spiritual growth – Just the Tarot

New Moon in Sagittarius: Tarot-Friendly Rituals for Big Vision, Fresh Starts, and Better Luck

This New Moon in Sagittarius invites us to lift our eyes from daily worries and reconnect with a bigger sense of purpose. In this post, we explore how Sagittarius energy supports vision, belief, and fresh starts.

Tomorrow’s New Moon in Sagittarius is the kind of lunar reset that doesn’t whisper — it calls you forward. Sagittarius energy is optimistic, truth-seeking, and future-focused. It’s less about fixing what’s broken and more about asking:

“Where am I going next — and why does it matter?”

If you’ve been feeling stuck, uninspired, or a little too boxed in by routine, this is a beautiful New Moon to work with. Below are simple, Tarot-friendly practices (no complicated rituals required) that align with Sagittarius themes: expansion, belief, faith, and big-picture intention.

“Just the Tarot,” by Dan Adair – Available on Amazon

Why the Sagittarius New Moon Feels Different

Sagittarius is ruled by Jupiter, the planet of growth and opportunity. That’s why Sagittarius New Moons tend to feel like:

• a spark of hope returning

• a desire to try again (but smarter)

• an urge to explore new ideas, paths, or possibilities

• a hunger for meaning, not just productivity

This isn’t the New Moon for micromanaging.

This is the New Moon for choosing a direction.

7 Sagittarius New Moon Activities (That Pair Beautifully With Tarot)

1) Set “Big Horizon” Intentions

Sagittarius intentions work best when they’re directional rather than rigid.

Try writing intentions like:

• “I move toward a life that feels expansive and true.”

• “I welcome opportunities that widen my world.”

• “I allow myself to outgrow old limits.”

Think: vision, not logistics.

2) Do a One-Card Tarot Draw for the Next Chapter

Ask:

“What energy wants to grow in my life next?”

Pull one card and write three sentences:

1. What the card is inviting you to become

2. What it wants you to release

3. One small step you can take this week

Sagittarius loves simple, bold action.

3) Release One Limiting Belief

Sagittarius rules beliefs — the inner stories that shape your whole life.

Ask yourself:

• What belief has been quietly shrinking my world?

• Where have I been playing small because it felt safer?

Write the belief down. Then write:

“I no longer consent to this story.”

You don’t have to replace it with a perfect new belief yet.

Just loosen the grip.

4) Start a “Meaningful Study”

Sagittarius energy thrives on learning and perspective.

New Moon ideas:

• start a book that expands your worldview

• explore mythology, philosophy, or spiritual symbolism

• study one Tarot archetype more deeply this week

Even one chapter read with intention can shift your whole mood.

5) Go Outside and Ask One Big Question

Sagittarius is the open sky, the horizon, the road.

Take a walk and hold one question:

“If I trusted life more, what would I do next?”

Let the answer come slowly. Don’t force it.

6) Use a Mini Tarot Spread for Sagittarius Vision

Try this simple 3-card spread:

1. The Road I’m On

2. The Road That’s Calling

3. The First Step

This spread is perfect when you feel like you’re between chapters.

7) Create a “Jupiter List” (Luck & Expansion)

Write a list titled:

“What I’m Ready to Expand.”

Add anything that fits:

• creativity

• money

• confidence

• love

• freedom

• health

• visibility

• joy

Then circle the one that matters most. That’s your New Moon focus.

A Simple Sagittarius New Moon Ritual (5 Minutes)

If you like simple ritual, do this:

1. Light a candle

2. Write three big-picture intentions

3. Pull one Tarot card for guidance

4. Speak your intentions aloud

5. Close with:

“I trust the larger arc of my life.”

Sagittarius responds beautifully to spoken intention. It’s a “say it and claim it” kind of moon.

What to Avoid Under This New Moon

This is not the time for:

• micromanaging outcomes

• overthinking every emotion

• heavy, endless processing

• forcing certainty before you act

Sagittarius New Moons reward faith, courage, and forward motion — even if the path isn’t fully visible yet.

Closing Thought

The Sagittarius New Moon reminds us that life isn’t meant to be endured in a narrow hallway. It’s meant to be lived with curiosity and a sense of possibility.

Choose a direction that feels meaningful.

Then take one honest step toward it.

Happy New Moon.

THE EMPRESS AND THE ART OF FLUNKING OUT OF EARTH SCHOOL

A playful look at the New Age paradox of being “perfect souls” who still come to “Earth School” to learn lessons. The post explores both views and suggests that real growth comes not from suffering, but from joy, play, and becoming more fully ourselves.

There’s a rather large pothole in New Age philosophy that I keep tripping over. Let’s call it The Earth School Fallacy — the strange contradiction between “We are perfect divine beings” and “We’re here to learn lessons because… well, we’re NOT perfect divine beings.”

Somehow, we manage to carry both of those ideas around in our heads and not notice that they don’t quite fit together.

THE EARTH SCHOOL MODEL

You’ve heard this one. If you’ve been on a spiritual path longer than a week, you’ve probably used this one.

Earth, we’re told, is a sort of cosmic classroom we incarnate into repeatedly. Each lifetime is a syllabus of Very Important Lessons, and with each incarnation we supposedly level up until we become Spiritually Perfect.

In this model, we actually choose our life challenges before we’re born.

Have a temper? Great! Let’s incarnate into a family whose daily activities include pushing all of your buttons like they’re competing for a prize. Assuming we don’t murder each other we eventually learn enough humility and patience and – SHAZAM – we transform into Mahatma Gandhi.

Have an obsession with sex? Wonderful! Let’s incarnate into a world filled with gorgeous, eager, naked partners who—

Okay, that one never happens. But you get the drift.

Pass your lessons and you move up a grade.

Fail your lessons and you come back as a cockroach or a MAGA supporter and start over in Spiritual First Grade, eating glue and making macaroni art.

In Tarot Talk, Gaia’s classroom often looks like the Five of Wands — a bunch of souls flailing around wildly until one of us finally figures out what the sticks are for.

THE ANGEL WITHIN

Now we arrive at the second New Age idea — the one that directly contradicts the first.

This is the belief that we’re already spiritually perfect, but we’ve forgotten that fact. Our task isn’t to improve ourselves… it’s to remember that we don’t need improving.

Buddhists describe it as our original nature: a perfect jewel hidden under a crust of plain gray rock. Chip away the rock and — surprise! — you’ve been luminous the whole time.

Joni Mitchell phrased it better than all the gurus combined:

“We are stardust, we are golden,

and we’ve got to get back to the garden.”

In this view, we are pure, radiant beings from Source Energy who come to Earth, promptly forget who we are, and then spend the rest of our lives meditating, journaling, and buying inspirational calendars in an attempt to remember.

Put another way:

We’ve got a sleeping angel inside us, and the angel really needs to get its butt out of bed.

THE CONTRADICTION

Here’s the uncomfortable question no one asks:

If we’re already perfect, why would we CHOOSE to forget that and struggle?

It’s like becoming a master at algebra, then signing up for a lobotomy just so you can relearn quadratic equations from scratch.

Imagine your higher self sitting in another dimension saying,

“I’m a being of luminous perfection. You know what sounds fun? Forgetting everything and getting pissed off at the traffic while I drive to a boring, meaningless job that I hate.”

Something about that doesn’t quite compute.

EARTH SCHOOL AND THE WORK ETHIC PROBLEM

The Earth School model borrows heavily from Christian theology, a worldview in which:

• Humans are inherently sinful.

• Life is full of temptations that make us more sinful.

• If we behave ourselves and avoid having sex with the neighbor’s spouse, we get to go somewhere nice after we die.

In this model, Earth is basically the rough school on the dangerous side of town, with a curriculum of suffering, discipline, and fear.

Just keep your head down, work hard, and eventually—good news!—you’ll die.

THE VEDANTA SOLUTION (AKA: THE EMPRESS APPROACH)

Vedanta, from the Hindu tradition, on the other hand, leans toward Joni Mitchell’s interpretation. It suggests that:

• We are already perfect.

• Life is not meant to be hard.

• We’re not here to learn painful lessons.

• We’re here to experience, enjoy, and expand.

If the Vedanta version of Earth School has a model, it’s not the stern monk or stressed-out student — it’s The Empress.

She’s not here to ace the test. She’s here to savor the banquet.

Play, creativity, pleasure, beauty — these are not distractions from the spiritual path.

They are the spiritual path.

That’s a really hard concept for Westerners to wrap our heads around. We’re taught from the moment that we’re born that life is a series of assignments that we’re supposed to complete and that the next assignment will be better than the last. That’s really the way that our whole society is set up. We go to kindergarten so that we can go to grade school so that we can go to high school so that we can go to college or trade school so that we can get jobs so that we can get promotions so that we can retire comfortably and have enough money to pay for our funerals.

If we do all of that, we’ve been, “successful.” If we don’t, our lives have been meaningless.

When someone tells us that the whole purpose of Earth School might actually be recess, it feels slightly insane.

LIVING SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE

We can argue both sides.

If you lean toward Earth School, you can point to all the suffering and struggle that seem baked into our reality. As the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes famously put it, human life often appears “nasty, brutish, and short.”

But if you look again, you’ll also see breathtaking amounts of love, generosity, joy, and compassion.

So what’s the truth?

Probably something in the middle.

No, we’re not perfect angelic beings slumming on Earth…

but we can be.

Maybe life isn’t about learning painful lessons, and maybe it’s not about effortless perfection either.

Maybe it’s simply about becoming more yourself, more awake, more playful, more alive.

And oddly enough, the way we get there isn’t through suffering…

it’s through joy. It’s through learning how to play.

We don’t have to wait until we die to graduate.

We can do that right now — as soon as we remember that recess was always the point.

Harnessing the Power of Mentalism: How the Magician Card Can Help You Manifest Your Desires

Discover how the Magician tarot card and the Principle of Mentalism from The Kybalion can help you manifest your desires by aligning thought and intention.

Have you ever tried to manifest something—a job, a relationship, a more abundant life—only to feel like nothing’s happening?

As you probably know, there are hundreds of manifestation methods and techniques out there, each of them 100% guaranteed to bring us happiness, wealth, and a great sex life. So why are so many of us still stumbling along, sad, poor, and . . . well . . . un-laid?

Here’s the truth: manifestation isn’t just about saying the right words, finding the right method or doing the right ritual. It begins with our minds. According to the ancient Hermetic wisdom of The Kybalion, “The All is Mind”—meaning that everything in the universe begins in thought. This is known as the Principle of Mentalism, and it’s the foundation of all true manifestation work.

Why Manifestation Often Fails (And How Mentalism Can Help)

Here are the most common reasons why manifestation doesn’t work :

• We’re trying to manifest from a place of fear or lack. We’re so wrapped up in what we don’t have, that that’s all we can think about. And whatever we think about is exactly what we’re going to get.

• Our conscious desire doesn’t match our unconscious beliefs. If we’re convinced subconsciously that we don’t deserve love, we won’t find love. If we’re convinced that we don’t deserve abundance, we’ll stay poor.

• Our thoughts and emotions are scattered or unfocused. And undoing that is a learning process. Especially if we’re already afraid or anxious, learning to calm down and focus on what we want, instead of what we don’t want, can feel like a real challenge.

Mentalism helps by bringing it all back to the source: our minds. When our thoughts are aligned, our emotions follow—and so does our reality. Manifestation becomes less about “getting stuff” and more about changing who we are inside.

The Principle of Mentalism and Visualizing

The Principle of Mentalism is the first of the seven Hermetic principles outlined in The Kybalion. A summary of it is the axiom:

“The All is Mind; the Universe is Mental.”

This means that the universe itself is a mental creation. While that’s a fascinating metaphysical discussion for another day, what we want to focus in on right now is, “Why in the hell aren’t my visualizations working?”

When we bring this axiom down to the level of our daily lives, it means: Everything begins as a thought.

Put another way, every single thought we have is creating our personal reality – the fabric of our lives – whether we’re aware of it or not.

When it comes to manifestation, Mentalism teaches that:

We are not separate from the creative power of the universe. That can be a hard one for us to wrap our heads around. We aren’t just creations of the Universe – we’re also creating the Universe because we are conscious beings with free will. We’re a part of the Universe making itself. We’re a part of that same source energy that created the stars. We are incredibly powerful – we just don’t realize it.

Our thoughts are not passive—they are active forces shaping our experience. As Mike Dooley likes to put it, “Thoughts become things.” Every single thought that we have has the potential to manifest in the physical world.

To change our outer world, we must first change our inner world. If our thoughts become things that create our lives, then it only makes sense that the first thing we need to do is to take control of our thoughts. We have to create what we want to manifest in our outer lives in our inner lives. That means that we need to quit being victims of our thoughts and learn to direct them. They’re working for us, not the other way around.

Which brings us to The Magician.

The Magician Card: Your Inner Creator

In the Rider-Waite tarot deck, The Magician stands at a table with the four tools of the Minor Arcana before him: a cup, a wand, a sword, and a pentacle. Above his head floats the infinity symbol. One hand points to the sky; the other points to the earth.

This is a card full of meaning for the manifestation process:

Infinity symbol: We have unlimited potential. Our minds are conduits for universal energy. This is what we were just talking about: we are not separate from the creative power of the Universe. We are a part of that power and that makes us much, much more powerful than we realize.

One hand up, one hand down: As above, so below—our inner world shapes our outer one. This is another way of saying that our thoughts aren’t passive – they’re active agents creating our lives right now. Whatever we create in our inner lives will manifest in our outer lives.

Tools on the table: We have everything we need to manifest—thought (swords), emotion (cups), action (wands), and material resources (pentacles). We don’t need to borrow someone else’s methods for manifesting because we already have the magic in our own lives.

The Magician is the living embodiment of the Principle of Mentalism. He reminds us that we are not a victim of circumstance—we are the creators of our experience by using our mental powers.

A Simple 4-Step Magician-Inspired Manifestation Practice

Here’s a simple practice that brings together these lessons from the The Magician and the Principle of Mentalism.

Step 1: Clarify Your Desire

Get crystal clear. Let me say that again: GET CRYSTAL CLEAR! What exactly do you want? Let’s face it – as human beings we are fully capable of wanting two things that contradict each other at the same time. For instance, if you want a full time lover but you also want a lot of time to yourself, you need to sort that out. Which one do you really want, because you probably can’t have both and if you ask for both they’ll cancel each other out and you’ll get nothing.

Write it down in a present-tense, emotionally charged sentence. For example:

“I am joyfully attracting a lover and friend who is filling my life with meaning.”

Step 2: Align Your Mind

Close your eyes and visualize your desire as if it’s already happening.

Feel the emotion of it. Say your intention out loud. In this example, you could imagine that you’re spending the day with your lover, having a wonderful time, and planning for a sensual evening together.

Step 3: Act with Intention

Now take a small action that reflects your inner belief.

It could be creating a vision board, applying for an opportunity, or simply saying “no” to something that no longer fits. In this case, it could be writing out 20 affirmations that say, “I am loved and treasured by my partner.”

Step 4: Meditate on the Image of The Magician Card for a Few Moments

Do this while you’re visualizing your goal. This helps us to remember the lessons here: everything begins with our thoughts; we have unlimited potential that we’re using to create our dreams; everything that we need to create our dreams is contained within us.

It also goes a step further and helps us to connect with that archetypal energy of The Magician. It’s a symbol that pulls power into our visualization and engages the Universe in helping to create our desires.

Final Thoughts: You Are the Magician

You don’t have to “become” powerful—you already are.

The Principle of Mentalism and The Magician card both remind you: your reality is a reflection of your consciousness.

Want to change the outside? Start on the inside.

Start with your thoughts.

Start with your intention.

Start with you.

Want to Go Deeper?

If this topic speaks to you, I invite you to check out my new ebook:

“The Alchemy of the Mind: Transforming Your Life With the 7 Principles of The Kybalion.”

In it, I explore how each Hermetic principle can help you reshape your beliefs, emotions, and daily experience. It’s part philosophy, part practical guide—and 100% dedicated to your growth.

Your Turn

Have you used The Magician card in your manifestation work?

What has Mentalism taught you about the power of thought?

Drop a comment below—I’d love to hear your experience.

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