Spelloween 2025: Day 12

Don’t mind me. Trying to get back into the groove of habits left behind. Today is October 12, 2025, and it’s time to have some fun. Each day of the month of October, I’m going to put together a little spell that involves one of my favorite tools: Tarot cards.

None of this is meant to be taken seriously, unless you want it to be so. All of this is in fun and with good intentions. All of this is meant to bring me joy. If you get some of that joy-juice as well, then all the better.

These spells are meant to be modified, adapted, and used “as is” or as inspiration for your personal rituals.

Day 12: 5 of Cups – Diverting the Flow

Gather the following:

• The 5 of Cups from your preferred tarot deck. If your deck priorities elements, then pull from the suit that corresponds to Water. If you are using an oracle deck, pull the card that corresponds to “grief”, “flood”, or “emotion”.
• A glass of water. (Any drinking container will do, plastic, ceramic, paper cup, etc.)
• A portable mirror that can be turned towards and away from you as necessary.
• Access to a safe place to pour water out, such as a sink, household drain, potted plant (indoors or outdoors), or outside lawn or garden. Areas where the water would puddle such as concrete walkways, asphalt driveways, or patio surfaces are not recommended.
• Optional: Box of tissues and a place to discard used ones.

If you are going through a medical and/or mental emergency, please contact your local medical office and ask for help. I am not a doctor nor am I licensed to perform any medical procedure or action. This spell is for entertainment use only and is not a substitute for medical advice or treatment.

The previous paragraph may seem over the top, but emotions can distort one’s perception of reality, and many a person has caused themselves grievous harm relying on an amusement of the parlor rather than asking for help from all the right places.

In case the card itself did not give it away, the focus of this spell is one’s own emotions. Specifically, the flood of regret, grief, and/or rage that comes when something has happened and it feels like more than one can bear. Why something happened is not within the scope of this spell. Giving yourself space to work through your emotions, is.

The spell:

1. Fill your glass of water such that you can drink as least a sip of it, and at most three big gulps. Fill it all the way up, or to the limit of your carry strength, whichever you encounter first. (Depending on where you will pour this out later, keep in mind your mobility limits.)
2. Prepare your working area in your usual way with the expectation that you will be encountering something difficult about yourself. You will want uninterrupted time according to your personal levels of patience with yourself.
3. On your working area, place the filled glass of water (with a coaster if necessary to protect your working area), the tarot card, and your mirror (turned so you see your reflection). (Optional: On or near your working area, place your box of tissues.)
4. Pick up the 5 of Cups tarot card (or your chosen card if otherwise). You will not be speaking to the card in this spell. Instead, pick up the card and think of the subject that has your emotions flowing at “flood levels”. What others think about your emotional fortitude is not relevant. If something is bugging you, then something is bugging you. Think about how you are responding to that occurrence.
5. Still holding the tarot card, face your reflection in the mirror. Address yourself as if you were addressing your closest and truest friend. Talk to that friend about what happened, what they are feeling, what they are trying not to feel, and give them permission to feel all the things they are actively feeling and all the things they are trying not to feel.
6. Still addressing your reflection as if addressing your closest and truest friend, remind that friend of the good things that are still present, but they are at risk of forgetting about because their emotions are just that much. Tell them that this flood will pass, the waters of their emotions will recede, and that while this will take time, you will be there for them.
7. Take up the glass of water. Say this specifically (out loud or silently):
   “A burden shared is cut in half.
   Right now you cry, next time you laugh.
   Right now I’ll carry what I can.
   The rest I’ll give to waiting land.”
8. Toast your reflection in the mirror. Of the glass take at least a sip, at most three big gulps. Do not be surprised if suddenly you don’t feel very thirsty, or that what would have been trivial for you to drink before suddenly feels like a trial. However much you drink, do not drink it all!
9. Place the tarot card back on the working area. Leave the mirror in place as you leave the working area and carry the partial glass of water to the location you had already determined to receive the poured water.
10. In silence, pour out the glass entirely. Dry the exterior of the glass, if necessary, and return to the working area with it.
11. Show the empty glass to your reflection in the mirror. Tell your reflection (out loud or silently): “We’re going to make it through.”
12. Either place the mirror face down on the working area, or turn it so that you do not see your reflection in it anymore. (Optional: Turn the mirror so that you see the reflection of the empty glass without seeing your reflection.)
13. Pick up the 5 of Cups tarot card once more. This time, focus your thoughts on the good and/or beneficial things that your emotions have been distracting you from. It’s okay if you don’t feel any different, or if these things don’t feel special right now. The point is you are identifying them as goals to achieve later.
14. Place the card back on the table and close/end the spell in your usual manner.
15. Optional: Ice Cream as a later treat.

In my cosmology, the fives are about violence. Emotional violence can be portrayed as rushing white rapids of a mountain river, but can also be portrayed as an uncontrollable flood. The inspiration for this spell is the regular floods of the Nile River in Egypt. If the floods were not prepared for, or if they happened out of season, the resulting deluge would become a tragedy for the peoples along the banks as either the fields would be drowned or homes would be washed away. But preparing for the floods means acknowledging that the floods do happen. That those waters will rise and envelope more than their usual path. And it has been a cornerstone of success for the Nile kingdoms to do just that and plan their farming so that the flooding of the Nile brought enrichment to the kingdom instead of woe.

And so, it is my hope that if you perform this spell, that you do it not to banish the deluge of emotion that is threatening to wash away what good you still have left, but to harness it, to work through it, to recognize that this too is a part of you that needs love and care and attention. (And ice cream.)

This too, will pass.

May your later harvest be plentiful and restorative.