204. Soul Tarot Q&A with Lindsay!
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Today on the pod, Lindsay answers some of your amazing questions, ranging from ways to differentiate between three cards that all feel similar, how to ethically read for other people from a Soul Tarot framework, and how to interpret strong cards showing up in a position of release in a reading.
Air date:
November 25, 2022
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About the Episode
Links:
LINKS FOR INDIGINOUS SOLIDARITY AND REPARATION:
Educational Resources:
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/land-back-a-necessary-act-of-reparations/
https://resourcegeneration.org/land-reparations-indigenous-solidarity-action-guide/
https://www.instagram.com/p/ClCcEPEyFKv/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link*
Donations & Reparations:
https://linktr.ee/lilnativeboy
https://socialjusticefund.org*
https://www.naha-inc.org/programs/food/*
*A special thank you to Valerie Cochran for introducing these resources to me!
LINDSAY'S LINKS:
Download your free Ultimate Soul Tarot Card Guide here!
Check out our 2022 Wild Soul Holiday Bundle + Early Bird Offerings!
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: colonialism and ancestral & land-based trauma
The content in this episode contains references to mentions of colonialism and ancestral & land-based trauma. We have done our best to identify difficult subject matter, but the labels may not be comprehensive for your personal needs. Please honor your knowing and proceed with necessary self-awareness and care.
Transcript
[Introduction]
[0:00:00]
—
(Instrumental intro music)
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.
Hello, loves, and welcome back to the podcast. So wonderful to be gathered here with all of you in this virtual space. We have a slightly different episode today, and I think a lovely one, an unexpected one. I think it's always nice to shake things up a bit. This is a Soul Tarot Q&A episode, where I'm just going to answer a series of some questions of the many questions I receive that I selected for this episode, mainly because I think they're… All of the questions that y'all send in are extraordinary. I thought that this was a nice variety of different things, and I think they're just wonderful questions for folks at all levels and all experience…you know, at all places of experience in their Tarot journey, whether you read for other people or not. I think it'll be really useful.
And then next week, we'll have our Monthly Medicine episode for December, and then we're really diving in deep as we sort of prepare to welcome the new year. So this is a little bit of a nice breather, I hope. And again, a little bit of a fun change of pace, if a Q&A episode on a Tarot podcast is what you would call fun (Lindsay laughs). I guess I would but, all right, I'm just gonna dive in.
[00:01:47]
This first one is from Anonymous. So Anonymous asks,
Hello, Lindsay. I discovered Tarot as a personal practice solely through your teachings, and it has been a deeply intuitive and supportive practice for me over the past few years.
I'm so glad to hear that, Anonymous.
I’ve begun to share here and there with trusted friends what I discover and how I feel nurtured by the Tarot, and a close friend has asked that I read for them. I'm honestly unsure how to go forward. I would love to introduce them to the practice, but have no idea how to read for someone else. I'm in the profession of soul care and know how to intuitively hold space for another's journey, so there is a foundation of being present in an honoring way as someone else discovers their inner voice and leading. Do you have advice for someone learning Soul Tarot how to ethically hold space for someone who is asking that I read for them? I would love for them to gain some insight through the Tarot and…and they clearly want that, too. Thank you so much.
Oh, man, such a great question. And I think for a million reasons, this is such an important question. It's not only great; I think it's crucial. Because there's such a fine line between what I think is really a helping reading experience, and another kind of reading experience that can really be… I don't want to use the word “rob”, but can sort of take some agency from another person, or if there's not even an awareness of ethics and of honoring of sovereignty and of the power dynamic inside of a Tarot reading and… There's a lot of heavy damage that can get done. There's a lot of harm that can be caused. And I mean, I want to just state for the record that I know that I look back and have thought, “Oh my gosh, I would never say that now (Lindsay laughs). I would never do that now.” And during those moments, I really genuinely thought I was being helpful. I didn't know any better.
[00:04:09]
So I just want to say that in speaking about this, if you have never thought about this, if you have never thought of these questions, if you've never even been like, “Oh, there's like… What does that mean?” Like, you know? Know that I don't want you to feel alone in that. That I think we're constantly, as Tarot readers, have to be in a process of devotion, continual repair, continual evolution, and acknowledging like, “Wow, I didn't know this. Now I do. I'm going to do better,” you know. And I think in a paradigm where the power structure is like, “I have this deck. I'm reading these cards on you and for you,” finding the ethics in that, finding the…staying very closely tethered to the desire to allow the client, the person you're reading for, the querent to remain seated in their power is essential and is challenging.
I think sometimes even because of the expectations of the querent. I know a lot… I've read for so many people, and I'm not… This is not a dig on anybody, but I've read for so many people who will come to me and put, lay something at my feet that I think, “This is way outside of my scope of practice. This is way outside. Like, this person needs intervention, or support, or professional care.” And I have always done the best I could to say, “I don't know that I can…I'm really the person to help you with this. But I would recommend these resources.” And sometimes it's not so dire. Sometimes it's literally like just someone coming in and essentially saying, “Tell me what to do.” And that's very hard when you are reading Tarot, when the expectation is that this is what Tarot does. Outside of maybe, I'm imagining, a kind of a closed practice that someone might be leaning into that is really deeply connected to helping someone cast a path forward.
For me–and I understand that this is the root of your question–in terms of Soul Tarot, that's not the way I teach. So how does one do that? So, here's what I would say. Here's what I would offer, is that even when we get an intuitive hit that's very strong for a client, everything inside of Soul Tarot–not as a hard and fast or fixed rule, but as a really soft structure–it's all an invitation. So what I liked to do when I was reading, and what… If I ever do give the occasional reading for someone that I love, I will say to them explicitly, “This reading is an invitation. It's what I, as a very imperfect filter and channel, a humble channel, I’m getting for you today. In this moment as we're together, how I'm receiving your guides. In my humanness, this is what I'm getting. I really want you to know this is a collaboration, and you are 100% free to take or leave anything I say. I'm not bringing anything to you, I promise you, that you couldn't receive yourself.”
[00:08:09]
So what I've always liked to do with my readings, with Soul Tarot readings in general, the reason that Soul Tarot is a utilization of the Tarot kind of on purpose to help to delineate the truth of the soul, which is generally a whisper from the real noise of the mind. The reason why I think my readings and my style of reading can be a balm and can be really useful for some people… And I promise I'm not tooting my own horn, but I just…because it's not mine, necessarily. It's the Universe's (Lindsay laughs). You know, it's… Just how it makes sense to me is I think that that's all I'm doing, is I know this person… When I feel like I really land it is when this person already knows what I'm inviting them to consider, or they…or it was something that maybe they couldn't believe because it was too good, or too hopeful. Or they were…needed someone to maybe invite them to consider something that they had sort of thought for a little while but didn't want to face, and now they're facing it.
And again, they can take it or leave it. I'm not dismissing responsibility for my role in inviting someone into something, but I think the first part is, again, naming that this entire reading is something that they can throw in the garbage if they want to. That I'm a person. I'm not above them. I'm not better. I'm not higher. I don't know anything they don't know. I'm working with a set of archetypes, and opening my channel to whatever benevolent guidance might be useful to them in the moment. They might hate it, they might love it, they might walk out feeling like, “What a waste of money,” right? And that's experience. And it's okay if people don't like it. It's okay if people do. It's okay if they're neutral.
And obviously, I'm not dismissing like, if someone doesn't like your reading, if it was harmful, if they really feel like, “Wow, this felt like, you know, this is something that I want someone to know for the future. This is like, I walked out and did not feel great, or moved away from the reading and really felt like there was harm.” Obviously, we want to know about that so that we can repair, or we can learn, we can shift, do better, pause, whatever.
[00:11:00]
So that's digressing and moving all over the place. But that's the first part is I, like, when I offered readings and occasionally when I do, I am explicit about that. I just say, “You’re free… We're on the same page here, (Lindsay laughs) like… And I get to be… I get to have the privilege of being an objective eye looking through the lens of the Tarot to maybe be of service, to clear and clarify certain things that might not be clear from where you are, because of our own experience being inside our life.”
So I used to say that in my…in the verbiage around my offering. Like on my website, it used to be like, “Here is what these readings are about, and here is the kind of experience that you can expect.” And I used to very, like, lightly say it to people before I read for them. Because a lot of folks, when you read Tarot for them, have a pretty high expectation of like, again, “You're going to tell me what to do. You're going to be like a brilliant, unbelievable cold reading psychic.” And that is not my gift at all, and bowing to all of you who do that. I think that's beautiful; it's just not my gift. It's not what I do. And it might not be what you do.
So being really clear about what you do offer and how you do hold a space I think is wonderful. Then when I move through a reading–all readings are different, but in general–how I frame the cards are literally, “Okay, so the first reading…you know, the first card you got in this reading is Temperance.” And then, you know, from there, it might change. And usually, I do get some kind of weaving of song for someone. Not literal song, but just whatever might be coming through from their team. It's always presented in, “There is an invitation here for you.” And I want to land this in a way that I think is very important. And this is… I'm going to say this. Again, knowing that I am a person and, like, I take my role of advice giving very seriously because I get things wrong all the time, and I am learning.
[00:13:28]
I do think it's very important to say that looking to the Tarot as an invitation is one of the main tenets of Soul Tarot, because Tarot is an invitation. No card can tell you what to do. No card is a symbol of what's gonna be, as a rule. Everything is flexible. Everything is spiralic. So it's just an invitation. Folks are free to take it or leave it. And that's where we get the idea in Soul Tarot is each card being medicine. If someone gets The Tower, and underneath The Tower as a support card is, like, Nine of Pentacles, we might say, “You're moving through a Tower experience right now, and that can be very brutal.” You know, I'm speaking to you. This wouldn't be what I would say to the client. But we know that The Tower can be many shades. It can be way up in the higher registers, very, very light, very soft. And it can be crushing, crashing, absolutely, like, unearthing the whole house and tossing it into the woods. Like there is no Tower anymore; everything's been sort of razed.
When I see Nine of Pentacles there, what I would take that… Look, if I was reading for myself, if I was giving myself a reading, I might see The Tower and I might think “Okay, that helps me to maybe contextualize a couple different things that are going on in my life. It helps me to deepen my understanding. Now what do I know about Tower?” I'd apply that. Then if I saw Nine of Pentacles, I would say, “Okay, I'm being invited, maybe, in the midst of all this Tower nonsense to perhaps focus my attention, not as toxic positivity, but on what actually brings me pleasure in the midst of all of this Tower-ness,” right? That's an invitation. It's all an invitation, right? We can just say, like, “This is just here as something. You don't have to take it. You know, you can leave it behind. You can… It'll be here for you, if you want to.”
The reason why I want to kind of…a moment or two ago, I was like, “I really want to land this in this space,” I say all this to come back to that point. Guides, angels, Source, whatever you believe in, whomever you speak with, whomever you are guided by, they do not command. They don't demand. They don't tell us we have to do something. They are advocates on behalf of our soul, yes and no. They help to say, “This is what's in your highest and best good. This is a yes. This is a no.” They don't tell us that we have to do anything. Our spirit team invites us. They don't demand of us.
So by pitching our reading, linking our reading to that kind of idea, it's really just aligning it with guides anyway. It is an invitation. We can take it or leave it. How many times have we done that? That we've sort of absolutely known, like in our gut, “This is a no for me,” and we've, like, proceeded anyway. There are times when life will physically bar us from one thing or another, and we'll look back and think, “Whoa.” And then there are other times where we have to bust through and move through that whole prickly path, and then look back and say, “Wow, it was really, really hard. I don't want to do that again,” or “It was really hard, but I had to do it that way,” or whatever it might be.
[00:17:11]
That, I think, is the root system of how we can ethically attempt to hold a space for our clients when we read Soul Tarot for them, is to clarify what it is that we do, what it is that we're doing to hold space for them saying, “Hey. Well, I wanted this.” And you can… I’ve had to do that so many times. I want you to know it's not an idea for me. This is a lived practice. I have had more people sit across from me and be like, “I thought you were going to, like, be a real psychic.” (Lindsay laughs) And I’m like, “Eh, I'm sorry to disappoint you. I'm not here to tell you what to do. And if you're putting that kind of responsibility into anyone's hands but your own, I think there's probably more to look at there,” right?
I want you to…I want everybody to know. Like, I know a lot of folks that I've taught and held space for have a lot of deep wounds about that, as though someone saying like, “I thought you were gonna, like, be a real psychic,” is some sort of insult to the testament and the depth of their intuition. And like, we all have different gifts and skills. It's okay. And it's all right that they don't necessarily know the difference. It can be challenging, it can be tough, it can be painful. It doesn't have to put you off of what you do with the Tarot. So, naming really clearly what we do. And if they want to go elsewhere, you're not for them. That's great, so okay.
And then after that, every single card is just an invitation into something to pay attention to whatever. I'm working on something right now for 2023, a little bit later into 2023, that's pretty much like exactly what you asked, which is like how to give readings to other people, and how to kind of tend and hold the space. So this is a lovely question that is sparking and inspiring lots of different things for me.
So yeah, those are kind of the two, I'd say, bolsters inside of the answer to your question is like, naming, with great humility, what you do and how you do it, and the kind of space you hold. And then really broadening it, pulling cards and just again, with that kind of deep service in mind, just saying, “This is what I'm getting for you as an invitation.” You don't have to tell anyone what to do. You don't have to tell anyone anything. It's really just, what are they being invited to offer and devote their attention to? You can pause and say, “Is this resonating with you? Is there anything coming up that you feel like is important to land in this space?” Leaving space for that is great. You know, I think all that's beautiful.
[00:20:12]
So I think it's a constantly evolving answer to a really important question, but that's what I've got so far, and hopefully that serves. Thank you for asking it. Okay. On to our second question: Justine. This is from Justine and they ask,
Hi, Lindsay. First of all, thank you for sharing your gifts. I've applied so much of your teachings to my everyday life and approach to Tarot. You’ve been a guiding light during many cycles of being in the void. Love you.
Aw, I love you, too.
My question is around receiving certain cards that I've related to generating energies for prompts related to clearing and releasing. For example, receiving Temperance, or Eight of Wands, or Strength, or The Empress for “What am I being invited to clear and release?” Am I invited to release the qualities of that card? Thank you so much.
Great question, Justine. This is a question I feel like I've answered a couple times, and I've covered in my courses and certainly on this podcast before, but I always think it bears repeating. It's one of the more common questions I get, which is like… And I'm sort of moving a little bit away from Justine's question in order to sort of loop back to it. But what if you get a “good card'' in the position of what you're releasing? Are you releasing a good card? Like, why would you? Like, what does that mean? And the way, Justine, you put it, which I think is beautiful, is relating certain cards to generating energy. How do you kind of square a card that's about generating energy that you're being invited to release, right?
[00:21:58]
So I'd love to offer a couple of examples that hopefully will help to clarify it. When we release a card, we're not letting go of the card itself. It usually has to do with an angle of the card. And I often find that it can be about a resistance or something around the card that's really important to look at. When we have gigantically open-ended questions like “What am I releasing?” or “What am I pulling closer to myself?”, the answers are very rarely kind of concise. Like, the answers can't possibly match that. And I really want you to think about, like, the last time you let go of something. Did you really have all that much control over how you let go of it? Was it a cut-and-dried thing? Was it that you fired someone and then never had a back and forth, never had a post mortem, never repaired, never clarified, never grieved? Think about your last breakup. Think about letting go of…
Like, it's a wildly (Lindsay laughs) complex thing, to let go. And it's very rarely something that we're doing completely, concretely just us. Usually, we…something is letting go of us. Usually, like let's just say, we are transitioning, maybe letting go of an old way of working. Like, we used to host massive retreats in person, and now we're moving to more of an online space. Letting go for one person might look like, “Thank fucking God. I'm so tired of organizing, and holding all the different energies, and the money. And like, I'm so… Like, thank God, thank God, thank God. Like, thank you, thank you, thank you for the simplification. Now I can charge differently. Like, thank you. Thank you.” For another person, it might be profound grief, like, “Oh my gosh, I'm letting go of something. I want to gather in-person.” Like, it's… And there might be a million reasons why we might be letting go of in-person in favor of virtual, or vice versa. We might be letting go virtual in favor of in-person. And what does that mean? What does that look like for us?
So there's a million ways of… And I can't help it. Like, I have to go into the heart of the question because it's not so simple as like, “What am I letting go of?” You know? So I want to reframe the prompt “What am I releasing? What am I letting go of?” And the next time we engage with that kind of question, I want for you to think about it like a season of the year slipping away in favor of another one kind of coming in very elegantly, and very naturally, very organically. Fall giving way to winter. Just the day is becoming colder, the leaves, the trees becoming more bare as the wind sweeps away more leaves. Like, there's nothing we have to do.
[00:25:46]
So, let's say in the spirit of that, we got The Empress, right? There's a couple different ways that I might think about The Empress showing up in the position of release. Are we releasing some of our stuff, some of our hangups, some of our resistance, some of our stories of deservability around fully being in connection with The Empress? I know that that's been something that has been up my ass since I've had my child, is like, I don't know how to receive at all (Lindsay laughs). Like I… You know, I thought I was like, kind of okay at it. I'm terrible at receiving. Terrible. And it's been pretty, like, crucial for me to actually, like, acknowledge that I'm not great at it, and open to deeper care, and support, and receiving.
So is that part of what we're letting go of? Is the fact that The Empress is sort of letting go of us mean that we're actually letting go of some of our old, preconceived notions about this card, or about what it means to us? Does it mean that we are moving away with The Empress wrapped up in our heart? That it's not that we're letting go of this card; we're just making space for something different? You know, there's lots of different ways to contextualize that. I also think a huge question whenever we look at what we're releasing is like, well, what are we moving into? And why might a card like Strength, or The Empress, or Eight of Wands be in that position of release? Usually, what we're receiving can tell the full story about maybe what's going on.
So the other thing that… So hopefully, that helps. It's usually, I find, letting go of some sort of hangup around the card, or we are being invited to… Or it's just a shift of the season of our lives. Like, if we're in a big, big Empress time where kinda, we are getting our ass kicked about where we kind of have little patches of insecurity or difficulty with receiving, with opening to pleasure, with really radically saying yes to that kind of nourishment and nurturing, and we're moving into like, you know, The World, that would tell me that whatever we're doing with The Empress is really serving to move us out of a huge cycle of life; one that is really a pretty essential ingredient to moving into the next cycle that we're going through.
The last thing that I would say, just as the most gentle… Like, this is the literal most gentle invitation to you, Justine. I would just invite you to get curious about categorizing cards like some that can… Like certain cards being generating or not. I don't think there's anything wrong with it but (Lindsay sighs)… And it's just one of those annoying things about the way–and I totally acknowledge it can be annoying–it's just one of those annoying things about the way that I teach. Where I think that probably one of the most important things we do as readers is to just–and I have to do this all the time in my own practice, so know that I’m holding myself to the same questions and same curiosities as I'm inviting you to consider–but just thinking about like, “What are my preconceived notions of the Tarot? What if, like, The Empress wasn't regenerating? What if it just… What if it was something different today? What if it was not that way? What if Eight of Wands was slightly different? And what if my way of categorizing this card is actually inadvertently blocking me from seeing all that it can be? From seeing how it can be exhausting? From seeing how it could invite me into different work than maybe I'm imagining.”
[00:30:49]
I have to say, my experience with…and, I mean, this is one of the beautiful things about the Tarot is that all of us are right, right? (Lindsay laughs) Like, we're all supposed to see and relate to it differently. But just as a, merely just a way of being neutral and playing devil's advocate, I just want to put forward that I find that for myself, Eight of Wands can be exhausting because it pulls on me to surrender and to open to something kind of invisible. And so there's a lot of tension that it can bring up in me because I think, “Can I trust this? Is it, like, magical thinking? Is this just like manifestation ideas, or am I really like…” You know, it's hard. Like, Eight of Wands is like something's on its way. That's really challenging to do work around.
Like, the idea of the eight Wands themselves coming forward is beautiful, if we can hold to that. But I think what really winds up happening is that it can trigger all of us, that idea of like, things that we've kind of worked to set in motion for a really long time are now sort of on their way, in their way. So how do we make space for those things? Oh my God, it can bring up all the things. So to let go of a card like that might mean that the eight Wands, whatever they are, are actually going to show up on your doorstep, rather than just be kind of in the air, you know, soaring toward you, rather than here, right? It's a massive process of trust; one that transforms us, hence the Eight. Because Eights are a transformation that we show up in them one way, and we leave them changed.
So just that again, I think the way that you've categorized those cards, and the question that you're asking is not only on point, but excellent. And like, I'm so grateful you asked. It's perfect all the way around. Just, you know, maybe I wouldn't be doing my due dilly unless (Lindsay laughs) I invited you to just leave a little bit of a space for these cards to not be regenerating, and just see maybe what happens when they can be anything. You know, they can be exhausting, or, you know, regenerating, or something totally different.
[00:33:29]
So I hope that helps. Yeah, just… I use this prompt all the time in my readings. So I think this is like something, I feel it's like we have to sort of really widen our thinking when it pertains, as it pertains to the idea of, like, what we’re releasing, and what that actually means, and how we can open to deeper, richer complexity with the cards we pull there, because the question itself is really quite rich and complex as well. But again, I'm very grateful that you asked. Thank you.
And our last question is from Kelly. And Kelly asks,
I've pulled Nine of Pentacles as an anchor, and I'm having some trouble with it. Traditionally, it looks very similar to the Seven and Eight of Pentacles: hard work/reaping rewards. Can you share some thoughts on the differences in these cards?
I would be honored. I loved this question because I think… All three of these questions really illustrate, I think, questions that are so… And I applaud these listeners for sending in these questions, because I think what they're putting language to is something that so many folks struggle with, and I think they think they're alone in it. And I chose these not only because they're excellent, well-crafted questions, and they deserve… I wish I could give all questions that are asked this kind of attention. Maybe one day I'll be able to. But also because I think they apply to so many folks.
And I know so many folks ask me, or are like, “What the fuck? What is the difference between, like, this card and that card?” And another person might think, “Of course I know the difference between this card and that card,” but that person might be like, “but I don't know the difference between, you know, this one and that one.” So it can be really challenging to sense into the fine differences between these cards. And I also want to just normalize, and advocate and, like, bow to where we all are. That as somebody who's been reading Tarot for like, now I think we're going on… How old am I? Oh, my God. (Lindsay sighs) I don't even remember but… I can't do math right now. It's simply too early. But way… More than 25 years. It takes a lot of time to sense into, even beyond what you can language, the differences between certain cards that feel on paper very similar, or look very similar. Right? So I just want to again, like, really normalize this and applaud you for asking about it, and know that you're not alone.
[00:36:36]
Okay, so let's really break down Seven, Eight, and Nine of Pentacles in a bit more of a granular way, and explore the difference between all of them. And in order to do that, I have to back up and just give us all a primer about the Pentacles in the framework of Soul Tarot. In Soul Tarot, the Pentacles is the suit that helps and assists us with what it means to actually put soul work out into the world. “Lindsay, what is soul work? What does that look like?” I'll tell you. When the ego, when the brain is driving the car… There's nothing wrong with the brain and there's nothing wrong with the ego, unless they are maybe more inappropriately in charge. Ego and the brain are perfect at keeping us alive, keeping us safe in moments of danger, absolutely in critical thoughtfulness, in deducing things. They are essential. Essential.
And then there are times when they're really just simply not the best navigation system for a particular thing. If we absolutely know that it is an alignment for us, that we are feeling a big call to leap in some way, to move away from a relationship that maybe looks so good on paper, but we're just simply not in love anymore, we don't want to be in that relationship anymore. When we have a job offer, we have something that's calling us, but it kind of makes no sense on paper, and obviously, is not actively causing harm. It's not going to endanger ourselves or others. It's just unexpected. It's not like “the thing to do”. That's when the soul pipes up and starts to really whisper, and starts to really call us towards something. And when we move through something like that, the brain tends to get very protective, and will call us into all kinds of different things to try to get us to avoid doing the thing that is unknown, unfamiliar, etc.
If you have ever struggled with this process–because I certainly know I have–around trusting your soul “Yes” when the brain is, like, screaming at you (Lindsay laughs) to try to, like, not get you to do something… And just to say that every important, amazing thing that I have ever done, my brain has absolutely told me would ruin my life. And everything that has been kind of shitty for me, my brain has absolutely been like, “This is the right thing to do.” (Lindsay laughs) So like, every time. And I'm not saying that's everyone. I just want to say that's me. And I think that's… You know, I'm probably not alone in it. But… Maybe not every time for everybody, but that's my brain.
So okay, I share all this because the Pentacles show us what it is to nurture a seed of soul longing. Every one of those cards show us the way. It starts as a seed in the Ace. We nurture it with our devotion, our devotional discernment in the Two. We learn about what it is to sort of keep our eyes on our own paper, and do the work that we're meant to do now without comparing and being like, “Well, that person's over here, that person’s over there,” in the Three. The Four is about the importance of boundaries, of energetic boundaries, of taking space. The Five is like, I think, a massive range of things, but basically like, “What if this dream, what if this vision does not support my survival? What if I don't have what I need to survive? What if my vision… What if I can't complete the book on time? What if I can't… What if no one wants it?” Right? Massive questions that everybody has, no matter where you're at, right?
[00:41:01]
The Six of Pentacles: once we've moved through that, what is it to be in right relationship with the exchange of this offering? What is it to offer reparation? What is it to give where maybe we weren't able to receive? In other words, if we struggled through our process and got ourselves to a place where, like, we have a little bit more to share, what is it to help someone who is where we were? What is it to be like, “I still don't have what I need, and can I receive, like, guidance, mentorship, support, funds?” Like, what is it to recognize what it is to…that exchange, that reciprocity through advice, through caretaking, through money, like whatever it is, right?
The Seven is crucial. Sevens in the Tarot have to do with us believing essentially… This is the breakdown of The Sevens is that if we're believing like, “Oh, all of my worries, concerns, issues, problems would be solved if this external thing happened because then I would get relief,” we're in a Seven. Because The Sevens are going to come and they're going to say, “This thing could happen no matter what. You have to deal with the underlying thing that's going on internally, that's causing you to have distress or anxiety about XYZ.” Are there things in life where like, they’re so distressing that like, yeah, you would have immediate relief if you just heard this test result is x, y, or z? Or if you got a phone call confirming something? Or if you got news on whatever? 100%. In those circumstances, though, I don't think you'd get a Seven.
So if we're believing like, “Well, if, you know, if I could just get a fucking answer on this, I'd be able to, you know, whatever. If my…or if this happened, or if this person gave me the…” you know, whatever. You get it. The Seven of Pentacles has to do with, basically it says, “In the journey of channeling what it is that you're being called to channel, you cannot rush it.” You cannot rush it.
As someone… I'm pivoting more into my voice—Lindsay—as somebody who does everything from a soul-led place, this is the hardest, most infuriating part of living a soul-led life. It's completely unsexy. It does not in any way, shape, or form fit the profile of like, Instagram ready–and God bless them, I'm just not one of those folks–Instagram ready people being like, “I'm guided with everything I do.” I would kill to (Lindsay laughs)… Like, I can't. I never know what the fuck I'm doing until it comes through. And there are a lot of feelings that can come up, like, “Oh my God, I have people, like, waiting for me. I’ve got to get this transcribed in time, and we're like a week away.”
[00:44:20]
And that's Seven of Pentacles. It's you have to wait until something is ready to be picked. If you pick something too early, in my experience, you’re just going to have to redo the whole thing. If you wait until something is at peak ripeness… Typically in the journey that you go on from the timeline your brain, or your mind, or your self thinks, and sometimes totally rationally, the process you go through, what that process brings up and forward, “I should have this. Why isn't this coming?” Whatever. All that stuff, it brings up some very important things. It can tend to uproot certain things. It can bring up heavy emotions. It can… Things that a lot of time, in my experience, have to be unearthed in order for us to move into the next process.
So Seven of Pentacles is a process where we feel like, “I'm ready to go,” but Spirit, Soul, whatever it is that we're channeling down, whatever it is that we're pursuing or working on is saying, “For one reason or another, it's not quite ready yet.” So between your belief that you're ready and the thing itself not being ready, what do you work on? The Seven is going to draw you to exactly what you need to work on in order to be ready for the thing that you're moving closer to.
The Eight of Pentacles is when that thing is ready, it lets you know it's not so simple. It's not some big, romantic, lovely, you know, gorgeous sunset where everything comes through, and it's perfectly packaged. It's usually we move a little to spiral process one. That's hard work, you know. We're refining over time. We do one thing that helps us to understand this, and then we understand that, and then we can channel down the next thing, and the next thing. It's a slow process of transformation through experimentation, through experience, through actually trying something, right?
Think about anything in life. Anything. We've got to do it for a while before we get to a point where we're saying like, “Oh, yeah. Okay, I do understand that.” No, we don't want to do that. We want to skip past all that shit. So it's about, the Eight of Pentacles is about once that soul fruit is ready to be picked, what is the process, the medicine in saying, “Okay, I'm going to make this jam with this fruit, and then I'm going to make the jam again, and then I'm going to make the jam again, and again, and again.” Eventually, you're going to get to a point where you know it so intimately that maybe you add different things to it, maybe you get even more proficient in different ways. But it’s a slow building of mastery through experience, right?
[00:47:35]
Now, the Nine of Pentacles. We get to this point in The Nine, and it's a very different invitation than the other ones. This is essentially saying, “You're making all this soul jam (Lindsay laughs), soul marmalade for everybody. Are you enjoying that?” It's a crucial question. Everyone may like what you do. Are you enjoying it? Are you pausing to say, “Ah, I’m so grateful for the connections that this work has brought me”? If you're running a community garden, like you could be quite literally doing this work if you're in permaculture, if you are running, you know, any kind of exchange. Who you're meeting, how that food nourishes people, touches people, how you all come together to work on or help the land, the soil, redistribute that food, you know, like all of that is Nine of Pentacles essentially. Because it says, “When you bake your bread and make your soup, are you saving a bowl and some warm bread for yourself?”
Because there's no way that we can continue that work unless we're getting nourished too. That’s Six of Pentacles as well. There has to be some kind of reciprocity, both to others… But I think that's important to name because The Pentacles are actually about service. They're about serving. It's about our soul work nourishing the world, touching others, but also being deeply satisfying to ourselves. So maybe… Like, I'm working on an example of exchange. It could also be like, if you're working very, very hard, what is it to take time? What is it to invest in a vacation, if you're available to do that? What is it to look around you and to say, “Wow, all of these beautiful things around me, or all of this beautiful food on my table, or all of this is because of the money, or of the the exchange, or whatever it might be that has been earned or has been received through this soul work”?
And it… And again, it's not about money, because The Pentacles are not…have nothing to do with money. It could be that you live in a place that you look outside and you think, “Wow, I'm so glad I trusted myself and came here.” It could be any number of things. Anytime we kind of look outside of ourselves and think, “Oh, can I receive the medicine I offer to other people too?” Right? When something in our own work touches, or supports, or assists us, that is part of Nine of Pentacles too, right?
And Nine of Pentacles is a crucial jumping off point for The Ten, because The Ten is essentially an invitation to share what we've created thus far with others, while also being open to perpetually constantly outgrowing what it is that we're offering today. Like on this podcast, if I went back two… maybe not two years, but I'm sure there's something even two years ago that I'd look back on, 2020, and say like, “Oh my God (Lindsay laughs). I cannot believe it,” not to mention 2018. Oh my God. So yeah, it's… That's been very true with my work that I'll do something that's absolutely right, I put it forward, and then I've outgrown it in some way. And it's a perpetual process of we do the work we do to nourish, and heal, and help ourselves, and to help and nourish the world. And that's The Ten.
[00:52:12]
But to understand the differences between one card and another, sometimes it can help to move back and look at the whole picture of the suit itself. And we can ask ourselves, “What exactly is the intention of this suit? What is its invitation? What is it inviting us to understand or to pay attention to?” So hopefully, that helps in differentiating the three: The Seven, Eight, and Nine. They are quite different from each other, but they all do build upon each other. So again, hopefully, that helps you. And for anybody who might be struggling with like, let's say the Five, Six and Seven of Swords or something completely different, I invite you to sort of maybe play around with doing a little experiment for yourself around like, “Oh gosh, you know, what Lindsay just did with The Pentacles, I wonder if I could do this with the three that I have kind of difficulty differentiating around. And just sort of see, when I apply kind of the same formula to my own personal work with this suit, what comes up for me? And what do I notice? And how can I integrate that in whatever way I might be able to today?”
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[00:53:29]
So thank you so much for listening to this, Wild Souls, and I cannot wait to connect with all of you for our December Monthly Medicine in a little under a week. And I just want to say as a final note, I'm thinking of all of my Indigenous listeners today on this incredibly challenging, very difficult, very problematic week. And I'm sending massive acknowledgments and solidarity your way for any and all of my listeners who are descendants of folks who have been colonizers of what we call now America, also known as Turtle Island.
And if you wish to… And I don't even know if it's a “wishing to”. I think it's incredibly important to think about and act on reparations, and to learn more about Land Back initiatives. I have a couple of action links, and links that could provide education if you've never heard of this before, places to donate. They're always a start. I'm sure that there are other folks who know of better places, so if I did not mention a resource that you love and would really like me to link to, I can loop it into a future episode–cause this is not just this week; this is all the time–or into a newsletter.
So do let me know, but yeah, just sending (Lindsay sighs) massive, again, wishes and intentions of very fierce solidarity, and of apology, and of just acknowledgement, and inviting my fellow White descendants of settlers on this unceded land to donate, to learn more, to continually attempt to do as little harm as possible as we continue to reside here. So on that note, I'm wishing all of you a very beautiful week. And until we connect again, please take exquisite care of yourselves.