148. Deepening Tarot Connections: The Hierophant, The Lovers, and The Chariot
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Welcome back to Tarot for the Wild Soul - we’re so grateful to meet you in this virtual space!
On today’s episode, we continue our exploration of how certain Tarot cards work together with The Hierophant, The Lovers, and The Chariot from Line One of the Major Arcana.
Last week we talked about the Four, Five, and Six of Cups and how those cards create their own special harmony to guide us along the terrain of our emotions.
Our Tarot card teachers in today’s lesson invite us to come back home to ourselves, to reclaim our power, autonomy, self-love — everything we have a tendency to give away to others.
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About the Episode
When The Hierophant comes up in a tarot reading, we’re asked to investigate our beliefs, our authorities, and find meaning and wisdom deep within ourselves.
Who are we following, worshipping, or paying attention to? The Hierophant gently guides us to question our authorities and invites us to open to becoming our own leader, our own wise counsel. We will explore how The Hierophant is showing up in the collective as a teacher and anchor for us in these times of great questioning.
After we look deeply into our beliefs, The Lovers card can step in and show us where we’re projecting onto anyone or anything the attributes, gifts, or values that we already possess.
What are we giving away to others that is actually ours to cherish, hold, and celebrate? The Lovers card pulls the curtain back on those people or situations we’ve possibly unjustly labeled with deep meaning and significance and holds up a mirror. If we are willing to look into it, we’ll see that we are deserving of the honoring and loving we’ve given away to anything out of alignment.
After identifying outdated beliefs and situations, The Chariot Tarot card is the best friend who comes over to help you let go of these old treasures you no longer need, the things holding you back from thriving as You.
When we pull The Chariot, we’re invited to choose if we’re willing to let go of everything that is not in highest and best and walk into the forest of the Second Line of the Major Arcana. We’re prepared to move forward without anyone else’s approval or validation. Line Two of the Major Arcana will deeply challenge us, but, The Hierophant, The Lovers, and The Chariot prepare us to be our whole, authentic, resourced, and soul-led selves before we venture out.
We’ll talk about how we can begin to lean into these three archetypes as a unit and call back to ourselves what we’ve lost or given away. How would life change, evolve, or transform if we began to reclaim these birthrights?
We hope you enjoy this lesson on these three Tarot cards and the special team they create to prepare us for the mystery, the uncertainties of life.
Cards mentioned in this episode:
The Hierophant [0:04:49]
The Lovers [0:15:47]
The Chariot [0:16:03], [0:44:54]
The Magician [0:16:51]
The High Priestess [0:17:29]
The Empress [0:19:16]
The Emperor [0:19:26]
The Devil [0:58:48]
Related Episodes
If you enjoyed learning about connections between tarot cards, we invite you to check out Deepening Tarot Connections: Four, Five, and Six of Cups.
If you want to learn more about the Hierophant, we invite you to enjoy our lesson Taurus and The Hierophant: Becoming our own wise teacher.
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: violence, white supremacy, domestic terrorism, grief, death, and birth
The content in this episode contains references to violence, white supremacy, domestic terrorism, grief, death, and birth. We have done our best to identify difficult subject matter, but the labels may not be comprehensive for your personal needs. Please honor your knowing and proceed with necessary self-awareness and care.
Transcript
[Introduction]
[0:00:00]
(Instrumental intro music)
[0:00:12]
Hello Loves and welcome back to Tarot for the Wild Soul podcast. I am your host, Lindsay Mack, and as always, it is such a joy, a delight and an honor to be gathered with you in this virtual space that we're sharing. Thank you so much for being here.
I just want to start the podcast by offering a lot of love and acknowledgement to the nervous systems, hearts of all the folx listening to this. If you are still feeling rattled and deeply affected by the attempted coup by insurrectionists, white supremacists, that took place in the United States on the Capitol Building, it is not only utterly and completely understandable but, in fact, normal to have such a strong or overwhelmed response to such a violating event. The ripple effects from it are imbued with injustice and rage and the absolute need for accountability, for accounting of harms, to name a few, like demands and needs. I just really wanted to name first and foremost that if you're feeling tender, touchy, exhausted, enraged, all of the feelings, they're all valid and I am with you in them and witnessing you in them. And I hope that, in the best way that you're able, that you can really nourish and honor your body and your nervous systems as best as you can. I think sometimes when we talk about nourishing the body, we immediately go to a particular kind of action or food or whatever. I just mean, like nourish in whatever way actually nourishes you; that is inclusive of anything that is really, again, deeply offers that kind of bone level nourishment, of soul level nourishment. So, just naming that.
[0:02:27]
And kind of in light of that, in light of what's going on, collectively, politically, kind of across the board, we're deepening our conversations around Tarot connections today and what we're really looking at in this series is the way that certain tarot cards make music together.
Each tarot card when it comes up connects with another card, a group of cards - it creates a kind of a song. And sometimes we're not so attuned to that. It's not as easy to kind of meet that song, meet those connections, at the level that they're coming at. It's really easy for the brain to be like, “Well, these cards don't make sense together.” Then, we kind of miss maybe the beauty and the dissonance or whatever it is.
So this is sort of, a part of... one way because, and I say “one way” because what we're doing in this particular series is kind of looking at the way that cards flow together, that run in kind of the structured and named “original” order of the Tarot (not “original,” there's many orders, but the order that we tend to universally look at the in). And I think that's really helpful because sometimes, when we look at kind of the lines of the Major Arcana, the way we flow from a Two to a Three to a Four, maybe in the minors or from an Ace to - rather, from Page to a King, we can tend to think, “Ugh, geez, I can't see the story.” So we're just exploring a little bit of that.
I feel like it's a whole other thing to look at cards out of that order. And to see, like, if you got the Emperor reversed with the Seven of Swords and, you know, maybe the Ace of Wands, what kind of song would that make? And that's a big part of Soul Tarot, is honoring and trusting that any card grouping, any card pulls that we have together, there is a medicine to it, there is a power to it, even if it doesn't, quote, “look like it makes sense.” There's always something to be gained even if it bounces you over to the next thing.
[0:04:43]
So the cards that we're going to be exploring this week are Hierophant, Lovers and The Chariot.
The reason that I mentioned that it was sort of inspired a bit by what I'm really witnessing - a lot of what we're seeing right now in the first week and a half (Lindsay Laughs) of 2021 is enormously potent examples of Hierophant work.
The Hierophant is all about investigation of Source. Who is your Source? What is your Source? What are you listening to? Who are you listening to? You know, what source inside of yourself do you listen to? Do you tend to give a lot more credence than perhaps what is necessary to very old, outdated beliefs that may be, and I want to be so - I have these, too, so I don't want to in any way be diminishing about this - but for many of us, you know, beliefs feel so true, right? We can start to believe something and we've seen a lot of evidence for how far it can carry us out of our center.
So Hierophant is about a reckoning with that. It's a hard energy. If we've really been honoring, following, believing, investing in a source that does not have our highest and best good in mind, if we are not questioning that source, if we are not bringing common sense, critical thinking, the ability to see outside of what we're told - and sometimes we need some help, and some outside sources for that - it can, again, lead us very far out of our center of truth.
And this card always invites us, Hierophant, to deeply reflect on, again, who we're following, what we're worshiping, what we're paying attention to. Attention is a form of devotion, is very, very powerful. What are we devoting that attention to, that preciousness to? Whose guidance and counsel do you draw from? You know, what do you draw from within yourself? Something that was told to you by somebody who didn't have your best interests at heart, and it really, really stuck, you know, does that make sense anymore, to follow, to let guide your life? Or is it time to follow your own wise counsel? You know, any places where there is something to clean up, are we cleaning it up?
[0:07:28]
And, you know, I mentioned it on The Threshold, this year, 2021, is one in a series of years that is ushering us into a new time. And I mean, new time as in different conversations, different levels of... really, of transparency, of ethics, of integrity. We're at choice right now. We're seeing that choice in others and ourselves. It's a very powerful time, but it is a reckoning time and we got into it pretty hard, just a couple days after the year started. It's got Hierophant all over it.
You know, sometimes when we think, you know, “Oh, I'm in this year card, I don’t know, I'm a little confused about how this is kind of showing up for me,” really, world events are a pretty powerful place to look at not what a card is, but the kind of work it invites us into. So it's very powerful.
And these three cards when they are together, and they run together in the first line of the Major Arcana, moving from Hierophant to Lovers to Chariot is, essentially - it's like a little trio chorus kind of a thing that involves a ripple effect, that is rooted in a very similar intention and invitation, radical self-choosing. And when I say “radical self-choosing,” I don't mean we're pushing away connectedness, community. When we're choosing ourselves, we're not betraying ourselves. We're not brushing ourselves away. We're not saying “yes” to something when we really mean “no.”
We've all done that. We've all - we all do that. Like let's, again, take the hierarchy completely off the table. There isn't any one person who's just done with that. And it's not to say that if you're listening to this being like, “I have done my work on this, I am done on that,” I believe you and I look to you as my teacher because I think there's nothing that I'm not still learning, at least for myself, on this path. I'm very comfortable with being both teacher and student in this lifetime, you know. But I do think there are definitely things that I feel like I've definitely been offered a chance to master, you know, and in the hardest ways.
[0:10:10]
Hierophant is ultimately, it has nothing to do with following another person - it has to do with choosing ourselves.
And to do that involves a break down of where we seek comfort, where we want others to tell us what to do, because it takes us out of the discomfort, out of the Void, out of the terror of us not knowing what the fuck we're doing (and, by the way, nobody knows what the fuck they're doing). You know, you can be so - really, the best thing that can happen is that you have such a strong relationship with Source and your loved ones and all those who care about you.
But I mean, we're... every moment gives birth to the next, we're seeing that, especially now. Time is - I was just reading, goodness, I'll link to it in the show notes - but, that the earth is actually turning at a faster rotation than it ever has to the point where they're thinking that they actually may need to shift the clocks. I mean, we're talking microseconds, but very unusual. And there is a lot happening right now in terms of time. We can feel that. It's never been more spiralic. Things have also never been more possible, we're starting to also see that.
And what Hierophant teaches us is that this isn't like we lean back and just let fate take over. This is about choice - choice and presence and consideration and care for all beings. We're just coming into a much more powerful and important place of personal responsibility with that. I'm looking at how that affects other people.
So Hierophant, it's very intense. Like it just is. And it's really important. It'll give you your whole life to go through Hierophant work. We spend our whole lives trying to make our parents proud of us, trying to get someone to love us, to choose us, and we're just looking for ourselves.
[0:12:31]
And Hierophant... when we are willing to work with it in that way, that's when shit gets really uncomfortable. There's a shallow top to Hierophant work, where we think like, “Oh, this person knows the way. I'm gonna follow them.” It's not true. It's a really lazy form of Tarot interpretation that has been influenced by patriarchal structure. It's never been true and it's time to do away with it.
What is possible in this card is something so much more stimulating, rewarding, and also extremely intense and uncomfortable... which is that it invites us to unpack and process and clear everything that separates us, all the locks on the doors that we have, that maybe have been put on our door that we keep locking, because we think, “Well, this person knows something I don't.”
Now the beauty of Hierophant stuff is that it can yield us to take really important stock of who we are following, who we are listening to, who we are spending our time with, whose advice or counsel we hold dear. You know, I'm very lucky to be surrounded by people who are extraordinary space holders and caretakers and it doesn't matter how wise, how potent they are. If it's a “no” for me, it's a No. I'm not giving my power away to anybody. And neither should you. And I don't mean to “should” you (Lindsay Laughs), but I will on this exception.
[0:14:27]
And sometimes we need a little help to find our way out of that, right? Like, I'm definitely working on that. It's a part of being gaslit so horribly as a kid, you know, and as a young adult and in my 20’s and still to this day because my own family hasn’t unpacked their experience of being abused as well. They can't do better for me than they've done for themselves yet. So it's very... it's big.
And we don't need to like clear it all, get it all out, but when we drop into these possibilities with Hierophant, if we're willing to say, “Whoa, I'm willing. I’m willing to take this blindfold off. I’m willing to say ‘yes,’” it then clicks us over into Lovers - that has to do with following up, going this second step, and bringing back, integrating within ourselves, calling back in all of the things that we've placed on other people, all of the ways that we try to get love, all the ways that we tend to romanticize to give someone else power and beauty and believing that, somehow, someone else is our source for love, too.
[0:15:47]
And Lovers is about saying, “Nobody is my source for love, but me.”
Other people can come, they can elevate that, they can match that, but at the end of the day, that's it. And there's choice there, too. There's choice present and all of these cards. And Chariot then comes in and takes the whole thing that we've been doing in Hierophant and in Lovers work and integrates it into a big, powerful opportunity to actually physically leave something behind, to shed something, to graduate in some way from one thing that we've been doing to the next.
So all of them are about Source, all of them are about trusting ourselves, all of them are about choosing ourselves, all of them are about bringing what was true, what is true, back home to ourselves. Very, very important energies.
And these cards, I think, are very significant. Because you know, really, Hierophant is number five in the line of seven in the Major Arcana. And we, you know, we kick into the first line of the Major Arcana with the Magician which really shows us when we're in alignment with Spirit, with Source, with our highest and best, we are these vessels, that co-creation is possible. That's the beginning of the whole soul’s journey we go on in this lifetime, too, is that we're here as vessels of co-creation. What are we engaging with? What gets to spend time coming through our channel? Are we available to have things come through our channel? Like there's so much in there, you know?
[0:17:29]
High Priestess then takes that and invites us to go in the inverse of it, and invites us to say, like, I want to bring you, to invite you into a completely... there isn't even like language for it, like a radical, self-guided way of connecting with intuition through being present with self.
It's not an accident that High Priestess is ruled by the moon. The moon is in a different sign, a different “phase,” quote-unquote, every couple of days. Our tides of the ocean, which the moon is in total control of, are different every day. Anytime that you might look up at the moon, anytime that you might go to the beach throughout the day, while the core is still the same, the core of the moon is always its own being, it's always the satellite that we look up to in the sky. The ocean isn't changing, and yet, the presentation, the way that the ocean is showing up, the way that we see it, the way that we're experiencing the moon is always different. You're exactly the same way. We're not static beings. We’re not linear beings. Ever.
So High Priestess says, “Yes, I am a seed of deep intuition and spiritual connection.”
And that starts with dropping out of the linear right away; expecting that you're going to be the same every day, life is going to be the same every day, that Spirit is somehow linear. Spirit is totally spiralic.
So we learn radical receiving, sometimes to an uncomfortable degree, in The Empress. We are invited into the unbelievably deep and confronting reflection that The Emperor offers us. Do we feel like we have a birthright to be here? What tells us that we don't? What has told us that we don't? What are the stories, the beliefs that we can't rise up, can't stand up, can't use our voices, right? And there's a lot of energy in the Emperor because, for some folx, that sense of being silenced is so real and continues to be. So really just looking at that, right?
[0:20:06]
And then we have Hierophant and it's very significant because it's the first card, at least in the Smith-Rider-Waite, that has more than one person on it.
This card shows us right away we have influence. What we say matters. It's not an accident that this comes after Emperor. Emperor is the redwood, it is the Sequoia, it is the sky, it is the root, it is the mountain, it is the essence, the archetype, the being in nature that takes up space without crowding anyone else out and without apologizing for it. It's essentially looking to the tree outside of your window, if you can see a tree, and seeing it as a symbol for: “I have a right to be here. I don't care if my needles get all over the grass. I don't care if my berries stay in the sidewalk. It's my job to be a tree. It's okay.” You know, it's okay.
And it's not from a sense of “Oh, I don't give a fuck,” like, the ego. This is about soul. This is about saying like, “I don't give a fuck if somebody would prefer I do this. I'm hearing a ‘yes’ to do that,” right?
Hierophant work is very powerful. It's very intense, brings us into some really deep shit like, “Who am I to do this? Is it okay, if I do this? Who am I to take up space? I'm so nervous with people hearing me.” It's root work and foundational work at an incredible degree. And Hierophant is what we stand on once that foundation is built. If we don't have a sense of that alignment, of that clarity, of that sense of structure within our root system, we can grab on to other people. If we're not comfortable going as deep as Emperor wants us to go, Hierophant will sometimes encourage us, invite us to say, “Maybe check out what other people are doing…” Right?
[0:22:18]
So this is the first card that says, “What are you communicating? Who looks to you?” Everybody is looked to by someone. We may feel so fucking powerless. We may feel like we influence no one and I'm here to tell you that you do, in ways that you may not even realize or think are relevant or valid. It happens, you know, it absolutely happens.
And that can be inherited. If we have a parent who feels like “I'm such a fuckup. I’m such a failure, I don't even want to form a bond with my kid because I don't want to disappoint them…” Guess what? That kid may or may not grow up, exist in the world, and feel like “Well, nobody wants me around anyway. So who cares?”
And I can tell you that I've known people like that. I've had my own experiences with that. It really affects people. Because they're not looking at it like, “Oh, she doesn't feel like she matters enough to be here.” They're looking at it like “Why don't I matter enough for them to show up?” So we all have things that have lived in our root system that then begin to show up in the way that we respond, react, influence, speak, look to others.
So it is a reckoning. It is an opportunity to say, “Okay, I've been in foundations for quite some time. Now, can I remember that I'm not that child that I was, that I can confront, I can look at these wounds, I can... I can remember and know that I have influence whether I believe I do or not, that people are listening to me?”
Some of us feel like nobody fucking listens to us, right? And yet, it's not true. If you have children, they're listening to you. They're looking to you, even more than you think they are. If you have younger siblings, if you have older siblings, like we're - our parents are looking to us. Like, they're our friends, our community. And people aren't looking, like, waiting for us to fuck up. But they're listening. And we're listening. And sometimes we can get so far out of our center that we think, “Well, geez, I'm so lost and I don't know what the fuck is going on. So maybe this person does,” right?
[0:24:48]
Hierophant is also about personal responsibility. It is about acknowledging that sometimes we're so out of our center that we can really be believing things. You know, we've been told things to the degree that we really start to believe it. We forget, because beliefs feel so true, to investigate it. We forget to really tune in. We forget to say, “Oh, wow, you know, is this in highest and best for me to be engaging with? Is this true?” You know, we can get so in autopilot that we forget to even practice that, to even consider it.
And I mean, if you're feeling like, “Oh god, I do this! I, oh, geez…” you know, this wouldn't be a card in the Tarot if it wasn't a universal theme that we were all meant to look at and work with around this idea. So again, this is about unpacking beliefs. This is about looking at who we look to, who looks to us. This is about acknowledging and really reflecting for ourselves, committing to ourselves, you know, “Who is my Source? What within myself feels like my main Source?”
I have impulses, voices, like invitations that come from all kinds of different places within myself... thought forms and brain chemistry and, you know, born of whatever... it's not always my highest and best. Sometimes I can catch it and sometimes I can't. And it's really a question of just getting into the habit of considering, if we're able to do that, and just asking, “Man, you know, okay - is that really - would that really serve me,” right? It's work that we do over a lifetime. It's hard to put into practice.
[0:26:39]
But Hierophant is our first invitation into reclaiming our personal responsibility, our integrity, aligned leadership.
Aligned leadership. And it starts with, again, unpacking what we've been believing. What were you, what are you, what have you been told about yourself? At a young age? What has society told you, tried to tell you, about yourself? These are really big questions and, yet, they can be in and of themselves quite neutral. There can be many that you can ask yourself: What do you believe? Do you believe - you know, our beliefs can be so multifaceted, so varied. They can be big. It can be small. It can be like a pebble in your shoe, something very, very small and yet very present.
And Hierophant says - it, again, is this big invitation to reckon with that. And to say, You know, I am willing. I am available. I am here to come into my own, to be my own gatekeeper. Yes, absolutely. To be open to the counsel of others. And when that counsel doesn't align with me, to follow my own instinct. To do my own research, to educate myself, whatever we might call it, and then actually do that. You know?
[0:28:15]
So, why does this lead us into The Lovers? Like what is the connection there?
So Hierophant is ruled by Taurus and Taurus is the bull. And bulls can be so gentle. They're very fixed creatures and Taurus is fixed earth. So we can either go from not even being movable, to like, once we're going, it's hard to stop (Lindsay Laughs) Taurus energy. The key with the medicine of Taurus, what we learn in this energy, is to embrace the experience of discomfort. To understand that we're not going for fixed necessarily, we're going for depths, we're going for devotion, but we're not going for complacency. We're not going for fragility. We're not going for comfort, again, for comfort’s sake, for relief’s sake. We're going for learning, for investigation, for curiosity, for openness.
There's a lot of deep work that can really be done there when we consider the idea that Taurus really wants to stay steady. And the Hierophant doesn't really... It does invite us to embody the center within ourselves, to be the center, to hold kind of both of those experiences. What guidance are we getting in the heart and the soul? Does that, is that, creating some dissonance, conflict with what's the preferences of the ego of the mind? We're always checking in about that. Always, always. Always checking in.
And we are that center point, but sometimes we really want to rest in one place or another. And we can forget that the whole deal is to really be reflecting and moving, fluid. Always. So we're going for that kind of energy. And then we move into mutable air in Gemini, which rules The Lovers card.
So Hierophant is absolutely a card of choice, about reclaiming our “yes,” reclaiming our power, calling back the power that we've given away, the autonomy, calling back our wisdom or intuition... And clearing, and processing the old beliefs that may have lived within us for a really long time, may have influenced our actions and may not have ever been true for us. So again, there's big reckoning, there's big work in that.
[0:31:09]
And when we flip over into Lovers, we’re taking that core seam of reclaiming, of calling back to ourselves, what we've sort of lost or given away, and we're centering it around love. And we're centering around beauty.
Lovers is a very, very complex invitation. Easy enough to describe, funny to clue into. And that is such a deep testament to its rulership by Gemini, that there's such complexity and such richness to Gemini energy, to mutable air in general, and to kind of the Mercurial magic of that sign and that energy.
With The Lovers, we're talking about connection. And we're talking about what is possible, when we are open to deep intimacy and connection with any being, any part of nature, any aspect of ourselves or of life in general. And we're not giving all the power away to the other person, source, place or thing.
If we're believing that a particular opportunity, job, title, whatever is gonna make us, that's Lovers work. And the medicine that we may do in that is to say, “I am already good enough. I have always been good enough... And I honor that, of course, my ego, my heart, I desire this other external piece to come in and amplify.” And when we're making that job opportunity, that title, that check mark on the kind of larger list of our life, our Source, when we're believing, even if it's a teeny little bit, this thing will make me, it will define me, it will give me something that I don't already have, that is when we get into some Lovers work. (Lindsay Laughs)
[0:33:42]
And Lovers will come in and it will say, “Hey, this can't give you anything you don't already have. You already got it. Whether this job, whether this title, this job opportunity is meant for you or not, it can't give you anything and it can't take anything away.”
We do this with people all the time. We believe that if somebody chooses us, loves us, is friends with us, returns our call, holds us, cherishes us, touches us this way, chooses us, that we will be chosen with a capital C and it's not true. It's not in any way, shape or form to diminish human connection and the power of being chosen and loved and cherished. But, even if we're given all the choices, even if somebody offers us all the love, all the validation, (it's so cliché and, I know it's probably very annoying to a lot of folx), until you're giving it to yourself, it can't even go as far.
You're really the only, I mean - we can absolutely be open, be desirous of that kind of energy, that connection with friends, with a group, with you know, whatever. But until we're offering it to ourselves, and especially if we're believing, “Oh, if this person works with me, chooses to,” you know, “desires to date me, too, desires to be friends with me, I will be chosen with a capital C,” that's when we have Lovers work to do.
[0:35:29]
It's not so much that the want and the desire to be friends, to date someone, to want to collaborate with someone is a problem - it's great! If we're making the other person our Source, then it's something we have to adjust. You know, in therapeutic relationships, we may call this a kind of a transference where we really believe that somebody can give us, again, you know, we work out some of our biggest issues with therapists through transference where we feel all kinds of feelings that are projected onto our therapist that we're really feeling about others that really allow us to go deeper with ourselves.
And we can do this in - we do this in relationships all the time. We only need to look back and think like, “Holy shit, why the fuck did I spent so much time on this person that I didn't even like that much?!” But underneath it, it may have been that some part of you - and it's not like I'm psychoanalyzing, but I think we do this - that we want them to choose us. It doesn't even have to do with the other person. Or we're lonely. Or there's some part of us that gets triggered off, maybe when we were children, that says, “Woah if this person chooses me, I'll really be special.”
And again, we do this with Lovers energy all the time: “If I only lived here. Oh, how I wish I could be there.” It has to do, it's a kind of an infinity looping that starts on the outside by inviting us to explore where we're giving some power away to an external aspect of our lives.
[0:37:22]
And it's different from Hierophant because it has to do with what kind of love and beauty and longing we are subscribing or ascribing to, something outside of us that's actually a mirror for us. It's easier to see the beauty in others than to acknowledge it in ourselves. Most of us feel that way, right? It is, we may be a lot more comfortable... by the way, some of this is so fucking real... But if we're in a place that we kind of, if we are lucky enough, privileged enough to live somewhere that lights us up is beautiful, we can tend to start being like, “Oh, I wish I was here,” right?
It's not even that hard to - and then we can think about that, we can think like “What's there? What do I believe would be there that I can't have here?” And sometimes that's really real. Sometimes we have family, just dying to see them - that's not Lovers work.
Lovers work is when there's nothing there (Lindsay Laughs) but the idea of there being something there but we're tending to give power, agency, presence away. And we want to collect that back and infuse it back into ourselves. There's a lot of dead energy that can come up in Lovers card work. And I don't want to make it all about, because it really doesn't have anything to do with relationships or a lover. If you are wanting to be covered in some kind of press, opportunity, that can be Lovers, too. If you're believing “this defines me if I get it” or “I don't get it,” right? So that's really important.
[0:39:20]
Anytime we're believing that something outside of ourselves is defining a part of us that wouldn't be there without the external, that's when we do Lovers work.
There is nothing, nothing, nothing external that can impact, validate your like, ultimately, your destiny, we might say. But there's nothing you need outside of yourself that cannot be given - you are, you're it. Now other people can come and amplify that, can see us, can love us, you know, but unless we are... If we're believing, “Oh this person is IT,” like “Without what this person is giving me, I would have nothing,” that kind of clingy-ness, that kind of grip-y-ness… that's where really dead energy can collect.
A lot of folx, it can keep us in situations, relationships, infatuations a lot longer. It can keep us chasing things that we don't even fucking want. And it can just keep us looping and looping and looping.
How we break free, what's possible in the liberation of The Lovers and where it kind of steps up and expands us even further from Hierophant is that with Hierophant, we're touching into the core connective tissue of our truth; the truth of our knowing, our intuition, like that gut knowing, being able to feel into like, Oh, this is where the tidal pool kind of sweeps me in this direction. This is what I was told as a kid, like this is - I'm noticing the old, outdated beliefs and their, again, their kind of tidal pull on me. But I'm also aware of what's right and good for me. And knowing that that's always changing. Time is so flexible.
But Lovers takes it further and goes, “Can you look at where you have made someone else your source for love? Where you've made something else your source for happiness? Where you've made…” and, again, it can be anything, but it has to do with external pieces. It takes this core idea and Hierophant, which does connect with the idea of - who do we look to within ourselves, outside of ourselves, and then says, Where do we give our love away? Where do we give our beauty away? Where are we uncomfortable integrating the beauty of another and the beauty in ourselves? Where can we honor and celebrate but stay very loose, not get too attached, really stay in that center? What might be possible with that, right?
[0:42:21]
So there's a lot in here about making something external a defining factor. And The Lovers says it's time to recenter that and draw that back into yourself, it's time to shine that light on yourself, it's time to look in the mirror and see what might be possible. And I've done a lot of Lovers work in my time and I actually, ironically, I find that if it has had anything to do with me around another person, it typically has to do with someone that I'm believing, you know, has so much more impact in my life than they do. Because they're - it's actually not about the person, it's about whatever the person tends to represent, you know?
So there's something really powerful and, again, very complex in here that does take, I think, a lifetime to unpack, that really has to do with like, in Hierophant, like, Where is your center? Where's your source of wisdom? And can you differentiate that from what's been done, what you should do, what you're told to do, what another person is inviting you to do? You know, just that influence and really have, be rooted in your own critical thinking, your own wisdom.
And Lovers says, Where have you given this away? Both of them ask that. Where have you given your power away? And where have you given your love away? Where are you waiting for someone else to give you something? Might that impact the way that you walk forward?
So with Hierophant, there's a choice there. Are we going to look to other people to tell us what to do because we don't want to deal with the intensity and the kind of discomfort that comes with that kind of investigation, that kind of internal investigation?
And Lovers absolutely offers us a choice. Are we going to continue to place on others, on situations, on things, on opportunities, on titles, something that they have no right to bear which is a completion in some way of you? Nobody can give you that. Nothing can give you that. And it can be, again, work we sort of unravel really slowly over years, over, really, a lifetime. And we have, often, different figures in our lives from here to there that come up to really amplify that.
[0:44:54]
And how does that lead us into Chariot?
So The Chariot is ruled by Cancer which rules the moon. So we're talking about, again, that kind of lunar connection, that opportunity to show up to the complexity, the potency of this more kind of lunar rhythm.
We're also talking about the energy of the crab. So crab is the ruling animal of Cancer and crabs have this sort of harder shell and this really tender flesh inside of that shell. And we're talking about layers with Cancer, always. We may not ever necessarily get to the heart of the crab, in the energy of Cancer and, when we reflect on that, in the energy of ourselves. But like the falling in the rising of the moon, like the shedding, like the rebirth that comes at every new moon, like the big harvest energy that comes with every Full Moon, with every phase of the moon, bringing their own medicine, this energy reminds us that there is a kind of a perpetual, evolving, graduating, shedding and leaving behind of things that no longer serve us.
There are times in life when we have to look at, review, the larger trappings of our lives, the Chariots of our lives, the crab shells of our lives - where we are tasked with asking ourselves, “Is this vehicle, is this relationship, situation, way that I'm living my life actually helping me to traverse the roads of my life? Does it match what I really want? Have I outgrown it? Can I thank this Chariot? Can I thank this crab shell? Can I thank this part of me that…” typically with Chariot we have something that, like, looks really good, looks like it's working, but when we look at it a little bit more closely, there's a lot left to be desired. (Lindsay Laughs) There's a lot to be desired in there.
It can't really take you very far. It's exactly like baby teeth. Lovely, imperfect, and beautiful and necessitous - not permanent. Can't take you the long haul, can't take you to adult chewing, for the most part, I would say not. We're meant to lose them.
The Chariot speaks of that: We're meant to leave some things behind.
Certain things aren't meant to come with us all the way to the end of our line. And in fact, one of the most important things about deepening into our soul work, as we might call it, our deep, evolved, centered, aligned work on this planet personally, is to go through occasional Chariot experiences; to say like, Whoa, this person, this relationship, this collaborator, this partner, oh my god, they were so important and now I feel I've outgrown them a bit. Evidence is showing this, you know, whatever it is, or there's another person that I'm realizing, whoa, really reflects to me what it is that I'm wanting, which is this, right?
[0:48:41]
So we take the work we've done in Hierophant, which is the hard and necessary work of coming into our own integrity again, reflecting on who and what we're kind of following, worshiping, listening to within ourselves and outside of ourselves.
The Lovers invites us to investigate where we place undue, potentially, importance on outside sources, where we give, again, our love away, our beauty away, where it's more comfortable for us to place it on someone else, to believe that someone else or something else can give and complete us in some way. And really, what that card asks us to do, the hard and necessary work of The Lovers is to look in the mirror and reclaim what's always been yours. And sometimes that comes with a lot of grief and a lot of pissed off feelings and kind of anger that we can't quote-unquote “have the thing” that we're so desiring or have to have it in a different way or whatever it is.
And it's really, again, all part of the medicine to thank that person, that reflection, that mirror image of - sometimes Spirit can put folx in our path that reflect some part of us back to ourselves that is so beautiful and we're not able to see it. But, we can see it through this person. We can see it through this thing. There's mirrors all around us. Waking up to that is what we do in Lovers work. And again, it's deep, complex, nonlinear work that takes place over our life.
[0:50:27]
Now, what can happen, if we start to do all of that kind of internal evolutionary work is that it starts to set the stage up for us to shed and clear and be complete with certain things in our lives.
The Chariot is always a symbol of a graduation of some kind... a setting off from where we've been to where we're going.
It kicks off the integration, moving from Line One to Line Two of the Major Arcana and represents a moment when we're asked to really acknowledge, like, Whoa, this thing served me for such a long time, I can't get out of this Chariot. You know, everything that’s collected in The Chariot is all a part of what we're talking about with Hierophant and Lovers, and even the cards that come before it. It's everything that we learn, all the treasures that we keep, stay with us, like what we're meant to keep, will come. It's all the stuff that has served us up to this point, gotten us here and, now, in order to keep going, we have to leave that particular Chariot behind in order to walk, in order to run, in order to meet the moments that life is putting in front of us.
So it's a very, very powerful shedding and completion cycle and can really only happen if we have called back home to ourselves the things that we continue to give away because we're uncomfortable standing in our power. We don't want to get it wrong. We don't want to be lonely, you know? Where we are kind of - Lovers and Hierophant, to me, are pretty imbued with... it’s belief work.
You know, it's really, it's really kind of undoing some of the foundational stuff that can get caught in us from our formative ages. It really does invite us to unpack these things. And I don't care what age you are, we all have those things where we have put something on another person that is so overblown, so inappropriate, so - not even like “problematic inappropriate,” like - we've all had that friend and maybe we've all been that person that's just like, “Oh my God, this person is everything to me” and everyone around you is like “That person is like not all that.” And again, that's a big part of Lovers work.
[0:53:15]
So, you know, making Lovers all about, a lot about people - and I want to kind of go back to the job title, like the opportunities, a quote-unquote “thing...” Anytime I do stuff about like, “Oh, geez, why haven't I gotten - why hasn’t a book happened for me yet?” I always pull Lovers on that. (Lindsay Laughs) Because I mean, I have nothing, like, I'm so excited and happy for so many of my buddies, my colleagues, folx that I'm friends with who are in adjacent fields, and even outside of my field, who have book deals, have written books, like I think that's extraordinary.
But every time I go through my own like, weirdness about it for myself, I always pull Lovers for it. Because Spirit is essentially like, “Yeah, you can completely celebrate these folx in their accomplishments, but like, what do you think that's going to give you? Like, what do you - What is your story? What is your belief about that? What are you - What are you, again, kind of believing a book is going to give you that cannot come from the medicine and the offerings, the way they're being shaped, are coming through you now? Like, what would be different about a book versus a course? Why do you feel like that one is better than the other?”
And that always leads me into some really important, rich, uncomfortable places where I'm like, “Oh, wow, I do have a lot of beliefs about this or that or I believe if I had a book deal, it would mean this” or like - I just share that openly because I think we all feel those things. So why not (Lindsay Laughs), why not - we all have them in some area - why not just name them and be really honest about it? We've all got those places.
[0:55:04]
So Lovers is not relegated to just romantic stuff or even human relationships, but it can show up there a lot.
A lot, a lot. And what happens when we move into Lovers work is that it actually, when we can clear out looking for somebody who's not really in alignment to give us something that really only we can give ourselves, we're sort of missing something that we're redirecting onto someone else, when we can aim that flow of love and beauty onto ourselves, (Lindsay Sighs) I mean, it's big.
And it can actually yield to much more aligned opportunities and relationships. So it's a very powerful kind of, again, infinity loop that starts outside of ourselves, moves inside, then moves back outside. And that's why we end up in Chariot reflecting on this part of ourselves that is essentially the crab shell, like the protective part, the part that has guided us over the terrains of our lives.
What have we been ensconced in and what are we ready to be free of? What is kind of the old shoe, the baby teeth? What is it that no longer fits? If you're clearing out old beliefs that don't serve, if you're reckoning with ways that you've given your power away and bringing them back into yourselves, if relationships in ways that you have redirected some of that love, that potency to others, if you're bringing that back into yourself, it is going to naturally change the way you show up in the world. And The Chariot is a lot about that.
It's not really a symbol of victory and luck and whatever. It really is, like, it's an opportunity to deeply shed, to deeply reflect, to mourn something, to celebrate it, to thank it, to recognize that eventually we'll leave these bodies in the exact same way. Nothing in this life is permanent.
[0:57:17]
But these three cards together, show us what is possible when we start to choose ourselves, show us what is possible when we call back inside of ourselves the things we've given away.
And Hierophant/Lovers work is so intense, sometimes we don't even realize we've done it. Sometimes it's just a question of like, Oh, yeah, like, I'm just kind of going about this thing and then the more we reflect on it, the more we realize, Holy shit, I have, like, given away these parts of myself. And there can be a lot of grief there. But it can open up the portal for incredible amends to be made to ourselves and to others, you know, we can, we can wake up.
In some cases, we can try again. In some cases, we can take responsibility, if needed. But with The Chariot, we get to have a culmination of all of these lessons and leave behind what got us this far, but won't serve us going forward - and from there, everything can change.
Once we have that moment, where we make that co-creative decision to step out of The Chariot and walk forward into the forest of the Second Line of the Major Arcana, we're not doing so looking for anybody else to make us or break us. There's no more of that in the rest of the Tarot.
There's no other opportunity except really in The Devil card. And that's kind of the last sort of breaking from that. And it's really just, I believe, most of the time, about relationships with ourselves. We never really deal with what it is, again, to give power away. Like we have reclaimed something in these three cards. For the rest of our experience, it's really about going into the cocoon and letting what does not serve our real highest expansion to be cleared in order for us to kind of emerge with wings, so that we can truly, truly fly and be who we came here to fucking be.
And, absolutely, in The Devil we're gonna confront like, what are the stories, what are the old pockets of shame that have to be cleared before I can go forward? And even that is different than Hierophant work, but it's not really possible without doing Hierophant work first.
[0:59:57]
This is really kind of what we're being called to look at, this is what, you know, speaking about 2021, is kind of a series of years, these are our next three years. Because next year, 2022, we're gonna be in The Lovers and then 2023 we will be in The Chariot. So this is a powerful thing to meditate on because we don't just work with one card. We work with many.
You know, we work with all kinds of different units and typically when we're in one, you know, when we were in Emperor and 2020, we were - I felt the Hierophant in April. I was like, Whoa, like the ripple of this is so strong, like, it's here. And I felt the card that we were in in 2019, which was Hanged One or Tethered One and Empress.
So I invite you to reflect on this and see what comes up for you. Where do you find yourself in these cards? Where are you seeing them show up in the world around you, in life around you? And if you don't understand some of them, just hang out with it, you know? See if other folx have put some of these cards in ways that make more sense to you. That's always not just possible, but inevitable. (Lindsay Laughs) You know, sometimes, like I can read what any person has said about any card, and I, it just doesn't click for me until it clicks for me. That's part of the beauty and the delight of having a relationship with a Tarot practice. So sometimes it's like a couple, it's a little bit before a card like really clicks in. But when it does, it's amazing. So no worries, if you're like, “I get it, but I don't get it.” Just hang out with that feeling because it will only spur you on to create even deeper bonds with these cards.
[1:01:46]
Yeah, I encourage you to be awakened to the cards here that are really working with all of us right now and to be really available and open, to connect with how they're showing up in your lives right now. They're definitely showing up in mine. I'm seeing them show up in all kinds of different ways with other folx in the world and historical events right now.
So yeah, I wonder if, I wonder what will come up for you when you start to meditate on how these three cards have shown up in your life, do show up in your life, and what they may be communicating to you.
So I am wishing you all the love, all the care, all the nurturance, Wild Souls, everything you could possibly ever want or need. May you receive it, especially this week, in terms of self-care, just be so gentle. But really, that's going to be a pretty regular thing for the rest of the year into 2022. (Lindsay Laughs) Really, even when things are a little bit less chaotic and intense in the world, I'll probably still say it because you deserve support and care and love no matter what is going on.
So thank you for listening to this. And yeah, I'm loving on you so much and I don't really have anything else to share right now in terms of updates. Still clicking away on the website rebrand that looks like it's going to be launching a little bit closer to late February versus like next week. But it's all, like, so good. It's like, again, such wildness and beauty with the time, bend-ability and like things changing and it's such a, it's a very interesting time, certainly, to be on the planet. But yeah, I'm so excited to share that with all of you. We're working on our first course of the year of many, just so many things in store. I'm so excited to drop into them with you.
So yeah, just loving all of you Wild Souls and until we meet again, please take care of yourselves.
[Conclusion]
(Instrumental exit music)
[1:04:11]
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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