Elemental Air

Written by Aster

A feather gently floats down to the earth and becomes the writer’s quill.

The wind blows and the question you have been stewing on solves itself in perfect calculation.

Lightning strikes and a seven book fantasy series writes itself in your mind.

A cloud passes by and you take a moment to pause and breathe with its drifting majesty.

The inhale of inspiration and the long, slow exhale that calms the heart.

Air is the cauldron of concept encompassing ideation, the plan, and the reason. If Earth is the body, water the emotion, and fire the soul, then air is the mind. Air is the act of analysis, the troubleshooting process involved in thinking, reason and knowledge. It is the energy of the ideas which precede action. Air erodes like a sculptor to stone, revealing the steps necessary to create. It is the intelligence that transforms raw materials into tools, objects, programs, or any other manifestation in existence—everything man has made was once a thought.

If Water is the past, and Fire the now, then Air is the future. Air is required for the fires of action to feed on. The fires of motivation cannot burn without a reason or purpose. There must be a future goal, a predicted outcome, or some sort of general idea for the future for you to be motivated to accomplish anything. Air is the least material of the four elements and thus has very little physical form. Much like the ideas we all have that float in space, in order for them the be materialized, action is required.

While many associate the heart chakra with the air element, it is my opinion that the lungs are the true home of the air element. As the lungs and heart are intricately connected, I see the air element in the lungs, and spirit or aether in the heart. You can use whatever definition works for you.

Breath is the key to harnessing the power of the air element. Through breath focus we unlock several special abilities. Breath is the way to calm the body or invigorate it. It can be used to slow your thinking so much that you gain access to a hidden place of knowledge. Some call it the Akashic records, others call it a sacred silence, but no matter the name, this is the place of clear thinking, or claircognizance (more on that in September).

Slowing the breath is freedom from tension. Even right now, you can breathe yourself into a calmer state. You can breathe into different parts of yourself to relieve stagnation and density. Breath is one of the only ways we can actively slow the autonomous nervous system (and thus this thinking and reactive body, simultaneously).

Air is closely associated with love and acceptance—both the acceptance of others and the acceptance of self. Air holds community, laughter, play, and connection. When we spend time with family (the ones we like anyway), friends and loved ones, we find the joy of the air element. When we fully accept the self, we unlock the heart fully.

Because air element rules over joy and community, it is blocked by grief and isolation. Those who have been betrayed by community suffer from heart chakra imbalance and tend to isolate themselves. Those who are stuck in a grief blockage cannot feel joy deeply. One must allow love to access them and seek out community to overcome this blockage. Journaling can help overcome these blockages, as the pen becomes the sword to cut through confusion and organize thoughts. Left unattended, these thoughts can wreak havoc on the mind, leading to dissociative and isolating patterns.

In Tarot, Air is the suit of Swords. They tell the story of mental blockages, overcoming thought patterns, and offer cutting advice to instigate change. Every card is double sided like a sword, so intuition with this suit is necessary. Though the imagery of most of the cards can be bleak, there is always a two ways to look at each image (this is the case for every card, but even more important to remember when viewing the swords suit).

Air is also reason, thinking, and logic. As you will see in The Art of Reason below, air energy balances the many ways of knowing each element provides.

Collective Tarot Energies for August 2025

The Devil and the Three of Swords
Breaking the Contract | The Grief of Reclaiming Power
The End of Emotional Bypassing

The Devil. An intimidating card for many, the central figure sits perched eyes leering and hypnotizing the querent to succumb to their lower self. There is a lot I could say about The Devil. Many stories and legends are tied up with this figure, some fair and some unfair, and most funneled through the Christian hegemony. Now is not the time to hash that out, but something important to consider is how He makes you feel.

If you have a discomfort with this figure, then you assuredly also have a discomfort with yourself. While The Devil rules over contracts, addictions (used colloquially here, not referring to true chemical dependency), and ways we keep ourselves enslaved, He never keeps you bound to these themes. You do. Being under the influence of His realm is a personal choice and this card is an opportunity to analyze both your choices and your personal power, especially in scenarios where you are tempted to play the victim.

Scary, right?

The human experience can be a delightful and pleasurable thing, but when things are out of balance, i.e. overindulging in pleasure, being controlled by addictions, or being overly hedonistic, then life can become a personal Hell. If The Devil only appears when He needs to communicate that your relationship to something is unbalanced, is he really a “bad guy” to point this out? Or are we simply fearful of facing our inner demons?

Three of Swords. One of the most iconic cards of the tarot, this card encompasses an overlap of Venus and Saturn—that is to say, partnerships and destruction. When this card appears it can talk about the energy of breakups, betrayal, and loss and can act as a suggestion to take time to confront your grief and emotionally process what the mind is attempting to think through or over intellectualize. Woof, right?

When this card is paired with The Devil, the word “break,” rings loudly. As in, if the Devil is the keeper of contracts, then it is time to sever contracts that do not belong or fit into your life anymore. Can you clear out the heart and mind to make room to channel what needs to change in your life?

Together. With this in mind, this duo asks: what contracts are established in your life that are outdated, or no longer serving you? To help you figure this out, lets talk about what a contract is.

A contract is a simply an agreement between two or more parties that bind each party to specific acts, property, routines etc. A contract can be between you and another human, you and an object, you and a timeline, you and a substance, you and a habit, you and any secondary party you can think of—deities, psychological programming, the different parts of the self…

Regardless of the contract that may be coming up for you, this pairing is speaking to the ways that it is time to renegotiate or more than likely sever the ties to this deal. Something is ready to be felt through, grieved, and released to create the freedom you have been longing for.

Maybe this involves being honest about your current relationship? Perhaps this involves severing a tie between you and alcohol or addressing a specific routine that is keeping you from productivity and/or true rest. Stop for a moment to think about how this reading could be reflecting a personal contract in your life ready to be analyzed.

On a collective level, there are many contacts we could discuss here that need renegotiating.

Societies, governments, and countries exist as a form of societal contract. The Constitution is a contract. Collectively we either allow or disallow events through our action or inaction. Recently, the terms and conditions of the American contract are being tested. When a relationship we are in becomes unhealthy, it is up to us to call out and address the issue. Otherwise, there is no real contract. A contract without accountability or oversight is an illusion masquerading as a safeguard.

Perhaps there are contracts you have established that are not directly harmful to you but may be affecting something (or someone) you care about. All of us have contracts with various corporations: passive subscriptions, choices of grocery markets, or brands of clothing to name a few. Do you know the brand values of these companies? Do you know their impact on drinking water, who they donate to, or if they use child labor? Think of the things you value, and want to protect. Do the companies and technologies you support reflect those values? If not, there may be a need to divorce yourself from them.

Money is a form of power. Every action has an equal reaction. You have more power than you think.

The Devil, through the sign of Capricorn, has connections to capitalism, money, and management of resources. I recently took inventory of the value of many things in my life. This reading reminds me of that moment. I realized how much time (and money) I was wasting on several streaming services while I waited for the one show I like on their individual platform. I found myself watching mindless garbage between the stories I care about. After meditating on it, I realized the ways that these services weren’t serving me, but draining me.

After assessing the value for cost, I cancelled my Amazon, Netflix, Disney, HBO, and a few other services. I severed the contracts because, except for one story I was following on each, they really weren’t producing valuable content. Honestly, since cancelling I have switched to YouTube which is free, AND supports content creators—real human individuals, not companies. My content feed is educational, and sometimes silly, but my thought process is $45/mo ($540/yr!!) saved is a round trip flight to Mexico—a much better cost/value ratio if you ask me.

What outdated contracts do you need break?

The Air element rules what you are taking in mentally. Is your mental food good? You can only eat so much. Maybe for August we take a break from it all and go back to books, knowledge, and gnosis.

August Reflections, Tasks, and Journal Prompts:

• Take inventory of your subscriptions. Are there any you aren’t using? Are there any you really don’t need anymore? Be sure to check different cards and accounts if applicable. Really only keep the ones that are giving you value. Write in your journal and keep a log of how much time you use them, or how valuable it is on a scale of 1-10.

• Pick an object near you. Who made it? By whom? Where was it made? What is it made out of? Does that material have a journey too? Where was that made? Who made it? Why was it made? Take the time to research online and meditate on the process it took to get to you. Westerners can often have a disconnect on the journey of their items.

• Are there any personal relationships (either career or private) that negatively effecting your energetic field? What is the cost/value of these relationships. Perhaps make a grief/joy list with the ones that stand out. What can you change about these situations?

• Make a list of five things you want in your life. Now take those words, plug them into ecosia one at a time with the word book, and see what you can find to read. Air element is knowledge and script, so let the wind take you to new places of understanding.

• Recall a time where you let something go and it brought about a change for the better. Write through what you remember from the transition. How can this empower you today?

Remember, in any severing of ties, in any separation from our normal there is a natural grieving process. It may seem difficult to separate ourselves from our patterns, but once you move through the grief and reclaim your power, you are always better for it. The distractions listed above often times keep us from going within. If we are constantly consuming information, then that leaves no time to digest it. By taking some of the steps above, you make it easier to stop emotional bypassing. So for this month, cut out the distraction, and feel into what you need to process to gain mental clarity.

Stay Blessed,

Aster
Want a reading? Maybe even asking what is blocking you from the Air Element and Freedom? Book Here. @astersoluna on Instagram and TikTok

The Art of Reason

Written by Vesper (your resident philosopher)

A story from the ancient Greeks tells us this: the titan Prometheus stole the fire of reason and knowledge and gifted it to humanity. Fire both to keep us warm and to cut through the dark night of ignorance and the fear it breeds. For this crime, he paid a heavy price, but his gift allowed humans to thrive and grow into our own power. 

One of the most important things a pagan or otherwise spiritual path teaches us is to respect other ways of knowing. Indigenous ways of knowing, embodied ways of knowing, intuitive ways of knowing. But, as important as it is to honor and spread these ways of knowing that our patriarchal society has systematically devalued, we should be careful not to abandon our other inheritance: Reason.

Of course, logic and reason has been used to undermine the wisdom of our emotions and our body. To put white western ways above those of other cultures, and to diminish the capacities of marginalized races and genders. It only makes sense that we would question this hierarchical vision that puts reason above and apart from other ways of knowing.

And yet.

Take it from someone who has spent seven years studying philosophy (with a focus on knowledge systems and logic) while also engaging in a deeply meaningful pagan practice – reason has an important role to play.

Reason – and all the things birthed from it, like logic, science, technology – gives us a solid foundation of knowledge about the world around us. It is a practical bedrock, and because it is based on experience and observation and logic, it is easier to evaluate and trust its conclusions. It is objective and impersonal; it keeps us anchored in a shared reality.

As with anything, it can be misused by structures of power (as can spirituality, see cult leaders and charlatans), but we give up on a powerful and uniquely human tool if we ignore the importance of our own personal reason, analytical skills and discernment. 

As we’ve established, there are many different ways of knowing – many epistemologies, as the philosophers say – and each is appropriate for different scopes of knowledge, different kinds of questions and different methods of questioning. Just as it may not be appropriate to reach for science to answer a question about the meaning of an experience, it may not be appropriate to reach for intuition or spiritual insight to answer a question about the way a thing is in the world.

And when we start relying too heavily on certain ways of knowing for the wrong kinds of questions, we can quickly get an imbalance of air energy that leads down some dangerous paths. We can lose our grounding in the natural world around us, become obsessed with supposedly ascended concepts, and start to lose our ability to discern truth from seductive fantasy or illusion. In the worst case scenario, this can lead to full spiritual psychosis.

One particularly immediate example is the impact of AI use on our thinking. We are already seeing the data showing that AI use reduces our ability to think for ourselves and rely on our own rational capacities, and I have a feeling we will only see more of this dangerous impact as the powers that be force it further and further into the center of everything.

If you need the reminder, AI is nothing but a cursed mirror. It does no thinking, no reasoning, of its own. It merely reflects back the mess of data it was trained on, literally predicting what you expect or desire to hear in answer to your questions. And its use reduces your own ability to evaluate information, to reason out your own answers, to trust your own mental abilities – an obvious boon to the capitalist oligarchs that are pushing its use.

There’s an irony at the core of this: That we should value the tools and insights that science and technology have given us, but always with an eye toward their impacts. If it improves lives and furthers our human experience, gives more autonomy and empowerment to individuals (without destroying the environment), great. If, like AI, it destroys the environment and sells itself as a way to replace the human element of experiences, all while making us less capable and more reliant on those who would sell the stolen sum of human knowledge back to us, we should opt out.

Our spiritual community is particularly at risk for this if we don’t focus on developing and relying on discernment based in reason. Interacting with AI in the realm of spirituality leaves us vulnerable to falling for illusion, to losing our footing in reality. We do not want to see a rise in spiritual psychosis among a community unprepared to combat it, considering the value we place in channeling and imagining and other ‘detached’ air-type practices.

Whether through AI or misinformation or just the general climate of fear, it is so easy to be fooled right now. None of us are immune. So it’s incredibly important to take a beat, take a breath (literally), before assuming anything is true and reacting accordingly. This applies even, or perhaps especially, to wisdom gathered from your own intuition or spiritual gifts.

As reality continues to fracture around us during this time of great upheaval and change and illusion, it is more important than ever that we ground ourselves in the earth around us, in the gifts we’ve been given to observe Her, and in the rational ability we’ve been given to make sense of those observations. We must hold each other’s hands in this shared reality and not let illusions and fear and fantastical stories tear us from our communities.

Though our Christian supremacist culture will try to claim it as a fruit of the great western Christian academic tradition, reason is our legacy as pagans. From the earliest Greek polytheist philosophers to the medieval thinkers shunned by the Church, our traditions and worldviews have shaped the development of reason and science as much as any other. We should not give up on that legacy and simply hand it over fully to the existing power structure to misuse.

All our ways of knowing are valuable. All of them work hand in hand to empower us. You have the tools at your disposal to utilize facts and meaning, logic and magic. The rational capacities of Air are the sword we use to cut through illusions, fantasies, and the lies of those who would control us (whether they come in the guise of an “opponent” or a fellow seeker). So spend a little time thinking about strategic ways you can balance your spiritual ways of knowing with a grounded, rational approach to the world around you.

Athena will be proud.

Upcoming Events and Workshops!

Follow @AsterSoluna on Instagram for upcoming workshops and events.

We will be at Flame Con in NYC on the 16th and 17th!

The rest of August is purposefully light. Tarot Club on the weekend of the 24th. If you want a Halloween party reach out sooner than later as those requests start to come in about this time.

Thank you for reading. We hope your August is full of freedom and relief.

Cut the ties that no longer serve and break free from all chains.

As always, please share with any loved ones who may need these messages. We grow together.

Much Love,

Thank you for being a part of Three Cups Circle. 💗 

Listening to: K-Pop Demon Hunters/Huntrix

Don’t be turned off by the title! I almost was but honestly this movie has suuuuuch great narrative on processing fear, guilt, shame, and grief—the demons of the four elemental chakras. This movie is simply an animated metaphor for self-acceptance, self-empowerment, and Shadowwork. Many themes from Kundalini Yoga are seen throughout the movie, and the main story is about activating and protecting human collective heart energy. (Lyric video because there are spoilers in the animated version of this song).

Reading: Your Choice!

Because the tarot assignment this month involves researching and finding a book on your own, we don’t want to make any recommendations. You have the freedom to find something on your own! Even better if you go to one of your local bookstores to support them. :) Or if you can't go in person, but from Bookshop.org and you can support a local store with your purchase.

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