The longest and the shortest month begins in December.
Many of us are still processing grief and this year. For many of us, 2021 has been a series of 2 steps forward, 3 steps back: both in external efforts and in healing. Give yourself grace. Focus on making the month as intentional as possible; preparation is a major theme now. Preparation looks like anything you need to do in order to clear space, make life easier, or be kinder to yourself.


The final Solar Eclipse coincides with the start of the month, and with it, a portal opens.The time between the New Moon/Eclipse and the Full Moon/Solstice time on the 18th - 20th is potent for taking external actions around important groundwork for the next year.

The Solstice marks the time of the darkest night; it is ripe with potential for making amends, forgiving yourself and others, and choosing up to 3 important areas of focus until the Equinox.

This month's Tarotscopes were channeled and written by meditating on each archetype and pulling a Tarot card for them. You can read for whatever sign you feel called to: some read for their Sun, rising, Moon, or all three. As always, take what you need & leave the rest. If your Tarotscope doesn’t resonate now, you may want to go back at the mid-point or end of the month to re-read.

Please note: If you don’t know if you are allergic to a specific herb or plant, use caution or consult with your herbalist or doctor before ingesting. Never leave a lit candle or flame of any kind unattended.

The Modern Women studio is so grateful for your support in time and attention.
All Many Moons Lunar Planner orders placed before December 6th from the studio are invited to take part in a special free gathering on January 2nd where we will go over the themes of the year, and initiate our planners with our intentions, and cast a group spell.

The studio stops shipping on December 15th for a holiday break; any orders placed after that will be shipped between January 4th and the 10th.

The first online workshop of the year is on Sunday, January 16th at 12 pm PST. It is on The Lovers. Later in that month, the studio will welcome Blanca S. Villalobos for an online workshop on Dream Magic: subscribe to the newsletter to hear more about it and to sign up when enrollment is live.

We hope you’ll join us. Wishing everyone a beautiful, restorative month.

Aries
6 of Cups

There’s a lot of relief that accompanies finally letting go of attachments to all the wrong things. Societally-sanctioned ideas of success—marriage and kids by a certain date, a particular kind of job by a certain age—are just that: ideas. There’s a huge amount of life-force energy that returns to us when we realize that the only set of standards we need to care about are our own. Luckily, you are in a phase where the less emphasis you put on someone else’s shoulds, the more satisfaction and energy becomes available.

You are no longer playing anyone else’s games—you’ve never really played by anyone else’s rules anyway, fire child. It’s more fun to create your own, based on first choices, non-negotiables, and heartfelt wins. Now, more than ever, you can spot the drama and distractions from a mile away. Now, more than ever, you don’t feel the need to enmesh, take it personally, or entertain invitations to keep up certain appearances. Being done never felt so good.

Fairytales the world over have posited that the fountain of youth could be found after long journeys to far-flung places. Your fountain of youth is found anytime you give yourself the love and attention younger you craved and deserved. It’s found through play and laughter. It gets more found every time you find yourself through sweetness, beauty, and love. As you transition into the next year, relish in all the progress you’ve made. Let yourself appreciate how much goodness surrounds you.

Suggested spell ingredients: Fresh flowers for your inner teenager, feminist comedies, rhodochrosite, indoor play forts, hot cocoa before bedtime, and the 2022 Many Moons Lunar Planner.

Taurus
Wheel of Fortune, Reversed

Eclipse season may be ending mid-month, but you’ll be feeling the reverberations through all of December. The entire last four weeks of the year could feel disorienting: time will feel like molasses, then quicksand, then sped all the way up. Because this month could become a blur, it’s on you to slow down and make intentionality a baseline each day. While you may be feeling the urge to get it over with, this month is lucrative for preparation. Make space for restoration. Call your energy back: from relationships, worries, unsolvable problems, and from a past you can’t control.

Part of any spiritual path is realizing that when certain chapters feel finished, they must be ended appropriately. This is the process you are currently in: before beginning the next phase, the right containers must be created. You’ve got to commit to creating the proper structures and scaffolding for your next home. Quite frankly, you’ve also got to summon the energy. That means doing an energy audit and cutting some serious time drains. That all takes time. You may not feel like you have it, but you do. A magician bends space and time through her attention, energy, and focus.


Before your life pivots down another path, you’ve got to get back to basics. Enough sleep. Enough pleasure. Enough nourishment. Enough clarity. Enough vision. Before the camera pans wide, zooming out into majestic mountain tops, it has to focus on the trailhead. The sooner you can accept that’s where you are, the sooner you’ll be on that different path. Pause. Recenter. Live the process, even when it requires patience.

Suggested spell ingredients: Black tourmaline, gold, citrus, solar plexus strengthening exercises, good luck charms from your ancestry, and the 2022 Many Moons Lunar Planner.

Gemini
10 of Pentacles

Everything is as good as it’s going to get for the particular circumstances you are in. The question is, can you let it be? This is it. There’s no more pushing you to have to do, no more rearranging, no more tweaks. It is what it is. You are what you are.

If you are reading this, you are here, now. Alive. Willing. Compassionate. If this was the best you could get, would it be enough? Right now, this is your life. Worn in. Purposeful. Beautiful. If this was the best it could be, is it enough?

The 10 of Pentacles denotes the completion of a major cycle. You are in a time when you are seeing the tangible results of years of work. So much effort has gone into healing, striving, growth, and abundance. It would be a shame if you didn’t stop to look around and acknowledge how far you’ve come. It would be a tragedy if you didn’t spend at least part of the month honoring all who helped you, from the ancestors to the birds to that favorite high school teacher. Part of healing is resting from healing work. Count your blessings until they trill back at you, until they are evident with each breath you take. There’s still a home you seek, there are still puzzle pieces around legacy, there are still questions around how to bring certain visions to life. Trust that the missing keys will come with time. First, allow your life to feel like home.

Suggested spell ingredients: Malachite, marigold wreaths, pineapple, globes and maps for travel plans, a gratitude altar, and the 2022 Many Moons Lunar Planner.

Cancer
The High Priestess

To get things you’ve never gotten before, you must do things you’ve never done. To do things you’ve never done, you must believe in yourself as never before. To believe in yourself as never before, you have to bypass the mind, and go straight to the soul you know yourself to be. NBD, just easy, breezy, beautiful Moon Child things.

December could be a tricky month: the Moon, your beloved, eclipses the Sun at the beginning of the month. This is initiation energy: an exciting beginning bubbles up from a pool of grief. There could be calls for you to acknowledge your particular power and get more serious about your gifts. There could be the pull to finally follow the calls coming from across the chasm of your future self. There is magic to be made. The bigger question you could ask this month is how can I make the whole of my life more magical and more meaningful? It mustn’t be reserved for certain spells, circles, people, or situations. It must all be for you, first. Let it flow from your fingertips, infuse the mundane moments with agency. 

If you haven’t followed your intuition in a while, set aside solid amounts of time for meditation, trance, or journaling. Throw messages in a bottle out into your own deep sea of mysteries. Create a cosmic call and response to what you are seeking and let the answers seep in like clear running water. Keep it all to yourself, like the best secret. This reconnection has to be all, completely, only for you.

Suggested spell ingredients: Lapis Lazuli, offerings to your deity, water, dream magic, pomegranate juice, the space and silence to listen to your own intuitive wisdom and to to journey into unknowns and underworlds, and the 2022 Many Moons Lunar Planner.


Leo
2 of Swords

First, remember what’s going on in the world. Then, remember what’s going on in your world. Both are a lot, and when combined, they have the potential to make you feel like Sisyphus, pushing some ancient boulder up a mountain for some reason you lost touch with. Things feel hard because they are. And also: you’ve got a case of decision fatigue, Leo. All year, (or longer) you’ve had to keep it together and make moves in the uncertainty, while also taking so many others into account. Throw in a dash of burnout, and a sprinkle of late-stage-capitalism ennui and/or anxiety, and voila: here you are!

This month, what you want and what you need are two very different things. You probably want to do a dozen things a day but you need to rest. You may want to have the next 5 years figured out but you need to figure out how to get through the day with less stress. That doesn’t make you somehow bad, wrong, or embarrassing. It does mean you should have a heart-to-heart with your inner child, or your ego. It could mean having a conversation with a close friend, therapist, or depending on your situation, boss or co-worker.

The good news is, you’ve got choices. Remember that each minute you feel like you don’t is a temporary trick from your tired brain. One way to heal from decision fatigue is to make some decision magic. Decide what you need. Decide what is non-negotiable and most important this month. Decide what is easiest. Decide you don’t have to do things that limit your autonomy, threaten your dignity, or dim your light. 


Suggested spell ingredients: Lavender and salt foot baths, selenite, a writing workshop or self-directed writing retreat, naps, a lockbox for your phone, milky oat top tincture, and the 2022 Many Moons Lunar Planner.

Virgo
King of Pentacles, Reversed

The King of Pentacles is the last Tarot card in the entire deck; they are the master of the material realm, skilled at bringing their dreams into tangible form. When they show up, they are an indicator that some major victory has been won. The reversal indicates that it might still be on the horizon, or that you could be refusing to see it, or second-guessing your abilities. In some way, you’ve arrived. Knowing what you want, finally, is an arrival. Wanting something so badly that you can taste it is an arrival too. Savor whatever progress has been made this year. You’ve come so far.

This time of the year corresponds with death, endings, and rebirth. In some parts of your life, the soil is ready to be turned over. In the realm of the lunar humanifestation, doing nothing is doing something. This would be a prime time to reflect on the greater legacies of your life.

At the end of your life, you won’t be wishing you had spent more time being upset about comments from strangers on the internet. You won’t be wishing you spent more time chasing approval from gatekeepers, the coolest kids, or certain people who you will never be good enough for anyway. You will wish you had cultivated a style and a body of work that reflects your most authentic self. You will wish for more quiet, spacious mornings spent feeling the supportive earth warm slowly under the Sun. You will want more time spent with people who accept and see you in all your glory. Sink into your enough-ness, and build a legacy from that.

Suggested spell ingredients: Coins, community, bone broth, obsidian, silk pillowcases, and the 2022 Many Moons Lunar Planner.

Libra
Page of Wands

Libra, after Quite A Year, this month brings a sweet reprieve. The caveat here hinges on your perspective: what you choose to focus on will either continue to burn you out, or begin to light you up. Particular harsh truths you discover through therapy, meditation, or contemplation could usher in some much-needed reorganization, or leave you despondent. Try to stay out of the danger zone of hopelessness and maneuver into the fertile ground of solution-based strategizing.

This is a month to develop and refine energetic boundaries: where do you end and others begin? Spend time in daydreams and practices to spark your imagination for future plans. Don’t worry about the how. Focus on the what.

Spend the first ten days of the month clearing any residue that has been dragging you down. Schedule lingering appointments or tasks. Apologize to yourself in the mirror. Keep your eyes on your own precious paper. Center a creative practice: whether it is a poem a day, a meal a day, or a playlist a day, pay attention to the impulses to remind you of your natural genius. When things get tough, go easier on yourself. 

By the second half of the month, the how may appear. The notes of angel song that previously felt so far away—those glimmers of hope—will sing so clearly in your sphere you’ll have no choice but to feel brighter. There’s no such thing as failure when you are doing what you love.



Suggested spell ingredients: tea-lights sprinkled with cinnamon and red pepper flakes, an altar that celebrates shadows and light, a rose-colored lightbulb for your bedroom, a Solstice celebration with one or two of your nearest and dearest, and the 2022 Many Moons Lunar Planner.

Scorpio
King of Cups

The end of the year finds you honoring yourself in even deeper ways. December is an opportunity to step back from your regularly scheduled programming. Now is the time to unravel some unconscious impulses that have become primary habits over the last 2 years. Are your coping mechanisms pulling you out of your body, or are they supporting embodiment? In order to tell whether some of the more intense emotions you’ve been holding onto are a control mechanism, control must be relinquished. When you seek to control for insecure reasons, it ends up controlling you.

It’s also time to recalibrate how much you base your worth on how helpful, of service, or “good” you are. How much of that started as a survival mechanism? Most likely, you are battling compassion fatigue. Putting yourself first doesn’t make you selfish, it’s a necessity. If people have a problem with that, that’s information to remember. You deserve to be seen and loved, no matter how much, or how little you are of service to others.

This sentiment flows more into the totality of your life. You are a being, not a doing. What you do might be life-changing, phenomenal, or impressive, but if you are doing it mostly for acceptance, to get attention, for control, or as a shield against intimacy, it could be time to rethink those motivations. Underneath all of these waves is the ask to clarify who you are, what you want to experience most often. Center that at the core of all your plans. Make your everyday life a reflection of your depths. It’s time.

Suggested spell ingredients: Coral, ocean or river water, mirrors, a poetry writing session, indigo-colored candles, and the 2022 Many Moons Lunar Planner.

Sagittarius
6 of Pentacles

The book of the Gregorian year is closing, and so is a larger chapter of your life. So many milestones have been met. So many corners turned. Yet, all the hardships that loomed large this year might be overshadowing some of the major growth that’s blossomed in the garden of your life. Hold the smooth weighted stone of grief in one hand, and the bouquet of beauty in another. Your heart is wide enough to contain it all.

Your birthday always kicks off new adventures, and there’s so much future to look forward to. Travel, more ease, and at least one deep dive project are on the horizon. Before that all coalesces, make sense of your part in the greater theme of worth that’s come up over the last two years. Certain behaviors can create an imbalanced energy exchange within your relationships: what you tolerate and why you do must change. How you treat your body especially as it pertains to work is up for review. If your belief in yourself gets shaky around that which tests it, figure out how to slow down enough to reroute.



What are you willing to do to protect and advocate for yourself, even when you’re the one attempting to sell yourself short? What, or who, are you willing to lose in order to keep your self-respect and energetic field intact? What is stopping you from asking for more help and stating your needs before isolation, resentment, and loneliness take over?



Receive to give. Give to receive. Don’t be afraid to truly choose yourself first.

Suggested spell ingredients: Dried sage tea, a check made out to you from the Universe with how much you will make next year, long hugs, open hands, the smoothest stone that calls to you on a grey-morning wander, and the 2022 Many Moons Lunar Planner.

Capricorn
The King of Swords

This month, talk a lot less than you normally do. Talk to be understood, not liked. Talk to hear your own voice vibrate through your being like a healing instrument of attunement. Pay attention to how words sound when you are smiling, nervous, or relaxed. Watch the types of words that flow out of your mouth most frequently, and what that might mean about your beliefs. Pick at least 8 different new words that have personal symbolism to incorporate into your daily speech. Talk less and know more.

The transitions that are taking place right now require a sloughing off of certain parts of your personality. In order to parse out what conditioning is ready to go, or what is a trauma response that can be healed, stillness and deliberation are required. Most likely, the Eclipse at the start of the month will illuminate the “true you”: it might feel comforting and confronting simultaneously. As your nervous system becomes more supported, so will your next moves. Make them in silence.

The focus that this month requires will be rewarded by late spring. There are title changes, promotions, and other achievements forthcoming that must start from within. More aspects of your leadership skills will be on display. You’ll be asked to share more of your specific wisdom. Thought processes are changing, neural pathways are forging different paths. Carve out time, space, and clarity as you continue to rise.

Suggested spell ingredients: Poems, silence, space, crow energy, petitions to patron saints or deities or ancestors, the deep wisdom that dwells within, and the 2022 Many Moons Lunar Planner.

Aquarius
8 of Pentacles

The energy for you this month is feeling very “now or never.” There seems to be a clear push for you to do the thing, make the move, start the project, make your health a priority, truly focus on a particular healing process, etc. Whatever you are feeling compelled to hunker down with is deeply connected to one of the larger purposes of your life that you’ve been kinda…putting off. There seems to be any number of things stopping you: resources, perfectionism, motivation, imposter syndrome, or lack of time during a particularly busy season.

There’s never an opportune time to expand your family, start a different job, come out as non-binary, go back to school, or change your entire life. However, when a decision has been made, the shape of one’s life rearranges to fit that growth or process. Whatever calls to you from the not-so-distant future must be acted upon. However you can begin, do so this month.

It will feel hard and there will be times when you will feel alone. Reminders that you are never alone: benevolent ancestors, future friends, and everyone who will benefit from your growth surround you. There are the trees stretching out towards the sky, vitally alive even though they appear frozen. There are reminders all around you that in order to touch heaven one must nestle deeply in the faith of dirt. It takes grit to invest in yourself. It takes courage to believe you can do better. The strides you make will become tangible sooner than you think. A witch in motion stays in motion. This next push of dedication will secure more health and healing for the ecosystems you inhabit, so long as your health and healing are not overlooked. Dig out the reasons why you are doing this from the cold, hard earth: that’s all the motivation you need.

Suggested spell ingredients: An altar to the most important things in your life, gold pyrite, a foam roller, accountability buddies, schedule magic, and the 2022 Many Moons Lunar Planner.

Pisces
5 of Pentacles

It’s ok for you to feel frustrated about your life. It’s normal to feel trapped by bills, obligations, or to be overwhelmed. What’s not ok is beating yourself up about past decisions you made in moments of compromise, or when some important information was missing. Life is a continuous practice of filling in our knowledge gaps with experience, which is both exhilarating and exhausting. Humility is a spiritual key. Self-effacement is as worthless as guilt. The past has passed. Enjoy without explanation. Finding ease requires no effort.


It’s ok to feel dejected at the end of the year, surrounded by the goals that didn’t quite work out, and old wounds that surfaced like soul shrapnel.* Loss is real, and your feelings need to be honored. Part of your healing process now is feeling all the uncomfortable emotions without punishing yourself, without over-identifying with the pain. You deserve sweetness, sweetheart, no matter what.

There’s a lot that is out of your control right now, a lot that you can’t know. Take the lessons you’ve learned and apply them: they will help you figure out the next steps. Confidence isn’t to be flexed only when one is at the right place at the right time. It also comes in handy when one has to figure out how to get to that right place at that right time. A lot of where you end up next relies on how well you are embodying self-trust now. It’s all a lot closer than you think.

Suggested spell ingredients: Self-forgiveness, ruby, nettle, extra help and support, a month filled with the longest bedtime rituals before the longest sleep you’ve ever let yourself have, and the 2022 Many Moons Lunar Planner.