194. Liminality with The Magician Rx + Tarot without a Deck
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Whew! Linds starts this week's episode of the T-WS Pod with some words of wisdom on Mercury Rx (and how it totally upended last week's episode drop), and digs into our Anchor Card of the week, The Magician Rx. Together, we look at the invitation of this card, how we can work with it, and Lindsay answers a listener's question about how we can work with our decks during watery, challenging, or unclear seasons of life.
Air date:
September 16, 2022
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About the Episode
Transcript for this episode is coming soon!
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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: Postpartum depression and anxiety, challenges with mental health, capitalistic structures, and childbirth
The content in this episode contains references to Postpartum depression and anxiety, challenges with mental health, capitalistic structures, and childbirth. We have done our best to identify difficult subject matter, but the labels may not be comprehensive for your personal needs. Please honor your knowing and proceed with necessary self-awareness and care.
Transcript
[Introduction]
[0:00:00]
Hello, Loves, just a gentle heads up that enrollment for my brand new offering, Spiralic Tarot, is going to close on Monday, September 19th. And I know I'm biased, but I don't think you want to miss this offering. Spiralic Tarot is brand new and it is an intuitively-channeled Tarot download that's going to come out every Equinox and Solstice through the Wheel of the Year.
And in each installment, you will be able to dive into intuitively channeled downloads for the entire season ahead, as well as individually channeled downloads for each astrological season. So for Libra, Scorpio season, and Sagittarius season, respectively. The workbook is literally bursting with spreads and prompts and Tarotscopes for all twelve signs of the zodiac for Libra, Scorpio, and Sagittarius season. That's all specific to this Fall cycle.
If we think about what you love about Monthly Medicine, and what you love about my offering The Threshold but kind of pivoted and we’re able to get that kind of medicine for each season of The Wheel of the Year. That's what Spiralic Tarot is, and it's only thirty-three bucks. So if you're looking for a really nourishing, really informative—I mean again, I know I'm biased, but I just completed all of the material today and it was so helpful for me to be able to be like, “Okay, wow, this is what I can expect for my sign, specifically, and the collective for the season ahead.” I'm very proud of it and I think it's really strong.
If you're looking for something like that, if you're looking for something just incredibly to the bone, in terms of the intuitive guidance, but also a lot of kind of nourishment, and loving care, and bolstering, and witnessing, and support, and ways that you can sort of connect with this time on the Wheel of the Year, I think this offering is a great way to go about it and it's really affordably priced, and it will only be open until end of day September 19th. So you can sign up for it or learn more about it by going to the link in the show notes or you can go to tarotforthewildsoul.com, click the banner at the front or at the top of the page or you can go to where we have our Soul Tarot Courses. So thanks so much for being here, Loves.
—
(Instrumental intro music)
[00:02:40]
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 Tarot for the Wild Soul podcast with Lindsay Mack. That is me, and I am so, as always, grateful and honored and delighted to be gathered with you for this weekly show.
I want to first begin with an apology (Lindsay laughs). I… now, a few of you heard this, but I actually released an episode on last Friday. It was an interview with Ace of Alice Sparkly Cat all about their incredible book “Postcolonial Astrology”. I think we have about twenty to twenty-five thousand listens per episode, I would say roughly, and about a thousand of you heard it on insights (Lindsay laughs), because for some reason, the podcast would not post to all of the Apple Podcast subscribers. It would only post to Stitcher and Spotify subscribers. So we have a lot more on Apple Podcasts than we do in other places, which is fine.
The incredible thing about that was that we couldn't fix it. We couldn't fix the issue. We were unable to contact Apple. We couldn't. It seemed like the podcast wasn't associated with the Apple ID it normally is, and then the audio got corrupted. Twice! And so, then we had to take the whole thing down, and as Spirit as my witness, there will be a way for me to share either that conversation or another conversation with Ace with all of you because it was pretty amazing and brilliant. And I love their book and if you haven't gotten a chance to touch in with it, I highly recommend it.
[0:04:46]
But I share it, number one, to explain that there actually was an episode that was posted. Only like one percent of you heard it (Lindsay laughs). And to those of you who were just like, “Oh, I guess no episode this week.” That wasn't my intention. I worked very hard on that interview. But I share it in A) the spirit of just informing you about what's going on, and B) just to say like Mercury Retrograde is such a little rascal.
I have spoken about this before on this podcast, and certainly, whenever I've been asked, I really appreciate the medicine of any retrograde. Any retrograde, it's not here to funk us up or mess us up or whatever. It can create snafus. Most of them are in service of helping to recalibrate, realign, helping to get us and to draw us a little bit closer to something that needs to be kind of dealt with, for lack of a better way of putting it.
The combination of that Mercury Retrograde and the Pisces Full Moon for me, brought up massive terror, actually. Because we couldn't quite find where the podcast was, I was like, “We're going to lose it. Like we're going to lose the podcast, our subscribers, my ability to communicate with like the majority of my following.” And it struck absolute terror into my nervous system. And I can't say… I didn't love it.
[0:06:35]
I certainly didn't enjoy what it brought up for me, but it was a feeling that I got to lean into and get to the heart of and the root of, which was at the end of the day—it would be devastating and a heartbreak if that happened, and it would also be okay, right? Like it wouldn't be okay and it would also be okay.
And I don't know that I would have ever thought about that scenario. But once I did, I was grateful to sort of clear up the root that I, you know, I didn't even know was in the garden, so to speak. And that is also the marriage of Pisces energy with all that swirling Mercury. It’s like, “This could happen and that could happen,” in there. We're not sure if what we're seeing is smoke and mirrors, or actual, or a reflection, or what.
So if you went through something like that on a lesser scale, or on a greater scale, I salute you (Lindsay laughs) as a fellow, I don't know, person moving through this time. If it was lighter and beautiful for you, I love that. You know, the energy works differently with everyone. We are definitely, and I did talk about this in the intro to my conversation with Ace, but of course, like only a small amount of you heard it. So we are moving through a pretty major Mercury Retrograde. Mercury relates to our communication, to our thought processes, to how things bounce off of one another.
[0:08:33]
Mercury is connected to Gemini. Gemini is part of this sort of connection loop from the lungs, the breath, what we take into the nervous system, how it greets our body and runs through our system. The nervous system is totally part and parcel with the intuitive channel and they kind of run concurrently together and without, you know, our nervous system functioning, it's very hard to access that channel as well.
And the hands. What we make and how we work with and pour that energy, those hits, those intuitive downloads out of us. So it's a cycle where we're taking in information and we're outputting it. Ace of Alice Sparkly Cat actually referenced something that is in their book that is absolutely extraordinary and is totally something that they began to realize in their research about Mercury. It’s that Mercury, for them, is very connected to labor; how we push ourselves, burning out, sometimes going too far, being asked to, a lot of labor, you know, a lot of labor being asked of us.
So, all of this is an opportunity to fine tune and recalibrate how those connections inform one another, and our labor, and how our body is feeling, and how our nervous system is feeling, and whether or not we could be benefited by a shift, by a tweak, by an overhaul. So it's also a time where those delays, those technical snafus, and that was not the only technical snafu that I dealt with around that time when Mercury had just stationed retrograde.
[0:10:39]
It serves to bring up a lot around our control and around other various things, and so the best thing that we can really do is be willing to work with it as a helper. Now, because we're in the unique situation of Mercury shifting astrological signs through this retrograde transit, being in Libra for a little bit, and then moving to Virgo, we are working with, essentially, like The Magician and Justice energy. And Justice is, it's a great card to start thinking about because we're about to shift into Libra season next week.
Justice will never let us off the hook. If we are overgiving, if things are out of alignment, if we feel like we shouldn't be where we are, things are unfair, it kind of… it certainly doesn't force. It's pretty, again, unrelenting in its desire to support us in being with what is, whether we think it shouldn't be happening, or it shouldn't be happening, whether it is fair or unfair. It may very well be unfair. Justice wants us to be with what is, the full spectrum of the reality, so that we can make better, more informed, more supportive decisions for ourselves.
For example, if we say like, “I wish this person would email me back about this opportunity, or about a second outing, or whatever.” The fact is, they're not, and I'm allowed to feel however I want to about that. I can feel angry, I can feel frustrated, I can feel confused. Those feelings, we're not invalidating them and we're not taking that away. The reality is, whether we believe they should be emailing us or they shouldn't be, they're not. And that's Justice: is being like, “Okay, they're not, so now what?” Right? So now what?
[0:12:53]
The next step might be that we release that desire for the conversation. The other option is that we might lean in and be like, “Hey, everything okay? I was expecting to hear from you.” You know, it could be that we take a totally different tack. So there's a lot happening around the themes of balance in general, which I know all of us are feeling. And it's messy right now. It's messy. Things are changing every day. Things are flipping around on themselves. So if that's how you're feeling and that's how stuff is, you know, you're sensing into it for yourself, you're definitely not alone and it's okay.
The best advice I can give you is just to not commit to anything right now at all and to just know that everything is in process, and if you're like, “Fuck, I'm really committing to something right now.” That's okay. I've done a lot of really important, totally aligned things in Mercury Retrogrades, and they've turned out great.
So I think just not pushing, making sure that if something isn't coming together, don't apply more gas than you need to. But I'm definitely wishing everyone (Lindsay laughs) like, just a lot of love and ease around this transit. It's pretty spiky. Maybe just for me. I feel like I can't be alone in that. It might not be everyone, but I very much doubt that I'm alone.
[0:14:26]
And I communicate all this about Mercury Retrograde at the top, one, because I did communicate about it in last week's episode, but no one heard it. Rude. And second of all, because my pull for the supportive Anchor Card of the week could not be more well-matched, be more well-timed. It's The Magician, Reversed. That is our Anchor Card for the week. That is our supportive continuation with the word work that we're doing in Three of Pentacles, which is our big Anchor Card for the month of September, and with the theme of September that we're working on, which relates to permission.
So let's go back in order to come forward. So again, the Monthly Medicine, the theme for September, for this entire month, is Permission. All of us are working with the theme of Permission differently. You might be working on feeling into, like, “I have permission to be seen, to take up space.” Another person might say, “I have permission to slow down and to retreat.” Right? We're all working with that really differently.
The fact that this theme –Permission– is connected to Three of Pentacles, which was our card for the month of September, is really significant, because it has to do directly with that idea of recognizing ourselves as individuals in a collective environment and balancing the two together. We are, ideally, all together on this planet and in this over-culture. Even though capitalism denies this, and there's so many different things that have us believing we're all alone, and we need to do it all alone, and we can't share and there's not enough for us.
[0:16:23]
Three of Pentacles honors us as doing work in an individual way that is individual to us. We're not supposed to be doing the same thing as our neighbor, or even if we're doing the same job, our job and our work within the same. Like if we're all, you know, ourselves and our neighbors, if we’re both herbalists, we might be focusing on two completely different things. We might be herbalists that sell homemade products, instead of an herbalist who teaches courses. So, we might do the same thing, but have totally unique flavors. And that's really not just okay, but great.
Three of Pentacles reminds us that where we tend to get things a little confused is when we compare; when we believe like we have to do what that person's doing in order to go where we want to go. Or when we get, when we doubt, when we're like, “Fuck, like it seems to be going so well for this person and like look at me.” And what I have found to be true is when the mind does that, chances are whoever we're leveling that comparison at is probably going through a similar thing that we're going through, or has at one point. Whether or not they're admitting it or talking about it is a totally different thing.
The important thing is to remember that we are all building something together collectively and we all have different jobs within that collective rebuilding within that community sort of care. Our job is to sense into what our role is inside of the community care, inside of the collective care. So it's a restructuring, the month of September, of the work we want to do, of our responsibilities, of what we take on, what our energetic tasks and duties are like.
All of those things come under the purview of Three of Pentacles. And all of it is so we don't burn out, so we are clear about what our capacity is, and dare I say, so that we actually have a stronger sense about what we want to do with our time.
[0:18:47]
So where does The Magician, Reversed come into this? So that is our Anchor Card for the week ahead. The Magician is ruled by Mercury and absolutely is an archetypal representation of that kind of mercurial, Gemini, lightning bolt, connective process where something hits the channel, moves through the nervous system. We sort of breathe in the information. We breathe out. It comes out of the hands, right?
So there's this incredible process that, again, the archetype of The Magician moves through, and there's a lot of symbolism on like, let's say the Smith-Rider-Waite Magician card that indicates that, right? There's a balanced altar in front of The Magician with a representation of each of the elements. The staff that The Magician holds represents below and above. There's an infinity loop over The Magician’s head. I love to call that the God Loop (Lindsay laughs), you know, representing kind of this person as being guided by Spirit toward their work and their offerings.
Now, there are a couple of things to bear in mind before I kind of get into the specificity of the reversal. The Magician is not just a magical person who needs to let go of and create and do all the kinds of amazing things magicians do. It's also not like a title, like, “You are a magician so you fit XYZ qualities.” When we—all that's fine, I just don't really find it to be all that practical or useful for the day-to-day.
[0:20:27]
What I do find to be very practical and useful for the day-to-day, just a couple of things to bear in mind: if we're moving through a Magician transit, which we are this week is, one, The Magician does not ask that you edit what wants to come through your channel. Your job is to let it come through your channel. So if you have something to share or say or sing or paint or like, do, express—your job is to express it. Now, what you need to bear in mind (Lindsay laughs) is that just because you feel called to express it doesn't necessarily mean that you'll have a willing or wanting audience for what you have to say.
So your job is simply to let yourself slough off what wants to come through. That's it. Other people may be interested, other people may not. It might not even be for anyone, it could just be for you. That's one of the most important reclamations of The Magician. This external, internal to external clearing, sharing process can be deeply personal. It doesn't need to be that other people need to validate it. If they do, terrific. If they don't or you don't even want to share it with them, that's cool. That's still The Magician. It's just saying, “There's a little painting that wants to come through me.” So do it.
Don't worry about it being the perfect painting or like, sharing it on TikTok or whatever, like sharing your process. And if you want to do it, that's okay. It's just letting yourself do the thing that's in your heart to do and letting yourself do it without editing or stopping that process. Number two, is that we see through all the symbolism on let's say, it's Smith-Rider-Waite that we have a need to ask the question, “Is my channel open?” And we could really go into the mystical, spiritual, energetic aspects of like opening the channel or not opening the channel.
[0:22:35]
But frankly, and I don't mean to be rude in any way, but I find that to just be such a slog. Like, I really do. I think that that's a valid question to ask, like, is there something blocking the channel or whatever? It's totally valid. And I think when something, when inspiration hits, if we can just stick around with it, it can actually really help to free that up. The biggest thing is, I think when we talk about like, “blocking the channel,”, it's actually way more of a practical thing than we might give ourselves credit for.
One, it typically shows up like a “block in the channel,” when we have a desire to like let's say, sing a song or pick up a guitar, and we're like, “No.” Then that starts to crimp the hose a little bit. And we can start feeling like, “Ooh, like, why doesn't, why aren't things moving or flowing?” or whatever. Sometimes we have to just kind of get in the messy process of like, I can tell you after coming, coming back to work from postpartum and having a baby like, I'm now a couple of offerings deep from coming home and like, the second offering was much easier than the first one back, because I am back in a little bit more of a rhythm. I remember. Like, it's a muscle memory.
So now I'm noticing, it's a lot easier for me to like let things go and let things flow. So your job is to not edit. Again, your job is to just let it go. And the second thing—if we look at kind of the symbolism of the balanced altar on The Magician—what resources do you have? And that comes back to labor, right? What do you draw resources from? What supports you in your magic, in your creation, in your expression?
[0:24:32]
And here we have the reversal. So when The Magician is reversed, it lets us know that there's some—if we can think of it like a table on four, like being supported on four legs—one of the legs is shorter than the other legs. There's wobbliness to the table. There's something, there's something going on that we can feel. There's something happening. We might not totally be able to understand what it is. We might not know where it's coming from. The most immediate question, the biggest invitation that Mercury, or that The Magician Reversed, is asking of us this week: “Is there something that you're needing that you're not getting?”
Now, it's like, beyond a simplistic question and the answer might really surprise us. The answer might be more in-depth than we believe. We may have been asking different questions and not quite getting the answers that we want. Is there something we are needing that we're not getting? If that's the case, what is it? And what would need to change in order for you to get it? Those are the questions that we must ask ourselves. We must ask ourselves.
When The Magician, Reversed shows up, things are usually very liminal. They can kind of be like a Mercury Retrograde. So again, good timing on The Magician's part this week. It usually means we're kind of in the middle of something, things are a little messy, they're a little unclear. It might feel like the flow is blocked, but really what's going on is that we have questions to answer and everything is getting restructured.
[0:26:28]
So this week, part of us leaning into, continuing to lean into that theme of permission is being bold and brave and courageous enough to ask ourselves, “Hey, my love, what are you needing? What are you wanting? What are you longing for more of today? And how might I be of greater service to give it to you?” If you find yourself getting caught in like, “I can never have it. This is impossible.” That is a place for you to start. That is the place for you to land and to be with right off the top. So that's number one.
Number two is if you feel like, “Well, this is not possible. It's not accessible.” What is accessible? And if you're in a place in your life, like, fuck those questions that I just invited you to ask, where you're like, “I don't know what the hell's going on at all, questions aside. Like I don't know, I am floating in space right now. I don't have a clear grasp of my channel. I don't really know what's going on. I feel super liminal about everything.” If that is where you're at right now, can you just let it be? Can you just let it be? Can you rest in that and know that it's not forever? It's just right now, it's just this week, it's just what's here at this moment.
It might be that things are so foggy, because you're being invited to look more fully within, it could be that you're not clear about the next thing because it's inside yourself that you're being invited to really look and take, like, a look at.
So The Magician, whether reversed or not, shows up around our expression, around our labor, around our communication, around what we're creating, what we're spending our time on, what we're devoted to, and how our nourishment, our hydration, our resourcing, our friends, our kind of the stuff that really fills our cup up, how that is directly related to those things? To our labor, to our… like, to all of the things?
[0:28:49]
So we're in a huge recalibration time of these themes, in this idea. How might you feel called to lean into the medicine of The Magician Reversed as a support system for you as you navigate these questions and all of this sort of recalibration, you know, as we all move through the fog that's sort of in front of us as we recalibrate?
So hopefully that helps. Be super gentle with yourselves in the coming weeks, just really gentle. I also want to remind everybody that we're in the last, we're in like the death rattle phase of our Lovers year. And again, just as a gentle reminder, The Lovers is ruled by Gemini. And we're starting to get… this always happens.
When we start to get toward the last spiral of the calendar year, before we shift into a different energy, and we're just about ready to move into that sort of last, the largest, like we'll be in the Earth Spiral starting on the Winter Solstice here in the northern hemisphere, beginning in late December, but the majority of the rest of 2022 is going to be spent in our Air Cycle, or Fall here in the northern hemisphere, Spring in the southern hemisphere.
[0:30:21]
The Lovers work, the whole deal with The Lovers, is that it calls us to clear out and release the stuff that's never really been ours to begin with, the stuff that if we feel like, “Oh, I gotta do this in order to be lovable or palatable or acceptable.” The Lovers is gonna get in there and be like, “No more. You have to be willing to bring the fullest part of yourself, who you are, to the world without doing it the way this person is doing or that person is doing.”
And we are already preparing for next year, 2023, which is a Chariot year. And let me tell you, so (Lindsay laughs) like, this is the time to do this work on recalibration. This is the time to be radically honest with yourself. Be like, “I really hate doing this. I hate this relationship. I hate this thing. I don't like it. I don't want to do it anymore.” It doesn't need to be any more than that. If it's not a real yeah. I mean, there are some things in life that are not yeses that we have to deal with, right?
There are tasks or responsibilities, or if we're caretakers, we're in it, in this particular season of our lives. And there's always room to shift or change, or call in different support, or recalibrate or rethink things with other people. And like, let's just be real, life can be really challenging and there are seasons in which we have to do things that we don't necessarily want to do. But if you have a choice, it's time to make changes, to be sure.
So before The Chariot comes around, when the whole point of 2023 is going to be supporting us in getting our asses out of these kind of symbolic vehicles that were not, that cannot, take us in the direction that our heart and soul really wants to go. You cannot take the chariot into the wild woods of The Strength card in Line Two, can't do it.
[0:32:25]
So we have to be willing to let the things just crumble, move out. It's not a Tower energy. It's a total beautiful shedding of our skin. Like we're just complete. We've done it, we don't need to do it anymore. All of those pieces are related to our work in The Chariot. And I mention all this because like the work’s here for us to start doing now. We may as well lean into it before it gets even more heightened in 2023 and in the later parts of 2022.
So I'm going to answer a listener question, then I'll go on my merry way for this week. And then next week, we'll have an interview. I have to see about troubleshooting this interview with Ace that was originally supposed to be my first interview back, but whatever. The spirits had different plans and so we'll either re-record, or Chase will work their magic and we will figure out a way forward. But next week we have an interview with an amazing guest, with a totally different guest. And so yeah, I hope you love that. And then the week after that, I think we're at Monthly Medicine again, which I don't even know what to say about that. The time is flying.
Okay. I have a question from Amanda, who asks, “I'm wondering how you work with your deck during huge moments of immense change. I feel like I'm just living in The Moon card and so many beautiful things are starting to occur. However, I'm having days where I don't even know how to work with my deck anymore. What are some ways you find your deck to be a source of grounding and truth when you're living in watery times?”
I love this question, and I love you for asking it (Lindsay laughs), and I bow to you and salute you. I feel like I've been in a Moon card season for like a year. So this question, the question you asked, is a question that I have been wrapping my head around for a little while, specifically since I gave birth and went through postpartum, because I never went to my deck during that time, because I could not bear what I was pulling.
[0:34:54]
It was impossible, too upsetting, like to keep pulling The Moon card, Reversed, (Lindsay laughs) which I literally got, every time I went to my deck. It was too upsetting and it made me too angry. But what did help, and I know that there is an offering in this, but I just don't know what it is yet. When I was in the dark, literally the dark of my child's room, rocking her with my thoughts completely overtaking me and just feeling like they were completely suffocating me in the anxiety and worry, and “what if” thinking, and belief that I would absolutely never get out or survive the depression I was in.
When that, when I was in my daughter's room in the dark, with like the white noise going, just humming or singing to her while she slept on me. I felt like I was walking through a very, very like a valley at night. And that it was just The Tower, The Star, and The Moon again, and again, and again, again, and again, and again. Those were the cards of my postpartum. I think they are the Anchor Cards for postpartum.
[0:36:31]
And I would like to create something about postpartum, but I am struggling a bit with feeling like as somebody who's not a birth worker and does not work with people and support them in that threshold, I feel like I'm not sure if I have anything to offer (Lindsay laughs) because my postpartum was particularly hard and I don't know if that's everyone. I would be very interested in feedback about it. I feel like we could collaboratively come up with something together. If this community wants me to talk about it, I certainly have much to say.
I can point to, Amanda, a couple of different situations in my life where I have not, whether they were enormous like postpartum was or whether they were nothing at all, where I just understood what I was in. I was just like, “This is, I'm still in this and there's nothing else to know, really.” So I think I totally understand your question and why you asked it.
I believe that a way that, one, that we can find our deck to be profoundly grounding and helpful is, and I hope this answer is useful, but it really is the only one I feel like I have to offer you. If we do the work with the cards to anchor and tether to them, when we're not in those seasons, then we sort of can—our raft or the proverbial boat that we're in, can sort of like, go out to sea and we don't have to rely on pulling.
[0:38:28]
There are times when we're in such a long stretch of ocean without a landscape in sight that pulling every day is actually pretty excruciating, because it can feel like we're just so desperate to know that like there's some land in sight that we're not going to be in the middle of this ocean forever, as you so beautifully put it, like just watery times that it can just feel like too much. That's actually why I started to develop Tarot Anchoring as a practice because it was just like, what do you do, if you don't, if you, if it's too much to be pulling?
So what I would say is, you don't actually have to pull. If you kind of know what you're in, be in it. If they're like, for anyone going through a really tough time who's like, “I cannot even think about pulling,” I am inviting you to sense into the feeling state and the experience of what you're going through.
And if you do any pulling at all, on any, on anything, I invite you to go to your deck and just simply say, to the clearest deck you work with, right? Like some decks, the responses they give are really more cryptic, or they're more kind of spiralic rather than linear, so maybe your most like linear and clear of decks and just say, “May I receive a reflection from this deck about the season that I'm currently moving through?” And pull and see. And if you're like, “This doesn't match,” it might be a clue to the next stage of where you go. I don't… I think the deck comes with you. When I was in the dark in my daughter's room for all those months, all I could think about was The Tower, The Star, and The Moon and how I thought I knew those cards and didn't at all (Lindsay laughs), and how I hated it.
[0:40:35]
And I was like, “I don't want to be in these energies, I want to be in something else.” But I knew that there was no escaping it. So I share my personal experience to sort of cement in that, and there are other experiences I could share, but they do feel a bit too personal for this platform, where I just was, like waiting, like in something, and didn't—there were no answers. I just had to be in what I was in until things were clear, but it was pretty torturous.
And in those moments, there's always some card that floats to the top of my mind, or I just know in my body. I'm in one of those other experiences that I won't get into the detail of, I knew that the card I was working with was Wheel of Fortune. I had pulled it a couple times. Because I had done my work with it, my field research with it, because I had spent time with it before that experience, it was really, it was already in my body.
That's why we anchor with certain cards so that if we're going through a really challenging time, we can call upon an energy that can be useful and an energy that can be reflective, an energy that can be a mirror. So we can call upon that mirror, like if we're going through, you know, if I'm thinking about my postpartum, you know, I knew. I didn't even need to read. I didn’t even need to ask. I knew it was Tower, to Star, to Moon, to Tower, Star, to Moon. I never reached The Sun during that time. It was just those three cards again and again. And it was really excruciating.
[0:42:23]
Now the helper card was… it changed. Sometimes it was Two of Swords. Sometimes it was Four of Wands. Sometimes it was The Star itself. So long story short—and hopefully I provided some semblance (Lindsay laughs) of an answer to this question, there are times when we can't really work with our decks in the way that we typically do. And I think that's not just normal, but like, essential that we not try to lean on our decks as a tool and a help in the same way we would when we're not going through a difficult time.
Like the Tarot can be of use in different ways for different seasons of our lives. The way that I find, because this was your question to me, the way that I find my deck to be a source of grounding and truth when I'm living in watery times is that I know these cards. I know them. We're friends, I understand. I don't like all of them. I don't like the experience of all of them, but I know them. So when I'm going through something, I don't want to say, “Oh, I don't have to pull,” but there, again, are moments where we just kind of know, the way you knew you're in The Moon. Like you just know that.
So that's what I would say. And to anyone who's ever been like, “Wait a minute, I thought like the whole point of Tarot was to pull a card. Like you're telling me I can work with the Tarot without pulling a card?” And my answer is absolutely. In fact, I think that's ultimately where we want to go with the Tarot, is to understand like, “Okay, I'm in this season right now, and I can pull it. I can go to my Tarot deck, but I know what these cards mean to me so intimately.” And we also are always growing and evolving in our relationship with them, that they can just come with us. They can just be there.
[0:44:29]
And I think that giving ourselves the permission to not have the pressure of pulling, and to really normalize and honor the moments where the pulls, it’s like when we need the advice most the Tarot can be the most like “unhelpful,” because it's like we want to know. It’s a really hard thing and something that I've gone through a million times myself, where I'm going through Hell and I want the Tarot to tell me when I'm gonna get out of Hell, and it won't. It'll be like The Moon, (Lindsay laughs) you know. Or like, it'll be like, it'll be something maddening, like, Three of Cups. And it's like, I understand that probably what they're telling me is, “Reach out to someone you love or touch in with your practices.”
It's not, the Tarot can't tell us when we're going to get out of something. And yet, we're human. And we just want those answers so badly when we're suffering. I've often reflected, especially with my postpartum being what it was, that I would just love to do a class on, like, moving through Hell (Lindsay laughs), like how to engage with our decks during those moments.
I would really appreciate feedback, actually. If folks are hearing something inside of what I'm sharing that they like, want more of, I would really love to know that. Because I can feel an offering, or maybe a couple, inside of those, but I'm just not quite sure how it's all coming together, what people are wanting right now.
[0:46:06]
So that's my answer to you, dear Amanda, and I'm so glad that you asked this question. I think just like being with The Moon until we sort of feel called to do more pulling, you know, until the questions change, until the landscape becomes more visible again. Things change and then all of a sudden, we have a different approach with our decks, and it can feel so much better than it did. And so, I think giving ourselves that space and permission is really the key. So hopefully this helps. I love all of you so much.
—
[Conclusion]
Again, if you want some absolutely crackerjack (Lindsay laughs) channeled guidance for your Libra, Scorpio, and Sagittarius seasons, if you want to know all about the upcoming Fall cycle here in the northern hemisphere and spring cycle in the southern hemisphere, I highly recommend that you check out my offering Spiralic Tarot. The last day to sign up for it is Monday the 19th, end of day.
I just, again, finished it today. It's so solid. There's so many nice audio. There's spreads, there's prompts, there's Tarotscopes that I just had so much fun writing. I know folks are still like learning about what this offering is, but I am really loving doing it. And it was very informative for me and helpful to be like, “Okay, now I know what I'm looking toward for the next three months.” And I have all kinds of Anchors and resources to help me work with it in the best way I can.
(Instrumental exit music)
So if you're interested, go to the link in the show notes. Check it out. Purchase it, if it feels good to you. Yeah, just sending everybody my love and I'm excited to connect with you next week. Until that time, please take exquisite care of yourselves and each other.
[0:48:15]