In the cards this week: prudence and sacrifice

Being careful and letting go

This week's Minoan Tarot cards:

Seven of Horns: It's time to be practical and prudent with your material life, including your finances. Acting wisely now will secure your future.

Sacrifice: The concept of sacrifice means giving something up in order to get something else. You must first empty out your hand before you can pick up something new. Letting go will allow positive change to take place.

The Minoan Tarot is my creation, my art. Details and many more card photos here.

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This week’s cards offer some wise advice, literally the stuff that spiritual teachers have been telling us for generations.

The two cards reflect two different, major aspects of life: the material and the spiritual. It’s interesting that these two aspects reflect the more obvious and the more hidden parts of life, and the cards come from the corresponding positions in the deck: the Seven of Horns from the top of the deck, as the card about what’s going on this week in our world(s), and Sacrifice from the bottom of the deck, as the card that’s the secret to finding joy in these Interesting Times.

I feel like the content and positioning of the cards underscores the structure of the reading, reinforcing the strength of their meanings.

The Seven of Horns is a very straightforward card. It advises us to be careful with our money, our belongings, our jobs, all the stuff that underpins material life in the modern world. Now is not the time to make rash or wild decisions. Take a breath and move past your impulses, choosing instead to be prudent and practical. That may not be as glamorous or as fun, but it will serve well in the long term.

And the long term is what this card looks toward: having security and stability (as much as we can get in today’s world, anyway) going forward. This is, ultimately, a card of success — success that’s built on wise decisions made today. So it speaks not just to the now but also to the future, assuring us that forgoing a few pleasures this week will pave the way for greater pleasures in times to come.

There’s a sense in which the Seven of Horns reflects a similar concept to that of the Sacrifice card: you can’t pick up something new until you’ve first emptied out your hand.

Sacrifice (the Hanged Man in the Waite-Smith deck) is one of the cards that focus on the concept of control: how we do or don’t control various aspects of our lives, and how that control or lack of it creates outcomes of success or failure (or somewhere in between, since this isn’t an either/or world).

The Chariot speaks to the idea of succeeding by controlling forces outside ourselves: other humans, professional situations, personal situations. Strength speaks to the idea of succeeding by controlling ourselves, being our own driving force in the correct direction. And Sacrifice speaks of succeeding by giving up control.

That’s scary. And it’s something our culture discourages. We must always be in control. Which, of course, leads to fun stuff like the Tower card (not shown in today’s reading, thankfully) which speaks to the idea of inevitable, inexorable change that we fight against, because I guess that’s just what humans do.

But we don’t know everything there is to know. Whether you believe in deity, universal intelligence, your own higher self — there’s something bigger than you that understands more than you do.

And sometimes you simply have to let go and let that larger force lead you in the right direction, trusting that you’ll get to where you need to be.

I don’t know about you, but for me, giving up control isn’t easy or particularly enjoyable, at least not most of the time. So this week, I’ll be working on that issue, leaning into my trust in the divine and allowing myself to loosen my grip a bit so the change that needs to happen can do so in its own way and its own time.

I wish you a week of peace within and around you.

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About Laura Perry

I'm the founder and Temple Mom of Ariadne's Tribe, a worldwide inclusive Minoan spiritual tradition. I'm also an author, artist, and creator who works magic with words, paint, ink, music, textiles, and herbs. My spiritual practice includes spirit work and herbalism through the lens of lifelong animism. I write pagan / polytheist / magical non-fiction and fiction across several different subjects and genres. My Minoan title in the Moon Books Pantheons series is now available for pre-order and will be released on 26 August 2025. While that process percolates along, I’m finishing up the illustrations for a book of modern Minoan myths which will be released on 21 June 2025. I’m also an avid herb and vegetable gardener and living history demonstrator.