130. Monthly Medicine: August is Reckoning
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On this episode, we dive deeply into the medicine of the Wild Soul Collective Tarot reading for the month ahead, as well as ways that we can work with our journey from Leo (The Sun card) to Virgo (The Hermit card) in the month of August.
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About the Episode
August is inviting us to work with the theme of soul centered reckoning — reviewing, reflecting, clearing things up and making changes. This deep reckoning must start from an internal, heart centered place. In order to rise up and create the kind of lasting, evolutionary change that is needed on this planet, this rhythm of internal to external evolution cannot be rushed or overlooked.
On this episode, we dive deeply into the medicine of the Wild Soul Collective Tarot reading for the month ahead, as well as ways that we can work with our journey from Leo (The Sun card) to Virgo (The Hermit card) in the month of August.
Wild Soul Collective Reading for August:
Cards for the month ahead: The Hierophant and King of Pentacles
The card that is showing up as our teacher: Judgement
What is it helping us to learn: Ten of Cups
What are we offering up to the fire?: Temperance
What seeds are we being invited to plant?: Death
What are we being invited to devote our attention to this month?: Six of Cups
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: grief
The content in this episode contains references to grief. 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]
(Instrumental intro music)
This is Tarot for the Wild Soul, a weekly tarot podcast about life, death and rebirth. Hosted by me, Lindsay Mack.
[0:00:15]
Hello Wild Souls and welcome to Tarot for the Wild Soul podcast. This is our Monthly Medicine episode for the month of August. I'm your host Lindsay Mack, and I am just so overjoyed to be connected with all of you in this virtual kind of liminal space. I'm so grateful. Yeah, whew! We are in it baby. (Lindsay Laughs) We are in it. We continue to be in it, in it. God, the energy right now.
So the word, the phrase, the connective tissue I'm being told for the month of August for all of us to kind of lean into, marinate in is “Reckoning”.
So this is a month that is rooted in some of the most powerful soul work that I feel like maybe some of the most powerful, like the most powerful set of cards I've ever pulled for any Monthly Medicine episode. And it's perfect. It's a perfect fit with what this month is asking of us, requiring of us. This is the work of these times.
August is rooted in the invitation of taking account. It's rooted, it calls us, and is going to call us into review, reflection, clearing things up and making big changes, big changes. Not from guilt, not from fear, not from “shoulds”, but a true inventory. And we're all going to be invited to do this, but August… So much in our lives and society overculturally, there's just — and understandably, right — a massive premium, a massive amount of attention and expectation placed on external first, then internal process. And there are times, of course, where that's necessary, required, but not for this. Not for this.
And as much as we might feel personally pressured or pulled from ourselves — I mean, I inflict that pressure on myself all the time — to get it together externally to figure it all out, to have proof, to whatever, we can't skip this step. Lasting, external change and evolution is not ultimately possible without internal work, review, reckoning, acknowledgement, that journey, that pilgrimage, without that first. And we are all in that, and, appropriately, teetering back and forth between the absolutely crucial demands of immediacy and external change that must begin to happen now.
And the necessity of us being able to not luxuriously, but crucially, pay attention to our own internal process. Otherwise, those external changes aren't going to be lasting.
[0:03:59]
Now, the Good news is that we don't need to, like, take five months off and do this internal work. It's possible, kind of Nine of Wands-style to dive in, come out, dive in, come out, but there may be times where we may be rushing things. And ultimately, this month is kind of the antidote to that rushing. It's really going to require us to drop in, to really, really start with ourselves, because we can't skip that step. Why? Because it's the step we've skipped for generations.
Really, like, the reason that we're in what we're in. It may seem like everybody's just been thinking about themselves. Everyone's been thinking about their survival. Everyone's been thinking from their ego. Everyone's been operating out of preservation. Nobody has truly been dropped into themselves, not me, not you. I feel very confident saying that.
That's why this time is so intense. Because everything, all of our habits and patterns and refuges and escapes, are gone. We're trying to start them up, many of us. They're gone, they burned away, they literally don't exist anymore.
There's no escape. And that's a great place to be. Because we're used to thinking, “Oh, I have to really go in and really do this internal work, and then maybe I'll be ready.” I'm talking about like, dropping in, going deeper than we've ever gone to the bone of like, “Whoa, this is a huge cluster here of you know, addictive patterning, a huge cluster of attachment wounding, a huge cluster of like, worship patterns where I’m making someone else into this, like, deity figure and following everything they do. Holy shit, like, that's what I've been telling other people not to do, and I'm doing it.”
So, time is getting very fast right now. The idea of us being able to kind of do this and immediately translate it into our external actions, into really aligning ourselves with the external, is getting a lot faster because we're able to go so much deeper ,because there really is no escape from what needs to be paid attention to. This is the reckoning.
[0:06:39]
August is really a huge month of activation, but it's flipping a switch inside so that when we walk, when we talk, when we communicate, when we put out an invitation, it's coming from a rooted place. Nobody is rooted right now. That's appropriate. Right.
So naming that is the first step. That's great to know. Yeah, totally not rooted (Lindsay Laughs). It’s a highly traumatic time. So, of course, nobody, you know, that's ultimately this root, if you can go back to my offering, The Threshold, that was recorded in like, early December of 2019, we focused in that offering on The Emperor, which is all about, you know, where are we rooted? And how do we rise from that root? And the Fours that all have to do with four crucial root systems that allow us to have a sense of homing, so that when we come out into the world, when we make these changes, step up, step out, we're doing so from a place of, again, real. We've ground underneath us, right?
Nobody's doing anything wrong. This isn't an invitation to look out at your neighbor, or to look out at someone else and go, “Ugh. What they're saying doesn't matter. They're not rooted.” Not at all. People are communicating profoundly, and have been doing so for decades, with no root under them. We've been capable of doing things with no root under us. It's not about things not being like everything is worthy, even if there's not necessarily a strong root system under it.
But the point of this month is to show us how much further we could go, how much further our message could reach, how much transformation we could be capable of, evolution, accountability, if we were rooted in our truth. And it requires a reckoning. It requires this kind of inner activation and the rhythm of internal work that then gets redirected externally.
And again, you know, I was saying this before, I cannot overemphasize how important it is this month not to attempt to do your external work before your internal work.
[0:09:11]
We are feeling Mars retrograde right now. As of the recording of this, Mars has entered its shadow, and we're all experiencing as a result of that a temptation to make all of these external moves. There's a lot of pressure for many of us, feeling like we should be doing something.
Now, obviously, we're living in a time where especially like, really, for all of us, there's there's stuff to do. (Lindsay Laughs) Like, there are things to do. I'm not suggesting that there's a, again, like a luxurious sense of like, “Oh, I can't take responsibility for this. I can't step out in this uncomfortable space. I have to do my internal work.” It's larger pieces, collectively. We're talking about collective.
Personally, we may be called to do this. I mean, I know for myself with the work that I've been doing and the kind of process I've been in for July — because it's been a major month for that in many ways — it's like diving under the pool, collecting a shell, coming back out, putting it on the beach, diving in collecting a shell... It's not like this huge swath of time. We're just learning not to spend all the time on the shore, and learning how to feel into this rhythm of really going down and in and reflecting.
And in some cases, yeah, it's not going to be a rushed process. It won't necessarily be as fast as we want it to be. But that's the point, is that if we actually want change, evolution, revolution to be lasting across the board, it requires us to drop into the processes within ourselves, that unless we're willing to acknowledge them we’ll just continue to perpetuate old patterning. And this is across the board, again. Like, this is the continuation of our planet, the continuation of the human race, like, with climate change, this is racism. This is across the board, everything, period.
[0:11:18]
So, with that Mars retrograde, we may be really tempted to feel like we need to kind of do all the things immediately. So when we get a “yes” to something it's important to also understand that — I mean this quite seriously — things are changing minute by minute right now. I am not in any way kidding you when I say I have had five full course downloads come in: dates, titles, details. They're gone, because humanity keeps changing. This isn't a problem. Things are, they're going, they're coming, they're going, they're coming.
That's why internal work is so important right now, because the external keeps changing based on the amount of huge, internal transformation that's happening. Like, it's so rapid scale. That's why it's really powerful to begin to input that rhythm and to not be afraid of it. You know?
So allowing yourself also to connect with your heart. That rush, that hurry, that expectation that, you know, that feeling like someone's entitled to my immediate external answer, change, or response. Not even response, like an email, but response, like whatever. Any example will do just fine with that, you know. We always feel like this pressure, even, you know, something like not doing a podcast for a month. Like, you know, I work through those feelings all the time, like, “Oh, people expect it.”
Ultimately, I'm not being — a) I don't necessarily know if that's true — and b) I'm not doing you any favors by meeting you in an expectation that you have if I get a no. So that's the deal, right? That's the deal. It's the work.
[0:13:17]
With that willingness to uncouple from — really, that's rooted in white supremacy and capitalism — that sense of rushing, needing to be performative, it allows us to actually connect more with our heart and our feelings, which is part of the reckoning, part of the acknowledgement of the wounding, the trauma, the fear. We've been holding it, many of us. It's not like we're tossing it away, but we don't need to make decisions from that place anymore. Right?
And if we feel like we have to, that's part of the part of the honoring process, right? So making space for grief, for a process, I keep hearing from my Guides. I literally cannot overemphasize the importance of that, especially with where we're going this month. The kind of energy that's going to come up, the intensity, the pressure, the invitations, that we cannot skip the internal process step, or any work that's done will ultimately collapse in on itself and won't be lasting. So trusting that knowing that comes with the process, we cannot cannot rush it.
And pay attention, right? This is always a reflection. By the way, everything I'm saying is just an invitation. You don't have to take it, or, you know, you're welcome to release it, if doesn't align with you always, but what comes up for you when you hear that? “I can't do that. It's selfish.” I promise you that if you’re feeling that now, you were feeling that a year ago, two years ago, three years ago, it's a much deeper wound than just right now. It's getting kicked up right now because the planet is demanding that we make lasting changes for the good of all people, for the good of marginalized folks, for BIPOC, for our environment, for ourselves, for our children. And if we can't honestly reflect in on ourselves, it's just not going to last. So it's really it's really important thing.
[0:15:38]
In August we move, we transition, right, we travel through Leo and Virgo. We, in that way, are traveling from the Sun to The Hermit.
So The Sun is so many things and also not so many things. It’s a funny way to put it, but it's so deceptively simple. And it's just so much more than what I think most of us believe it to be. It's certainly not a card of joy, which I think is the lazy way of describing this card, with all due respect, I think it's fine if you feel like it is. From a teacher's perspective, I think it's a little lazy because no Tarot card can ultimately rest on a feeling state. Because we're omitting those who may pull The Sun card and feel completely miserable, and they're just as valid. You shouldn't feel any way other than you do. So that's one thing.
The second piece with Leo energy and The Sun card is also rooted in this incredibly important piece about seeing. Leos are about being seen. They're about shining their light. They show us what it is to be available to be seen. They show us what it is to see.
I know so many Leo's who are just the most brilliant photographers, brilliant artists. They see, they have visions. They become activated by being seen, by being seen with a loving gaze, by seeing others with a loving gaze. It's amazing to be in the gaze of a Leo person, you know. So that gets extended to us.
Where are we uncomfortable with being seen? That extends to where are we uncomfortable with showing up imperfectly. Where are we uncomfortable showing up, you know, because we're afraid. You know, what does that say about our spaces? Do we want to create our own spaces? Do we want to ask to be seen more?
There's so much power in Sun work, you know, because for some people it's really, it's a reckoning of, “I'm afraid to be seen. For all of these reasons, I'm afraid to be objectified, I'm afraid to be hurt, I'm afraid to be misunderstood.” And for some of us, we are so good at seeing others, but we have a really hard time accepting the way other people see us. And for some of us, it's the opposite, where it's very hard for us to see others, but we kind of have this feeling of like, “I need to be seen. I need. I need. I need.”
So this is a rebirth around shining our own light and being willing to have the light of others shine on us. And that's that real, strong, beautiful piece of my Leo season, even though, you know, it's been very powerful to reflect on the medicine of the Tarot cards through the Wheel of the Year in this pandemic. Obviously, not everybody has the means, the ability, the privilege to be sheltering in place at home, or to be in quarantine, many of us, many folks have to, or are choosing to, go out — hopefully always with a mask on.
But this piece about, we're learning new things about the cards, because we're not as socially present in a way. So we're doing a lot more self-reflection with these cards.
[0:19:27]
And I think there's always been this sense with Leo that like, oh, yeah, it's the summertime. It's like going out, being dramatic, being fun. But what we experience here on the Northern Hemisphere, we have to consider in the Southern Hemisphere, we're going through the exact opposite.
So for the folks in the Southern Hemisphere, this is their cold time. What does it like to be in Leo season when we're not… the sun isn't shining, it's not warm out? You know, it will bring us into a place of like, where's that inner warmth? Where's that inner light? Where do we deny, block, have resistance to other people shining their light on us or other people shining, period? So there's this deep stuff.
I really believe Leo is a profoundly, internally-directed energy, believe it or not, even though I know everyone would disagree with me, of course. Like, you know, we need only to look like all the famous Leos to see how incredible it is, you know, when they turn their light on us, or when they shine and show up in the artistic space. I mean, it's an obvious given. But I would make the argument that that's only possible if the internal work is really rooted.
And then we do all that work and move into Hermit, which is a space and an energy that says “Can you pause, and can you read reconnect with your relationship to divine timing, your relationship to why you do the things you do?” Really, that no escape experience, going a little slower.
It's a really powerful transition to make. And I think when we do this beautiful Sun work, this rebirth, our willingness to be seen as we are, not as we wish to be, not as we think we should be, as we are today, if we are willing to show up with that, it can help us to journey deeper in The Hermit. So that's the power that's what's possible this month, you know.
[0:21:45]
A card for the month ahead, we have two this month, is King of Pentacles and The Hierophant.
So, the Hierophant is a card that has been really misunderstood, I think misinterpreted, and that misinterpretation has really just kind of traveled down through generations. And, really, the crux of this card has been reflected to us as a teacher, an authority figure, somebody who's a wise person and knower.
And I, you know, this is a community, autonomist-spaced space. So, I'm sharing with you my experience with the Hermit and my thoughts on it. But it's also not perhaps presumptuous to say that it's a misunderstanding. But I also believe that when we're basing any Tarot card on an external feature, we've kind of lost the way of it. They can't ultimately be based too much in, like, you know, other people. They can and they can't, right.
Hierophant work is really, really, really intense. It is really intense. It's a sacred birthright. I think, you know, ultimately, it's necessary when the Hierophant calls on us we go. Hierophant work is a journey of deeply questioning what we were taught, what we believe, and why we continue to believe it when we have not investigated it.
Who or what do you worship? Really reflect on that: what do you worship? What do you devote your time and energy to? Is it something that you really believe in? Or were you told to believe in? Do you think you should believe it? Have you brought any kind of reflection or critical thought to it? What and why do you believe what you do?
Beliefs feel so true that we often don't even believe — haha — that we can question them. They're not the truth, necessarily, right? A lot of our inherited beliefs, a lot of our stories, not in any way true for us, but feels so true because we were immersed and marinated in them. So I ask again: what and why do you believe in what you do? What kind of leader do you desire to be?
[0:24:42]
We are all leaders, whether you are showing up in your house of one, whether you are showing up for your community, whether you are showing up for your house, whether you are showing up for the members of your family, for your audience of thousands, you are a leader. So what kind of leader do you desire to be? How do you want to lead your people? And how can you be a leader without necessarily subscribing to the hierarchy of being on top, higher, further than anyone else in your home, anyone else in your space, or in your community?
So, these two cards, King of Pentacles and The Hierophant, are working together. And we are — my Guides literally showed me — like hands plunging into ancient dirt, like, burial dirt, ancestral dirt. We are being invited to look, to unpack, more intensely, more closely, more unflinchingly than maybe we ever have, the root systems of our beliefs, of our power, who we give it to, how we take power and how we can free ourselves of this, how we can step into higher autonomy, deeper trust in self.
The Hierophant, historically, a Hierophant is somebody who is said to be able to interpret the most sacred texts, lost languages, channelers. There's a lot of stuff that comes with that right? Being the only person in the room who can “understand something.” Human beings are not perfect. It doesn't matter how well-intentioned, how… You know, we all have the capacity to cause harm. We have the capacity to be wrong.
Intuition is a completely unexamined science, utterly. And we can only have a sense of feeling and invitation. But we, as the receiver, this card is so much about someone who offers, someone who receives. And for a very long time — because, unfortunately, like a lot of modern day Tarot — is really quite rooted in patriarchal structures and capitalism and so forth. There's been a real attachment to this story of like, well, Hierophant is a teacher who we look to. And that's not true.
Not everybody has someone that they look to — although I do believe we all have places that we devote our worshipful gaze at, and it can be really valuable to look at why and our process with all that. Very often we can, you know, have this feeling of like, “Oh my God, I've made this person my everything, and now they’re dead to me.”
And that, too, is the pendulum swinging the other way. Of course, it's perfectly okay to clear someone out of our lives if they've been harmful, but it's in the middle. It's in the middle. It's an honoring of the real discomfort that growth sees, the hard stuff that comes up around “I gave this person my power,” if we went that far with it, right? “I gave my power over to this belief system. I never questioned it.” God damn. I’ve been there. I think we all have.
This isn't a — so many people end up in situations where they're really taken and they're manipulated — this isn't a victim blame. This is for anybody, for anybody, victim or otherwise, somebody who just sort of they’re waking up to something. They’re like, “Holy shit.” This is all of us. That's the wound that deserves to be tended to. So that’s the more integral, I believe, evolutionary experience of Hierophant. You are the Hierophant. So am I.
[0:28:59]
We all have a sense of balancing these two big, wild, wiley channels. The brain, that is very often not in alignment with the truth with a capital T, we get thoughts all the time that have nothing to do with anything that we want to do, that we intend to do, that even belong to us. Thoughts are not necessarily true. That's fine. We don't need to ever show the brain or a part of ourselves an unkindness, but it's your ego. It's not you. It's of your experience, but it isn't who you are. Thoughts are not necessarily true.
And then we have our channel that is completely spiralic, rooted to the truth, but the truth is, life is constantly changing. And so you may be thinking, “Well then what the hell do I hold on to?” And that's the point: we're not holding on to anything anymore. We're in the void. We only know what we know when we know it. Being flexible, not attaching to being perfect, not trying to make other people perfect, not trying to give away all of our discomfort with the void, with the unknown, by saying, “Oh my God, this person has it figured out let me like, just get rid of all my shit and put it on them.”
It's never gonna work.
The Hierophant is about personal autonomy, integrity, willingness to trust our inner knowing, while with humility, acknowledging that we have human filters, and we make mistakes. We only know what we know, when we know it, right? It's a big thing.
And as it relates to belief systems, beliefs, again, feel so true. And anytime we have a tendency to say, “I'm so uncomfortable stepping up and trusting myself. This person looks like they got it all figured out. This community seems like they're where I want to be. So I'll just put everything into them,” you know, we've all been there, right?
And it's very painful to reclaim that when inevitably that community or that person lets us down because nobody can ever be anything to anyone. Sometimes we have the highest possible desires for that community or that person and they, you know, again, it doesn't match.
[0:31:34]
So, we're clearing up this piece and taking back some of what we've given away. Processing, grieving, feeling the pain of “I didn't trust myself to be in my power. I didn't trust myself that I could be as connected as this person. It's a reclaiming and a reckoning, but it's not an easy one, but it's ultimately crucial, as we go into this time.
We are really moving into a time — I've been talking about it for a while — where the degratification of this world… I cannot tell you this, you know, how often in my courses, I would say every day I remind them, we're in this together. My students, we're in this together. I am teaching you, but this is a, you know, there's a natural power structure here because I honor that. And this is about your knowing.
I can't tell you how many people will, in spite of that, just defer back to me, like, “What do you think? Well, you know, how could you know whatever it is?” This is... it's a huge undoing. They're not doing anything wrong, and I'm not doing anything wrong. I don't think in that area, and some people are not as sensitive to that. But it's a crucially important thing to look at where we defer out, not because we're unwilling to hear what other people say, because we don't want to sit in the discomfort and the unknown of our own liminal spaces. Like it's human nature to want answers.
The Hierophant it's also about affecting people, what we say if we're not really rooted, right? We talked about rooting. It's going to have an effect. And this is not about perfection. And we all have the capacity to say things that cause harm, and sometimes that harm is very great. Sometimes it's not, we can learn from that, recenter.
I feel like my work, my work, as it stands right now, has been informed from that. It's a natural process we learn over time. Whoa, I thought that that was a great thing to do. Now, I'm realizing not so great.
We know that there are other people who cause harm, and they refuse to look at it. And that's somebody who's not doing their Hierophant work, period.
So Hierophant, it's touching on both areas. It's saying, “Can you trust in that soul channel? Can you trust that you have everything you need?” It's not that we can't have teachers, people that we look to, but it must come back to us first, has to at the end of the day or last or whatever, and it swings to the other side.
[0:34:47]
You know, very often we can have that experience, that feeling of feeling like, “I heard this on my channel. It can't be wrong.”
When we get that reflection from other people if we’re called in or somebody says, “Hey, you know, I’d just like to reflect this to you.” And we realize, like, “Whoa, my human filter has been a little clogged in this area, and it's affected the way I've been hearing things in my channel.”
It's about the acknowledgement of causality cause and effect. The Hierophant is the first card in the Major Arcana — in the Smith-Rider-Waite, anyway — that has more than one person on it. It has to do with we're talking, that what we're saying has an effect. If we're listening, it has an effect. So we must do our work on both ends, as the receiver and as the channel. As the channeler, being humble, acknowledging that we have human filters. We're not pure channel. Like that's our job. That's ultimately what we come to the planet to explore as souls. We come to have a human experience as souls. That means working through traumas, brain chemistry, like all kinds. You can't separate it. It's impossible.
And as the receiver being able to really, really unpack this, and say, “Yeah, they can say that. It's not for me. I'm going to walk away, divest whatever. And I'm, maybe in this particular instance, why did I come into this in the first place?” Like it can go, it can have any kind of range of depth, you know, as long as we're willing to work on it.
[0:36:33]
But ultimately, at the end, the Hierophant belongs to all of us. It has to do with being a humble, soul-centered teacher, and we are all teachers. We all lead. We all affect somebody, someone. And we all are looking because of our wounds because of our pain because of our losses, looking to be in like mind, looking to be in joyful community. Looking for that, you know, how can we build that together and take away that hierarchy, right where one person sees and hears all?
And, you know, it's very valuable to me — as a teacher who does have my own really, I think, a unique take on Tarot — to have other people, you know, say, “Hey, this hit me here. This landed for me here.” Sometimes it lands for them, and I really check in about it. I think like, I think that's for them. I'm not getting that I need to adjust this in any way. And most of the time, when people express to me, “This landed with me,” it’s very valuable to me. They don't need to be wrong, and I don't need to be wrong. It's not about being wrong. It's about really reflecting, rooting when it's necessary, shifting when it isn't, or shifting when it's necessary.
So the Hierophant, again, teaches us this effect that we love each other, right? This power to invite, be the invitation. It also shows us the power that we have, too, you know, this harm piece. And if we're blindly following, giving our power away, if we're not internally questioning that, what we're worshiping, who we're following, why we're following them, why we repeat and do the things we do, we're not ultimately going to evolve. And we must evolve. It’s evolve or die time, period. Quite literally.
So for some, this Hierophant work is going to be happening in the midst of huge downloads, big stuff coming through, very public. Again, this is not about like retreating away. It may be a month where you're very, very present. We can't discount the internal work that's necessary and important right now.
So others this is happening in a space of, of really deep not retreat, but more listening, less active, more receptive. And there is no problem with either. The only problem is when we push or feel like we shouldn't be doing one or the other, right?
So we're being invited to honor ourselves as holy teachers with reverence and humility, learning how to shift the way we regard teachers and leaders on a very large scale, living our lives as an invitation.
[0:39:48]
How do you live? How do you show up? What do you put forward? That's where King of Pentacles comes in. And in a way without naming it, King of Pentacles is really what's possible with what we put out into the world, just naturally, how we walk, how we talk, how we engage with our community, with our family, with our friends, in our writing, in our words, like whatever it is.
When we do this Hierophant work, King of Pentacles is somebody whose beliefs, whose earthly presence is completely rooted in their truth. They're not pretending, they're not trying to be something that they're not, they're not confused. They are rooted in what they do. They're open, they're soft, they're receptive, they're flexible, they're not defensive.
King of Pentacles is what's possible to bring into the world once we've done this Hierophant work, and like we talked about before at the beginning of this Monthly Medicine, we're doing a kind of like internal, external, internal, external. It's not one or the other. And these two cards coming up together show us that.
Hierophant is very internal. It's more about the reflection actually than it is about the channeling, I would say. And King of Pentacles is what happens when we take that, and we infuse it, we put it out into the world.
So this is about shifting our rhythms of life, you know, really unpacking, reckoning, refusing, considering, letting grief, letting anger, letting all kinds of feelings come up, and then translating it into King of Pentacles, living a life in pursuit of alignment.
Alignment doesn't mean on the top of the mountain, super perfect, never variating, never. It means like in the world, climbing that mountain, trying our best, resting when we're told, going when we're told, like not making anything about a “should” an “ought-to”, right/wrong, good/bad, right? So we're honoring divine timing. We're exploring and unpacking biases and in our human filters. This is our job.
[0:42:13]
This is also the beginning of the work that we're going to do in 2021. Laying the seeds before we do the threshold for 2021 in December, we're getting ready to enter a Hierophant Five year. I just really want to let that land with everybody (Lindsay Laughs). Like it is… nothing in that is coming to play around. So we get to start this. It’s good. We do this work to be free. We do this work to recreate. We’re birthing right now, as a planet. Like it's, there's no escaping it. So we may as well lean in.
So we're gonna be asked to do this work every single day next year. We might as well. It's time to take this concept of leader, teacher, guru goodbye, but like, time to… there's no more pedestals. And if we're operating from that sense, we have a job to consistently remind our students and those who learn from us, we're on equal playing fields here. We are, and you're just as empowered as I am, you know, to really becoming our own teachers, and to question why we do this in the first place.
For most of us, it's because, again, we feel lost, and we're terrified to trust ourselves. That is part of what we're healing. So this month, pay attention to your own patterning, with beliefs, with authority, with worshiping people you place on pedestals and not questioning what you've learned, not letting your teachers be human beings, you know, inviting them into accountability when appropriate, like inviting ourselves into accountability. Like all of those things are necessary, important pieces. Internal, first, external following. And I think it includes questioning and embodying this kind of leadership being the invitation paying attention to our pattern.
So because the Hierophant is a Major Arcana energy, that is a part of what… Majors we surrender to them. There's a lot of Majors in this reading. So, and King of Pentacles is very rooted in leadership. So there's there again, is the sense of allowing things to come up, allowing things to move forward. It's a a very big thing. I mean, this is such a huge thing for all of us. It's super tender and intense, and it's okay, right.
[0:44:55]
The card that’s showing up as our teacher this month is Judgement.
And you know, of course it is, you know, this is total Judgement time. Judgement/Tower time. And this isn't new. We spoke about this last month of June, but we are awakening. We're excavating right now collectively, personally, across the board. The blindfolds are off, our heads are out of the sand. Some of us are completely freaking out and attempting to rebury our head or put that blindfold back on, but it's just not working.
Now that we are awake to what is, and if we're past the point of resistance to that, how are we responding? How do we direct this response, this awakening, this noticing, this work, into all of the veins almost of the body of our lives? You know, what are we seeing about our inner mechanisms? Why do we do the things we do? What are the deepest parts of the root systems of our being that we are being called to pay attention to? What pain patterns do you have still operating, that are part of the why that you're there?
Compassion. Can you have compassion for yourself as you awaken to your own pain, as you awaken to the why of your intimacy issues of your, you know, hero worship, of your fear of being seen? What's the medicine in that? We develop a fear of being seen often because we're in situations where we're afraid to be seen, for some of us where it felt dangerous to be seen.
For some of us — and this is a big piece of what's coming up right now, very related to Judgement card, ruled by Pluto — this is also huge past life stuff. This is a strong time for old lifetime ones to be coming up. And it's no joke. And some of us may feel like, “I can't be seen right now. I can't be seen.” And that may be that it's something that we experienced a long time ago. It might be 100% true for this lifetime.
That's a part of the undoing work of Judgement. The Judgement is the ultimate reckoning. In Judgement, we really know on all levels, all cylinders, what we've been preparing to know the whole journey of the Majors. This is the reckoning, you know.
And in August, this has been happening, but like, we can think about it like the flesh, getting stripped from our bones, going literally down to the skeletal structure. Everything is being laid bare. This is Pluto work. Nothing gets hidden. Everything gets excavated in Pluto (Lindsay Laughs).
And now that we see those bones, we can rebuild that body, that home. We can regrow flesh, in a completely new way, because everything is rebirthing. We are a part of that.
[0:48:27]
Judgement as a teacher says, “You don't need to be afraid of this process. You can also develop strong ways of showing up in deep care for yourself while this work happens. You don't need to apologize or provide any kind of explanation to anyone.”
If your Judgement work is coming up hard, like intense, like hitting you in these really, really tough or tender places. You do what you got to do to stay with that process. Nobody needs to approve of that for you. So yeah, it’s about, again, meeting ourselves where we need to be rather than where we feel we should have to be. But it's the seeing, the kind of clarity that's going to — so for every person, this is going to be different. Every person, what it can tell you is, if something arises this month for you, that feels really big, really intense, even if it doesn't feel intense to other people, it's going to most likely trigger off multiple, multiple layers of unraveling so that you can go down to these bones, so that you can go as far as you need to go to understand why you're being, what you're being awakened to see as you are.
What is Judgement helping us to learn? Ten of Cups.
Ultimately, we, as human beings, are very scared of the good stuff. We don't like to be excited. Excitement feels very similar to fear once we start feeling optimistic then our nervous system kicks in and goes, “Well, we could lose it all right.” And we're not — it's hilarious because we're not getting out of here alive. Like, we're going to die. You will lose it all! (Lindsay Laughs) Like so will I! We will lose it all. That's the point. Okay, is how do we show up knowing that, not trying to cheat it or brush away from it?
We're terrified of joy. And you know, I've spoken about this before. I think there's a real difference between joy and happiness. And happiness to me, and again, like, I don't know, you can disagree. What the hell do I know? But I feel like happiness is it's a feeling state that really comes in and out. It's not… I find that happiness is very fleeting and ultimately very dependent on specific factors.
Joy is the radical willingness to be with what lights us up, in spite of, and in fact, while including the realities of life. It's dying of laughter with our close kin while the world falls around us. It's making a meal and bringing it to our neighbor. It's having a socially distanced, you know, get together with people that we cherish and love. It's really appreciating the sound of the birds in our New York City apartment. Like whatever that is, right? Joy is what shows up. It's the rainbows that show up in the midst of life being life. And I find joy to be so much more of an available experience. But to actually lean in and take it is radical.
[0:52:16]
And with Judgement as our teacher, teaching us how to be deeper and teaching us essentially, how to embody and fold in Ten of Cups medicine more fully and deeply, what it's essentially doing is saying, “The more you can awaken to the parts, pieces, things that you're being invited to open your eyes to, the big changes, the big reckonings, the big reviews, your eyes being open and, really, Pluto sparing none of us even like a corner of what might be hidden, it's all going to come up and out this month as in our personal lives. Not publicly, but we're having this kind of inner excavation, right? That will affect our external life.
If we are excavating untrue beliefs, inherited stuff, old traumas, pain, pain patterns that have never matched our truth, and if we are courageous enough to unearth that, to say thank you, to acknowledge where those things came from, to begin to invite in support and help, to help groove new neural pathways, we will make more space for expansion. We will make more space for joy.
The joy is a crucially important piece of all of this big, heavy excavation work anyway. We're not supposed to be doing this shit 24 hours a day. And I mean that across the board, I mean, some work is a 24 hour job, and it's this, and it's not to say that we can't… It's not a sense of like, “Oh my god, I need a break.” It’s the sense of like, we're doing some big work, and, you know, can we send completely hilarious GIFs back and forth to our best friend? We're having a really, you know, we're in the midst of huge work, things are coming up, or we're in the middle of a call, a class, an equity audit. Again, crucial work. You know, maybe when we open the window, the breeze hits us just right, and reminds us of another time or makes us feel a sense of homing and safety in the midst of everything that's getting shaken up.
That's Ten of Cups. It's the available present, moment to moment beauty, the joy that's right here, the joy that's radical, that allows us to refill our cups, so we're capable of keeping pace with what this time is asking of us.
[0:55:06]
And it's helping us to learn that we don't have to be so afraid of joy. We don't need to be so afraid of excitement. We can get excited. Because, again, we're not getting out of this alive, you know?
So what is in front of you? Where is your present joy of available beauty? How do we bar access to those, to any part of that for ourselves to rest, joy, whatever it is? It's really important to ask those questions to dive deeply into those beliefs. Again, it’s Hierophant work, and I think that this card — it's funny. The Ten of Cups has been coming up so much in these Monthly Medicines and on this podcast — and I think that it is connected to us being invited to reel in.
For so long we've looked out into the future, what we hope to get, and you know, for some of us that sustained and kept us alive, if we've been working or or really helping to create better futures for ourselves. But especially right now, what is beautiful here, rather than out there or later? It's really radical and crucial and important, and it's also a lot of people profit off of our perpetual unhappiness, consumption, and seeking of more and more. It's all capitalism. It's all white supremacy.
So it's a radical thing to the leap that we deserve, to expand to have life be full of that sense of joy and possibility in the midst of what's coming up, to rest, to really be open to that joy, to be awake for it. It's radical acceptance of what's here, rather than what we believe we should be doing, or how life should be. It’s, I believe, a real bridge to change in a way that we may not immediately think is important and is.
So ways to practice that is like what's in front of you? Like what's in front of you, that brings you joy, and can that be enough to fill your cup up a little bit?
[0:57:40]
What are we offering up to the fire right now? Temperance.
So what do I mean when I say offer up to the fire? In terms of what are we willingly laying down on this fire, on this funeral pyre, because this is a death time. It's a burning time, a Tower time, where everything that does not match the truth, does not match the direction that we must go as a planet, as a collective it's all being cleared. Everything is being cleared.
So temperance is a card of co-creation and partnership with source. It's a living relationship, where we know when we can't quite handle something, we don't have the answers, we give it up to Spirit and say, “Great, you let me know. And while you let me know, I'm gonna focus and concentrate on clearing and acknowledging all the places where my ego wants to control the way my life goes.”
I can tell you as an intuitive that the work that continues to sow richly, deeply, deeply, deeply spiral out for me is every time I expand, I uncover more places where my ego goes, “Oh, great, you got this download, let me swoop in and da-da-da.”. And I think this is everybody, but that work never stops. Like it's never like we just clear the ego away. Again, it's a part of the work. It's the weaving and the unweaving, and the reweaving.
So we're not burning Temperance, we're being asked to throw everything in the fire that stands in the way of having a Temperance-centered relationship, everything that blocks us from, you know, believing in this divine kind of support and partnership, everything that makes us doubt our innate trust in ourselves, that tries to make us believe we don't have the right to this sacred co-creation, or should, our control issues, the ego mechanisms that, again, try to control the situation. Those are all going into the fire and that's work.
It's work because it's not a logical process. It's not a thought, cerebral process, an experiential process. It's a process where we open ourselves, we listen, we take a step, we realize, oh, okay, like, there was some sticking the finger into the spokes of the bicycle wheel here. It's a feeling.
So it's not like, I mean, probably you could, but you'll have a different effect. In other words, you could think to yourself, “Oh, here are all the ways where I get in the way of intuition.” That's really valuable to kind of let yourself journal about that. Think about that. I highly recommend it. But really, it's doing the inner work, deepening our intuitive connection, so that when those things inevitably come up — and they will, they do, it’s important that they do — the places where there's a kind of a hijacking, so to speak, like a bypassing from the ego, from the brain, we have the ability to say, “Oh, that's what needs to go on the fire.”
[1:01:18]
And often that comes with the experience of contraction, of pain, of frustration, like, whatever the experience is. There is always a sense of, again, intuition is so much about the spiral being of and in the moment, like what comes up for you. That's the rhythm of this death process, the cycling of putting things on the fire. Every time we notice this place where we go, “Well, I have to grab the wheel. I've got to figure it all out.” Temperance basically goes “No, you do not.”
When you get that pulse to go, when you feel that yes, when you sense that click, you'll go. If something's in front of you, you'll go. If it's not, if you're pushing yourself, if you're ought-to-ing yourself, if you're shoulding yourself, you're not in alignment with source. You're in alignment with ego. That's what wants to be changed. Internal work, first, external, you know, into external.
So, when, what is going to rise, shining from those flames is a rebirth of our relationship to our own channel, our own medicine, and our own rhythms. My teacher, Michelle, has always said like, other than committing yourself, ideally, to a life of alignment, the kind of second Golden Rule of being an intuitive — not that there's a rule — but it's divine timing. It’s a relationship. We cannot rush what doesn't want to come. Babies come when they want to come. We can't ultimately rush, right, what will be, what is, and this is a part of what we're learning with this.
And everything, everything again is getting stripped. The only way, ultimately, that the human race can go forward on this planet is by dropping into alignment with our soul selves and our truth. And we don't need to know how to do this. It already lives within you.
If you're thinking like, “Oh, it must be such a luxury to tune in with your soul self.” It's actually the highest opportunity, responsibility. That's when shit gets really real. The ego will tell you, “Be comfortable, be safe, don't rock the boat, get defensive, blame other people.” The soul says, “Shatter your illusions. Be imperfect. Step up shaking, scared, super vulnerable. Speak your truth. Stand up for what's right in spite of what might come down on you if you do it.”
That's all soul work. We have confused ego for soul for forever. So that's all coming down, getting rebuilt. If you can just focus on stating your intention to clear the resistance it will start clearing up.
[1:04:13]
What seeds are we being invited to plant right now? So what are we birthing from this time? The Death card.
How can we accept and welcome the death cycles that are occurring in our lives? This is a Death time. If you have ever wanted to know like, “What's Death card like?” You're in it. This is it. Observe, we are in a time we are never going to go back to where we were. And I, for one, do not want to.
What was, was broken as fuck. Everybody was out of their body. It's not much better now, obviously. We're in the process of huge evolution. Nothing was in alignment. Systems have to come down. But we are grieving. We're grieving, and nobody wants to feel that grief.
And anger, you know, its own worthy and valid experience. It's also a huge component of grief. All of our anger and rage and outrage underneath that is grief. The denial that many people are experiencing right now, also a form of grief. But you'll notice the wild attempt to cling to going back, doing things the same way. It's like holding on to a corpse. Right? It doesn't work anymore. That's Death card.
So the seeds, in terms of what we're planting this month, tending to, honoring and welcoming the fact that we're in a Death cycle, not trying to stop that or stifle it or tell to go away, not turning our back to it, honoring and letting go of the things in our lives that died a long time ago that are dying. So what are those shells? What are those corpses that we're holding on to, kind of pretending like they still work, or that they’re still alive, trying to breathe life into them? We don’t have to do that anymore because within that — and I mean this with everything: relationships, jobs, opportunities, things like this.
And by the way, you know, I'll share from my own personal experience, I'm undoing everything I'm talking to you about right. Like I feel this. I'm living it right now in ways that are still in process. So I'm not keeping anything from this community, but everything in my life is on the fire right now: this podcast, my course, my Instagram, my work, my husband, my — like, we're fine, my partner and I — but like every single relationship, obligation, everything is on the fire right now.
[1:07:14]
I don't mean on the fire like there's all this shit coming up, and things are popping off. I mean I'm placing it on the fire because I don't want to walk around doing anything because I feel like I have to anymore. I am available for my work to come back to me if it wants to, but I can feel deep, Death energy from a lot of what I'm doing, stuff that worked a while ago, and it's so clear that it's not even the thing that's dead, but it's been how I've been doing the thing. So thinking about that, it's been impossible not to go into some of the most intensely confronting inner work of my life. You know, like looking at my own patterns of codependency, my own, like all of those things.
It's impossible not to do Death work without looking at why you clung on to the thing in the first place. And whether you're actually stepping up to the fire or not, you're in this with me, because this is every person on the planet. What changes profoundly is if you can come up to the fire and lay those things on it yourself and work with Spirit. This is where the Temperance-Death partnership just blooms open so powerfully, so beautifully. It's like Temperance can bloom open. They're, you know, working together when we're willing to clear.
So in this beautifully inverted way, we're allowing everything that keeps us from this connection with our own inner wisdom to die, so that we can step into a deeper co-creative relationship to letting things go when they're ready to go.
[1:09:18]
The reason that ego plays such a big part in Death card work is because we don't want to let things go that are dead. Like this is across the board. We don't want to, you know. If I… Like, you better believe when I sit in meditation about, you know, a different incarnation that this podcast might want to take, for example. It's not me deciding. I'm sitting in the discomfort of the not knowing of it, and allowing this podcast to tell me what it wants to be. And that's the same exact thing with my marriage with my teacher, with everything, everything.
This is the point of this time, everything is on the fire. We don't need to be afraid of that. If we're not, we're in some denial, right now about what's going on here.
So that only means that if something wants to come back to us, that it can bloom open in a form that we've never seen before. But if you don't think that there's some huge ego kickback from that, you're wrong. So that's the work. We're planting seeds to have more resilience, more ability to stand in the discomfort of this. We're working to be in divine acceptance of the Death cycles of life, in the letting go nature of things. It's a very powerful thing to bring our attention to, right.
[1:10:52]
So speaking of that, our last card here, what we're being invited to devote our attention to this month is Six of Cups. So with all of that intensity, this is what that means: devoting our attention means essentially fixing our gaze on something. So it's all of these massive energies, and this is a majority, Major Arcana reading which means this energy is coming at us like a wave. Our job is to figure out how to surf it, how to surrender to it, how to respond to it. We're not making Death energy happen. It's here. We're not making Temperance happen. It's here, same with, you know, Hierophant, same with Judgement, right? We're choosing Ten of Cups, choosing King of Pentacles, and we're choosing Six of Cups.
It's very powerful to envision this. Like imagine yourself in a tornado of Hierophant — or in an ocean, rather, of Hierophant of Judgement of Temperance, of Death, and you're floating on these waves and letting the current take you here and there. And the moon in this ocean that you're gazing at, the fixed point, is Six of Cups.
The fixed point in this month for us, if we can train our gaze on it, come home to it, our north star, is heart work. It's intimacy work. This is not an excuse to self-flagellate, this time. This is not an excuse to drop into guilt, shame. We can feel those feelings, but ultimately, they're not motivators. They really stopped the process.
Can we open our hearts to ourselves? Can we be compassionate? Can we open our hearts to one another? Can we be tender? Can we be kind? And that's not the tone… like I believe if we are coming in fierce, angry like that's a beautiful thing there's not a desire to in any way suggest that that needs to be mitigated. The fierceness is welcome. This is about internal work with ourselves and when appropriate, when — because I think anger can be really kind actually — it can be a powerful extension of our desires and our feelings. And I think the more comfortable we can get with that, the better it'll be for everybody.
But can we offer that medicine to ourselves? We're being asked to really foster a deep willingness to expand our capacity for intimacy, “Into me, see.” This goes back to The Sun card. Can you let people see you, into you see? Can you see into others, seeing one another in a full spectrum way?
[1:13:55]
This is, you know, it's in many ways relational medicine, this card being there for one another, exchanging, helping, and loving. A definite part of shifting out of this perfect/worship-centered space. We're taking responsibility for ourselves and our care, willing to be imperfect people, willing to step down off pedestals, willing to really be on the journey with everybody else, willing to do our own work as well as be present for others who are willing to do their work. So Six of Cups is about allowing ourselves to feel feelings, but opening that heart, opening.
At the end of the day, this time in history, from an energetic perspective, is a heart opening time. It tracks with really everything that's happening. It doesn't mean that it's not horrible. That's the point is that we've been really shut down to our hearts for forever. And now we're being invited into a new way.
So there's so much to take here. I invite you to just really let this medicine sink in, listen to it again, if you like, really just let it be there for you in a potent way. Consider what matches for you, consider what doesn't, go further, and let it land because it's big.
Thank you so much for listening to this, Wild Souls, for being present. This may be another month with just the monthly medicine episode where I'm excited to share some of the new stuff that's happening with the business, and I think we've got some really exciting, kind of behind the scenes, pretty potent changes going on right now, which I'll definitely share more about once they're ready to be shared. But my focus is there. If I get a yes to do podcasts, I'll do them. And if not, if I don't get a yes, I'll really trust that that's what's supposed to be, but you may not hear from me until early September. And if that's the case, I really trust that that's the time we're meant to connect to one another again. And, yeah, I'm really excited to share a little bit more about what's going on. It's pretty potent.
Loving all of you, holding huge space, cherishing you, bowing to you, my fellow travelers on this profoundly intense time, this huge journey of awakening. And until we meet again, please take care of yourselves.
[Conclusion]
[1:17:00]
Thank you so much for listening to Tarot for the Wild Soul.
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. It helps people find us and it is greatly greatly appreciated.
Thank you so much for being here.
[1:17:44]