119. Radical Receiving with The Empress
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The Empress is a profoundly radical, expansive, beautiful energy, one that invites us into realms far beyond its traditional paradigms. This is a card that calls us to reconnect to receiving as our birthright, to explore the wounds we have around receptivity, pleasure, sensuality, and bring some love to those tender spots.
Air date:
April 24, 2020
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About the Episode
In today’s episode, we speak about what The Empress is (and is not), how we can open to it’s profound invitation and medicine, where and how we can bring a sense of deep tending to our wounds around receiving, and how we can open to deep Empress nourishment from within ourselves.
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Soul Tarot Courses + Workshops
Land Acknowledgement
Honoring and acknowledging that this podcast episode was recorded on the unceded land of The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, currently called Portland, OR, with the deepest respect to the Kalapuya Tribe, Cowlitz Tribe, and Atfalati Tribe.
Please Note
CW Tags: birth, pregnancy, trauma, inherited generational patterns, relationship to body, trauma related to industrialized standards of beauty, capitalistic structures
The content in this episode contains references to birth, pregnancy, trauma, inherited generational patterns, relationship to body, trauma related to industrialized standards of beauty, and capitalistic structures We have done our best to identify difficult subject matter, but the labels may not be comprehensive for your personal needs. Please honor your knowing and proceed with necessary self-awareness and care.
Transcript
[Introduction]
[0:00:00]
Loves, just a gentle heads up that enrollment for Tarot for the Wild Soul closes in just a few short days on Tuesday, April 28, at midnight, Eastern Standard Time.
You know the drill by now (Lindsay laughs). If you'd like to—or feel available to—take part in this eight-week journey of deepening your Tarot practice in the midst of supportive community, if you'd like to begin to discover new ways of working with the Tarot, of engaging with it as a healing tool, of going to it in moments that feel challenging or difficult, it would be my honor to support and assist you.
So if you feel called to learn more about the course or to sign up, you can go to tarotforthewildsoul.com. Thank you.
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(Instrumental intro music)
This is Tarot for the Wild Soul, a weekly Tarot podcast about life, death, and rebirth. Hosted by me, Lindsay Mack.
[0:01:05]
Welcome back to Tarot for the Wild Soul podcast, Loves. I am so excited to be diving into and devoting a whole episode on The Empress. We have never done this before on this podcast. We've spoken about The Empress in, you know, in more partial or sort of specific ways or in company with other things. But we've never devoted, again, an entire episode to this fierce, radical card, and its medicine and invitation. And I think perhaps now, more than ever, is actually a really powerful time to look at the way that we are being called to kind of reclaim and rewild our relationship to this archetype.
And it's cool because even though I haven't been pulling The Empress card a lot, I don't have to. I kind of sometimes feel the energy of the archetype with me. I'm sure you've experienced probably the same thing where you're just sort of visited by a card, but it's not necessarily coming up in your readings. And if you've never experienced that, I bet you that it is happening; you just maybe haven't given yourself the permission to acknowledge it because I think it happens with everyone.
But I have just been feeling, in spite of everything going on right now, so much, like, Empress taking me in, like by the face, like taking my face in their hands and being like, “Hello, I want to work with you right now.” And I, again, spoke about this on Monday's episode, but put something out on Instagram and said, you know, “Who would be interested in a podcast on The Empress?” And I was not really expecting a lot of people to say this (Lindsay laughs), but it was easily one of the most requested of the three topics. It was like right up there with Anchor Cards for Grief.
So—and a lot of you expressed the same thing, like you've been really feeling a call from this archetype, you'd really been feeling like they'd been coming up in your readings. And the thing that I heard from a lot of you — that I know is very, very common, very expected, I hear it a lot from my students and from the listeners of this podcast, as well—is that a lot of folks don't resonate with the traditional interpretation of this card. It doesn't fit with their understanding, it doesn't feel inclusive of their experience, and they want to get to know it a little better.
So what I can offer is what makes sense to me with The Empress and what The Empress has told me, based on when I've pulled it in readings, and what's come up around it—sort of what it can really call us to pay attention to. And I think that reclaiming it, especially in these times, is potentially very, very impactful in terms of our ability to form a very strong bond with this card.
You know, sometimes we're able to form bonds with certain cards based on when they come to visit; when we happen to receive a different way of looking at them. And of course, my offering, in terms of the medicine of this card, may not resonate with you, and that's always valid and possible, and it's not even supposed to. It's really just supposed to spark some potential food for thought about your own knowing because the Tarot belongs to all of us and is not ever relegated to, kind of, one person in terms of, like, “This is the interpretation and this is where we stop.” Ideally, we want to always keep going.
[0:05:08]
So let's talk about what The Empress is and is not. So to do that, we have to sort of start at the root system, or at least the kind of false root system of this card.
So The Empress is a really cherished card, a really treasured card by many, and offers… is pretty much universally and traditionally interpreted—unless by folks who are really conscious of language and inclusivity—in one way. You know this is the card that is the representation, traditionally speaking of the Divine Feminine. Of The Mother, of a mother, of the, you know, again—the Divine Mother: a birthing person. It is usually a representation of fertility but seen in a pretty classically gendered lens, and this being about female fertility. And that's great, because for whom that resonates with that's a really strong invitation to sort of reclaim these powerful aspects of that kind of archetypal representation, and that's wonderful.
And it has also completely dominated the discussion and the lens of this card and has inadvertently closed that lens and contracted it into a very, very small framework because, of course, not everybody who engages with The Empress identifies as female. Not everybody who engages with The Empress is a parent, much less a mother. Not everybody who is a birthing person considers themselves a mother. That can be very triggering; it can be a huge erasure to birthing folks, who actively are like, “I'm not a mother (Lindsay laughs). I'm not the mother. I don't want to be called ‘mother,’” and has really put fertility in a lens work of this sort of, again, traditional frame.
And before I go further, I want to say that I'm in no way denying that those pieces are a part of what the emphasis can shine a light on. If you are really in touch with the paradigm of Divine Feminine, if you are really in touch and wanting to be in touch with your sense of the word mother, with your sense of empowerment around pregnancy, around birthing, or around a sort of—what is the word I'm looking for—kind of like a symbolic birth?
I'm not saying that that's a problem. Not at all. You're not taking that away at all (Lindsay laughs). Nobody's taking anything away from you. But is that the definition of The Empress? Absolutely not. Is that where we stop? No, it is one small branch, small, mighty, and humble branch on an enormous tree on which there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of branches.
You know, we have to think: if the Tarot doesn't include everybody, it doesn't include anybody. So who, what are we doing? What are we perpetuating? What kind of harm are we continuing to cause by limiting this card to just that very, very, very small, yet valid, perceptive framework?
We're leaving out a lot of people. We're leaving out people who might actually identify as feminine, might actually be very connected to those archetypes, and yet, that you might be triggered as fuck around the idea of having this be associated with pregnancy or birthing in a biological sense. There are a million reasons why it falls pretty flat, right? What are we going to do if we read for somebody for whom, you know, they identify completely differently, or you know, whatever it is?
Whenever there is a definition of a Tarot card, that is solely based on a gender, solely based on a representation of a body, or is relegated to a kind of a human identification—as in, “This card is about a woman who…” “This card is about a man who…” It's lazy, and it's old, and we don't need to bring it a minute further; we just don't, you know? These cards, at their core, are inclusive of everybody. And there are beautiful examples of Empress energy, that have absolutely nothing to do with that kind of binary, with that kind of, yeah, with that kind of framework.
So I want to start there: The Empress is not a person. The Empress is certainly not, by definition, a person who identifies as female or feminine, and who happens to, you know, be connected to the archetype of birthing.
The Empress is anyone, anything, any body, any being, any creature, who is being called to reconnect to their sense of receiving, with a capital R, as a birthright. So they were kind of going in the right direction with this card, but we, you know, had to put it in these kind of old, paradigm frameworks. Make sense. We just don't need to perpetuate them.
[0:11:40]
So I want to talk about receiving. And I want to honor that so much of what I've been taught and shown, and so much of the support I've received around what I know about receiving, has come from my teacher, Michelle, who I've been working with for six years, and who has really, really modeled for me and normalized for me how intense, how challenging, how hard, receiving can be, and how it's so much bigger, so much more important as a concept than we give it credit for, and also how it is a birthright.
So just bowing completely to my lineage here and sharing also from my own experience—within the container and support of Michelle’s teachings around this—my own experience with receiving, because every single time I expand in my work as a person, in my journey, as somebody who has experienced abuse and trauma, in my experience as a teacher who is committed to being of service in the best way that I can, I have to do work with receiving. It's a part of my daily practice, and it's really intense (Lindsay laughs). So, just, I would never be able to teach this and wouldn't have the perspective that I do on The Empress if it weren't for Michelle. So just absolutely naming that, and also, you know, all the work I've done over the years, so just naming the roots of this lineage.
But in speaking about receiving, my teacher, Michelle, again, has said to me for many years, “It's like the hardest thing we do on the planet.” And I really believe she might be right; that it is so intense to receive. It is really, really, really intense. It's the place where most of us buckle and curl in on ourselves. It's the place where we can… It's a lot of our weakest, softest, least-formed spots, and it is the place where, if we think about a bone that, you know, is smooth and strong and then has a little fracture in it, no matter how many partners we have, if we hit that fracture, we're going to be called to, kind of, no matter…
Like, in speaking about partnership—be it a friend or a partner—if there's an area where you have a threshold, a max capacity, of receiving love or intimacy or kindness or caring or whatever it is, if there is that little fracture in your bone, until that fracture is fully acknowledged and is given the time and space to heal, until there's some nourishment given to that fracture, we're going to keep buckling in the same exact place. Receiving doesn't really happen. The expansion and the dilation of receiving doesn't really happen without our committed presence. And that's why The Empress is such a triggering card to so many. It's really triggering, of course, because of the triggering (Lindsay laughs), old, paradigm frameworks of it being so gendered and so much about birth and pregnancy and fertility, which is really triggering for a lot of people.
And, and it's not not about that, but it's certainly not all about that. And, again, if that resonates for you, that's so great. I just highly recommend you open your worldview a little bit and look at it differently. But it's triggering for those reasons.
[0:16:05]
It's also very, very, very triggering because it brings up our stuff with receiving, whether we're aware of it or not. It brings up, it's part of this card’s job.
The Empress is ruled by Venus, and Venus, you know, traditionally speaking, again, is the card that is you know, it's about love. It's about beauty, it's about our money, it's about the things, you know, our material possessions, it's about sensuality, it's about, you know, really, what is pleasurable in life is Venusian, you know.
The perfume on the air or the, you know, the flowers, the colors, you know, that's all Venus, it's anything we cherish, anything. What you cherish, be it something about yourself, something externally—is all Venus work, you know? Then there's so much to say about it, but I'm not an astrologer. So I won't (Lindsay laughs).
But there is a real power here because without coming back home to receiving, we can't let in any of that Venus stuff, to begin with. So the first place, the root system of Venus work, of Empress work, is coming back home, Checking In, Dropping In: where am I in my, and on my, journey of reconnecting to my ability to receive?
And I want to take receiving outside of capitalist frameworks. I'm not talking about receiving money. I'm not talking about receiving in a transactional sense. I'm talking about you walking through the world, taking up space in receiving of the love or the presence or the gifts that you share in the world, being able to receive feedback for those gifts, without kind of collapsing in on yourself. I’m talking about being able to receive pleasure from your own touch, be it self-massage or masturbation or even washing your own hair in the shower.
Like there is—it's not about a performative sense of like, “Oh my god, like, Herbal Essence commercial.” (Lindsay laughs) It's not like about that. It's just like, this is your scalp. This is your head. Like, this is your one and only human head that you hold up every day, that houses your brain, that does so much for you. How can you be aware of that fact while you wash your hair? That's receiving.
Taking a breath, taking in breath, right? Especially now, when a lot of our attention is based on breathing and our lungs and our breath. What is it to receive oxygen? How many of us hold our breath? How many of us unconsciously feel like, “Well, I don't even deserve to take up this space?” This isn't an attempt to argue with those feelings. Those feelings are completely valid. They're welcome.
And the reason why The Empress is so intense can be so triggering, the reason why we all feel a little discomfort around The Empress is not only, again, because of those old paradigm definitions, but it's something deeper; it's the fact that this card asks us to challenge what we were told and taught about what we were worthy of receiving, how much space we deserved to take up.
[0:20:28]
It asks us to challenge the notions of our beauty, and beauty completely outside of the overculture, of media, of any gaze, of anything, you know? Where is the beauty about you just being who you are? Being your best self, being your worst self, where is that beauty? Because there is beauty there, you know? Even if there is a savagery or a rawness or, you know, that's really fucking beautiful, you know?
Where is the beauty of the fact that you're alive? You're alive on this planet, you did it, you're here. In spite all that you've experienced and all that you've survived and all that you've moved through, you're here—a wonder, you know? When we take and divorce ourselves, it's constant work, but when we're available to undo this perception that we have to meet these particular standards or live from this particular framework, we can be free to actually meet ourselves in the gloriousness of who we are and what we are, beyond anybody approving of us, beyond anything like that, you know, really, really stepping into a place where we're examining, you know, what was I taught about this? What did I inherit about this?
We inherit the receive—excuse me—the receiving stories of our ancestors. We absolutely inherit those stories. There are so many things that I have in my body that feel like mine, that are actually my mother's, you know, that she struggled with. And it's not necessarily my mother's fault—it's just part of what I can lay on the fire and begin to do the intense work of reclaiming my birthright.
The Empress says you have a birthright to receive. The air is yours to receive. Water is yours to receive. Even if you don't have access to water, it is a birthright to you. It doesn't negate that, you know? Your feet on the earth, you have a birthright, you have a right to be here. You have a right to receive support from whatever ground, whatever surface you happen to be sitting on or walking on. You know, you have a birthright to intake, to receive, and to not have to give anything back for that receiving. It doesn't ever have to be transactional, you know?
And in fact, the more we're able to receive and negotiate and notice where we have huge stuff with receiving, the more we're able to expand it and dilate. The more we're able to receive, the more we can give. Period. And the more we give, the more we're able to receive. So it's usually a place where we can inadvertently skip out on because we assume like, “Well, I'm a giver. That's what I do.” And that's beautiful, too, and a lot of people need work in that area as well. But The Empress really says, “Where are you? You know, where's that fracture?”
Everybody's got ‘em. Where are those fractures in your bones? You know, where are those places where there's weakness, there's buckling, where you pull out of relationships because it gets too intense, where you step away from friendships or don't even let them begin because of receiving?
[0:24:40]
And I want to make something really clear, as a trauma survivor, and as somebody who is a pretty fierce survivor of trauma—my trauma was extremely intense and severe—I am exactly where I'm supposed to be on my journey of receiving. And in comparison, if I was to compare with how some people are available to receive certain things, I would consider where I am a failure, or I would say, “Oh my gosh, these people are so much more mature than I am in this area. These people can really let these things in. This person has no problem with this thing.”
And I don't give a fuck about that. I don't care what... I don't. It's really important not to give a fuck about the brain's invitation into comparison around receiving. I do not care if the next person is so comfortable with that form of receiving or that form of receiving—they're not me. And they're not you either.
So this is not an invitation for anybody listening to this to let their brain beat up on them and think like, “Oh, God, I do pull out of every relationship,” or “I do want to cheat at this point in every relationship that I have,” or, you know, “I do feel so upset and unable to connect with myself,” like, of course, you do. We all have wounding around receiving. Let's normalize that, first and foremost, let's just, let's just name that. We've all got it. If it's the hardest thing that we do as human beings, I'm pretty sure we've all got it (Lindsay laughs).
And where you are doesn't—part of the first step of reclaiming this birthright to receive is that we don't compare where we're at with anybody else. No comparison. Not fair, to you. And that's part of Empress, too, to be able to say like, “Hey, you are where you are. And those fractures in your bones are completely incomparable to someone else.”
We're not supposed to be comparing; where you're at is where you're at. Let's start there. Let's completely start there. Let's honor that some people might have been on their receiving journey for much longer, let's honor that some people have absolutely no problem receiving in certain areas, but tremendous problems receiving in others. So let's not compare to each other. Let's just not.
[0:27:28]
So how can we nourish those things? When we bring The Empress forward and when we work with The Empress, the invitation is, typically, the medicine that this card brings, that they bring: how can we expand or dilate our threshold of receiving?
So what that means is that when we're called to do Empress work and right now is a great time to be thinking about this because we're in Taurus season and because Venus is Taurus’ ruling planet and because Empress has a huge hand in Taurus energy, you know, this is big. This is big Empress energy right now.
This is all about Taurus, too. How can we be in receiving, you know? How can our receiving be in alignment? Even in The Hierophant—which is ruled by Taurus—is about receiving channeled information and being able to determine, you know, “What's mine? What's my truth? And what was I taught? What's not true for me, and what is, and how can I communicate that from a really humble place?”
The Empress says: “What's actually the mechanism of receiving? Where do we have stops and gaps, and where do we get caught? What's the threshold that we all have, you know? What's the maximum capacity?”
And usually when we're called to work with Empress or when Empress comes to call, there's typically a huge spotlight put in someplace in our life, where we do have huge challenges receiving. And the first kind of step to this work is often that we feel really contracted and sometimes really upset or really bummed out, especially if it's a place that we've been doing work on forever.
We can just really feel like, “Oh my god, like, what is wrong with me that I'm so uncomfortable around this? What's wrong with me that I'm thinking about getting out of this relationship? What's wrong with me that I'm thinking about, you know, pulling back, and this person's being nothing but lovely to me? Or what's wrong with me that this person is being super lovely, and I want to run away screaming?” (Lindsay laughs) Like, you know, and that's part of the, that's the first thing that The Empress really does is it just so clearly illuminates where we're struggling right now.
And you know what? Sometimes Empress does come up around relationships that aren't actually meant to be perpetuated. Sometimes we can be in a space of receiving where our threshold is so low that we can call in sometimes even nice people who just can only match us at, like, 3% of receiving because that's all we were available to when we met them. And then we start growing, and we can get frustrated by our friend, by our partner, and think like, “Well, why can't they meet us?” And, and they're like, “I’m at 3%. You’re now at 10. You know, I'm not there.”
So sometimes Empress can come up and can illuminate for us, like, you may be expanding past this particular friend and partner. Rather than assuming that it's time to break up, can you stretch your hand out and invite them up with you or out with you?
Sometimes other people do this for us, sometimes our partners or our friends, or our caretakers, or whomever are expanding, and they stretch a hand out to us and say, “Hey, can you come with me? You know, is it possible, even in the midst of your discomfort, are you available to be uncomfortable with me in in a safe way?” you know? And there are other times when we realize, quite frankly, that the person that we're kicking it with is a piece of shit, and it's really important to just be like, “See you later,” you know? So sometimes The Empress can illuminate some really strong things, and sometimes we take action on those things.
[0:31:46]
How the inverse, I find, normally comes up for me is that it really strongly can come up in moments when I'm about to personally expand in some way. I am about to expand, and typically, I have to do personal work in order to be available for the external expansion. It's like, you know, if we are to bring this image of birthing in, this is the one place where I really think the image of childbirth can be really evocative.
This idea if we are birthing—like through the birth canal versus all the other ways that birth happens, like birth, you know, is so spiralic in the way that it can be experienced by bodies and across the board. But if a child is, like, physically coming through our birth canal and through our body in that way, then we have to dilate in order to receive, and dilation happens with contraction, and it's typically really uncomfortable, but the baby is not dilating. We're dilating. The baby is the external piece that's wanting to come through us.
Sometimes Empress comes to say, “Something wants to come through you that's so big, that your threshold of receiving, it's not going to be able to come through. So I’m gonna hit you with a lot of contraction right now (Lindsay laughs). And I'm going to invite you to be really clear, because you can't—there's not enough room for this thing to come through.”
And we never have to respond to that from a place of like, “Oh, my God, oh no! What if I miss it?” Because, again, if we're birthing a baby, there's no question, and our baby isn't going to move on to somebody else. So when The Empress comes to call, we're typically ready to expand in some way and our ability to receive that is contingent on our willingness to look strongly at where are we now. Without any comparison, without anything, just where do we find ourselves? Is it tough to look at? Can we celebrate how far we've come? Is that a huge difference from where we were five years ago? You know, but where are we today with our ability to receive, you know?
It changes from day-to-day for me, you know, and usually, when I make enormous strides in some way, there's always a snapback on the rubber band, and I can think like, “Oh my god, you know, I can't even go near this thing or I can't even engage with this thing.” Right? You know, whatever it is. We're being called to get really clear. Like what's here?
[0:34:48]
And, you know, another thing that I think is really important is like The Empress is not about our ability to receive tangible goods and services. It can extend to that kind of framework like, you know, again, like our ability to “receive money.” There's a lot of capitalist bullshit in that. There's a lot of, like, there's a lot of privilege, there's a lot of equity, there's a lot of white supremacy that doesn't get named in that kind of sneaky, backdoor, manifestation thing. And I don't want to make this about that.
If you are a person who's ready to share something with the world, you know, that's Empress work. If you are a person who is alive on this planet and wants to enjoy the moments of your life that feel radical to reclaim, that’s Empress work. If you're eating a piece of fruit, and you want to actually be awake and alive for the receptivity of that fruit, that’s Empress work.
If there's a part on your body—I can speak to personal experience with this—where you were taught to be ashamed of, where you judged, where you thought, “This isn't as beautiful as I want it to be. This doesn't look like how I wish it were to look. This doesn't feel…” You know, to be in a scenario where we don't have to be, but to be in an experience where we're not comparing, where we can hold all of the feelings about our body—maybe not being what we want it to be, maybe not feeling how we want it to feel, maybe completely still being like, “That burn of shame, that old trauma is still here,”—and simultaneously holding “...and this body and I are in this together. And this body is alive in spite of everything it’s experienced. And it's out in the sunshine with me. And we're breathing together. And we're enjoying this apple or this peach.” Those are Empress moments. And they have nothing to do with money, they have nothing to do with transaction, they have nothing to do with measurable goods and services; we're not supposed to.
[0:37:29]
The more performative Empress work is, typically, the more work we have to do. Because it's easy for some folks to bypass their receiving work by being kind of performative about it. There's no judgement on that. Some people are beautifully expressive with their Empress work, and we can feel that. We can feel when someone's just in their joy. They don't give a fuck whether you like it or not; they don't care.
And then there are times where we can feel like this person is really, you know, maybe not completely with themselves, right? And there's never, never a problem with that because, again, we're not comparing, but it's an opportunity for you to feel like we can divorce The Empress from this capitalist, performative framework.
This is about the quiet moments between you and you, you know? Because the truth is that if you're somebody who desires to be more available to pleasure across the board, if you're somebody who really, really is looking for your beloved or for a partner to touch you, to engage in sexual play, to be a partner, to be any kind of partner—it's really hard to find a partner who can bring us to places that we can't bring ourselves to.
And if that's the case, once that partnership might end, we'll be left kind of feeling like, “Well, how am I going to get that back again?” And the truth is that that person was only inviting you to explore parts of yourself; they were showing up as a mirror for you. You can offer yourself that same love, that same exploration, that same sense of pleasure. The Empress says: can you seek the reclamation of receiving and of sensuality in whatever way that wants to be expressed?
[0:39:34]
A lot of us, again: asexual, a-romantic, not interested, don't consider themselves sexual beings. Sensuality is to be one with the earth, to feel dirt on our feet, to feel sand, you know, in between our, you know, in our fingernails. If we've been playing outside: to feel dirt in our hands. If we've been gardening: to feel sweat on our bodies, to feel a breeze on our skin, to smell the flowers that are blooming, or to smell the air.
What is our relationship to reclaiming that? Do we allow ourselves that? Most of us don't. I think we should just start there, you know (Lindsay laughs)? Most of us don't. It feels really triggering and really scary; it can really wig our nervous systems out.
This is also something I learned from Michelle, but to be in Empress work, there has to be a sense of spaciousness, you know? That a lot of the time, for most of us, if there's been trauma there, that doesn't feel like there's a whole lot of space for that kind of receiving. So when we're in receiving it can be that sometimes we can feel a little triggered, because the nervous system can think like, “Hey, you're meant to be on alert here. Like, you're enjoying this peach, you're not paying attention.” That's part of why receiving work can feel so triggering and so, so wild. And, you know, we're not going for complete abandon here—we're just going for moments.
[0:41:17]
Radical reclamation, of receptivity, what does it mean to you in your particular body, in your particular incarnation, your experience of the world? For some people, it's really complicated. It's really fraught. For some people, it's complicated and fraught in different ways. I don't know if it's easy for anybody. How we reclaim that sense of birthright in this way, is really, again, it's a completely different path for everyone. But the medicine of The Empress says you can start with where you are, you can start with what's coming up for you in this area right now.
You know, this is an interesting time, not for everybody, but there are some Empress themes happening right now in ways that I don't even necessarily know that I fully understand yet. But there are some really strong themes of receptivity happening right now, ironically, now that a good many of us are inside and are actually disconnected to some of the ways that we used to fill up our receiving cup in external ways or even in beautifully valid ways like being out nature, you know?
What is it to not have that anymore? And to consider receptivity, you know, what does that look like? Does it get down on the macro level? If you're somebody who is in no way, shape, or form hanging out at home (Lindsay laughs), like, are crazy busy, or like, an essential worker in hospitals, you know, with your children. If you're somebody to whom this time you're at home, but it's an incredible struggle, you're on the phone all fucking day with, you know, with unemployment, or trying to figure out where your next stimulus check is, what does this look like for you?
It's really easy to be like, “I don't have time for this bullshit,” and yet, it's a birthright. And yet, it is quite possibly one of the most important times to begin to think about this: what does receiving look like right now? What feels accessible to me? And it's important not to necessarily let the brain dictate when the right or wrong time is to be in consideration of receiving because the brain will always say “It's not the time,” the brain will always say, like, “Well, how am I to do that?” The brain will always say, “I feel like shit. I don't even want to think about receiving,” and probably we feel like shit most of the time anyway. So why not think about it now? Why not just consider it?
What's available? What's in front of you? You know, is there the touch of your own skin, is that a form of receiving? Do you love scalp massages? Can you give yourself a quick scalp massage and really be present for it? It seems really, really dumb and unimportant, and yet, those moments remind ourselves: I'm here for you. I'm actually here for you. I'm right here, even in the midst of all of this craziness, even in the midst of all of this scary stuff.
And from there, our bodies can often feel safe enough to be like, “Whoa, I have been really, really scared. I've been really hyper-vigilant.” And for you, it might feel really triggering to be in the embodied sense of care. So then what does that look like for you? You know, does it look like, you know, roleplay? Does it look like jogging? Does it look like masturbating? Does it look like cooking? Does it look like listening to music? Those are all forms of Empress work.
[0:45:38]
Empress work is radical work. In a completely unromantic sense, this is a time of enormous evolution. We're all being handed things right now to evolve through, to be with, to grow through. We're all in our own work right now. And certainly, collectively, wow, there's huge work happening, right?
Evolution is growth through discomfort. You know, we don't ever have to like that. It's not romantic. It's not spiritualizing it (Lindsay laughs). It's quite literally what our animal ancestors do. It's quite literally what animal species do when met with an external circumstance that they can't rise to engage with; they have to evolve in order to survive. That's exactly what's happening with us on a soul level and on a literal level.
So with that engagement, with this experience that we're being invited to evolve here, how does that change our relationship to receiving? You know, what about that tracks for us? What's coming up for us around that? If anything, you know, what is accessible? You know, what is simple? What is free? That's where we start with Empress work.
We've been, for a long time, really placing—missing Empress work; we've been oversimplifying Empress work—which is not to say that if you identify as a mother or a birth giver or a parent, that I am in any way, shape, or form, undervaluing what you are doing. Wow, it's one of the hardest jobs on the fucking planet. I see you, and I'm in no way taking away from any of that, nor am I taking away in any way from anyone who identifies as feminine or as a woman; not in any way taking away from any of the intensity of that experience. We're not saying, again, that Empress cannot be in that space, but we're widening the lens. We’re widening that lens, you know?
What is accessible for us right now? How in this evolution can we free ourselves? Can we unbind ourselves? Can we come back to a sense of birthright, receiving as a radical act that does not rely on any kind of, again, capitalist external framework at all? You know, what does that look like? How does that feel?
So that's just kind of like the tip of the iceberg, really, with Empress. I'm sure that if I did a podcast episode on this archetype in a year, it would be different. And I'd have more to say because I am on my own humble journey with receiving in the exact same way that you are.
[0:49:09]
And again, I want to come back to this—it's really important, very easy, very easy for the brain to go, “I feel great with receiving.” And I'm not saying that you're not, but I am saying that you may be really great with receiving in a certain area. Where is that fracture on your bone? We've all got it. Where is that place where you buckle? Where's that place where you think, “Oh, I can't do that. Other people do that. I can't do that.” That's a receiving thing. That's your wound.
So in order to step up into Empress, in order to, you know, as we expand, as we are called to evolve, everybody's bringing forward gifts right now. That's a part of what's happening is that a lot of us are getting really clear, like, “Oh my god, I don't want to do that anymore. I don't want to live like that anymore. I'm not available for that circumstance anymore,” or “I actually love this.” You know, again, it's very, very small, very subtle. Even if we don't have the time to focus on that, it's not about focusing; it's just about being able to name that it's there.
We're all bringing forward a lot right now, you know, whether invisibly, visibly, publicly, internally, and otherwise. So how do we dilate to make space for that? How do we expand our ability to receive in order to be deeper stewards for the planet? How do we expand our ability to receive so that we can be more present with other people? How do we expand our ability to receive so we can give as much as what's being asked of us? It's not a selfish act. It's for everybody. Truly.
So I invite you to just kind of start where you are, like, what's coming up for you around Empress right now? How does Empress resonate for you? I don't need to know how Empress resonates for you. You don't need to (Lindsay laughs), like, it's just for you. You know, what is coming up for you around that? You know, what's present, what's here? It's a powerful, powerful place to start: with what's here. And what feels available to you? What’s available, you know?
[0:51:42]
And this is all also about personal timing. So I go through days with my receiving work, where I'm like, I am out of my body, I am dissociated, I can barely, you know, again, for me to say, you know, I don't feel like eating or having a drink of water is a part of my trauma responses—and also, like, let's talk about the fact that I have access to water. Let's name the privilege here, obviously; not a sob story.
But if I go into those places, and I don't try to force myself out of it, I just hold it and say, “Okay, I'm in a time right now where, like, even taking a breath feels impossible today, where there's so much shame, there's so much—feelings of unworthiness and doubt that it's like, you know, I feel like I'm surrounded by swords, you know, or knives or whatever.”
And I hang out with that until I feel like there's some ability to move. I do, you know, I can still hold. I can still, like, hydrate, to the degree that I'm able. I can still eat.—again, I'm very privileged to have food—to the degree that I'm able. I can move, to the degree, sort of that I'm able, but sometimes I'm just frozen. And that's okay. Like, we don't have to force this at all.
Sometimes those days I think are really important, actually, because they help to illuminate, “Oh wow, you know, I feel, like, really contracted around my receiving. Like, this is a part of how my fracture tries to take care of itself; it doesn't want me to break the bone or cause further injury. So I'm being called into this frozen place to just look, you know, what your response is to that.”
And then you'll forget about this podcast, and, you know, then you'll start thinking about other things. And then you might remember it, and then you can ask yourself, like, where am I being invited to expand my threshold of receiving? Like, where is that fracture in my bone, you know, so to speak? And, you know, where is that place that I loop and loop and loop because I don't feel like I'm worthy of more, or I'm afraid that if I didn't do that, I'd be rejected? Or I'm afraid that if I don't have this, I won't be chosen? Or, you know, really, it's are you rejecting yourself? Are you choosing yourself, you know?
[0:54:10]
Lastly, one of the most important and vital reasons to start expanding the framework of the definition of The Empress card is because the Tarot offers us everything that we could ever want in terms of advice for life, and we have been robbed of this definition. We have been robbed of this in our… There's a reason that this card is in Line One because usually when we're in our formative years, our work with receiving, there's a lot to undo that can go back to the roots of our age, you know? It can go back to when we were really young. It's very formative.
So, yeah, you know, this reclaiming, this is a part of what you were promised and now you get to offer it to yourself. So just an invitation, and I'm sure that many of you could take this, you know, invitation or definition much, much further, just to start thinking about a more equitable, expansive, evolutionary framework for this magnificently radical card, and what it could be bringing into your life right now.
Thank you for listening, Wild Souls. I love all of you. I'm grateful that we got to connect so beautifully and three times this week (Lindsay laughs). Yeah, be well until I see you. Catch you in Monthly Medicine and Weekly Medicine next week. Please take care of yourselves, and until then, and have a beautiful weekend.
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[Conclusion]
[0:55:55]
This podcast was edited by Chase Voorhees. The podcast art is by Chelsea Iris Granger and it is hosted by me, Lindsay Mack. For more about the podcast, visit wildsoulpodcast.com or follow us on Instagram, @wildsoulhealing. For more about me and my work, please visit lindsaymack.com.
To support Tarot for the Wild Soul, please consider subscribing to the podcast on iTunes and leaving us a five-star review. That helps people find us, and it is greatly greatly appreciated.
Thank you so much for being here.