The Monthly Arcana: May 2025
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Guidance for the Month Ahead from Spirit Element
Happy May my darling. I hope you had a wonderful Beltane. Spring has felt a bit heavy this year and not in an especially grounded way. It just feels like a lot is hovering over us. Now, it's important to keep up with the world around you but it's just as important to disconnect and have time for yourself. I think that’s the key takeaway this month. Sometimes news is just that, news. You can’t carry so much to the point that there’s nothing left of you to hold.
Solitude isn’t just about self-care you know? It's also a chance to check in with your compass. To re-evaluate your morals or the things that are most important to you. Perhaps this year, the economy is top of mind and you need to shift your focus to that. Or maybe it's spending time with your kids before they grow up too fast. But when you keep speeding through life, you often disconnect from what you actually need. I’ve done this myself so I’m eager to see how the month plays out for me, just as much as you.
The Cards Pulled for May
The Thesis - The Violet
This card represents the general energy or theme for the month and sets the tone for the focus required during the next several weeks.
The Domain - Justice
This card represents what’s within your control this month. This is your opportunity to develop sovereignty and to take intentional action.
The Periphery - Four of Skies
This card represents the things that are beyond your control and that you will need to come to terms with or something you need to move on from.
The Axis - Six of Waters
This card represents how you can stay grounded and restore your sense of peace or stability.
The Codex - Ace of Trees
This card represents your key to enlightenment. It shows you what you can learn, gain or improve when you embrace the energy of the month.
Detailed Reading: Insights and Interpretation
“Solitude is the soul’s holiday, an opportunity to stop doing for others and to surprise and delight ourselves instead.”
- Katrina Kenison
The Thesis - The Violet
The Violet calls for solitude this month. To be on your own for the sake of enjoying your own company. Take a few minutes, hours, or days if that’s available to you to give your soul a chance to take a deep breath. This card suggests you’re taking in energy from too many other people and things. There’s too much noise, too many responsibilities, too many opinions and ideas and desires melding with your own. You need to disconnect from all of that to remember what’s important to you. What do you need for yourself?
Perhaps a solo trip would do you some good or spending the weekend in your pajamas while you eat your favorite foods and binge your favorite shows. If nothing else, consider discovering an activity or hobby that is solely your own. One you don’t have to share with anyone else. It's important to have things that are only meant for you. Every journey needn’t have a partner or guide. Every interest doesn’t have to be one that offers connection to another person.
The Domain
→ Justice
Staying in integrity is always within your control but is needed this month more than ever. Be careful to understand what justice actually means as you travel through the next few weeks. It can be easy to hyperfocus on YOUR idea of justice without taking time to consider other opinions or avenues. Fairness is as much a part of justice as accountability. Be sure you’re being fair to yourself and anyone else involved.
This is especially important when it comes to how you judge yourself and your actions. Taking responsibility for your choices is the right thing to do but there’s a big difference between accountability and unnecessarily harsh self-criticism. Be sure to look at your life objectively, weighing whether justice is truly needed to move forward. And if you find you need to atone for something then do it but apologize, change the behavior and move on. Don’t dwell on what you can’t change.
P.S. Justice also happens to be the focus card for this month in the Seer’s Guild. I take a deep dive into this card as well as provide a spread and prompts to help you integrate its message.
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The Periphery
→Four of Skies
The four of skies is most closely related to the four of swords which guides you to rest but here, in this deck, the advice is to learn to be content and at peace. The periphery asks what’s beyond your control and the answer is that so much of the world is out of your hands. All of what people do and say is beyond your ability to dictate. You can advise and influence but whether or not someone listens is another matter.
Acknowledge that it isn’t your responsibility to change someone even when you can tell they’re in a bad way. Someone has to want to change for change to occur. No amount of kicking and screaming from you will move a mountain that’s rooted in place.
This card also speaks about wanting to belong. Perhaps you don’t feel like you belong where you are because you’re trying to force something that isn’t a good fit. Rather than trying to change yourself to fit in or expecting others to change to fit your needs, it’s time to accept that home is some place other than here. It’s quite liberating to acknowledge when you need something else or something more. It doesn’t have to mean what you’ve had until now was bad or a waste of time. It just means you have to spread your wings and fly. Same as when you left home on the cusp of child to adult. Home’s shift and evolve and there’s nothing wrong with that.
The Axis
→ Six of Waters
Rather than exploring nostalgia as you would with the traditional six of cups, the six of waters invites you to explore your own depth and darkness. To know that everyone has a little bit of dark energy within them. It's the part that feels sexy or uninhibited from time to time and yes this part also has dark, destructive thoughts too. The ones that make you wonder what kind of person you are underneath and the answer is: you’re a person; a human. And all humans have—good or bad—have darkness within them.
Denying it doesn’t make it go away or easier to manage. In fact, trying to repress it is often what leads to a lack of peace and inner chaos. All parts of you are needed to feel grounded and stable. All parts of you are there for a reason. Have a little more patience with your dark parts this month as they’re likely to be louder than usual. Ask yourself what they can do for you rather than trying to fight against them.
Think of your darkness like a child. When you ignore a child, it acts out in a search for attention. Your darkness will do the same. What could have been resolved with something simply or small could escalate to something destructive. But if you’re intentional and meet your darkness with compassion and a desire to understand, you learn to become whole and that’s what leads to peace.
The Codex
→ Ace of Trees
The ace of trees invites you to learn patience. To settle in an idea or spark before leaping blindly. Let newness wash over you fully: mind, body and soul. Explore what a new idea, hair style, job, relationship or other would feel like before fully committing to it.
All too often, we feel a sense of urgency as if we’ll miss out if we don’t act immediately and that is certainly the case with the ace cards most of the time. But here, the ace of trees wants you to feel settled in your choice rather than acting on impulse.
Closing Reflections: Empowering Action Steps
This month’s message is clear: retreat, recalibrate, and reclaim your energy.
The Violet and Four of Skies call for solitude and surrender — not as weakness, but as sacred restoration. You’ve been absorbing too much noise from the outside world, and it’s time to return to your inner voice. Justice asks you to walk the line between accountability and compassion, especially when it comes to your self-talk. Meanwhile, the Six of Waters reminds you that peace is born not from perfection, but from the integration of your shadow. And finally, the Ace of Trees encourages grounded intention: not every spark needs to become a wildfire. Let new beginnings ripen before you act.
This is a month to:
Find peace in your own company
Let go of what you cannot control
Befriend the parts of you that feel “too much”
Choose stillness over urgency
As you move through May, consider these questions:
What parts of myself am I only willing to acknowledge in private — and what might change if I offered them compassion instead of judgment?
Where am I mistaking urgency for importance? What would it feel like to pause before choosing?
If I stopped trying to belong where I don’t fit, what kind of life could I begin building instead?
Call to Action: Engage with Spirit Element
What insights did you gain from this month’s reading? Share your reflections in the comments or tag @spiritelement on Instagram with your thoughts. To deepen your tarot practice, join the Seer’s Guild, a monthly membership to teach you how to read tarot and oracle decks with confidence.
Decks used in this reading
Herbana Witch Oracle
Witch Sister Tarot
