🐇 March forecast
An upside-down journey through chaos with a side of wisdom.
Purple, yellow and white snowdrops have popped up seemingly overnight. Spring is just around the corner, about to paint the landscape with broad green strokes and vibrant pops of color. The mental state of everyone seems to be one of exhaustion and the expectation of radical change.
I want to torment myself, want to keep changing my condition, believe I have a presentiment that my salvation lies in the change and further believe that through the sort of little changes others make in half-sleep, but I only by stirring up all my intellectual powers, I can prepare myself for the great change I probably need.
Franz Kafka diaries, March 1, 1915.
Justice in February made us all face the music. The consequence of our actions, thoughts, beliefs - no matter where you stand - became clearer, both on the collective and personal level. You might have received some good news connected to the work you’ve been putting effort into, exercised your civic duties, been to courts, or simply watched the consequences of your previous actions unfold in the world. Good or bad, February has been more active in serving karma than the whole of 2024. What do we have going into March?
Chaos will start taking shape, and patterns will emerge - as long as we’re open to seeing them. The Hanged Man, ruling this month, encourages the change of perspectives (or forces it upon us). Depending on the context in which the card is read, the protagonist has either been hung by the outside world against his will or has strapped himself up on purpose to attain a new understanding - just as Odin hung himself from Yggdrasil, the World Tree, for nine days and nine nights to gain otherworldly knowledge and acquire the ability to read runes.
The Hanged Man is divinely protected in his quest by the Tree of Life from which he hangs. When we venture to understand the world more deeply, we tend to find helpers and guides supporting us. The call this month is to not be afraid to look beyond - to drop the conventions of what is okay to consider and what is not. Not at the expense of abandoning your innermost moral compass, but to better understand reality. The upright worldview the Hanged Man has previously inhabited has served him well up until now. But even the upright has its lies and distortions - ones that the upside-down perspective can highlight. After all, Alice’s journeys into the rabbit hole and through the looking glass were not only bizarre but also illuminating.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
Sylvia PlathWe’re in a questioning period, everything can and shall be dissected. Have you always deeply believed the world and people to be a certain way? Have you considered yourself to carry a certain label or a fixed set of character traits? What if the story you have been telling yourself is only partly correct? Everything is up for scrutiny this month. Most importantly, don’t be afraid to ask questions you haven’t asked previously, to look into places you haven’t dared to venture. And to dig deeper. Alice went down into the hole under the tree, and Odin stared into the roots of the tree he has been hanging from. Both found what they were looking for - one haphazardly, the other intentionally.
March is also ruled by the Empress (III) and the Pisces’s season, of course, is ruled by the Moon. On your Hanged Man journey, turn to mother nature and to the feminine aspects. Allow yourself to be emotional, as the Empress does not repress anything. Whatever you find, however it makes you feel, let it be felt fully.
The Empress, in her pure form, is the White Queen in Alice in Wonderland - nurturing and abundant. She signifies the earth waking up from its long winter slumber. The Red Queen is the shadow aspect of the Empress - short-tempered and controlling, she blindly trusted the whispers of her fears (the Moon) instead of transcending them.
Whatever your new perspective uncovers this month, however exciting or disturbing, allow emotions to bubble up to the surface of your consciousness. Express instead of repressing, and trust your intuition.
When it comes to the Moon, there is a lot of confusion of how to differentiate between trustworthy gut instinct, intuition and imagination versus mind-produced anxiety and fears. Here are a few ways that I’ve found helpful:
Where do you feel it in the body? Anxiety is often felt around and above the chest or in the extremities. A tight chest, racing heart, stiff neck and shoulders, cold clammy hands might all indicate anxiety. While, the gut instinct, even when cautionary, is felt more deeply in the body. If the latter were a sound, it would be a deep echoing bass, while anxiety is high-pitched.
Is it constructive or constrictive? Intuition offers us a path forward, an alternative change of direction, a constructive feedback. While fear can be constrictive, making you feel frozen and stuck.
And one of the most useful for me - is it first and foremost a thought or a feeling? Thoughts are passersby; we don’t have to identify with each thought that enters the mind. But thoughts can linger and cause emotions if we examine them too deeply, if we start identifying with them. That’s where anxiety and fear take root.
Watch your thoughts and watch yourself watching the thoughts. The state of freedom from all thoughts will happen suddenly and by the bliss of it you shall recognize it.
― Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That
Tarot Deck of the Month
Zillich’s wonderful watercolour Tarot deck is a classic that deserves to be in any Tarot collection. Abstract, vibrant, and expressionist, it uses astrological and Kabbalistic symbolism with reference to Crowley’s Tarot tradition.
March Affirmation
New perspectives expand my understanding, and I welcome the wisdom they bring.
Things that inspire me:
Per Adolfsen pencil and crayon landscape drawings are so fitting to the coming of spring.
I had a privilege seeing Grammy-winning Tank and The Bangas perform live in Berlin. If you need a pick-me-up kind of vibrant energy this March, you won’t regret it.
Valerius De Saedeleer, Pear tree in the Flemish Ardennes, c.1925
C. Derancourt, La Source, ca. 1842–71