138. Reversals, Part 2: Coming Home to Presence
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This week, we are reflecting on the moments when a reversed card can represent a call to come back home to ourselves, to return to presence and tend to a fear, belief, or painful story that may be coming up around the card we've pulled.
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About the Episode
Happy New Moon, Wild Souls! Today on TFTWS podcast, we are diving into part two of our three part series on Reversals.
This week, we are reflecting on the moments when a reversed card can represent a call to come back home to ourselves, to return to presence and tend to a fear, belief, or painful story that may be coming up around the card we've pulled.
Together, we will look at how we can begin to skillfully work with Reversals that fall into this category, looking to The Fool, Two of Cups, Ace of Swords, The Sun, and Queen of Wands 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: body and ancestral trauma
The content in this episode contains references to body and ancestral trauma. 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)
[0:00:12]
Hello, Wild Souls, and welcome back to Tarot for the Wild Soul podcast. I'm your host, Lindsay Mack, and, as always, it is such a joy and an honor and a delight to be gathering with all of you in this virtual space. I am wishing everybody listening to this very happy New Moon.
I'm also, like, sending energetic care packages (Lindsay Laughs), like, to everybody. This has been such an intense week energetically. I mean, let's face it: The world is on fire right now, and in some ways, that's great, because there are a lot of systems that really need to come down that have been broken for a long time. And it's also horrible because so many people are suffering, and it is such a challenging time to be in a body on this planet.
And the power of a New Moon in such a time like this is, really, just quite a profound thing to meditate on, to think about, you know. What does it feel like to plant seeds of intentional growth of new life in this new cycle, that are not just in our highest and best, but are also in the highest and best of the planet and all living things?
It's so powerful to consider the energy of Libra during this really important time, which of course, is Justice, and because the Justice card is ruled by the astrological sign of Libra, and also the Empress because the Empress is ruled by Venus, which is Libra’s ruling planet.
So we're dealing right now in this particular cycle with the themes of receptivity. And I mean, gosh, Justice is just embedded in everything we're doing right now. We're opening our eyes in really impactful, ideally, very profound, very powerful ways to really acknowledge what's not working, what's not in alignment, and what, really, is the full scope, a 360 degree view, both of what we like, what we don't like, what we need, what we don't need, what we desire, what we desire less of, to really see everything? Not for what we wish it would be, or could be, or to not be in the story that we should be somewhere different than we are, but how do we really see the reality of what's happening right now in our lives, both intimately and individually, and collectively and planetarily.
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Because ultimately, what Justice teaches us, and we've spoken about this so many times, is when we are really available and courageous enough to see what is happening, are we then available to make true change? Are we then available to really step forward in a way that is just, is really rooted in divine, equitable, impactful justice, transformation, change. And it's work we do every day, there's no kind of end point to Justice work.
And the Empress is such a profound help in the midst of all that intense work. Where do we receive pleasure? Where do we fill our cup up? Like, right now is not really the time. Like, I feel like it's hard to come by full cups these days. You know, in general, we can be incredibly aware and very grateful for the blessings we do have. That is, ideally, what we're tethered to every day. But again, times are really intense. They're really big, in multiple ways, many ways, and hard and scary. And energetically, the invitations into despair, exhaustion, sleeplessness have like never been higher.
How do we connect with Empress medicine in the midst of that? That says, in spite of life, being what it is in whatever moment it arises, how can we be open and available to expand our capacity of receiving, of support, of care, of abundance of expansion? Not out in, like, an inaccessible way or a way that doesn't feel reachable to us, and we don't need to feel good to do it. It's just a question of like, you know, can I really just be the most compassionate?
You know, taking a deep breath, if we've been holding our breath for a long time, that's huge receiving. Allowing ourselves to be held by the chair or sitting on or by the bed we're laying on, that's huge receiving, and you're doing a great job. And it's just like, the need to… it's really an evolve or die time.
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So how can we hold all that we are in the spectrum of where we are, while opening our eyes and being aware of how we can meet the call of these intense times with greater receptivity to what fills our cup up? So certainly not simple, but definitely something I am inviting — I’m being invited to meditate on in my personal life, and I'm really considering, really, in all facets of the collective right now, as well as my own path as an individual and very strong time to plant seeds in that direction.
I mean, to be able to plant seeds in the direction of: may I always find a tether to some kind of pleasure, joy, refill, in the midst of what this time is asking me, not so that everything is always overflowing and balanced. It's fairly unrealistic to imagine that that would be, but it's a pretty profound thing to set down and intention for.
So here we are, in Part Two of our three-part journey through the medicine of reversals in the way that I teach them, which is to view them as medicine and as kind of an alternative, energetic resource to the actual right side up energy of the card. I love doing this series, it's great. Today we're going to focus on when reversals are an invitation to come back home, so to speak, to come into presence, our response to a call within us that's asking us to come a little closer to a part of us that might need or desire, a little bit more support and caretaking and tending.
I will say, before I kind of launch into this: I apologize from the bottom of my heart, there is no transcription for this today. There will be one hopefully very soon. Even by the time you're listening to this, even on Friday, there might already be one. But as of the recording of this, I'm doing it on, like, Thursday afternoon. So the likelihood, I should say, it is likely that there is no transcription for this right now, but there should be one up within 24 to 48 hours of this going up.
And thank you for your patience. It has been a wild week, of course creation, live call for the course, filming a video, virtual workshop for the Modern Witches Confluence — which I'm teaching a workshop on Spiralic Intuition if you're interested in that. That's happening in a couple weeks. So actually, I think, just two weeks. Yeah. And the workload has been insane. So I'm sorry, I didn't get the chance to record this a little further out, but I promise you, you'll have a transcript as soon as possible. And thank you, as always, for your patience and flexibility with me. It is appreciated more than I could ever say.
[0:08:59]
So this idea of, this idea about reversals being an invitation to come back home, to draw further into presence, I believe, that's what most of them are rooted in. Sometimes, of course, they can alert us to the presence of resistance, and really, all of the reversals in the Tarot are largely centered around this idea, because, even in resistance, even like what we talked about last week, like reflecting on when a reversal indicates some resistance, even then, that's the work we're still doing. We're still coming home. We're still getting curious. We're still drawing ourselves into presence. And this is how the Tarot is always, it is inherently, always bringing medicine, always benevolent, always for our good, always, always, always, especially reversals.
And in fact, I think, you know, the general view on reversals is really quite the opposite of what I'm talking about. That they're often looked at as kind of these indicators that tell us like, “Oh, no, watch out,” when I think that there are particular energies that can offer us a heads up, but I don't necessarily know if, as a rule, reversals always do that. Sometimes they can do that, but not quite in the same emergent energy that the mind can often project as being important. And, you know, if it's important, we'll know with like a flashing light and some major energetic blasting, you know. Whereas that can sometimes happen with guides, but it's different, again, than when it happens with the ego and the mind.
Really, the beating heart, I think, of the Tarot, in general — and especially reversals — is that, typically, when we get a card reversed, there is some part of us that is a little scared of the energy that's coming up. It doesn't mean that they're scared of the card. It may be that there's a fear around some aspect of the energy embedded in the card or situation in our lives. And when we're willing to look at that with a lot of care, a lot of compassion, just a sweet, tender ear to ourselves, it can really provide us a) with so much more information about how, really, everything we're looking for in any given moment lives within us. Two, it can help us to really show up as compassionate in our caretakers for ourselves, I think a practice of which is so important and rooted in personal responsibility, self-tending, being autonomous, really feeling into the strength of our own root system, which is something we do over time with practice. And thirdly, it really gives us a context for the idea that all of these cards are bringing something benevolent.
If you get The Fool reversed, we're going to talk about that. The standard definition of Fool reversed is, “This is a warning sign: Don't take this leap.” And I mean, who am I to say that you're wrong? Who am I to say that that's wrong? I don't want to be that person.
It's not wrong. It's just not necessarily true, which I think, is a really important distinction to make. There's nothing wrong with saying that, technically, except for the fact that you could be inviting a client into hypervigilance and fear in a moment when it's not reflective of anything in their experience. You could be allowing their ego, or your own, to get in the driver's seat.
[0:13:34]
So when we take a leap in The Fool, we're essentially leaving behind the ground that the mind tells us is, essentially, an illusion, right? That we're on something solid. And as though things don't happen constantly in this life of totally spiralic change, we can really tell ourselves like “I'm safe, I'm secure.” I don't want to say we're not safe or not secure, but this time has really taught us like the illusion of security, as it pertains to you do everything right, everything right should happen, is not true. Sometimes really, really bad and hard things happen to good people. The truth is, we never know what's going to happen in life. There's no guarantees ever.
We can establish a deep inner resource within ourself. The Fool invites us to create, to leap away from the grounding, from the root systems that don't ultimately serve us, that don't actually match, that were formed on a sense of egoic safety. Remember, the mind really wants us in stuff that's familiar, that's safe, that secure, and I'm all about safety and security. Like, make it a priority. But when we ignore the soul, because we say, “Well, I can't do that, you know, because of XYZ,” it's always really wise to check in about that. Sometimes that's true, that this isn't the right moment to do it. Sometimes it's a question of waiting a couple hours. Sometimes it's like, “I just am a no to this period,” and that's our own business and our own choice.
But the leap that we take in The Fool is about committing ourselves to saying yes to our souls. It's about committing ourselves to saying, “I'm willing to leave behind the belief systems that my ego is the best and most reliable narrator for my life; that I do things because they give me a sense of false security. They give me a sense of like, how…” you know, whatever it is.
And when we take that leap, we’re essentially committing ourselves to a life in the void, which life is. All we have is this moment. The best we can do is the best we can do. We're always evolving, always changing, always moving, further and further out into the spiral. And The Fool just helps us to move away, slowly, but surely, to ever kind of getting too comfortable. so that the mind, again, winds up kind of stepping into the driver's seat.
[0:16:33]
It's very powerful when we step into The Fool because we're taking a leap into soul evolution and growth and choosing ourselves. But when we get the Fool reversed, that doesn't mean “Don't jump. It's dangerous.” What it does mean is that our egoic story, the story of the mind, might be rooted in that.
We may have a fear that we can't go into that realm. We can't choose our soul, we can't connect to this part of ourselves, we can't take this leap. What if this happens? What if I lose this? What if I lose this relationship? It may be that our little kids, our inner kids who come forward and have a lot to say, whether we're listening to them or not, are really fucking scared. And by the way, The Fool is never relegated to anything external. It doesn't ever mean you have to, like, quit your job or take a leap into this or that. Like, literally sometimes can.
It's more of a choice. It's more of a willingness to say, “In this moment, I choose truth. I choose me. I know that I'm expanding in some way. The Fools letting me know that if I've I've gotten too comfortable, if something new wants to be born forth in me, I'm willing to take that leap. I'm willing to commit to that.”
And again, the brain wants what's comfortable, what's safe, what's familiar. It’s not about that shit. It does not like it!
[0:18:16]
So why is The Fool reversed a nice place to start? Because that is, unfortunately, that treatment of The Fool reversed as being a card that indicates like, “Oh, no, this is a huge stop sign,” it's essentially amplifying the voice of the fear-based mind and saying, “Oh, that's right. That's right,” when that's not true, necessarily, and we're wise to check in about it.
What is typically true is that we want to jump. Some part of us wants to jump. We want to take that leap, but we're scared. It might be that the people around us who have not ever taken their Fool leaps, their Fool jumps are like, “Pfft. Good luck.” you know. Welcome to my life (Lindsay Laughs). Like, it's happened to me so many times. If people have not gone through their Fool experience, they can very easily project onto us, very easily.
The Fool reversed is an invitation not to delay our jump or to turn our back on the jump or say, “Oh, no, I jumped in. That was the wrong thing to do.” — like “jump”. It's an invitation to draw into ourselves very deeply, to tuck into the heart, to kind of almost, like, pick up the heart like a baby bird in our hands and talk to ourselves and say, “Sweetheart, Love, what do you feel scared of? Where's the fear? What's the story?” And it might be, “I'm so afraid I’ll lose everything.” And you can say, “Okay, I see that. I know, it's super scary. We could lose everything anyway. We will, because we're eventually going to die. Perfect. I'm holding you in that.”
It could be a part of you might feel like you're going to — you know, a lot of “what ifs” can come up. “What if this? What if that?” Can you be so tender in the face of those. It's essentially sitting down with yourself on the edge of that proverbial cliff and having a chat, and really giving yourself some sweet space and time to just be like, “Yeah, this is what's coming up for me. Like, this is the contraction that's coming up around this particular leap into the void and into the unknown.”
[0:20:53]
I mean, I am doing so much work on this right now in one area of my life, where, you know, my teacher, Michelle illuminated this to me so beautifully the other day, because my brain was just coming in with so many fears, so many horrible scenarios, about this or that. And she so wisely illuminated to me, she said, “You know, I don't know that you're afraid of all these things, or that there is necessarily fear. There's just a lot of unknowns, and the brain is responding to those out of fear, because it doesn't like what it doesn't know.” And so it can tend to make, you know, the mind can make kind of a little bit of a… they can feel a little threatened by that, or it can feel like a huge threat. In fact, really, the more expansive the leap, the more threatening the mind tends to view it as.
So it's almost like we're working backward here. We can tend to feel like, “Oh, something's really right,” we're going to feel that sense of “Yes!” and rush, and that's, truly, not often the way that these experiences can be. Very often the experience that we can have of these big, expansive, Fool leaps is that we are very scared. And when The Fool comes up reversed. It's just… it's literally like getting waved down by a guide, and just coming into some conference with the guide, the guide being like, “Hey, like, this is a yes to leap. But there is a part of you that's feeling really scared, and is really not sure about this.”
Can you locate where this lives in you? Can you locate the brain story, the egoic story, the contraction? Can you locate maybe something that doesn't even feel related to you? Like what's coming up around this thing that's actually about that?” And then just literally, U-turn, and, you know, “Oh, thank you so much.” And then U-turn in conference with yourself, and just say, “Hey, hey love, like, I'm right here, let's talk.”
That's how we work with The Fool reverse, because when we do that, energetically speaking, we may not see proof of this in our readings, but the reversal writes itself in that moment. And that's also another thing I haven't really spoken about, but that does happen.
I've given readings before for people where they'll get a card reversed, maybe like the first or second position of the reading. And by the time we're at the end, the reversals already righted itself, because whatever was discussed, the person has already integrated. They've already allowed the medicine that's come through — through their guides, through my reading, whatever, through their own processor, or work or reflection related to that — that they've already flipped the reversal the other direction. That's not always what — we're not looking to do that. That's not failing, if we don't, but it can happen. And it can be really powerful when it does.
So I invite you to consider like, what might it be like to consider that you're never going to get, as my teacher, Michelle, would say, “punked”. Like, if you get The Fool, you're not going to get punked by getting Fool reversed.
[0:24:20]
What might be coming up around that could be a whole range of things. It could be that we're ready to leave, and it's just that time. It could be that we're trying to get out of something, and we don't quite know how. It doesn't mean that we're blocked, it just typically means that we're scared.
And you know, how can we tend to that? How can we acknowledge and begin to really integrate — in a very tender, radically accepting way — that we're never necessarily going to be that comfortable with unknowns. So when it comes to The Fool, how can we greet the reversal as, like, this beautiful bell of reminding and reflection, of the opportunity for us to hold ourselves, that we can do it hand in hand, you know?
Very often, like, I know, for myself, I mean, my childhood experiences were really like being dragged into a lot of shit that I didn't want to do and never really having a parent present who could hold the space for my fears, who could let me be afraid, who could let me take my time. A lot of us didn't have that. So we have a chance to reparent ourselves with this card.
Now, of course, The Fool reverse can come up around, again, resistance. It can come up around completions. Like it can come up around all kinds of different things, but it is one of the stronger cards that can present itself as an opportunity to kind of — in the rush of the rapids of a Major Arcana card— can present itself as like this sweet, strong, big boulder to kind of tuck up with ourselves on and have a conversation before moving further down the river.
[0:26:03]
Another card that can show up — and these are just five cards that presented themselves as potential good anchors and examples, but really, you could do it with any of them. Another card for this example of reversal being an invitation back home is Two of Cups.
So the Cups suit is not about romance. We want to be always very sensitive to the fact that that's a pretty reductive way of looking at the Cups suit. If something in a particular suit or an aspect of the Tarot is not inclusive of everybody, then it really doesn't include anybody. It's really wise to get more… to just utilize our critical thinking around that. Not everybody dates, not everybody's interested, not everybody's in the season of their life to be available to that. So the Cups being about romance is just, again, like, really oversimplifying a very rich, beautiful suit. It really is an invitation to love ourselves. It's deep heart work, and it's powerful. And sometimes other people play into it, sometimes they don't.
But really, at the root and the heart, the soul of Two of Cups, it's an invitation to open our arms and deeply embrace, or at least acknowledge, the parts of us that feel really hard to love. And we've all got ‘em. And we're not, I'm not, I am not personally about — because I think it's not really very helpful — this idea that even if we don't like or appreciate, or if we have issues or triggers around, aspects of ourselves, personality, body, whatever, that we have to like, pretend like we love them (Lindsay Laughs), that we can start with, perhaps, just acknowledgement.
“I see that this part of my body is here.” Maybe witnessing, maybe appreciation - “I'm grateful for my legs for,” you know, for some folks, “getting me from place to place,” for some folks, “for being there,” you know. “I'm grateful for this aspect of my being. I'm grateful for this part of my personality that can tend to get very, very bossy, even though I have some shame about the way it shows up in certain spaces.” It's amazing in this part of my life,” like just starting to sort of make space for things like that.
[0:28:40]
Two of Cups is sort of a marriage, it's like — not a marriage, that's, again, pretty reductive — but it's like a ceremony with one’s self. By ceremony, I mean, you don't actually have to like sit and do ceremony, but it is very powerful to have a moment where we look at the things that we don't really, we're not really a big fan of, or maybe we believe our life would be easier, better, different if we didn't have them and just bow to those things. Very powerful to be able to say, “Maybe it's not true that I need this particular aspect of myself to change to have this or that.” So it's just making space for very, very deep self, radical, you know, self-acceptance and, potentially, love — if we feel like we can get there, you know.
Two of Cups reversed presents a very strong call to come home for, potentially, a few different reasons — maybe some of which I won't even speak about because maybe how it comes forward to you is totally different from sort of the arbitrary samples I'm getting.
One of which is that some of us don't even know what we don't know. Some of us are so, “Well, this part of me has to change for me to be worthy, lovable, okay.” And sometimes we can get so deep in the belief of that.
The Two of Cups can come up to be like, “Actually, that's not true,” (Lindsay Laughs). You could start with just witnessing, noticing, and then it offers us an opportunity to hold space to our response to that. Sometimes our response to that can be really strong. We can just think like, “No!” you know, “I hate it!” And that's valid. You can really, really not like aspects of myself, and yet today, at this moment, it's here.
So how can we honor and acknowledge that? What does that look like? Is there grief there? Is there rage there? That's a part of the caretaking, too, that can bring us into some really, really strong, really powerful, really powerful places.
And from there, you know, it can also be that we really want to do this, and we just don't know how. We just don't know how. And then we might want to do a little bit of a deep dive. Maybe we want to create our own Tarot spread to help us through that, using Two of Cups as an anchor. Like, how can I open to this? What card would be useful? What card would help me? What could I bring more of into my life? What doesn't match, doesn't suit me anymore?
[0:31:38]
The other way that this often comes up for me — that's sort of connected to the first two examples — is that, again, sometimes I can just get so far down the rabbit hole of believing that something is really wrong with me. And I think we all have that really shared, common wounding that so many teachers, so many people, reflect on. It’s like, really, one of the deepest core wounds we have is like the fear or the belief that there's something wrong with us. And it can really spiral us into spaces where we try to change, into spaces where we try to improve.
And change and improvement is great! It sometimes doesn't have the completely desired effect if we're doing it out of a place of believing that we're broken.
So sometimes Two of Cups is an opportunity to awaken to the pain of a certain part of us that we're not comfortable with including in the whole of our being. Sometimes — I know for myself, this card reversed has offered me the opportunity to make deep amends to certain parts of myself for really, like, making them a problem, when they're just kind of trying to do their best. And actually, from there, I find that the spaciousness for potential evolution, growth, or change is, really, more possible after that kind of acceptance.
It can awaken us to when we're just kind of on autopilot, just almost like in a trance, not even thinking about our ability or our capacity to connect, or to even make contact with, these parts of us. So it can provide us with just, again, like an alarm clock, an awakening; to be able to say like, “Hey, you've really been going down the road with believing that you would be better off without this, this part of you is keeping you from this.”
And Two of Cups is really a big anchor around, “If you can begin by really deeply accepting where you are and who you are right now, it's really hard to do. But if you can begin with even acknowledgement, it can create so much more wholeness, so much more integration. That if we — and we will, we're always changing, and it's beautiful to want to change and beautiful to want to evolve, and absolutely acceptable that we can have parts of ourselves that we're just not that big of a fan of. It's in the how that we do it that this card invites us into, just some greater integrity and specificity around.
So this can draw us into some big spaces and I think pretty traditionally this card means, like reversed, like a breakup, and it just kind of couldn't be further from the truth. It's actually letting us know, like, there are parts of us that are crying out. They want to be folded into the whole. They want to be embraced. They want to be loved. They want to be seen in their hard stuff and their flaws.
And it’s you wanting to be seen. And it's not easy, but it can draw us into some very, very powerful places. It can really be quite an awakening, in some pretty big ways.
[0:35:17]
And this next card that we're looking at for this idea is Ace of Swords. So if you've done one of my courses, you'll likely be anticipating my example here.
So Ace of Swords, is so many things. Aces are, you know, again, so powerful and so strange and, like, such a unique and specific energy in the Tarot and kind of hard to understand, even though they seem very clear. It can be hard to embody them. And essentially, kind of the cheat sheet explanation to Aces is that we learn what it is to be in co-creation with divine through them. We get an offering from Spirit in the form of this soul element, but it's up to us to actually take it and integrate it and do something with it. And that's really where the whole suit, the journey of the suit, winds up kind of lighting up. So that can be really, really powerful.
So with Ace of Swords, we're talking about having the experience of working with the mind at its highest potential and capacity. This doesn't mean that we don't have busy, noisy thoughts, or ego tantrums or brain chemistry, it doesn't mean that. It means that we can illuminate the experience and also make room for inspiration, for brilliant thinking, for amazing creation. Like there's so much that can come through us in this way that is so powerful.
And when we kind of, like, take that proverbial sword, we have the capacity, the ability to speak, to communicate, to write, to allow and channel all of this beautiful air energy through us. And sometimes, Ace of Swords can speak to a brilliant idea, like a genius idea, or a brilliant idea we've had expanding in that idea. So maybe we had an idea for something for a little while, and then all of a sudden, we pull Ace of Swords, do-do-do-do-do, we're going about our day. And then all of a sudden, like we have a million downloads for that idea, and everything kind of clarifies and becomes even more illuminated than it was before. So that's what's possible.
Now if that doesn't happen, that doesn't mean you did Ace of Swords incorrectly. It's just one of the ways that it can come up. So really, it means just the most potent form of the mental, kind of air-centered energies moving through us in a way that is really just can be very, very, very powerful.
Now, when this card is reversed, let's say that your big idea in Ace of Swords is that you want to open up and start a pickle factory. You have a passion, you have a desire. It's just like a yes for you. This would probably have been… this was a better example pre-COVID, but let's say you want to start an online business, you know, whatever it is, or a pre-COVID pickle factory.
When you get an Ace of Swords reversed, that doesn't mean don't do it. It means call in assistance, support, and help to allow you to further support your idea. If you don't know the first thing about running a factory, you're definitely going to want people in there to help you. If you don't know the first thing about paying people in an equitable way, maybe becoming a B Corporation in your pickle factory, if that's possible. Like if that's a desire that you have, calling in the right people to help you do that.
[0:39:19]
To really open, it's very typical that the mind and the ego want us to kind of do everything like by ourselves kind of in a vacuum. And Ace of Swords reversed says, “Draw in the support you need to make your vision a reality.” And to do that, we often have to draw in really close to ourselves because we can be confronted when this card comes up with feelings of failure and frustration and, like, the ideas not coming together we feel overwhelmed.
So very often what can be super useful about this card reversed is just taking it as an opportunity to be like, “Oh, I'm trying to take all of this on. I don't know the first thing about this or that. I don't know, for my online business, how to set up this or that. And I feel super overwhelmed. Like it's just kind of not coming together. Okay. Can I make a list?” That's also very sword-like, to do writing, kind of delineation organization. “Can I make a list? Can I illuminate, kind of, all the steps that are sort of jumbled in my mind? Some that might be step 90, 91, 92? Some that might be steps, 2, 3, 4, whatever it is. Can I allow those things to be there, and maybe even once they're written out, reorder them? And is it possible to reach out for more support? Is it possible to not do this, necessarily, all by myself?”
It would probably be impossible for us to do certain things all by ourselves. How can we move out of the echo chamber of the mind and of the places where we can get down on ourselves really easily and just think, “Oh, I can't do it,” and move into a space that can be so rich and so powerful, where we actually help to reparent ourselves around problem solving?
We don't need to do it all by ourselves, and especially if we're feeling like, “Oh, I'm failing. I can't get it right. I don't know what to do. This isn't working.” Maybe it's just a question of being open to a little bit more support and tenderness and care in the form of external folks.
[0:41:34]
I can't tell you how many times I've had that experience where I've tried to, like, take it all on. And then there's a moment that arises that I think, “The fuck am I doing? Like, there are people who this is, like, their job. This is their passion, their brilliance. And I'm..” You know, sometimes we don't have those choices, right? We got to empower ourselves to like scrap it, or teach ourselves, or do what we got to do.
But a lot of the time Ace of Swords can come in and can say, “Can you really be with yourself, and can you be with the parts of you that feel like you have to do everything by yourself, or that feels like you need to do it all immediately?”
And if there are any areas that feel like you're getting stuck or caught, is it just possible to invite in a little bit more support to help to assist you through that?
And from there, that will bring you home to yourself, because it allows us to pivot what can feel like frustration, failure, giving up, to a space of constructive problem solving. And if we're having some really hard feels about failing, it can allow us to really tend to ourselves in those moments, which is, you know, incredibly valuable.
[0:42:44]
Another example is The Sun. So The Sun comes after we've moved through The Moon card. And typically, it's not a card of joy, but The Sun is so many things.
It's cultivating the ability within us to be seen in our brilliance. It is cultivating within us the opportunity or the ability to see others in their brilliance. It's a kind of a gentle rebirth of the self and kind of a time when answers that were previously unclear to us can become illuminated, can become clear. It's literally like the sun dawning after a very long night. And the moon is that night, typically, and is a time where we're kind of meant to rest in the unknown and be kind of okay with that.
When The Sun comes up, it's sort of beginning our work with the last three cards of the Major Arcana. We sort of awaken. We're willing to see and be seen. We're kind of rebirthed. Answers begin to become clear in The Sun.
Then the blindfold really comes off to Justice — or in Judgement, rather, which is the card that comes after The Sun, where we really start to see beyond our own experience. what generationally systemically, collectively, are we just totally waking up from, in terms of, you know, illusion or delusion or old story or whatever. What are we being awakened to?
And then The Fool — oh geez (Lindsay Laughs) — The World allows us to kind of close that cycle to learn those lessons and leap into something new with the wisdom we've gained.
[0:44:33]
So it's important to recognize the importance of Sun reversed, partially because of what comes before The Sun. So we move through all of line two of the Majors, which is no joke. It's very intense. It's a big cocoon, underworld line. It's very uncomfortable. We finally burst out of it in Death and totally rebirth in Temperance, and then all of a sudden we're into line three, and we're in The Devil, and then we’re in The Tower, and then we're in The Star, and then we're in The Moon. This is like, it's work. It's major, major soul work, huge.
So by the time we get to The Sun, there's a sense of, there's a breath here, there's a moment here. There's some light, there's some space, there's some answers, there's some clarity. There's a moment to kind of, like, connect to that joy in the midst of this. Like, how do you know how do we do that, right without decoupling from our work.
So when we get The Sun reversed, very often, it indicates that there's a part of us that's like, “I don't trust this. I do not trust this, I do not trust that. I am out of all of these line three cards, I feel really uncomfortable, hypervigilant, kind of scared. I have, like, I'm in shock. I don't want to come out of like, my Moon cave because I'm frightened. I don't want to do that, you know.”
We can have also feelings like, “It hasn't been safe for me to be seen my whole life, Why all of a sudden am I being invited to step up and shine and share my work? Why now?” You know, we can see someone else and think, “Oh my god, I can't believe I did that. That was so vulnerable of me, I shouldn't have been such a reflector of this person's beauty, whatever it is.”
So that is a huge moment, to like, crawl into that little moon cave, and sit with yourself, and talk to yourself and tell yourself you understand, tell yourself you know how hard it's been, that it has been super scary, but that The Sun does set and it rises again every day. But it's not going anywhere right now; that it's safe to come out, it's safe to enjoy it even for a few minutes, and then if you want to go back in, that's okay.
But just being so, so patient, soft, gentle with yourself, illuminating the places where there may be very clear invitations into joy and to delight into, you know, whatever. And we're just like, “I'm not, I don't even know what this is. Like, I don't even know what this is.”
[0:47:50]
The sun card can be hard for folks who've had really hard lives, actually. Even like understanding it, it can just be really hard to wrap our minds around. So we just want to be really respectful of that. And that's something that we can do with this card, when it comes up reversed. It's something we have an opportunity to do.
And the more we do that work, the more that we become comfortable with excitement because very often, my teacher, Michelle, talks to me about this all the time. Like our inner children are afraid to get their hopes up. We can be afraid to get our hopes up. We don't often know what to do with excitement. It feels very threatening. We don't want to be hurt.
Often, it's one experience of getting excited and then being like, having that dashed that can create so much fear around particular things and, you know, these moments of joy. And it's a powerful opportunity to explore that and to take, potentially, yourself or your inner child by the hand and say, “We don't we don't have to let that stop us from The Sun shining on our face in this moment.”
How could we be more available to that? You know, what, what might help you? How might you feel a little safer? Right.
[0:49:19]
And then the last card that we, in a similar fashion, the last card to just touch upon is Queen of Wands. And I really wanted to talk about this one because I think that it illuminates and offers us the opportunity to do work on an area where we can have some really deep reserves of pain.
You know, Queen of Wands is, it's really the magic maker, the witch of the deck. This kind of cauldron-like energy that can live — that does live— within all of us and is expressed differently within all of us. We tend to have this idea of how Queen of Wands people are, but it's really, like, it's just you. Like, how you are is Queen of Wands when you're in that energy.
But it's an invitation to tether and work with, and rejoice and celebrate in, to touch into our own innate magic, our own intuitive capacity, our own connections with divine, that are our birthright. And when we get this card reversed, it often is an illumination, is a heads-up, that we feel like we don't have access to those places. And it can come up in a million different ways.
Sometimes we can have — I mean, the trauma and the wounding around this is so deep. Some folks feel that disconnection to their blood ancestry, either because they were taken from their ancestral homeland, or because they were adopted, and they don't know where, necessarily, their blood lineage is rooted in. There can be a sense, like we have a separation, that it can be really, really hard to connect to an aspect of what feels like it's our magic and our birthright, because we literally don't, at this moment, have access to the information, and maybe we won't ever.
That can be an opportunity to let yourself feel that pain, this reversal, to remember that whether you know where your ancestors came from — and it's in no way a negation to that incredibly deep wounding and profound injustice — you can talk to them anytime. You can open to them anytime. They're yours. You don't need a gatekeeper. You don't need anything to connect with them to just say hello.
They're waiting for you. They want to connect with you, you know.
[0:51:48]
Sometimes if ancestors don't feel, like, safe, or whatever, we can connect with the energy of our ancestral homeland. If we have a sense of that, we can open to the energy of what is supporting us, that invisible support. It's not meant to necessarily… we're not trying to take anything away. It's just remembering our empowerment, even if we don't have all the information. Even those of us who do have all the information, sometimes don't have access to that.
So remembering that we can just talk to them is really powerful, that we don't need to go through any processes to do that. We can just say hello, you know.
It can also come up like, “I'm not a real intuitive, I can't do this. I'm not magic, I'm not magic enough. I'm not intuitive enough, I'm not “cool” enough, I'm not this enough or that enough.”
I'm not enough/I don't have enough/I can't do, you know, whatever it is, is a huge part of Queen of Wands reversed, and we want to take that part of ourselves by the hand, scoop them up, and talk to them from the viewpoint of your wise, inner self. Intuition is our birthright. Magic is our birthright. Nobody needs to approve of, gatekeep, give us the seal, tell us to go, for us to rejoice and play and practice and just be where we are with our intuition with our “witchcraft” — if that word resonates with you — with our practices, with our magic. We can just be.
And this wound, “This isn't for me, this is for other people,” is part of the witch wound, period. So if you're moving through that, it's proof that you're of this path. And you know, we're all healing this in our own way.
You have everything you need to step into this path. You're on the path.
[0:54:00]
So how can you begin to come home to yourself in those moments, when you don't feel that way? How can you let those feelings be there? Honor those wounds. That's a sad, tough place to be. Those feelings don't need to go away, you know. How it's expressed through you might be really different from the next person.
Maybe there's a desire to really be seen and accepted for some aspect of your intuitive medicine or magic, and today, in the way that you're so desiring, you're not. That deserves to be acknowledged, that pain. It's really, really, really hurtful and painful to not be witnessed. That's really hard. Can you just honor that in yourself, rather than, potentially, getting bitter, resentful? Maybe there's, you know, I could go on and on.
We really just want to show up to what, where the wound is, where the hurt spot is, and offer it our tenderness and our love. That's all we want to do is just love it up. Just love on it, get curious, listen to it, you know, come into spaces of compassion and tenderness. Speak directly to those stories from the mind and the ego in whatever way suits us best, and, you know, maybe affirm like, “No, this isn't my truth,” or, “Yes, this is something that belongs to me.”
When we view reversals and check in on them as an invitation to consider, like, what we're being invited to come back home to, what in the present moment within us is calling out for us, if we are able to come back to that, it can be — I mean, there's no word to ultimately describe it — it can be a rewilding, an expansion, an evolution a transformation, a reparenting, a total movement through a life-death-life cycle, sometimes in a day. It can shift things in a heartbeat, and not necessarily that we “feel different”. But just by doing so, just by witnessing and acknowledging, we've already planted the seed of possibility, of new growth.
And every time a reversal comes up like that, it's a beautiful opportunity. If a reversal comes up to just do a quick check in with yourself: “Oh, is there something I'm being invited to come home to right now? Is there a wound? Is there a belief? Is there a tough spot? Is there, like, overly pressuring myself? You know, what may be coming up around here for me to offer some love to, some tending, some nurturance? And how can I greet that as best as I can today, like right now?”
So hopefully, this helps to further enrich and deepen your practice and your process of befriending reversals. I really invite you to play — yes, play — with this idea. You know, what and how does this make a difference for you, when you consider a reversal? You know, we can check in, “Am I resistant anywhere?” Maybe not. “Am I maybe being invited to come home to something?” Most likely yes.
And that doesn't mean that there's anything wrong, it just means that it's an opportunity to check in with yourself and to go a little deeper. And it's one of the very many ways that reversals show up in such brilliance that we really haven't given them credit for for a really long time. And just by doing that, we open up to a whole world of medicine that's really right in front of us, and all we need to do is consider what it might be offering instead of judging it, or believing that there's something wrong with it.
—
[0:58:05]
Whew, so thank you so much for listening, Wild Souls. I love all of you. Thank you.
Next week, we will complete our three-part journey through reversals. We'll cover the last and final — well, it's not technically the last and final — but it is the final one we'll be covering. A potential category that we can consider reversals in that can really help us to just be open to how they may be coming forth, the medicine they may be bringing.
And then the week after that, we'll have November Monthly Medicine — which is insane that we're in November. I'm loving all of you. Sending my love, New Moon blessings.
Until we meet again please take care of yourselves.
[Conclusion]
(Instrumental exit music)
[0:58:54]
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.
[0:59:40]