147. Deepening Tarot Connections: Four, Five, and Six of Cups
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Our exploration of Tarot card connections begins with the relationships between the Four, Five, and Six of Cups. The Cups suit invites us to truly love ourselves in our day-to-day lives starting where we are — not where we believe or were told we “should” be.
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About the Episode
It’s time for a new lesson on the Tarot for the Wild Soul podcast!
As we cross the threshold of 2020 into 2021, we can experience so many feelings all balled up inside our grief. That grief is asking to be heard.
In this episode of the Tarot podcast, we’ll look to three cards coming together, like interwoven fingers, holding our hands in times of big, big feelings.
How do multiple Tarot cards influence and interact with one another?
It can be so powerful to reflect on the essence of a particular Tarot card. That card can take on a whole new meaning if we look at how it flows and assists in the journey through or into the spiral of other tarot cards.
Our exploration of Tarot card connections begins with the relationships between the Four, Five, and Six of Cups. The Cups suit invites us to truly love ourselves in our day-to-day lives starting where we are — not where we believe or were told we “should” be.
As someone sees you moving from Four of Cups to Five of Cups, our worries about how we look or seem can distract from authentic self-care.
We’ve been taught in so many times, in so many places, and by so many people how we’re “supposed to feel” in various situations. The Tarot can be our absolute best friend, someone who sees you in your wild, unruly process and makes space for your feelings to be what they are.
Lindsay Mack offers her listeners her experience with the Tarot leading us from taking a minute away from others to process a situation (Four of Cups), setting a place at the table for our grief (Five of Cups), and seeing how this honoring and attention to our wild, brilliant hearts can lead to softness, opening, and insight into how to truly love ourselves (Six of Cups).
The Four, Five, and Six of Cups may be among some of the most misunderstood Tarot cards.
Explore how certain interpretations of these three Tarot cards may have reinforced some of our barriers between ourselves and healing.
Lindsay explores why the Four of Cups has nothing to do with missing out or being stubborn and why Five of Cups is misunderstood as an omen of sadness rather than a generous, open hand to hold when you need more time to feel your feelings, to mourn. We’ll also learn how Six of Cups has less to do with nostalgia and more to do with integrating the needs of our inner children into our emotional process.
These Tarot cards invite us to integrate our emotional experiences and create ample, compassionate space for our grief. When we work with these Tarot card energies as a unit, we cultivate the capacity for radical self-tending, transformative reparenting, and greater spaciousness in our hearts for ourselves and others.
Cards mentioned in this episode:
What are tarot connections? [0:04:08]
Nine of Cups [0:06:41]
Four of Cups [0:19:42]
Five of Cups [0:28:20]
Six of Cups [0:32:20}
Related Episodes
We invite you to explore Monthly Medicine: January is Creation for more information about our entrance into 2021 and our departure from 2020.
If it would feel supportive for you to further explore how the Tarot meets us in our grief, we invite you to explore Anchor Cards for Grief.
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, capitalistic structures
The content in this lesson/episode contains references to grief and capitalistic structures. 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, as always, such a joy to be gathered with you in this virtual space. I’m wishing everybody a very happy 2021. I hope the year has been gentle with you so far.
A really quick announcement at the top, before we get into our juicy subject today, which is that the enrollment for The Threshold, which is centered around the Hierophant, the Fives, and 2021 on a whole, the energetic year ahead is closing tonight at 9pm Pacific, midnight Eastern. So if you are interested in leaning into this really sacred, really powerful offering, tonight is it. So I hope you get a hold of it. And if you don't feel called to, that's great, too (Lindsay Laughs).
For those of you who've said “yes,” thank you for your lovely, wonderful, potent words and feedback. It's been so nice to read how the material has resonated so much with you.
We're still trucking along here at Team Wild Soul with the rebrand. Now we're getting, like, really into the thick. We're going to start filming new things next week for some of the many new offerings that are coming out next year. Next year, oh my god, this year. And, you know, we want to be able to have things out this month, but who fucking knows (Lindsay Laughs), with Spirit, with me, with like intuition, who knows? There are definitely, we’re definitely digging deeper into it than we have before and I'm so excited to share the new website, new offerings. It's gonna be great.
[0:02:09]
I knew, you know, I didn't know what I was going to, what the theme of this month would really be and where I'd be called to kind of speak, where I’d be called to kind of touch in on the energies at hand. But I have personally been spending, since 2021, so much time in Five of Cups. And this is a card that is, I know, not welcome, necessarily, and yet contains so much medicine. We've talked about it, I believe, a little bit on the podcast. Of course, it's part of Threshold, but I wanted to not just talk about Five of Cups, but talk about kind of the arc of teachings, of wisdom, of life guidance that happens in the connective tissue that guides us from the Four of Cups to the Five of Cups to the Six.
Because, really, what these three cards show us is the kind of rebirth process that happens when we open ourselves to our emotionality, period — to our wounds, to our old grief, to our present griefs, to our traumas, to our transferences, like to all of the things that feel challenging to integrate — if we can be with what's here, it can yield to absolutely beautiful spaciousness in the heart, absolutely beautiful generosity, more compassion for ourselves, for one another.
There is a kind of transformative process that happens from the Four of Cups to the Five to the Six.
So what I really wanted to, there are a couple reasons why I feel really drawn to talk about this subject matter. One, because I know that a lot of folx who read Tarot struggle with the idea of associating like what is the connective tissue between one card to the other? And I personally find that to be a very interesting topic. Like, why do certain cards lead us into the next card? So I think we're going to be covering that. Every week this month in January is like putting things together, like really seeing the connections and how these cards are in relationship with each other.
And then, because this is really just my bread and butter, my reason for it being the most exciting, passionate, wonderful part of the Tarot to me, personally — and of course, it's a really huge part of my influence, how I talk about it, literally what influences me — is, to me, the Tarot doesn't... I mean, the Tarot is so exciting and so powerful when we can see it as advice for life, when we can take it out of the esoteric, kind of the big, universal picture.
And by the way, there is a reason and a season for those pieces, too. Like, I love the arcane, I love the mystery, I love the magic, I love kind of the secrets and the revelations and like, the bigger symbols. Like, that's all so beautiful. It has a place. And when you're going through the shit, and you're having a lot of feelings, and you're moving through a lot of stuff, it is not particularly very useful.
What is useful is to really see how these cards that we might have judgements around, we might think are “bad” or scary or unpleasant, or, you know, they all bring medicine. All of them. It doesn't mean you have to like them, or prefer them, and it doesn't necessarily mean that they're comfortable. They all bring some kind of gift, some treasure. And typically, the treasure is some kind of beautiful key that can help us to get closer to ourselves in challenging or uncomfortable moments, you know.
[0:06:41]
Nine of Cups, for example, which we're not going to talk about today, but it’s really like all the treatments, all the interpretations of Nine of Cups are completely valid, right? There's some that I'm going to maybe like debunk, or some that I might say, “Hey, let's bring like a little bit of common sense to this particular thing,” or, “Hey, I actually think this interpretation is a little harmful, you know, personally,” whatever it is.
But any interpretation of a card, be it challenging, problematic, it's all a place to start. And from there, we can bounce off of that foundation and say, “Hey, from this perspective, from this way of thinking, this doesn't really hold water for me. Can we go further with it? What about this, right?”
That's ideally what we want to do with every Tarot card. We're just humxns interpreting these huge, beautiful energies. Like, it's wise to go into that with a beginner's mind. It's wise to consider that there might be some gentleness and benevolence to these cards, even the ones we don't particularly like, that we may not immediately see. So it's in our best interest when we get any kind of card to get curious about it.
And, going back to Nine of Cups, the idea about Nine of Cups is like, it's a card of hopes and wishes. Great. If we're not exploring that, we can just think like, “Oh, make a wish, hope for something, hope that something will come or expect something.” There's nothing wrong with that.
But the root of Nine of Cups that is really connected to this medicine piece, is that that card actually invites us to explore our relationship to getting our hopes up. I mean, that's really triggering for most of us. It's triggering for me. And, and there's a whole like, there's similar treatments, right? A card of hopes and wishes, maybe even wishes coming true, versus an inquiry and invitation, what comes up for you when you consider the idea like, “Is it safe to get my hopes up?” For most of us, the answer is: “No. It doesn't feel safe to get my hopes up.”
And Nine of Cups doesn't seek to eradicate that or bypass that. It seeks to gently guide us into those waters and say, “Well, why, for you, particularly? What defense mechanisms, what coping, what kind of, you know, what helpful measures have arisen in you to help you step away from the searing pain, the feelings, for some of us, of shame or embarrassment, of what it is to get your hopes up and not have them be met?” Right.
So that's what I'm talking about when I say “the medicine.” These cards, if we're willing to lean into them, this is all that Soul Tarot is basically, is really, how can we apply them to the shit that we go through in this life beyond like the esoteric, the Spirit? These are the universal themes.
I don't give a fuck who you are, where you are, what you are, how intuitive you feel, how in touch with yourself you feel — we've all got stuff about getting our hopes up. We've all got stuff about pleasure, about giving ourselves enough time to grieve, or whatever it is. Like, we've all got stuff. And every card in the Tarot is like a little friend, like at our side, wanting to kind of hold our hand and say, “I can help you. I can help you walk through this.” So it can really change and shift the way that we look at cards.
[0:10:55]
And I felt really called to talk about Five of Cups for a couple different reasons. One is because I, personally, have been walking through a lot of work with Five of Cups, and I think that when I do, personally, it's not just about my personal life. It is also about like, sometimes it is like, “Oh, wow, I wonder if this is a part of collecting information to potentially share with the collective around this energy.” And it felt like a “yes” to me.
When I started to really meditate on it, it became really clear that what wanted to be discussed was kind of the full spectrum cycle that guides us from the Four to the Five to the Six of Cups. And that it felt exciting to talk about connective tissue between cards, how they flow together.
But also, something that does feel really important to name here, our entrance into 2021, energetically, has been quite bumpy. And I think that's probably putting it mildly. Like this is not a gentle year. This is a... Hierophant work is extremely intense. It will bring up everything, and it can feel very liminal sometimes, even though it's like very Taurus, very rooted because Hierophant has a lot to do with belief systems, challenging those belief systems, inviting us into deeper investigation of those belief systems.
So there's a lot of — the word that I would use about 2021 so far is pretty confrontational, and not even in an aggressive way. But just things like in our face, like, “Okay, here you go.” And what's under that is an invitation to plumb deeper, to go forward. Like I've never really had my Guides be so like, “Yeah, this is in front of you. This is in your face. You have a choice: You can keep circling the drain, or you can let go. Whatever you want. But like, you don't have to keep circling the drain. You can just do something different, you can step away, you can ask for help, you can investigate further.”
There's a lot of, like, invitations into that kind of autonomous work, that personal integrity, that personal responsibility. It's been very strong and so, so much of Five of Cups... It’s also a Five year. So I thought that that would be a nice thing to weave in.
[0:13:30]
So much of Five of Cups, Four into Five, is about honoring integration. And I think that these three cards can be really deep anchors for us, as we embark into this amazing, powerful, potent cycle that we're in and just beginning, and can help us to really touch in with and talk about and dive into the concept of grief and transforming through grief.
Now, I am not a grief expert nor am I a therapist. So this is absolutely never to cross that line, express, speak about, or be something that I'm not. You know, of course, this is never a substitute for mental health care. This is not grief counseling. This is just an opportunity to look at when we are with the grief that we carry with us all day, every day — be it very general or very specific — over time, how does that grief shift and morph and change, and how does it bring us closer to ourselves?
And I want to just offer a gentle content warning and a reminder about your own autonomy, your own personal experience that if you are in the midst of a deeply specific, personal, painful cycle of grief, we are talking about Five of Cups at the root. And Five of Cups always says, “There is no rushing this process. You want to hang out with those spilled three cups for as long as possible, for as long as feels right to you.”
So by me speaking about what can happen over time when we bear witness to our grief, I am absolutely not inviting you to rush any part of your process, nor am I inviting you or encouraging you to bypass your grief. Grief contains many multitudes. It contains rage. It wants to be witnessed and seen. I’m in no way, absolutely no way, even attempting to speak to everyone's experience around their particular spiral of grief that they're hanging out with.
[0:16:01]
This has, however, been a tremendous year, 2020, of grief. And it's not always terribly specific. We can feel grief and absolutely not know why. We can have, all of us, have pools and oceans of grief living in us from childhood, from adulthood, from it with regard to particular situations. This isn't specific to just folx who have experienced acute loss. Although, I don't want to diminish the enormity of that, too.
I think my highest aim in exploring this topic is to investigate and explore with you how these three cards flow together and to consider what it might be like to make space at the table for our grief, to not push it away, and to not assume that grief only comes in the midst of particular circumstances. We can be in the midst of particular circumstances that may seem like they might be impregnated with grief, and yet, we don't feel acute grief. We feel acute anxiety. We feel acute anger.
And I've said this before on this podcast, and outside of it, that I think grief is the emotion that we tend to gaslight ourselves most around and inadvertently gaslight each other. Grief is extremely wild. It's very intense. It can't, we don't expect grief. It can come at any moment, and there's a lot of it right now, and there's also a lot of processing.
And that's sort of more particular to where I think these three cards live. They live in the realm of honoring the emotions that are present in the here and now.
[0:18:02]
What is it to not apologize for having these big feelings, having these experiences, having the need for space, for time, for clearing, and not in any way shrinking from that or apologizing for it? And when those thoughts and feelings that everybody has comes up, and we think, “I've been in this too long. I'm indulging in it. I’m wallowing in it,” or when someone else, very unhelpfully, tells us the same, can we pivot into curiosity? It’s very interesting. “I'm hitting some kind of threshold, some kind of wall here, where I feel like now it's not okay for me to be in grief about this. I should be over it, I should be…” whatever it is, right?
So I believe that Four, Five, and Six of Cups are about healing some of that and beginning to lean into our own kind of radical permissioning around our process, whatever that might look like. Whether it be inclusive of grief, whether it be inclusive of deep anger, or a wound, or a rupture that arises with someone, a breakup, you know, any process of integration, of clearing a feeling, and then of having, essentially, there be such a deep rain, such a deep weather system, that can come in that it actually creates more fertility within our heart space for us to be softer, to be more compassionate with others.
So, with Four of Cups, we have this really powerful moment where we've consumed three cups, right. The Cups are the vessels of life that hold within them the experiences that help to guide us forward on our emotional journeys with life. There, you know, all of the Minor suits contain some of their own mixture of these things. It's just life.
But we're talking about learning to love ourselves, and loving ourselves in the Cups suit is not some fancy, flyaway thing. Loving ourselves is very radical and is moment to moment. It's a choice at every moment. Are we going to betray ourselves in this moment to make someone else comfortable? Are we going to kind of apologize for ourselves, when we really haven't done anything wrong? Are we going to beat up on ourselves when we're the ones suffering? Like we — and it's not to say that we are unloving when we do betray ourselves, whatever it is. It's to say that we all do it. It happens.
And the more we pay close attention to the moments when it does happen without, you know, totally upending ourselves into “I’ll never do that again” or “How could I do that?” — and even, really, those feelings are valid — the more we can start to pay attention to it, the more we can be aware of it, and the less we can react from it, the more we can begin to come home and say, “Oh wow, this is a big invitation,” or “I'm feeling so uncomfortable, like so upset.”
Then we can realize, after we've sort of dropped into it, “Oh, it's because I kind of gave myself away there. You know, I kind of said something about myself that wasn't really very nice.” And we can apologize to ourselves, we can make amends. We can honor the fact that we're always learning. But we develop and cultivate greater connection to our intuition, to our trust. We learn how to work more with divine timing. Like there's so much that happens in the Cups suit.
So we have this moment where we've had these three cups. We've drunk deeply of a particular experience. We've had a lot of intaking and now we have the offering of this fourth cup.
[0:22:10]
And whenever we get Four of Cups, it's a moment in life, you know, whenever this card comes up, it's an invitation, a little heads up, a little mindfulness bell, to say, “Hey, you may be a little too full to take in this cup today, right now,” or you're being invited into something. You don't necessarily have to take it right now.
Now, very often, folx will invite us into stuff that really has nothing to do with us. You know, our brains can even do that. Our minds can say like, “Oh my god, you need to pay attention to this thing right here, right now!” And we don't always. We just think we do, or it's a distraction, or an invitation into distraction.
So what we really want to get into the habit of doing when we see this card is just to pause. Because Four of Cups is a moment, no matter what our circumstance, that has some kind of root system that is always present. Whenever we get that card, no matter the situation, we're being invited to digest something before we take in anything else.
And that's really intense, and can feel really confronting. That's part of why it's so confronting. It's what has motivated the interpretation of this card for forever as being like, “Hey, you're not paying attention. You're too lost in your bullshit. You're gonna miss this thing.” It's like, you know, it's not true. You're not.
You may be lost in your bullshit. Maybe it's important for you to be lost in your bullshit. Maybe there's a lot to the bullshit that is really important for you right now.
We're so motivated by fucking capitalism. Capitalism is seeped into the way we acknowledge grief. “It's got to be packaged. It can't be too long.” You know, whatever it is.
[0:24:15]
We're meant in this card to begin a process of integration, of digestion. It's a moment where life comes in with something, some kind of invitation, some kind of situation, and we're invited to say, “I'm not available to take this on right now. I need to let the day pass.” Whatever it is, it could be as simple as like, “There's a really big email in my inbox. It's been a big day. I'm going to save it for tomorrow.” That's an example of healthy Four of Cups work. For real. You've taken in a lot. You need to digest it. It's important to leave time for that tomorrow. You can be fresh to take in that cup, no problem.
And then in a bigger context, it can be maybe we've been in a relationship, and now all of a sudden, there's an invitation into a new one. And we're just, we don't feel ready, you know, and that's completely valid. It could be that there's an invitation to create something, there's an invitation to collaborate, there's an invitation to get all stirred up about something.
Whenever we get it, it’s not to say that that thing won't have a time or a place. It's an invitation to say, “Do you have room? Is this exactly and totally the right time to be doing this? Is it important to be doing that?” Sometimes it isn't. Most of the time, it's important to leave room to integrate.
So I want to start with that and really open it up to consider and reflect on 2020 as a whole. There's a lot of energy right now focused on like, “What are my resolutions? What am I doing?”
I'm recording this on Monday, the fourth, and there's a lot of ass-kicking that I feel about like, “Okay, everyone's back to work,” and I'm exhausted, and I know that I'm not alone in that, and kind of feel like a little bit like loopy, you know, just adjusting to this energy work. We’re four days in. It's not bad. It's wonderful, but it's also like, it's intense. It's a lot to have to just pivot right to that
[0:26:37]
So what is it to honor, to leave space for integration? We just moved into this new year. That's big. That might be all three of your cups. It could be that you have three separate things going on, and now, all of a sudden, there's something that we may, in fact, want to do, but it's just not quite the right time, or it's just not the right day today.
Whatever it is, this is where the journey begins. Can you honor that? Can you trust that? Can you be gentle, loving? This is an act of love, to be able to say “I am interested. I am delighted. I am excited. I'm not able to right now. I'm not able to today. I'm not available to at this moment. In time, if it's right for both of us, absolutely. In time, if it's right for me, absolutely.”
And really, it's an act of love. Not pushing, not rushing, not forcing, we're allowing ourselves to move into the medicine of integration, letting those, letting the exhaustion be honored, letting that give way to a nap, to an earlier bedtime, to deeper care, to just even like crying and being like “I'm so tired, and there's no end in sight.” That is a part of the integration process, the really big feelings that can come up around all kinds of stuff like that, especially the fear to miss out on something.
[0:28:20]
Five of Cups really teaches us that if something is meant to be it will come back, but we have to first acknowledge what has come in those three cups and really bear witness to it, bear witness to what has been. When we can honor that really courageous, really brave, really heart-centered, self-loving, often very confronting, intuitive decision to leave room to integrate and digest our emotional experiences and allow the big contractions about, like, “What if I miss something? What if this isn't right? Why am I not over it? Why am I not ready?” like all the things that we all do, it gives way, so beautifully, to Five of Cups.
And Five of Cups actually allows, it is such an important powerful card. It is so important. It allows us, going forward, to leave a space at the table in our lives for our grief. It says, “Your grief is allowed to look however it looks like. Your exhaustion is allowed to be here. You are allowed to take time. You are allowed to integrate. You are allowed. Your grief doesn't need to be a killjoy. It can be a sacred part of the experience.”
You know, I found myself, my most powerful experiences with Five of Cups medicine has been when I've been unexpectedly hit with tremendous grief in the midst of situations that on paper seem like I should be really happy, or there should be like a sense of like, “There's no room for grief here,” like a moment of like a holiday, or like I'm on vacation, you know.
I think I've shared on this podcast — I know I shared it in Tarot for What Is — that I went back to a summer home that my grandparents used to take me and my gigantic family to ever since I was very, very young, on the Outer Banks. And I went back last summer in 2019 and was like, overcome with memories about really hard and harmful stuff that happened in that house when I was a kid and about really beautiful things.
I felt like the ghost of my child was everywhere I looked, there were so many layers of memories, because it was like 35 years, give or take, you know, at least 20 years of going. The ghost, the literal ghost, of my grandfather was everywhere. And it was such an amazing, joyous, beautiful time away, and there were also hysterical, hysterical up-swellings of grief that I was absolutely unprepared for and found myself feeling like, “Oh, I don't want to burden anyone. I'm on vacation. Like, why am I not happy?” You know, and just this like bullshit.
And I found that it was only through honoring the grief that was arising that actually helped me to be present and soft and available to the joy that was also there. And that's where we move from the Five to the Six of Cups.
[0:32:20]
The Six of Cups is, it can absolutely be inclusive of kind of nostalgic experience, but the whole key to that card is not in going back to childhood, but to consider the heart of a child, to consider the idea that children are very available to feel their deepest desires and wants and grievances and upsets and griefs and ruptures, and then pivot, and then be in the joy, then be in deep rest or relaxation; that there is a softness, a flexibility, an openness and vastness, a trust to the heart of a child.
And I believe that when we go through this arc, from the Four to the Five to the Six of Cups, we actually reparent ourselves, because we're permissioning our youngest self, that may not have been allowed to feel grief, may not have had the space, may have been told “You're too sensitive, you feel too much.” We're actually giving them permission to be their full selves. We're saying to ourselves, “I love you. I want you here. Your grief has a place here. Your fear has a place here. Your feelings have a place here. You're allowed to be on a vacation and feeling this way.”
And I was also noticing, for myself, Five of Cups work come up — I'm in such intense therapy right now. I’m doing EMDR and had a really big, like a very big, I can't even... I don't have words, just a lot of shit come up, basically (Lindsay Laughs), and felt angry and pissed and was all over the place with all of it.
And I knew I needed, like I was completely ignoring it all day, and I knew I needed to take myself up to my little work room, out to my car — which is typically where I go when I really need to scream — I knew that I needed to give myself the space to fall into the cold pool and feel the feelings, let them come, and let it be messy. And I watched myself resist that for a couple hours. And the feelings got more impacted. I got kind of angrier. I felt stranger and weirder about it.
And when I finally went out, you know, and really gave space, everything came up so quickly. And I watched my heart go from being so clenched, so closed, to so tender. Like, I'm still so achy, in such pain, but open, no longer a closed fist in protection, but open, willing, a little softer.
And that comes from us saying, “I want to be with this part of you.” It comes from saying it to ourselves, like, “I want to be there for the tough times as well as the good. I want to be there for the messiness. I want to be there for those big feelings. I want to be there.” There's no other way it can go, other than to have the heart open.
[0:35:58]
And that gesture that's present in Six of Cups, at least in the Smith-Rider-Waite, that one child gifting the cup with the flower in it to the other child is basically saying that we've gone from being so closed by ourselves in the Four and Five, to being with another and saying, “I want to gift this to you.” It's also the only time we see anything growing in the cup. This would lead us to believe that something has grown where there once was nothing.
That is the transformative process of honoring not just our grief, but sometimes honoring grief needs to happen in safety and witness and in a kind of container. Some of us want to honor our grief, but it can feel very hard to access. So, again, I want to just be so respectful and honoring folx at whatever place in any, like you are perfect wherever you are, and I'm bowing to you in your process. I feel like we all have really big challenges in that honoring process. But that's where the transformation can happen.
Even if we're not like crying, grieving, screaming, and being very outward with our grief, sometimes just saying, “Whoa, there's unbelievable amounts of grief here or protection or defense or resistance.” My resistance, defense, anger responses are often precursors to my grief. Almost everything goes back to the root system of grief.
So the way that these cards, we can see them as such allies around this kind of homecoming, this kind of reparenting, this kind of radical acceptance and acknowledgement of self, begins with the Four of Cups when we take refuge in that invitation to say, “You don't need to take this piece on right now. You can take the time to integrate this big experience, what's been brewing for a while, this small moment.”
Let yourself drop in and reflect: Is there something that you are being invited to integrate?
You know, there are some of us that fight that pretty vehemently or people that are like “I absolutely do not want to integrate this experience. It makes me incredibly uncomfortable.” And I really want to bow to you, too. So if that's you, and if you're finding yourself being like “whatever” to this. I love it. I love you. I see you. I mean, sometimes there's just so much power in being like, “Yeah, that's me. Like I recognize, I'm being invited to integrate some big stuff, and I don't want to. I don't know how. I'm unwilling right now.” Amen. I bless that and honor that.
There's so much that can happen just in you acknowledging, “Yes, I see that invitation. All I'm doing is grabbing for that fourth cup. I know it's not quite working, because I haven't yet integrated the three empty ones, and I'm not quite ready to shift it yet.” There's so much power in that. You get to choose that. You get to decide, right?
[0:39:17]
But when we know that, we can give ourselves the space to begin to explore what integration even looks like. Maybe for you it's like laying down, being quiet, laying in the dark, like just being by yourself. Maybe it's having a ritual or ceremony. Maybe it's like taking a fucking nap.
Like whatever the integration, maybe it's not necessarily on a timeline or on a small piece just acknowledging like, there are some griefs that are so big, that we go through seasons where really big feelings come up, really big emotions come up, we can do things like EMDR or other therapeutic processes where stuff that we might have thought like, “Whoa, I wasn't even thinking about that,” can come up again in a safe and, you know, ethical, appropriate container, right, with a therapist or a processor. And then all of a sudden we have something to integrate that like in, you know, that morning we weren't even thinking about.
But that's a big part of life. We're not necessarily always expecting to have big feelings to process and integrate. It's really uncomfortable, and it's totally normal not to like it. And we can make space, if we're willing. We can play with that.
So when we do the radical act of not taking that fourth cup, because we're going to fully honor our big feelings, what's coming up for us in the Four, it immediately shifts us into the Five, where we're able to actually be present with those three cups.
I think there's something so powerful in the physical change from the Four of Cups to the Five of Cups in the Smith Rider-Waite.
In the Four, the person sitting under a tree, they're like hands crossed, they kind of don't feel well, they look like they've had a bit too much to drink, which is sort of a parallel to this idea of like intaking a lot emotionally, right?
So this idea that the person, the being on the card is like they're sitting there, not really looking at the three cups. They're just kind of like in themselves a bit. When we go to the Five, the person is no longer sitting but standing. They are facing those three cups. They are in a present, active relationship of process, of grieving, of integrating, of sharing their feelings. They're actually looking at and saying “goodbye,” acknowledging what was there in the three cups. It's also very powerful to note that the cup that they were so afraid they were going to miss, that fourth cup. is not just behind them now, but is accompanied with another one.
[0:42:16]
Five of Cups is proof that if we say “no” to the Five, even if the exact specific situation or relationship doesn't come back to us, there will be something. There will be something that will nourish us, once we actually have room to drink of it.
Have you ever had the experience of wishing, wishing, wishing, longing for a particular kind of collaboration, friend, partner, and it just keeps not happening? Maybe you even keep meeting the same kind of person, and you're like, “How the fuck am I bringing these folx into my life? This is not what I want.”
And then all of a sudden, we can realize there's a huge, you know, huge wave, sometimes of grief or process or longing or loneliness, or becoming aware of a particular habit, or something we weren't even aware that we were enacting. And once we clear it, acknowledge it, all of a sudden, like different people come in. It's happened to me many times. And I wonder if you've had a similar experience that it can look completely unrelated.
So before we turn and can really fully drink of those cups, be present, be with another, be with ourselves, be available to the joys, to the loveliness, we have to first honor what's here, honor what's been. Once we begin to do that, if we are... And you know, again, it's all spiralic.
So if we're working with a grief, like, you know, I have griefs in my life or pits of grief, or voids of wounding or loss in my life that will be forever. I'll be tending them for the rest of my life, and it's not a problem, you know, but it is a season where I'm often like deeply tending to something that's coming up that wants my attention. And then there's a natural turning toward the two full, where because there's been some layer of shrapnel that's been honored and bowed to and cleared, there's no room for other things. And typically those “other things,” that natural turning, guides us right into the Six.
[0:44:43]
The turning toward those two full cups guides us right into the cup, or the Six of Cups, that cup of love, of the heart, that can be exchanged.
Sometimes in the Six of Cups that whole thing, you know, that whole, you know, movement from the Four to the Five to the Six can happen in, something happens, and we get upset, and someone comes in and says, “Hey, I want to hang out,” and we feel a little upset and we go, “I'll reach out to you. I’m just, I'm not available for that right now,” or “I'm super busy.”
We let ourselves have that moment in the Four, and it opens us up into the Five, and we may go into like, really big feelings, really big anger, really big fears, whatever it is. The Six might be a moment where we say, “Hey, I just wanted to ask you and tell you how your behavior affected me. It really hurt my feelings, and I needed space to process that.”
There's kind of a mini Strength card energy that comes with Six of Cups because if we can speak from the truth of our holding, of our experience, we're not necessarily getting someone in to make it better — obviously, we might appreciate an apology and acknowledgement, that's ideal — but Six of Cups can actually bring us into a space where we are so spacious, so heart-centered.
That doesn't mean, you know, that doesn't mean that we're A) impervious, or B) so porous, that any and anything and everything can just pierce right through us. It means that we can speak from our truth. It means that we can actually receive from others. You know, it's very challenging for us typically, to receive the love of another. It can be very challenging for us to be present just in our lives because we're so busy beating off or staving off the big feelings that we don't want to acknowledge
[0:46:52]
So I find that I'm in Four, Five, Six of Cups energy, actually quite often. I don't think these cards are as esoteric or out there as we tend to think they are. They're not so related just to “grief” with a capital G. Although, of course, there is that, too, because we're in grief every single day of our lives. There's always grief. Something can happen on Instagram or in your inbox, or in a small comment from someone, that literally did not mean anything, but triggers off all this stuff because of our own wounding.
And we're always at choice with that. Are we going to kind of ignore it, bypass it, pretend it doesn't exist, not really deal with it? Or are we going to be open? Are we going to say “Damn, this fucking hurts,” and are we going to offer ourselves the chance to play with what it might be like to be permissioned to feel?
It doesn't matter if it makes other people uncomfortable. You're allowed to feel those feelings. They are your personal responsibility to hold. You know, our feelings are for us to unpack, and sometimes
it is important to unpack them with others if they're available, or important to unpack them with a processor.
Beyond grief, and any kind of label, this is about permissioning ourselves to feel our feelings, to grieve our grievances, to emote our emotions without — to leave space at the table of our lives for that, to not push it away, to not force it away, to not feel like it's gonna ruin a party. If it ruins the party, it's not a party you want to be at anyway. And that might be step one, you know. If your grief is a problem for someone else, they may not be your people. And that's really painful, and it's also okay, because it doesn't have anything to do with you.
[0:49:07]
So these three cards have incredible connective tissue and layer on top of one another what it is to honor our timing, what it is to, again, make space for grief at the table of our lives, to build in moments, times of deep digestion and integration, when it comes to emotional, big experiences, and seeing the kind of heart openness, vastness, caring, compassion that can only come from us acknowledging these places within us.
There is something that happens to us. It shifts our ability to listen, to empathize, to hold space when we hold our own emotional experiences. It is a very powerful thing and can absolutely invite us to confront that very story like, “I'm going to ruin my night, I'm going to ruin my day, I'm going to blah, blah, blah.” And that's, often the messaging we pick up from our caretakers. Like, “Ugh, you know, this child needs so much,” or “This child is so emotional,” or like, “Why are you so upset? We're here. You should be happy.” Like, those things are so devastating.
And then we do them to ourselves, and think like, “Well, I should be so happy. Why am I not?” instead of getting curious about, you know, “What place at the table does my grief occupy here?” Because guess what? Your grief is with you 24/7. It is always here. Our grief is always here. We have little g grief, we have big G Grief. Some of our griefs are like mountains; they're so big. Some of them are a bit smaller and take up space in a different way.
Grief can really radically crack us open. It can make... It’s very intense, and it can also make us so much more soft, spacious, able to connect with others, able to connect with ourselves.
And you know, there can be, I've often thought, you know, with Six of Cups, that the nostalgia piece — I don't know if it's so much nostalgia as it is a reconnection with our inner child. And actually going back and saying, “I see you. Your emotions, your feelings, your experiences, they matter to me, I want to make space for them.”
And this kind of arc of three cards really shows us that that can only happen when we acknowledge that there is something there, something to integrate and digest, and we don't turn away from it. We don't try to just grab that fourth cup and go off with something different, that we do really honor what is possible. We do really honor what is present in the heart, that we show up for the heart and pay attention, and really offer it our love. And it's deep, deep work this Cups shit (Lindsay Laughs). You know, it's big.
[0:52:25]
So I invite you to just reflect on that, to keep what works, pay attention to what stood out for you, leave anything that didn't resonate. And to really just think about how you might permission yourself around these themes this weekend, next week. Like, what's been here for you? And how can you work within the structure of your current life?
Not all of us can stop everything and go off and grieve, and yet, we can, likely, take a moment to say, “Whoa, there's pain here, and I see you.” You know, like I said, it's not always about like going up to the room, letting the tears flow. Sometimes it's just a question of saying, “Yes, I recognize that there's a lot here, and I'm willing, potentially, to feel it” or “I'm not,” which is okay.
But if you are willing, you know, what might be wanting to be acknowledged right now? What might be wanting to be seen, be heard, be witnessed by you? Who might you bring in to witness you in that witnessing? You know, do you have a processor? Are there space holders that are lovingly, excitedly, enthusiastically available to hold you in that space? For some of us at some moments, it's important that it's just us. For some of us at some moments, it's important that it's not just us.
So I invite you to really sink into this invitation. Take from it whatever feels right to, and go off into your own exploring. What relationships, bonds, intimate connections, can you develop with these three cards? How do they work in relationship with you? You know, what are they whispering to you, teaching to you?
They really are such wisdom keepers and have something a little different to share with all of us, which is why the Tarot is such a beautiful tool because it's really meant to be interpreted differently by everybody.
[0:54:37]
So I think that's it for this lesson, Wild Souls. I'd love to know what you hear, what you feel about this. I'll be back next week with some different like two or three card connective tissue explorations.
I'm just loving on you. I'm inviting you to love on yourself, to really honor the stuff that's here. We've all got it, especially now at this time in history this year. Can you be with it? You know, can you radically, radically permission yourself to be in those feelings, to be reparented, to see yourself, to give yourself that space for shifts, for transformation, for deeper softness, for more time with yourself? And there is something really extraordinary about it.
And again, it doesn't yield to a feeling of like, “I'm so happy now. I understand everything!” The heart can ache, and it can still just open a little bit. And I really think that's possible when we work with the magic, the medicine of these three cards together.
So thank you for listening. Again, enrollment closes for Threshold tonight at 9pm Pacific, midnight Eastern.
Loving on all of you. So happy to be connected with you this new year, and until we meet again, please take care of yourselves.
[Conclusion]
(Instrumental exit music)
[0:56:25]
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.
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Thank you so much for being here.
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