever present for me and, after years of experimentation and discovery, I am fully living my life as a witch, mystic, healer, and awakener. My gifts have been called life-changing, and because of this I will continue to chase down this dream of reintroducing souls to the Truth—that we are all connected, one ecosystem, one entity.

My mission stems from my faith in humanity to heal and flourish during a seemingly hopeless time. I aid people in finding themselves on a spiritual level, so they may analyze their thoughts and emotions to create physical healing. Together, we do this through finding perspective, decolonizing the mind, discovering who you are, and creating actionable steps toward the future you choose. Fate deals cards, but you decide how to play them. Are you ready to be given the keys to your highest and most powerful self?

Nicole - The Healer, The Scientist, The Creatrix

After a profound experience with Reiki while in crisis, Nicole began studying Reiki and pharmacy simultaneously. As a pansexual genderfluid witch-creature, she embraces duality, and Dionysus, and creation, and Queer joy. She is dedicated to the holistic healing path, that of honoring the entire person through different lenses of life, and walks with one foot in Western medicine and the other in Spirit. Teaching is one of her lifelong passions and she is proud to have expanded from biochemistry to Reiki in recent years, with more to come. She offers Reiki healing, Reiki instruction, Integrated Energy Therapy and IET instruction. She will never stop loving crystals and has a wide and useful collection of pendulums for energy reading, all named.

Nicole is currently in training for psychedelic facilitation, in the hopes of uniting more people safely and soulfully within the embrace of mycelium and the vital truth of our interconnectedness on Earth.

Hello! I’m Nicole, the resident Earth witch of Three Cups Circle. Whereas Aster and Mary had fairly magical childhoods, they were the ones who brought magic into my life in a way I could recognize it, feel it, and fall in love with it. It wasn’t as hard as you may think, with me being a “Western” healthcare student/professional in Oklahoma, because it was like finding my missing piece. Through magic and Reiki, I began to heal my heart, and my deepest belief is that this healing is waiting for anyone brave enough to say yes to themselves.

I’m primarily a healer and a teacher, and my current passion is the revolutionary healing possible through psychedelic plants, or entheogens. My goal is to bring my particular brand of duality – Science and Spirit – to our ventures in order to stay grounded, thoughtful and relevant, offering support and deep healing to those experiencing the crisis of simply living through a world such as ours. Healing and expansion is possible, but you have to find your path to it. Can’t wait to meet you all and help however we can!

Vesper - The Philosopher, The Priestess, The Hierophant

Ves has been practicing paganism since she was a child, and her path has taken her through academia, politics, queerness, activism, and much in between. She is working toward a vision of an evolving modern paganism that serves a broad community, is accessible to all, and has the institutions to back it up. She teaches paganism as a community practice for a community life. Her work focuses on creating sacred space, facilitating connection with the divine, encouraging reverence for nature, and recognizing the interconnectedness of all life. Ves is especially passionate about co-creating a safe space for queer spirituality and an appreciation of the in-between, the transgressive and the “degenerate.”

Ves has a graduate degree in Philosophy with a focus on ethics and human rights, and her spiritual path has been inspired by the ancient philosophers and their living paganism. She is an elemental witch, ritualist, ceremony leader, teacher, speaker, writer and rabble-rouser. Her spirituality will always be a tool to survive the forces of oppression and alienation, to reach across divides, and to create a better world.

Hey, I’m Vesper, but you can call me Ves. I’m the fire witch of Three Cups Circle, and I’m a ritual leader, advocate and teacher. I love to joke that I’m doing this because Aster and Nicole won’t let me go back to grad school, but actually our spiritual work is a way for me to connect to the philosophy I’m passionate about as part of a living practice, and share it with all of you. As the ancient philosophers proved, spirituality and logic can go hand in hand, and our spirituality has a lot to teach us about the world and how to move through it.

I’m excited to teach people about paganism in a practical way, from our everyday experience, and to create the kind of community and connections and shared traditions that can be missing from solitary practice. It is an especially poignant time to be deepening our relationship to spirituality, and I think both teachings and the embodied experience of ritual are integral to strengthening our connections to each other, reminding us what we owe to each other, and giving us the tools to embody the sacred. I’m excited to meet you in ritual space, to hold hands as we meet the divine, and build a living paganism that meets the needs of our time.