137. Reversals, Part One: The Medicine of Resistance
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In honor of the many Retrogrades that we are currently transiting through, we are kicking off a new three part series on TFTWS podcast, all about Reversed Cards!
This series is devoted to touching into the medicine of Reversals, to begin to see them as both beautiful invitations for our growth and profound opportunities for personal reflection. In each of the three weeks, we will explore a different category that a Reversal can fall into, the teachings of which are rooted in Soul Tarot.
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About the Episode
In honor of the many Retrogrades that we are currently transiting through, we are kicking off a new three part series on TFTWS podcast, all about Reversed Cards!
This series is devoted to touching into the medicine of Reversals, to begin to see them as both beautiful invitations for our growth and profound opportunities for personal reflection. In each of the three weeks, we will explore a different category that a Reversal can fall into, the teachings of which are rooted in Soul Tarot.
This week, we are looking to the moments when Reversals can be indicators of our resistance. How can we offer tenderness, compassion, and love to these places? How can we begin to shift from fear to empowerment in these moments? This episode will explore all of this and more, looking to Death, The Magician, Three of Pentacles, Knight of Swords, The Hermit, and The Hanged/Tethered One as Anchors for this work.
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: death, birth
The content in this episode contains references to death and birth. 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]
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(Instrumental intro music)
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Hello Loves. Welcome back to Tarot for the Wild Soul podcast. Such a joy, as always, to be gathered with you in this virtual space.
So, for this month on the podcast, I was inspired, again, with the idea for another three-part series. And this one that we're gonna cover over the course of the month of October is all about reversals. And I don't think I've ever done on the podcast kind of a deep dive into reversals in the way that I teach them, but I think that it'll be really cool (Lindsay Laughs) for those of you who are interested. For those of you who aren't, I guess I'll see you at the next one, you know, I’m not sure. But it feels like a really, like a wonderful time to do this since there are so many planets in retrograde. Mercury Retrograde, or Mercury will station retrograde in Scorpio at the New Moon in Libra on October 13. We've got Mars, Uranus, Neptune, and Chiron all retrograde right now.
Retrogrades bring tremendously important, powerful, beautiful invitations, huge medicine, wonderful information. We don't have to like them. That's always the part of the package. We can not like things and still appreciate what they might be bringing for us, and reversals are very much like that.
Reversals, in my opinion, are pretty misunderstood, actually, and tend to get a kind of an unfair treatment. And so this, the next three podcast episodes will be kind of devoted in this series to touching on, exploring some of the ways in which I teach my students how to approach reversals. Of course, that's not hard and fast. Anyone, be they my student or not, can interpret reversals in any way that they like. But like retrogrades, it is a wonderful thing to consider a reversal in the brilliant, beautiful, medicinal light that it actually offers. And the same goes with seeing retrogrades — even though they can be a huge pain in the ass — can just bring just really beautiful opportunities for self-reflection, for allowing something that's lived under the surface to come up and out, to review. Again, we never have to like it, but we can build and and kind of strengthen and tone the muscles of appreciation, and I think that's a really powerful space to be at during this time.
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I also think that it's a wonderful opportunity to strengthen and, you know, sort of further build the energy of the October Monthly Medicine as well, that is all about completion. And part of the completion process, when we're really, really devoted to clearing something out for good, we have to really kind of leave no stone unturned.
We have to really check out every detail, every area, we have to expect, even, that things that have been long since buried will come up and out. And the more welcoming we are of that, the deeper the process of reflection and review can be, and it can really create the right circumstances to allow for there to be a deep excavation and a final shedding of a skin that we're just not meant to carry anymore.
And reversals hold the same kind of power to them and can really help us, I think, in many ways, in embracing them, reflect on the parts of ourselves, you know. What don't we want to include into the whole? What do we have stories about, you know?
So there's so many things I love talking about reversals, and so we're going to explore this through a three-parter over the next three weeks, and essentially what we're going to do, and this is a real simplification of the lesson that I teach, you know, in my work with my students, but we're gonna look at the ways in which — and this is so loose, like this is the loosest thing on earth - but essentially three categories in which we can consider what a reversal might fall into. And we're going to cover one each week.
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And the first category that we're going to look at this week is when a reversal reflects moments that we’re in resistance, and what that means, what that can show us, what that can teach us. And I invited kind of six cards to volunteer, literally random, to come forward to present themselves as Anchors for exploration in this podcast episode. Like what happens when we pull this card, and we're in resistance? What happens when we pull this card, and we're in resistance? How might we look at ways that we might dive in, recenter, explore that? What might be lying underneath? So we’ll play with that, because being in resistance really isn't a problem. Again, it's just information, you know.
And in Soul Tarot — which is the type of Tarot that I teach, that I developed — there's more than three ways to consider reversal. But the three major ways that my Guides have channeled to me, that really aren't that far out of step with what other people have said, is that reversals largely are an invitation to check in as to whether or not we're in resistance somewhere. That's the first thing we're going to explore: an indication that we are complete with something.
So reversals can actually indicate the end of a cycle, the end of a particular season, or an experience in ways that are really quite lovely and quite profound, and can also represent, in a much larger spectrum, a call to come back home to self. When we're afraid, when we need love, when we need tending, when we need a little bit more presence, when we're needing something from ourselves, reversals can indicate that.
So it's a very far cry from, you know, the kind of blanket or standard idea of reversals that I think many of us over culturally or collectively have, that if you get a card reversed, it means it's bad, that it's a warping, that it's somehow a a ruining of the purity of a card, when, really, nothing could be further from the truth.
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So we're going to kind of unpack, rewild, and provide some, hopefully, fun framework — fun, if you're a Tarot, nerd like me (Lindsay Laughs), some fun frameworks to begin to reconsider your relationship with these magnificent placements.
So for those of you who need me to go, like, all the way to the beginning, what is a reversal? Because I know that some folks are asking that question.
A reversal is a term for when a card — so if you can picture any Tarot card in your mind's eye — comes up in a reading for yourself or with someone else upside down. So a lot of people never ever get reversals based on the way they pull cards or the way they shuffle cards. You may have never pulled one. I've had a couple of students be like, “No, literally, how do you pull a reversal? I can't get a reversal” — just because of the way they happen to be, again, shuffling, ordering from, or pulling from their deck. If you work in a way that just organically, naturally, doesn't present reversals to you, that's in alignment right now. I promise you it'll change. There's nothing permanent or static about the way that Tarot operates itself through us.
So you may somehow just one day begin shuffling totally differently, your deck may get reordered, and like all of a sudden you're pulling reversals. You may choose not to work with them for any reason. It could be that you understand them fully, you have a beautiful relationship with them, but you just don't choose to do it. It could be that you feel intimidated by them.
There is no one right way, no one wrong way, no right or wrong way, period, to approach or think about or intend to work with reversals. And you are, as always, completely and fully honored in your choice as to whether or not you even want to play with them. Some people really don't want to even touch reversals until they're very clear on what a card means. Some people have been, like, fully traumatized by some of the misinformation and some of the more irresponsible interpretations that have been laid out in books or in Guides because some of them are incredibly irresponsible, unfortunately.
And I'm going to say this: that nobody can ever fully and completely define reversals for you. It's impossible because reversals are a shift, are a part — you know, if a Tarot card represents a whole forest, think about the ecosystems, the animals, the insects, think about everything that happens in a forest, in terms of the whole ecosystem. We're talking about a whole community, a whole family, a whole system of life that exists in every single Tarot card.
And we're also talking about different paths, different trails through this forest, different forests are different from one another. Some are very wild, some are much more gentle, some are in between, some change, you know. Sometimes we're in certain forests in a night time of our lives. Sometimes it's daytime. Sometimes we can't see anything. Sometimes we can see it all.
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The reversal of a card is not taking you out of that forest. It's not a malevolent, bad, out of alignment part of the forest. There is no part of the forest that is, ultimately, any less worthy than another. It is — what I like to say — the equivalent of taking the untamed path in the forest, versus the path that's familiar and known. You are going to arrive at the same place whether you pull The Magician right side up or reversed. But you're going to have a different journey from point A to point B.
Reversals are not a separate thing. They're not, again, a warping of the card’s medicine, of the card’s purity. And I hate to use that word, but cards are really pure. There's nothing wrong or bad about any Tarot card. And the reversal doesn't change that. It doesn't turn the card into a wrong thing or a bad thing.
And unfortunately, reversals are very often interpreted — I mean, up until very recently, almost universally — in a pretty negative light. They have been interpreted as a warping of the card's original essence, or a signal that we're in danger or out of balance or, you know, and it goes with this kind of old school idea that the Knights are all handsome men, and that the Kings are like all fathers, when no Tarot card is really ever, ever limited to personhood or even being a person. They're really just all invitations, certainly not relegated to any kind of expression of gender, certainly not to any sex, certainly not to any identity, that we as humans have ultimately kind of created. It's just not the case.
So the way that I teach Two of Pentacles might be really different for you, and thereby, my interpretation of the reversal of the Two of Pentacles might differ from yours, and that is great. If you're interested in what I have to say, you take it in, you consider it, maybe you evolve your toolbox of potential outcomes for the receptivity of that card. And if not, that's cool. Like it's fine, but nobody can ultimately like tell you what a reversal is, we have to discover what they are.
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And that, once again, goes into the core of the way that I teach, of the way that I believe Tarot is, ultimately, longing to be experienced, which is not to go by one person's way of looking at it. It's a tool of the people. It deserves to be really uniquely and autonomously interpreted, and there deserves to be a range of interpretations and blah, blah, blah. You get it. I’m getting up on my soapbox.
But the reversal is such a beautiful opportunity to shift the flavor, the enrichment, the color of a card. It brings in more information, you know. It does flavor the card’s meaning and can often provide us with a richer, more complex essence that can come forward. And something that — just to kind of round out what I was saying before, that each card is a pure, beautiful, wonderful being, and the reversal is not a twisting of that idea.
It doesn't mean that if you get Knight of Cups, right side up, and all of a sudden, you get it reversed, that doesn't mean that in some way, shape, or form, it's a warning. It doesn't mean that if you get High Priestess reversed that it means you're not listening, you're not tuned in. It's just information. And it's up to us to be very open, and very touched in with how we can be available to what that means. And it takes a lot of practice to undo that old way that we've really been conditioned to think that reversals mean we did something wrong. And that's not true. That's something that we're being asked to divest from wholly with the Tarot, whether reversed or right side up.
And please do excuse my voice. I am full in with Heart of Service and recording, like, hours of material per week, and my voice is a little tired (Lindsay Laughs). So please do excuse me, if it sounds a little bit more raspy than usual. Hopefully, it won’t go in and out as this episode unfolds.
[0:17:33]
But yeah, we are taking the unmarked trail versus the marked trail, whenever we get a reversal. They're always bringing medicine. They are always for us. They are not warnings, they are not heads up. They really are not — not in general. I mean, I guess sometimes every once in a while it's a gentle heads up about something, but they're all bringing compassionate witness and inviting, all of them, no matter what reversal we get, are inviting us to drop in a little bit deeper to ourselves.
So really, you can consider a reversal from any place, but these next three episodes are just an opportunity to begin to think about if you're feeling overwhelmed, if reversals have always confused you, if you'd like kind of a foundation to be laid, so that you can begin to consider, bounce off of it, this is the point of offering these three different categories that you may consider a reversal. And it's silly to categorize them in just three. That's not actually how it is, you know. All them are a mixture of the three and even more, but it can be really nice to start from a place of deep-rooted simplicity and then build our way up from there. And you are going to have, eventually, — the more you study, the more you befriend these cards — your own interpretations, your own understanding. And that is exactly how it should be.
But really what we're working right now — and this is the highest devotion of my work on this planet, I would say, with the Tarot — how can we get away from the idea that we're doing something wrong, that a reversal is an is an indication that we are off or bad, someone's wrong, we're wrong, or taking it as an opportunity to, you know, judge ourselves? This is something we want to get really, really curious about.
And it's very interesting how we can project our human stuff onto things like retrogrades and reversals. It’s not like we have to enjoy if we pull, whatever reversed, you know, Death reversed. It's not exactly something we might want to throw a party over, or maybe not. Maybe you want to throw a party over that, because you have a very specific tone, or music, or set of notes on the piano, so to speak, that come through that essence for you. So we're really looking at just these little roots for learning.
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And today, what we're really looking at as resistance. So sometimes reversals, when we pull a card reverse, can be an indication that we are in resistance in some way. And there are some cards that offer just sort of like a classic reversal-resistance indication. The Hermit reversed is one of them.
Usually, when we pull the Hermit reversed, what we're looking at is we are being invited, Hermit-style, to kind of drop into a deep pause, deep space of reflection, and we may not want to do that. We might want to move, we might want to go. Why? Because to the ego and the thinking mind, standing still can make it very uncomfortable. It can make us very uncomfortable to not know what we're doing next. If we feel scared, if we don't know what's going on, if we're nervous, if we feel lost in our life, and we keep trying to kind of distract ourselves, The Hermit will strip all of that away. And when we get it reversed, it typically is a gentle indication that we're fighting that energy. And this is not a problem. It's information. Right?
Another card that comes up is sort of another classic, you know, reversal-resistance indication is the Hanged One or the Tethered One. We don't want to be tethered. You know, we don't want to be in this Neptunian, Piscean space where we're literally moving through a slow preparation for egoic death and soul rebirth. No part of our nervous system, ego, thinking mind wants any part of that. We don't want that. So what do we do? Fight it, we resist it. So you may not even be doing anything. Again, it's not about wrong or bad or not linking up or not working with. It's just information.
If we're in Hanged One reversed or Tethered One reversed, it might be an opportunity to see, you know, am I being invited to have an audience with this archetype, with this invitation? The Hanged One is not pleasant. The experience of it is often very uncomfortable. But when we work with this energy, it can bring up the most extraordinary opportunities for completion, for clearing, for going through the last cycle, Pisces-style, for diving into those really deep waves, allowing old excavations to come up. It essentially tethers us. This card holds us in the pose, so to speak, so that everything that we're holding on to that doesn't match can come up and out. Of course, we would resist that.
[0:23:56]
Resistance is good information. Sometimes resistance is a holy act. We need to resist in order to say, “Fuck no, this is a complete violation of my rights. This is a total violation of justice, of an indication of inequity. Hell, no.” Resistance can be an uprising of truth that can come forward and say, “I am coming forward in resistance to bring about a different outcome, to let you know, I'm not okay with this.”
Whether we're in a situation where the resistance is deeply expansive, it's powerful, it's important, it's a really crucial part of the whole narration. Or we're in really contractive resistance where we are on a path to growth, and the ego is just totally kicking and screaming. It doesn't really ultimately matter because what we need to start with is, if there is a resistance, a lack of willingness coming up in us, that's the first place to start. That's the first place to begin around any card.
Sometimes it's an indication, again, that there's a part of us that says, “No, you know, this has been a part of my life and I choose not to have it be a part of my life anymore. I'm choosing to let my voice be heard around saying no to this.” And sometimes we can really tantrum and kick and scream on our way to something that is far more expansive for us. Why would we do this?
The ego doesn't want us to necessarily be evolving like that. It wants to feel like we're moving in a comfortable, predictable, linear way. It wants a safe in familiarity. It doesn't want us challenging the status quo. It doesn't want us evolving. It doesn't want us to expand. It doesn't know about any of that. That's not familiar. It's not easily categorized.
So when a reversal comes up for us, and we find ourselves in resistance, we want to first begin by deeply bowing to that. We may not feel like we're in the mood to deeply bow to our resistance (Lindsay Laughs), and yet, that is really where it is important to begin. Because no matter what, no matter how we choose to be with that resistance 10, that resistance, nurture it, honor it, gentle it down, or act out of the resistance, no matter where we find ourselves drawn to go from there, what we first want to acknowledge is that this is here. And if it's here, some part of me is afraid. That's what's happening, typically, underneath a reversal that we may pull that indicates resistance.
So we're going to go through a couple of examples that will offer just kind of a random, you know, I mentioned two that were sort of wonderful examples of cards that often come up when we're sort of like, really pushing against the card’s energy. And there's good reason for it, which we explored. There's good reason that the thinking mind, the ego, that level of comfort that the nervous system is always craving says, “Fuck no” (Lindsay Laughs) to this particular card.
And remember, we're covering a couple of different categories, so reversals are not always indications that we're in resistance. But if we are, if we are in resistance to expansion, to evolution, we want to really offer that our full attention and determine why that might be.
[0:28:05]
So one of the places that we can start with is by just looking at what happens if we pull the Death card reversed.
So Death card is number 13. It's ruled by Scorpio. This is the card of the spiral. This is the card of the void. This is the card of profound transformation. You have to die before you can birth again. Death actually initiates the birth cycle; it is not birth first, which is something my teacher Michelle has always said, it's something that I've said, something I just talked about in Heart of Service as well, that it really goes death-birth-rebirth. And that's important, because in order for there to be room to plant new seeds, we have to be willing to clear what doesn't serve.
Death card is not an indication of human loss or of actual death. Some folks really, really feel like it is, and I wholly and completely respect that, that it's not my experience or my truth that it is, but it doesn't make your experience or your truth invalid. That's just why we have different teachers for different things. It is, right, and it also isn't because we move through death cycles all the time. We're constantly dying and birthing and dying again and rebirthing anew, like there's never not that happening.
So, when we pull the Death card, it is about the release and the loss and the clearing of the straight, linear path, and it is really an initiation into this spiral, this 13 essence. It is, you know, there is a lot of power to this card. And it lets us know that if we actually know that, very often relationships in our life, offerings in our life, situations, you know, things that we do or try to do, aspects of our own being, will see, sometimes reach, their highest capacity, and will no longer serve us in the form that they exist in.
And when they're ready to be kind of laid down on the fire, it's up to us to really trust that if they're meant to come back to us, they will, perhaps in the same form, usually in a completely different, more expanded form. But it has to do with surrender, it has to do with letting go of an egoic story of control of, again, linearity.
There are a million reasons why we would be in huge resistance to that idea, if we pulled that reversed. This is a big ego kick and scream energy. We don't want to do this, we don't want to let go of control. We don't want go into the fucking void. We say we do, and then when we're there, we're like, “What the fuck is this? Like, we don't want that. We don't want to be initiated into the great mysteries. We don't.” We do, right? But the nervous system goes, “No, no, no. Like, I just like the idea of this.” Right?
[0:31:32]
So what do we do when Death card comes up reversed? And we know, whether we kind of know what it's “about” or not, we can feel ourselves in a kind of a death cycle internally. What happens when we resist that? What might we need to work through that resistance?
So the first place we want to start is just by honoring, checking in: Is that there for you? You know, just by seeing “Whew, yeah, wow, that is there. I don't want to let go of this. I don't want to let go of the idea of this. I don't want to let this thing go because of what might happen. Because I might be alone. Because it might be a mistake. What if it's a mistake? What if I never, you know, find love again? What if I never create again, what if I never make money again?” Like we can really go to these deep, primal, scared places.
And what we want to do with Death card reversed is — I believe what can be really useful is to — first of all, kind of pick ourselves up, really do some deep heart tending, really honor, bow to, acknowledge the places in the nervous system with our inner child where there's fear, you know. It's very natural to fear the ego, to fear letting go. It's because it's afraid of losing control over you. So it's not so much that you are afraid, it's that the ego is afraid, and we identify with that. We think it's us. And it isn't. It's a part of us. It's an experience that's happening in us. Is it ultimately the truest truth of our being? Sometimes, sometimes not. That's what we want to get really curious about?
Is it absolutely true that we want to stay in the same stuff just for the sake of safety, just for the sake of stability? Sometimes, other times we don't because as soon as we reach that place, of like, “Oh, wow, you know, I'm in a space where everything's kind of clicking and working,” the soul is gonna want to go and expand further. We never stopped radiating outward, expanding more in this life.
So what we can do with that is move into the embodied practice of what it is to be incredibly, potentially, scared, uncomfortable, in the not knowing, and humbly, beautifully, courageously lay what is ready to be laid on the fire, and let that resistance be a part of what goes on the fire, too.
[0:34:48]
Everything that comes up in response to Death card reversed is also part of what's ready to die. “I'm afraid that if I make… I'm afraid that if I let this thing go because it really is not working, but I'm afraid if I let it go, I'm never gonna get anything back to me again.” That's not true. I understand how it feels true, but that belief can really take root, and that's an important thing that may really want to be ready to be cleared. So we can look at that, right.
But ultimately, one of the places to start with Death card is just by honoring how absolutely valid and appropriate it is to be in resistance to that energy, if we are. It's not comfortable for our nervous system. It is not comfortable for our ego. It is actively uncomfortable and activating and potentially even triggering to the ego because it just goes like, “I don't understand what we're doing here. Why would you release this thing? Why would you let go of this measure of control? Why would you shift me away from being in primary control of you?” from the perspective of the ego. And the answer is, because we're coming closer to our soul self, we're engaging a little further into the spiralic path, and it's okay.
So what Death card reversed can potentially teach us is how to hang out with discomfort and still move through the card’s energy. Now, we can either surrender to Death card energy, or we can fight it. And it's much easier to surrender because it's coming no matter what. Like when autumn comes, it's not going to keep a couple of like summer leaves on the tree just because. It's a natural season of time. We all have harvest times in our lives. And the more we can not push through the resistance, not force it away, but let it really be there, and let it be a part of what can get gently laid on the fire, we evolve. We make room for new growth.
[0:37:07]
So let's take The Magician reversed. That's such a nice, that's such a great card to explore reversed because it's ruled by Mercury. We're in a Mercury Retrograde. Mercury will station retrograde in just about a week. So it's a nice piece to look at.
Mercury or The Magician is about being a vessel and a channel for bringing things that are invisible and unseen, bringing them out and through you. Sometimes that can be speaking, channeling, recording a class. Other times it can just be journaling, it can be singing, it can be doing, it can be allowing your body to be a vehicle for expression for something that came through your channel from the invisible realm through you, and just wants to be expressed. It doesn't necessarily need to be filtered. It also — this is very important — is not always meant to be shared with others. Sometimes it's about just speaking it, singing it, painting it. We're not necessarily sharing it.
My beautiful friend and brilliant teacher, Jeff Hinshaw, often speaks about Gemini energy and, by extension, Mercury, as being like they're not there to like necessarily think about what… their job is to kind of let the energy move through. Ideally, they're like, that energy, if we're working with it is checking in: is it in highest and best to share this? Yes or no. But really, what we're doing when we work with Magician energy, with you know, Gemini energy by extension, it has to just come up and out. Whether we're sharing it with anyone, that's remains to be seen, but really letting things come up and out of the body, allowing the body to be this conduit, that's a part of the deal with The Magician.
And all the kind of symbolism in that card really lets us know that in order to let ourselves be that conduit, everything around us, elementally within the body, really needs to be right place, right time to have that happen.
What happens when this card is reversed? So we have some really strong ideas about Mercury Retrogrades, right? Like technological failures, disasters, never sign a contract. With all due respect, I'm not one of those folks who feels that way. I totally recognize that Mercury Retrograde can create snafus and little issues and sometimes huge issues.
It can also provide the opportunity to be in really deep reflection about the ways that we communicate. And sometimes in that reflection, we can get invited into some of our deepest integrity, some of our deepest self-reflections on self, when things are challenging, that it can really show us essentially what we're made of when things are really hard or really intense or really stressful.
When there is a technological difficulty, how do we respond? Do we completely freak out? Do we lash out at the people around us? Do we blame ourselves, or do we just roll with it? When the plane is like two hours late to take off, do we freak, or do we roll with it? You know, so it's an opportunity to really practice that.
[0:40:55]
How The Magician might come up reversed and indicate resistance is if you're waiting for what you share, what you paint, what you journal, what you speak, what you say on your podcast, what you say in your class, or what you say in your webinar, to be perfect, you're going to be waiting forever. So that's the first thing to look at is, are you inadvertently crimping, like creating a blockage, in that flow by being in the story that you need to have right place, right time, need to feel a certain way, be a certain way, wait until a certain date to do something? Because you don't. And I would be, I would really encourage you to look at that.
Sometimes Magician reversed can come up around, are we afraid to speak our truth? In that way, working with this card reversed can be an act of profoundly expansive resistance. “I have a right to be heard. I have a right to speak. Even though it might be really scary. Like if I'm really feeling called to speak about something that is bothering me is on my heart. Can I be courageous enough? Can I call in support? Can I speak in a way that's not in expectation of anything from anyone else, but just simply to be?” It can be really powerful.
And another thing that can happen is if we're trying to force something that's just not ready yet, you know. If we have a human deadline, and Spirit — or our Guides — are just like, “It's not happening today,” can we roll with that? I have to do that all the time with my work, where like I have a due date for this, and for one reason or another it just doesn't want to come until it's ready to. I've had to really learn to just be like, “Okay, like, alright” (Lindsay Laughs). And that's why, even with this podcast, just really naming a couple weeks ago being like, if you hear an episode on Friday, you get an episode. If you don't, you're not going to.
Sometimes we're meant to bring certain things through, and other times when we're pulling, forcing, and, like, tugging at strings, and just it's just torture, that's Magician reversed. And why would we be in resistance there? Typically because we're afraid, right? Typically, because we don't want to disappoint, we don't want to lose out. We have a belief like, “Oh my God, if I can't do it today, I'll never be able to do it.” And that's not true. So that's also about leaning into our own deep care and really, really honoring, aligning ourselves with divine timing, is really the most important thing.
And when Magician comes up reversed, it doesn't mean you're blocked. It could mean that you're creating some, again, like a little knot in the hose there by not allowing the flow to come through you and like letting it be imperfect, just like letting it come off the top of you. Sometimes that's true. That's also really good information, you know, that we have beliefs about needing to be in certain places to perform or to offer something up, and we don't. We don't need to be. That's not required. So again, we can just really look at that and acknowledge in all the directions like all the medicine that this card can bring us the information when it comes up reversed.
[0:44:48]
Three of Pentacles — When we get this card, it is, essentially, a beautiful acknowledgement, a beautiful reminder, we create, we are creating the most aligned, most beautiful, most expansive, equitable world for ourselves and others by doing the work that is ours to do; not by living in shoulds, not by comparing, not by saying, “Well, that person is doing that part”, but honoring the fact that they're probably supposed to. And that the more we grow, the more present we become, the more we don't judge or compare, actually, the more energy and more capacity, more awareness, we have to step up and be more present in the work that we do.
We’re essentially all building the world together, and when we get this card, it's an invitation to really reflect on what our part of that is. It's really just such a beautiful energy in honoring and bowing to other people and the part that they're playing, whether they're doing something that we would do or not, just really acknowledging that.
What happens when we get this card reversed, and it can indicate resistance? It could be that we are not kind of feeling the work that we're doing right now, and we want to do something different. And we might be really scrambling or really spinning our wheels to feel like, “Well, this person is doing that, and I have to figure it out, and I've got to do this, and I've got to do that, in order to get out of this or get out of that,” or whatever it is. I mean, you’ve probably experienced this before.
Sometimes with Three of Pentacles reversed, it can indicate, “You know, what if this isn't enough?” We can get into this place, “What if this isn't enough?”, but really largely, the thing that is so true with our existence, offering our creation, our soul work on this planet, through these vessels and integration with these vessels, our bodies, is that you can't be off your path. You're either exploring one thing, or you're exploring another. You're either investigating one area of life, or you're, you know.
[0:47:17]
We're not always in alignment with what we really came to the planet to do, but if you are present, if you are in your integrity, if you are in what is truly your best at any given moment, whether it is something that deeply fulfills you, or whether that's sort of to come, whether it's something that really feels like the fullest expression of what you're meant to bring to the planet or not — because it can take time to really be in that full expression. There's a lot of Death work that comes along with that. — will things die away and make room for that?
Whether you're there or not, whether you see other people in their work, and think “I'll never get there, I can't get there, or I have to do it exactly like them,” like, whatever your story is, we want to be in the willingness to a) as always, befriend the presence of that resistance. It's painful. There's pain under that. There's fear under that. We want to caretake that first, then move into a space where we are actually in the position to totally and really radically redefine what service even is.
If you are present in your life to yourself, first, that soul service, if you are allowing that to radiate out, if you are responding to where and how you're being asked to be of service today, in this moment, you're exactly where you're meant to be. That's going to change at any moment, at any time.
So we can get really, really stuck into thinking like “I'm not where I'm supposed to be. I'm not living my potential. I don't feel this. I don't, you know, I worry that I'm not where I'm supposed to be,” you know, all that stuff. And we can have real resistance sometimes to what is here, but what is here is the springboard to what may come next. And, really, the more present we are with that, and with our resistance to it, the more information we will have about what wants to be tended to and where we're going. The kind of path that we're currently spiraling and journeying — and what is the word? I want to say exploring… — but um yeah, studying right now.
[0:50:01]
Another energy that we can look at in reversal is Knight of Swords. So if we get Knight of Swords, that card, that archetype, is an invitation. All Knights represent forms and different rhythms of movement. And that one, in general, says, “You can go and do and create capacity for so much more than you think you can. You can fly, you can leap, you can go, go, go.”
It also invites us to look a little differently at what pace means for us. So everyone's pace, everyone's output, everyone's creation, is going to be a little different than other people's. Now, how do we offset that with deep care with deep compassion and tending?
So something that I think is really powerful to consider, because, again, we don't always have to get these cards reversed, period. And then when they come up, they don't necessarily have to be indicators of resistance. Let's just say this one is. So the resistance could be coming up in two different areas, and this might be, you know, and here's some ways to work with that.
One of the places might be, “I don't want to move fast (Lindsay Laughs). I can have resistance. I don't want to move fast. I'm tired. I don't want to do these things. I'm not feeling great about that. That's not my desire. I don't want to do it.” And that's totally valid, but that, when we have a real call into service of some kind, into something, Knight of Swords can often let us know that we're capable of so much more than we believe we are. And it might be that our choice, that can be so radical, is to say, “I'm not available to move at this pace. I'm actually going to slow the fuck down. I'm going to be really clear about what I'm taking on and what I'm not. And I'm going to shift and create far more balance, be really clear about my boundaries, be really clear about what I'm available for and what I'm not.”
That's a huge, huge act of expansive resistance to basically say if we're, like, totally offset, with all of this work that we don't need to do, or if we're taking on too much, and some of it is within our control, we can say, “No, I'm not available for this.” And that can bring up a lot. It can feel like, “Oh no, what if I say no. I let people down,” you know, whatever it is. Saying no and naming a boundary, even if it's just to say, “That's not even what I desire to do with my time,” can be really powerful.
[0:53:02]
And it can also work in the opposite end, where the Knight of Swords reversed can actually be an indication to slow down a little bit, and we can have real resistance to that. Maybe we don't want to drop back into our body and acknowledge how tired we are.
You know, sometimes — I work with Knight of Swords a lot. It’s a very present companion in my life, because this spiralic rhythm of my life and service is that very often there's seasons of real, like, doing nothing, like just working general stuff, and then all of a sudden, bam! I'm doing a course, I'm doing this, I'm doing that. And so I've had to really learn how to rest when it's a rest time, and how to go when it's a go time. And I'm still not super great at it. When it's time to go kind of into the cocoon, I fight. When it's time to come out of the cocoon, I fight. So there's good information in there for me.
And if you're one of those people, or someone who dances around that idea, Knight of Swords reversed as an invitation to slow down and drop back into the body, actually to acknowledge that it's been maybe a really fast, intense season of life, be it a week, a month, a literal season, and now we're kind of organically going into something different. We can have a hard time slowing up and making that shift and that transition, so we can resist it. We cannot want to let that go because we're afraid if it stops, it'll never start back up again.
So how can we be really in our truth and our awareness about that? How can we come back home to ourselves? Essentially say, “Of course it will. You know, this is just a natural rest time before we leap back off the cliff again.”
So really working with this card as a beautiful invitation, I guess, as a reversal, for looking at where we might have resistance to slowing down. Doing our work around that can be really powerful because it can have a huge ripple effect in our lives around how can we, across the board, trust when times are a little bit slower?
We can build that into anywhere. We can build that into the way that we date, the way that we engage with projects and work, the way that we engage with stuff that we eat or drink or, you know, whatever it is. Like how can we trust that if things are slower, or if we are choosing not to engage with a certain person or certain thing that if and when we're ready to go back to it, it will be there in whatever format presents itself to us?
[0:56:10]
So I could keep going, but I'm feeling called to stop here. I think that's really good. It's been six cards, we looked at Hanged One and Hermit, as well as these four. I think that this is, again, like a really wonderful place to start.
And I encourage you, if you're working with reversals, or if this is something that interests you, to maybe do a little field study on your own this week about what and how you work with yourself when you're in resistance? Do you see it as a beautiful piece of information from your inner self? Or do you kind of push through it, you know, maybe ignore it, maybe just given to it without even investigating it?
We just want to go a little deeper and explore, and because it's such a rich, beautiful place — uncomfortable, but beautiful place — to explore, reversals do such a good job at bringing it up to the surface and illuminating all, really, 78 opportunities to work with it in a way that can bring about deep, radical healing and a lot more self-tending.
So thank you so much for listening to this, Wild Souls. I hope that this served you. It’s fun to talk about. Next week I'll be back with a Part Two about a different category that we can explore reversals from, and until that time, and up until that time, please, please take such tender, gentle, sweet care of yourselves. And I will see you next week.
[Conclusion]
(Instrumental exit music)
[0:58:03]
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.
[0:58:46]