Day 11/12

Day eleven of the 12 Days of Dreaming.

As we approach the end of this cycle of intentional dreaming, wish-making, and quiet devotion, I’m noticing a particular kind of tiredness. Not burnout. Not depletion. More like the feeling after a long hike or a creative stretch that asked something real of me.

There’s hope here. And readiness.
The good kind of exhaustion that comes from having done the thing.

The Eleventh Day of Yule carries a liminal energy. Dreaming meets ending. Yule meets New Year’s Eve. Reflection overlaps with celebration. This is a threshold day when one foot in what has been, one foot in what is forming.

New Year’s Eve has always felt collective to me. A shared pause. A moment when so many people, consciously or not, are standing still and looking both backward and forward at once. It echoes Yule’s promise: that light returns, that cycles turn, that beginnings are born directly out of endings.

Today aligns with the virtue of Self-Reliance.

Not isolation. Not doing everything alone. But the quieter, steadier trust that I can meet my own life. That I can listen inwardly. That I am resourced enough to navigate uncertainty without abandoning myself. Self-reliance feels especially important here, at the edge of a cycle, where it would be easy to look outward for reassurance. This doesn’t negate our community or connections. It means that we have the inner resources to ask for help when we need it and that we do so without loosing ourselves in the process.

Looking ahead to November, I drew the Three of Cups.

After October’s Five of Swords, a card rooted in mental conflict, spiraling, and inner undoing, the arrival of Cups feels like a release of breath. Swords ask me to know. Cups ask me to dare. To feel. To risk joy.

In the Tabula Mundi deck, the Three of Cups is titled Abundance. Hands rise from cups holding a pomegranate, a golden apple, and wheat. Each is backlit by phases of the moon in light. At first glance it is celebratory and fertile. A harvest scene.

But these symbols are anything but simple.

The pomegranate immediately calls Persephone to mind. This is joy bound to seasonality, abundance that comes with an eventual descent. The golden apple reminds me of the myth of Paris, where desire and beauty spark a war that lasts a decade. These are gifts, yes, but gifts that ask discernment. Gifts that cannot be hoarded or possessed without some sort of consequence.

This isn’t abundance as ownership.
It’s abundance as experience.

When I think of the Three of Cups in the Rider-Waite deck, I think of friendship and community. The people who catch me when I reach out. It’s the card that reminds me that I’m not actually alone, even when I feel that way. Which, to be honest, tends to surface strongly come November.

But the Tabula Mundi Three of Cups feels more intimate and more cautionary. It says joy is available, but you must not cling or grasp. Love arrives, but it doesn’t belong to you.

November, then, doesn’t feel like a promise of endless happiness, (which isn’t realistic anyway). Happiness is but one emotion among many that we are lucky enough to experience in this lifetime. It feels more like permission to enjoy what is here, while it is here. To savor connection. To feel belonging. To let myself receive emotional fulfillment without gripping it tightly in fear of loss.

This card doesn’t warn me away from joy. It warns me against grasping. It invites to trust that what flows can also return.

After a year that seems to be asking me to open my heart, stay embodied, release armor, and remain present even when fear arises this feels like a fitting invitation.

Enjoy the harvest.
Love fully.
Let the moment be what it is.

Affirmation:

“I receive without gripping. I trust the rhythm of connection and release.”

Always,
Your Trusted Friend ✨