141. The Fours: Root, Replenish, and Resource
Jump to:
Listen | Show Notes | Transcript
Today we are diving into some of the most brilliant allies in the Tarot for restoration, rooting, and resourcing: The Fours.
Each of the Fours in the Tarot offer us an invitation to drop into our center and take space to replenish our mind, body, heart, and spirit. These cards are particularly helpful in times of exhaustion, stress, fear, overwhelm, and burnout.
Whenever it feels like the world (or our day) is just too damn much to bear, The Fours are available to us as brilliant Anchors for radical self tending, personal nourishment, and inner resourcing.
Listen
About the Episode
Thanks for joining us for another lesson on the Tarot for the Wild Soul podcast with Lindsay Mack!
In this episode, we are diving into some of the most brilliant allies in the Tarot for restoration, rooting, and resourcing: The Fours.
Each of the Fours in the Tarot offer us an invitation to drop into our center and take space to replenish our mind, body, heart, and spirit. These cards are particularly helpful in times of exhaustion, stress, fear, overwhelm, and burnout.
If you’re wondering how Tarot cards can help in stressful times, Lindsay will show how the Fours nudge us in the most healthful direction at any moment.
In reality, many of us experience moments when support feels elusive. Lindsay Mack describes how Tarot cards like the Fours can help us remember or rediscover our most deeply rooted containers for self-care.
If your mind has been whirling with thoughts like a wicked merry-go-round, there’s a Four card to invite you into a mental break. If you’re identified with having no choice but to overextend your body’s energy and space, there’s a Four card to remind you that’s not true.
When we’re getting so very serious or feeling tense, a Four card in the Tarot might guide you to play a game. When a wonderful new person enters our life just as we’re grieving the departure of someone else, a Four card may fly out of the deck as a reminder to take the time and space we need to digest our situation before moving forward.
The Four of Cups and the Four of Pentacles in the Minor Arcana invite us to allow for the space we need.
We live in a time where we’re encouraged to get as far away from our need to sit with our feelings as possible. Many of us were taught to see rest, quiet time, or solitude as “wasted.” The Four of Cups and the Four of Pentacles remind us we are allowed to take however much time we need to be with a feeling or to enforce a boundary.
The Four of Wands and the Four of Swords disrupt our ego’s desire to produce at all costs by stepping into gentle self-awareness.
We all need to balance the hard work we do with play and levity. When our brains are really loud and inviting us into harmful thought patterns, we can cultivate awareness and create a mental boundary for ourselves to start the process of non-identification with the brain’s stories.
Whenever it feels like the world (or our day) is just too damn much to bear, The Fours are available to us as brilliant Anchors for radical self-tending, personal nourishment, and inner resourcing.
Mentioned in this episode:
Friday the 13th is not unlucky [0:02:04]
Introduction to the Fours [0:10:09]
Four of Swords [0:27:59]
Four of Pentacles [0:37:02]
Four of Cups [0:47:56]
Four of Wands [0:58:44]
Related Episodes
If you enjoy this review of the Fours of the Tarot, we invite you to check out The Eights: Transform and Emerge.
If you’d like more support on your journey of receiving, we invite you to our lesson Radical Receiving with The Empress.
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, trauma, abuse, PTSD
The content in this lesson/episode contains references to death, trauma, abuse, and PTSD. 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)
[0:00:13]
Hello Loves, and welcome back to Tarot for the Wild Soul podcast. I'm your host, Lindsay Mack, and it, as always, is such an honor and a joy to be gathered with you in this virtual space. Happy Friday the 13th.
It's really, really beautiful to be back with all of you after a week off. The week off was not just because things were so uncertain with the election in the United States that it just really felt like letting that liminal energy be liminal. That felt really right. It just didn't feel like a “yes” to do an episode.
And I'm in that really intense integration period after really, really big courses, where I'm just so tired and typically have a lot of body pain, check, a lot of chronic stuff, check. It's just big, big contractions that come after gigantic, gorgeous, beautiful expansions, big, big births, and now I'm in a period of self-care. So for all those reasons, and more, it felt really right to pause last week. And to be honest, I'm still, like, so tired this week, for a million reasons, but it felt like a “yes” to be here today, so I'm really grateful to be.
I love that the last time we met, we were meeting around the Samhain portal, Day of the Dead, Halloween, which is very much a spiral day, very much a day when the veil is quite thin. And I would say that the same is true for Friday the 13th.
13th is most certainly not an unlucky number. It really is the witch’s number. It is... many have turned this number to be almost the number of the spiral. We could also look at it as the number of the wild. It's unknown. It's feared, as most things that are very, very powerful and very, very potent are, and is really connected — especially with those of us who are of the liminal realms, can feel and see and work with Tarot, and feel connected — or even disconnected, but yet tethered — to magic, wanting to be closer to that space. 13 is a pretty powerful number for us. It's just a gigantic smear campaign, kind of, that 13 is “an unlucky number.” It's so powerful.
[0:03:08]
And Friday is Freya’s day. Friday is the day of Venus, the day of love. Venus has everything to do with sort of the classic pieces. And this is so limited for, you know, astrologers could — and should, by the way, that's their profession — but totally blow me out of the water with descriptions about Venus, but you know, right?
What we know about Venus is it’s love, and love can be translated to any way we might want to view it: romantic, platonic, self, all of the above, and in a specific way that only we, you know, specifically feel tethered to beauty, what fills our days, our life, our homes, our visions with pleasure, what feels pleasurable about our life, and acknowledging the fact that we have to be open to actually receiving these things; to let them come from the otherworld, from the liminal, to the earthly, essentially, from our imaginations, or from a place of desire, to a place of actually integration.
And, you know, that's why The Empress is ruled by Venus, and that is also why Empress work... You know, it's such a shame that the Empress is sort of, it's not that they're not a wonderful archetype and just so beautiful, but Empress can be really quite confronting and very challenging. And it can kind of bring up all the stuff about our threshold of receiving, where we feel uncomfortable with receiving, or love, or beauty, or pleasure, or whatever it is.
So I think Friday the 13ths are like a mini Samhain, you know. I think the veil is really quite thin and really porous, and there's so much kind of magic in the air on Friday the 13th, that it's really, really special, at least for me. And I encourage you, if you've always been really wary of this day, to kind of lean in, and most likely you probably love Friday the 13th, too (Lindsay Laughs). So hope it's a real sweet one for you. And it's really nice, it's really, really nice, you know, especially today, Friday the 13th, to think about this day as being kind of walking along, side by side, with you is Empress and Death.
[0:05:52]
How can you open almost as a radical act to receiving? How can you catch yourself in those places where you say — and we've all got them. Even if it doesn't seem like other people have them, they do. It just might be different from you — where we say, “Oh, I don't deserve that. I'm going to sabotage this thing, because I feel so uncomfortable.” And by the way, there's nothing technically wrong with that. Again,I think we all do it (Lindsay Laughs), or at the very least we have done that. And ideally, we're working toward a little bit more awareness with every day so that we're not.
But Empress is quite powerful. It says, “You know, how much pleasure can you allow into your life?” And it doesn't negate the fact that life is tremendously hard and very uncomfortable and very unfair, for so many. And yet, how can we be in the full acknowledgement of what is so hard and open to what feels so good, you know?
And for me, I'm always trying to empower myself to kind of take feeling good out of the over-cultural framework of feeling good, if that makes sense. Like, I don't need to feel happy. I don't need to have, like, a big smile on my face. And if I do, that's fine. I can be in tremendous grief, I can be weeping, I can be furious, I can be raging, and still be open to pleasure; that can happen at the same time. So wherever you are, it's available to you.
[0:07:47]
And Death: what is ready to die? What no longer serves? What got you here? What habits, beliefs, patterns, circumstances, got you to where you are, and what doesn't fit anymore?
Death is so friendly and so beautiful, and only wants to harvest and compost and create fertilizer out of the stuff that doesn't match. And it's not that we say goodbye to it. Those things become food for the next thing. You know, why would we ever want to forget the mistakes we've made, the lessons that we've learned, that it may have been hard or really tough along the path to places where we've been so closed off to love, to beauty, to receiving, to pleasure, because we needed to protect ourselves, or we didn't feel ready?
Friday the 13th is, at least for me, it's my personal practice with it, such an amazing day to touch in through the day and ask questions of the Empress energy in my life, of Death in my life, maybe do a little burning, maybe do a little, you know, planting of new seeds that…
Certainly to me, once again, not really surprising that there would be a New Moon in Scorpio that would be happening, unfolding, right around Friday the 13th, around the 14th of November in certain time zones, I believe, maybe in some on the 13th, and Mars is also going direct. So it's a pretty powerful few days.
And again, not necessarily about feeling any type of way, but a pretty powerful few days for illuminative work, for really opening our perception, for reflecting on where we've grown, how we've grown, what we're clearing, and what we're welcoming in, what we’re calling forward.
[0:10:09]
So, today's episode, what we're going to be diving into on the podcast today is a little immersion on the four Fours of the Minor Arcana, and how they really present themselves, show up for us, as tremendous Anchors and allies for really deep rooting, resourcing, nourishment, and restoration in times of great upheaval, stress, chaos, burnout, exhaustion, heartbreak, grief, you name it; when things in the macro and the over-culture are way, way too much.
We're so reactive, we're addicted to our phones, we're doom scrolling, we literally can't touch out, we can't turn off, we're not present, we're not in our bodies, and when we want to be, you know. When a part of us may think, “I cannot uncouple from this,” we want, we can look to the Fours to create a sense of deep rooting, a sense of centering in those times, so that we're not burying our heads in the sand. We're not bypassing anything, but we are remembering the resourcing, the nourishment, the centering, the quiet, that is necessary, in order to even intake that information in the first place; to actually shift out of hypervigilance, out of fight-flight, and move into rest-digest, where we can actually assimilate information. The Fours help us do that.
Not that the Fours show up as, like, something that's a substitute for psychological care (Lindsay Laughs), but the process of the Fours can actually want to assist in helping to gently, gently, gently aid us, along with many things, and encouraging us to reach for those places where we can foster a deeper connection with rest and digest, with the parasympathetic nervous system. So the Tarot cards don't do that, but the invitations in them can help us reach for things that do.
We're not going to go over The Emperor today, just because I've gone over The Emperor on this podcast. It's present in the 2020 Threshold, which is available on my website. By the way, the 2021 Threshold, all about the Fives and The Hierophant will be out in just, like, a few weeks, which is insane. It's going to be a big one. I'm really excited for all of you to check it out.
[0:12:58]
But I just really wanted to make this one about the four Fours because they're so great. And I also think they're pretty misunderstood visually. They can seem a little, they just seem a little different from what they are. And this lesson, the aim of it, is to empower those of you who may not necessarily want to read in a standard way with your deck — like pull a card, do a whole spread — but just want to kind of call upon in your mind a card to help you, maybe want to tuck one into your back pocket or your bag or your work or your car, just to kind of have as an Anchor to remind you that these things are possible. You can do that. That's what Tarot Anchoring is all about. You don't have to read, you don't have to choose the card. You can call upon the card, which I think is really fucking empowering, and I love that practice, and so that's why I teach it.
And secondly, that even if you are somebody who reads and does spreads for yourself, these cards and the medicine they're in are things that, quite frankly, I think all of us are needing right now. And it can be really powerful to even just bring to light the importance of making space for this kind of self-tending, this kind of energy, to come into our lives.
[0:14:44]
So the Fours are really, really special because, you know, when we talked about a card like The Star, we're talking about, like, we are ducking out of the real world in The Star, and we are kind of going into the healing cocoon. And that's not to say that it's all light and bright and love and all that bullshit (Lindsay Laughs). It really is, like, healing, is very intense and confronting. So The Star can be fierce, it really can be. But there is this energy in The Star, that even if you're in the world going to work, your kind of first line of work is that deep Star process that you're in, where something is really ready to come up, to be witnessed, to be reparented, and you almost can't go forward unless The Star is really, unless we say “yes” to it.
The Fours are very, very different. The Fours, you can spend an hour with a Four card. And when I say “spend an hour with a Four card” this is what I mean: if you are in need, if you hear the lesson on Four of Pentacles, and you think, “Oh my god, I need this so badly.” Tonight, you can say, “I call upon to my life, to my body, to my process, to my,” you know, whatever it is, “I call upon Four of Pentacles energy to help me remember that space and boundaries and time are part of my birthright with my body. My body gets to move on their time. I get to take my time. I am absolutely not available to judge myself for that, and I call upon the Anchoring, the strength, the reminder of that card to be with me,” you know, “now and for the next few days, for the next week.” And that's it.
And then from there, maybe you put the card on your altar, maybe you create a spread that can kind of go around that. Maybe your first question in the spread is, you know, “A message from my body: How can I offer my attention to my body? What kind of space is my body asking for it, for itself, for its care at this time? What kind of love and support can I give my body at this time? What doesn't belong in this space? What can I welcome in?” You know, that's like a whole spread, you know, and you can just dick around, you can just play. That's what I mean when I say that.
So you can call upon any of these cards to help you in any moment. And it might be an hour. It might be that it’s just like a prayer you might offer up, you know, “For the shift at my work, I really call in X.”
[0:18:05]
You know, if you're feeling, like, deeply serious, very leaden, can't lighten up, just no levity whatsoever, afraid to celebrate, afraid to touch into joy, you know, Four of Wands is your medicine, because Four of Wands says, “Put aside not your feelings, but put aside the ‘work’ you feel like you have to do, put aside the seriousness, and see if you can't touch into some real joy, some real community celebration, some real community connections, and some joy with yourself, you know, some honoring of a process that, you know, it's just as important as any of them.”
So this doesn't take us away. It helps us to relate to the world without going anywhere. That's the best thing about Minors and why I feel called to just talk about them because Minors are so much about us being in the world, kind of our process, our experience, like down in the dirt, hands in the dirt. You know, how can we go about our day, answer phones, answer emails, make food for ourselves, feed our kids, deal with fucking corporate calls, and be rooted in one of these energies? It is possible. In fact, I do it all the time, so I know it is, and how you may experience it will be totally unique to you.
So with every Four we want to literally think of a table with four legs and think about crawling under that table and having a kind of beautiful, gauzy, sweet curtain, or sweet tablecloth that covers all of the whole table that you drape over it, then you crawl inside. And just imagine yourself in that space with maybe the light shining through, the color of the fabric or, you know, the dappled light coming through the trees, or maybe it's nice and dark and cozy in there. You're basically making a little fort with every Four.
And what do we do? What do children do? What do animals do? What do we do, when we kind of, children or animals want to, like, crawl under a table? They're regulating. They're taking space to regulate their nervous system, when things feel like it's way too fucking much, which everything feels that way. When things feel like it's way too much, when the body needs some space, when we need time to emotionally digest something, when we need space to kind of recenter the mind, we need a mental break from what we're doing, or we just need to go in there with our dolls, or our toys, or our phones or our books, and, like, curl up and take a nap or play, that's all Four work.
And again, we're still under the table. We're not out in another galaxy. We may be in there for a couple days, we may be in there for a month, we may also be in there for an hour, five minutes. Sometimes that's all it takes for us to really deeply receive Four-related medicine.
[0:21:30]
So Fours are exactly like a kind of a table top fort. They're strong and sturdy. They're, again, like Four legs, it's not going anywhere. You can crawl and are meant to kind of crawl inside of that, and have it hold you. It's a space and a container. That when we pull a Four, when we work with Four, the doors kind of open, and it says, “Please come in, like, take a minute, like, have a cup.” (Lindsay Laughs) like you know. Can you root back into yourself, come back into yourself, take that time to resource, to tend yourself in a way that is both, like, radically unapologetic, and also wholly what you need without, you know making any kind of bones about it with anybody?
Because the cards are invitations for us to look at ourselves, all of these cards are also invitations for us to look at how we are those tables, providing that space for ourselves. Fours can bring up some confronting stuff like where do we feel like we don't give ourselves permission to take those spaces? Where do we kind of cut ourselves off of joy because it's silly or frivolous or we can't? Where do we feel like we can't have a mental break?
This is something that I, as a trauma survivor, hypervigilance is one of the biggest survival pieces that I gained from my experience of being abused and gaslit and traumatized as a child, and so when I'm hooked in kind of a hypervigilance place, I tend to pull a lot of Four of Swords. And there's an interesting process that comes up where I'm always like, “I can't. Like, I have to blah, blah, blah.” And in fact, that's exactly what is needed, because there is no emergency, you know. There just isn't in my particular situation. Obviously, sometimes hypervigilance is there to keep us alive and did with me. But now, in my day-to-day, I don't need to be . Like that’s PTSD, you know (Lindsay Laughs). It's the engine getting fired when the car isn't even, hasn't even left the garage.
So that can be, again, a really potent reminder for me: Am I believing that I can't kind of shut the car off right now because of something really old? If so, can I strengthen and make more sturdy this kind of tabletop fort that I have, so that any part of me that needs to kind of crawl in there with all the cozies and take some space can do so, you know? Who might I want to bring in there with me? You know, whatever it is, what kind of boundaries do I want to draw? What's not allowed inside? That's also a really important part of the Fours. And we're going to go over all four of them.
But we want to look at that. Like where do we feel like, “Oh, you know, I have to give up my time, my energy, my body,” in the form of acts of service or showing up when you're just, you're not getting a “yes” to do it. You're tired, you're worn out, a lot of people are asking of you, asking a lot of you, that's good Four of Pentacles medicine to be able to say, “Hey, I'm touched out, I'm tapped out. I need space for this bod. Like, I need to really feel like I'm in my own space and in my own, you know, place.”
[0:25:19]
How do we not — and this is a lot of us — where do we not allow ourselves enough time to process emotionally? This is a big deal. We always want to be like, totally fine in two seconds, and that's Four of Cups.
Four of Cups is one of the absolutely, most woefully misunderstood cards in the entire Tarot.
Most people assume and believe that it's about kind of missing stuff, not paying attention. It's actually quite the opposite. It's... You literally cannot miss something that's meant for you. That's number one. It is impossible. If it's not here, it's very hard to argue that it should be. And if it's really meant for you, it'll come when it's meant. It may not be the person that you're wanting it to be with, it may not be the situation, the particular thing. Obviously, not negating or invalidating anyone's disappointments or discomforts, but it's very hard to argue with that. You can't miss anything; that's not possible. Spirit will get your attention (Lindsay Laughs), if, you know, we really are meant to draw our attention to something.
And this specifically applies to us feeling like “I can't take time to feel this, I can't take time to digest, I can't take time to be upset or to be in my process, because I'm going to miss something.” And it's a very subtle way that we kind of tend to push ourselves out of that table fort before we're really ready. And that is really what Four of Cups is about.
So yeah, they're just very, very strong, brilliant, brilliant Anchors and allies, and all of which offer us a really quite transformative, quite empowering invitation to drop into our center and take space. Just take space, you know, to replenish our body, mind, heart, and spirit. And again, they are particularly helpful allies and support in times of exhaustion, stress, fear, overwhelm, burnout, whether it be about the macro events of the world, or the micro events of your life. So yeah, they're really, really powerful.
[0:27:59]
So we're gonna start with Four of Swords.
What happens when your mind just won't shut the fuck up (Lindsay Laughs), when your thoughts are just going 1000 miles a minute, you can't shut off your mind, you're scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, you can't stay off your phone, you're in total doomsday situations, you're going into 1000 “what ifs”, you're super hypervigilant, you're super just thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking about all the things?
First of all, we can't necessarily change our thinking in that moment, but we can change our relationship to that. We can change the way we respond to it. And if there's a fire, we don't want to put more gasoline on it. We want to take the brave, empowered action of seeing how it feels. Even though our parts of ourselves may want to keep that car running, running, running at, like, 80 miles an hour, what it feels like to slow that car down and gently pull over to the side of the road.
And when we look at Four of Swords — we'll kind of go over some of the Smith-Rider-Waite imagery and how we can relate it to this idea — but the simple, just the simple dollars and cents of this card is that we just need a mental break.
We just need a second. We need some quiet. We need to shut our phones off, shut the TV off, go outside if we can. Even if we're in a city, to breathe in whatever air is available to us. If the freshest air is in your home at this moment, if it's smoky, doing the best you can to just really root and drop into some quiet, to name a boundary with yourself, to say — like I do this with my mind all the time, especially if my mind is very, very scared and chatty, and it is really inviting me into just all sorts of things, that it's not that it's not important, but they're really just like, I either have deadlines or, like, have to record something or have a class, and I set up boundaries for myself.
And I'll say, “Brain, thank you so much for bringing all of these pieces to my attention. I have received them, like receipt, you know, received, like, just letting you know. And I'm not going to touch in with you about this again until 24 hours from now. So you can bring it up all day long, if you want to, I am going to do my work. And I'm going to take space, and I'm going to stretch, and I'm going to breathe, and I'm going to drink water, and I'm going to take a nap. And you can be in the backseat and say all the things. But I am not going to place my attention, my worry, my concern on that.”
Now obviously, that's not, this is never substitute for therapeutic advice. It's not therapeutic advice. But this is just, again, not a psychological need. But really just when we're super consumed, we’re really stressed, we’re anxious, we're just really cycling with a lot of chronic, fear-based thoughts. We don't make the thoughts... it’s not like snapping our fingers, but we can set up these boundaries with ourselves.
It helps. It really helps even to just help us feel like, “Oh yeah, I don't need to make the mind do anything. But I can be aware of how I am inadvertently creating more inflammation around something that is already inflamed. And I just need some quiet, as uncomfortable as it might feel. As much as I may not want to unhook from that cyclical kind of thinking, I can do so. I can. And it's, you know, something for me to checkout and try.”
[0:32:27]
And how you may take a mental break is totally different than how I would do it or the next person would do it. It may be that for you, you turn on your phone and kind of dink around, instead of trying to figure out a project or instead of trying to do this or that. So really, just kind of let your wings spread and see where they take you.
In the Smith-Rider, we see the image of a coffin and of a body, an effigy, kind of lying in this sort of stone-carved coffin dead. And there are three swords pointing blade down, kind of, you know, standing ceremoniously above this body. So it really looks like the swords are coming into the body. And then there's one sword that is laying parallel to the body on the side of the coffin.
And how we can look at this is to say, when three swords are coming at you, when thoughts are coming at you blade first, which we all have experiences with, we can actually harness the power of the mind, to be able to say, “I'm gonna lay parallel, I'm gonna work with this thought, with this way of relating to my mind, and come to a space of rest.”
That imagery of someone lying dead in a coffin, it was a wonderful way to express, you know, sleep, where we didn't really have to think about stuff too much. And that it, again, reflects to this point of: Can we come into a space of deep rest? Can we come into a space of nourishment?
What is it to set up that table top or that table fort for yourself and curl up under there? When it comes to relating to your thinking, when it feels really, really stressed, really kind of hypervigilant, really cyclical, on a loop, what helps, you know, what helps? What hinders? What do you know really serves? What doesn't serve? What feels like a break? What doesn't?
You know, we want to think about that piece of it all and lean into it because it can be a really great way to kind of, when we pull this card or when we work with this card, we can catch ourselves and just say, “Whoa, my mind is running at a million miles a minute. My thoughts, my fear-based thinking is so high, you know, what tools, what resources, what skills, what support systems do I have to help me lay down with this sword and actually use my mind to help me stay centered, while those other thoughts come in, swirl around, knowing that I don't have to attach to them? I don't have to necessarily have them take me anywhere. I can stay in the center. They can swirl around me.”
And the rooting of that Four, the structure, the stability of that Four, that deep fort that you can make underneath that tabletop can really, really help. And I know for me, I have my own, again, array of kind of resources that I call upon and will work within those moments. And it's not always comfortable when I first start to do it, but it can be quite effective when I just feel like I can't hop off the ride, if that makes sense.
So that's Four of Swords. It's an invitation to take a really nourishing mental break without the delusion that somehow we're gonna feel super calm and stress free.
It's just a way for us to say, “I'm not available in this space where I'm super upset, super scared, to add gas to this fire. I am gonna caretake the fears that are here, and I'm going to work to really allow my nervous system, in the best way I can, to come to a space of calm and centeredness.: That's what we're doing with that.
[0:37:02]
With Four of Pentacles, we're kind of creating the same spacious awareness with the physical body, and that can be anything related to your body.
That could be that your body just simply does not want to be touched in a particular way, either by you or anyone else. It could mean that your body is not available for certain things, it could mean it needs a tremendous amount of rest. It could mean that it wants to stay all nooked up and cozy, all kinds of different things.
This is about us honoring the wishes and the wisdom and the preferences and the clear desires of the body without trying to say, “What's wrong with you? Why do you need all this time? Why do you want to sleep so much? Why don't you want to go out? Why don't you want to be more social?” — I mean, this is more of a pre-COVID thing — “Why don't you want to be on more Zoom calls? Why da-da-da-da-da...”
The lack of trust that a lot of us have in the wisdom and the timing of our bodies, what our bodies move through, our seasons, perhaps, of pain or chronic illness, taking space, and honoring those seasons, honoring the crucial kind of Four of Pentacles fort that is needed in certain times where we just say, “I'm not available energetically, and I'm not available physically, as it pertains to my body, to step into this particular space, to be available for this particular person, to be available for this.” How can we respect that?
So one of the most devastating (Lindsay Laughs) kind of visualizations of the Tarot is the Smith Rider-Waite depiction of the Four of Pentacles. Not because I'm disrespecting Pamela Coleman Smith's brilliant art, I'm absolutely not, and I respect that.
The Smith Rider-Waite Tarot tells and weaves a very particular story that really leans on the Pentacles being a symbol for money. And that's — while respecting that — that's not actually what the Pentacles are doing, nor is it really what they're about.
The Pentacles are symbols and externalizations of our soul work in the world. They are the things that we nourish on the trees of our service, of the way that we show up in the world, of the dreams that we really desire to bring forward, that come from us, tending to our body, that really come from us understanding that the body is really the vessel that all of that comes through. And so Pentacles are about so much, bringing our soul work into this kind of material earthly plane, but they're not about money expressly.
But we can see in this image that shows kind of this wealthy-looking, royal person, and you know, it’s always quite significant when somebody wears a crown in the Smith Rider-Waite, because it typically means that they're about to get cleared of that royal status (Lindsay Laughs). And we see that on Death, we see that on the Tower, many places. But we see this being who is dressed as somebody who seems to have a lot of money, and yet is kind of holding on pretty tight to these coins, and has one above their head, has two at their feet, one near the heart space. And it just appears that this person is really just a miserly, greedy person.
While I'm not... I would never say that there would not be some really important clarifications for folks who do kind of refuse to share their money, there are other cards that actually provide a far more clearer invitation when we're being asked to be a little bit more generous with our resources or our energy or our time. But I really do not believe that Four of Pentacles is one of them.
[0:41:43]
In fact, what this card speaks to me is if we think of the Pentacle as this kind of deep symbol for body wisdom, for physical rootedness in this world, where we are connected, and desire to be connected with our soul, asking what is in our highest and best for our body, rather than making the decision for our body or overriding the body, betraying the body. What we have here is a portrait of someone who is in the world, but the major energy centers of the body are blocked, not to the person, but to us.
This person is saying, “I'm here, I'm in front of you, but you don't get all of me. I'm not necessarily available to be open in the crown for you. I'm not necessarily open in my roots, in the soles of my feet for you. I'm not necessarily open in my heart space for you right now. Right now, I'm in my own space. Right now. I am tending to me. Right now, my body, my well-being absolutely comes first. And you might not hear from me for a little bit. Please don't take that personally.”
It might mean that we are showing up in beautiful service. My therapist reminds me of this all the time, you know, and she shows up, again, so beautifully. But as with most therapists, while we can have kind of a healthy, light discussion about the fact that the world is fucking crazy right now — it would be impossible for any of us to be immune to that — my therapist absolutely goes through things all the time that are not for me to know about or that would be either inappropriate, none of my business, and just simply not what our relationship is.
So there are wonderful reasons to have Four of Pentacles happening for us and none of them have anything to do with greediness. In fact, to me, not to go too far into this, but it says quite a bit about how much we deem people who take space for their bodies, who need time, who maybe aren't healing or living or processing on the same timeline as we are, that sometimes there can be a tendency to say, “You know, what's wrong with you? Hurry the fuck up.” And we can have a tendency to do that to ourselves, too, because we don't want to miss anything.
[0:44:25]
So when this card comes up, it offers us just, again, the most brilliant, beautiful opportunity to say, “Okay, my body needs space, period. I feel, again, like touched out. I'm showing up in service. Maybe I'm feeding children with this body. Maybe I am showing up and doing bodywork with this body, sex work with this body, and right now I just feel touched out. Like I don't feel like... I don't want to be available, you know. (Lindsay Laughs) I'll show up as I need to, absolutely, absolutely have to, but I need some space. I need some time.”
And again, it can be for an hour, it could be for a day, it could be for a couple weeks. Like what is it to absolutely, radically honor “I don't understand maybe even why, but I don't want this right now. I don't understand why I don't want to talk to this person right now. I don't necessarily know why” — again, this is pre-COVID — “I don't want to be around this person. I don't want to spend my time with them. I don't want to drop into their energy. I don't want to.”
There is wisdom in that, tremendous wisdom, even if you can't necessarily understand it. And you don't have to explain yourself, and you don't have to apologize, ever, for what your body needs. Period. You're allowed to nap, you're allowed to say “yes,” you're allowed to say “no.” And that has nothing to do with anything. You don’t have to be available for exquisite touch, exquisite, you know, friend time with certain folx, and with other folx you may not want to. You might be totally available to your clients to serve and to be in the world, that they just may not have a certain part of you. You may be more available to your students and less available to your friends. It might be the exact opposite. So it's just really important to be really just, again, just deeply, deeply honoring, nourishing, unapologetic about that, you know.
What is the fort that your body needs when you work with Four of Pentacles? What does that look like for you? Who gets to come in there, if anybody? Who doesn't? What gets to come in? What does not? What would it be like to not worry about that this is too much for someone, that, you know, to really honor that your body is such a wise being, and that knows quite a bit more than we do at times? Because the brain is always fighting with the body and always trying to make the body behave in a way that's acceptable to other people, and we just don't have to do that. You don't have to. You can feel those impulses, but you don’t have to.
That's what Four of Pentacles really teaches us. So it says, “If your body, if your being in this world needs a break, period, give yourself a break.” It's beautiful. Do you need space, time, like an afternoon, couple hours by yourself? Like, can you? Not everybody has the luxury of that right now, but can you take that if possible? You know, that's how we can work with that energy.
[0:47:56]
Four of Cups, you know, again, in the Smith Rider-Waite deck, we see somebody who has had a couple of cups to drink already and is kind of holding their stomach.
They're sort of leaning on a tree, they look a little sick/not the happiest, right? Then we see this disembodied hand, this cloud hand, handing the being another cup. And this being is, I think very wisely, not acknowledging the hand, sees it, in my estimation, understands that it's there, sees the invitation, is aware of it, but is having the rooted power and courage to say, “I don't have enough room in my life for this right now.”
How we have viewed Four of Cups, kind of old paradigm style, like, “There's an invitation. You're not paying attention.” I'm not here to say that that's wrong. There is, you know, there are some things that I'll say like “No,” with the Tarot (Lindsay Laughs). If I feel that they’re un-inclusive and potentially harmful and rooted to systems of oppression like capitalism, like, you know, phobia, like racism, I will call it out loud and proud. And I think in this way, there is some problematicness with that interpretation. It's really saying, “You can't take space and time. You can't trust yourself to take time. You could miss something.”
And if you've ever been in a situation, you know, that when, like let's say you have a deep, deep heartbreak or a breakup or friend severance or something, that you can meet other people, and they can kind of take your mind off of it, but until you're kind of underneath that tabletop fort by yourself, dealing with that heartbreak, like, really just letting, again, even if it's just a day, letting that come up in you, it's gonna be really hard to meet someone else who fulfills what you may want them to fulfill. It's just harder.
Sometimes we do that work with our new partner, sometimes we don't. Really The Cups have nothing to do with love anyway, so it doesn't really matter.
The Four of Cups, to me, in Soul Tarot, in a way that I think is the most expansive and the truest is really, can we live in a space where we trust Spirit enough to say, “Thank you for this invitation. I don't feel available for this right now. I need to digest what has happened.”
That thing will be there for you. In fact, it's proven because in Five of Cups, the cup that we said “no” to, plus another one, are behind us. All we can see are those three spilled cups without realizing we've
lost nothing. It's literally in the Smith Rider-Waite (Lindsay Laughs) which is one of the reasons why very early on in my Tarot knowledge and self-taught journey, I was like, “Well, this doesn't even make sense with the imagery.”
[0:51:30]
We can't be not paying attention. It's not possible because this actually comes later. This has to do, very clearly to me, with giving ourselves the permission to emotionally digest something. Cups are about emotion, intuition, feeling states. They're about water where, you know, again, we're letting the water move through us. We're digesting. We're letting it come through. We're letting it filter through us.
There are so many things, especially now, especially this year, that have been so intense and overwhelming that we may have felt like we didn't even have time to process this thing. And sometimes we can have just enough distractions to kind of keep us away from it. But there can come a moment where we get an invitation and that invitation in the form of that fourth cup can be anything, where we really just see it. We say, “I love that that's there. I know that that's going to be there when I'm on the other side. But today, right now, I need some space to really cry. I need some space to really feel in my feelings. I need some space to feel like I'm full.”
Like we're full in this card. What is it for you when you feel full emotionally, when you just feel overloaded, stressed? How do you allow yourself space to actually digest? What does that look like for you?
For some of us it's sitting down with the herb or the medicine or, you know, the TV program or all of the above of our choice. Sometimes it's about curling up with a good book. Sometimes it's our own thing where we don't even know. Sometimes it's a period of time with this card where we're kind of just hanging out, where we understand, “Wow, there is an invitation here down the road. But for right now, I need to be in this.”
[0:53:42]
I'm going through Four of Cups right now; I often do. And it has nothing to do with any particulars. I'm always going through Four of Cups because Spirit is always giving me heads up on various things that I'll be doing, that will be coming forward, and one great example is that I'm already getting some downloads for The Threshold for next year, and I am very much in an integration space after Heart of Service, like very much.
The integration that I have to move through after courses is quite big. It's an enormous, energetic undertaking to do a course, both channeling the material, holding space, you know, tending to folx, and it's a very high level of output for everyone involved. A delight, and yet that's just the truth of it. So that cup, for me, is some stuff about Threshold, and I write it down. I write what comes through about the new Tarot for the Wild Soul. But Spirit is not expecting me to put that anywhere. They're just given me some stuff, and I get to digest. I'm not going to miss anything. Nothing.
We can talk to someone and, you know, not be ready to actually formally get to know them or go out on a date with them until we're ready. We can have a really long time getting to know a friend before we really dive in because we don't even have any space for that. So it can be quite simple, this card, but it really just says, “Can you allow yourself space enough to process the big experiences of your life?”
And we don't do that. And in fact, we're so uncomfortable with that, that this card for decades has been interpreted as “You're not paying attention. Wake up. You're going to miss it.” That's how uncomfortable we are with saying, you know, as if you could ever miss anything that is meant for you, as if you could, like you are... Our Guides are... It's very hard to imagine a scenario.
Now, I have had feelings where I've been like, “I missed it!” And yet, I can absolutely see, like, I may not fully understand why I didn't hop on that thing, why I didn't do that. And yet, here I am, you know. And it can be powerful sometimes to reflect on those pieces, you know.
What is it for you to actually let yourself move through your aligned time, to get into that fort with all the things that help you in your digestion process, that aid you, and allow, you know, say a gentle “no thank you” to the things that do not need that process, including whatever's in that cup? We're not shooing it away. It waits for us. It can wait, you know, in that particular instance. It's not a catch-all for everything within that particular situation. It says it'll be there, you know?
We can sort of take that cup and honor what Cups we have drawn from without necessarily overdoing it with that. We can have that space for our own emotional well-being, and, again, replenishment.
[0:57:21]
It's really important, so that when we actually do take that Cup in the Six, the heart is open, the cups are full, you know. In some ways, I think it's so beautiful, the fact that there are flowers growing in the Cups in the Smith-Rider-Waite on the Six of Cups. And I like to think about the fact that maybe in the Four, we're getting handed a cup full of dirt with a seed in it, that if we actually took it and really tried to make something with it, or tried to harvest a flower, that it would be too early, you know.
So that's another thing too, that we can often think like, “Oh, I missed this thing. I missed this opportunity.” What if you missing that particular opportunity opened up the door for you to actually draw into something that worked for you even better?
It can be hard to hear that when we're really identified with having “missed” some things. You don't have to take my word as truth. It's just something to think about. And for those of you who are really in that space, I know it well; of feeling like “Oh, I did miss something. I have so many regrets.” And I'm really holding a huge space of love for you, and I really would encourage you to do some work with Four of Cups.
You know, how can we not apologize for the time we need, you know, without any, again, explanations?
[0:58:44]
And our last card here is Four of Wands.
And Four of Wands is so different from the rest of these cards because Four of Wands is really... The Wands are quite serious. There's a lot of... we're kind of working with this fire, like we're learning how to handle this fire. We're learning how to work with these roots, these connections within us. And there's a lot of energy moving around in these cards.
And the Four of Wands is the only kind of fort that presents itself to us that says, “Please stop working and go play. Please, if you're feeling like you should be serious, you should, you know, not take this time, please do not do that. Please actually celebrate, celebrate. Please actually make space for joy. Please play.” We're so bad at playing. I don't even know how to play. It's very very hard for me. I'm trying a little bit every day (Lindsay Laughs), but everybody's play is totally different.
You know, this is a space that can be really confronting, because we can think, “Well, with all the horrible things happening in the world, all the injustice, all the folks who need so much work, so much care, who the fuck am I to play? When I'm aware of, you know, again, all of the things that need to be done, all the work that has to happen, who am I to take this time? Who am I to play?” And that's why the Fours are not an invitation to leave the reality of the world.
This is not an extended vacation. This is a crucial space of self-rooting, self-replenishment, so that we have more to give. We create that sense, that fort, that structure, that root system in ourselves, so that when things do feel crazy, chaotic, all over the place, when the wheel of life turns, we are centered, we have somewhere to go, we have a place that we can actually take refuge in and receive a little bit.
[1:01:20]
So Four of Wands is a really, really important part of that pie and one that I think we tend to actually respect the least. Because, you know, with the other ones, it's like, “Okay, I need a mental break in order to, like, function” you know. “My body might need to have some boundaries, need to have some space. Maybe there's stuff around that, for me, that I can do it, you know, need it.”Four of Cups, you know, “Trusting in my emotional process, trusting in my timing, trusting in the flow and the timing of everything in my life, a lot, and also really necessary for my again, my digestion, my emotional experiencing, my processing.”
Putting the work away to go out and play, you know, actively not working on the thing and making what we're doing feel really fun, really joyful — really confronting. And because it doesn't feel like we need to, it can be really hard to trust that it's valid, or it's worthy. And while I can't tell you what to do, or what's valid, and what's worthy, I can absolutely acknowledge that you're allowed to play.
You're allowed to play. It's okay if you don't know how to. Most of us don't. It's okay, if you have no idea what's fun. It's okay if you don't even know how to have fun (LindsayLaughs). That's part of why this card is here, to see what it might be like to hop underneath that beautiful table, and maybe put an extra cool, colorful tablecloth over it. Maybe, like, get some cool lights going. Maybe that's a nightmare for you. Maybe, you know, who knows how or what you might be desiring from that? But really letting yourself lean into what feels joyful, what feels good, what feels like it's fun.
[1:03:35]
I remember, pre-COVID times when I used to teach this card, way back in the day, I used to say, to those of you who tend to think of taking a break as like, you know, maybe going to a yoga class or meditating or this is, like, go out dancing, like go out roller skating (Lindsay Laughs). It's — don't do work. It doesn't need to be work at all. It can be, like, a puzzle. It can be like making a felt costume for your pet. It can be really whatever you want it to be. But what feels like fun for you? It could be restoring your bike.
Whatever feels good, like, just roll with that, and know that it's likely going to feel uncomfortable because it's going to fly in the face of the story we have, that all of us have, is “I'm not deserving of
this. I'm not worthy of this. I didn't work hard enough to take this break. I don't know how to have fun. I can't have fun, da-da-da-da-da.”
So again, we're not going for happy. We're not going for overjoyed. We're not going for some status or feeling state that you don't have to attain, you know, to just be a person. We're challenging ourselves. We're actively taking this space, going into that fort. It's a choice.
Remember that this is about rooting, tethering us to the root systems that help us to remain in contact, tethered to our birthright. It is part of your birthright to play and have fun. And how you experience that doesn't, you know, when we're doing it in a way that's in highest and best for all, it does not take away from anybody. And the guilt that may come up around that for you is a really important, protective mechanism that we all have, because play and fun feel really fucking scary. The brain doesn't like them.
[1:05:45]
So it's really important to recognize that Four of Wands presents a totally different container, little tabletop fort, than really any of them and yet no less powerful that says, “Can you prioritize play? And like just having a good time, yeah, you know, what does that look like, feel like to you? And how can you let yourself learn as you go?” I think that can be a really powerful thing, too.
So the Fours are, again, here as invitations to root into our inner resourcing, to take time. Each of them are these little containers, these little baskets, these little forts, that are here to hold us, to help us to kind of find a safe space to land, so that we can restore, we can replenish, we can kind of regroup, so that we can come out into the world feeling more fresh and more present.
And it is normal, so normal, that the mind, that the ego, that our fear would say, “Well, I can't take this space.” And who would you deny, in your circle, in your world, the opportunity to root and restore? Probably nobody. It's not taking away from anyone to do this.
So catch yourself in those stories, and be willing to go beyond them. Be willing. You're not your thoughts. Be willing to say, “Yeah, I totally witness that invitation into shame or guilt or fear about taking this space, about not wanting to do this thing, about feeling bad, about whatever,” and open your arms to it. But you don't have to believe it, that you have to make choices from that place of guilt or fear. You can make choices from what you know is needed, what you know is being asked for, which actually provides us with the opportunity to do work on those beliefs inside that.
Again, the Fours are here to help us to become more resilient, more sturdy, more rooted in ourselves. And the more we can lean into them and call upon them as Anchors when the world or our day or our life just feels like too goddamn much, the more we will form bonds with them, because you're going to move through your Four work in a totally different way than the next person will.
[1:08:31]
So yeah, be really willing, especially now, when, you know, when the world or your life or your day just feels like too much. What might it be like to call upon these energies, these archetypes, these Anchors and friends and allies and see what they may illuminate for you, illuminate to you about your own needs, about what you are desiring, about what might feel nourishing for you? You know, how can you form bonds with these cards? I think it could be a really beautiful way to work with them and get closer to them now, especially, as things are just continuing to be so intense.
And 2020 is a Four year. We know that because two plus zero plus two plus zero is four. It's also an Emperor year, and we're getting ready to transition out of that energy because 2021 is right around the corner. And so it's powerful to think about, you know, how can you connect with these archetypes when they're really here wanting to work with us so badly? I mean, you know we get the medicine we need when we need it.
There has never perhaps been a year on record where Four medicine has been more important and necessary. Like, being able to go into those forts, clarifying our boundaries, our time, our process, having those spaces in which to go in, resource, and come out when we're ready, it's again, not a departure but really a practice of being able to take space when we need it and come back into the world when it feels right.
Thank you for listening to this, Wild Souls. It's always an honor to be with you. I hope that this served and resonated, and yeah, I think that's it. I don't have any announcements. Yeah, just wishing all of you a really beautiful New Moon and Friday the 13th, and catch each other next week. And until then, please take care of yourselves.
[Conclusion]
(Instrumental exit music)
[1:10:55]
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.
For Further Exploration
