178. Letting Ourselves Be Witnessed with Six of Swords
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How can we call in loving and supportive witnesses to our most contractive experiences, helping us to not feel so alone in what we’re moving through? Today, we look to Six of Swords as an Anchor for our deep, continued work with Five of Pentacles (our card for the month of November), and as a powerfully bolstering energy, one that can amplify our courage to be seen in moments when we feel vulnerable and unsure of ourselves.
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About the Episode
In this episode, we dive into the heart of Six of Swords, looking at it through the lens of Soul Tarot. We also chat about Eclipse season, the Sun moving into Sagittarius, and I answer a beautiful listener question about how to differentiate between Six of Swords and Eight of Cups.
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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: none
This lesson/episode does not contain explicit references, but please honor your knowing and proceed with necessary self awareness and care.
Transcript
[Introduction]
[0:00:00]
Hey, loves, Linds here with some really, really, really, really special and I think amazing announcements. So first, there will not be a podcast episode before December 1st. So if you would like to receive the December Monthly Medicine Missive that I send out to my mailing list only, I invite you to sign up for that at the link in the show notes. It's going to be really, really beautiful.
And also, hence the important and special part, I'm going to be doing something this year that I have never, ever done before: I'm going to be doing a little collection of some early bird discounts, some regular discounts, on some of my most beloved courses, and I'm putting together a holiday bundle for your upcoming 2022 year.
So it's going to span a couple of different offerings. Those offerings will start to become available on December 2nd. The discounts, or early birds, are extremely limited. Some of them are only like 36-48 hours, some of them are three days. I don't want to reveal it, because it's really special (Lindsay laughs) and I think folks will love it.
I just know this has been such a hard year for so many and I want for the medicine of these courses to be as accessible as possible. And so yeah, it felt really right to offer this. So yes, there will be a holiday bundle. There will be a couple of really exciting discounts, one earlybird that I know that you're going to want to know about and be a part of, all of which are only going to be available to my newsletter subscribers.
So again, those discounts, early birds, start on December 2nd. Some of them start on the following week. So you'll have one more reminder, if you want to join up for these and be a part of them on our next podcast episode on December 4th, but if you really want to be the first in line to know about them, to receive them, to invest in them, to potentially gift them to anyone who you think would benefit from such a gift, you can sign up to receive notifications about that at the link in the show notes.
And yeah, that's it (Lindsay laughs). I'm really excited to share it with you. I hope it feels nourishing and supportive. And yeah, we'll definitely talk more about it in the weeks to come, but wanted to make sure that everyone knew that those were going to happen. So if you want to be a part of it, or engage with it, or receive from it, you can sign up at the link in the show notes. Thank you.
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(Instrumental intro music)
[00:02:41]
Welcome to Tarot for the Wild Soul, a bi-monthly podcast that explores the Tarot through an inclusive, soul centered, trauma-informed perspective for growth, healing, and evolution. I'm your host, Lindsay Mack.
Hello Wild Souls, and welcome back to a new episode of the podcast. So delighted to be gathered with all of you as always. So we have a very full episode today with lots to get to. Of course, we have our Anchor Card for our actual card for the month of November, which is Five of Pentacles. Five of Pentacles—we've been looking to the theme over the course of the whole month as Upgrade and we explored a couple of weeks back at the last episode, that Five of Pentacles can actually be a tremendous source of clarity for moments when an upgrade really wants to bloom forward, which we'll kind of talk about as a little reminder.
But the card that we're going to be looking to today as a bolster, as an Anchor for this idea and for our work inside of this theme in the month of November with Five of Pentacles is Six of Swords. So our episode today is called “Letting Ourselves be Witnessed with Six of Swords.”
We'll be looking to the medicine of Six of Swords, to the challenges, to how we view this card in Soul Tarot and how we can sort of couple to it as an Anchor.
Of course, I'll answer a wonderful listener question. And we also have a lot of kind of energy-of-the-day things to get to. The Sun moves into Sagittarius in just a couple days, so we'll chat briefly about that.
[0:04:27]
We also are, of course, heading into Eclipse season starting today. So this is our final eclipse portal for the year 2021 and we'll be in this starting today until December 4th. So I'm going to talk a little bit about how I look to, view, work with Eclipse portals, eclipse seasons, however you want to look to that, and offer some helpful medicine, I think, about moving through this season with some grace (Lindsay laughs) because it can be challenging to sort of plug into exactly what the season is bringing. It's a pretty specific flavor, so we'll plug into that too. So, so much to get to.
And yeah, I'm going to start with our cards. So we spoke just a couple weeks ago, at our last episode, about how the card for the month of November is Five of Pentacles. So in Soul Tarot, we don't look, and I actually think this extends beyond Soul Tarot, like, I actually think this is the truth of the card, but this is specific to my teaching. In Soul Tarot, we do not look to Five of Pentacles, or any card, as a foreshadowing of ill will, of destitution, of financial collapse, of some kind of personal collapse. It's not a foreshadowing of any kind of negative issue or problem. It's not a card of ill will, at all.
We can't ever know. There's no way to ever couple anything that has an earthly finite outcome to a Tarot card. It's not possible to ever know that. It's certainly not possible to make a sweeping generalization, so it's a very old paradigm meaning and we can evolve it. You know, it's possible. As we evolve, so should our treatments of these wonderful energies.
[0:06:29]
So with Five of Pentacles, what we look to it as, in Soul Tarot, is really an indication when we're in this kind of an energy that it typically comes up when we are really, really wanting something to move faster than it's moving. Like, we want something in our hand, we want something on a piece of paper, we want something.
And we're seeing this all over the world right now with shipping delays, with like all kinds of issues. And obviously, this has been going on far longer than this month. But this is a… It's a really strong energy that relates to this idea of, “Oh, I'm longing for this thing, I'm wanting this answer, so that I can have a sense of this is taken care of. I can check this off my list. I know that this is happening.”
It's that uneasy feeling that can pop up sometimes in life, but most especially when we're in sort of Five of Pentacles situations. And what that can call us into is a lot of contraction. The thinking mind does not like, does not like circumstances where we don't know what's going on, where we don't have a sense of like, “When is this gonna come? When am I going to get the piece of paper? Or when am I going to have the thing in my hand? Like, when is this gonna happen?”
So that gulf between what we're waiting for and the moment when it finally arrives is very uncomfortable. And that's a part of what The Fives sort of warm up and activate in us. They can be like a little, a little spiky. They can be a little spicy. They can be a little bitter. They can pop up or bring forward some of those feelings, because they tend to revolve around contractive experiences.
[0:08:27]
Why? So that we can have the practice of moving into deeper care with ourselves when those moments come up. We're not meant to fix The Five, solve The Five, solve the situation, make the piece of paper come in the mail faster. It's really an invitation to let us know, how can I tend to myself here and once I've tended to myself, how can I take right action, right?
Like there are times when we might speak up and be really clear like, “Hey, this is actually, I need this to come a little faster, actually.” To the person who we’re waiting for, it might be an invitation to surrender because there's nothing we can do.
So the theme for the month of November is Upgrade, and Five of Pentacles can be such a powerful energy, believe it or not, for opportunities to upgrade. Because in the gulf, and in the bridge, and the gap between what we're waiting for and what we've got, we can get really clear. Maybe there's something inside of this that's actually, it's possible, to actually reach for something a little better, for something that maybe I didn't think of before, for something a little bit more expansive, a little bit more aligned for me.
So that gap can root us into the truth of what we want, what we need, what's working, and what's not. If we've been in a situation where we've been, again, sort of like waiting for something, waiting for someone—well, could be maybe that person is lovely as they are, or that circumstance, or that situation, it could be that they're teaching us to trust in the medicine of right timing, that really everything's flowing so perfectly. And we want to explore like, “Why do we need something before we're kind of ready, you know, before it's ready? Why do we need something so quickly?” Maybe there's an invitation to sort of shift there.
[0:10:34]
It could also be clarity, like, we're not on the same wavelength here. Like, we're moving separately and I can't continue to slow down or curb my speed or my natural pace for you. You know? And it's not a problem. It's just sometimes we discover we don't work as well together or we don't collaborate as well, or whatever. Whatever the deal might be, right?
So it's all very specific. It's all very personal, but the upgrade is possible insofar as letting us see like, this is what we've got, can we imagine something different? Can we imagine something? Can we not get caught in shoulds? Is it possible to be grateful for what we have? Are we actually being invited to be really clear about what we need?
So for everyone, it'll be a little different. But why Six of Swords as an Anchor for this energy? So what I really want to talk about and zero in on today, as sort of the branch that we're exploring on this tree, is this idea that Fives tend to bring up contraction. And Five of Pentacles can be really intense, because it can trigger off our thinking minds, our inner kids, our protector self, and have us really start to hurtle into some stressful, scary places.
“I'm never going to have what I need. Oh my god.” Like we can encounter like, “I don't really feel comfortable naming that I need this faster. I don't really feel like I can, or I just have to surrender to it. What are we gonna do?” Right?
[0:12:17]
Sometimes those feelings are totally rooted in like, (Lindsay snaps) “We need something and it's not here. What are we… How are we going to respond to that?” And sometimes we don't actually need the thing. It's actually completely fine. But again, when the thinking mind, when that protector self, when that primal self is triggered off, is activated—it can be very, very hard to know whether or not what we're actually needing (Lindsay laughs) is needed, or whether or not that's coming from that deeper protector, primal part of us.
Both are valid and legitimate, but when it's coming from that scared, primal place and it's not really rooted—like, we are okay. Like, things are actually rolling as they're meant to. We can avoid some really big over-responses out of hypervigilance in different things by rooting into a deeper sense of self inquiry and self care, so that when we're coming forward with a request or with a statement of how something is making us feel, we're really aware of our feelings, and you know, it's really an opportunity to get clear on that.
So in Soul Tarot, I believe… I don't believe that I've ever talked about, I think this is a first for our time together with Six of Swords. I could be wrong, but I think I've mentioned it in passing, but that this is really our first time kind of centering it in an episode.
So Six of Swords, we look to it a little differently, as per usual. I would say across the board, pretty standard, Six of Swords is said to be, thought to be, a card of some kind of movement or travel; that we're kind of pivoting or we're shifting from one place to another. And you know, as I always like to sort of say and name and acknowledge, that's not wrong, at all. Like if that's your rooted kind of relationship to this card, I think that's incredible, and I would say go for it.
[0:14:35]
The only thing I would say, if you're interested—it is a Tarot education podcast (Lindsay laughs) so I would be remiss—the only thing I would say is that, if that's the only thing you've got and you're giving a reading for yourself or for others and there really is no movement happening, we can get caught.
We can get down on ourselves because we can think like, “Oh, I must have read it wrong, or pulled wrong, or whatever,” because again—if we're Anchoring any Tarot card to a physical, earthly happening, like there has to be a move, there has to be a travel, there has to be travel, there has to be some kind of, again, shifting point where we're physically going from one place to another, and that doesn't happen, we can get… Again, it can be a little confusing, and we can think like, “Well, why didn't that happen?”
So ideally, we want to look to the essence of a card, the core of a card, and really ask like, what's actually going on in this card, right? Because certainly movement and travel can be a part of it, but it's not the whole thing, right? If it was true for everyone, I feel like we would have known that by now, to be sure.
So here's how we look to it in Soul Tarot. One of the most striking things if we're looking to Pamela Coleman-Smith's wonderful art on the Smith-Rider-Waite Tarot is that we have three humans in a boat. We have a person and presumably their child sitting in a boat facing away from us, kind of only seeing what looks like a darkened stairway kind of going down, in many ways, like almost an optical illusion into this boat with all of these swords, and we have a person who is standing and rowing this boat, directing this boat. Not rowing it, but we could say “steering the boat,” we could say that too.
[0:16:37]
So we have people who are very strongly in their roles here. We have somebody who can only really see kind of the worst picture. We can, you know, we could maybe safely say that we have somebody who is really in thinking mind stuff, maybe someone who is really in a lot of contraction, really moving through an experience, a grieving, a letting go of some kind, and there is a symbolic energy of an inner child here. So we have the presence of the child self.
We have the presence of the part of us that does get scared, that does get nervous, and then we have this figure who is helping to guide and steer. So when we sort of extrapolate all that and look at it all symbolically, we have all of these parts of the self. We have ourselves, our human selves that get scared, that get terrified. We have our inner kids, who also get terrified. They look to us. If we're scared, they're going to be scared. And so it's hard.
But then we have a protector self, we have an inner Guide, we have an inner wise one, we have an inner space holder, all of us do. All of us have this. Sometimes very challenging to access, but we have this that we can call upon, that we can always call upon this part of ourselves, for medicine, for clarity, for openness.
[0:18:20]
And when we are engaging in an internal triangle with this kind of relationship, we have the human self recognizing, “I'm afraid here. I'm afraid.” And those feelings can pop up with Five of Pentacles situations, right? Like, “Am I okay? Is everything going to be fine? I don't know. I'm feeling a little twisty.”
We may not even be feeling in a sense of despair, but when we have those feelings like, “Fuck, why aren’t things moving faster? Why don't I know? Why am I still like stuck in this place of waiting or unknown?” That part of us can really get caught in the swirl, right? And if that starts to trigger off the thinking mind, like, “I'm never going to get what I need, I'm never going to. I'm not okay,” then the inner child starts to get nervous, and then we're really in a swirl, right?
So in those moments, when we work with all of them together, we can call upon that inner wise one. We can think of it also as an extension outside of us: of our Guides, of our wise protective figures, of our Spirit helpers. We can call upon all of the energies within us—and I think Guides are also within us, but outside of us as well—that are a part of us both in and outside, that are the figures in those moments that are helping to be the ones that steer that boat.
And that's still us, it's just we're calling upon wisdom to help fortify the truth so that we can be the one to sort of take the reins and say, “Actually, let's really check in. Is there something to say here? Is there an invitation to express frustration? Is there an invitation to be really clear about what we need? Is there an invitation to upgrade? Is it actually not in alignment to ask for something to move faster, but to actually clear it out or do it ourselves?” Or whatever it might be, but we're calling upon that and we're letting each part of us be honored where we are. And in doing that, the proverbial boat (Lindsay laughs) like, right—of our lives on the river of life starts to move, and we move out of the stuck place that we're in and into a place where things are much clearer.
[0:22:44]
We can also take this inner triangle work and apply it to external circumstances. Who witnesses you? Who champions you, cherishes you, validates you when you are in a place like this? My beloved teacher, Michelle, has really said since we've started to work together that almost all of us have the tendency—the thinking mind has a tendency—to kind of isolate us a little bit.
When we're in a funk, when we're in a difficult moment, when things are really spiky or twisty. We can be tempted to not say anything about it, because we can assume like, “Oh, this is just like a pain or it's not really that big of a deal, or whatever.” But this card actually invites us to say, “This is bothering me. Like this is a contraction, it's a worry, it's a concern. It's bringing up some deeper things that maybe aren’t even in the real situation, but they're in me, and I want to do something about it, I want to honor this part of myself.”
So because we're working with swords in Six of Swords, it's all about the relationship with the thinking mind. And Six of Swords is so powerful. You know, all The Sixes kind of bring us into a deeper connection with energies outside of ourselves. They're very interpersonal, huge reminders that we're not in this life alone, that we lean on each other, that we affect each other, and that's really powerful to lean into, and plug into, and receive from.
[0:22:30]
So when we work with this card, we want to have that in mind, that we can lean on the inner parts of ourselves for support, but we also want to be very conscious about reaching out to be seen by others who are outside of us as well. And the reason that this card, that this lesson rather today, is called “Letting Ourselves be Witnessed” is because that's precisely what we're doing. We're coming to someone that we trust: someone who is professionally competent, somebody who does not give us advice that is bypassing or invalidating—that is that they can honor us and hold space for us in the totality of our experience, without needing us to change or fix anything, that can just be with us.
And when and if we request it, can actually provide, can actually open us up to something much, much deeper, that can actually say, “If you're available, I would love to offer a reflection for where I see you or where I'm seeing this in you. And I'm wondering, maybe it's not as much of a disaster, maybe these couple things are possible.”
Or maybe we're trying to deal with the behavior of another person going so slowly, and another person says, “Hell no, like, ask for what you need.” And that kind of bolstering is exactly what we need. Sometimes they say nothing and just acknowledge, like, “Wow, this is really, really hard, and I'm so sorry you're going through it and I'm holding you in it.”
[0:24:11]
Letting ourselves be witnessed both by ourselves and by another can have the capacity to bring us out of that isolation that we're often drawn into. And I think that The Swords in general can be an invitation. Almost all of The Swords cards call us out of this isolation and into a deeper space of being witnessed, being seen, acknowledging what's actually there, rather than trying to, sort of, like jump or leap over into the next thing.
This is also very true of Five of Pentacles, and that's one of the ways that we invite in the kinds of upgrades that are possible this month, the kind of awarenesses that we can make. I'm not talking about upgrade in terms of like a magical thinking upgrade, like, “Oh, we're like ascending and upgrading.” Not at all. What I'm talking about is, “Wow, it actually would be much better for me to go about my work this way. Wow, it would actually be way more supportive if I had this level of care.” And then we reach for what's accessible.
And in that way, it's a much deeper upgrade. It's not like we're necessarily doing this trumpet blast, like, (Lindsay laughs) you know, thing, but we're quietly being invited to notice like, how can there be an overall, a generalized, upgrade to the quality of our lives, you know, based on what it is that we're witnessing and noticing this month?
It's very much a month to be like, “Whoa, this, not that. This is totally not working anymore.” And sometimes it's not personal at all. We just might not know why. But inside of realizing that, all kinds of worries and fears come up. It's inevitable. “Oh my god, what if I change and everyone hates it? Oh my gosh, what if I, you know, start allowing this part of myself to be noticed? Would anyone love me?” Like, we have big, big, big feelings about that.
[0:26:20]
And so, the key is letting ourselves be witnessed in the process, so that that boat can move. That is actually the way that we start to engage in a, kind of, an evolution of the soul, is that when we allow ourselves to be witnessed both by us and others, it can provide support for that upgrade. It can clarify so much. It can move that boat from place to place, that proverbial boat. It can get us out of little whirlpools and little things.
Because sometimes, I know for myself, just saying it outloud sometimes (Lindsay snaps) clarifies it. I don't even need the advice. It's just saying it outloud, writing it, right? All of that is wrapped up in Six of Swords. And when we, as the sort of inner, maybe scared part of ourselves is validated, is witnessed, we pass that along to our inner kiddos and it all becomes a reparenting.
So with Five of Pentacles—again, our card for the month of November—there can be a sense of real, you know, we can feel bound and tight. Like, “I'm worried, I'm nervous, but should I be? Is everything okay? I'm not sure like, there can be a lot of confusion.” And with Six of Swords, we’re, we're opening that. We're kind of blasting it open in a gentle way to let ourselves be witnessed inside of what we're going through.
And we can Anchor to that anytime we feel tight, contracted, scared, we can lean on this card as an Anchor to say, “Okay, can I take some time with the part of myself that’s scared? Rather than trying to scramble and get into the thinking mind about… really every single Sword card—especially this is how we look to them in Soul Tarot—is actually kind of pulling something out of the thinking mind and back into the heart again, and again, and again.
[0:28:22]
So it is very much, you know, again, the thinking mind wants to fix, solve. You know, it's a wonderful part of us, but if there's a fear, a worry, a wound, we have to tend to that, and really, that's present in all of the Swords, like all of them. So it really is a very powerful kind of shifting that we do in every single one of these cards in my, again, in my estimation, those are my teachings and my observations.
But with Six of Swords, that's really what we're doing, is moving from that contraction, from that “I gotta figure it out”, from that “I'm worried but I, you know, don't know what to say about it,” place into a deeper heart knowing. So again, when we're Anchoring we can say, “Can I center this part of myself that's worried or afraid? Can I reach out to someone to talk about this too? Can I lay out all the things I'm concerned about, you know, my therapist, my coach, my dear friend who's given consent to, sort of, be an ear for this. How can I open and let myself be seen?” That's really what's possible, and any time we get this card in a reading, it's an invitation to really let ourselves be witnessed in what we're going through, both by ourselves and by other people.
So I hope that this serves you and your journey through the rest of November. It's certainly powerful medicine to take with you even beyond November, that, you know, we don't need to stay locked in what we're experiencing. We can be open and honest about it. We can invite in vulnerable, tender witnessing to safe, you know, from safe sources and parties. But it really can unlock so much. It really can free us quite profoundly.
[0:30:16]
So our listener question for this episode is from Corinne, and Corinne asks, “I did not get a chance to ask this during Tarot for the Wild Soul course, but a burning question has come up for me. I'm wondering if you could speak to the difference between the leaving in the Six of Swords and the Eight of Cups. To me, the Six of Swords is about a rite of passage and a sort of initiation that happens when we leave the edge and have the courage to set sail into the liminal space of not knowing when we will see the next edge. And that we can take this journey, even with all the baggage of The Swords, and they may even be tools on the journey or we’ll find that they're actually dead weight and throw them overboard. And the Eight of Cups is more like a choosing to leave, like choosing sovereignty and holding yourself in integrity of not pouring into leaky cups as you allow something to be eclipsed out of your life.”
So first of all, I want to honor and acknowledge that these are wonderful treatments, Corinne, and I think you should… well, I don't want to should any, in order to bring should into it at all, but I highly encourage you to keep working with those treatments and those viewpoints on these cards, because they're excellent, and I think, very strong. And if you were needing me in any way to sort of validate that for you, I’m here to do that (Lindsay laughs), you know, a hundred percent.
I think just go with your gut on it, but this is a really beautiful question. And I chose to center it not just because it revolves around the card we're talking about today, but I think brings up a really lovely point that Six of Swords is so completely universally thought to be a card of leaving that we wouldn't even imagine that we could draw it into the inner world, and not have it necessarily be related to a “leaving.”
But Corinne’s example is an amazing way of looking to how this card can be a balm for that kind of migration process, like proverbially or realistically, how there can be this movement that can occur. I think it's a beautiful treatment. You're asking me the difference between the leaving of one and the other. This is, again, just my personal opinion.
[0:32:36]
As I mentioned, I don't necessarily look at the Six of Swords as a card of leaving anything other than the knot of confusion and isolation that can occur when we sort of try to stay insular. I think a lot of shame can come up when we're in a Five of Swords experience. That can really be an invitation to stay quiet, not ever tell anyone about what we perceive as a mess up, or a mistake, or like a wrong choice. Like, they're not always but sometimes it can feel like that.
And so to me, Six of Swords has always been about like telling our therapists, going to AA, being witnessed inside of a safe group container where we're not going to be judged, telling someone and feeling like it's so horrible, and having them be like, “Oh my god, that's happened to me and here's how I handled it,” like that rush of relief, and about not being alone, not being, you know… because again, the thinking mind, we can get pulled into some tough feels like, “I'm the only one who's ever done this, I'm so bad.” Like we can be taken there.
And so I think it's a metaphorical leaving behind, of a state of potential shame or of again, isolation, into one of more openness and safety and softness.
And I think that Eight of Cups is an experience where we really recognize that something that we've poured quite a bit of care into has… We've outgrown it in some way. Like, it's still beautiful, it'll always be valid, we will always cherish it. But in terms of continuing forward with it, it's time for it to go and sometimes we don't quite understand why that is, and other times we do.
[0:34:37]
Other times it's a brutal leaving behind where we still love the thing, or love the project, or love the person, but it's just not working or we’re desiring something else. The dream inside of like the secret heart, the golden core of Eight of Cups is that there's some part of us that feels like, “I actually feel like I'm longing for something maybe a little bit better, a little bit more sustainable, a little bit more.” And we get that, right?
In the Nine of Cups, there's really a kind of a gestation process and getting our hopes up, the seeding of something new. And in The Ten, there's a really powerful kind of reclamation of living in the present and being available for the joy in the present. There's a lot of, there’s a lot of medicine in that. So, that's… you asked me directly, how I feel about those two, but again, I think your way of looking to them is so gorgeous and solid. And I would say keep exploring it. Much more important how you feel about them, rather than what I feel about them, but hopefully, my answering your question has been useful, so thank you for asking it.
So before we kind of leave each other here at this episode, there's a couple of more energy-of-the-day things to look to. First is that the sun is moving into Sagittarius on November 22nd, around November 22nd, depending on your timezone again, and that's you know, huge. Like the shift from Scorpio season to Sagittarius, there's definitely harder shifts in the zodiac, but this is a really big one. To go from fixed water to mutable fire is really big.
[0:36:38]
In terms of Tarot, that indicates a shift from Death to Temperance. Sagittarius is such a powerful energy. It's definitely a lot to hold. And I think it's a really important energy to have a lot of clarity about going into this particular season this year. Mutable fire is fire that can be directed in many, many different ways, right? So it's important for Sagittarius to always be, not even Sagittarians when we're in this energy, for us to be always coming back to a rooted sense, like “Where are we? Where do we find ourselves? What roots us? How are we being invited to direct that fire?”
Temperance is a really important energy for Sagittarius, in general, and for our time in this sign and for even Sagittarians, because Temperance is all about the initiation point in being soft and humble around something that has a deeper wisdom and awareness than we do. You know, and that could be our wise inner knowing versus kind of like our ego and what it wants. And it could be our sense of devotion to a practice, versus, you know, kind of what that thinking mind of us wants. Again, the thinking mind’s great, it's fine.
But Temperance really draws us, Temperance is ruled by Sagittarius, and it draws us into a space where we're really learning for the first time, how to work with Spirit, how to co-create with our Guides, how to live on our soul’s kind of rhythm, rather than that of our ego and again, our thinking mind.
[0:38:38]
And so it's really, really important, especially as we're pivoting into Eclipse season and this idea of mutable fire, to always be checking in. You know, is this belief true? Is this an old pattern? Is it a new one? With all of this bright kind of fire that can go in a million different directions, how am I being invited to ground it and to direct it? You know, Sagittarius is the archer, and I've spoken about this before, but I like to think of Sagittarius as sort of the tip of the arrow, as the arrow itself, and the inside of the archer’s relationship to the way that they sort of aim that arrow toward their target and pull.
And with mutable fire, there's always a sense of like, “I could go here, I could go there.” So what are we sort of being invited to direct that to? That's a really important, very important kind of phrase to draw into our lives, because what's possible with this energy is to do so much with that fire that is rooted, to create, to say no, to say yes, to warm all of these different things that we're working on, but we want to be able to be really clear about the larger invitation inside of it. That can be, and I think is, incredibly helpful.
So, and then, of course, we're moving into Eclipse season. Eclipse season is here, the portal has opened. So when I speak about an Eclipse portal, it's… other people do too. What I'm talking about is that when an Eclipse happens, there's generally another one around two weeks after that.
[0:40:31]
So today, on or around the 19th for some folks—it's again, it's a timezone thing—but today, we have our Full Moon Lunar Eclipse in Taurus, and that is initiating us into this Eclipse portal, and we will kind of flow out of the portal around December 4th with the Total Solar Eclipse in Sagittarius. I say around because the energy of Eclipse portals, like we've been in Eclipse energy for a little bit leading up to the 19th of November, and we'll be in it for a little bit after the fourth, to be sure.
Eclipse seasons are very, very powerful. They're huge opportunities for very, very accelerated growth, clarity, awareness, to really open up so that we can become very, very clear about a lot of things in a very short amount of time. But what Eclipse seasons do most acutely is that they help us to excavate. So if something is buried, if we're not seeing it, but maybe other folks are, if we haven't been ready to see it. If they're… and not anything that's gonna traumatize us, but like an awareness like that we're just… I haven't just been able to, you know, I haven’t been able to put those pieces together.
Eclipse portals excavate, they assist, they unbury, so to speak. They bring things up to the surface that are usually buried within it, right? Why does this happen? Because again, Eclipses are here to help to accelerate, to help to liberate, to help to get things moving in different ways. And those two weeks are very powerful.
[0:42:24]
Things that we generally want to lean into during Eclipse seasons is like burning, if it resonates with you. I love—I've mentioned this many times before—I get a lot of nourishment
out of writing the things I feel complete with and burning them in a safe proof or a heat proof receptacle. I really feel the potency of that practice, very simple for me. I write, I burn. That's it.
So for you, you may really like that. You may really like kind of other forms of clearing. It's a time for clearing. It's a time as things excavate, to process, to let them come up, to let them be witnessed à la “Hello, Six of Swords energy,” drawing that back in (Lindsay laughs). Very helpful energy, I think, for Eclipse medicine, really letting ourselves be witnessed in what's going on. So these things don't get excavated and brought to our attention and we have nowhere to put them, we want to clear. We want to, you know, really offer up a gentle, warm welcome to what does become obvious to us that wasn't before. All of these different pieces are things that are wonderful to be centered in Eclipse season.
In general, there's a consensus like, don't work with the Eclipses, don't pull things in during Eclipse season, don't set intentions. I'm not here to tell you what you can and can't do. I feel like if there is something really powerful that pops up and if you're setting an intention, I think it's fucking great and you should go for it. Like the end. And I don't think that any binaries in magical work and astrological work, I don't know that I necessarily resonate with that.
[0:44:11]
That being said, go with your gut, go with what feels really good. I just, in general, advise everyone to have a pretty, like to have a little extra gentle space around them when they go through an Eclipse portal, because it can be pretty intense and it can bring up a lot of stuff. And if we can remember that they come forward, they show up in our lives to help to move us closer to where we want to be, it can be very, very helpful in and when potentially uncomfortable things arise.
So thank you so much for listening to this episode, Wild Souls, for being here. Another reminder to please, please, please sign up at the link in the show notes to get your December Monthly Medicine. It comes out on December 1st. We won't have another podcast before December 1st, so this is your big reminder, you know, and if you want to be on the mailing list to receive those offers and opportunities to sign up for a couple of different offerings on an early bird rate, or at a really limited time offer discount on some of my most popular courses. And if you would like the holiday bundle, again, my mailing list is the place to get that. So that is a separate link in the show notes. You can sign up for both at the show notes. And I highly recommend that you do so.
And yeah, thank you so much again for being here. I can't wait to connect with you again in a couple of weeks. And until that time, please take exquisite care of yourselves.
[0:46:06]