🎑 Just Another Manic Moonday (Issue 002)

What the arrival fallacy can teach us about setting and achieving goals in a time of grieving, and how the moon calls us to embrace our shadows. Also: download the Five and Nine Lunar Calendar 🗓️

This is Five and Nine, a podcast newsletter at the intersection of magic, work and economic justice. Welcome to our pilot! Listen now to our most recent podcast episode and stay tuned on March 18 for our next one.

Orthographic projections of the "Unified Geologic Map of the Moon" showing the geology of the Moon’s near side (left) and far side (right) with shaded topography from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA). This geologic map is a synthesis of six Apollo-era regional geologic maps, updated based on data from recent satellite missions. It will serve as a reference for lunar science and future human missions to the Moon. Credit: NASA/GSFC/USGS.

It's morning in another year beyond the last.

There are emails to answer and invoices to send, unclicked links waiting for the day to unfold. Somewhere between newsletters and headlines, messages come in from friends across continents: messages of grief, of pain, of sandbags and shelling, of loneliness, of worry, of their three month old baby meeting their year old cousin for the first time, of quitting their job, of finding a new one, of birthday parties and memes, of an arc of moonlight across winter snow, muffled in its certainty. 

The conflict in Ukraine, the UN’s latest climate report, the ongoing conflicts around the world all raise serious questions. What if the constant in your life was merely to survive? How do we advocate for the peace and welfare of humans beyond ourselves? How might we dream and aspire towards a more just world within our own practices and desires of “making it”?

These days, time feels so odd and, well, timeless, even while punctuated with timebound difficulties. At Five and Nine, we honor the ancestors who have come before, having lived through war, disease and countless challenges. Throughout the ages, one thing they have taught us is that, despite uncertainty, there is the certainty of the moon. It comes and goes, rising, falling, crescenting, waxing, waning. Watches and clocks that define time to the second are only a few hundred years old. The moon, sun and stars come closest to a combination of clock and calendar, appearing to rotate above us in the sky while the earth rotates beneath. We can pretend they don’t matter, but their very influence shapes the work we do day-to-day.

As below, so above. In the Gregorian calendar, the months do not strictly follow the moon, but they do follow the moon’s cycles in a general sense, being just a few days off from each lunation. Indeed, the Proto-Indo European word méh n̥ss is the root word for both “moon” and “month” in English and mes in Spanish. In Chinese, the word 月 (yue) means both “moon” and “month,” as does the Tagalog word buwan. And every week, after the passing of the sun on Sunday, we of course meet Moonday (aka Monday), which for many of us kicks off another week of meetings, schedules, to-dos and to-donts.

Many spiritual traditions use the moon as a guide, and some tarot practitioners enjoy doing readings by the lunations — the new moon and full moon. The new moon is an ideal setting for naming and discovering changes for the coming cycle, and the full moon is an ideal setting for checking in on that observation at the peak of the cycle. The moon doesn’t shine without the sun’s light, and days of rest wouldn’t feel as sweet without days of work.

The new moon can be thought of as a time to set goals, aspirations and to-do lists, with the full moon as a time of culmination and reflection. In this time of conflict, pandemic and climate disaster, we’ve been thinking of the moon cycle as a time to do shadow work — a continuing theme throughout the next few newsletter cycles.

In this issue, we offer a Five and Nine Lunar Calendar to help you plan by the moon, and a journaling exercise for each Moonday. Mondays may be manic, but they can also be an opportunity to recenter and reground.

🃏 The Shadow Side of the Fool: Goal Setting and the Arrival Fallacy

By Dorothy R. Santos

Every morning for years, I wake up and meditate immediately. At one point in my life, I got up an hour earlier and meditated for a whole hour. Yes, you read that correctly, 60 minutes of sitting still. These days, I’m lucky if I can sit for ten minutes (fifteen, if I’m feeling ambitious!) without worrying about the impending to-do list that awaits me and the email messages amassing in multiple inboxes. 

Over time, believe it or not, my levels of worry and anxiety have become reminders of how much I care and my desire to show up for collaborators, teammates, and fellow artists. It hasn’t been an easy journey to realize (and admit) that not everything I say I want to do will get done as smoothly and maybe even on time. 

Recently, while listening to a guided meditation by Kara Cutruzzula, I learned a term that encapsulated how I’ve been feeling about happiness and contentment in my life. Scholar and author Tal Ben-Shahar coined the term “arrival fallacy” as a way of describing the idea or expectation we possess when we say things such as “I’ll be happier when…” or “If [insert your desired outcome here] would just happen to me, I’d finally be happy!” He found that what happens to us is the opposite. Once we reach a certain point in our lives of achieving, we either want more or we find ourselves feeling a sense of emptiness. 

I know this feeling well — too well, perhaps. I’m fortunate and make certain to express my deepest gratitude to people that have helped me accomplish things I didn’t think were possible, I’m still hit with other factors that make me question myself. Whether it’s self-doubt, imposter syndrome, or questioning my decisions, I started to see my experiences as a way of being led to a new set of skills to learn, hone, or share with others.  

The arrival fallacy is important to understand when setting goals because we’re constantly asked to “dream big” or “sky’s the limit.” But without understanding context, circumstances, and systems that may or may not prevent us from achieving what we want, it’s difficult and unethical to tell someone to simply dream. One of the major challenges I take up with arrival fallacy is the privilege of being able to fathom a future when so many people around the world face conflict and violent conditions, including war in Ukraine and violence against trans youth in the United States.

I started to wonder how I could do what I wasn’t conditioned or encouraged to do. How might I involve the people I love and care about in the process of helping me? How might I instill strategies that allow me to be accountable to the communities, but most importantly, to me? How might I remind myself to say, “I did well. I did the best I could with what I’ve got with where I’m at,” instead of “Who were you trying to fool? You knew you couldn’t do this. You failed.”

The Fool from the Sola Busca Tarot (1491). Sourced from Wikipedia.

When it comes to determining how you will achieve your goals, we can learn many lessons from the archetype of The Fool. While the Fool’s optimism and fearless impulse of taking that leap of faith gets us a step closer to our dream or goal, the shadow side of the Fool is when we forget to factor in unforeseen circumstances or neglect the fact that there may be repercussions to our actions. 

However, when we over-prepare, over-analyze for various outcomes and become too rigid, we also give into the arrival fallacy because we begin to expect specific outcomes that aren’t guaranteed. As many of us witness the seismic shifts over the past two years and feel the heat of the world burning around us, how might we bring ourselves back to the present moment more consistently in a way that allows us to be mindful in each moment as opposed to a possibly fatalistic view?

As Jessica Dore, a licensed social worker, tarot reader, and writer reminds us, “The Fool’s journey to the World is about not choosing between the edge or the Center, civilization or the wild, male or female, above or below. Rather, it has more to do with the sacred liminality…. The aim is all of it; it is walking between worlds with as much grace as possible.” ¹

And not giving into the fallacy of an absolute happiness, but the gratitude of the present moment.

🎙️ Listen to the Five and Nine Podcast (Next Episode March 18)

Subscribe now to get our podcast, which comes out with the Full Moon 🌝 (March 18). As a podcast newsletter, Five and Nine brings the conversation to text and sound. All podcasts are fully transcribed to encourage accessibility.

Just started subscribing? Listen to our first and most recent episode and stay tuned on March 18 for our next one, where we will offer a meditation for challenging times.

🌒 Manic Moonday Journal Exercise: Shadow Work

“It's just another manic Monday,” sing The Bangles, “I wish it was Sunday.” In tarot, as in so many spiritual traditions, the sun and the moon complement each other. Just as the sun sets, the moon rises, and just as the Sun’s day ends, the Moon’s day begins.

The moon has no arrival fallacy — it rises, it falls, it fills up, it empties. It is always arriving and going, whether we pay attention to it or not. Its fullness and emptiness as it appears to us depends on the context, circumstances and systems around it, from the Sun’s light to the Earth’s shadow to the clouds that might obscure our view.

Try taking a moment after the start of the week and look up in the sky tonight — what is the state of the moon? If you look at it the exact night this issue goes out, you won’t see much, as the new moon has just begun, and the moon’s shadow side points toward the earth. But by the coming Monday, it should be forming a nice crescent in the sky. 

In tarot, there is the idea of a daily card. The daily card is a way to stay connected with the tarot throughout the week. Try drawing one on Monday and seeing what you see. These journal prompts can guide you through your practice as you meditate on the card.

What can you observe about the moon tonight? How does the moon make you feel? What does it bring up for you? 

Where once the vast range of stars was visible to us as an incredible celestial event every night, these days in most urban areas, only the moon and a few faint stars remain. This makes the moon a regular guide and companion. Where is it in the sky, and what shape is it taking?

If you have a pair of binoculars, take a look at the details, its various dark seas and fields. Lunar observers often notice that, throughout the month, the moon looks different as it shifts and turns, because the various seas and plains are cast in different angles to the sun’s light. 

What shadows does the lunar cycle call you to embrace in your work life right now?

A shadow is often a feeling that we have been taught is uncomfortable or ‘negative’ by society — anger and feelings of revenge, sadness, disgust, shame, etc. Yet these shadows are powerful and cannot be repressed. We all have shadows, and it’s shadows that make us three dimensional beings. 

Your shadow imparts great wisdom. Where do you feel hurt? Grieving? Which shadow sensations come from self-protection? The moon, in its certainty, is an ancient elder. What shadows are part of you that, as an elder, you would want to pass on? 

🗓️ Download Our 2022 Lunar Calendar

Ready to reflect by the moon? We’re pleased to share a lunar calendar for 2022, free for use as you plan out your year, designed by Five and Nine Creative Director Xiaowei R. Wang. Print it out, keep it handy on your desktop, or just use it as a reference tool.

📜 🌊 Scrolls and Streams 

Spirit

• Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche on meditation as a tool to manage panic attacks: “Ordinarily, the anxious mind focuses on the negative and magnifies it. We can ‘change the channel’ by doing the opposite.”

• Amanda Palmer on grief: “The larger and more intense a love is, the larger the fear, the larger the grief. Love and grief are directly proportional, glued together, impossible to separate in scope and size.”

• From wrinkled skin to graying hair, has the pandemic accelerated the aging process?

• On screaming with fellow moms: “You find a sense of peace, joy, and equanimity afterward.”

• Ocean Vuong on the passing of Thích Nhất Hạnh: “I think it is helpful to see sadness, too, as energy. May we let the sadness come and teach us how to live. Let it be the mud for the lotus, as [Thích Nhất Hạnh] says. Let us sit with it and let it pass throughout us so that it might be transformed to something like love.”

• “You see, grief never ends, and it is a natural response to loss,” writes neuroscientist Mary-Frances O’Connor in her new book The Grieving Brain. “Grieving has a trajectory,” on the other hand.

Mind

• Slate has started a mental health section: “...we know how important discussions about mental health are, that stigma is deadly, that the system to treat mental illness is broken.”

• “Life is always happening, but when you add intention the result is more likely to happen in your favour.”

• Is biphasic sleep the better way to sleep, or just another way to justify insomnia?

• “The closer you get to the vision of full rehabilitation, the more likely you are to rush and have another setback.”

• Psychology Professor Karin Coifman: “As a field, we used to assume that if bad things happen, people are going to struggle, but we can now have the assumption that when bad things happen, most people are going to be okay.”

Labor and Justice

• Burnout has many causes, not just working too much. Other factors? Chronic stress, unresolved trauma, and simply being in a job not meant for you.

• “While theorists frequently forecast capitalism’s demise, labor’s prominence in art more often points to an impending shift in class relations.”

• Banning email after hours? Sounds like a work-life balance technique that can in fact create greater imbalances.

• Dr. Ellen Vora speaks with the So Money Podcast on The Anatomy of Anxiety: Understanding and Overcoming the Body's Fear Response about the root of our anxieties, how they impact our financial wellness and her holistic approach to healing.

• When work is identity, leaving a job means finding a new sense of self.

• Some of the 21 ways COVID has changed the world: exposing the US myth of rugged individualism and changing the world of work, for better or worse. 

• Gen Z vs. Millennials at work.

🙏 In Reflection

In these difficult times, we've found solace in this meditation produced by Inward Bound, titled Connecting to the Earth Elements: A Guided Meditation with Tuere Sala: “Maybe you're finding yourself lost in thought, distracted, or scattered. Take 10 minutes to practice meditation…and get embodied. Reconnect with your body and with the world around you.”

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Five and Nine is a podcast newsletter at the intersection of magic, work and economic justice. We publish “moonthly” — a newsletter every new moon 🌚 and occasional podcasts on full moons 🌝 — , and we provide an ongoing critical discussion through readings, reflections and debate. In this new world, we’re all rethinking the meaning of work and justice in our lives. Our lives and livelihoods are more essential than ever in identifying ways forward for society that can be grounded in care, compassion and sustainability. 

During our pilot period, every issue of Five and Nine is free, and after the pilot, we’ll publish more regularly, with paid and free options. Learn more about us here.

Directors of Magic. Dorothy R. Santos and Xiaowei R. Wang
Creative Director. Xiaowei R. Wang
Producer. Ana Mina (aka An Xiao)

Subscribe now to get our podcast, which comes out with the Full Moon 🌝 (March 18). As a podcast newsletter, Five and Nine brings the conversation to text and sound. All podcasts are fully transcribed to encourage accessibility.

1. Jessica Dore, Tarot of Change: Using the Cards for Self-Care, Acceptance, and Growth (New York: Viking, 2021), 121.