As the waning Moon crosses the final, dissolving degrees of Pisces (twenty-seventh, threshold of endings and beginnings), a gate opens between element and archetype. The world stands at a crossing: from the oceanic depths of the mutable water to the blazing threshold of cardinal fire. Images collide, matter ripens or withers, bonds are sealed or undone, and what is buried calls for judgment. The four winds turn the Wheel; only what is distilled, embodied, united, and resurrected passes forward. The moment is both dissolution and annunciation: a liminal, unrepeatable edge.
North – Seven of Cups
Third Decan of Scorpio (Venus in Scorpio)
At the northern gate, the Seven of Cups arises: a sphere of phantasmagoria, multiplicity, and seduction. The third decan of Scorpio, ruled by Venus, is a cauldron of dreams both poisoned and golden. The images multiply and overlap, vision becomes excess, and desire threatens to drown discernment. This is the realm of the “phantom feast” – the endless array of choices, temptations, initiatory visions and mirages. The risk is intoxication, the loss of centre amid a thousand glittering surfaces. True gnosis lies not in choice but in filtration: which of these vessels holds the genuine elixir? Which dissolves the will into formlessness? Only through deep symbolic discernment can the essence be extracted and the rest surrendered to the flood. The passage demands clarity within mystery, a gaze that sees through and not merely at. The chalice that will cross the fire must be emptied of fantasy and filled with substance.
South – Queen of Pentacles
Water of Earth; Capricornian Gate; Mater Terra
In the South, the Queen of Pentacles is enthroned. This is the Mater Terra, the one who shapes the invisible into form, vessel of the lunar current within the dominion of earth. Hers is the knowledge of cycles, the mystery of gestation and harvest, and the responsibility of stewardship. But, beneath this blessing, the shadow forms: excess of preservation, clinging to the familiar, reluctance to risk the wild leap from water to fire. Capricorn’s influence seals and crystalizes, at times closing the womb that should birth. The wisdom is paradoxical: abundance must be surrendered, gold must circulate, the body’s bounty offered, not hoarded. The Queen guards the passage, demanding that all material attachment be weighed, including that which sustains and imprisons. Only what is given freely, with open hand, takes root in the coming light. The altar must not become a prison; the vessel must not refuse its own emptiness.
East – Two of Cups
First Decan of Cancer (Venus in Cancer)
To the East, the new light dawns with the Two of Cups: the axis of encounter, reflection, and alchemical union. This is Venus in the first decan of Cancer, the matrix where water receives water, and difference finds recognition. The new impulse is not individual assertion, but communion: the pouring of one chalice into another, the mirroring that transforms solitude into dialogue. The fire of Aries is approached through the bridge of Cancer, where vulnerability and commitment are both demanded. In this decan, each union is a gate, each encounter an altar; the cycle will open not to the isolated will, but to the sacred contract of mutuality. The offering required is trust, the price is dissolution of boundaries, and the gain is the creation of new psychic lineage. Only what is joined, what is truly shared and blessed in the eyes of the Other, can cross into the cardinal fire.
West — Judgment
Pluto; Fire through Resurrection; Major Arcana XX
At the western horizon, the arcana of Judgment resounds. Pluto, the lord of depths and thresholds, presides over this reckoning. This is not the soft dissolution of Pisces, but the volcanic unveiling: the bones rise, the ancestors call, and every concealed narrative demands to be named. The final degree of mutable water yields to the call of fire by summoning all that has been lost, suppressed, or forgotten. Judgment is the ritual of resurrection, the convocation of the dead self, not as memory, but as energy available for transmutation. The western gate demands that nothing be left festering beneath the surface; only the acknowledged, the reconciled, the integrated can ascend. The legacy of this lunar cycle is not amnesia, rather radical remembrance. What is transmuted in this cauldron becomes the seed of the new cycle; what is denied remains as shadow, haunting the threshold.
This cardinal oracle demands fourfold initiation:
- Vision sifted from illusion, under the phantasmagoric gaze of Venus in Scorpio;
- Embodiment liberated from attachment, through the crucible of earth’s Queen;
- Communion forged in the matrix of Cancer’s first decan, Venus’s invitation to union;
- Resurrection enacted in the Plutonian fire, where only the truly awakened may pass.
The Moon’s descent through Pisces and entry into Aries is a trial by water and fire, image and substance, union and judgment. Only the distilled, the surrendered, the joined, and the transfigured will enter the new dawn.
