Week #21: May 19-May 25, 2025
this one's on the house & features THE ORACLE OF REWILDING
Welcome to week twenty-one! We Fools have journeyed from The Magician to The World, and by this week’s end, we’ll be in ready to begin again. Again.
I had this whole plan for us to observe different iterations of The World cards, but today’s mail delivered me THE ORACLE OF REWILDING: Pathways to Renewing Our Kinship with All Things, a new deck by Alexandra Eldridge with guidebook by Sherry Salman, and it’s so freaking gorgeous and magical, I immediately changed course. So this week’s on the house!
Thank you to Weiser Books for giving us a sneak peek, and be sure to pre-order your copy before it’s pub date of June 2! The artwork is beautiful and weird, and the food for thought shared below is a mere snippet of what the guidebook has to offer. I’m already know I’m going to learn so much by using this deck!
PS. This post is “too long for email,” so if yours gets cut-off, click through to my Substack to read in full.
ICYMI:
🖐️: 5/16: The Friday Five + an invite to the internet’s most feral new club!
📔: The month is halfway over!? Check in with May 2025: The Junk Journal
🌀: SPIRALING THROUGH THE WISDOM YEAR w/ Meg Jones Wall
🎧: Catch up on Call Your Coven - Coven Convo: Building Spiritual Community
Week #21
Twenty-one is a number of journey’s end, pomp and circumstance, and speaking truth to power. It’s a rallying cry, and an opportunity to use your hard-won moment in the spotlight to shed light on what’s important, like NYU student Logan Rozos did when he denounced the genocide in Gaza in his graduation speech. It’s a risk—his diploma is currently being withheld by the university.
In Week 17, I wrote about watching Lord of the Rings with my buds. Well, we finished last week, and the ending wrecked us all. “How do you pick up the threads of an old life?” Frodo asks, after being freed from the grasp of the ring, and returning to the Shire. “How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand... there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep, that have taken hold.” It takes courage to name those truths, and even more to grapple with life’s largest conundrums.
This week, get clear on your reasons to stay alive. Consider where you’re still carrying the weight of old wounds, and offer those aches as much grace and tending as you can. Take a deep breath and stand in the present moment. What makes your heart race? What twists your stomach? What do you want to fight for? What do you want to say, and to whom? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
Keep reading for some food for thought based on your yearly cycle number!
May 19-25 for Your Yearly Cycle
To find your yearly cycle number, add the digits of your month and day of birth to 2025, and reduce until you reach a single digit. For example, the calculation for my birthday of July 7 looks like: 7+7+2+0+2+5 = 23, 2+3 = 5.
Please note that I reduce doubled digit numbers like 11 and 22 to their root numbers when working with yearly cycles, so please calculate and read accordingly.
This week’s forecasts are excerpted from the guidebook to THE ORACLE OF REWILDING, written by Sherry Salman, a psychoanalyst, teacher, and internationally recognized author and speaker. Her area of expertise is symbolism and the creative imagination in postmodern culture and psychological life.
1
DESIRE | All hail the great god Pan.
Cultivate and safeguard your desires as you would a babe in the woods. Consider how it would be to act on them, or maybe to just allow yourself, as Jung put it, to be “decently unconscious.” Only you can do this. Only you can keep the winding pathways between desire, conscience, and community open. It may be frightening at first; extreme passions can truly dissolve everything—for good and ill. And yet, while caution may be warranted, there is often a method in the madness of desire, a primal urge towards life and manifestation.
2
HUNGER | Surrender to the call of the wild.
What am I actually hungry for? What do you really need to survive and thrive so that you can nurture yourself and those around you? What feels frightening or embarrassing about your hunger? …A shapeshift into wolf allows our fear of the wild to become the call of the wild, as we listen and surrender to a brave and sure-footed intelligence which knows that hunger satisfied is a path toward independence and freedom.
3
ANCESTORS | A link to the past, a bridge to the future.
It may be time to follow your ancestral call. To a certain extent, our family and social milieu influence our actions. But it is easy to get caught in the bubbles of our personal history, forgetting that these are only moments in time. They will burst and float away. Let them. Here, we are invited to be guided by a larger inheritance. Like a deer, move gently, but swiftly. Join the lineage of deer women by protecting what is deserving of life…
4
REVIVAL | Not all those who wander are lost.
Death can feel like an inescapable and utter loss. Grief and memory are persistent. Some losses are so profound they become a part of what we are. However, sinking into mourning is necessary, it is part of the blackening. Even while feeling bereaved, inert and alone, moldering in the grave or wandering aimlessly, we are not lost… [T]he raven’s head has more to teach us about the meanings that may be born in suffering. So grieve until grief is done with you.
5
GROUNDING | I sing the body electric.
[S]omething very special may be on its way. Be prepared to bring it to ground, so that rather than being blown away, you can embrace it and be changed by it. To ground yourself, start by being conscious of all beings and events happening right around you, making sure that you and they are safe. Sometimes a ritual for receiving and containing energy helps… Watch and wait. And as you wait, stay humble.
6
DOUBLE VISION | I look both ways.
To get the knack of double vision, you first need to examine where you are right now. Separating things first is important. Do you tend toward the butterfly [effervescent soul] or the blackbird [darker wisdom]? How do you experience the world, and how do you act? When you know where you are, then switch places. And switch again, and again, and again… [S]tay with it. As you oscillate gently between perspectives, their unity will come into focus and you will be able to be in two (or many) places at the same time.
7
VULNERABILITY | I can see you.
Look deeply within. Nature’s plan is revealed there. Follow the trail left by what appears at first to be small, insignificant, or makes you feel vulnerable. This may feel elusive at first, but when your outer sight is occluded, insight will fill the vacuum… {Y]ou will find that allowing your sense of self to grow larger and encompass your vulnerabilities and limitations is the key to good fortune and communion with yourself and with other beings.
8
ILLUMINATION | I am the light of nature.
[A] shift from a state of innocence into one of living into what you need for survival may be underway. Something hidden or even shameful will be made visible and clear. This may announce itself first as need or desire, or you may feel the wolf stirring you towards loyalties that you didn’t know you had. It is important to remember that these strong, even frightening, feelings, when carefully interrogated, reveal themselves to be the “light of nature.” Trusting your gut may help.
9
UNCONDITIONAL LOVE | Bring me a higher love.
[I]t may be time to sacrifice dominance over another in the name of love and aspire to a less conditional way of being in relationship with others. The first step is to admit the self-absorbed conditionality of your loves and distinguish those from healthy boundaries. This is often a humiliating and grisly business… Acknowledge that it takes exceptional courage to love with the “heart of a lion.” It usually does not come easily and may require many days and nights in the jungle…
What’s coming up for you this week? Does your forecast resonate or not?
COME SWIM IN THE SOUP™ 🥣
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