On Surrender
Full Moon Report ft. the Ace of Pentacles, The Hanged Man, and Queen of Cups
Noemí Delgado, cards by Zoe Storz
On the last Full Moon of the Gregorian calendar year, I ask the deck, my ancestors, our angels, and the Divine for guidance on Temporality.
All that you touch You Change. All that you Change, Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change.
— Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower, 1993
The Mind: Ace of Pentacles
As this year comes to an end, like they always do, it feels natural to reflect on the inescapable passage of time. Many of us will enter 2021 without the physical presence of someone we love, and we will all feel this collective grief. There is no way around the intrinsic loss of temporality; however, there are ways through it. The Ace of Pentacles offers us a message about honoring the seeds planted by those who are no longer embodied with us and planting our own while we still can. This card teaches us that regeneration allows for immortality. By tending to the seeds left by those we’ve lost, we disrupt the myth of linear time. By embracing the cyclical nature of this reality, we understand that what we create in this realm has always existed—and lasts forever.
The Body: The Hanged Man
The constant feeling that we are running out of time is a psychological symptom of the false belief that time is linear (and of a system that commodifies it). Although appearing defeated, the Hanged Man symbolizes a transcendental act of bravery: surrender. It is through surrender that we allow our bodies to be markers of temporality without implicating impermanence for our souls. To make peace with temporality, we must accept that our spirits’ physical vessels will eventually be reabsorbed by the earth. We can only understand our immortality by holding mortality close, as one cannot exist without the other. When we surrender to the material sacrifice of mortality, we remember that our dying bodies are only one manifestation of our presence—and that the others are eternal. When we realize that each moment is endless in nature, we finally stop feeling like we’re running out of time. Love your aging cells, cultivate a practice of communicating with your past and future selves, break with the linear timeline and make your own.
The Spirit: Queen of Cups
Temporality induces change, which is scary because of our attachments. The Queen of Cups fearlessly indulges in the instability of life without expectation. This card teaches us that adaptability eases our inevitable metamorphosis—and that of everything, and everyone, around us. Like the Queen, we must meet our ever-changing reality with fluidity and finely tuned intuition. What does it look like to enjoy being in the places around you while accepting that they will not always remain the same? Temporality serves as motivation to savor it all; and impermanence means that the hard things, sad things, and terrible things will transform too. There is comfort in the truth that everything changes if you let there be.
As the calendar leads us into a new year, it is easy to experience time as sadistically leaving the ones we love behind. But we can find peace in knowing that what our loved ones create for us makes them immortal. When we plant seeds for each other, they germinate as our bodies return to the earth. The bravest thing we can do is surrender to temporality because it is the only unchanging truth of this dimension. Appreciate things while they last and know that, on some level, they’ll last forever.
I wish you blessings this moon cycle and new year,
Noemí
Liked this piece? Venmo @cuidandoalas, a collective generating ongoing support—including paying for food, medication, private transportation, and medical bills—for Indigenous language keepers and midwives in El Salvador.
You can read Noemí’s essay “Territory of the Moon Not the State” in issue 1.