237: MONTHLY MEDICINE: August is Soften
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Lughnasadh blessings and happy August to you, loves!
Air date:
July 31, 2023
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About the Episode
Lughnasadh blessings and happy August to you, loves! Our theme for the month ahead is Soften. How can we open to greater, deeper, richer support, community connection, and spiritual bolstering? This month has a lot of complex energetic notes, and is a strong invitation for reflection, review, and transformation, all longing to be experienced through a lens of softness.
Our Collective August Soul Tarot Reading:
Card for the month ahead: The Devil Rx
The Anchor that can help us to work with it?: Three of Cups
What this medicine is teaching us: Five of Wands/Page of Cups
How can we support ourselves through it? Page of Pentacles/The Fool Rx
What most wants our attention this month? Nine of Pentacles
Where is this preparing us for? The Sun Rx/Eight of Cups
Lindsay’s Links:
Learn more about Lindsay and dive into all of their courses, journal posts, and free resources here!
Got Q's for the podcast? Ask them here!
Download the (free!) Ultimate Soul Tarot Card Guide here
PODCAST EDITOR: Chase Voorhees
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTIONISTS: Meghan Lyman, Terri Wanjiku, Annelise Feliu, Valerie Cochran
PODCAST ART: Rachelle Sartini Garner
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: COVID-19, illness, capitalistic structures, trauma, gender identity struggles, and parenthood
The content in this episode contains references to COVID-19, illness, capitalistic structures, trauma, gender identity struggles, and parenthood. 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]
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(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.
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[0:00:20]
Hello, loves. Hello, Wild Souls. It's Lindsay. Welcome back to Tarot for the Wild Soul podcast. I am, as always, so honored and so grateful to be gathered with all of you. Apologies for the way that my voice sounds. This is just a little content warning at the top for anyone who doesn't want to hear about COVID, just go on and skip on down a couple minutes. I got COVID in early July, got over it. Five days later, my family was exposed to this new variant that was going around. We managed to get through my COVID diagnosis, my experience with COVID, without anyone in my family getting sick and we somehow got exposed to this second newer, variant, and my partner got it. My child got it to the point where we had to take them to the ER. They're absolutely fine, now. They were absolutely fine. Thank goodness for the absolutely amazing folks at that children's ER we went to. I rebounded. My cat has it (Lindsay laughs). So I've had COVID. I mean a rebound isn't technically a full, but I've had now COVID kind of three times in the last four months and it doesn't feel… it feels rude, really. Thank God again, for Paxlovid (Lindsay laughs).Thank god for like, you know, we're very grateful for all of the measures that one can take if they're accessible, which we're lucky to have, you know, accessible options. So yeah, I sound like I'm sick, because I have been sick. I am sick today, but I'm feeling better. I'm excited to be here with all of you. So grateful my child is feeling better, and partner’s feeling better. We're just exhausted, you know, but that'll once again be—it is temporary too. So I am very, very grateful to be here with all of y'all. I wasn't sure if I would be. I don't think I've ever been late for a Monthly Medicine. Maybe like one time before. But I was curious, like, because I'm not pushing anything. So I was like, if I don't feel well enough, I won't record it, or I'll wait. But we were able to do so. So here we are. Yeah, hope all of you are hanging in there. I hear we are having a wave. So you know, it's just such an incredibly difficult, challenging—not to be negative—it is such an intense time for everyone on this planet right now. And COVID wave or not, I'm just thinking about everyone in this audience, and loving all of you, and again feeling so incredibly grateful to be gathering with all of you.
[0:03:36]
So thank you for being here with me. I’m wishing everybody a very Happy Lughnasadh here in the Northern Hemisphere and a happy Imbolc in the Southern Hemisphere. It's not really—I'm not going to go, you know, terribly deep into the folklore of these, you know, fire festivals, these Cross-Quarters of the year. But I will say personally for me, I lean into and derive some of the most medicine from the Cross-Quarters. I find them to be a lot more gentle, typically, than the solstices and the equinoxes. Those energies feel very big, very sweeping, very much like big thresholds that usually come with a lot of… a lot of energy (Lindsay laughs), like a lot to look at and pay attention to, and a lot of knots to untie, and a lot of yeses to commit to, and then a lot of no’s, and I have almost never just sat and lit a candle on a solstice and an equinox. It's usually like there's some shit whirring around, honestly.
And it's not that the Cross-Quarters are not very powerful, but they are different. They're really different. They don't guide us from one seasonal shift to another. They represent the peak and the zenith of the season we're in. So for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, Lughnasadh, which happens on or around August first, is the height of summer. It represents the halfway point between the Summer Solstice and the Fall Equinox. And for you in the Southern Hemisphere, Imbolc is halfway between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox, so the height of Winter. There is a lot more history, folklore, lineage traditions.
Actually, again, historically, for folks who came from the Celtic diaspora, where a lot of these originated from, most of these originated from, these Cross-Quarters. There's a lot more about folk from the olden days, working with the Cross-Quarters than they actually did the solstices and the equinoxes. Those were present for them, but the Cross-Quarters were very important in terms of the ritual. These were crucial, and they're all built around fire festivals, but they're all built around the livestock, and the good of the harvest, and like making sure that everything was sort of honored and set, and, you know, that ritual was followed out, tradition was followed out in order to ensure those things. So I also derive, I think, a lot of medicine from that. But again, that's very personal to me.
[0:06:46]
So even if you don't, like even pay attention to the Cross-Quarters, there's still something really powerful about acknowledging that we're halfway between this particular season. We're at the height of it. And to weave it sort of into Tarot, I personally, always—because I'm in the Northern Hemisphere, I'll talk about Lughnasadh specifically—I always associate Lughnasadh with the Tens of the Tarot and with Full Moon energy. So Lughnasadh is like, it was a festival that was essentially in existence, among many other things, to honor the enormous, delicious bounty of the late summer harvest, which is in full swing, and it's glorious. You know, we have our tomatoes. We have our watermelon. We have like peaches. It's unbelievable right now. Tomato season is just getting started here, but you know what I mean.
So that, like everything to celebrate that, to honor that, to just bless and welcome the bounty of that, Lughnasadh is all rooted in that—sunflowers and everything that comes from this beautiful time on the Wheel of the Year. In terms of again, the harvest.
And Full Moon energy is all about reaching a peak of a cycle. And Full Moon energy is really most potently leaned into and utilized when we're actually looking at it as the peak and also the clearing of a cycle. Like with Full Moon energy, with Lughnasadh, there's so much we're embracing, we're receiving. We're expressing gratitude for what, you know, we have, for the bounty that we have, for our blessings.
And there also is—because we are harvesting so much—a lot of attention being paid on: what has to be composted, what didn't make it, what, you know, how we're kind of dividing this bounty—what are we canning? What are we preserving? What are we serving now? What are we sharing? And that same idea goes with Full Moon energy. There's actually quite a bit related to Full Moon energy that has to do with composting, has to do with kind of laying out all the information, the full bounty of that particular cycle and harvest on the table and saying, “What am I keeping? What am I working with? You know, what am I doing with this?”
[0:09:34]
The Tens of the Tarot are on the same track as this idea. So it's a beautiful time to deepen our relationship with the Tens, just very naturally. We don't have to do anything. Just kind of being with that, because all the Tens of the Tarot do relate to this. There's something that we're clearing away with every Ten. We've gone as far as we can go with whatever work we've been doing in this cycle that we've been moving through from Ace to Ten. And now in order to move forward, on to the next level of our journey, there's a natural review process.
What are we keeping? What are we leaving behind? What are we preserving, you know? And what are we sharing, right? What are we kind of distributing and taking off of our plate? And what are we reclaiming? So it's just a really beautiful, natural time on the cycle of the Wheel of the Year to do that. You know, we're more than halfway through the year, which is wild. And, yeah, it can be powerful around this time on the Wheel of the Year. Before we move into Autumn, and then Winter, here in the Northern Hemisphere, it can be very powerful to drop into that and to sort of offer up a kind of a review, you know, of what really wants to be paid attention to, what wants to be reclaimed. So hopefully that is useful and resonant for all of you.
[0:11:14]
So the theme for August is soften. And I'll acknowledge that the first thing that came through was transform, which I found maybe a little repetitive. There's like so many of these episodes (Lindsay laughs) that have the word like transform, or transformative, or transforming—just calling myself in on that. My Guides love that word, so it's hard sometimes to move away from it. But that is what they first piped up with. And I was like, “Well, why don't we sit with this for a little while? I wonder if there's something else in here.” And I was surprised when soften came up.
There are a lot of very strange and rich and interesting notes in this reading and I'll try to do justice to it. I've had a couple of these this year where I'm like, “Whoa, this piece of music is like funky, cool, interesting.” And for any budding Tarot readers out there, I cannot—I know not everyone's brain works like this—cannot kind of recommend more highly to think of every Tarot reading is sort of a piece of music from Spirit, from the cards themselves. It can be very helpful to remember that when you get a reading and you're like, “What the hell? Like, these things don't go together.”
And when we think about the range of music that's created and how dissonant certain things can be, and the harmonics that can come from dissonance, it can really help us to see each reading with a very open and curious mind, to assume, “Well there is music here. It just might not be the kind of music that I'm assuming it should be.” So not to put my teacher hat on for a moment (Lindsay laughs). You know, hopefully, that'll be useful to someone. But yeah, very interesting medicine this month.
[0:13:33]
It feels particularly internal, August does. It feels still more like I have felt like most of 2023 has been sort of waiting, like to have my number called at the DMV. Like I'm in a, I'm waiting and I'm posted up, and I have books. I have snacks. Like, it's not like a problem that I'm waiting at the DMV, technically, but I am like, “Wow, there's like, really? Like okay, I didn’t miss my number. (Lindsay laughs) Did I miss it?” It's just felt like a whole lot of kind of liminal waiting, and also living, but not in the ways that, I mean, different rhythms this year.
I think most of that is due to Chariot, most of that is due to this being a Chariot year. The Chariot is incredibly liminal. I think we're learning how liminal The Chariot can be from this year. We're getting used to Pluto being in Aquarius. Venus is retrograde through this month. It's been retrograde in Leo for a little bit now. It's not like the sexiest, juiciest vibe. And it doesn't mean that this month won't be delicious for you.
In fact, I think that's the medicine right now is like, there's so many things in life that are really, really hard. And life is often fraught with challenges; like all of us are moving through something, whether it be illness, or our children moving through illness, a new diagnosis, a breakup, a friend rupture, a shift in, you know, job, difficult situation with money. There's, you know, we can count our blessings, absolutely, but we can almost certainly count on life handing us something that will be something for us to kind of work with.
And I guess the medicine for us and the question for us is—no matter what is present to us now, what we're moving through, whether it be challenge or blessing, or a blend of both—how might we soften to our present circumstances? How might we pivot away from the hamster wheel of the rhythms of capitalism and constantly trying to get things going, figure out the next thing, do do do? And just soften and, and be—as much as we're able to, as much as our circumstances might allow. And I think that begs its own kind of category, you know?
Softening looks really different for different people, right? What might be soft to you, might still look a little bit more rigid to someone else. You might be living with a kind of an internal shield, where you're only comfortable to soften just so much, maybe in certain circumstances or seasons of your life, or at all. And yet that shouldn't be invalidated, you know? It's still valid. It still is amazing, you get to have your own relationship with softening.
[0:17:14]
To soften, we have to feel safe. You know, and a lot of us don't feel safe, for various reasons. So then the question might be, how can we cultivate and reclaim a sense of refuge within ourselves even if it's just for a moment, for a few minutes? How can we start to plant more seeds that it's okay to soften, it's okay to not do? It's really okay to not know. This is the year of not really knowing, you know. Like it or lump it. I've mostly lumped it (Lindsay laughs). Just to be real, I feel like I've just started to be like, “Okay, I'm willing to work with this.” And it's not my favorite energy, but that's really okay, you know.
So we're learning how to soften and be present with what's here. And what's happening kind of underneath that, throughout the month of July, this is a really strong month for untying knots, cutting chains, clearing things away, hauling debris out, like very strong for that. It's been that way for a little while. June was kind of like breaking away. We're still kind of clearing quite a bit. but to do that we have to soften in, and open to, what might want to be birthed in its place. So there's quite a bit going on here. You know, there's quite a bit going on.
[0:19:00]
Softening. This is what, this is something that came through from my, just the helpers that work with me through channeling down what this wants to be, but there's also a very high quotient of reclaiming pleasure this month. It doesn't mean—pleasure doesn't necessarily mean everything's peachy, or perfect, or we love it all. Doesn't have to mean that. Pleasure can be simple. Pleasure can be accessible. Pleasure can look different to you versus another person. Reclaiming pleasure for ourselves is also a pretty big piece of the softening process this month.
So, our card for the month ahead is The Devil, Reversed. So essentially what this month is sort of going to feel like is a little bit like, the vision I'm getting is ashes. So I don't, ashes aren't meant to say like, “Oh my god, everything's destroyed and there's just ashes here.” But I think, in the last year, in the last couple years, especially in the last few months, we've been quietly, quietly burning away quite a bit, quite a bit of old story, quite a bit of old belief systems, quite a bit of mental-emotional debris.
And we've been coming a lot more home to the core of ourselves, and we've been changing. There's no way to not go through the last (Lindsay laughs), you know, several cycles of life, and not be changed by that. And again, that looks different for all of us. So there's a lot of ash where once there stood, blocks, or dams, or chains, or bonds. The Devil, Reversed, is about acknowledging, “Oh, I have shifted. I am not the same as I was.” This is something we never fucking give ourselves credit for. And I'm going to, I'm going to be, really, generalize a minute. I'm going to generalize here, because goddamn it I think it's worth it (Lindsay laughs). Like it, it tracks for this.
[0:21:41]
We just don't give ourselves that credit. If you're among the rare few, I bow to you—you are all of our teachers. But we have changed. We have. Your change might look different than my change, right? We might be at totally different places down the road from one another, you know? You may have taken a wild detour, I may have taken a wild detour. You may have kept on a more linear path. None of that ultimately really matters. We've changed.
Devil work is when we reclaim freedom and clear away, say no to the invitations of shame and guilt, and hiding, and playing really small—and not playing small in like, you know, in like a faux-like way. Like, I don't think anybody has to play big either (Lindsay laughs). But like, hiding, you know, because we, you know, don't want to be misperceived. We don't want to attract too much, you know, ire. We might not feel totally comfortable being ourselves.
I mean, when I reflect on even myself. Like, just even a few years ago, I wasn't out as nonbinary, I didn't have a child. I was still, you know, believing and, and, you know, struggling with certain things. My work was still, like, a runaway. I love my work and I think it was really powerful, but the pace that it ran on was so intense and unyielding, and I didn't know how to stop it. It really took me leaping off the train (Lindsay laughs) and just kind of letting the train keep going without me. Like shifting the way I approached courses, you know, it really changed everything. There's been so much that has changed. I'm Lindsay still, but I'm not the same.
[0:23:56]
I imagine that's true for every single one of you listening to this. And right now it might feel like my life is in shambles. For some of you it might feel like that, or like, we shouldn't have changed, right? The regret is often a really piercing piece of this.
The Devil of it all. There can be very strong brain chemistry invitations with The Devil. The mind doesn't want us shaking up too much. It doesn't want us moving through huge waves of change. It doesn't want us expanding. It doesn't want us moving away from what's known and safe and comfortable and familiar. The reversal of The Devil means that we're on the other side of that fire in ways that we might not have even really given ourselves credit for, in ways in which we have likely not even acknowledged for ourselves. That a lot has turned ash because of our courage and our bravery because we've been slowly getting rebirthed out of the chariots in this Chariot year that we have outgrown. And there is no way to be birthed out of those chariots to walk, to move, to wheel ourselves out of those chariots, without deeply confronting what those chariots were doing for us.
What were they doing for our ego? What did they teach us? What were, you know, what value did they offer? Chariot years are transformative, literally bringing us from egg to nest, from womb to world. And there is a clearing quality to this month. There's clearing the ash. There's sweeping it away and disposing of it in a way that feels ritualistic and ceremonial. There's a lot of medicine around acknowledging, and grieving, and holding ourselves, you know, in this time of great reflection. So the month is gonna feel a lot like that. It's going to be moments of great joy and liberation and realization, marked with little invitations into contraction (Lindsay laughs), and most likely feelings of like, what the fuck am I doing? What the hell is going on?
[0:26:38]
Softening to it. You don't have to know right now. It's normal to ask those questions where we're in a very big time of change, and of evolution. And the truth is, we never really know what's going to happen. But we especially don't know. So The Devil, Reversed, means we're not doing the crunchy heavy-duty work that we do in Devil energy. We're now in the pleasure piece of it. We're now in like, “Oh, I don't have those bullshit, those bonds tying me down.”
Now, what is it like to like, live in this and trust that that's great? And know that just like I changed, most likely things will change again. So how can I soften to what's here? How can I just be, you know?
The Anchor Card that can help us to work with this energy is Three of Cups. So community, soul family; not isolating. Being—if we are in a bit more of a solo place, you know, it can mean or call us to a sense of retreat, to a sense of joy, to a sense of connectedness. It can be about time spent with one person, time spent with many. It can be time with our Spirit helpers, you know? It could be that we've got a really solid clan and really what we're needing is a little bit more quiet.
I feel like Three of Cups—I’ve talked about this before—is an incredibly important and powerful ally as it pertains to deeper connection or deepening connection with our Guides and our Spirit helpers. It lets us know we're not supposed to do this alone. We're not supposed to move through this alone.
[0:28:38]
I've had COVID literally for like twenty days now, (Lindsay laughs) but when I was first sick with it, I got very sick earlier this month, and I was so ill and was just feeling—I think I talked about it last week on the podcast, again, I've had this fucking record streak—but talked about it last week where I pulled Three of Cups when I sensed into like, “I feel so incredibly alone. This is so hard.” There was a lot of kind of trauma or stuff bubbling up. And it reminded me, even if there isn't necessarily a parent to call or a community to tap in this particular moment, there are my Spirit helpers. Even though you know, there isn't, you know, direct moment-to-moment connection with my partner, they're still there. So, my partner was tending to our child when I wasn't feeling well there, which is a huge privilege.
So Three of Cups is so powerful. The way we work with, we process, we witness one another, right? So witnessing one another, celebrating one another in this change, grieving with one another if this, if the changes we've been through do not feel joyful, you know, really being present with one another. It's a huge part of Three of Cups.
What is this medicine—our kind of work with The Devil, Reversed, the medicine of the month—what's this medicine teaching us? Like, what, if there is a lesson, what might we look to? We have Five of Wands and Page of Cups. So here's what's up, right? We're in a Chariot year. We're pivoting into sort of a new Pluto paradigm, for lack of a better word, with like, very different vibes, Pluto being in Aquarius, than Capricorn.
There's a lot of different things going on. We're preparing for a Strength year in 2024. Fixed Fire. Line Two of the Majors. A very different vibe. Okay, so all of these different pieces. They're very different, you know? Five of Wands represents, and I think is drawing our attention to, again, the natural kind of contraction and frustration with things stretching out for so long, not having a resolution, and feeling so unclear. I think that experience is very universal.
[0:31:26]
We're, we are, I don't really know how to explain it. I know for myself, intuitively, it does feel like some of the way that I used to communicate and connect with my Spirit helpers has shifted, like the directives are different. I can be very clearly directed to do something and then it all, like, scatters. Or feeling yes to go for something and it totally doesn't pan out. And it's not because Spirit is trying to bone us or anything like that. It's just the time, you know? Things can be a yes, and then can change (Lindsay snaps) so rapidly that we really are coming home. This has been happening for many years, leaving behind this idea of like, we're doing something for, you know, twenty years from now, ten years from now, five years from now, really coming home to or creating the future with this moment. What we do now has an impact. How can we be here? You know, it's a very different invitation than has been in the recent past.
So Five of Wands, it's pissy. It doesn't love it, it's annoyed. It's fucking frustrated with having to wait, deal with the same fucking, you know, run around, a million times. It has a lot of energy. That energy wants to move. You know, we may have a lot of different ideas, but not a whole lot of energy to execute it, and not a whole lot of clarity to execute it.
Whereas Page of Cups wants to kind of float on a lazy river and play (Lindsay laughs). Like, Page of Cups knows, like, play is work, and play teaches. Play is amazing. Play is lifesaving. Play is in so much of what we do, and there is an energy to it, that that's like, you know? So that there's a strange tipping back and forth this month. From the, you know, and if we're relating it to, like, what is it teaching us, I think how to hold ourselves in a place of softness around those two extremes.
[0:34:01]
I don't think that they're both extremes—but around those two different points on the spectrum. That's how I'll frame it up. That Five of Wands is that very natural and valid contractive place where we're just like, “I just want to know what the fuck is going on. I'm so tired of not knowing. I'm so tired of this limbo state.” Whereas Page of Cups is kind of like, “I will float down this lazy river with a seltzer in my hand forever. Like I am in no fucking rush. I am here, I am talking to this fish friend. I am chillin. Like I got nowhere to be.” And that's not forever and neither is Five of Wands, right, and both have their place. But both require a willingness to soften and be present with what's here.
So what it's teaching us is how to know that neither is forever, right? We won't be in Five of Wands, limbo, waiting, unclear energy forever. We just won't, right? We just won't. If anything, take heart because in 2024 we're moving from a Cardinal Water, Cancerian energy—an energy, card-wise, that is the end of Line One of the Tarot—and moving into a Leo, Fixed Fire, Strength energy. There's still a lot of depth and power to that, and obviously, 2024 has its own intensities, but it is certainly not murky. It is certainly not like, in the fixed gaze of that fire. Everything is open. (Lindsay laughs) Everything is very clear. So almost to another extent, you know.
So I think remembering that is also really important. Like this is not forever, right? And Page of Cups, for as sweet and as delicious as it is, is also not forever, which is sad in some ways, but there are times where play is really important, and then there are times where our attention will be taken towards something else.
[0:36:17]
I'm reminded, if you'll indulge me, my daughter is quite young, but is a very early talker and absolutely adores books, and books that are for older children. And there is one book that she loves a lot called Little Witch Hazel by Phoebe Wall. Phoebe, we're obsessed with you. We love you. (Lindsay laughs) I have no idea if Phoebe Wall listens to this, but I love you and my daughter loves you. And there are like four little stories about Little Witch Hazel and the summer story has to do, I think it's called The Lazy River, and Little Witch Hazel has all these different things to do on this like very glorious summer day. Like they have to go to the post gnome, they have to go pick berries, they have to go to the cobbler, and everyone's sort of off on vacation.
And all of Little Witch Hazel's friends are sort of floating on these like rafts along this beautiful river and Little Witch Hazel is finally convinced to just sort of not worry about all her errands, all her tasks, everything she has to do, and just kind of float on the lazy river, and eat berries, and you know, hang out, chill and see what happens tomorrow. And there's something of that that is reminiscent to Page of Cups.
Now, obviously, that's not every day in Little Witch Hazel's life, right? Like that's not for every day. But it is really important every now and again, or on a regular basis depending on what our ability to receive something like that is, to just kind of say like, “Yeah, today, this is what's required of me and the rest of the day, I'm going to choose to be very tethered to ease. I’m not going to push anything,” you know?
So all that to say, that is a huge lesson: to know when not to push, to know when, you know, very—you know, we're having a very valid experience being so frustrated with not knowing, with how liminal things are, how weird the time is, how we, there's so much we don't know. And how uncomfortable we might feel about there being a little bit more space.
[0:38:50]
And so, softening in the face of that and being present with ourselves through that is an enormously important life skill. Huge. So the more we can be with that, the better it will be for us. And that really is the lesson of this month.
Now, how we can support ourselves through all this. I also got two cards: Page of Pentacles and The Fool, Reversed. Okay. Our connection to our practices and the inner compass within us, full stop. That is how we can support ourselves through this time. I feel like there are a lot of you who know me and my style really well. But for those of you who don't, I want to just really advocate for something. And when I talk about a spiritual practice at this season of my life, really always, I have never truly seen the value in rigidity with practice. I do think there's something to be said for an artist drawing every day, if we're a writer, writing a little bit every day.
And for some of us, it's not going to happen like that. Some of us have really small kids, some of us are dealing with, like a lot of shifts, ebbs and flows, to our schedule. And what I would love to invite you all into, is to think about for yourself, “Okay, well, what does a really supportive, spiritual, connected practice look like for me? That's nourishing, that doesn't feel rigid, that can come with me through anything I'm going through, that can be quite casual, and yet quite deep?” That has always been at the heart of my relationship with Spirit, and I have honestly found that it takes me into very, very powerful, rich, deep, nourishing territory. And it doesn't need to be limiting, by any expectation, anything.
[0:41:08]
Page of Pentacles is one such Anchor that holds the torch for that kind of experience, that wants to do, wants to live, wants to be in alignment with that North Star, with that compass. It's very, it's a freewill universe. We can make every decision, do everything in this world, without ever connecting with our Guides on purpose, ever. You know, we can. It happened to me not that long ago, where I kind of got a sense of something that we really wanted to do, my family really wanted to, but it was like, totally not the right thing to do. And there's no wrong, but it just was not in alignment for us, and we pushed through it. And it was nice, but there were some light consequences to it, and not consequences in the fact that we were punished, but just it made certain things a lot more difficult.
And that's not Spirit, that's just us making that call and being like, “Okay, you know, that's just more information.” So it's easy, even if we have a strong spiritual practice, to sometimes be like, “I'm not even gonna tune in about this, like, whatever. I just want to do it.” We don't even think to tune in.
Page of Pentacles is a very powerful invitation to tune in, to basically say to Spirit, “What would you have me know? What would you have me do? How can I be in alignment with you?” And remember, Spirit is this incredibly beautiful, guiding, helpful energy that is here to assist us. It’s not here to tell us what to do, right? So opening to that deep wisdom can help us to surrender and clear away a lot of the pressure that we may have been holding.
I know that's been happening for me, too. There's like—my brain has really been like, I'll feel really completely something and then my brain’s like, “Oh, but this, but this, but this.” The only way to really quell that is by connecting with Spirit, is by being like, “Hey, you know, what, what would you have me know about this or anything for me to know that would clarify this?” And then from there, there's a lot more ability to basically, one huge way to support ourselves through this cycle, through the work of the month, is to really bring Spirit in a lot closer.
[0:43:51]
The Fool, Reversed, of it all has to do with us probably needing some support from outside human sources, to help us to trust that whatever it is we want and we’re working toward, and we're building toward. It's going to happen; it just might not be it today—that we can trust what we're in, that it's safe to soften, right?
The Fool, Reversed, doesn't mean don't take that leap. It means we might be scared of that leap and we just need a little bit of time with other people to vent, iron out certain things so that we know like, “Hey, this is how I'm feeling about this,” you know? So Spirit and human, deep, nourishing support—very similar to the Anchor that can help us to work with The Devil medicine, Three of Cups, right? We want to be held, softening with others with Spirit this month, and just seeing what that does for us, what that opens for us.
What most wants our attention this month? This was the shocker pull of this whole reading: Nine of Pentacles. I've gotten Nine of Pentacles so much this year in a way that has felt just rude, because there's been so much this year—blessings beyond blessings, I can't complain—but challenges too, and moments where I'll pull this and be like, “I can't. Like what? (Lindsay laughs) Like, really? Like, okay.” You know, it's helped me to work with this card differently. Because I'm like, well, I clearly had some weird biases about what this card meant. So okay, maybe it doesn't mean what I thought it meant, and I need to dive a little deeper into it.
So what wants our attention most this month is pleasure. Like, we are not in these human bodies for long. Enjoy the fuck out of what you can, when you can. It's not bypassing all the things that suck right here and now. It's not bypassing the difficulty that anyone who's listening to this might be going through. And I am coming in as the messenger, this card is showing up on its own accord. Like what brings joy, even in a small way, and how can you not apologize for receiving that joy, you know?
[0:46:31]
What is all this preparing us for all this work? It's, again, two pulls here. The Sun, Reversed, and Eight of Cups. Essentially, profound change. Huge change, really big shifts. Moving away from something in a way that feels very clear and, again, very transformative.
The Sun, Reversed, is sometimes an emotional pull, I feel like for me. It's, The Sun represents, as a card, the natural and organic close to typically what is a very difficult cycle of lessons. We're talking, all of Line Two. We’re talking The Devil, The Tower, The Moon. These are, this is a long journey in the valley. That's a long time, you know. The Sun is when light dawns and we can see things are different. The landscape is different. We've changed. Really coming back to kind of the beginning here, right?
When reversed, all that's happening. There is change. There's a lightening. There is a softening. There's, you know, perspective that we didn't have before—which I can say, that is coming to a certain extent. We haven't had a tremendous amount of perspective this year and that will likely be changing in the next few months. I think certain things will just start to become a lot clearer. Especially in the Northern Hemisphere with the Autumn coming, that is typically when things start to, not to generalize, but if we're even talking about the card of the year, that is typically when we start to have a little bit more like, “Oh, fuck, like, that's what this was trying to help me to do, or clear, open to, whatever it is.”
So The Sun, Reversed, means like, the dawn is rising, but we don't trust that. We’re like, “I'm not coming out of my bunker for shit, because the sun could go away at any moment. I don't trust it. I don't feel safe enough to drop into this.” You know, which is heartbreaking and yet a very human response to that kind of thing.
[0:49:05]
So what it's preparing us for is joy, and probably working through some feelings about lack of trust in that joy, and, you know, Eight of Cups is moving away from something that we've outgrown. So really powerful transformation. And, you know, I want to go back to, this was a couple pulls ago, but like, when I asked and received cards for the question, “how can we support ourselves through it”, we got Page of Pentacles and The Fool, Reversed. I think that it is important to remember that when The Fool touches any part of the reading, it's letting us know that we are on the verge of some very large new cycle, some very large change.
Like change is... We are changing, like reflecting on how we've changed and also acknowledging that we're still being kind of squeezed through this symbolic birth canal this year, we're in the midst of that. We're in process with that change, so that's why a lot of us feel like, you know, I described it as feeling like I've been in the waiting room at the, you know, like waiting for my number to be called in the DMV. Like, it does feel like a kind of a purgatory. It does feel like kind of a waiting, a waiting room. You know, and that's not wrong, but it's not always great.
But remembering that The Fool is a part of like, there is a profound transformation happening, it just doesn't really feel like anything right now. So utilizing this month to soften, to enjoy what we can, when we can, if we can. Without bypassing the very real, very challenging aspects of life, opening our hearts to what really wants to be acknowledged, embraced, and seen. And opening to greater support, not isolating ourselves, either spiritually or interpersonally, is really what's at the root of this month.
So thank you for listening. Thank you for being here. I love all of you. And I feel so lucky to get to, I always say like “gather” in quotes, because we're not technically gathering, but we kind of are, you know? To get together with all of you each and every month, and you know, every week. So, again, thank you. And until we connect again next week, please take sweet care of yourselves.
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[Conclusion]
[0:53:16]
This podcast was edited by Chase Voorhees, podcast art by Rachelle Sartini Gardener, and this episode was transcribed by one of our absolutely brilliant and beautiful transcriptionists, all of which you can learn more about or read about on our website tarotforthewildsoul.com.
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