Using Cartomancy to Attract the Season of Abundance By La Sirena Selene

Late summer arrives with a particular kind of fullness. The work of the year has begun to reveal itself, the harvest is coming in, and for a moment we are invited to stop striving long enough to notice what has already grown. It is a season of gratitude, but also of maintenance. Once abundance arrives, how do we nurture it? How do we create prosperity that feels less like a sudden windfall and more like something stable enough to live inside?

For La Sirena Selene, the answer can be found in the Ten of Pentacles, a tarot card associated with prosperity, stability, family, legacy and the kind of abundance built to last. Its imagery evokes not simply wealth, but contentment: the feeling of being surrounded by the evidence of what has been cultivated over time. It is this quality that makes the card particularly resonant with the energy of late summer.

Although tarot is now most recognizable as a tool for divination, its history is far more complicated. Early tarot cards were connected to games in Renaissance Italy before later becoming intertwined with fortune-telling and Western occult traditions. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, practitioners and occult writers were increasingly assigning mystical meanings and correspondences to the cards, laying much of the foundation for the way tarot is approached within contemporary magical practice.

For the modern practitioner, that means tarot does not necessarily have to remain something we simply read. A card can become part of the ritual itself.

In Selene's late-summer abundance working, the Ten of Pentacles becomes the symbolic center of a ritual built around sympathetic magic, pairing objects with complementary intentions. Candles in yellow, orange, green or white represent happiness, success, summer and wealth, while geranium oil is incorporated for balance and stability. Mint, basil, parsley and catnip bring their associations with fortune and prosperity, while lavender incense introduces an element of continued happiness and steadiness.
But this is deliberately not a quick money spell.

Below is an example of a quincunx pattern with two gateway tools: mirrors and fire (candle), and two kinds of offerings: corn and herbs (adapted from pg. 170 of ‘Cleansing Rites of Curanderismo’, by Erika Buenaflor):

The intention is to create a different relationship with abundance, one rooted not in panic over what is missing, but in gratitude for what is already present and confidence in what can continue to grow. Rather than asking only for more, the working asks us to consider what it would feel like to experience enough.

At the center of the ritual is a quincunx, a five-point geometric arrangement incorporated into the working through five small mirrors. Drawing inspiration from practices discussed by curandera and author Erika Buenaflor, the adapted arrangement creates a ritual space around the Ten of Pentacles, candles, herbs, incense and offerings.

Once established, the working is intended to be tended rather than abandoned. Selene recommends allowing the space to remain for seven days, returning to it with prayer and offerings, and potentially keeping the tarot card and mirrors as a permanent abundance altar. Once a month, a candle and incense can be lit again to keep the intention “hot” throughout the year.

Perhaps this is where late summer offers its most useful lesson. Abundance is not always something waiting somewhere in the future. Sometimes it is the moment we finally recognize the harvest already sitting in front of us.

The complete version of “Using Cartomancy to Attract the Season of Abundance,” including La Sirena Selene’s full ritual, ingredients, correspondences, altar arrangement and step-by-step working, has been published in the print edition of Bruja Magazine: Sol Invictus, The Late Summer Issue.

References

Buenaflor, E. (2018). Cleansing rites of curanderismo: Limpias Espirituales of ancient

Mesoamerican shamans. Bear & Company.

Husband, T. (2016). Before fortune-telling: The history and structure of Tarot Cards. The

Metropolitan Museum of Art. https://www.metmuseum.org/perspectives/tarot-2

A history of tarot cards . V & A. (2025). https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/tarot-cards

About the Author

La Sirena Selene is a reader, rootworker and spiritual advisor whose practice weaves together rootwork, curanderismo and espiritismo. With bachelor's degrees in psychology and forensic science and a background working within mental health and research settings, Selene brings both lived experience and an enduring commitment to service into her spiritual work. Through La Sirena’s Botanica Congo, she offers readings, spiritual guidance, limpias, ritual tools, mentorship and education designed to help others reconnect with their intuition, ancestors and spiritual paths.

Explore her work at La Sirena’s Botanica Congo. Follow her on IG https://www.instagram.com/lasirenasbotanicacongo/