Hello to my fellow well witches and other well beings! By now we are well into the second lunation of the year, the crescent moon is hanging above me in the night sky as I type this, and the messages from my collective card reading for all the moons of 2025 are slowly revealing themselves.

I also took omens during the intercalary days, and the message I received for this month was: “Human machines idle menacingly close. The air fills with tiny moths.”

It is natural to scatter, to flee in the face of an unknown peril or a threatening presence. It is healthy to have instincts for danger. But we can’t live on instinct alone. We need to get clear on how to live, collectively, in spaces where risk must be presumed, and where trouble, even good trouble, finds us.

Held in the quiet fullness of solitude, Four of Cups is a card of rest and reflection, but also awareness of any inclinations toward stagnation. This card brings to mind the saying, “No Mud, No Lotus.” We need the dirt to grow — death, decay, and yes, sometimes also suffering are a part of life. But there is necessary and there is unnecessary suffering.

The "lotus effect" refers to the self-cleaning properties of lotus leaves, organized on a nanoscopic level to repel water while allowing droplets to pick up particles of dust and dirt. What dirt do you need to grow, and what dirt do you need to wash away this lunation?

This month I recommend performing your primary ritual (if you do only one) during the full moon, as it is depicted in this card. But you can also use the energies of the moon in your small ceremony, using its waxing energies to collect our insights and wisdom from the mud we have to grow in, then allowing the waning moon to wash away the dirt inhibiting our growth like a gentle rain.

Magically, the lotus is often used to enhance a sense of peace, or to help induce meditative states. Where it grows, it helps to clean and filter the water of pollutants and algae. It provides shelter and protection for fish, frogs, and other aquatic creatures. The young shoots and seeds sustain ducks and other birds.

And humans love to eat it too! Every part of the lotus is edible. This is a plant that can sustain you, as well as a diverse ecosystem. That doesn't necessarily mean you live here in the swamp now, but while you're here, lotus can nourish you, fill your cups while you rest and prepare for the year ahead.

Pigs are prolific breeders among meat animals. They have been bred for this advantage over ten thousand years. A lucky breeder today can turn a piglet into a litter of piglets in as few as six months, animals that would reach market maturity and be ready for the table in only another six months.

Pigs are also known to eat their young. They have even been known to eat the occasional person. In the horror genre, these facts are often conveyed as symbolic of their uncivilized, beastly nature. It might be interesting to contrast this portrayal with the fact that domesticated pigs would not exist if not for civilization.

I grew up on a small hobby farm, but my father often worked on much larger pig farms, massive operations requiring laborers to shower in and out, wearing special protective gear to avoid spreading germs that could lead to epidemic illness. Pigs are a powerful symbol of the ways that industrialization impacts and perverts food ecosystems.

Pigs are smart. They can use tools, play video games, solve complex problems. They are self-aware. They experience emotions, and share them with others. They can lie.

Pig asks, where does our productivity and our prosperity come from generosity and hard work, and where does it come from absolute horror? Pig asks, are you sure that you're the civilized one?

This card asks us to hold two different sets of emotions within us, and explore how they interact.

What does care and responsibility feel like? We will be digging much deeper into feelings of responsibility later this year, so it will benefit us to get comfortable with these sensations now.

What does indifference and self-interest feel like? What does it feel like to label? Where are these feelings protective, and where do they limit us?

Someone once asked me to consider if perhaps the "divergent" in "neurodivergent" didn't have to mean "diverging from other people or a normative way of being" but could instead refer to the types of thoughts that dominate in the minds of some people. J. P. Guilford, an Air Force psychologist and researcher in the 1940s and 50s, coined the phrase "divergent thinking" as creative imagination, which he contrasted with "convergent" or logical thought. These can also be thought of as "categorical" and "noncategorical" thought. Great! Another binary!

I don't love the framing, but it's worth thinking about how these various binaries we encounter when we talk about thought (mind and body, neurodivergent and neurotypical, creativity and logic) impact how we see the world around us. It’s worth it to be curious about how we can experience the world outside these frames.

As we are gathering up the nutrients deep in the mud at our roots, is there anything in there that activates our sense of responsibility towards that which can shift perspective, switch the vibes, interrupt thought-terminating cliches? What calls us to tend that which dissolves the walls of self-interest, to re-sensitize the numbness of indifference?

We are so detached from our own shit. We use hundreds and thousands of gallons of clean water every day to whoosh it away for someone else to deal with. Less than 10% of that water is reclaimed for reuse. When we say "another world is possible" we mean right fucking now. Today. Another world is possible today if you are willing to get up and live in it.

When was the last time you touched mud on purpose? Felt clay or silt or compost under your nails? We use so many of our precious resources trying to have only flowers, without any of the mud. Clean, sterile, perfect, everything "ugly" discarded or made invisible.

This month, we will fill our cups by playing in the mud, and then we will wash away everything that dulls us down and prevents us from getting the nourishment we need. If you live somewhere that it is currently warm enough, and wet enough, to rain, I encourage you to take this prompt very literally. Go splash in a mud puddle! Run naked in a warm rain shower!

If you aren’t blessed with warm rains right now, how can you implement a little mud and water ritual into your day to day life? Is there a houseplant whose soil could use some tending? A patch of floor you could just lay down on and roll around a bit? Can you bring a peaceful, cleansing rain vibe to your shower?

Let the water bring you back to life.

On Monday, February 10th the moon will be full in Leo, fiery sign of the lion.

Effigies have historically been used as a way to enact justice on someone unaprehendable. Who are the villains in your life? If you were Robin Hood, who would be your Prince John? Your Sherrif of Nottingham? You are building yourself up as you build this perpetrator from papier-mâché and glue.

If you don't want to use the Leo energy to channel some righteous anger and burn the likeness of a political enemy, you can go the exact opposite route. Burn an effigy of someone you admire, whose passion for change and rebellion inspires you. Burn an effigy of your ancestors and hold a funeral for them. Build, and burn. Remember how it feels to watch the firelight flicker, especially in the eyes of someone else.