Regardless of the function, I find it necessary to center our agency. The principles of co-creation (creating a life that is meaningful and authentic) work best when we cultivate personal power, situated in a context of relationship and interdependence (understanding our agency, and understanding forces beyond our control).

The overall card of the month offers a pointed snapshot of the feeling tone this month, whereas the other cards portray a story from which I will derive questions for consideration. If you’d like, you can use these questions as an anchor for the month ahead, helping to navigate the intricate pathways, conversations, and situations that arise for you.

For the overall month of August, the card I pulled is the Six of Wands. The Six of Wands is a card rooted in pleasure: the recognition of who we are at our core and the actions that most naturally reflect this self.

A question for you:

• When do you feel most like yourself? Pay attention to what you are doing in those moments and the emotional state(s) it elicits. Pay attention to who you are with and what parts of you are expressed.

This month will be an invitation to clarify the state in which you feel most like yourself and the adjustments required to create those conditions. Grounded in pleasure, consider what it might feel like to follow your bliss. When you allow yourself to soften into your heart, notice where you feel called to go and what you feel called to do.

Based on the cards I pulled (see the reading below), here are the overarching questions that we might find ourselves exploring this month:

• Where do you feel controlled by the image you portray to the world? How might the fear of losing touch with that image keep you frozen in time?

• What crossroads or threshold might you find yourself at? What would it look like to release the decision or transition altogether and rest for a moment? What would be revealed in that space?

• How might the desire to figure something out prevent you from receiving the spontaneous guidance of the present moment?

• What would it look like to release complication and choose simplicity?

• How can you allow for time and space this month to cultivate a receptive mind? What new possibilities become available when you release the fear of non-action?

• How might the journey to self-realization be effortless? How might a part of you be habitually oriented to anticipating and creating roadblocks?

• What part of you feels attached to struggle? Who would you be without the energy of struggle?

• If you trusted your own intuitive authority, what is one step you would take this month? How can the curiosity of potential outcomes excite you instead of frighten you?

• This month, what would getting unstuck feel like? How does that feeling wish to be expressed today?

I recommend choosing the questions that strike you. Leave the rest. Come back to the questions a little while later. See what speaks to you then. Leave it again. Come back at another time and observe your experience once more.

Entering into a relationship with the tarot requires an ongoing dialogue with the stories that present themselves. There are many different ways to hear a single story, and depending on the vantage point, entirely new worlds can open up. New perspectives allow for new choices.

Adopt an experimental attitude by returning to these questions throughout the month and observe where your mind goes each time. Pay attention to how you feel when you see the cards and tune into the felt sense of the body.

Trust that there are many different ways of knowing.