142. The Eights: Transform and Emerge
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The Eights in the Tarot are invitations for transformation. We go into each of these cards one way, and come out of them differently, like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon. With all of the Eights, we walk a powerful journey of reckoning, inquiry, choice, grief, experience, and realization, growing and evolving with every step. We learn that transformation is a process, one that happens over time, that requires strength, dedication, patience, and courage of the heart.
In today's episode, we will dive into The Eights, their connection with Strength and Justice, and how we can lean into them as support allies for the coming month, where we will move through an Eclipse portal and The Great Conjunction (two hugely transformative events!)
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About the Episode
Welcome back, Wild Souls, to another Tarot lesson with Lindsay Mack.
In this Tarot podcast episode, Lindsay Mack covers the Eight cards of the Minor Arcana.
The Eights in the Tarot are invitations for transformation. We go into each of these cards one way and come out of them another way, like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon. With all of the Eights in the Minor Arcana, we walk a powerful journey of reckoning, inquiry, choice, grief, and realization, growing and evolving in our own way, in our own time.
The Eight cards of the Tarot teach us that transformation is a process, one that happens over time requiring strength, dedication, patience, and courage of the heart.
A deeper message can be found in the Eights when we explore their connections to the Strength and Justice cards of the Major Arcana.
Lindsay describes her perspective on how the Eight cards of the Minors correspond with either Strength or Justice, the 8th cards in the Major Arcana, depending on the deck. When we look at all of these cards together, we see the invitation and the medicine we can accept in order to transform with more ease and grace.
Whether you work with the Strength or Justice cards in the Tarot as your 8th card in the Major Arcana, Lindsay will explore the message they add to our own field work with the Eight cards.
The Eight of Swords and the Eight of Cups can have more robust meanings if we look deeper into the classic Smith-Rider-Waite imagery of the Tarot cards.
There’s an element of desperation and sadness in the Eight of Swords and the Eight of Cups when we first glance at the images created by the brilliant, insightful Pamela Colman Smith. Lindsay will guide us to look a little closer and to hold the cards up against our own lives to find our personal paths to liberation.
If the Eight of Pentacles looks like drudgery and the Eight of Wands is a little confusing, this Tarot podcast episode may clarify the transformative magic of these cards.
When we see a person who looks like all they’ve been doing for hours and hours is making pentacles, we might be invited into feelings of dread. Looking at eight wands just flying through the air, on the other hand, may make us feel like we don’t have much to go on when deciphering our own meanings of the Tarot cards.
Lindsay pulls the curtain back on what’s going on deep within the Eight of Pentacles and the Eight of Wands no matter what images are displayed on our Tarot cards.
We hope you enjoy this deep dive into The Eights, their connection with Strength and Justice, and how we can lean into them as supportive allies in times of great change.
Mentioned in this episode:
Astrological weather (eclipses and The Great Conjunction of 2020) [0:01:27]
The Eights of the Tarot [0:04:49]
The Eights with the Strength and Justice Tarot cards [0:10:57]
Eight of Swords [0:19:26]
Eight of Pentacles [0:35:11]
Eight of Wands [0:41:47]
Eight of Cups [0:49:49]
Related Episodes
If you enjoyed this review of the Eight cards of the Tarot, we invite you to check out The Fours: Root, Replenish, and Resource.
If you’d like to explore the topic of personal transformation with a different card, we invite you to review Transformative Trust with Five of Pentacles.
Land Acknowledgement
Honoring and acknowledging that this podcast episode was recorded on the unceded land of The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, currently called Portland, OR, with the deepest respect to the Kalapuya Tribe, Cowlitz Tribe, and Atfalati Tribe.
Please Note
CW Tags: grief, trauma
The content in this lesson/episode contains references to grief and 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 Loves and welcome back to Tarot for the Wild Soul podcast. I'm your host, Lindsay Mack, and it is such a joy and an honor to be gathered with you in this virtual space. As always, thank you so much for being here.
—
So we are diving into the Eights today, which I think is quite fitting since we looked to the Fours a couple weeks ago.
And the Eights at their root, at their core, are about transformation and emergence, really what it is to shift, to shed, to go into that cocoon and come out as the butterfly. Like what is that alchemical process like?
So much of that is contained in the Eights which are such unbelievably sacred, hugely exciting, wonderful cards to form, kind of deeper bonds with. And beyond that, I think it's quite timely to talk about them since we are entering into — to put it mildly — a time of huge, potential transformation in the coming month and especially next year. We're moving into the eclipse portal that will take us through November 30th all the way to December 14th. And then one week later, we'll be moving through the Solstice and The Great Conjunction both happening on December 21st.
And The Great Conjunction in another... eclipses are radically transformative kind of portals for very accelerated growth. And really, I like to think of the energy of eclipses as kind of like getting a haircut where you can, and should, absolutely, come in with a clear view about what you would like. But it's almost like putting yourself in the hands of a tremendously gifted and talented stylist who will really have a vision for your hair (Lindsay Laughs), that... the best thing you can do, let the eclipse energies kind of hang out and let your hair get cut, and let whatever wants to fall away or whatever wants to come up while you're sort of in that chair to happen.
And The Great Conjunction — which, I mean, is huge. It's Jupiter conjunct Saturn in Aquarius — is literally a new era of life and of energy and of the lessons of those planets. Moving into, both, air signs, but having it happen in the energy of Aquarius is very tied to The Star: collective healing, collective reclaiming. And because of its, Aquarius’, connection with Uranus, is totally in alignment with The Fool.
[0:03:20]
So we've got transformation, we got change happening in our faces across the board. Some of it over the next month will be about surrendering, allowing that transformation to unfold within us, really allowing that energy to guide us, to take us, rather than trying to grip and control it and, also, absolutely, doing our work and emphasizing our freewill and our preferences and what we're looking to bring forward and to reclaim in this next cycle.
And when we look at the idea of supportive cards for the next month, and we're going to talk so much more about the eclipses, the eclipse portal, The Great Conjunction, about the Solstice in Monthly Medicine episode of the podcast that's coming either on Monday or Tuesday, but also over the many subsequent episodes that we're going to cover in December. So we'll spend lots of time on that, on those themes, then. We're just sort of touching on it now, but they're tremendous anchors for the times that are to come over the next several weeks, and, you know, that we're really gearing up for in the next, for the next year.
This 2021 is a very, very big deal energetically — to put it mildly.
[0:04:49]
The Eights in the Tarot, really, we go into them one way, in one kind of incarnation or version of ourselves as we are, and we leave them different.
You know, and that doesn't mean that it's a snap of the fingers, and that it's very fast. In fact, a lot of the Eight cards are about initiating the transformative process, not starting and ending in just two seconds flat. Like, we pull the card, and all of a sudden we’re transformed. It doesn't work that way in life, so it wouldn't work that way with a Tarot card, of course.
Transformative experiences are really intense sometimes. They really bring up all the things. They can be really, really contractive. They can bring up a ton of grief. You know, sometimes when we transform, very often we're outgrowing things. We outgrow friends, we outgrow old modes of communication, or we outgrow stuff that we feel called to invest in, we outgrow teachers, we outgrow even family members sometimes. We certainly outgrow beliefs and thoughts and habits and responses and patterns. And that, we want that. We're here to evolve, here to grow through what is uncomfortable.
We also are always going through, in this life, experiences where we sort of, whether we know it or not, kind of enter into the cocoon, and emerge as a butterfly, or where we've been in the cocoon, and all of a sudden, we realize that we never even realized that we were. Sometimes we're just banging at the door thinking, “What the hell's going on? Why can't the next thing in my life happen?” and it can take a really long time to realize like we're in this bigger process of shedding and rebirthing, which, again, I think, to some seems like a kind of esoteric, spiritual idea. And yet we see it reflected in nature all the time, and we have tricked ourselves into believing somehow that we are separate from that, which, of course, is not true.
So this isn't about “magical transformation.” This is not like a wave of a wand. This is not a snap of the finger. This is really transformation through experience, through hard work, and through the choices we make. You know, it can sometimes come in these realizations, but we have to choose to live out those realizations. We have to choose to bring inquiry to them. So it's about, really, I think, transformation, when it is kind of woven, interwoven, with personal responsibility and critical thinking, you know, with an extra large dose of surrender and willingness in there for sure (Lindsay laughs).
[0:07:55]
And, you know, what happens? Why do we go into these cards kind of as we are and emerge different, changed, or transformed?
I believe that there are many reasons for that. For life, that's a really important life experience — and, of course, we really have a card for every aspect of life experience. Sometimes, even beyond our understanding, at certain points we can think, “Well, you know, this experience isn't reflected in the Tarot,” and then all of a sudden, we can pull something that we never would have thought would have been connected to that, make these connections — which is why Tarot really needs to be expressed, understood, utilized, and reclaimed by everybody, because without everybody's insight, it can't really be the democratized tool that it is really meant to be. But that's on another note (Lindsay Laughs).
When we consider Eight, one kind of unique thing about it is that, of course, the number Eight when you tip it on its side is an infinity loop. And so that's really what we're talking about here. We're moving through a kind of a sacred, alchemical process where there are these moments where we have these again, realizations, these wakeups, these initiatory experiences or journeys, where our eyes are opened. We have awareness or we're choosing something differently. We're seeing something differently for the first time, you know.
Again, really, what is it to transform, and how is that expressed or felt? Like, what's our relationship with transformation? That can be a really powerful question, to ask ourselves.
Some of us, I think, have a perception — that's why I said it's not a magical kind of transformation. Some of us have a perception of transformation, like, if it's not ecstatic or external, or if everybody can't see it or recognize it, that we're somehow doing it wrong, when often it is a highly internal process, and it is only until the absolute last moments of the journey that the external changes begin to arise and present themselves.
We can be on a journey with something for 10 years or more before we start to step into a place where we're actually, the external pieces of what we're so desiring are ready to come in. And I think that that's important to acknowledge and remember. Not to say that somebody is going to have to be waiting a decade for something, but if you are, it doesn't necessarily mean that there's anything wrong. You may not like it, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it.
[0:10:50]
So the Eights are not fast transformations, although they are very powerful. So we'll kind of look at what that is. Because these are the Eights, they have a connection with both Strength and Justice, because of both of those cards being mutable and moving, shifting back and forth from 8 to 11, depending on the deck that we're using.
And, you know, Strength, there's such a beautiful connection here, I think, with both Strength and Justice. And we can kind of lean into either Major as the sort of larger mirror, this larger container, that's holding the fullness of the invitation of the Eights. That Strength is always an invitation for us to touch into some part, something that feels big, overwhelming, maybe even frightening, confronting, just big, whether it be inside of ourselves or outside of us, and to do so with an open heart. And not an open heart in a way that is without wisdom, without intelligence. Obviously, we don't want to totally bear all parts of us and open up all of our gates and doors when we're not fully, you know. We want to be as open as we can, while also having the appropriate boundaries that are important for us at that given moment.
But there's a process of transformation that happens in Strength. When we show up with an undefended heart, it shifts what we're showing up to. Other beings, even ourselves, can feel defense. They can feel armoring, they can feel the potential of attack. They can, and we can, too. And that's why very often, if there's something within ourselves that feels really confronting to look at, it's when we actually show up to it with softness, that something cracks open, and we realize, “Oh my gosh, I've been so afraid of this thing. And I'm realizing it's just a part of me that's wanting love and attention and/or clarity from me or boundaries or, you know, some real strong communication” or whatever it is. And it certainly changes, a lot of the time, the dynamic of conversations, hard conversations, often with other people.
You know, the heart can be open, and we can be angry. The heart can be open, and we can be fierce. That can happen. Those things can happen simultaneously. So it's not about being like oh, so soft and gentle. And yet there is a porousness that comes with this card.
So we know right away, from reflecting on Strength card, that to move through the Eights, it's asking for us to show up soft, willing, with an open heart.
[0:14:00]
The Eights bring up a lot more stuff than we, I think, give them credit for in a very general way, which we'll talk about when we get to them.
But Justice, as a kind of a flat, kind of the baseline of the Justice card, invites us to be awake to what is. Very often, as humxn beings, we're here, we're there, we're wanting to be outside of where we are, we have a belief that things should be different than how they are — and by the way, that belief is not always wrong. But Justice always says to us, whether it's about a larger issue of inequity, of injustice, or whether it is a personal experience where we're just feeling like “I want things to be different than how they are”, and that could be anything, however that's being experienced.
Justice is ruled by Libra. We’re starting with balanced scales. It says, “Can you be here right now, awake to what is? Can you drop into the reality? Whether you like it or not, you're in this. Whether it's right or wrong, this is happening.”
And it's only when we can acknowledge what is— not what we like, not what we wish, not what we believe, not what should be — we can hold all those things. Justice asks us actually, I think, to hold both; both the dream and the vision, and the absoluteness of what we, 100 percent, know is equitable, is just, while also acknowledging, “In order to get there, I have to start with what's here.”
Starting with what's here, opens us. It blows open doors that are closed, where we might be hardened in saying, you know, “This can't be the way it is,” trying to bash open kind of a locked door, starting with saying, you know, “How can I even gently begin to consider?” It may not be what we like or would prefer, and it may not even be, quote, “right,” but, if we can start with what is, if we can open our eyes to the reality of what's going on, it is only then that we will truly be free and available to make changes.
We can't really make changes unless we know and understand what's here. We’ll be ill-informed. We won't really be able to listen. So it can't happen unless reality is acknowledged and honored. And that is a huge part of the transformative process.
Being with what is and touching into it with curiosity with an open heart, there is so much emotional processing that comes up in Justice for so many people. Even to speak of, like, there's a reason a lot of the time people cannot acknowledge reality. It's because it, for some folx, it's too painful to bear for some time. For some folx, it so shatters their worldview, that their defenses get so high, that they can't, for a time, see it.
[0:17:13]
When Justice comes it does say, “You are capable. You can, maybe even just a little bit, touch into what is here, what wants to be acknowledged and honored.” But it's only that sense of being with what is with a curious, open heart, even if that heart feels frightened, feels scared, feels very tender, very angry — all emotions are welcome. That's really the core of both Strength and Justice and is a really potent inroad to working with the Eights because both Strength and Justice are transformative processes.
Strength changes our own perception of our ability to touch in with our heart, with our own ability, to touch in with — our relationship with what frightens us changes. Our own relationship with our courage changes with Justice. Justice is highly, highly transformative inner work that extends itself to the external, which both of them do. Both of them have this kind of relationship to the internal work that expands out to the external. Both are meant to start from within and then extend themselves again to community connection, to steps we take in the world, all of those pieces. That's, I think, where the two merge, and that's also where they weave in all of the Eights together.
So there's a lot of potency in what all of these cards bring in. It's just really touching at the surface; it’s not going so deeply into that. But the Eights really do invite us on this journey of personal awareness and reflection, inquiry, where we see something we didn't before, and it elicits and initiates a kind of a change in us.
[0:19:26]
So the first Eight that we're going to look at is Eight of Swords.
So I'm going to talk about some of these cards from the imagery and the perspective of the Smith Rider-Waite, but really, with all of these lessons, you know, take what works and leave what doesn't. But also feel free to do your own kind of field work and field research on the decks that you use, and see how the imagery has evolved from Smith Rider-Waite or another deck, see if you agree with the imagery. You don’t always have to agree with the imagery that you use. Imagery on a deck is not always actually even in alignment with the actual meaning of the card (Lindsay Laughs).
So, you know, humxns can superimpose their will on everything. So it's not to say don't trust your imagery. It's to say, trust yourself and know that the imagery is just an invitation. It's not a law or a rule. You can really feel free to go beyond it anytime you wish. But I do find it helpful to start with sort of looking at that sense of Smith Rider-Waite imagery for this example.
So the Eight of Swords invites us to see things beyond the story that our mind is telling us. And in this particular story — typically, when we get Eight of Swords in a reading or pull — we can have the sense of the feeling that we're trapped in something. And it could be a literal feeling, like we're caught in a position or in a situation that we don't want to be in, we don't know how to get out of it. It could be that we're kind of engaged in this social commitment and we don't quite know how to back out, even though we don't really want to, or we may want to, but we don't really know how. It could be that we're in a job that we, you know, isn't particularly working for us.
It could be that we're literally just having a totally internal experience, where the mind is inviting us into a story that feels so true; something sucks, “This project is so bad. This piece of art is so bad. No one's gonna like it. I'm not on my game,” whatever it is. Not saying to anyone, including myself, that those feelings are not completely valid. We can explore and touch into anything.
The point is to inquire and ask, “Is that really the truth? Can we honor and acknowledge it may feel true, and yet, here we are, right?”
[0:22:07]
So that sense of inquiry that's starting with sort of like a balanced slate, looking at that is a really wonderful way to begin to work with Eight of Swords because traditionally, if you look at most cards, most books, most definitions that are rooted in, you know, that speak of Eight of Swords, what can sometimes come up in these definitions — that I think is really, actively not very useful — is that it just stops at, “You're in a situation where you feel caught or trapped.” It doesn't actually invite us to bring any inquiry to whether or not that's true, nor does it actually tell us what to do about it. Right?
So because this is an Eight, we're going into it one way, and we're coming out different. We're coming out transformed in some way. So the key with Eight of Swords, and we can see this actually, in the imagery in the Smith Rider-Waite, if you look closely at it, that in that image, we have a blindfolded person. That person is also bound, their arms are bound, and eight swords are sort of encircling this person from behind. So it looks, for all intents and purposes, like this person is totally trapped, is stuck, is caught.
And there's even — something that I find, always found, very interesting, which is that on the ground near this person's feet, there's kind of water coming in. It almost looks like the tide is rising a little bit. It's a very subtle detail, but to me, when I've looked at that card, it's always added kind of a little element of panic, and of potential danger, even, like “I've got to get out of this now.” It adds this sense of real desperation, sometimes, to this energy.
What this card invites us to look at though is how the mind immediately goes to, “Well, I'm blindfolded, and I'm bound, and there are swords all around me, and I cannot get out.” And yet the feet are not bound. This person can walk, and there are no swords that are actually in front of their body, which means that even though they can't see, even though they are not, their arms are not free, they can actually walk away at any time, at any time that they wish to.
[0:24:47]
So the invitation, the truth, of the Eight of Swords — now this doesn't mean that it's always true in every life situation, that we can just walk away from anything. Very often we’re... situations can arise that are enormously complicated.
But where this card is concerned and the situations that it can arise in, it's an invitation to consider: Are we actually trapped? Or do we just believe that we're trapped? Is there actually an open window here that we can open? When we're trying to smash down a locked door, are we trying so hard to figure out how to get this blindfold off with bound hands, when we could actually just walk, you know, and move our body in a way that might even loosen those bindings?
So it's a very, very powerful experience, when you are living in this way, with this belief, like, “I can't get out of this engagement. I can't do this thing. I feel so locked. I feel so trapped. I can't do anything. I'm so stuck. I'm so lost.” And if we pull Eight of Swords, very often, it's an invitation that lets us know, “Sweetheart, you are so much less stuck, caught, and trapped than — you feel that way, but the truth is that you're totally free. And the truth is that the bird cage door is open, you can fly out anytime that you want to. Any time.”
And that is often the case in circumstances like this, where we can think like, “Ugh, this thing just is so bad. It's not right. It doesn't feel good.” And sometimes those feelings are really, really important to acknowledge and honor. And other times, it's the mind getting really, really threatened and really scared of us expanding in any way and wanting to pull us into doubt; to just help us be in that sense of safety and of stuckness, of “safety” and of fear, of contraction.
[0:27:03]
The transformation that can happen in Eight of Swords is enormous, because we can actually feel. We actually have the capacity to feel and groove a new neural pathway that helps us to look — when we feel stuck, caught, lost, like, “Ugh, I can't do this thing. I'm not in the right frame of mind for it,” whatever it is — it can actually help us to groove new neural pathways that help us look for the unlocked window instead of wasting our energy breaking down the door; that very often Spirit, or our soul, or some part of our knowing, that sort of second channel that we all have, is saying, “Just take one step in this direction, and it will really loosen up all of these things. Why not just finish this piece of art? Or why not just write for the next hour, whether or not you think it's good or not, or record a podcast that your brain might be telling you is not good enough.” (Lindsay Laughs)
And just as a practice, say, “Who I am and where I am is good enough.” And it could also be that if we feel like, for example, we have maybe an engagement or an obligation that felt like the right thing, now does not, we can tune in with ourselves and say, “What is in highest and best for me here? What can I say?” And it might be that we have the opportunity to do something so totally scary, but so transformative and courageous, and maybe say to someone, “I'm so sorry to do this, but this doesn't actually work for me anymore,” or “I won't be available for this and I can't tell you how sorry I am.”
Whatever it is, even if the person gets so upset with you, and you're potentially holding space for their feelings, it doesn't necessarily mean that it was the wrong thing to do.
It's an opportunity for us to see, we're not our thinking. We’re not our thinking. The mind is not in any way, shape, or form the most reliable narrator — for most of us — about what we can and cannot do, or what we should and should not do. Very often there is a tremendous capacity for experience and creativity and beauty that we have that we can really invite ourselves into some story about how we just can't do it, you know.
So, the medicine of Eight of Swords is to investigate whether or not those feelings of stuckness or caughtness or tightness or not seeing a way through the wall, wasting all of our thinking, all of our energy, on how to strategize the way out of this whole thing, could actually just be totally bypassed by taking a step forward.
So Eight of Swords also says, “Try doing something instead of trying to think out a way to do it.”
Sometimes that can be a really positive thing. Sometimes we can think in a million ways, “Whew, I wonder how I can express to a person that I'm interested in working with them” or “dating them? And I don't want to. I feel scared. It's not the right time, blah, blah, blah,” you know. What might it be if we pull a card like this to just say, “Hey, would you be interested in hanging out? I would love to get to know you better.” Or, “Hey, I would love to work with you. I'm sure you hear that all the time. If there's something that you'd ever be interested in collabing on, I'd love to be a part of it. If it's of any interest to you, here are some ideas that I've had that I'd love to collaborate with you on.”
And sometimes even if the person doesn't ever respond, very often, we can think, “Well, I'll never do that again.” But we can also look at it differently and, say, sometimes just one experience with being brave enough, courageous enough, to say, “I'm going to put myself out there and try” is enough to actually, again, groove a new neural pathway to deepen into our courage for future experiences. So it makes us more solution-oriented. It makes us more... this card can really help with that.
[0:31:29]
It can also help with us not, you know, not collapsing into giving up. It can be a very, very radical approach to saying, “I am unavailable to be told by my mind or, you know, to believe the story or the invitation that there's no way out of this situation. And I'm willing to consider that there might be a solution that I've never even thought of before that might be right there for me. I'm just not looking in the direction that it might be in. I might be looking in a harder direction. I might be looking to say, ‘I've got to bust down this locked door’ when something might be open.”
You know, what is it to... Actually, I mean, really, the most radical thing about Eight of Swords is that it posits a world or an option in which the more easeful way is actually the way that really provides the solution or the freedom that we're looking for. And we tend to not look for the most easeful way out of things. We tend to really overcomplicate things. We tend to really say, “I don't want to drift out of this, like, bubble of comfort that I’m in.
So the transformation that occurs in this card is huge. It requires our courage, it requires our integrity, it requires our willingness of spirit, to work through the stories of the mind and move into a space of openness and a willingness to say, “I'm willing to consider this could be a lot easier than I'm believing.”
And whenever we pull Eight of Swords, it is wise to at least put that intention out there, even if it's not necessarily “easier.” There could be other options, other roadmaps, other pathways forward, we're not even seeing, and just by saying, “I'm willing to open to a different way of looking at this,” it can shift the energy profoundly.
That can really, I mean, this is the card that can ultimately, like, it ultimately shifts the dial on our work with the Swords, period. Because really, the work we do in the Swords is to get to know our mind better, to get to know our thinking better, to kind of bless the invitations that come forward and say, “Okay, this is a great invitation. I can honor what's here. And I also know that, again, I'm not my thinking, that thoughts are not necessarily true. And in order to work with what comes up in my mind, what comes up in my thoughts, it's really wise for me to have a root system of observation, of being able to observe, oh, this is an invitation from the mind into the story I'm caught. Okay, I can honor that, fully and completely. I can bow to that. I can let any emotion, any experience, come up in that, and then it is part of my personal responsibility, my commitment to my soul work to be able to say: Is that true? You know, is that absolutely the truth that I'm caught, and I'm stuck? Maybe I could ask someone else if they see a solution.”
Sometimes, you know, Eight of Swords is so beautifully solved in pairs or in groups or with the help of a trusted friend or loved one or processor. There's so much medicine that comes through that card and can be profoundly transformative. It can shift the whole way that we view the stories of our mind, you know, really.
[0:35:11]
Eight of Pentacles. We evolve and transform over time. We become masterful. We become experienced in some way through Eight of Pentacles work by showing up in repetition and getting better and better and better, more skillful, more experienced, through experience.
Essentially, through that repetition, we get, we gain skills, and we grow over time, through showing up and doing things starting from the very beginning, starting from sort of where we're at, and getting further and further into our mastery through experience.
Experience makes the master, and very often with anything, if we're talking about mastery, first of all, mastery isn't a solid place. There's a period at the end of that sentence. We're always always expanding. We're always teacher and student, in one moment.
Anyway, we put in hours with this card. This card is a reminder to say it's not... this is not like a quick fix. We have to put in hours. We have to honor that every experience that we move through is an opportunity for growth. Our journey of learning is never over, and it's, again, about lived, physical repetition of experience.
So if you are a Tarot reader, Eight of Pentacles says, you know, cherish your dream of being a Tarot reader, that is maybe so abundant, that has all of your needs met, and there's enough abundance to give away. There's enough abundance to create systems of equity where you can do recreational offerings.
Like there's so much that can happen. It, you know, we can have any kind of dream, you know, the biggest dream in the world, or the most humble, small dream, or somewhere in between. And we can get Eight of Pentacles for that, that says, “This is a long game.” And every experience you have is building you into the practitioner, into the parent, into the teacher, into the worker, into the facilitator that you dream of being.
And very often when we want to show up from a soul mastery, from a soul-guided place, it demands that kind of commitment from us. So it's, again, not to say that we can't go right out there and blow up and do a beautiful job. It's not to say that at all; that folx who fall into success or a lot of work quickly, are somehow bypassing this. It's not true. But even folx who fall into things very quickly will never, there's no skipping this.
Eventually, there will be a time we'll get so far down the road, and then we'll go back, and we'll look at something else. We'll go back, and we'll study something else. It's happened to me a million times in my practice with the Tarot, where I will teach and teach and teach from where I am, from what I know, and then experience or mastery, or Spirit, or my own desire takes me into a different emergence with the cards, into a different experience with a particular card.
And sometimes that... it’s why I say, like, if you worked with me five years ago, it's gonna be like a totally different person. My experience with the Tarot is always changing. And it's changing not because of the books I'm reading. It's changing because of my life experience, because I will go through an experience, pull a card for it and think, “Oh my gosh, how so? How is that card connected to this?” And all of a sudden, it opens up everything.
[0:39:23]
And so I can look back on my work with the Tarot, and there are many, many imperfect Pentacles along the way with certain cards, where I started with a belief or a story, or even with someone else's definition where I thought like, “Whoa, that really tracks with me.” And the more I got into it, the more I reflected, the more I grew as a person, I outgrew many, many definitions of those cards. Or when a student would reflect to me, “Hey, this doesn't feel as inclusive” or “I didn't see myself reflected in this,” it's always an opportunity for me to say, “Wow, like, I need to go back to the drawing board and think about why that might be.”
So, yeah, there's... always amazing. We all have those things in our lives that we’re like one, two Pentacles in, and they look really rudimentary, and where we have thousands of pentacles, that now at this point are so beautifully intricate and carved, where it's almost nothing for us to create those Pentacles, and yet, it brings us deeper and deeper into our mastery in some way.
And I think Eight of Pentacles kind of redefines mastery in taking it out of this kind of hierarchical place and moving it into a place of, you know, just constantly evolving in our learning and our understanding of things. But whenever we work with this card, whenever this card comes up, it's an opportunity for us to know that we are on a path of transformation. We are moving from one kind of apprentice to master in some way.
And that experience, that just, kind of, time with our nose in the books, with our working hard over time, and, again, putting in the hours, so to speak, is one of the best ways for us to actually learn something with our hands, with our heart, with our eyes, with our body, you know; to actually have enough time, so that something that we feel a bit clumsy with can actually get just so easeful, so much more graceful.
And that transformation happens, again, often over a long period of time. It never stops, you know. It's always unfolding. You know, even if we don't see that unfolding, happening as quickly as we want to.
[0:41:57]
With Eight of Wands, this card is very interesting, because — and I've even explored it in this way — but pretty often, when we look at this card, I've explored this card as kind of describing, like, a package that's enroute to us. Like something's coming, something's on its way, energetically. And that's not not true, but it's just a refinement and just a constant commitment to recentering on my part, because I don't really believe that the Tarot can ever really be defined through external means. Meaning, if a card, if a definition is rooted in, “Something is coming,” it's really hard to root to that.
Even in Wheel of Fortune, where we explore Wheel of Fortune sort of through this lens of, you know, changes moving around us. Can we root into presence while that change kind of flows and expands? We're not attaching to any kind of external change. We're always changing. Wheel of Fortune just really teaches us in the midst of ever-evolving change, can we root into ourselves in any given moment, so that we don't feel like we have to sort of be on top of every single thing? Like, it essentially takes us out of Spirit’s business, so to speak, and the things that we can't really control in this life and roots us into what is asking for our attention.
So with Eight of Wands, I want to take it a little further:
[0:43:50]
Eight of Wands is really about us being in process, letting us know that, you know, the image of this card is often kind of these eight wands flying in mid air. It's letting us know you've thrown your wand in some way. You've said “yes” to something. You've committed your energy to something, and you've said, again, a sacred “yes” in some way.
The Wands are all about the root of our energy and there's really a connection to its, you know, again, like, all of us have different roots, different sources, different capacities, for energetic output. And when we say a sacred, soul “yes” to something, anytime we do that, it means that as soon as we do that, the energetic process that moves us from that “yes” to the actual meeting with the final outcome of whatever that process is, whatever it happens to be, is now in process.
If we say, “Yes, I am saying ‘yes’ to a desire to be a parent. I feel a call to parenthood,” or there's an invitation into parenthood that is sometimes a very long process from the “yes” to a baby. And often, the journey is so different for every person who goes through that journey. Sometimes where we get to at the end of the journey is that there's a different kind of expression of parenthood or love than the traditional one that we might have known. Maybe we don't have our own biological children or even adopt a child, but offer that love to the other children in our lives, or, you know, whatever it might be. But it's often a big process.
And Eight of Wands is a reminder to us: it is in-process. And we can have a tendency to get really impatient, to get really scared, to get into doubt, to say, “I don't know if it's gonna happen, you know. I said ‘yes,’ and nothing's occurring. Do I need to kind of say, ‘yes,’ again? Do I need to reaffirm my ‘yes?’” And you can do whatever you want, but the answer really is “no”. If you've said that “yes,” the most important thing is to continue to show up to the things that are now arising as a result of you saying that “yes.”
I know for myself when I've said big “yeses” to things, my expectation is that what the final result is is coming, like, in two seconds. And I'm always somehow surprised (Lindsay Laughs) when the process comes up that is always uniform and, yet, never what I want, which is that there's a lot that has to typically be cleared or processed in order to make room for that thing.
There's often — it happened to me hugely when I was moving across the country. You know, it was almost a year plus of active, calling that in, and calling that in. It was situation after situation after situation that came up, that over and over again, I was told, “You're not meant to take this with you into a new place, into this move.” And there were many things both kind of emotionally, energetically, physically, literally, that had to be cleared in order to make room for that.
[0:47:33]
So Eight of Wands is really a transformative process over time. It takes time to build from an internal “yes” to an external result.
So this card, again, is not fast, but the process has absolutely begun and, from here, we will begin and continue to lean into that crucial, inner transformative work, in order to be ready to actually harvest and reap and love on all of those seeds that we've sown, once they're ready to be harvested.
And we’ll emerge with an awareness of how a “yes” can spiral out over sometimes years or bloom within us; how it's not really a linear path from that deep soul “yes”, that deep desire, to whatever it is that we're working or building to. And from there, we can really lean into that yes and the journey that unfolds.
You know, sometimes what we say “yes” to brings us into a journey that's so different from where we start. We can have a desire to move somewhere and we can have a really clear vision of where we want to go, and somewhere else can call us forward. And we can think, “Ugh, I don’t want to go there. Like, I've never even thought of that” (Lindsay Laughs).
But if we feel a “yes” to — like when we moved to Portland, we, both of us, my husband and I, kept hearing “Portland,” we had never even been. When we started to hear about Portland, we didn't know anything about it at all. We didn't know about the neighborhoods. We didn't know. I mean, we really didn't know anything, but we kept hearing. And we really just wound up lucking out so beautifully with the house that we're renting, but it was so unexpected. We wanted to go other places out West.
So again, sometimes things change along that journey, but the process of transformation is in motion, and Eight of Wands really invites us to kind of rest in that deeper journey and bow to what is here, what really wants our attention in that way.
[0:49:49]
And finally, we have Eight of Cups which is just such a big, beautiful, important, powerful energy.
The invitation of Eight of Cups, when we get this card, it asks us to walk away from something that we have typically put time and love and effort and energy into, that served us, that was so important, and now no longer does, now no longer does in quite the way that it did. And now we are invited to leave those Cups behind, in order to make room for what really wants to be birthed through us next.
Sometimes this is not about a physical, typical, letting go. Sometimes this is about the way in which we've been doing something. We need to, you know, there's an Eight of Cups energy that comes in and basically says, “Hey, the way in which you've been doing this has worked up until now. Even if it sort of hasn't, it's gotten you to here, but you're ready for something different.”
Typically, you're ready for something a little bit better, a little more easeful, a little bit more graceful, maybe something way more supportive. Maybe it's time to not have your work or creative process be so — I know mine can just be — so torturous sometimes because of my own stuff, you know, with not trusting Spirit, with wanting things to go faster than they are, you know? I'm a person (Lindsay Laughs).
So like, even, you know, everybody has a holy, sacred, beautiful, intuitive channel that flows through them. And even those of us who work from our channel can sometimes struggle to trust what comes from that. And I always want to normalize that sort of humxnness. We are in a humxn body, having a humxn experience with these immensely sacred channels, that it can get a bit messy from time to time.
But sometimes it's the process, you know. Are you willing to walk away from that? Sometimes it's something bigger.
Many folx have been going through Eight of Cups work as a result of the pandemic, where they had to close their business, they had to walk away from certain ways of working — not necessarily in order to make room for something better. I would never be so insensitive to say that, “Oh, that's just, like, great!” you know. Some people are still in the deep, deep grief places as a result of that. And I also know many folx who have had to shift the way that they've been working, and it was tremendously heartbreaking, and there was so much grief and rage and fear and trauma in the decision for them.
And there were also a ton of folx that I knew who said, you know, “Truth be told, I was so burned out. I was so exhausted. I didn't know how I was going to make this work. I didn't know how I was going to continue to do this. I did feel like there was something missing. I did always want to do this thing. I just never knew I was going to be able to try it like this.”
So obviously, that's not everybody. And I want to bow so hugely and with so much compassion to all of the folx who are dealing with tremendously challenging and heartbreaking losses as a result of their businesses due to COVID-19.
[0:53:48]
And it is Eight of Cups work where we are asked to walk away from something that we love and cherish. And in no way are we bypassing the deep grief and all the emotions that come in. I mean, this is a Cups card. Like, there's huge emotion in this decision. It's not always an easy one, and it's not always one that means that we were unhappy with what was going on.
Sometimes we know that it's time to walk away from a particular relationship and it doesn't mean we hate the person. It doesn't even mean if we were in a particular kind of relationship with them, that things were so bad, or were working out so badly. It can sometimes mean that we've outgrown them. It can sometimes mean that life is moving us in a different direction. It can sometimes mean that our values, our desires no longer align. They did, and now they don't.
So this card really speaks of outgrowing and holds a big, big space for the process that does come up for, I think, everybody in this card. This card holds a space of “this or better,” always, you know, walking away from something for the hope of something that feels more aligned, but it doesn't mean that we have to feel that way. It doesn't mean that we have to just all of a sudden say, “Oh, yeah, this is like great.” Sometimes this walking away can be enormously painful, so challenging.
But if we can hold a space for the possibility that this is not a total end to everything that this has been, but a new beginning, if we can hold both, it just further deepens us into, really, what I think is the essence of the Cups, which is a “both/and” experience; that we can hold with so much tenderness and so much compassion our feelings about things, our emotions, our preferences that we don't maybe want to walk away, or we didn't want to walk away as we did and, yet, it's here. You know, what does that look like for us? What does that mean?
[0:56:11]
I'm really going through this right now — and it doesn't even compare with how some folx are experiencing this — in a lot of ways with my work, with my website, which is getting redone right now.
Not that anyone can see, it's getting redone behind the scenes. Tarot for the Wild Soul is so completely, my course, so totally in a transformative process of her own, and I don't know really what she wants to be yet, which is like just a part of the work and honoring that my offerings really do have a life of their own. But as a humxn who, you know, it's really scary.
And even though I don't know completely what's on the other side of the bridge, there have been a number of things that I've been preparing or have already walked away from with my work. And it is all the feelings. It's so intense to shift things that probably, for some people, if they heard that I was having feelings about shifting or walking away from some of the things that I do, they'd be like, “Okay, I guess?” but it is a lot.
And sometimes we can't. Sometimes folx can walk away from relationships and just think, “Wow, that was really sad. It's really intense. But I'm ready for something different.” And sometimes it can take us years to process the walking away from that.
No matter what, there is a profound transformation through the work we do in this card, because, one, whenever we walk away from something, we always transform, no matter what. Even if it's the hardest, most challenging, most upsetting thing in the world, there is always a change that comes from it, whether we like the change or not. That's number one.
Number two, there is something very powerful in the Cups suit that is woven into us trusting ourselves. There's a lot of invitations with these cards that are rooted in trusting our choices, trusting our timing, trusting our emotional process; that a lot of us will sometimes underplay how big of a deal it is to walk away from some things. Some folx never walk away from the things that are really, really clearly, you know, sometimes we don't know why we're asked to walk away from these things. We can have something.
I know for myself, like, I don't know how different Tarot for the Wild Soul course will be. I don't know whether or not it will be really quite similar to how it used to be, there will be some things that will be really different with this new version. And in other ways, I have no idea what's to come. It's not like Tarot for the Wild Soul course wasn't working and wasn't very successful. It was, but it wanted to be different. So there had to be some things that were ready to go and honoring that was really painful. It brought up a lot of grief, and that's appropriate.
And for some folx, they might never take up that invitation because it might be too scary to consider. You know, “Oh, I can't change this. It's working. Why would I change it?” When really, we're always changing whether or not something is “working” or not. There are always opportunities and invitations to change no matter where we are in life.
[0:59:44]
And so Eight of Cups can really help us to value those things, to actually evolve through what we're handed, and to trust our decisions in the long term. Ultimately, to say, I know for myself now after having gone through multiple, big, fiery Eight of Cups experiences, I trust them when they come up. I do. Even if I don't understand them, even if I don't know why something doesn't want to happen again, it can be really powerful to bring about a deeper trust of that.
And also, there have been times where I've gone through endings for things that I have absolutely no clarity on why. It's totally devastating and I allow myself to have as much time to process those decisions as I need without feeling the need to shorten it for anyone else's comfort, right? So that's a really big part of this card, too.
The art of walking away when it's time is a big one, and this card really invites us into that space, and it is a highly transformative process, one that certainly, in light of Strength and Justice, takes a lot of critical thinking, a lot of willingness to be in the reality of what is being asked of us, and a lot of courage of the heart, a lot.
[1:01:20]
So this is just a taste, just a little, you know, a touch into these energies, and some of the ways that they can invite us into just really quite profound transformation, and really big, transformative processes that are really woven into the bedrock of life. It is so empowering and transformative when we feel super stuck, and realize like, “Oh my god. The solution’s been right in front of me. Holy shit! Now I can move forward. That's crazy. And I understand why my mind... like the solution is really expansive. I kind of understand why my mind wanted to invite me into maybe an old story that, you know, ‘this is going to be so hard, I'm going to struggle with this so much.’” And it can. I think it happens to a lot of us.
And it can be very powerful to shift, to realize that there could even be a shift in our narrative in that way, you know. Looking and finding those unlocked windows when the door is locked, that's very transformative. Moving through an experience when something is ready to be bowed to, when we've reached the end of the road with a particular experience or relationship or situation or habit or process, and it's time to bow to all the lessons that those Cups have brought us and venture and journey out to new paths of life, perhaps some that we never even considered that we would ever do, or touch upon, or experience ourselves, you know, in Eight of Cups, it's enormously transformative. Some of the most transformative experiences of life happen in that way.
To move through a process of growth and of transformation over an extended period of time, to move through the waves and the chop and the expansions and contractions that come along with saying “yes” to something and then having to kind of go through the real time, day-to-day experience, where it doesn't look like anything is happening, where we feel like I don't even think I... like, what am I? (Lindsay Laughs) Am I actually moving toward this thing that I'm working toward?
You know, what is it, you know, to trust that when we say a deep “yes” to something, that the journey that unfolds that moves us from kind of point A to point Z will be what it will be? But this idea that we have already thrown the Wand, that it hasn't hit the ground yet, we haven't gotten to the point where we're finally coming into oneness with our big move or our big life situation, or this kind of work that we might be doing on ourselves internally, or a particular goal physically or mentally or emotionally that we may have that, but to remind us “Hey, like you did... You've started this. It’s in-process. Those Wands are going to reach the aligned finish line, whether it's where you envisioned or it's something perhaps even better, or something totally different to consider.” And, you know, there's huge transformation in that.
[1:04:48]
And there's also massive, clear, beautiful transformation in the journey that we have all moved through in some way in our lives; where we go from not really knowing something to being really proficient at it. For some of us that's reading and writing. We went from not reading to reading, if we read, and, you know, have maybe gone from writing in a way that felt more rudimentary to one that felt really graceful. For some people, it was understanding certain systems or certain subjects. For some folx, it's a style of movement, or it's a particular way of being. It can be also building muscle, whether emotionally or physically or otherwise or spiritually. It can be Tarot work. It can be anything, you know.
If we set out to gain knowledge or experience in any area, Eight of Pentacles says, “Keep at it.” You know, it's a Pentacle card, it's Earth, it's its own kind of root, you know. If you're tending to something in the garden, and you're planting the seed, it can take a while for that to really become a sturdy, fruit-bearing tree. You know, can you keep at it? Because the more you do, the more you're going to learn along the way, even if it's not directly where you want to go, even if the journey isn't a linear process.
And that really is transformation in general. It's not linear. And sometimes in the process of transformation, our original “yes,” our original goal, or where we imagined that we'd be, changes radically from just being in the process. It's just a part of life. If we can be open to that journey of transformation and emergence, emerging new from the very act of going through the earthly experience, it can really, really open up our view of life in some really, really powerful ways.
Thank you for listening to this, Wild Souls. It's always such a pleasure. I will be back in just a few days with December's Monthly Medicine, then we're going to be doing some regular episodes of the podcast. Keep an eye out, The Threshold is coming back for 2020, which is a huge energetic, intuitive deep dive into the medicine of 2021. Hierophant, Five year, major good stuff happening. There's gonna be like a full announcement about that on Monday or Tuesday whenever that podcast episode comes out.
And yeah. Yeah, so thank you so much for being here, Wild Souls. It's such an honor to, again, get together with you in this way. And until we meet again, just a few days, please take care of yourselves.
[Conclusion]
(Instrumental exit music)
[1:07:51]
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.
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