In partnership with

🎄 Upcoming Events 🎄 

Collective Tarot Energies for December 2025

Three of Swords, Reversed and Nine of Cups, Reversed
Healing from Excess | Mending Expectations
Rest is Not a Pause, It is Part of the Journey

Written by Aster

Three of Swords, Reversed. When upright, this card can indicate the presence of a storm, break-ups, and heartache, but when reversed it holds the energies of a clearing sky, breakthroughs, and heart mending. 

This year has been mentally, to put it simply, a lot, hasn’t it? Thinking, strategizing, healing, acting, plotting, moving, preparing, reacting, learning … it seems the amount of mental/spiritual/emotional/physical input was turned up to ten this year. We have many things to thank for that: the astrological weather, economic struggle, and the threatening political theatre to name a few. 

But this card talks about the recovery from that mental anguish. 

December is asking you to stop picking at the scab, and just let things heal. Let things be. Let things rest. I believe we are through the hardest parts of the journey, or at least, have reached the peak of our reactions to the stimuli. For now, the clouds seem to be parting.  

Nine of Cups, Reversed. The Nine of Cups reversed can refer to feelings of dissatisfaction, and/or the emotions that can occur when a wish goes unfulfilled. It can be the energy of listlessness and falling into the trap of “is anything worth it?” 

It is the frustration of constantly not being enough, of chasing perfection, and feeling emotionally struck when you don’t get a 100% A+ on life. (Spoiler alert: there’s no such thing as getting perfect grades in life.) 

When is enough enough? When do we take the time to relish in the efforts we have put out? If the mind is stuck on more, when do we digest?

Together.  This month, the cards are asking you to take a fucking break. 

You have earned it. With the popularity of Spiritual topics rising, there is a collective miasma that may lead you to feeling you should be doing more to heal: more shadow work, more meditation, more healing, more abundance, more money, more creating, more moving, more classes, more, more, more. 

Enough. 

Yes, I love growth. It’s true. I am ruled by Capricorn. I love advancement and achievement. I find the drive to want more healthy. I also need you to take in the lesson that everything requires balance.

But it seems our Western consumption and growth addiction has trickled down (ew) into our spiritual processes (double ew).

What’s it called again when something wants more and more and is never satisfied?

Oh yeah, cancer. 

Don’t let your pursuit of self improvement metastasize. 

What if this month, you were enough?

What if this month, you didn’t have a chakra to align, or a manifestation to conjure?

What if you leaned into rest? The calm after an exhale and the silence before an inhale. What does that sacred space feel like? To be complete? 

This is not a rhetorical question, this is an exercise. Inhale. Exhale. Wait. What does the satisfaction in the pause bring up for you?

- - - - - - - - seriously- - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - pause - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - inhale - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - hold - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - exhale - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - longer exhale - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - ok - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - pause, don’t breathe until you feel called to - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - close your eyes and do that again, then wait. - - - - - - - - -

A part of accepting moments of pause involves waiting in nothing. A part of accepting moments of pause involves silencing the voice that tells you you are not enough as you are—and that energy is the overlap of these cards. 

What if you were enough?

The Three of Swords, reversed holds the thoughts and the words that you use to self attack.

The Nine of Cups, reversed holds the feeling of having everything you need within and surrounding you but feeling like nothing is enough. 

The great news? Most of this is programming, and programs can be rewritten, downloaded, and uploaded. That’s the work we do with the elements, the light, the shadow, and external forces.

The problem is, like a computer, most upgrades and downloads can only take effect after restarting the computer. If you are constantly downloading upgrades and leaving no room for integration, then what is it actually doing for you? What’s the point? Likely, it is just going to make the reset longer when you finally choose to, or these days more likely, are forced to reset.

And that is what this time of year is for! It is the unplug. The calm. The unabashed joy of Sagittarius season. The elation of being done with the harvest. 

Our advice? No homework this month. Nothing to think about. Nothing to do. No journaling. Simply be with yourself and feel just how amazing you are. For those that need an assignment, perhaps, take a glance at how far you’ve come. For this month, use your visualization to move the goalpost to you as opposed to reaching further and further ahead. Use the phrase: I call in healing, as I release control.

And feel all of your physical selves release: the muscles, the organs, the nervous system, the bones, the fascia, the meridians. What does our body feel like when you stop controlling?

When you celebrate. 

When you release expectation.

For December, luxuriate in that feeling. We’ll get back to it in January. (Which is when we have planned our group shadow work journey, so sign up if you want to come back to the journey after the break). 

Remember, in all things balance. Maybe, doing nothing, and enjoying nothing is the piece of the puzzle you have been missing? Relax and do your best to enjoy the Holidays yourself. So many of us try to make everything perfect for everyone else that we forget to enjoy things ourself.

We can’t do nothing the whole month, but please microdose ‘nothing’ it for your sanity, relaxation, and peace.

You’re winning because you exist. 

Many blessings,

Aster

Want a reading? Maybe even seeking help with how to connect with nothingness and what that can do for you? Book Here and follow @astersoluna on Instagram and TikTok.

Adulting Away The Holidays

It’s exhausting. We feel you.

You’re an adult and holidays no longer consist of being thoughtlessly carted around to various decorated locations, ripping open presents and stuffing your face with great food. Now, you’re the one decorating, cooking, and coordinating who you will and won’t spend your holidays with. Choice is usually something we celebrate over here, but it can get overwhelming during this time of year when there’s so much weird fucking pressure to have a good time.

It can feel oppressive knowing that we are supposed to “feel a certain way” when we may not. As previously mentioned, many of us who struggle with mental health have experienced a sense of guilt atop December sadness, because this is a time when we’re simply supposed to be happy, and we feel like we are letting others down if we’re not.

We don’t need to tell you: depression doesn’t abide by the Gregorian calendar. In fact, holidays can be extra hard for some, especially those who have recently experienced loss or change. Rigid expectations during such a high stress time (all stress is stress, even good stress/excitement) can be a recipe for disaster.

Here are some tips to help you reframe the success of your holidays, as told by three mentally ill, exhausted and neurodivergent witches:

Recognize and Alleviate Pressure to Perform

“You should be doing something special, it’s a special time!”

Break away from capitalist-fed Coca-Cola expectations of what Christmas should look like and find out what would bring you joy. Sure, most of us have family/group obligations of some sort, but sort out what is for you and what is for the others. You don’t have to host a two course dinner and ride a horse-drawn sleigh through a lights display. As a kid, I felt guilt for curling up with a book when there was the pressure to socialize, but now it’s both a safe and happy memory and a current activity for me to enjoy these chilly times.

Holidays are sometimes out of our control, but the majority are what we make of them. Abandon FOMO and make time for activities you enjoy.

Take Little Bites

The “holidays” are not a 24-7 livestream, or a monolith, or a ride you can’t get off. It’s a collection of days with infinite co-created possibilities, but we tend to treat it like a performance that is sequential in nature, and one blunder in the beginning can ruin the show. 

We invite you to take things moment by moment. For instance, if you have a testy argument with a relative, it’s a bad moment, not a bad day. You might have a bad afternoon, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad holiday altogether. Dramatic self-talk like “Christmas is ruined!” because you dropped a plate or burned someone’s favorite dish doesn’t help your chances of enjoying yourself later. In magical terms, it’s low-key manifesting disaster.

When experiencing frustration or sadness, resist the urge to tell the story as it is happening. Give it space and give yourself grace. “The Holidays” are many, able to change course at any time, so take what joy you can and leave the rest.

Chase Glimmers

Get really excited about that pie you only get once a year. Obsess a little, and take your time when you get hold of it. Anticipation is half of happiness.

Hide Magic Where You Can

Christmas is the easiest holiday to smuggle magic into, full stop. It’s already sparkly, tasty and joyful, prone to pagan merriment.

Make a Simmer Pot: A pot filled with water, dried herbs and citrus peels will fill the house with a magical smell. It’s also a great alternative to artificial scents for those of us with sensitive animals (a.k.a. parrots).

Spiced Punch: Take a whole orange and pierce the skin with cloves before dropping it into the punch for tasty prosperity magics. Make shapes on the rind to represent what you want, or tell the orange directly. They’re very friendly.

Candies and Chocolates: Kitchen magic is at an all-time high this season. Bake your appreciation into your gifts, and they will taste better.

Hidden Wishes: Write wishes on decorative pieces of paper, roll them up and tuck the wishes into the Christmas Tree

Candle Magic: Lots of symbolism around the gift of light in the darkness, and lots of ugly family heirloom candelabras we only see once a year. Go crazy, just mind the animals and sugar-drunk small children.

The goal isn’t to have the most magical Christmas ever, of course. That’s a lot of unneeded pressure. The goal is introducing both magic and mindfulness to the holidays to find joy where you can, take time for yourself, and release the rest as the cost of a busy season.

You can survive this year. If you find a good balance between expectations and reality, you might even enjoy it. We hope you do.

Magic as Emergency Medicine

Written by Vesper

We’ve spent the last year doing deep dives into various corners of spirituality and magical practice, but as the wheel of the year turns toward its end, we are taking some time to get back to basics. The time between Samhain and the winter solstice is not usually well-suited to strenuous work or starting new practices. It’s a time to rest, when all of nature is conserving her energy and her resources to survive the long nights and encroaching cold. It’s not just okay, but encouraged, for us to do the same.

In modern times, it’s also a time of heightened stress and the major holidays bring visiting family, or traveling, and all the disruptions and labor that entails. Less sun and less time outdoors also means mental health struggles for many of us, and as a time of reflection and endings, it can leave us grappling with big emotions. 

When you’re facing these stressors, and you’re short on time and resources, your spiritual practice may be one of the first things to fall to the wayside. And that’s okay! The core truth of Nature is change: Cycles, adaptations, transitions. We change too, and so should our spiritual practices. Sometimes, to survive a challenging time, you have to strip back many aspects of your life to bare minimum, the basics, and focus on making it through.

The good news is, you don’t have to approach your spiritual life as all or nothing. Not having time to meditate every day, skipping your usual yoga practice, barely touching your tarot cards, and even not doing ritual work for weeks on end are all perfectly understandable interruptions to your practice. You needn’t feel any shame about it. And you also need not let your reduced practice mean you abandon all the tools your spiritual path has brought you. There are still small, easy ways your practice can help you survive a trying time.

And though our tips are focused around the holidays and the end of the year, this same approach can help you any time you’re dealing with more stress in your life or going through a challenging time – whether that time lasts a day or a year.

Hold to What Works

If you can, it helps to take a little time to look over your schedule and your daily habits and see what you can temporarily give up, and what is valuable enough to continue. Making conscious choices helps us feel less shame about what we need to put to the side for now, and it also makes it easier to work to make time for the things we value enough to hold on to. Does your daily journaling or tarot reading or meditation help you more than it stresses you to make time for right now, in these current conditions? Are there ways you can simplify your processes, just for now? Think of it as a triage scenario: You want to address the most urgent needs first, and anything else has to wait its turn. Even if that turn doesn’t come until January.

Let Go of ‘Should’

Release yourself from any perception of what you should be doing. Of what it looks like to be doing “enough.” Let go of any shame you may feel about stepping back from certain activities or pursuits or obligations while you navigate this time. And this goes for your mundane life, just as much as your spiritual one. If all you can do is the bare minimum, if you find you need much more time to rest, if you find you have to choose between possibilities and can’t make it all work, then that is all okay. 

Remember What Helps

That being said, magic can help you in a variety of small, easy ways. Here we’ve shared some ideas for spiritual practices that can help navigate challenging times, without taking too much energy or planning from you.

• While you stir your tea or coffee in the morning, focus clearly on what you want to bring in or embody that day, even if it’s as simple as calm survival. Stir clockwise for best effect.

• Pull a single tarot/oracle card any time you need a small insight, or even just a moment to think. Don’t pressure yourself to read every day or use long, complex spreads.

• Showers or baths are good for a quick meditation or manifestation prayer. Add salts or oils for an extra boost.

• A quick list of things you’re grateful for can help refocus you on what’s going well.

• Meditate when you can, even if it’s just five minutes to close your eyes and even out your breathing. Bonus points if you can find a quiet spot, but you can also do this while family talks around you.

• Simmer pots. Use holiday smells like cinnamon, clove, cherry, orange, frankincense, etc. Or use favorite herbs or oils to help you relax and stay centered in the moment.

• Use simple door charms to leave negativity outside and protect your peace while having visitors. Our favorites are hanging evergreen wreaths and sprinkling salt on the door step. We also hang a cinnamon broom above the door on the inside for blessings and extra protection.

• Time away: Find time to step away from the celebrations and stress, even if it’s only brief. Take a long bath in the middle of the day, dance to your favorite music while you clean the kitchen, take a walk and celebrate the natural world around you, do some simple morning stretching, find time to curl up with a blanket and a good book – whatever a break looks like to you, prioritize taking time and being fully in the moment with yourself for however long you can.

• Talk to your guides, ancestors, gods, spirits, etc. It may feel like we need a fancy, formal ritual to reach out to our spiritual helpers, but unless your specific practice says otherwise, you can just talk to them whenever you want. Keep up a running dialogue throughout the day or just reach out mentally when you need help. Not only will this help you ground and center, but it’ll improve your relationship to your helpers the more you interact with them.

• Memorize a simple chant for grounding/protection, and repeat it whenever you need. Our favorite: 

  “Surround, protect,
  Protect, surround,
  A ring of light is wound around
  my shining crown into the ground,
  Surround, protect,
  Protect, surround.”

• Nourish yourself. Of course, preparing food can be a magical act, but consuming it is too. Most cultures choose this time of year, when food would have been scarce, to come together to share what they have and make special dishes to celebrate abundance. Let yourself enjoy whatever your special holiday foods are, and be thankful for the nourishment and the delicious experience. It doesn’t have to be extravagant or expensive, just foods that feel special. Bonus points if you share with someone you care about.

• Mind your body’s needs. It’s important to give your physical body what it needs: food, water, sleep, a balanced amount of activity and rest. It’s also important to give your energetic body what it needs. During challenging times, this often means drawing in more energy to balance the increased energy you’re giving out to family and loved ones. If you have an energy practice, give yourself energy healing throughout the day (even while you’re doing chores that don’t take concentration). If you don’t have an energy practice you’re comfortable with, simply take time to ask the universe or your spiritual helpers to help refill your cup, and focus on drawing your spent energy back to you.

• Turn off the news. This is a mundane tip more than a magical one, but we all know now is a troubling time for the world. There is an endless diet of negativity and fear just waiting on your phone or your TV. It’s important to be informed, but the sheer amount of negative information right now is enough to fry our brains on a good day. You have permission to focus on your life and your struggles, and on the people around you, just for now. You don’t want to stick your head in the sand long term, but in the short term, you can do much more good caring for your loved ones and community than you can fretting about the most recent horrible thing the administration did that you can do nothing to stop. If you really struggle with looking away from the trainwreck, find opportunities to volunteer or help out your local community to put that energy to actual use.

Thank you for reading. We hope your December brings you celebrations, unity, and a deep exhale. As things get cold, as the times continue to feel dark, remember we can take all the actions in the world, but sometimes we just need to breathe.

As always, we encourage you to share this newsletter with anyone who might benefit from it. Spiritual work like this benefits immensely from a community. Thanks for being a part of ours, especially as we face these uncertain times.

Much Love,

Three Cups Circle. 💗 

© 2025 Three Cups Circle. All rights reserved. Reproduction or distribution without permission is prohibited, including by artificial intelligence or machine learning models, without explicit written permission.

My Personal Story with Void

Written by Aster

It sounds odd, I know. What is the difference between shadow and void? I remember the first time I experienced it…

Shadow Work is finding something in the subconscious that holds us back; Void is finding the nothing in the darkness that allows us to pause.

Aether is the connection to all life, Void is the full release from existing.

If that sounds scary, don’t let it frighten you. In fact, it is the deepest peace I have felt. Here is how I got there:

Subscribe to Three Cups Circle to read the rest.