Day 6/12

Today is the midpoint of the 12 Days of Dreaming.

The sixth day of Yule traditionally known as the Feast of Eir is devoted to healing, grace, and mercy. It reminds us to tend to wellness of ourselves and those we love, and to honor nourishment as both care and responsibility. Discipline here is not punishment or restraint, it is the practice of translating desire into action. Of choosing what sustains life.

In alignment with this day, we look ahead to June, a month of blessing, vitality, and renewed motion. which is a time to reflect on the blessings in our lives. The guiding tarot card for June is the Princess of Wands.

She is fire made visible.

Here she is depicted as an Amazon, bare-chested, unapologetic, and alive. She carries a club while flames leap around her. Adorned with the winged tiger she embodies willpower, sensuality, courage, and instinct. She is the earthly expression of fire: passion given form. Creative impulse ignited. Desire that moves.

The Princess of Wands represents the power to will. The moment when inspiration no longer just lives in thought, but actually enters the body. She is spontaneous combustion. The lust for life that says yes before it explains itself. Adventure, attraction, creativity, curiosity all set into motion.

She is ardent and ablaze. Enthusiastic. Daring. Magnetic.
A force of nature.

And yet, she is not without shadow. Her ignition can be fickle. She may provoke passion without promising commitment. When ungrounded she becomes volatile, theatrical, reckless. Fire without direction.

The Tabula Mundi tarot reminds us that the Princesses stand between Heaven and Earth. Fully human. Fully becoming. They represent not only our nature, but our potential.

I have always identified with the Queen of Wands, so the Princess of Wands, raw in her passion, fire, and lust, isn’t one I immediately recognize as my own. But sitting with her, I feel something awakening.

She feels like ignition.
Like curiosity without apology.
Desire that doesn’t need an outcome to justify itself.
Sexual and spiritual energy returning to the body.

She feels like a return to self before hurt made me cautious.
A return from the mind into the body.

She doesn’t ask: What does this mean? Where is this going? How does this integrate with what I’ve learned?

She asks instead: Is this alive? Am I curious? What happens if I step there?

Not to grow.
Not to heal.
Not to become.

Just to experience ignition.

She invites me to play simply because I want to.
To try something and drop it.
To be interested without attachment.
To light a spark and walk away smiling.

This isn’t recklessness.
It’s aliveness for its own sake.
Without needing to be productive.
Without needing to create meaning.

The Princess doesn’t care if the fire teaches a lesson.
She only cares if it burns.

June asks me something that feels both simple and uncomfortable:
Can something matter purely because it brings delight?
Can I want without metabolizing it into wisdom?
Can I follow an impulse and not archive it afterward?

The Princess of Wands unsettles me for this reason. I’m realizing how deeply I crave meaning. How often meaning has been a form of safety, created through control.

But June doesn’t seem to be speaking that language.

June feels like permission.
To want.
To desire.
To burn.
To live the full human experience without justification.

One of my thirteen wishes is a return to childlike joy. And the Princess of Wands feels like joy, fire, and spark just because. Joy for joy’s sake. Not because it leads anywhere. Not because it teaches something. Simply because it is alive.