151. The High Priestess and the Vertical Lines of the Tarot
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Hello and welcome, Wild Souls, to a brand new tarot podcast episode!
Today’s episode introduces Lindsay’s take on the Vertical Lines of the Major Arcana cards in the Tarot.
Thanks to the work of teachers like Rachel Pollack, the three lines of the Major Arcana are known to most practitioners. Students of Soul Tarot School have come to understand the three lines of seven Major Arcana cards as the Life/Death/Rebirth cycle. This way of looking at the Tarot is so beautiful and assists our practice in so many ways.
Less discussed, and for reasons you’ll soon discover for yourself on today’s podcast, are the Vertical lines of the Majors. These seven lines of three Tarot cards will offer a whole new adventure in recognizing Tarot in our everyday lives.
For the next three weeks, we’ll explore the second Vertical Line of the Major Arcana cards, which are The High Priestess, The Hermit, and The Tower.
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About the Episode
The Second Vertical Line of the Major Arcana is about our relationship to intuition, Spirit, surrender, time, and trust. In this line, we explore what it means to move and relate to a path where we encounter The High Priestess, The Hermit, and The Tower. The Vertical Lines can both challenge and expand our thoughts on which tarot cards “go together.”
Each of these cards build upon one another, taking us on a journey of discovery, frustration, expansion, and delight, as we uncover and deepen our connections to our spiritual center.
On today’s episode of Tarot for the Wild Soul podcast, we focus on The High Priestess and the meaning we can discover in our own intuitive practices working with this powerful companion.
Lindsay explores this tarot card from the Wild Soul perspective of autonomous, joyful intuition. The High Priestess is within each of us. There’s no hierarchy to climb or trial to endure to attain some pristine, austere state of mind where the energy of this tarot card is finally accessible. You’re already able to look within yourself, your life, and find this wise, compassionate center who wants to check in on how you’re feeling right now.
Together, we will look at ways to enrich, fortify, and deepen our relationship to The High Priestess, taking this archetype out of the conceptual, and grounding it into the approachable and accessible.
In this episode, we talk about:
Our inner children in this time [0:02:08]
What are the vertical lines? [0:05:27]
The Emperor, Justice, and the Moon (Vertical Line 3) [0:14:24]
The High Priestess [0:30:30], [0:38:07]
The Hermit [0:30:50]
The Tower [0:34:24}
The Magician [0:41:10]
Related Episodes
We invite you to explore the atmosphere and themes arriving in this new era in Monthly Medicine: February is Clarity.
If you want to explore more pathways through the Major Arcana, check out our series called The Great Rebirth starting with Part One: The Chariot.
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: trauma, patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, racism, religious structures, chronic/physical pain, grief, and systemic oppression
The content in this episode contains references to trauma, patriarchy, white supremacy, racism, religious structures, chronic/physical pain, grief and systemic oppression. 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 and welcome back to Tarot for the Wild Soul podcast. I am your host, Lindsay Mack, and it is, as always, just such a huge joy, huge honor to be gathered with you in this virtual space. Thank you so much for being here.
Oh my god. I feel like everything is just — continues to rise in pitch in terms of intensity and loss. And wow, is it an intense time to be in a body, to be alive on the planet right now. All this Aquarius energy, especially this Mercury retrograde in Aquarius is not — I don't want to say it's not helping, it's doing exactly what it's supposed to do (Lindsay Laughs) — but it is... it's extra.
So I know all of you probably know this already, but I just always want to be that gentle voice in your ear, just letting you know if you can make things, if it's possible to make your current state even 10%. more comfortable, more sweet, more soft, whatever that means to you. I think everybody's experience with sweetness and softness is very different. Yeah, just to know that you're not alone in the intensity of these times. I see you. You know, I'm in it with you and I don't know anybody, no teacher, no space holder, who isn't going through this, too. You're not alone. So just loving on your body, your heart, your mind, all the intersections of you that make you you.
[0:02:08]
And your little ones — I was having a conversation with my teacher, Michelle, about just like, this is such a hard time for our inner children. They're over it, you know? There's a lot of really old wounding coming up. So it's little children, adults, and the inner children that all of us have, it's just — they're definitely, a lot of them, are reaching a kind of a breaking point. It's a totally new realm of inner self-parenting. And I don't have any answers. That's just to acknowledge that it's here.
And really that is the gateway in which Tarot can do the most for us, with what's right here. Not what will be, not what might be, not what we might look to for the future, although, especially in these times (and really, we can say this since time immemorial), we've always looked to the future when things are horrible and bleak in the now or when we're frustrated and bored with our lives. And egoically, we don't really want to deal with it. There's all different kinds of reasons to look to the future and we can take Tarot in that direction, but where it really shines, where it really will open and flower and start to talk to us, start to really show up as an anchor and an immensely supportive tool for whatever arises is in times quite like this. So, yeah, whether you feel drawn to work with your deck or not, it's always there for you, you know. So just loving on all of you.
[0:03:56]
I was so surprised — like this new podcast format that's been kind of unfolding since September is always such a delight for me because I never quite know what I'm going to be called to talk about. And so this was really fun, to get to explore a little bit of something that I actually don't always love to talk about, which is the vertical lines of the Major Arcana. So I'm really excited to talk about it over the next few weeks.
Also I'm going to, for what it's worth — you can skip past this part — but I don't always like to talk about the vertical lines of the Major Arcana, one, because it's not really something that turns me on. It doesn't spark me. It doesn't make me super excited most of the time and I tend to speak about things on the spectrum of Tarot facilitation that really lights me up and that feels interesting to me.
Now I like thinking about and meditating on the vertical lines of the Major Arcana — if you have no idea what I'm talking about there, I will clue you in — but one of the reasons that I'm a little bit turned off, most of the time when it comes to teaching about them, is because people really, really, really want to know what they are. And I don't know. (Lindsay Laughs) I don't know what they are. I don't think anybody really does.
[0:05:27]
I think that the vertical lines of the Major Arcana — so we have Rachel Pollack to look to for this because the way we start to visually think about the vertical lines of the Major Arcana is thanks to her three lines of the Majors ordering and her subsequent teaching of those three lines while removing The Fool.
So we want to picture The Fool on top of a three layer cake and each of those layers are the seven cards related to each of the three lines of the Major Arcana. Those are the three, you know, if we were to look to Rachel Pollock's teachings, right - technically speaking, you can order the Major Arcana however you want. You know, you can have, five lines, you can have one, you can have no lines, it really doesn't matter. But it's a great way to look to them; I really like Rachel Pollock's concept there.
So we're gonna just kind of honor that lineage within this and picture those three lines of seven, with The Fool as a little, like cherry, a little rose on top of the cake. So if you look at those three lines vertically, we have seven vertical lines of three cards. So instead of looking at the first horizontal line that runs from The Magician to The Chariot, the first vertical line runs from Magician to Strength (or Justice, depending on how you order your number Eight in Line Two), and The Devil. So that's our first vertical line of the Majors.
[0:07:19]
Our second is the one we're going to be exploring over the next three weeks — that's High Priestess, The Hermit, the Tower.
And on and on, it goes, right? Really, really fascinating, powerful, beautiful way to just kind of like shift the mind, shift the heart and think about how the Major Arcana blooms open in a new way when considered in these potent lines of three rather than seven, or rather than one big line. It is a really cool way of learning.
But again, to kind of go back to my little caveat, I'm really... The difference, I think, with the horizontal lines of seven, and the vertical lines of three; the horizontal lines are linear. They're a road, they're a map. We're walking that map.
So of course, the Tarot doesn't really fan out in such linear ways. We don't really walk from Magician to High Priestess, to Empress to Emperor — we move around, right? But the bones of that structure can be really, really helpful when we consider, you know, what does soul evolution look like? What is it when we move from, kind of, crawling to walking, you know, from walking to running. The Majors can help us. I think they're a guide for life and when we look at them through those three lines of seven, it's a tremendous teaching. Just beautiful.
[0:09:04]
But the vertical lines are different because they're taking you on a journey not outward, but inward. You have to start at the heart in that first card of three and you have to literally drop in and reflect: What is it to go on an inward journey, an inward path of evolution that takes me from the Empress to Wheel of Fortune to The Star. That's the third line, the third vertical line. What is that? What — who knows? We could have a discussion probably for the next month, easily, if we were all together. We'd all have something different to say.
So I find with my students, and this is a completely human part of people, that they really want to know, like, the finite definition: What is this? What does this mean? And I don't really think that exists with the vertical lines. I just think it's a profound exploration where I'm often taken into realms that are much more spiralic, much more intuitive, much more potent, and that actually tend to serve as a much greater blueprint for me, personally, on soul work.
So Tarot, again, for the way I teach, for Soul Tarot, in my perception and where that perception meets channeling, the Tarot is a profound mirror for where we grow those intersections between our soul, the infinite part of us, our deepest knowing and our ego, our mind’s stuff, our conditioning, our biases, our traumas. How do we hold both and kind of center in? The Tarot can help us to do that, right? And that's also true with the vertical lines. But I find, for myself, that when I drop into them, what I'm really looking at is a guide — a guide for how to be with these elements of life that are profoundly beautiful, profoundly important, and that are also kind of holy, spiralic, mysterious and personal.
[0:11:36]
So really, the intention of this lesson is not to tell you what the vertical lines are, but to give you a gentle blueprint for one way that you could look at one of them and encourage and invite you, if it calls to you, to literally put them in front of you, those three lines, and check it out for yourself. To really look and to see like, Wow, like, what is this? What is it to go from the Emperor to Justice to The Moon? There's a lot I could say about that. And likely you'd have something really powerful and different to share, right?
But the crux, I think, that I can sort of acknowledge here is that I love to think about the vertical lines of the Majors. I'm not always called to teach them because I think, again, it's a fairly personal thing... and yet, here I am (Lindsay Laughs)! So really all that statement at the top was really for naught because I'm still here talking about it. Really... Yeah, I don't know. It's just It feels really fun to be speaking about that.
So if I had to offer you, if you asked me like, “Lindsay, okay, fine, I can do my own field research about what those vertical lines mean to me. What would you say about them?” I think that they are potentially profound, again, I'm going to use this word “blueprints,” blueprints for where we evolve from ego to soul. We're doing that on a much larger framework in the Majors and in the Tarot in general. But the vertical lines like really, really hone in on these just pure, undistilled, absolutely incredible threefold journeys.
[0:13:45]
So we can really look to any of them in the seven for some pretty profound guidance. I would say that all of them have to do with intuition in some way. All of them have to do with stepping closer to our connection with our birthrights, our gifts, our connections to nature. All of them have something to do with bringing an element, a foundational element of our self getting met with something in the energetic realm, taking that, and moving into co-creation with it, starting to work with Spirit in a larger way.
So this example that I offered of Emperor, Justice to The Moon: The Emperor is — that's a pretty powerful thing to reflect on, given the fact that 2020 was an Emperor year. The Emperor is about, as I've said many times on this podcast, the mighty tree, the big big sky, it's the wingspan of a bird. It's the shout and scream of a newborn baby, it's, “I have a right to be here, to take up space,” that soul spark, that knowing in us that no baby is less worthy, at its core, no being is ever less worthy than another. There are some pretty profound reclamations in that, especially when we consider the fact that on Earth, not everything happens from a soul-centered way.
So there are plenty of examples of people taking absolutely way too much space up in a room, on the planet, because they are coming from a slightly less clear place within themselves. There's an emptiness within themselves, a lack of rootedness in themselves. So the desire to consume energetically, even beyond what they may realize is — without that internal investigation, there's not a whole lot of clarity that we can necessarily bring to that question going forward. “Am I really in touch with what I'm being asked to bring, when it's appropriate for me to listen, when it's appropriate for me to move back or move forward,” right? Lots of questions there.
[0:16:17]
When you take that Emperor energy and you bring Justice to it, when you really bring that question of “What is in highest and best here? What is balanced here? What is imbalanced here? How might we need to make amends, correct, pivot, shift?” And then we move into The Moon, that says, “Can I be in the knowing that the Emperor brings, that I have a purpose here? I may not always be in touch with that purpose, but I came here for a reason while also living in the fact that this world is highly spiralic, highly chaotic, utterly and completely unknown.
It's a very, if you can feel the essence of that, it's a very, very subtle, intuitive, kind of out-of-the-bounds of language thing. We’re almost seeing The Emperor as a pearl inside of the shell of The Moon and what is holding all that up is Justice, When we're in living embodiment of that particular line, we're able to bring our gentle, soul-guided Emperor-ness to a world that really doesn't make a whole lot of sense. So then it becomes less about “We have to be #1. We have to take over. We have to be on top,” and more about “I'm being called to do this today. I'm being called to show up like this today.” When we bring about that Justice energy to our Emperor work, it helps to keep us in alignment with what's in highest and best — not just for us, but for everyone.
It also reminds us that it's a line that keeps shifting. What might have worked yesterday might be very different today. What worked five years ago is certainly going to be really different than it is now. So we're in constant ebbing, constant flowing and that's The Moon kind of holding that larger space.
[0:18:30]
So we start with the pearl, which is that first card in the vertical line. Then we look at kind of what is the flesh holding that pearl, like what's the — if it's a seed, what's the fruit that surrounds it? And then the skin of that, the shell of that, the container that holds it, that flesh in that second line or that fruit that holds that as our second card, that kind of container, that shell is the third card. So it's really really powerful.
Each one really does represent this pretty profound journey where we bring a root element of our being and mix it with a kind of a larger force that's outside of our control, that's a check-in process, that kind of runs up against the card’s energy in one way or another. And then in that third one, we have the opportunity to bring that first card into the realm of the third, to actually bring that sense of embodiment, of what was up in that first line into the third line and live out the root of that message in the midst of this third energy, this third line energy.
If it sounds a little weird, it's because. again, it is. It's really hard to, put a name to it, to really, the actual…
It's the lunar side of looking at the lines of the Majors, really. The solar side, the side that is the unfolding path that is much more connected, a little bit more linear, just a little bit more linear, that's really the horizontal line of seven. The vertical line of three is really the lunar side. So it's always changing and does really have to do with how we personally connect with the first card in the first line, how we connect with that second card, how it flows into the third.
[0:18:30]
So as you see, it really isn't about any teacher, any person coming in and saying, “This is what this line is.”
We can totally see how a lot of those elements in that Emperor line showed up in the year 2020. We saw visible Justice work being brought into the world. The Justice card can absolutely rip and tear. It can be very intense, very traumatic. It can be a massive — in ways that are both evolutionary and some in ways that are really quite harmful — that there can be profound rupture. And Justice really has us grappling toward repair in many ways over the course of a lifetime because Justice is a multi-generational, multi-lifetime energy.
So we're basically taking a root energy in the form of the Emperor that has been warped by the patriarchy, by white supremacy, by capitalism, by racism, by all of these different systems. We're taking that, we're bringing Justice into it, we're seeing what kind of combustion it makes and then we're asking, “How does that exist in a Moon world?” The Moon is Pisces. The Moon is about endings. The Moon is about - really, The Moon is so intense for many folks, myself included, because it kind of is a card about life itself. Life is completely — we don't know why things happen in life. We often don't have any answers as to why certain things happen. Life is profoundly unfair. And we can look to these systems of oppression, we can look to — we can see: Who has profited from this? Were folks complicit in this? Or am I complicit in these things?
[0:22:56]
And yet, we're living in a completely spiralic, chaotic, void. How does a tree bloom and grow in the void?
So, you know, this has been almost 25 minutes of musing, essentially, but this is where I think, why I think I was guided to talk about this today because I think, for most folx, the perception of a Tarot practice is to get to an end result: “I want to memorize the cards, I want to be able to give readings, I want to be able to-” whatever.
This here (Lindsay Laughs) — the Tarot is — it's an exploratory journey. We're always learning new things about ourselves, about our beloveds, about the people who are the closest to us... Why shouldn't it be different? Or why shouldn't it be exactly the same with these profound archetypes that are mirrors to us, but also ways in which to live in soul-guided ways?
So 2020, I think if you reflect on it, even for a little bit, you'll see — I totally feel the energy of that kind of fourth vertical line in my experience of 2020, for sure, in ways that I might not be able to language. And I think the shit that we're not really able to language but we feel, we can find that in the vertical lines.
So I encourage you to explore this, to play, and, again, maybe this is a very Aquarian thing. It's not really one way, it's just a way, and I think it's a path in that for us that's really really powerful and important because it does take you down and in versus out. So it's really valuable to explore it. Really valuable.
[0:25:01]
So having said that, we are going to be exploring in a bit more depth, our second vertical line of the Major Arcana, which is The High Priestess, The Hermit and The Tower.
And you may be potentially thinking, “There is no way that those three cards have anything in common with each other.” You might be thinking, “That totally makes sense to me.” You might be thinking, “Well, The Hermit and The High Priestess makes sense, but what the hell is The Tower doing here?”
So this is where, (this is probably just my geekiness), but this is where I feel like Tarot gets very exciting, at least for me, because it's gonna be different for everyone. So the way that I'm going to approach this is that today we're really going to spend the bulk of our time speaking about The High Priestess.
I've never really talked about High Priestess on this podcast, not really. I have one other podcast episode. We've sprinkled High Priestess in a bunch of times. One other one that was specifically about High Priestess in accompaniment with other cards, but never really by itself. And even this one isn't really just High Priestess standing on its own. It's in the context of the vertical three.
But I really want to talk about how — what makes sense to me about this second line and where I think I can offer folks kind of a foundation and gateway to begin to explore... As always, remember that the foundations that I offer on this podcast, in my courses, whatever our walls that have some bounce on them — so it may be that you bounce up on these ideas and it's exactly the right amount of bounce to kickstart a whole host of inspirations. You may absolutely resonate with what I have to say. It also may bounce you so far away from what I'm saying that you're like, “Ugh, do not agree!” Either way is fucking great. (Lindsay Laughs) You want to start thinking for yourself anyway. So just know that you have permission, always. You're the teacher here, too. So you have — I want you to start exploring and thinking for yourself and seeing how this lands with you.
[0:27:10]
So for me, in Soul Tarot, where we look to the second vertical line of the Major Arcana, what it's all about, this is really about our relationship to intuition and Spirit. How we work with our intuition, work with Spirit, work in co-creation with elements of life like surrender, trust and time. Those are really big pieces: surrender, time and trust, around living in alignment with intuition, often maddeningly and frustratingly so that you kind of give up a relationship with linear time.
You may think, when something is ready to come, you may think you're ready and Spirit, your Guides, your higher self may have completely different (Lindsay Laughs) plans for you, for your work, for your offering. And always, it's for us, but it can be, again, so profoundly frustrating on a human level to feel into that or to be on the journey of that.
So each of these cards in this vertical line, High Priestess, Hermit and Tower, respectively, build upon one another. It may not seem like there's any road from High Priestess to Tower, but it's there, and pretty profoundly, which we'll talk about, that really takes us on this journey of discovery, of, absolutely, frustration (Lindsay Laughs), of expansion and of delight, I think... Of self-inquiry as we really uncover and deepen our connections not only to our intuition, to our spiritual center, but how we allow our concept, our own definition of Spirit, of Divine, of our helping spirits, of our ancestors, our Guides, our angels, whomever you work with, how we let them in to help us. You know, it's powerful, because they need our consent to do it. And there are places where we might even intentionally not ask because we don't want to know or because we don't want to get the “no” or we don't want to get the “yes.”
[0:30:00]
Very often we don't — (Lindsay Laughs) I still have that. I had a huge rupture with Spirit the other day over something so stupid. But I wanted something and I knew that They were gonna say “no,” I knew that They were gonna do it because I knew it wasn't in highest and best for me. And I also knew, “Well, I could just not ask them and do it anyway...” But that's not how I prefer to live my life. I spent so many years being like, “I'm just not even gonna ask, I'm gonna blow right through this,” you know?
So the journey that we take, and this is a massive distillation of this idea, is really — in High Priestess, we learn what it actually means to connect with ourselves on this intuitive, deeper level. And we're going to talk about that. Once we've done that and made contact and started talking to Spirit, talking to our Guides, started to actually say “yes” to our souls, Hermit comes in and starts saying, “Are you beginning to veer off in this direction? That might be a distraction. I'm going to bring about a gentle pause here. Are you starting to take action on something that's not quite ready? I'm going to slow things down here.”
I found in the baby, kind of wobbly-legged beginning years of me really being very devoted to trying to honor my soul, trying to honor spirit, trying to honor my Guides, myself and everything I did, there was more Hermit, pausing, stalling, frustration than any other experience for the first couple of years. And that's because my brain and my ego were really accustomed to being in control. I didn't have any evidence to the contrary of like, “Well, if I trust this, what the fuck is gonna happen?” because the more you start to connect in with your intuition, the less you actually know about what's going to happen, or what's coming. Because the less you're really able to lean on your plans, you know... it sounds a little backward most people think like, Oh, if you're an intuitive, you know everything.
You do, the deeper you get, the more you can have a sense of, potentially around some things, greater ease, there can be a shortcut that can happen when you just think “I'm not getting a ‘yes’ on this, so I'm not even gonna question it.” We can go through the years of being like, “Oh my god, I'm getting a ‘no’ on this. Why?” Now I know for myself, I'm at the point where I'm like, “It's a ‘no.’ Great!” It's just like, you know, just kind of like wiping my hands of it, walking away because I know that sometimes I don't have the answer. I don't always know why it's “no.” But if I trust that, typically, the flow is a lot more easeful. And I'm just like, “Alright.”
[0:33:11]
Sometimes I have to tantrum about it. Sometimes I get really mad at Spirit. And I'm just talking to you honestly, because I think there's a gross over-glossing of what it is to live in alignment with intuition. This isn't in any way to negate the joys, the beauty, the power or the magic. It's a really strange path and wonderful but it does kind of ask you to forego a great deal of the way that we have social transactions with each other. Like we're going to make plans far out in advance, we're going to expect that if you say “yes” to something, you're going to do it no matter what happens. Spirit says, “Hell no, you're going to be different in a minute from now, much less in a year from now, a month from now.”
It becomes completely about presence and almost none of it has to do with future. So where does that kind of pausing, stalling, waiting, different pace, different energy, different relationship with time that we go through in Hermit? How does that yield to Tower and how do we go from High Priestess to Tower?
We have to, first of all, look at Tower differently in this conceptual way than we might in a sort of a minutiae way. The High Priestess and The Tower are intimately connected. Best buds, Baby-sitters Club level, joys, fun, like making friendship bracelets¹ together — like, for real! Because High Priestess is about our willingness to say “yes” to this deep oceanic channel within ourselves. The Tower is actually evidence that we have allowed Spirit into our life to the degree that They are willing to take care of things for us. We don't make The Towers come down. There are a million things that have to happen, a million choices that have to happen in order for The Tower to come down in some way.
Now, are there circumstances where we might go through a Tower and be like, “There is no fucking Spirit in this, this just sucked!” 100%. Yes. We're just looking at it in this particular context. You're absolutely allowed to hate The Tower. Everyone's entitled to their feelings about any card, I hate certain cards. While I may appreciate what they do, I don’t like being in them, you know. But I have no fear about The Tower because I appreciate — I've seen The Tower show up and be so beautiful, so positive that I'm the one that has the limiting belief and The Tower blows the lid off of it and goes, “Please! This is not true.” It's so much gentler, so much better, so much softer than you thought.
[0:36:19]
If we have a story and a belief like “no one helps me,” “I never get support”, The Tower can come in and blow the lid off of that when we meet the right assistant for us, when we meet the person who is maybe our beloved childcare provider, or we meet the person who's willing to collaborate with us, help us in some way. You know, whatever it is, right? The Tower is often freeing us from any old, egoic holds that we might have that are connected to that, again, mental, linear, controlling part of us. It's freeing us from that. But the freedom is often very painful. Tower is one of those cards that's a liberation that really stings. It can really sting while it's freeing you.
But there's a beautiful connection with High Priestess there. We have to say “yes” to it in order to actually bring in enough support from Spirit to help clear what is no longer meant to be standing in the garden of our lives. So again, we'll unpack that, we'll explore it within this context of Spirit. In fact, I think it's a tremendous thing to reflect on the way that Tower is actually a powerful, very powerful anchor card for intuitive, spiritual development, expansion.
[0:38:07]
But I want to start with The High Priestess because that's what we're doing here today.
So High Priestess is ruled by the moon and, absolutely, as its reputation is deserving of, is a tremendously powerful card of intuition, of mysteries, of wisdom, of channeling.
There's a lot of imagery, a lot of incredibly beautiful detail and intricacy that is present on Pamela Colman Smith's beautiful High Priestess card in the Smith-Rider-Waite and I'm actually not going to get into that here today. If you're interested in getting into it, you can definitely do so by reading any — any solid book on Tarot will get into kind of those intricacies. It's really lovely and really cool to to see like what that triple moon crown on The High Priestess’ head meant or means to some, why they have this, you know, triple moon, some folx say “triple goddexx,” we could say “the crown of Hathor,” and why this kind of symbol on The High Priestess’ head and the cross on their chest and the water at their feet, like what we might look to that as being, right?
So I'm gonna keep it much more overarching so that we can move into where we can connect on this card in more of a soul-guided way. But to kind of wildly oversimplify, we see in a myriad of different ways that The High Priestess is a being that's really calling us to drop into our deepest self.
There's a lot, again, of iconography, imagery, symbolism on this card classically that's, very often, been kind of creatively expanded upon with a lot of modern deck makers that depict The High Priestess as being somebody who has access to all the knowledge, all the wisdom, everything you could ever want to know, that is intricately connected with the moon. And many folx explore that in many different spectrums. And, you know, really, again, that's up to us to really find our way in with any card that we're working with, what makes sense with, for us, to us, etc.
[0:40:50]
What we do know, and where I want to kind of center back to, is this lunar ruling, this ruling by the moon, and why this card kind of kicks off this very powerful vertical line journey around Spirit, around intuitive discovery.
So a place that can be really helpful to start is that, again, in this very oversimplified way, zooming way out, The Magician that precedes The High Priestess in the horizontal line of the Majors is really all about channeling magic down and in and bringing it out of us. It is about being the vessel, The Magician, but it's much more importantly about bringing it out. Out, out, out. That's that Mercury ruling of Magician.
The High Priestess is the exact opposite. It is all about inner journeying, all about it, which means that it's often the shit that — you can't Instagram it (Lindsay Laughs) no matter how hard you try, or how hard some feel like they're channeling High Priestess vibes. High Priestess, if we're truly — I mean, really, I don't want to judge Instagramming. I think that's really beautiful and we're free to connect with cards any way we want to. But really, High Priestess work is what happens outside of what anyone is really seeing. It's a really, really uncomfortable energy because we're not bringing it out anywhere. It's moonlight, and it's only moonlight some of the time. Other times, it's new moon. It's nothing. (Lindsay Laughs) Like, there's no clarity. There's total obscurity.
[0:42:48]
What High Priestess does, this journey, is that it asks us to commit to staying with it even though we're not going to know answers.
If I could offer anyone seeking to hear some humbly offered advice on expanding your intuitive channel, saying “yes” to Spirit, the one thing that I would invite you to know, is going to be a part of your journey, probably an unwelcome part, probably an uncomfortable part, you're going to have to — you're going to be invited to sit in nothingness a lot of the time where there is no answer, there is no ping back, there is nothing that you're perceiving coming back to you, where you're learning to just be — that's a very important part of working with High Priestess. Just being. Just sitting. Just listening. Just being.
It's not so so much a card of profound channeling, although it can hold that, too, but it is very much about hanging out with us and Spirit at the same time, hanging out with that channel. High Priestess is really the depicted embodiment of what that soul, Spirit, channel is, what it feels like. It's not something that can always be languaged. It's not something that can always be described. It's often just a sense, an experience, a journey that we take that, again, is very hard for some folx to language... and you don't ever have to.
But the key to this card, the key to how this shows up in this deeper journey, the key to our own intuitive expansion is coming back to this ruling by the moon. So without even really trying to do this, The High Priestess, by this ruling alone, is reminding us intuition, spiritual connectedness, communing with yourself, with your Guides, going to your Tarot, like any kind of spiritual or intuitive practice, it's not linear. And I know that that might hit somebody, or, land with some folx, and really kind of hit the ear as being kind of like, “Okay…”
[0:45:36]
But, really, it's not linear, which means that the way that your Guides show up to you is gonna probably be different from one phase in your life to the other, in one moment in your life to the other. There may be times when you're communing, communing, communing, connecting, and then you, quote, “hear” or “perceive” nothing at all. And it's very easy to think, “I've dropped off, I'm out of alignment, I'm not hearing them, or I'm not perceiving them,” whatever it is.
And I want to say sometimes there's more going on, the brain is a little louder, it can be harder to perceive Spirit. But honestly, most of the time, there's nothing wrong at all. It just may be happening that we're meant to just sit and not know.
Maybe there's one gentle, steady directive, one gentle, steady invitation coming from that deep, source, wise root of ourselves and there really isn't anything for us to do until that moment. Now, I've had plenty of my share of sitting down and getting whatever. But the point is that many of us expect intuition to always be linear, to always be behaving the same, to be reliable, to be steady. And it is, but it also isn't, in the same way the moon is and it isn't. The moon is always the moon. Spirit is always Spirit. Your channel is always your channel. Right?
There are times when the moon is at the biggest, brightest fullness and time when it's not. There are times when it's new, times when it's waxing, waning, it's at a quarter, it's at half. There are times when there are tons of clouds in front of the moon and we can't see anything. There are times when there's nothing in front of the moon and we want to think of those clouds as being like our human stuff. We're not even necessarily supposed to clear that.
[0:47:43]
What The High Priestess invites us to do is be in the practice of observing and checking in with ourselves and with our Guides like it's the first time every time…
...to come to the altar of ourselves with complete respect, humility, curiosity, to come to our spiritual practice in the same way. What's here today? What phase of my inner moon am I in? Is there major cloud coverage? Can I even see the moon today? What sign is my moon in today? We don't have to get so literal about it like, “Oh, it's in Gemini,” but maybe? Maybe! (Lindsay Laughs) You know?
Befriending mystery. befriending the fact that the present is all there is, and that you and I and everyone else, we're different from day to day. And the way that we connect in with that deep, wise essence of our being, the way that we connect with Spirit is gonna be different every day. How we pull from our deck, if we're willing to let it be, might be the same every day, on paper, but, it might have totally different — it might be the same song every day, but the notes and the harmonies and the melodies and how we go about playing with the song, it could be totally different every single time we show up to it because you're not the same from moment to moment. Whether you like it or not, we're not the same.
It's not that Spirit is unreliable; it's the fact that we're not linear beings. So why would Spirit be linear? Nothing in this life is linear. Nothing is ever going to be robotic, same every single time. Not really.
So the moon is always the moon. How we're invited to sit with that moon will change from day to day depending on the phase, depending on the sign, depending on the cloud cover. And that's a beautiful, beautiful energy to go into if you're trying to expand your connection to your Guides or your intuition, to know that you have that permission to not have it feel stuffy or formal, that you're just connecting in. Literally, you can envision closing your eyes, dropping deeply into yourself, and seeing in your mind's eye, if this resonates with you, a night sky, a moon — that’s you and your connection with your Guides in this deeper way.
[0:50:31]
How do you look and be mindful? Because sometimes the mind will be like, “Oh, you're so obscured, I can't even see it, blah, blah, blah.” And sometimes the truth can be kinder. So really, like, let yourself be with that. Check in, because there's no problem with any phase of the moon.
But we learn in High Priestess right away that there's so much that happens, so much that we have access to, that we have the capability of being the moon, and being so steady as the moon because, again, the moon itself never changes. But the way we see it, the shape it takes, the light that's reflected onto it, the way that that light shines onto the land of our being, on our heart, the kinds of journeys we may go on, depending on where we're at in that way, if we're in an inner New Moon time, what does that mean? What would it be like to honor that knowing that that isn't necessarily reflected outside of you?
The High Priestess is where we do all of the seed work that later sprouts in all these different ways, but other folx may not see that work being done, if that makes sense. The other thing that I'm going to, I'm going to tune us into is the fact that, obviously, without the moon, the tides would be, I mean, the moon controls the tides, right? So there's a huge connective thread between High Priestess, the moon and the ocean. And you know, as that beautiful quote goes, “we are walking columns of ocean water,” we are majority water.
If you ever have gone, in your life, to the ocean, to any place that has a tidal high or tidal low, you know that you can show up to the beach, you can show up to the ocean and have a completely different experience at eight o'clock in the morning than you might have at eight o'clock at night. The actual route of the landscape is the same and, yet, it can really change. Sometimes the tide coming in can be life-threatening. Sometimes the tide going out can be a warning. Sometimes we can plan our whole day around the tide being in a particular place or not, depending on if we're, you know, fishing, whatever it is.
You are the same as that. Through the day your tides change. They get low, they get high, we may have a time where the tide is a bit higher in general than typical, we might have a time where the tide is much lower than in general. What is it like to honor that? Instead of trying to make our relationship with channeling and tuning in and intuition and Spirit and prayer (if that word resonates with you, whatever really your resonance is in this area is perfect for you) — what would it be like to treat yourself the way that you treat the ocean? To respect the fact that you have different tides, different high tides and low tides, that happen around maybe the same time in your cycles, but maybe are very different from day to day. What might it be like to respect that not as a problem to be fixed, an inconsistency that you may be judging in yourself, but actually profound wisdom?
[0:54:20]
Spirit follows us in any tide — state. Spirit is there no matter how our inner Moon is showing up. Spirit is always there with us. Our connection to Divine never goes away and I've had a lot of experiences due to trauma, due to other just random experiences where I'm like, “I got nothing. My channel's dead. Can't hear anything. There is no Spirit. I don't feel anything.” And again, that's that sense of cloud cover.
The more we practice, the more we show up just to what is, where we are, not how we should be, not trying to iron any of that out or get any of it smooth, but showing up to the beautiful rough edges of it all, to the humaneness of it all and the beauty of it all, we actually learn so much more about ourselves and can start to actually feel, “Well, I'm not getting shit, but I can feel the moon behind the clouds. I know they're there. I'm just not in a space where I'm able to receive or perceive right now.”
So, the High Priestess is an initiation into our autonomous relationship with intuition. There is really no clairvoyant, clairaudient, clairsentient — they’re there, but we're all a mix, all of us. And again, it's not to — those labels are incredibly important and without those labels, I would likely have thought I was crazy when I was really young and experiencing a lot of intuitive, a lot of evidence that intuition was coming through. It didn't feel like intuition.
Now, I know to the folx that I know who are mediums, learning about mediumship, that label has, you know, has saved some of their lives. Labels and identities are profoundly important. It's just not where to put a period at the end of the sentence. It's just actually the beginning. You are so much more.
[0:56:40]
Intuition is inherently quite wild. And how do we rewild our intuition? How do we get back to a place where we're touching in with the way intuitive channeling, spiritual connection moves through us? Everybody’s moves through them differently. Everybody shows up from their soul on this planet in totally different ways. Some folx know how to listen; in some ways, some folx really struggle with that. We are very, again, to say this word again and again, we are inherently wild, spiralic, of nature itself. There is no distinction. The only thing that separates us from that is our mind, pretty much (Lindsay Laughs) — is just this huge ego, this big weed, it's because we can perceive ourselves as separate, right, along with many other things.
So The High Priestess says, “Don't try to bypass your humaneness. Don't try to get rid of the feelings, the insecurities, the doubts.” You don't — it's one of, also, the first cards that really tells us, and the Hierophant takes it to a next level, “You don't need a gatekeeper for this. It's in you. You don't need anything. You are it. You are what you've been looking for,” you know. It's really the mirror that we call upon when we want to deepen our relationship with our intuitive center or our inner knowing.
And that intuitive channel’s very spacious. It's where we connect with that inner voice within ourselves, is also where we can get that profound guidance from our helping spirits beyond the Veil. We're all intuitive. We all have different connection points and access points to intuition — to even what that means. Intuition — that's why I say to just call something clairvoyance, clairaudience — it's too limiting. It's not enough. There isn't enough. It's really quite a patriarchal, linear, strategic bubble around something that is so vast and mysterious and unknowable.
[0:59:12]
It's so lovely that some folx, that's the way in, for many of us, is like, “What is my kind of intuition?” It's not in any way, shape, or form where to stop. And that's where, again, we start to rewild this stuff. We start to go back to the — we start to basically leave shit alone and we just show up with the land of our being. We don't make any of it a problem. When we rewild, we let the land take itself back. When we rewild intuition, we give ourselves the permission to take back what's always been there.
We have so much trauma from religion, even from religious structure, like the taste of it, the flavor of it. In some, like, plenty of New Age shit is deeply harmful and very problematic. So we have to really just be in connection about that. You are the one you've been waiting for. All of us are going to access this channel differently. And each and every one of you listening to this — you’re intuitive, you're — some of us are Intuitive with capital “I’s,” some of, all of us have little “i” intuition. And all of us use that big ”I” Intuition in completely different ways.
Some of us are teaching about intuition, actually seeing, channeling, doing the incredibly profound work of literally making things right with dearly departed, loved ones or family of origin or soul kin, with their living relatives in sacred mediumship. Some folx are like literally helping people find things that have been lost. There's profound waves that intuition can come through and for some people, their intuition shows up when they are in deep, activist, healing work. Some people it shows up for them in the therapeutic space. Some people, it shows up for them — I mean, I could really go on and on — creatively, artists, the way they channel down information, the creative process itself.
[0:59:12]
I mean, The High Priestess shows us that we start by befriending, making amends to ourselves in all the places where we thought, “I can't be intuition. I can't be an intuitive — sorry, this part of my mind is too loud. I can't do it. I'm too tired. I can't do it. I'm too exhausted.” Or, you know, “I'm in too much pain.”
None of those things — by the way, I'm not saying you're not in too much pain. You can take it with you. I'm in pain every day. And it doesn't mean that it's as painful or as challenging as other folx’s experiences with chronic pain. I know that this is possible because I live it. It's just that we've been told — intuition comes through when we're centered, when we’re grounded, when this, when that — it’s not true. It's total bullshit. You have access to this anytime you want to. Any time.
But the High Priestess says, just because you're not quote-unquote “getting anything back” doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. This card's primary operative is to get us into a space where we are sitting with that channel. I have been saying for years on this podcast, for years to my students, every time I speak about this card, it is uncomfortable because it essentially tells you to sit and listen. It's a meditative state. Mind does not like that. Mind wants to know what to do with it, what it means, what it is, right?
So we really, to touch into this deep pool of wisdom, have to come home to, first, what is checking in with ourselves on every level. So how is the body doing? Your pain can come with you. I'm in pain today. I'm achy today, I'm tender today. I have a migraine in real time. (Lindsay Laughs) I'm in a lot of physical pain today. I'm very uncomfortable. The energy of this moment, it's hitting me really hard. I think everybody goes through their own personal, little contraction points with the pandemic.
I'm obviously so privileged, so lucky, so blessed in an experience and in a time where people are suffering so much but I'm in a little bit of my own — I'm hitting a wall, personally. And that's also fine and I also recognize that within that wall, it could be a lot worse. But I'm tending to that today and nobody listening to that has to take it on.
And I'm here and I'm holding both. And that is what that looks like, that there can be a storm that's in front of the moon. And there can be a really big tidal riptide experience while still centering into the remembering, “I am the whole ocean, inclusive of shifting and changing, of weather and tides. There can be riptides and I can still be in the wholeness of the experience.” And no matter what weather, what phase my moon is in, I know that I always am the moon. So I hope that makes sense.
[1:05:02]
But we ask “How's the body doing” not to say, “Oh, I can't touch in with my channel because my body is doing this,” actually, quite because once I believe, when we can start saying, “Here's where my body is,” that actually softens up and so can expand and open up our intuitive connections.
Those are the moments where instead of feeling like we don't quite understand, it could totally soften and crack something open where we do have a sense of connection with the heart, we do have a sense of like, “Oh, yeah, deep nourishing care is needed here.” We sometimes are guided to record podcasts that are maybe exactly what we need to hear (Lindsay Laughs), along with anyone else who may be connecting in with it and enjoying it or not.
How is our pain level? How is our distress level? Is there anything that we could do to not make it go away, not pacify it, but also nourish it, nurture it, be there with it, honor it? How is our nervous system today? How's our heart?
How's our inner child? I meant it when I started and our kids are fucking pissed right now. They're scared, they’re mad. How do we hold that?
Little Linds and I had to have a chat before recording this. Again, it's not a part — I love doing this podcast, but like, I'm a person. Right? And so it's not — that makes us very uncomfortable sometimes, hearing people be like, “I had to honor, negotiate, be present for my physical spectrums and I also showed up in service or in my truth.” And then sometimes we're not available to do that, where we do say, “This part of me needs my attention so much. I'm not available to show up today.”
[1:07:03]
So we never want to push or force anything, but it really depends, right? How do we not bypass but actually bring intuition into oneness with our physical, full spectrum experiences? Instead of waiting for the tide to be soft and smooth and gentle? Instead of waiting for those waves to be as smooth as glass? Can we be present with the riptides?
What might we need to be present with those things that I believe, for me, that's what High Priestess invites me into. It continually permissions me to undo my own painful relationship with how patriarchy has infiltrated intuitive autonomy.
How I often feel like, “Oh, I don't look like an intuitive. I don't act like an intuitive. I'm not having ecstatic experiences. So I must be doing something wrong.” I'm a professional, intuitive Tarot facilitator and I still have to do that work every day. And I share that with you to be like, let's just lift the veil off of this bullshit. Like, we all have those feelings and those experiences, you're not alone in them. And I really do believe High Priestess kind of cuts that. It can, if we're willing to let it, cut that story of like, “everyone else is doing it right. I'm not. If I was intuitive, I'd be hearing x, y, z.” It's not true.
A lot of intuitives don't hear anything (Lindsay Laughs). You don't have anything! So we get to find our way with all of ourselves. Right? And sometimes that deep oneness with intuition can come by just being like, “I'm exhausted and I'm going right back to bed.” That's a holy High Priestess wisdom, too.
Just checking in with all this stuff. How is the mind? How is the weather in our inner sky? That's High Priestess work. How do we stand in the center as, inevitably, our moon shifts, inevitably our inner ocean shifts? It's supposed to. You've been sold a bill of goods that it was always supposed to be the same, or that you shouldn't have your human stuff.
I'm so sorry for anybody who is suffering and I'm absolutely not negating that intuition is very hard to perceive sometimes when the mind, again, is very loud or when pain is extremely high. It can be next to impossible. What I am suggesting is that we do away with the idea of trying in the first place, that we actually go closer to step one, which is, “I'm in pain today. How can I nourish this? How can I be with this? How can I offer room and space for my rage about this pain? For the injustice that I feel is connected to this pain? I don't want to be in pain.” That's important and valid and absolutely is High Priestess work.
[1:10:30]
Intuition is very... it's got lots of layers to it. So does Tarot. Very often, we go to Tarot and we're like, “What would you have me know?” in a much larger sense and sometimes we can pull cards and be like, “What the fuck is this?” And it's their way of being like, “Hey, you got something right here, right now, that you're trying to leapfrog over. Come back to it,” right?
So I believe that - I mean, I don't know the reason — but I think that that is the medicine with High Priestess being ruled by the moon is that it's reminding us we're not linear. So we often do skip these steps and we go right to asking questions or tuning in with ourselves or our Guides, which is great. We're just not meant to bypass the human stuff. It's meant to come with us.
So this card reminds us over and over again, that we make our own way in our connection with intuition, that it's changing all the time. It's an unlearning that lasts a lifetime and rewilding that, the more we do it, the more we begin to realize how much grief, how much pain, how much profiting there is on folks telling us that we don't know how to do it, that we don't do it right, we're not enough... It's really intense, and deserves to be acknowledged as such.
So this card really reminds us again and again that we have access to treasure troves of sacred wisdom within ourselves. That we are, again, spiralic, cyclical, ever-changing, ever-evolving. We're supposed to be — and it's only when the ego gets in there and wants to be like, “What am I? How am I intuitive? Oh, this was really powerful today, it should be like this going forward.” No.
If we're feeling like “I'm all about meditating before we tune in with the Tarot,” I think that's great. But if there's even an ounce of you, that feels like, “Well, I have to meditate because I'm feeling really antsy and a little upset. I'm feeling really angry or sad and I can't show up to my deck that way,” who the hell told you you couldn't? Of course you can! That's the first place to go (Lindsay Laughs).
I'm angry. I'm feeling funky and shitty and I'm mad - what am I being invited to pay attention to here? Bam! Pull a card. What would you have me know about this, Spirit? Bam! Pull a card. Don't skip it. That's where all the good shit is — not to, again, romanticize the hard feelings of life, but it's patriarchy, it's white supremacy. It's there. There's so much of that within intuition. That's a whole conversation in and of itself that's worthy and deserving, I think, of looking at and one that I think about a lot myself, obviously.
[1:13:24]
Don't skip it. Who told you that that was a problem? It's not a problem. It's the way in and High Priestess tells us that, reminds us of that. Every single time we show up to ourselves, our practice, our meditation, our tarot deck, whatever it is, our students, greet yourself anew, afresh, every time you touch in with your channel. Every time you touch in with yourself, you ask yourself, “How are you doing today?” It gets to come with you.
I mean, really, what we're talking about is at the heart of Soul Tarot anyway. It's Tarot for what is, not Tarot to bypass, not Tarot to get past. Tarot to come home to what's here. Right? So yeah, I mean, this is big.
There's a reason why a lot of us feel kind of uncomfortable with High Priestess. There's some reasons, I think, and you know, that are unrelated to this, but I think that this is at the heart of quite a bit of it — is that the perception is it's an unattainable thing when, really, that's in you, that's in me, that's in all of us. We all access it totally differently. Giving ourselves joyful permission to play, to bring all parts of ourselves with ourselves in those practices, in those check-in’s is part of what it's all about.
And again, I'm still learning all this. So I'm still discovering it within myself. So it's not meant to be something that's just checked in a box, you know, that we just, we know it and then, there we go. The only thing really to know is that whatever you've got, whatever you got going on in your human experience of intuitive connection is absolutely a part of the fabric, of the magic, of the way that you are meant to connect in with those deeper whispers. And I encourage you to just sit with that and see what comes up for you about it.
[1:15:42]
So pretty powerful first stop on this vertical journey, right?
Next week, we're going to explore how Hermit plays a part in this, how we move from High Priestess to Hermit. What happens when we start to unconditionally value and validate our own experience with ourselves, all parts of ourselves? We start to get into the practice not of, again, bypassing or feeling like we have to make everything all smooth for Spirit, but you know, showing up with everything we've got as we are and being really gentle. Having it really be a day-to-day thing.
I can certainly tell you, for my part, after I'm finished with this podcast — I've had a soup simmering on the stove for the last hour — I'm going to my soup, I'm taking a bath, I'm getting into my bed, and that is where I will be doing work the rest of the day. And I didn't need to “tune in” with that because it's not a problem, you know? There was just a gentle honoring like, “Can I do the podcast today?” Really checking in with that. I got a “yes.” I was like “Okay, great,” and it's felt absolutely lovely. And now I nourish. Some days after a podcast, I would go out for a walk on a little trail and some days I would do something completely different.
So it's just about meeting yourself where you're at and that's what High Priestess is really all about. That's the journey, the beginning of coming into, connecting into oneness with Spirit and intuition, with trust and time and surrender — is recognizing that you're a holy being and the holiness is inclusive of your humaneness. Right? Your humaneness is part of your holiness. It's not anything that has to be separated.
[1:17:47]
Wow, I am loving talking about this. I hope that this lands well with you. What a fun thing to get to explore on the podcast this month!
I love all of you, Wild Souls. I hope this serves. I really encourage you to do your own deep diving with High Priestess and see how this lands with you because it's for you. Everybody has their own inner High Priestess. Everybody has their own name for High Priestess — doesn't need to be “High Priestess,” the names of the Tarot, how the Tarot is visually depicted is completely flexible. You can really do whatever you want. Check in. See what comes up for you and see how you explore it. I encourage you to dive deep and see.
Next week, we'll connect in about The Hermit and then after that, The Tower. Until that time, please, please take exquisite, gentle care of yourselves and I will see you at our next episode.
[Conclusion]
(Instrumental exit music)
[1:18:53]
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.
___
¹We discovered friendship bracelets originated with indigenous peoples of Central America and the culturally appropriated place these items hold in American society while creating this episode. We wanted to share with you what we found to continue the larger discussion of investigating the roots of what we do, why we do it, and reexamine how we want to continue interacting with these items/topics.
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