on the full mamdani moon and the practice of hope

Social media can capture a lot, but it can’t convey how a place feels. Seeing your neighbors move with a pep in their step. The hopeful eye contact between folks wearing an “I Voted” sticker. The energetic and dare I say spiritual currents running through a city — especially one as vibrant and alive as New York.

Even as my wife and I had a quiet, celebratory dinner for her 40th birthday, we buzzed with the anticipation of the polls closing at 9pm. I firmly believed that it was a lock for our local Assemblyman, who was polling double digits ahead of his competitors; this belief was affirmed by the fact that I ran into two young women still going door to door canvassing for Zohran mid-afternoon. (I have never seen a ground game like this.)

But still, I was nervous. Hope is less a feeling than it is a practice, after all.

We went home after dinner rather than to a watch party (because we are nanas). And soon, it turned out that our anxiety about the future of our city had been… not unfounded, but unnecessary: Decision Desk called the mayoral race for Zohran Mamdani almost immediately.

I’ve lived in this city for almost ten years: through hurricanes and floods and COVID, through a multitude of breakups and moves and a health crisis that almost killed me. I remember what the subway felt like the morning after Trump won in 2016, as if the river crushing us from above couldn’t possibly make every woman in the car feel more underwater. I was at brunch in Williamsburg with Meg and dear friends when Biden’s win was announced, the waves and waves of cheers and music erupting up and down the street as we celebrated less that an old white centrist had won and more that Trump had been deposed.

Last night was a different kind of celebration: not just the sheer joy that someone horrible had lost (although, and I cannot say this strongly enough, fuck Cuomo and his fellow predator cronies forever), but that we had elected someone who had reminded us that we had something to fight for, who said directly to our president-despot in his victory speech, “To get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us.”

Mamdani’s success — winning more than 50% of the votes in a HISTORIC turnout, crossing the threshold of 1M votes! — is a mandate. The definitive wins of Democrats and progressive policies nationwide, from Georgia to California, makes that mandate a veritable chorus. Taurus rules the throat, and last night, we fucking sang.

And this moon wants to revel — and rest.

To enjoy the fruits of its labors.

To celebrate with its beloveds.

Its lesson is that we get to have nice things.

Its admonition is that we MUST be present, that we cannot merely acknowledge the Wins and the Good Things but must sit with them and truly take them. That this is good and essential medicine in times of grief and struggle.

Hope keeps us tender. Love keeps us tender. And Taurus is tender. This is not the hardened ground of a Capricorn winter; this is the lush soil of spring, renewed by mulch and ice-melt, ready for planting.

And these things are all only underlined by the fact that Venus, which rules Taurus, is still in her other home sign of Libra, reminding us that we are all we got, that relationship is the antidote to individualism, that creativity and hope are infinitely braver things than cynicism and fear.

Taurus is fixed earth that roots down in a place, and it reminds us to make home wherever we are.

Even before last night’s blue tsunami that coursed across the nation, renewing our spirits like spring water, I had said in Call Your Coven’s November forecast that today’s moon was not a day for doing, but for resting. For integrating. For slow, methodical movement. For being present: in the spirit and in the body.

Whether we’re thinking about a WIP or an as-yet-to-take-office politician, the lingering unknown of but what will actually happen can feel overwhelming. It’s so easy to try to control for disappointment that, in this economy, feels inevitable. It’s harder to hope that the fruits of y[our] labor will actually come. It’s that law of invisible progress, of acting in the hope of things that are not yet here. It’s that TikTok I saw a few weeks ago that reminded me that while I don’t have everything I want right now, I do have everything I wanted three years ago.

Three years ago, electing someone like Zohran Mamdani was unthinkable. But his campaign and message are truly proof of that Taurus lesson: that manifestation is just acting in the hope of things not yet seen. Which is really just my reworking of Hebrews 11:1: that faith is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

I hope you are able to truly be with yourself, and your hopes and fears, perhaps by journaling or meditation. I hope that the medicine of good news is healing for your spirit. I hope you find tenderness within.

Happy Full Moon, beloveds.

🔮 My aforementioned wife, Meg Jones Wall aka 3am.tarot, has an incredible new two-week, tarot-centric reflection container on grief that begins November 9th.