197. Setting Ourselves Free with The Tethered One Rx + Rethinking Relationship Spreads
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Mercury is direct, and we are so grateful!
Air date:
October 7th, 2022
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About the Episode
On today's episode of the pod, we dive into the medicine of our card for the week ahead, The Tethered One Rx. Lindsay's digs into the invitation of this energy, how we can work with it, and how it connects to and compliments our theme for the month of October. Then, we dig into a listener question from Ryan about a confusing card pull relating to a relationship spread.
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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: trauma, PTSD, birth, death, and difficult/toxic familial relationships
The content in this episode contains references to trauma, PTSD, birth, death, and difficult/toxic familial relationships. 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]
(Instrumental intro music)
[0:00:05]
Welcome to Tarot for the Wild Soul, a podcast that explores the Tarot through an inclusive, soul-centered, trauma-informed perspective for growth, healing, and evolution. I'm your host, Lindsay Mack.
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[0:00:21]
Hello Loves and welcome back to the pod. I'm your host, Lindsay Mack. And as always, just such huge gratitude and delight to be gathered here with all of you. I hope this all finds you well. It's starting to actually get kind of misty and cool here on the West Coast where I live, and it is everything (Lindsay laughs), like truly. Today, we're diving into our card of the week. I'm gonna answer a listener question, and then I'm gonna pop out of your hair. It's going to be a really nice coming together and then moving apart, as always.
So there are a billion planets in retrograde right now, but thank God (Lindsay laughs) Mercury has finally gone direct. We are still in the shadow for about another week, but wow. I don't know. Some folks are… it's interesting. Of course, it all has to do with where things land in our chart and where, you know, there are a million reasons why one, Mercury Retrograde might be tougher for some and more easeful for others. It depends on where we're at and what's going on—a million different factors. But I know for myself and for a lot of people, both in my life and not directly in my life, this was a very hard one (Lindsay laughs). And it's incredible how much, kind of, things have energetically lifted since we've kind of gotten out of that, the intensity of the retrograde. And I feel that there is sort of a direct correlation here, between our pull of the week, kind of the invitation and the Anchor that we're working with in this week, and the fact that Mercury has gone direct.
So our Anchor Card for the week ahead is The Tethered One or The Hanged One reversed. The Tethered One is really, really interesting. There's many levels and layers to it which would be appropriate. It's ruled by Neptune, so there's a lot connected to Pisces, there's a lot of layers to it. What The Tethered One does, of course, on the surface, there's, you know, it seems very obvious, and in a way, it is sort of a suspension in time, energetically speaking. It's preparation for something, but we're sort of put on pause or kind of held in place for something, in preparation for.
And if you listen to the Monthly Medicine for the month of October, the theme that we're working with this month, the real kind of orders (Lindsay laughs), invitations of the month ahead, energetically, are to clear the path, to really clear the space. It's a time of huge preparation for whatever that means to us. It's going to be totally different and personal for all of us. There's a strong invitation to make room and, again, different for everybody.
[0:03:47]
Tethered One is kind of picking up on that idea of being like “I'm going to help out (Lindsay laughs). I'm going to help out, and I'm also going to clear the space in some ways.” So here's what Tethered One does: The Major Arcana, the energy of them, we have to remember this. Major Arcana are here, we can think of them as an ocean wave, as a gust of wind, like whew, like sort of moving us forward. It's an energy force that's bigger than us.
The idea when we work with a Major is A) we're surrendering to it, we’re letting it take us, kind of like flowing with a wave, letting, like, a really strong gust of wind, like, whew, kind of move us. And we have to work intelligently with all of them, right? Sometimes waves are so big that we kind of have to get to higher ground (Lindsay laughs). You know, even then, you know, we're kind of working with—we're still working with that. Other times, those waves come, they're very big, and we kind of get, like, crashed out around the surface, and get, like, slammed into the sand, and that's sort of a part of our experience with life, as well. It's not great, nobody loves it, and it's a part of the human experience, right?
So with Tethered One, what it's doing is, it is sort of gently—and consensually, of course—kind of suspending us in place. It's rooting us down and in. There are a couple of cards that do that in The Majors. The Hermit is one of them that kind of fixes us in place; it's not stopping us from doing anything, but it is inviting us to just be with what is. Wheel of Fortune, it offers really good advice and basically says, “Hey, like, while the wheel is kind of turning here, if you can just be with what wants your attention, that would be great.” Really, all of Line Two in the Major Arcana—of which The Tethered One is part of, Line Two of the Majors—they're all kind of like that because they're teaching us to take our hands off the larger controls and let the soul lead the way.
It's a very, very important transition from Line One that has all to do with—and, by the way, this is crucial, and importantly, we must have this. This is not something that's meant to be lesser than or sort of judged; it's like the importance of development, where children develop, where we have to flex. We have to feel into our personality, our identity, who we are, our power, like, you know, individuation, like, there's all those really important things. And then Line Two is really where we sort of are invited to let go of that for something much greater, for something much more powerful.
Then Line Three is, really, once we're committed, and we're in, like, the true sloughing off of whatever doesn't serve and the full kind of rebirth into like, wow, we're really getting closer and closer, as we do, through life, to kind of a place in our lives that is really fulfilling, ideally, and is really true for us. And, you know, I digress, and also it's never a problem to… you know, it's great to talk about kind of the larger context of this.
[0:07:19]
So Tethered One is very, very important because it holds us in place in order to take us through the layers of things that have to be felt, processed, acknowledged, and examined. It's Neptunian, it's Piscean. It takes us real far down into those layers and will call on us to say, “Okay, this really old thing,” one of the hallmarks of Tethered One is, “this old thing is coming up”, an old wound, an old echo of something. Most likely, you, me, we all have been feeling some of that in the past week.
The reversal of Tethered One this week, actually, is wonderful news. It sort of lets us know that the mantle is lifting a bit. That's not typically the way I interpret Tethered One, but that is definitely the message of this card today. And that's what's so great is that you can learn the theory, but when you start to read with the cards and feel into things, the meanings are always changing, depending on what's going on. And it’s why Tarot is so flexible. (Lindsay laughs) It's great.
So, um, yeah, normally, Tethered One, I want to explain, kind of, what it does right side up and how we can lean into and look to it as medicine. It really prepares us for the Death card, and the Death card comes right after it. So it's sloughing off, delayering, taking us down and in, very, very, very, very deeply, again, as a preparation. The Tethered One, it prepares us more perhaps, strongly, than almost any other card for the next great leap in our lives.
And I don't want to, I am very cautious and careful not to get caught in—I don't necessarily think the Tarot very accurately predicts, like, you know? I think that it's very, very good at kind of illuminating what we're in now, and there is quite a bit of messaging that I've been getting about things turning over, shifting, inviting us to sort of prepare to receive something. So we'll see, you know? We'll see what that means. I really get that that could be very, very subtle for all of us, very personal, very intimate.
The really strong message is really like keep your eye on what's right here and clear some of that internal subterranean debris, so that, again, you have room to receive the things that you've actually been working a really long time and very hard on making room for, you know? We don't often think about that piece, and it gets very, very scary.
A friend of mine, Amy Kuretsky, and I—brilliant, absolutely amazing, business coach and breathwork teacher—were just exchanging messages about this. Like, it's very hard, as an intuitive person, as somebody who, you know, is a business owner, to make space and to not have anything in front of you in order to move into, in order to receive the thing that wants to come through. It's really, really intense. It's normal to want to kind of fill that space with something.
So what we're being invited to work with this week, what the point, what the medicine, and the message of Tethered One reversed is, essentially, it's a kind of a setting free.
[0:11:07]
And I want to go back to the Mercury Retrograde a little. Something that I can say very strongly is that with this card showing up this week in this position, there's a breaking of some kind of chain or bond that's been holding us a little bit, and, again, very subtle, very personal.
So with Mercury Retrograde, what typically goes on, because Mercury is a communicator, it's a mover, it transmits information, and has to do with all kinds of different exchanges. So when this planet is in retrograde on a larger scale, we hear about, like, disruptions and delays and technical difficulties. And like, all that is legit, and most of it is to sort of slow us and call us into a review, and, you know, make sure that we're really, like, connected (Lindsay laughs) to where we need to be, connected to. Or if there's more information, like just to pause a little bit and be more internal rather than external. Sometimes we don't get that luxury, but, you know, it depends on where we're at with it.
There has been a massive, energetic shift with Mercury going direct. So you may find—I heard from Spirit—where there were barriers and blocks and challenges and delays before, you may want to try again with touching into something or asking again, or just reminding someone, or that change you were trying to make, or that thing you were trying to do; just like touch into it a little bit and see. You may find that there's more freedom to move than there was before; that things move, that there's connections made in a much more easeful way now.
There's definitely been a completion of a cycle somewhere where there's going to be, this week, an opportunity to move things along, to clear something, to wrap something up. I'm seeing a lot of, like, closing of loops and gaps, so that we can get a little further through that spiral, through the spiral of the moment, whatever we happen to be working with, so that we can close the loop, close a gap. Definitely a time to do that right now, and it's not just because we're like, “Oh we’re in Autumn, closing cycle.” If that is connected, we don't necessarily know that it is, it's very much of the moment, to be sure. So it's, yeah, an opportunity to really, really move things, really move things along.
[0:13:48]
It's such a good reminder that when we think about the theme of this month of October—clearing the path and making space—that we have to do that internally, too, right? And that is, really, easier said than done (Lindsay laughs). Like, when old, you know, Tethered One and The Moon card, any Piscean, you know, connection that we touch in with, with a Tarot card, it can be very challenging because, depending on kind of what we're working with, because one of the biggest things about Piscean energy is that there's a lot of echoes. There's a lot of stuff that kind of feels like it could be, and it's not quite.
And honestly, there is sort of, this is a big armchair because, obviously, I'm not a therapist, I'm not a mental health professional. But to wildly oversimplify, there is kind of a tendency of the mind, of the brain, of the way we think, where the mind—my teacher, Michelle, used to speak about this, and I've certainly read, I've heard it from my therapist, I've, you know—the mind tends to have—Michelle puts it this way, “a very limited amount of, sort of, file folders in the filing cabinet for events in our lives.”
So when something pops up that kind of doesn't really have anything to do with the other thing over here, it can feel similar enough that it gets placed in a filing folder that it actually has nothing to do with, but feels like it does. If anyone here, my fellow sufferers of PTSD, like the experience of being back in something is, obviously, much larger psychological process, and it's very similar to the energy of Pisces. And again, that's not a description of a Pisces, and it's not all that Piscean energy does.
And it is sometimes an invitation to wade through those waters to get to the clarity of what's on the other side, which is to say that “This experience is unique and different; that, although it feels like I'm going backward in the spiral, I'm actually moving forward. I'm always moving forward; there's never a time when I'm not.”
That used to be, that idea of spiral used to be, immensely—and still is—comforting and nourishing to me as a trauma survivor, because, again, it can feel like, “Whoa, we're getting hurtled back into…” When I remember it, I'm never not moving forward on the spiral, and as similar and as kind of identical as this experience feels for me: it is different, it is unique, and it is its own.
So I say all of that, on that little tangent, to say that: pay attention this week, very closely, to where you might be getting down on yourself, feeling like, “Fuck, I'm like still going through this. I'm still dealing with this. I'm still snapping, I'm still losing my temper here. I'm just still not where I want to be.”
And, you know, and when moments come up, where that survival, that protector part of the mind comes up, and it's like, “Oh, fuck, you know, this thing happened. The last time something like this happened, that happened, and it was really bad and hard,” in those moments, it can be really, really helpful to move forward from the inner caretaker center, in terms of that sort of Internal Family Systems Model, and say, like, “How can I support you? How can I remind you that this isn't the same, that we're here, and it's safe to be here? It's okay.”
So some of the clearing of space that we're doing has to do with reminding ourselves, “Oh, this time is not like the other times. This time is not like last time. This is not. Even though it might look like a duck and talk like a duck, it's not the same. It can't be because we're further, we've grown, we've evolved no matter where we are.” So clearing of the internal realms, recognizing like, “Oh, I'm actually moving a lot faster and further than I was before/than I thought I was. Like how interesting. Okay, can I shift this in another direction?” Like, that's all sort of a part of where we're being guided right now of the next step in our journey in what we're being invited to pay attention to this week. It's a big one. It's a very, very big one.
[0:19:00]
And speaking of a very big one, I have an amazing question, a big question, from one of our listeners, Ryan, and I'm gonna dive into it now.
Ryan says:
Lindsay, I know you take the stance that cards reveal aspects of the self versus promising that a “tall, dark and handsome man is going to come into your life” just because you pull a King. But what about cards that come up in spreads where you are seeking insight into a relationship with a specific person? And what if they just don't seem right at all or go against your intuition?
In my case, specifically, I pulled the Queen of Cups upright in a position representing a female relative with whom I'm having trouble. (Okay, it's my mom) My mom has not reliably embodied the energy of this card, although the shadow and reversed aspects of it certainly track. It feels like my deck is gaslighting me, though it would never do that.
What do I make of this? Or should we retire this kind of relationship spread altogether because other real human beings contain multitudes, too, just as we do, and can't be boiled down to one card?
Beautiful, in-depth, complex, gorgeous question that I'm going to attempt to tackle. I love you, friends, for asking this. I love you for investigating. I love you for catching yourself in those stories, like “It feels like my deck is gaslighting me.” I don't think that's true, but feelings are valid, and, you know, like I feel this, you know? Like, I'm bowing to all those processes, and I feel honored to offer whatever I can to this, knowing that, of course, I may not get it right, and we may not agree, and I really think that's okay.
So, to kind of clarify my own stance, Ryan is right; that I do, in terms of how I teach Tarot and look to the Tarot—I do feel that the Tarot does not reliably—nor probably should it, ethically, but that's a whole other conversation—be an extension of the motives and thoughts and inner life of another person. Now, if that's where you've been, if you've read on other people, if you've tuned in about other people, I have, too. Let's acknowledge that, like, that's, you know?
And there are some folks to whom that might be a part of a closed practice that they have with the Tarot, where that is part of the ethics of their practice. I am not here to speak on everybody. And I also recognize that, for me, it just doesn't feel in alignment, and I think that there are some ethical questions about it that probably would be much better served to have there be some kind of, like, exchange about some folks sharing, like, where they're coming from and other people sharing where they're coming from.
The bottom line is this: the Tarot, it's very, very hard to have the Tarot, reliably and consistently, predict or clarify what another person feels, thinks, or wants, nor are we necessarily permissioned to check in about that without their consent and permission, right? And the Tarot really does a very poor job of predicting the future because there is no future; we're building the future in every moment. Right? And again, those are big themes like, destiny versus free will.
And I think the only place where Tarot really, for my money, shines and expands and blossoms and is really solid, sturdy, as a mirror, is in this moment. And that makes sense, because this moment is really all there is, and it is very powerful when reflected back to the self, because that is the only thing we know for sure. It's the only thing we can control. So that's really a huge part of Soul Tarot. So I think most people know that, but I just want to clarify Ryan's right, and sort of expand on it a bit. So I'll go through all of your kind of points, Ryan, here.
[0:23:40]
I want to start with one of your last questions, which is should we retire the kind of relationship spread that calls upon, questions, like, a position representing a female relative with whom I'm having trouble? I think it could—there could be more useful, helpful ways of framing those questions, right? I don't know what you define as trouble. You mentioned your mom, and I have a really rough relationship with my family (Lindsay laughs), but, yeah, tricky, you know?
It's, I think, I don't know that necessarily those spreads are the most useful, and I think there could be a case for retiring them. In that, I think that reframing the question might be a little bit more useful because I'm all about what's useful. And I'll talk a little bit about maybe other ways to reframe that question. But let's work with how to interpret that card in relationship to the question you asked, right? Let's work on that a little bit.
So Queen of Cups coming up around your relationship with your mom that feels troubling. Here are a couple of different ways that it could actually be coming up with really wonderful, solid, useful information for you that, again, you can take or leave. Okay, one, I don't know the kind of trouble that you're having. If Queen of Cups is representative of this family member of yours And I want to also say, for the record, I do not subscribe to the Court Cards, as a rule, being other people. Just want to put that out there. I think they're really expressions of our self.
We can't ultimately know another person. You absolutely name this, Ryan, that “human beings contain multitudes,” really cannot be boiled down to one card. And I think that everybody, whether they're a parental figure, identify as female, whatever that means to them, everyone has relationship with all of these Court Cards, and Queens are not necessarily cis-female. Like they're just not. They're not necessarily identified by any kind of identity, you know, like any kind of gender. They're not. They're off the binary (Lindsay laughs), you know, completely.
So, that being said, let's just say, right, if we remove that idea, is there something for you in looking at, number one: is there something useful for you in considering the issue of distance with your mom? Are there challenges with not taking the kind of space either you need or that she needs? Does she have difficulty with that? Do you have difficulty with that? Is it a boundary piece? Would you be served by taking a little space? Not cutting off contact, but would you be served, like, taking space before you check in with them? Could it also be that the Queen of Cups, maybe this is a message that the Queen of Cups is kind of trying to work with your mom, and that it's more challenging for your mom to take that invitation. That could be.
[0:28:07]
So let's work, let's think about the Queen of Cups here. If we remove the idea of this being about like, a representation of a person. Queen of Cups is an invitation to go to your cave, to go to the inner ocean, the shoreline within your spirit, and tune in with yourself, to give yourself space and time away in a real solid way. It often can come up when we're a little too enmeshed in relationship, when we're feeling like we don't have enough space, when we're feeling like oy, you know? People, it's scary to work with Queen of Cups.
We might, there might be a reason why we're getting really enmeshed with people. It could be we don't really want to be with what's going on inside our own mind. It could be that we're feeling a little worried about what could be there. It could be that there's kind of a, really, there's a kind of a long, overdue part of ourselves that we haven't really—I know this happens to me—where like, I don't pay attention to my inner kid for so long that they get explosively angry. And then I'm like, there's a lot of wounding to tend to about, like, them feeling kind of abandoned by me, you know? So it's like to turn toward them and take that Queen of Cups' space is challenging, right? Sometimes we're so away on the shoreline, that it's harder for us to come back and be with people.
[0:29:47]
I often use the archetypal symbology of—or mythology, I'm sorry, not symbology—of the selkie, the myth of the Selkie in Scottish lore to describe this, where we have a person who is both seal and woman or human. They're not all human, because they don't totally belong on land, they also belong in the ocean. They're totally meant to just be in the ocean, too.
And the myth of the selkie often involves the idea of—or certain selkie stories or selkie myths—have to do with a person being captured, their seal skin being sort of stowed away then, usually by a man or by a partner or by a husband, and then this person gives birth, has a child, now has a child that is a part of the land, but they're still called to the sea and like, how do they do both?
As a parent, that's a really big question for me, actually. I mean, no one is taking my sealskin away, but like, it's like, I am part seal, proverbially. We all are. Like, we all have desires and dreams and things that we want to tune in with, but we have children, too. And so it can be really hard. Now I'm not defending your mom, I don't have anything to defend, I don't know the situation here. It could be really, really difficult, and there could be a lot of challenge here.
What I am going to say, though, is that most likely—and I could be wrong. I could always be wrong. I'm often wrong. (Lindsay laughs) Most likely, Queen of Cups showing up in that position was for you. Whether or not that means that you are meant to work with Queen of Cups, it could be, it could be the Queen of Cups showed up there not as a representation of your mom, not revealing something about your mom, but calling you to take that space and tune in with what you think. It could be.
It doesn't necessarily mean that your mom is the Queen of Cups. It doesn't. It just simply doesn't. We don't know that. We cannot ever know another person; it's really hard to. I hate that (Lindsay laughs). I wish I could know other people, I really do. We can't. It’s just simply not the case. It could also be that this is an important part of your mom for you to consider, like, “Wow, maybe this is something that I'm meant to consider about them that I hadn't before.” It's hard for us to be objective about our parents. It could also be something your mom is being called to quite strongly and just isn't taking, like isn't taking the time to breathe or to be with whatever's going on.
Long story short, cards that come up in spreads where you're seeking insight into a relationship with a specific person, I believe, that no matter what spread we use, even if the prompt is like “the thoughts, intentions, and feelings about this into this other person,” the Tarot can't really give you that. It's just not possible, it's always gonna be for you. It's always going to be for you because we can't ever know another person. We just can't, and they are too complex to be captured in that particular experience or way, right, by a Tarot card, as magnificent as they are. And it's not that I'm claiming that other folks can't, again, beautifully intuit, if there is a sense of consent and permissioning, what's going on with another person, but I don't think we can ever reliably know this.
[0:33:59]
So what I would say is, some alternate questions to ask are: what am I being invited to know about my relationship with my mom at this moment? You are asking, “What am I being invited to know about this relationship?” You're not asking necessarily what your mom's feeling or thinking or doing. It's putting yourself back in the driver's seat. Also, listen to the wording of that question. As simple as that is, “what am I being invited to know?” You might not be invited to know everything you're asking specifically. Then you may ask, “What, if anything, am I being invited to do about the tension or the trouble or the difficulty about my role in my relationship with my mom?”
If you can reframe back to you, so let's just say, let's take that question. We're reframing it back to you. But let's take that question, “what, if anything, am I being led to do?” right? Let's say for that question, let's do a couple of examples, right? Let's say for that question, you have or you get Eight of Cups, right? Whew. Lots of different ways to look at that, “what, if anything, you're being invited to do?”
For some people, it could mean, literally, like, move away from the relationship for a minute. It could mean keep the good and leave what doesn't work. It could mean take some space away, take a little bit, take some boundaries, take a little bit of time. There are lots of different ways that we can interpret that card in relationship to our goings-on with another person. There's a lot of things to look at here.
You could have pulled the Emperor for it. It could mean like, be clear about your boundaries, be clear about what you're available to accept or receive or not receive. It could be, you know, who knows, right? Those are two examples that mentioned I would do a couple, but you get it, you know.
[0:36:12]
If you can shift it a little bit away from just like, “what's a card for another person” we don't really, there's no specifics there. We don't really know what that means. So again, we're getting into the weeds. This is more like Tarot lesson-ry, but, like anything, it's worth it. It's valid, right?
So your mom not “reliably embodying the energy of this card, but the shadow and reverse aspects of it certainly track,” possible, absolutely. If you see that, I honor it. Your work with this card might be different than mine or another person. So if it makes sense to you, I think that's great.
What does a Queen of Cups person mean to you? I would say, like, let's be a little bit more holographic about that. I would say that of all the cards, of all the Courts. If I were to think of a primary essence for myself, it would be Queen of Cups. I still get pissy and angry, I still have, really, a hard time, like, believing in myself. I don't really feel that I possess some regal other worldly, distant, deep quality. In fact, I would say I'm more on the opposite end (Lindsay laughs), very reliably.
So what does that mean to you? Like, can we widen the box of what's possible here? If you think, “Well, my mom doesn't, like, take space. My mom's not self reflective. My mom's not quiet,” could it be that that card is knocking at your mom's door? Could it be that this is important for you to work with in order to see your mom more clearly? Because really, again, there's very little that we can know about someone. Right?
So those are all kinds of different ways that we can reframe it, work with it, think about it a little differently. I don't—I agree with you—I don't think Tarot is capable of gaslighting us. Although I hear you. Like, you are very clear, like, “This does not represent my mom, as I know her to be, at all,” right. But it could be that it is an invitation for you in working with your mom, in engaging with your mom, in communicating with your mom. In fact, I would bet money on the fact that it is, because there is no circumstance in which the Tarot is not always just—it’s like shoots growing out of concrete. There is no circumstance where the Tarot is not reaching out to connect with some part of us trying to help as a mirror as medicine for us. So this might be for you. It might be for you. It might be that you both need space. You're the only one that you can control, right? So how can you take this? Right?
And also, I think you landed on a beautiful note: other human beings contain multitudes, too. So it could be that this is some beautiful aspect of your mom's soul self, shining back to you, underneath all of the complexity, trouble, difficulty, you know, maybe problematic behavior. Again, I don't know. I'm not reading for you at all, and I'm not tuning in about any of it. So I don't know. But I think, absolutely, this could be a reflection that's important. Right?
[0:40:04]
So what I would say to anyone listening to this—and specifically to you, Ryan—is that should we retire relationship spreads? I mean, I don't know. I think if like, like, yeah? (Lindsay laughs) Like, yeah, only because I don't really think they're very helpful. You know, maybe for some they really are, and to that, I say yes, like, absolutely. That's why I think it's tricky, because, gosh, there's just so many different ways to approach what might not feel or be ethical or acceptable for some, is very acceptable and ethical to others. And it's not just the broad range of a moral compass. It could be like, because of our ancestral lineage, because of inherited skills, because of a reclaiming of something ancestral that we do have a hand on that doorknob that other people don't, where some of us just aren't meant to do it. Right? We're just not meant to do it.
And again, this is so permissioned, this idea of, like, reading on other people and thinking about what other people—like, again, I've done it, and I certainly wish I hadn't done it. It was way before I started to connect a little bit more about the ethics and what was in line with my personal values. And some readers were way ahead of me, where they were like, “I've never done that,” or like, “I knew a long time ago not to do that.” To that, I say that's amazing. And I bow to you as someone to learn from, right? We're all… I don't want anyone to feel ashamed. You know, and I don't want anyone to feel like there's anything wrong with doing relationship spreads. I do think though, if you're going to do them, remember that the person making the spread is also a person. They might not be thinking too deeply about it, it's hard to think deeply about things. This is very entrenched into, like, sort of the fabric of Tarot that like, “Oh, we're gonna sense into this and that.”
So not to go off on a whole thing, but I do think the TL;DR of it is: I think this card has more to do with what the medicine is for you than it has to do with your mom. I think that if it has to do with your mom, there are a couple things that I've mentioned that could maybe, maybe, maybe reframe a different way to think about it. If it doesn't serve, throw it away. Keep thinking about it, because you might get to something.
And also, when you see a spread and you think like, “Ooh, that seems like a very limited, kind of weird question,” change it. I do that shit all the time and do whatever I want to do, you know? We're not bound to do a spread, you know, the way someone—we’re allowed to shift it for personal practice. I think that's okay.
I loved this question, Ryan. I loved your thoughtfulness. I loved your curiosity. I love the depth. I love the spirit of the student in you. I still have that, too. That's like, “Whoa, like, what is this?” kind of weighing out all the different complexities. It's perfect, kind of Piscean, it's a perfect, Piscean compliment, you know, feeling yourself be like, “I feel gaslit by this card,” which again, is, like, legitimate, and then being like, “but I'm willing to question that, I'm willing to think about that a little bit.” Like, that's all beautiful work with this kind of swirliness.
I would love to hear back from you, Ryan. How does this land with you? What did it bring forward? What did it bring up? Maybe I'll share your response, if you have one, on the pod. And if you want to dig deeper into it with me, meaning, like if you have a follow up or something. Maybe we could talk about it next week, or, if and when you feel like writing back again. You don't need to write me back, if you don't want to (Lindsay laughs). So yeah, I hope that helped. I'm really happy to, again, I'm honored to have taken a crack at this question.
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[Conclusion]
[0:44:08]
Thank you all. If you have any questions like this, anything that came up for you in a reading, any kind of anything, shoot it over to me at Ask Lindsay, you know? The link is in the show notes, always there for you. I think that's it. I love all of you so much.
Kind of last thing: I have a new offering coming out in the next week or so, so just, like, be on the lookout about that. I'm not gonna share too much about it. There might be scholarships for it. I'm pretty sure there will be. I'll share a little bit more next week. Just know that, yeah, there's some new stuff coming out, and a lot of new stuff coming out around the holiday season. So yeah, I'm excited to share more. Eyes and ears peeled for that. And yeah, just thank you so much all of you for being here. I'm excited to connect next week. Until that time, please take exquisite care of yourselves.