Welcome to September. I love September, where there’s this magic that arrives with a quieting, a turning inward, a sense that the world is beginning to exhale after the full brightness of summer. The light changes in September, like the universe is dimming the lights to help you pay closer attention. And what better time to learn the art of listening than right now.
This month the Witch School curriculum moves into tarot and oracle, and I want to start by saying something that might surprise you: this is not a month about learning to predict the future. It is a month about learning to have a conversation with your own intuition. The cards are a tool. What they are pointing toward is already inside you.
If you have been following along since the beginning of the year, you have spent months learning how to read the world around you and direct energy outward through spellwork. Tarot and oracle are the natural next step because they ask you to turn that same attention inward. To listen instead of speak. To receive instead of direct. September is exactly the right season for that.
The Seasonal Energy of September
September is the month of Mabon, the autumn equinox, which falls around September 22nd or 23rd. Mabon is the second harvest sabbat, the midpoint of the harvest season, and one of only two days in the year when light and dark are perfectly balanced. There is something deeply clarifying about that balance. It is a moment to take stock, to look at what you have gathered and what you are ready to release, and to prepare for the quieter half of the year ahead.
Mabon energy is reflective, grateful, and a little bittersweet. The abundance of summer is fully visible, but so is the fact that it will not last forever. This is actually beautiful energy to do card work in, because it naturally encourages honesty. You are not performing optimism. You are just looking clearly at what is.
The zodiac begins September in Virgo season, which brings a gift of discernment and careful attention to detail. Virgo energy is wonderful for learning a new system like tarot because it loves to study, categorize, and understand the underlying logic of things. Then, in the final third of the month, Libra season arrives with its emphasis on balance, beauty, and relationship. Libra energy brings a gentleness to card reading that helps you hold what you discover with grace rather than judgment.
September truly is one of the most auspicious months of the year to begin a divination practice.
The Core Theme of September: Tarot & Oracle
Tarot and oracle are related but different, and understanding that distinction is actually a great place to start this month.
Tarot is a structured system. A traditional tarot deck has 78 cards divided into the Major Arcana (22 cards representing big life themes and archetypal forces) and the Minor Arcana (56 cards covering the day-to-day texture of life across four suits). The structure means there is a lot to learn, but it also means the cards have a deep internal logic that rewards study over time.
Oracle decks are freeform. Each deck is created by its maker with its own theme, its own number of cards, and its own system of meaning. There are no rules for what an oracle deck has to be, which makes them incredibly flexible and often very intuitive to work with even as a complete beginner.
Neither is better. Many witches work with both and find they serve different purposes. This month you will get to know both, develop a real daily practice, and start building the kind of relationship with your cards that deepens the longer you show up.
The Weekly Curriculum
Week 1: Getting to Know Your Deck
Before you learn a single card meaning, the most important thing you can do is spend time with your deck. This might sound strange if you are used to thinking of tarot as a system to memorize, but the relationship you build with your deck matters enormously. Cards are not flashcards. They are mirrors.
This week is about choosing a deck if you do not already have one, cleansing and consecrating it in whatever way feels right to you, and doing your first simple pulls without worrying too much about meaning. Let yourself be curious. Notice what draws your eye in each card. Notice how different cards make you feel before you read a single word about them.
Grimoire Page Idea: My Deck Introduction
- The deck you are working with and why you chose it (or why it chose you)
- Your deck cleansing and consecration ritual
- Your first impressions: three cards you were immediately drawn to and three that made you uncomfortable
- The question you most want to ask your cards right now
- Your intention for this month of card work
Practice This Week: Pull one card each morning with no agenda. Do not look it up right away. Sit with it for a few minutes first. What do you notice? What feeling does it give you? What does the imagery make you think of? Write it down, then look up the meaning and see where your intuition was already close.
Week 2: The Major Arcana and the Story They Tell
The 22 cards of the Major Arcana represent the big forces: the Fool’s journey through life, the archetypes and turning points that shape us, the cosmic energies at work beneath the surface of everyday experience. When a Major Arcana card shows up in a reading, it is worth paying attention, because it tends to point toward something significant.
This week you are not memorizing all 22 cards. Instead, you are learning to read them intuitively by understanding the story they tell together. The Fool begins the journey. The World completes it. Everything in between is a chapter. Once you understand the arc, individual cards become easier to place because you know roughly where they fall in the larger story of a life.
Grimoire Page Idea: The Major Arcana at a Glance
- The Fool’s Journey summarized in your own words
- The cards you feel most personally connected to and why
- The cards that confuse or unsettle you, with space to revisit them
- Three Major Arcana cards pulled this week and your personal interpretations
- Any recurring themes you notice across the cards you are drawn to
Practice This Week: Lay out all 22 Major Arcana cards in order and walk through the story slowly. Read each card’s core meaning, but then close the book and ask yourself: where am I in this journey right now? Which card feels most like your current life chapter? Pull that card out and keep it somewhere visible for the rest of the week.
Week 3: The Minor Arcana and Everyday Magic
If the Major Arcana is about the big picture, the Minor Arcana is about Tuesday. The 56 cards of the Minor Arcana are divided into four suits, and each suit corresponds to an element and a domain of life. Wands carry fire energy and speak to passion, creativity, and action. Cups carry water energy and speak to emotion, relationships, and intuition. Swords carry air energy and speak to thought, communication, and conflict. Pentacles carry earth energy and speak to the body, money, work, and the material world.
You do not need to memorize all 56 cards this week. What you need is a felt sense of each suit’s energy, so that when a Cups card appears in a reading, you know you are probably looking at something emotional, and when three Swords appear together, you know there is likely some mental difficulty involved. The suit is the flavor. The number refines it.
Grimoire Page Idea: The Four Suits in My Own Words
- Your description of each suit’s energy in your own language
- Which suit you pull most often and what that might mean
- Which suit feels most foreign or challenging to you
- The number meanings you want to remember (1 as beginnings, 10 as completion, the court cards as personalities or aspects of self)
- A personal keyword for each suit that will help you remember its essence
Practice This Week: Do a four-card spread, one card from each suit, and read them as a conversation. What is the fire situation in your life right now? The water situation? The air? The earth? Write down what comes up and notice whether the cards feel accurate, surprising, or somewhere in between.
Week 4: Building a Real Reading Practice
Everything you have learned this month is useful only if you actually use it. This week is about building a sustainable, personal card practice that fits your actual life rather than an idealized version of it. A daily one-card pull is more valuable than an elaborate weekly spread you never do. Consistency is the whole game.
This week you will also try reading for a real question, not just a daily check-in, and practice one of the most important skills in divination: sitting with what the cards say even when you wanted to hear something different. The cards are not here to validate you. They are here to help you see clearly. That is actually a much better gift.
Grimoire Page Idea: My Reading Practice
- The spreads you want to use regularly: one-card daily pull, three-card past/present/future, any others that call to you
- How you set up your reading space and why those elements matter to you
- A record of your first full reading: the question, the cards, your interpretation, and what happened
- What you have learned about your own intuition this month
- Any card meanings you have developed that differ from the traditional interpretation
Practice This Week: Do a full three to five card reading for a real question you are sitting with. Write everything down before you look anything up: your gut reaction to each card, the story you see across the spread, what you most hope the reading is saying and what you most fear it is saying. Then look up the cards and integrate. The gap between your instinct and the traditional meaning is where the real learning happens.
Journal Prompts for September
- What does it mean to me to “listen” to my intuition? How do I know when I am hearing it versus when I am just hearing what I want to hear?
- Which tarot card do I feel most like right now, and which one do I aspire to?
- Mabon asks us to look at what we have harvested this year. What has come to fruition? What am I still waiting on?
- Where in my life have I been seeking answers outside myself when they might have been available within?
- What is one question I am afraid to ask my cards, and what does that fear tell me?
- How does balance show up (or fail to show up) in my life right now, in the spirit of Mabon and Libra season?
- What story have I been telling myself about my own intuition? Is it trustworthy? When has it been right?
Books for This Month
The Big Book of Tarot Meanings by Sam Magdaleno is what I have on my bookshelf and I like the format of this book because it shows you different meanings based on what theme you pulled the card for.
Another one by Sam is The Tarot Spellbook: 78 Witchy Ways to Use Your Tarot Deck for Magick and Manifestation. I haven’t used this one a ton, but I do plan on giving it a shot this month since I like Sam’s other book so much.
If You Have Extra Time or Curiosity
Learn the history of tarot. It did not begin as a divination tool. It started as a card game in 15th-century northern Italy, and its journey into the occult tradition is genuinely fascinating. Understanding where the symbolism comes from makes the cards richer and more alive.
Try reading reversals. Many readers work with reversed cards (cards pulled upside down) as carrying a modified or internalized version of the upright meaning. It is not required, but experimenting with reversals this month will help you decide whether they belong in your practice.
Pull a card for your tarot practice itself. Ask your deck: what do I need to know about working with you? See what comes up. It is a surprisingly illuminating question.
What Comes Next
October brings the curriculum into Crystals and Tools, which lands in perfect alignment with Samhain season and the deepening of the dark half of the year. After a month of developing your inner listening through cards, October gives you a chance to turn outward again and build your physical practice: your altar tools, your crystal collection, and the objects that hold energy and meaning in your magical space.
It is also, honestly, the most fun shopping month of the year if you are a witch. You have been warned.
Want to go deeper with this month’s theme?
The Witch School Beginner’s Grimoire Kit is a complete 8-module printable workbook covering everything in the curriculum: the elements, moon phases, the wheel of the year, altars, spells, divination, crystals and herbs, and shadow work. Each module includes a mini guide, a reference sheet, two worksheets, and a bonus cheat card. Print it, write in it, and build your own Book of Shadows or Grimoire at your own pace.
No experience needed. No dogma. Just a flexible foundation you can make entirely your own.
You’re doing great
-Ariel
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