183. Opening to the Rainbows with Ten of Cups
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Ten of Cups is our card for the month of February, inviting us into some profoundly vulnerable and brave work around being open to the rainbows of life, even in the midst of big storms. When this card arises, it doesn’t bypass the fact that there will always be challenges and difficulties with life, or with whatever we are facing at this moment. It does invite us to play with opening to deeper presence – to be available to the joy, the beauty, and the sweetness about what is right in front of us, even if it’s not our first instinct to center it.
Air date:
January 28, 2022
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About the Episode
In today’s episode, we dive into the heart of Ten of Cups, chat a little about Imbolc and Aquarius season, and I answer a listener's question about sensing into timing with our Tarot pulls.
Please note: at 6:56, Lindsay says, "Aquarius is fixed Earth" but meant to say that Aquarius is fixed Air.
Links:
Sign up to receive the February Monthly Missive (the last one before I go on maternity leave)
Soul Tarot Courses + Workshops
Sign up for The Threshold 2022!
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: pregnancy
The content in this episode contains references to pregnancy. 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]
Hello, Loves, just two quick announcements before our episode today. The first is that I invite you, if it calls to you, to sign up at the link in the show notes to receive an early bird discount for my brand new offering, Rewilding our Intuition, which is a course that is exactly what it sounds like (Lindsay laughs): all about how we can begin to sense into, rewild, honor, uplift, center, and love our own unique, intuitive rhythm—our own unique, intuitive gifts.
We're all intuitive, we're all born intuitive, and this course doesn't assume that you need the tools and tricks to try to bring it out of you, but merely speaks about how to naturally remove, gently remove, those blocks, those fears, those worries that we all have around our intuition, the places where we compare ourselves—and actually give it space to expand and sort of fly free. And we're looking to the four Queens of the Tarot as really helpful Anchors to kind of do that work not just now but for the rest of our lives. So yeah, I'm very, very excited to share it with you. It's been a long time coming, this offering.
So if you'd like to receive an early bird discount to this offering, enrollment opens on February 2nd and our early bird discount will only, only be available to newsletter subscribers. So if you'd like to receive that, you can sign up at the link in the show notes and you will receive that link when it's time.
And the second announcement is that I encourage you, if you'd like to sign up to receive the February Monthly Medicine Missive, also only available to newsletter subscribers, by clicking the link in the show notes—this is actually the last one I'm going to do before my maternity leave. And then after I'm on maternity leave, they'll be sort of a sweet monthly email that'll be a bit of a substitute that won’t require me to actually like tune in, drill down, and spend multiple hours (Lindsay laughs) tuning in about what the theme and the energy of the month will be. They'll be a little bit of that but not too, too much. It'll be more centered on the zodiac and on the particular zodiac sign we’ll be in, so I think it'll be still quite lovely and nutritive but different. So if you'd like to receive that download, you can also click the link in the show notes to sign up for that. Thank you so much for being here.
—
(Instrumental intro music)
[00:02:58]
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, Loves, and thank you so much for being here. Welcome to a new episode of the podcast, to a new month, to a new theme, to a new Anchor Card. I'm so grateful to be gathered with you here. As always, thank you so much for your presence. So today, we're going to be talking about our Anchor card for the month of February, the theme for February. We'll also talk just a little bit about the fact that we're in Aquarius season, which is so nice. We'll talk about Imbolc, and we will also speak about our listener question (Lindsay laughs), so lots and lots to move into.
And I sort of want to start with the fact that we have been in Aquarius season now for a little while, just a little while, and it feels great to be here. That's number one. And it's just such a special time on the Wheel of the Year and this is really the season in the Northern Hemisphere where we're working ourselves through the deepest point of winter. And when we think about that energetically, we're thinking about resting most deeply, tuning in most deeply, honoring ourselves most deeply, right?
[0:04:42]
Because winter—if we think about like Northern Hemisphere cold, winter times—it's a time for deep rest, for deep tuning in, sensing in, going subterranean, and really giving ourselves the time to prepare to do the deep inner work so that we can sort of rise up in the spring and have a really strong, fortified root system.
So how does this relate to Aquarius? Being that it's fixed Air, like it doesn't really seem to correlate. If we think about Aquarius’ ruling Tarot card, The Star, there's so much connective tissue there. The Star is the deepest healing card in the Tarot. The Star is a stop on kind of the journey of the Major Arcana that it seems like it would be easy to skip, but it's impossible to (Lindsay laughs), right?
It's a moment when we actually have to sort of get off the train and move into more of a replenishment phase of our lives, into a healing phase, where there's some kind of wound, some kind of process, some kind of experience or bubbling over of emotion or grief, or almost a reintegration that wants to take place within us. And we have to, have to give ourselves the time.
[0:06:25]
This is the card that follows The Tower. It's the card that comes after The Tower, after that scorch and that burn of The Tower. After in the Smith-Rider-Waite we go flying out of that tower, symbolically, with our crown on and our clothes on. We find ourselves in the nighttime, at the water, totally nude, completely reborn in many ways.
And Aquarius is fixed Air. It's also connected to Uranus, and there is something about both Uranus and the energy of Aquarius that is so deeply and profoundly individualistic. These energies must be who they are or they'll die. Literally, they have to. They will constantly be reinventing. They will constantly be rebirthing in many ways. And in some ways, the challenge for Aquarius is actually to root, to be in the root rather than to be flying off to the next thing.
So there's a tremendous emphasis this season on exploration, on healing, on shedding, on nurturing and fortifying, and on really rooting so that we can fly, so that we can explore, so that we can play, so that we can continue to evolve and rebirth in whatever way we feel called to and in whatever way calls to us.
And, of course, on February One, we have our first cross-quarter of 2022. We'll be moving through Imbolc. Imbolc is… I try not to get too much into sort of the lore and the history of the cross quarters, and it's out there to be sure, but because I like to keep these podcasts breezy and digestible I will say that Imbolc is the time on the spiral of the year that is the deepest point of winter.
[0:08:46]
It's right between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. So it represents this profound time, profound time of deep inner looking and indeed, this was the time in Gaelic culture and in Gaelic communities—where this cross-quarter was actually honored initially—where folks did a lot of scrying. They did a lot of really deep sensing into, a lot of tuning into. This was the time to work with wells and divination. To say just a tiny little bit about Imbolc (Linsday laughs), along with many other things that I could say, I highly encourage you to research it because it's a very, very beautiful day on the Wheel of the Year.
But how we can sense into this, right? Cross quarters are so powerful, because they represent this sacred middle point, the deepest point. And because Aquarius holds that, there is again an ability to travel and to sense into, to fly, to explore, to see very, very deeply, but we're held in place by that frozen ground. So there's this beautiful fixed nature to the Air, right?
And I love how all of us can sense into and work with the energy of the equinoxes, and the solstices, and the cross quarters in our own unique way. So that's just a little, little bit about sort of what we can look forward to in the next couple of days. Imbolc is February 1st, again, and what we can really sink into as we continue to deepen our journey into Aquarius season, into the season of The Star.
[0:10:52]
You know, it’s a really strong time for a very deep healing and very deep connection. Whatever that means to us, whatever that word evokes, to follow that and to really see what it brings forward and what it has to offer us, the gifts that it's laying at our feet.
So, our card for the month of February is Ten of Cups and if I'm not mistaken, and I could be, I believe this is the first time we've ever dedicated a whole episode to Ten of Cups. I believe so. We've definitely spoken about it on this podcast many, many times as an Anchor when I was doing weekly medicine episodes in 2020, but we've never really given it its own solo, so I was very excited when this card wanted to come up to be spoken about this month.
The title of today's episode is “Opening to the Rainbows with Ten of Cups,” and if you are familiar with the Tarot and if you're familiar with the art depicted on the Tarot in many different decks, you'll probably recall that there is often a rainbow on this card. And that started with Pamela Coleman Smith with the Smith-Rider-Waite Tarot. And it's just such a wonderful, perfect visual symbol for everything that this card invites us into, what it represents.
[0:12:31]
And it's a powerful theme, both for Aquarius season and Imbolc, and our journey from Aquarius to Pisces season this month, which is so wild (Lindsay laughs) that we're sort of reaching the end of our, of our zodiac wheel for this particular cycle and then in Aries season, we'll be opening up to a whole new one. It's just wild. But we're gonna explore why—like why the rainbows, why open to the rainbows, what's important about them, and what they are and what they're not.
And I first want to start with the theme for February which is “Wonder,” which I really loved when I sensed into that. So, this idea of wonder, if we look up the definition for the word wonder, which is W-O-N-D-E-R, not W-A-N-D-E-R. When we sense into the word wonder as a noun what we read is this. We read that “Wonder is a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable.” And when we sense into wonder as a verb, we see that the definition is, “Desire or be curious to know something.”
So, there's a lot, a lot of different places that we can go with this, but essentially what we're talking about when we root into the theme, the energy of wonderment, of wondering, we're sensing into curiosity. We're awake and enlivened. Our senses are primed. They're open. Rather than assuming, rather than kind of dropped out, rather than sort of eyes closed—eyes are open.
[0:14:34]
We may not know the answer, and in fact, with wonderment and wondering, we may be feeling around for something bigger than the answer. We may be really deeply tuned into the exploration, into the journey of learning, into all of the kinds of different pieces surrounding the desire to go sort of (Lindsay snaps) straight to the answer, right?
And when we think about this definition of wonder as a noun, this feeling of surprise, to be surprised in this way, is to be curious. We're noticing things that we don't usually notice before, right? And then it goes on, “Mingled with admiration, with appreciation and admiration for what it is that we are observing, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, familiar, or inexplicable.” In other words, caused by something that delights, caused by something that's new, that's fresh.
It might not be actually new to us, but it might be the first time we're really paying attention to it, which is, I mean, one, such a powerful feeling that I think so many of us have felt where we're really seeing something for the first time, where we're really gifting ourselves the fullness of our presence. And I think, conversely, we can all think of someone who maybe has never been able to give themselves that, who has never been able to get out of their own way, to move past their own blocks around wonder and joy and delight and excitement and observation to really be with something not from their own projections and judgments, but as it is.
[0:16:39]
It's one of the deepest acts of love that we can give to ourselves, certainly to the people and pets and plants and (Lindsay laughs) circumstances around us, right? It's true that wonder, at least for me, doesn't always feel like the most accessible experience. I don't know that I'm always tapped into wonder. I think that this is certainly the only time that this word has even remotely come up in a monthly theme in the years that I've been doing this. And I think that that's because, again, 2022 is continuing to prove itself to be different. There's something in the energy that it's bringing that is really, really different than what previous years, especially the last two years, have brought to us.
It doesn't mean that the circumstances are different. The opportunity is different. So we start there with the idea of wonder, with the idea of curiosity—the willingness to be open to something in a different way than we have before. That is what this month is all about.
We are going to be moving through—whether very, very big or very, very small—things that are new to us, things that might be really fucking big, thresholds of a certain kind that maybe we've never crossed before. And inside of that, there's high opportunities for lots of fear (Lindsay laughs), completely understandably. Like the thinking mind and our nervous systems, they don't like all that new shit (Lindsay laughs). Like, you know, like, they're not into that.
[0:18:29]
So where can we take it but to a place of wondering and of wonder? I wonder if it's possible that this circumstance might actually be really different than the terror that I'm believing is going to come up during it? I'm wondering whether we could try something different. I'm wondering whether I could look at this differently. I'm wondering whether I could just be with my feelings without needing to change anything about them at all.
Wondering, such an amazing place to be curious, open, available to surprises. It's delightful. There's just so much that's possible, right, inside of it. So what does this have to do with Ten of Cups? Well, in Soul Tarot, Ten of Cups is the ultimate card of wondering and of wonder. It is the ultimate card of curiosity, presence. Really, everything that we're talking about is deeply entrenched, deeply embedded, in the most loving of ways, in Ten of Cups.
So I want to first start, as I often do, with sort of where we typically find this card in more traditional, sort of old-world interpretations. For the most part, when you touch in with Ten of Cups, even in some of the best books, the best deck guidebooks, what we get is something that, to me anyway (Lindsay laughs) like, has never really felt all that realistic, which is something to the effect of wishes granted, harmony achieved, you get everything you want, everything's great, right?
[0:20:27]
It might not be exactly that, but it's something in the realm of that. There's an assumption that when we pull it or when we travel through the experience of this card, that there is a kind of a happiness. That's the subtext of it, that there's some kind of joy, or some kind of thing, or achievement that we've made contact with that's probably, typically, different from where we are now.
So where we want to start getting a little curious about that older interpretation and how much common sense it really carries forward is when you hook a Tarot card, any Tarot card, onto a feeling state or onto something that you eventually will achieve—but like, it's not here now—we're usually headed for some trouble (Lindsay laughs). Not trouble like bad, but trouble, like, Tarot cards can't predict that. The Tarot doesn't have any ability or any magic to it, that's different from life. It has to operate within the realm of reality, right?
So whenever we have, as nice as it is, a Tarot card that promises sweetness, or love, or something wonderful, or even, like, we'll be so happy, we'll get everything we want, it’s a boat with a leak in it, right? Ultimately. Because your definition of that might be totally different from what the author intended. You’re… in your mind, what would make you happy might not have anything to do with that card, with what that card is actually talking about. It's very challenging.
[0:22:25]
It can also bring up a lot of hurt feelings, like we've been sort of forgotten or betrayed by our deck sometimes, because we sit there and think, “Well, I'm fucking miserable.” And maybe if we’re even reading for ourselves in a moment where we have experienced an enormous loss or an enormous tragedy of some kind, and we have to think about how that would land with a client or with us. It might be super comforting, right? It might give the client or us hope for something better and that's absolutely beautiful. And it also may feel like an invalidation of the present moment.
So we just want to be curious, following in the footsteps of our theme of wonder, and we want to have a little bit of our common sense, critical thinking caps on, and really just touch in with that. Like can a card really promise all that stuff? No, unfortunately. I wish it could, but it really can't. We want to circle in a little deeper here.
So The Tens of the Tarot bring about Full Moon energy. That's a great way to look at it. Full Moons represent a kind of a fullness: a full harvest, a zenith. Like we've gone absolutely as far as we're meant to go and now it's time to birth something, to harvest something, to clear something. And in doing that, we get to sort of decide what works and what doesn't, what we're keeping and what we're composting. It’s a very lovely time of review, and all of The Tens really represent that sense of birth and death at the same time, of letting go and of making room in the same breath.
[0:24:24]
And Ten of Cups is of that. It might not be exactly the same as the other Tens. It might not behave in the same way, but it is still operating, still living inside of that framework. And so we want to get curious, like how… what does it mean to open to the rainbows inside of that framework? So, and certainly, it has us connect with wonder and you know, all of those different things.
So, we'll start with this theme, with this idea, this visualization, of a rainbow. And in that way again, I bow to Pamela Coleman Smith and to all the artists who really bowed to Pamela Coleman Smith and put a rainbow on their Ten of Cups card and on their deck because there really just is such an extraordinary, you know, it really works as a symbol and a theme for this card.
So if we think about this idea of rainbows, when do rainbows typically come out? When do we tend to see them? After storms, after rain. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But more often than not, there has been some kind of storm, some kind of cloud cover, some kind of rumbling, right, so to speak, in the weather system. And then all of a sudden, there's this rainbow. And when we think about how most of us feel about rainbows, and I'm not trying to speak for everybody, rainbows will get us to like pull our car over, and you know, in a safe way (Lindsay laughs) and take a picture of them, like rainbows will stop us in our tracks.
Rainbows will arrest a conversation. They will pull us out of our grind, and move us right (Lindsay snaps) into the moment because we know rainbows are beautiful. They're surprising. And they also do not last long, right? If we see a rainbow, we might get lucky enough to hang out with it for a half-hour, maybe a little bit more, but unless we're in a really special place where rainbows kind of hang out for longer than that, usually they come up and they go.
[0:26:53]
And not to be too cheesy or too on the nose about it, but it's a pretty great metaphor for life, to be honest with you, like these lives that we're living fly by. They can feel so long (Lindsay laughs) and also, like, they are so short. So short. We can look back on something that we did that was so challenging and intense, and the mind has a way of saying like, “Wow, I don't know if it was as bad as I thought it was. Was that really that long?” Or we can look back and think, “That was like the worst thing I've ever been through.”
But there is something about rainbows as a metaphor for life that I think is valid. We have these moments and these opportunities throughout life to open our eyes and remember what's important, to remember what's true, and what matters to us. What matters to us. So many of us fly through life and we're really not awake for it. Or we forget, and we have these moments of wakefulness and of presence. And we think, “Whoa, how much more am I missing?” Or we come into presence and we realize, “Wow, I'm living with a lot of discomfort in my body all the time.” Or “This experience makes me really anxious. I don't like really fully being here.”
And I think, you know, obviously I'm not a therapist, but I think all of those feelings are completely valid and okay, and I think can be the start of a journey of help and care with a processor, or can initiate a desire to want to live differently, if possible, or can fuel us to find another way of coming into presence that doesn't feel like it's too overwhelming for our nervous system or our body.
[0:28:57]
Ten of Cups comes at the very end of our journey in The Cups suit and The Cups suit is not about love. It just isn't, flat out. If it's about love, it's only about your relationship with loving yourself. Anyone else who comes into that relationship is, I’m sorry to say, but secondary. You are the primary relationship. So while the other person might be important, and I'm sure they are—I have people in my life who are so precious to me. If I'm not in touch with myself, and with what I need, and with what is, what I'm getting called into and how I'm being asked to caretake myself, I will not really be present for that relationship, with those other relationships.
And I think that's true for most of us and The Cups are about feeling into, tuning into, dropping into that love of the self. It's about embracing ourselves and all that we are. The Cups are also about trusting in ourselves and our intuition. I also think The Cups suit has an enormous amount to do with permissioning ourselves to take our time. There's something about that in there. Like with most of The Cups cards, they have something to do with permissioning ourselves to celebrate, to not do something, to mourn something, to grieve something, to… like there's something about giving ourselves the permission to move away, come closer, all that stuff.
[0:30:39]
So, autonomy is what we're talking about, loving ourselves enough to honor, to give ourselves permission—deep Lovers 2022 work here. So, wrapping all of this together: Ten of Cups is a card that invites us to be open to more of the rainbows of life, more of the things that delight us, that surprise us, that snap (Lindsay snaps) us out of our constant stream of worry, or our constant stream of anxiety, or how unconscious we are as we move through our day. The loveliness of something can be so simple. The loveliness of the ceramic cup we're drinking out of as we sip our morning tea, or our coffee, or our latte—that can be a Ten of Cups moment. It can be that simple.
Like, literally, the pleasure that we get at looking at our baby's face, or at our animal’s, pet’s face, knowing that they won't ever be this age, ever again. This is it. Knowing that one day our beloved pet won't be trotting by our side. It's really sad, but true. It's really easy to miss it. It's really easy to miss those things. It's easy to let them fly right by us. And the same thing is true with us. We can wake up one day and go, “Oh, God, I'm so much older than I was.” Or we can look at photos of ourselves and think, “What the fuck was I doing telling myself how bad I looked, or how I should do this, that, and the other to my body?” And all of us have had that experience, right?
[0:32:38]
So the point is that Ten of Cups invites us not to bypass those feelings, but to honor those feelings and know that there's something deeper, to know that that's not the primary. It's not the truth, in other words, which isn't to say like, “Oh, who knows what's true and what isn't.” But, we've, most of us had that feeling of being just so consumed with something and then something in life, some rainbow, some clap of an invisible pair of hands comes in, and it wakes us up a little bit. We think, “What the fuck was I so worried about that for, I don't even like, what…?”
It doesn't invalidate it, but it helps to balance it. It helps to correct, it helps to bring about a deeper alignment. If you really look at the Smith-Rider-Waite card, which is often—the Ten of Cups card—which is often spoken about as this just card of total unity and harmony. The kids are playing and dancing with each other, the couple is united, and they're kind of thanking the great rainbow of cups in the sky. If you really look at that card, what's the truth, right? That's a lovely snapshot, but who knows what that relationship is with those two adults?
I mean, not to like get out there, but it's true. (Lindsay laughs) We don't actually know that that's a love romantic relationship, we don't know. It's also perfectly acceptable to consider that that's us, embracing ourselves with our inner children dancing around like that. Gorgeous image and just as valid. Truer, I'd say, and much more realistic and likely to be true, especially because we can't control when we meet a partner. Some of us don't even care about connecting with a partner in a romantic way. Or that's not something that we're interested in or attracted to.
[0:34:37]
And let's just say it is, right? We're together only in this moment. We only have what's right here, right now. That's it. We don't have a moment longer, a moment shorter. We just have what's here. Right in that moment, those two kiddos are dancing and playing and who knows? In another moment, one of them might trip and fall, and another one might get a little too antsy (Lindsay laughs) and like, and then there might be tears, and that's also not a problem. But for that moment, there's a beautiful experience of appreciation, of wonder of what is here. It doesn't have to extend itself into this moment. Just because one of those kiddos trips and falls, it doesn't ruin anything. But if we're not there for it, again, we can miss a rainbow.
So, most of us have spent our entire lives missing a lot of those rainbows. They're really hard to catch, they’re really hard to sense into. Ten of Cups calls upon us, the Anchoring of this card, to see what it might feel like to open to the rainbows in an ongoing way without bypassing anything, to just simply be more present to the beauty, to the joy, to what feels good, to what delights, if anything. It doesn't mean that our feelings or our anger or our grief has to go away.
[0:36:32]
What feels like a balm? What feels like a gift? What feels like a treasure to us, at this moment, right now? At this moment? Like what's right in front of you that feels delightful. Or if it's not right in front of you, like, what's a memory of something, who's the person that you hold dear, what's something you really appreciate about your life right now? It's really powerful, really powerful, to sense into that.
Now, the challenge of this card can sometimes… it's hard to do this. If it was easy, we would all do it and there wouldn't be any, you know, it wouldn't be any effort required or difficulty or you know, it's hard. We don't want to get our hopes up, we don't want to lose out, we don't want to miss something, we don't want to grieve. So sometimes it's easier to remain a little numb or a little cynical, and that's fine. You know, it's okay.
This card understands that, but it also calls us to acknowledge that and honor that, and dig a little deeper into our own capacity for vulnerability and curiosity. We're really greeting this moment as if it's brand new—which it is. Which is the gift of this card, and again, also the challenge. And some of the other gifts of this card is that it can really shift the way we live. It can make us so much more grateful. It can catch us.
I notice, for myself, that my partner and I are living in this rental in the forest outside of Portland, Oregon. And it's so beautiful here and we love it, and I often find myself like looking for other rentals, which is (Lindsay laughs)... and it's so beautiful, but I realized not that long ago, like I do that because I don't want to be surprised if for some reason we have to leave.
[0:38:38]
Like it was a gentle noticing. Just kind of like, we're not moving right now and if we have to move we will, and we're very privileged to have you know, a really solid, beautiful roof over our heads. And let's just be here. Let's be brave enough to just be here (Lindsay laughs) knowing like, nowhere is perfect, but we're so lucky to be here. And that's like a teeny experience. But that's a Ten of Cups realization too, like “I'm not really here right now. So what's happening here that maybe is so sweet that I'm uncomfortable with being with it.” Right?
That's what we want to start asking ourselves and that, again, is what February is all about. Wonder is the complete opposite of that sense of worrying, thinking mind like, “Gotta know, gotta have an answer.” It also really disrupts this idea of like, once I get all my work done, then I'll be able to rest and relax. It brings it into opposition and makes every moment an opportunity for curiosity and wonderment.
So as we Anchor into this card, it doesn't mean that we have to be happy all the time. It doesn't mean that. In fact, what I'm saying is the exact opposite of that, which is just how can we be open to the rainbows as we define them, as we see them, as we live with them, as they surround us? And when one pops up, how can we be available to the medicine that it's bringing us? How can we be amenable to the kind of sweet interruption that those moments bring? How can we let those moments stop us in our tracks and go, “Whoa”?
[0:40:29]
We can always go back to our bullshit, to our work, to our worries. How can we let those rainbows be a really sweet pause, a break in those… yeah, in those merry-go-rounds of, yeah, places where we can really get stuck as humans? So again, we're going to be working with this card all month. And in two weeks, we'll dive into an Anchor that can really help us to expand into what this card brings even further. But I certainly hope that this helps and resonates and that it brings a lot of nourishment to you.
And we're gonna close out today's episode with a listener question. This is from Alexi. And Alexi asks,
“Hey, Lindsay, so grateful for the wisdom and love your podcast brings to the world.”
Thank you, Alexi.
“Often, when I pull cards that hint toward the end of a cycle or new beginnings, I get stuck on a sense of timing. Divine timing is so nebulous, and I’m usually reading for the present moment, but when I hear you speak about knowing it was time to take a pause from the podcast, for example, it feels like there's some way that the cards are communicating with you about timing that I feel like would be helpful for my practice. How do you know if a message about ending is soon, now, or perhaps even past due?”
That's a great question. So I will tell you, Alexi, that I, because you asked about me personally, I will speak about timing with regard to the Tarot. My body is the indicator of when I know I need to hold them or fold them (Lindsay laughs), rather than the Tarot, actually. I go to the Tarot to help me to sense into this moment, to get closer to myself, but I actually don't ask my Tarot deck all that much about specifics, because I don't often find that it answers me very accurately.
[0:42:43]
And I have had enough experiences with feeling like, “Okay, I'm asking a really deep question, and whoa, the card I pulled is huge.” And sometimes it does carry me through and it is an awakening for me, and other times it pulls me into a lot of stuff and then can get a little confusing. And so I don't want you to think I'm getting something that you're not. I just wanted to be really upfront about that.
My Guides tell me, my body tells me, my heart tells me, like, “This is a no right now.” And I will be honest; usually, there's not a whole ton of foresight on it. Like I knew I needed to take a break from the podcast when I went to go record an episode and it was such a “no” in my body.
And that doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with me, or the podcast, or anything like that. It just was a “no” for one reason or another and I needed to sort of back away from it, explore it. Then I go to my Tarot deck and say, “What am I being invited to pay attention to here?” But I don't ever pull a card that tells me it's experienced and it's felt, at least with me.
In fact, as I sort of prepare for my maternity leave, for my baby to come, I'm getting way more foresight than I ever have before, because I think Spirit, and my child, (Lindsay laughs) and me, like, everything is sort of like, “Yeah, we're gonna prepare a lot more in advance than we normally would.”
[0:44:25]
But I mean, I got a very specific date to stop doing the podcast and I probably could have batched out episodes longer but I didn't get a “yes” to do it. Who knows why? You know, who knows? You know, I got kind of a “no” at least right now on creating sort of batched content for Instagram. I really got to like pull back from that space, which brought up lots of feelings, but I am not going to fight that, you know. Also to be really present with my newsletter in terms of batched content and content that's being created now so that it can be enjoyed a couple months from now. So who knows why, you know, certain things happen the way they do, but I'm not getting anything that you're not. So that was a long way of saying that.
And now, specifically, moving into the second part of your question, “How do you know if a message about ending is soon, now, or perhaps even past due?” I don't know that the Tarot… Well, let's talk about the Tarot, okay? So sometimes we can feel into it based on what we're pulling in terms of context, right?
So it might be that if you pull an Ace, it could be now. It might be if you pull an Eight, it could be now. It could be if you're pulling a Seven, especially something like Seven of Pentacles, it’s soon but not quite now. If we're talking about like a sense of like, “Whoa, something's like past due,” it might be like… Oh, my goodness, I can't think of anything right now, but I'm certain that it's out there (Lindsay laughs). I'm sure it's out there. I just can't quite think of anything off the top of my head at this moment.
[0:46:27]
I don't know that we're getting a past… I don't know that any particular card is representative of like, a past-due experience. I think we just awaken to certain things when we do and I think we realize certain things when we do. And very often when I'm working through my own experience with the Tarot of something that we might call, like, past due, the energy I get isn't quite about timing. It's more about like, “Yeah, you did it. Like you did it and now it's time.”
Like, it might be The World. It might be, you know, something that actually has to do with the new thing I'm leaping into like The Fool or like, yeah, it really, I hesitate to say like, “Oh, this is exactly how you pick up on this,” because I just don't think that there is a system that is particularly accurate. I think we can plug into a system, but it may fail us at a certain point. I think that the best thing that I can say is that I pay attention to how I feel about things. That's a very important barometer for me. Then the Tarot helps me to clarify, but it is very rare that the Tarot tells me something that I don't know, at least a little bit already, or is not somewhat on my mind.
There's been a couple of times where I've been really blown away by what the Tarot has brought up and then when I really give myself permission to sense into it, it's so clear, like, “Oh my god, this has been something I've clung on to for so long and it's not even, like, a thing anymore.” Like, it's totally dead, you know? But there's usually some kind of feeling state that precedes it, even if it's resistance on my part. So what I would say is, see how your feelings and about your, you know, how your experiences weave in and out, back and forth, with your Tarot pulls.
[0:48:45]
So I'll give you two examples. There are times when I really don't want to do something and it's really good for me. I'm one of those folks, I think like a lot of people, I just have a lot of—my thinking mind, has a lot of feelings usually about the stuff that is really good, really helpful. There's usually a ton of resistance to going through with it because there's fear. So because I know that about myself, when I have that sort of big resistance come up, I give it a lot of my time and attention because I don't want to be doing something that's a “no” for me.
But if I get a “yes” to it, and if when I sense into my soul-knowing it's totally a “yes”, but the mind is like, “Hell no.” Then I know that's my sacred work to do. That is my work, to tend to my thinking mind, to talk to it, to talk to my inner kid to see whether or not they're feeling scared about something, like where are all of my… where all of me (Lindsay laughs), you know, where are all the parts of me? And that is when the Tarot can be really useful because then it can help me to sense into, not just what I want, but the timing.
And on the other hand, the opposite is true; where sometimes I want to fly full speed ahead into something and it just isn't a “yes” right now and I can get very upset about that. You know, I want something to happen or there's a fear—like, you know, sometimes that I'll miss out on it entirely, or “Why not?” And then that can be really helpful in terms of timing because that's typically when I do get like, the germination cards—like Seven of Pentacles or The Hermit or The Tethered One, that can help to root me a little bit more into like, “We're not done here. This is still baking in the oven, whether you like it or not, so as open as you can be to that, the better.”
[0:50:55]
So, again, my style is different. So it's possible that if you went to a much more kind of strategic, which is absolutely beautiful, Tarot teacher or educator or facilitator, they might tell you like, “These are the cards for timing, these are the cards for past due.” And I would say like, give yourself the gift of feeling into that because it could be that someone else's teachings might be super helpful for you in that area. It's just not the way my brain works and it's never been the way the Tarot has really communicated with me, so I can't really speak on something I don't know.
But yeah, because you brought me into it, I chose to center my experience and share that I don't find the Tarot to be typically a very accurate predictor or communicator around timing. What is typically helpful for me is to follow my feelings and then when something pops up, the Tarot can help to illuminate it, but often it's not there until I have some kind of awareness of it.
So for what that's worth, I hope it helps. And I think you are likely doing a glorious job with your practice. I just wanted to take the opportunity to demystify and let you know that there's definitely no extra sparkle happening (Lindsay laughs) in my Tarot practice with regard to that. It's that my intuition tells me, you know, like, “This is a hell no.” And sometimes, you know, it's quieter. Sometimes it's louder. You know, all different ways that our intuition, that that deep inner knowing, will get our attention. So I hope that helps. And yeah, thank you so much for asking it.
So thank you for being here with me for this episode, Wild Souls. I look forward to connecting with all of you in two weeks and until then, please take exquisite care of yourselves.
[0:53:11]