About Five and Nine: Tarot, Work and Economic Justice
Five and Nine is a podcast and newsletter at the intersection of magic, work and economic justice, produced by Dorothy R. Santos, Xiaowei R. Wang and Mina AX.
Each season, we publish “moonthly” — on new moons 🌚 and full moons 🌝 — , and we provide an an ongoing critical discussion through readings, reflections and debate.
In these upside down times, it’s time for a new perspective on the classic “9 to 5” (and yes, we’re Dolly Parton fans). In tarot and astrology, reversals and retrogrades matter, because they shed light on our situation in new ways. Five represents turning points and change, and Nine represents a coming to completion.
We’re all rethinking the meaning of labor and justice in our lives. Our lives and livelihoods are more essential than ever in identifying ways forward for society that can be grounded in care, compassion and sustainability.
This podcast is always free, and we're supported by paid members. Learn more at thisisfiveandnine.com.
Remember that tarot, magic and the other practices we discuss are not a substitute for psychiatric or mental health care services. We present this content as-is, for entertainment and educational purposes only.
fiveandnine.substack.com (https://fiveandnine.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)
🌚 Guest Episode: The Audience of Magic (Audiences Podcast)
Who’s the Audience of Magic? How has it evolved over the past few years? Where is it going next? 🪄
From TikTok tarot readings to “manifesting crypto gains”, we explore how audiences are engaging with magic to reassert individual agency, reinterpret identity, and regain some level of control over systems trying to define them.
In this episode, Five and Nine’s Mina AX and Dorothy R. Santos, PhD, have a magical conversation with The Audiences Podcast (https://www.audiencespodcast.com/), hosted by Francesco D’Orazio and produced by Sal Morton.
They dissect AI-generated audience personas to ask what happens when machine learning tries to map belief. Throughout, they reflect on the rise of mystical frameworks not as escape, but as resistance: a response to overexposure, over-simulation, and a growing desire to feel agency again. Whether it’s tarot as feedback loop, divination as dialogue, or witchcraft as subculture, magic is increasingly where audiences go to find meaning beyond the algorithm.
About The Audiences Podcast
The Audiences Podcast is the audience discovery show. We talk to guests who build audiences for a living. And as we discuss what it takes to build an audience, we explore new emerging audiences in fashion, tech, media and many other industries. Subscribe to never miss an episode. Subscribe to never miss an episode.
About Five and Nine Podcast
Five and Nine is a podcast and newsletter at the crossroads of magic, work and economic justice. We publish “moonthly” — every new moon 🌚 and full moon 🌝 — , and we provide an ongoing critical discussion through readings, reflections and debate.
Learn more at thisisfiveandnine.com (http://thisisfiveandnine.com)
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fiveandnine.substack.com/subscribe (https://fiveandnine.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)
3 Jan 2025
🌚 Retro: Magic in the Everyday, with Helen Shewolfe Tseng (2.02)
This is Five and Nine, a podcast and newsletter at the crossroads of magic, work and economic justice. We’re in the midst of Season 5, on the theme of Generation, but we wanted to take a brief look back at Season 2 with a “retro” episode originally published September 2022.
Summary
How can everyday magic helps us navigate change?
Five and Nine talks with artist, designer, and witch Helen Shewolfe Tseng (http://helentseng.com/). They share their work on growth spells, drawings made over an extended period of time for personal healing and transformation, and their Coyote Portals series, inspired by the fission-fusion adaptations and mythos of these often misunderstood animals. We also talk about what we learned in nature during lockdown and how to find grounding in uncertain times, from petting our plants to working with free ballpoint pens.
Season 2 is about transitions. As fall sets in in the northern hemisphere and spring int he south, Five and Nine looks at change in all its forms — leaving jobs, changing industries, starting new paths, and the wisdom that tarot and magic have to offer in a world that seems to be ever in flux.
Resources
From Our Guest
* Helen Shewolfe Tseng (http://helentseng.com/)
* Growth Spells (http://helentseng.com/#/growth-spells/)
* Coyote Portals (http://helentseng.com/#/coyote-portals/) (prints (http://helentseng.com/shop/coyote-prints) available here!)
* The Man Who Could Move Clouds (https://bookshop.org/books/the-man-who-could-move-clouds-a-memoir/9780385546669), by Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Music
* Episode: Bow Wow Blues (https://www.loc.gov/item/jukebox-43156/), performed by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, 1921.
* Outro: Ain’t we got fun (https://www.loc.gov/item/jukebox-40562/), composed by Richard A. Whiting and performed by the Benson Orchestra of Chicago, 1921.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fiveandnine.substack.com/subscribe (https://fiveandnine.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)
9 Dec 2024
🌚 5.02. Haunting through the Glitch
Five and Nine co-founders Xiaowei Wang, AX, and Dorothy R. Santos explore love, grief, and self-actualization through the lens of the Mixed Signals Tarot in this season's critical discussion on work, care, and economic justice.
Inside a recent episode
🌚 Guest Episode: The Audience of Magic (Audiences Podcast)
Published 22 Nov 2025 · Transcript excerpt
[…] Magic really never left. And so that was the first thing. Do not look magic as the extreme profiles. Look at magic in the everyday practices that people put in place to survive in the modern world, because that's where you'll find a lot of the deep connection to magic. The second one on that text side is that if you look at the parable of technology and where it's gone and how complex it's got to and our advances got to really AI emerges as the epitome of that conflation of magic and technology. It's a technology that defines itself as magic because it's something that it's all knowing and yet unknowable. […]
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