213. MONTHLY MEDICINE: February is Uncertainty
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Happy Imbolg, loves! Welcome to a new Monthly Medicine episode of the pod.
Air date:
February 1, 2023
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About the Episode
The theme for the month of February is Uncertainty. We're being invited into a huge season of transformation and release -- letting go of things, situations, relationships, and endeavors that are no longer aligned. What we're releasing might be clear, but where the next cycle will lead? That is a totally different story. We're being invited to gently and skillfully work with uncertainty this month -- to root into our center, and lean on our sources of support now more than ever before.
Together, we will dive into our collective reading around all of these themes, and answer a listener question from Anick on ways to calmly approach a Tower year.
Lindsay’s Links:
Purchase the entire Soul Tarot 101 course (or just the Digital Book for $22!)
Download your Ultimate Soul Tarot Card Guide here!
Defend the Atlanta Forest and Stop Cop City! Learn more here: https://defendtheatlantaforest.org
LINKS TO HELP IRAN:
Thank you to Ariana (@azadi.times.three) for sharing these with us!
1. Center for Human Rights in Iran (based in NY, provides news and in-depth reports on human rights abuses in Iran)
2. How to Talk About Iran (a living document from the Iranian Diaspora Collective on Instagram)
3. Persians With Purpose (Educational content, news translated to English, and other Iran resources on Instagram)
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: childbirth, death, grief, systemic inequities, ancestral wounding, inherited generational patterns & healing ancestral trauma
The content in this episode contains references to mentions of childbirth, death, grief, systemic inequities, ancestral wounding, inherited generational patterns & healing ancestral 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]
[0:00:05]
Welcome to Tarot for the Wild Soul, a podcast that explores the Tarot through an inclusive, soul-centered, trauma-informed perspective for growth, healing, and evolution. I'm your host, Lindsay Mack.
—
(Instrumental intro music)
Hello Loves, and welcome back to Tarot for the Wild Soul podcast, Lindsay Mack here. And it is always such a joy to be gathered with all of you, but it is a special joy and always a delight to be gathered with you for our Monthly Medicine episodes, our episodes for the first of the month, moving into a fresh cycle together. Thank you so much for being here with me.
I’m wishing everybody who honors this day or observes this day — and even those of you who don't (Lindsay laughs) — blessings, really, for everybody, but a very blessed Imbolc. For those of you who do not know, Imbolc is one of our four cross-quarters of the year. The cross-quarters are really what our Celtic ancestors, folk who come from that region, were really even more important, more kind of centered and regarded in some regions than even the solstices and the equinoxes were. These were extremely important, seasonal thresholds of time to purify and cleanse in the old ways. It was a time to bless the livestock, bless the harvest, really, just do some good, you know, for them, really good care and tending and sowing the seeds for, hopefully, a very blessed cycle to come.
And it's rather lovely because Imbolc and Samhain bookend, if we’re starting with, really, the first day of the year as January 1, which not many, not everybody does. But Imbolc and Samhain, which are the bookends, if we're going in that flow, are all about within; they’re very internal times and thresholds whereas, Beltane and Lughnadsha, which are May 1 and August 1, around that time in the Northern Hemisphere, they are very focused on the external. Really, all of us bring us, all of them bring us within. But Imbolc kicks us off to our first cross-quarter of 2023.
Without getting into it, really simply put, Imbolc is the peak of winter here in the Northern Hemisphere. It is right in the middle of our Winter Solstice and our Spring Equinox, and really represents the zenith point of this seasonal spiral that we're in, which in the Northern Hemisphere is winter, is connected to the element of Earth. We're kind of moving through work with the Pentacles. Pentacles are all about planting seeds, marshaling resources, being very, very wise and decisive with how we're going to use those resources, what we're devoting them to.
It can absolutely be a time of rest. Although, I do think about the winter as a time for rest, of course, but there's a lot going on underneath the surface in the winter, the gray. Everything is at rest; there's a wisdom to that. There's this much, much slower pace, and yet, there is often really a powerful depth of work that's happening. It's just invisible. And this is the time of the year in the northern hemisphere, when all of that magic, all that growth, all of that sort of preparation is largely invisible. We don't really see in the Pentacles all that much visible growth until the Ten, which is rather how it feels, right? Like we're working and we're working and we're working, internally, internally, or internally preparing, preparing, preparing, and then all of a sudden, (Lindsay snaps) the external matches the internal, which is something my teacher Michelle always spoke to me about, you know: do the internal work first. It takes forever. The external doesn't match it, and then, all of a sudden, it might — or, you know, if it applies or whatever it is.
We've all had that experience, right? Where we're deeply preparing for something internally. That's very much what this time of the year is. I encourage folks to, I'll include a couple of links that are relevant, more toward the Irish and the Scottish sort of old ways that this day was sort of honored and looked to.
[0:05:18]
There's a real, beautiful association here in Imbolc with the goddess, the deity, Brigid, who is, absolutely, my favorite deity, my favorite Goddess, you know. And it's because they are really a holographic being. They are. Brigid is connected to fertility and motherhood, parenting. They're also connected to blacksmithing, they're also connected to poetry. They're also very connected to wells and to divination and to water, as much as they are connected to fire and to passion, and to that kind of force.
So if we are a being that has tremendous fire and passion within us, if we are creator, a writer, an intuitive, a channel of any kind, and if we go into the depths — however, we define that — if we nurture, as well as, you know, stimulate and disrupt, if we travel as far into the depths of the waters, as we do rise in the flames, then we're working with this deity’s energy, you know, whether we… You know, I think, I know, that Brigid is for everybody, you know.
So this is also a day to kind of map ourselves to this kind of energy, like, where do we hold—and all of us do—like, multitudes? Where can we honor and look to our own brilliance and not box ourselves in, in any way? It's, yeah, it's a very powerful threshold. And it's been an especially deep one for me, even like leading up to it. And I'm curious, I'm recording this right before Imbolc, so I'm curious to see how that day will sort of blossom open.
[0:07:37]
So, February of 2023’s theme is uncertainty. And that's simply because we're all in our own way, right now. There's tremendous uncertainty, always (Lindsay laughs), in life. This isn't special, right? And all the more reason that when this theme sort of rose up for me, Spirit, the cards that I pulled, and what I got, was really centered on how can we wisely work with uncertainty?
Because we are living with a very large uncertainty, human beings are all the time, you know, we know that we will not be here forever. None of us knows when we're going to die and when we're going to transition from these bodies. All of us are worried, all of us have big thoughts and feelings about the what-ifs of life: what if the person I love gets sick? What if something happens to me? What if something happens to my family? What if something happens with my work? Or we're going through a particularly stressful or uncertain time? What if we don't? What if we're not okay? Like what if we got through this month, what about next month? So everyone's levels of uncertainty are different, but they are constant; some much more present than others.
And we're also, of course, living in a time, systemically, when there's so much profound injustice. There is so much that is broken and has been broken for so long. There's so much that is dead. Dead. And other than — I mean, there have been folks who have been talking about this for literally decades, and there are tremendous ideas for how to rebuild these systems. And we have to actually break down the systems that don't work in order to move into this time of greater equity, greater care, an actual, working system for all.
And there's uncertainty, right? There's uncertainty in everything. There's uncertainty in our love, in our births, in our deaths, in our losses. And I'm not trying to be — spiritually, (Lindsay laughs) you know — I'm not, like, trying to be like cheesy about it. Like, it's just the truth. It's really, like, kind of the truthiest truth, that there's uncertainty in everything. And living with that mystery is a part of what all of us are grappling with. So I want to acknowledge that before I dig into this theme and how to, more importantly, work with it, because this isn't new. It's not fancy, it's not even all that exciting. It's just a fact that there's uncertainty.
And in particular, we are living in a time on this planet, in our systems, inside of these cultures inside of these paradigms, where we know things are not working, but we can't, necessarily, fully see the realized vision for what is to come. And that might be mirrored in our own personal experiences, right, that might be so small, that we're moving into something where it's a big leap, it's a big act of trust, we just don't quite know where it's gonna take us. And that's a metaphor, really, for this time, this life, but specifically, 2023, because we're in a Chariot year.
[0:12:05]
And because the act of being in Chariot, like living this card is a baby, literally, being birthed from a womb to the earth. Like, the ultimate act of uncertainty (Lindsay laughs), like we barely even know where we are when we're inside of that womb space, much less, where the fuck we're going when we're out of it. And each one of us is born, symbolically, and actually, in totally different ways. Totally different ways. All valid, right? All impactful, right? And important. And when we're in Chariot were both that baby and that birthgiver, in a way. So this is, there are moments and times, and this is where we really get to learn about each card through living it, surely the best way to do it.
And the volume is so high on these themes of letting go, letting go in ways where we could never go back, no matter how hard we try. And the uncertainty around that is profound. And when we have, when we are faced with moments of great uncertainty, whatever that is, of real leaps of faith, it can be terrifying. It can be terrifying, in varying degrees, for all of us. Right? So we might have the material ability to take a leap and not really scrape our knees, we might not. We might have all the support around us to do something big, emotionally, doesn't mean it's not terrifying.
So how do we work with uncertainty? How do we hold ourselves through these times? That is really the question of this month. And each one of us will have a different answer to that. Because we are absolutely all, collectively and personally, going through this kind of Chariot initiation. What we've been in, it's not appropriate anymore. It doesn't mean it's inappropriate in every situation. It's not a container. It is not something that can hold our growth. We've gotten too big for it. We've gotten too big. So I will not be able to not keep pulling us, keep weaving The Chariot in, because it's so big. It looms so large, and its work is so impactful, it’s so visible.
Like, there are some cards in the Tarot where—like Hermit is one of them. The work we do is so big in The Hermit, but it's very often personally felt. We might not see the change on the other side; it might feel very subtle. Chariot is as obvious as it gets, and it's a very deep journey through kind of the underworld, but it's Cancer. Cancer is absolutely, like, all about the gooey center inside, all about the flesh inside of that crab shell. It's also about the shell itself, and the relationship between what we show, what we reveal to the world, our kind of experience with what is happening outside of us and what's happening inside of us, and where the two of them meet. It's a time of tremendous tenderness and vulnerability. Uncertainty is so… it makes our knees knock it's so tremendously vulnerable, tremendously vulnerable.
So all of us are being invited to just kind of jump into the deep end of embracing uncertainty and following our gut, in spite of not being quite sure how things are going to play out. It's not important.
[0:16:38]
Now, I think all of you have been listening to me for enough time to know that I am not the kind of intuitive, I’m not the kind of helping person who's ever going to tell you “Fly off the edge of the cliff. Don't, you know, don't check in with anything. Don't tune in with your support systems. Don't check in to see if it's financially feasible. Don't make sure you have some kind of like…” We want to be married to the kind of caretaking that's going to actually nourish those leaps. It doesn't have to be something that puts us in a position where we're unable to. In fact, it shouldn't put us in a position where we're unable to take care of ourselves, right?
But when we have a call, when we have some kind of clarity forward, we want to see, “Okay, is it an alignment to do it right now? Is it a right-now thing? Is it an eventual thing? Is it a big deal? Is it not a big deal?” (Lindsay laughs) You know? Some of us might feel uncertain, across the board. There might be a feeling of like, “Oh, I thought I knew what I was doing. And now I sort of don't know what I'm doing.” Like, there's no gut knowing at all. And to those folks who are in there, I salute you, and also the invitation is really to stay very rooted inside of that because it's not forever. It's just not forever.
There are absolutely seasons of life — this is what we focus on in Heart of Service, and it's going to be the focus of an intuition course I do in May — but there's a seasonality to soul work and to intuitive creation. And a lot of it is incubation, it's gestation, or there's an integration, you know. So there's a rest time there that feels like nothing's happening. And in fact, there's a lot happening, and there's a lot of preparation happening, it's just not an action moment.
And while not pleasant, not comfortable, may not be your preferred—it’s absolutely okay. It's a perfect place to be. It's just a season. So how do you Anchor yourself in that season without flopping around and making it last longer and making it a little harder? How can you totally embrace the uncertainty and know that it's okay not to be certain? It's okay to change your mind. It's okay not to know.
[0:19:20]
For those of us who are feeling called towards something with very uncertain results, like we're hearing or feeling to go this direction at the fork in the road, but there's very little clarity about how it's going to turn out. The medicine is the same. How do we hold ourselves through that and just try one of the options or dare to hang out at the fork until things just look a little clearer.
Uncertainty, as an experience, pulls up a lot of big stuff for us. It can pull up a lot to be honored, to be tended, to be processed. And that's actually not something to hurry up and get rid of, in order to make your next move. That is all a part of the spiral process of the next phase of your life.
So, for an example, let's say, right now, you're trying to decide between engaging in two projects or between moving or not moving, and there is some spaciousness in your choice. That might bring up all kinds of fear, all kinds of trauma, all kinds. And obviously, if it's a massive trauma response, 100%, if you're able, if there's accessibility, like, please do work with a professional processor, talk to somebody. You don't need to go any through anything like that alone. I’m not trying to simplify a traumatic response, obviously, and this work is not a substitute for therapy, of course. But we don't have to go through to look through that alone.
But there are times where big fears and big feelings of big emotions come up around uncertainty, where uncertainty can pull different things up from the surface, different worries or different, old, old things. We don't need to get rid of those things in order to make our first move or try something. Sometimes it takes just taking a shot in the void (Lindsay laughs), you know, just like feeling into like trying to find out where the edges are, to even get a sense of like, “Oh, this is a yes, this is no. Okay.” It's about embracing, radically, the fact that uncertainty is 100% a part of life. And if we're waiting for a moment where we have total certainty about something we will be waiting forever.
So this year, this month is a kind of a practice ground for all of us: how do we skillfully, and perhaps, gracefully — although that might be a bit too much to ask (Lindsay laughs), depending on the situation — how could we, how can we skillfully work with uncertainty? How can we hang out in what uncertainty brings up for us, knowing that it actually is bringing some clarity, some medicine? We might not be totally sure of its value. It might just simply be so we can move forward in that uncertainty, while tending to the wounds, while saying, “Wow, there's tremendous tenderness here. So I need to be really sure that there's a real soft spot in my heart for that. Okay,” you know?
If we're hanging out, again, in that total void, what helps us feel better in the void? Like, what stories are we getting pulled into? How can we notice those stories rather than identify with them and go on the ride? Way easier said than done. All of those things are what we're being invited to focus on, in particular, this month.
[0:23:36]
So our card for the month ahead for February is Knight of Cups. And this is the ultimate friend, ally, and Anchor through any kind of moment — uncertainty included, where the waves are choppier for one reason or another. Knight of Cups is the container that has very high walls and edges that can help to hold very sloshy, messy, stormy waters. It can stay, the container itself stays even, it stays still, it stays upright. So the water can splash over the sides, it can go hither and thither, but that cup, that kind of rootedness, what's happening around that container that's holding the water, stays steady and true.
Knight of Cups because it's a Knight is about helping us to kind of define the invitation of rhythm and movement, so far as an aligned rhythm and movement for a particular season of life. And put in another way, there are moments when we're asked to sprint, and moments when we're asked to kind of wait until the light turns green, actually. There are moments when we're being invited to move very individualistically and very personally, very much on our time, where we might cartwheel across the road, rather than walk or run or, you know, and there are times when the earth is shaky, and when the boat is really tipping and topping all around, because the waves are, you know, how do we keep as steady a course as possible? It doesn't mean we can't be messy. It doesn't mean we can't let ourselves be messy. In fact, quite the contrary, actually.
I think that Knight of Cups holds a very powerful duality, a very powerful both/and possibility, where it basically says, “Be as big as you need to be, emotionally. Feel these feelings. Move through your process. Let whatever wants to come up, come up, and trust that you are fortified and rooted enough to hold it.” And if you're not, who helps you feel more rooted? That is the North Star of February. That: our Knight of Cups work.
Anytime there has been a tremendous discord, collectively, a trauma felt collectively, anytime there is something personal for me that is very, very big, and that really feels like it knocks me off of my center, every time I have pulled Knight of Cups. Every single time. And that is this card's way of saying: I am here to help to model to invite you to let these feelings be as big as they want to be and know that you have an inner caretaker within you that can help you to hold it, and that you don't need to do it alone. There are other people who are holding you, too. But it's that beautiful: the knight holds the cup, the cup holds the water, right? So we're thinking about what's the symbolic cup within all of us that helps to hold these big feelings and who holds us through that.
And so there's this beautiful act of collective caretaking inside of this, I believe, that is going to be tremendously important for us as we move through all that this month is pulling us into, and inevitably sort of bump into, make contact, in one way or another, with whatever uncertainty happens to be bringing up for us, and how we can learn more about ourselves, how we wisely respond to those moments.
[0:28:13]
What we're being invited to focus on and pay attention to in the month of February: The World. I've been pulling The World for us a lot in the last several months, and I don't think that's an accident. When The World comes up, it usually comes up in some sort of repetition, and I've been pulling it for these collective pulls for the podcast.
The World is ruled by Saturn. And it kind of, it's really amazing in some ways because it, like The Chariot, is also the last card on its particular line. The Chariot is the final card on Line One of the Major Arcana, and The World is the last card in the Majors last card in Line Three.
With The World, we have a kind of a knocking together of something that we are, absolutely, very similar to this idea of The Chariot, something that we are absolutely complete with and ready to cycle out of and never go back to again, ever, ever, ever, ever. The World is measurable. The World is clear. What comes up in The World card, whether it be personally felt, internal or external, we know it. So this is what we're being invited to pay attention to this month. We know what we're finished with.
How we start something new, what comes next, you will never know that in The World card, ever. None of us will. The important thing is this is Saturn. This is our—this is the lessons, the tasks, what we must check off the box, must check off the list, before we move out of this particular cycle. It's like the final inspection before we are good to go, you know? That's where Spirit wants our focus this month is on checking those boxes: where are we complete? Where are we being called not to ever go back into certain things ever again? And where might we be trying to pull ourselves out of that because we're too afraid of the unknown on the other side? Understandable, if that's true. It is scary because we don't know. We just don't know.
So again, I'll come back to how do we hold ourselves through times of uncertainty? Who supports us? What are our rings of care? What helps us to sort of stay level, stay grounded, let the feelings come up, and still be a container to hold them, to know when it's a little bit too much to know sort of when to like follow them and take a break and when to come back, right?
So The World is huge. We're literally being asked to train our eye this month, on massive, deep, profound levels of release and completion, of literally ending a particular cycle of our lives and never, ever needing to go back to it again, ever. We can't. Once we're out of The World, we're out of The World. We're in a whole new cycle with The Fool. The end. So the fact that that's where our attention is being placed — that's the invitation anyway — that's a really big deal. It is a Major Arcana card. That's also a really big deal.
So again, The World card brings up all these kinds of things on purpose, so that we can be complete with them, so that we can clear out whatever we're no longer meant to hold. It's an absolutely crucial and necessary experience of letting all of the things bubble up to the surface so we can be with them; all of the what-ifs, all the uncertainty, all of the unknowns, anything that might trigger off, to be with it, to lean into those support systems, so that we can hold ourselves right; to allow whatever the worry, whatever the fear, whatever the self-sabotaging mechanism might be going on, to just let that bubble up, to hold it.
The whole point of this time, of this year, of the season, is release. We are moving away from anything that we have outgrown, anything that no longer suits us, fits us, anything that might be dead. And we have to be able to honor the grief around that. We have to be able to sit in the fire of the fear because, for many of us, it doesn't matter how much it's not working. If something's known, it's going to likely feel safer, even if it sucks, than something that's unknown.
So we work with The World, we work with Knight of Cups by remembering that we are being, on every single level right now, supported in bowing over to, thanking, releasing the stuff that doesn't serve anymore, creating new systems, but ultimately, clearing the systems that are not serving. And the attempts to do this, but like, in a way larger way, have been happening for a very long time. Collectively, they need to happen more than ever. And there are so many people who've been giving, literally, their lives, their time, so much in the pursuit of that, again, in a collective, systemic way. This is also happening, personally, on a multitude of different levels, on so many levels.
[0:34:39]
Eight of Cups is kind of the Anchor for the work that we're being asked to do with these two cards. And again, it's not here as like a hard card. It's here as sort of a soft, like, distant star to kind of help to piece the whole rating together. It's amplifying what the reading is already saying, which is that Eights are transformation cards. We go into them one way, we come out of them the other way.
And Eight of Cups, in particular, is acknowledging: I built all of this, I collected these cups, I've worked with these cups, I've toiled with these cups and for these cups, and I have outgrown them. I have outgrown them, or I've outgrown the way I relate to them, or I've outgrown some aspect in my way of interacting with them, or whatever it might be. And we're moving away from them. We’re leaving them behind, we’re moving, we're moving away from them.
We don't know in the Eight where the fuck we’re going. We're just either skipping away because we're so delighted (Lindsay laughs) to be away from, potentially, what feels like a bit of an albatross, or we might be weeping, wanting to turn back, wanting to cling, even though we know it's not working. And we're being invited to be very open, very soft around that. These are huge things.
This is all a part of the incredible intensity of being inside of a Chariot year. Again, this is Cancer work. This is tender, tender, tender, and so easy as Cancer. I'm not speaking about Cancers, but just about the energy of Cancer is that, again, we have that kind of soft core; that deep, tender, heart-led wisdom, and we have that beautifully wise, outer shell.
And if we're not totally in alignment with the inner part of us, that outer shell can take on all kinds of different forms and shapes. We feel too uncertain, it's too uncomfortable, we might find ourselves getting angry, lashing out, and trying to distract ourselves by any means necessary. If we find ourselves in a situation like that, we absolutely might know it's not in alignment for us or others, then this is a call to try something different, you know, because every single thing about this month — and really about life right now, I suppose, life, in general, you know, especially amplified right now — is supporting that tremendous outgrowth, that tremendous outgrowing and releasing, that shedding of a skin. That is very, very important right now.
But a lot of it, again, when we move away from those eight cups, we don't know what's waiting for us in the Nine and the Ten. We have to steel ourselves through that. We have to hold to the compass of our heart. That doesn't mean that the compass of our heart is going to match the vision that we have for the future. Like, it just isn't, you know, not all the time.
[0:38:09]
So what all this work is helping us to release is Ten of Pentacles. Now, we're not releasing Ten of Pentacles. Ten of Pentacles is a card of huge, hugely hard-won, satisfaction. I think of it as like the good ancestor card. We're healing the legacy of our ancestors, as we go fucking up, making absolutely imperfect mistakes, hopefully, repairing as we go. We're redistributing wealth, we're helping to create greater equity with what we're building and growing, healing those generations backward and forward, doing the best that we can at it. Again, some of us, it's really about just causing as little harm as possible. And we're also helping create new legacies. We're going further than our ancestors did. We're letting whatever we're creating and building, sing and help, you know?
So we're not letting go of all that good medicine. What we're letting go of is the stuff that blocks us from that. We're letting go of the blocks and resistance and the worry and the wounding and the trauma and the fear that has us believing that's not for us, that we can't get there. That's what we're letting go of that — the stuff we have around Ten of Pentacles. And that's all a part of what's popping up to be paid attention to; that's at the heart of that wounding or that response to the uncertainty.
[0:40:01]
What this work is helping to call in is — again, this idea of, like, the different ways of looking at what this work amplifies — what it's calling in is Seven of Swords. Again, just like we're not releasing Ten of Pentacles. We're also not like welcoming in Seven of Swords (Transcription note: Lindsay accidentally says “Ten of Swords” in the recording, but we’ve updated it here to the correct card, Seven of Swords) in the way that we might initially think, Seven of Swords. What we're being asked to do is to fully commit to being present with the things that are in our hands without trying to take on other stuff we don't have room for. This is a huge part of this year. I cannot be more, like, serious about it (Lindsay laughs). Like, it's so easy to just, like, float away and be like, “I don't want to deal with this, whatever.”
Like, as much as you can be with what's really, really asking for your attention, without taking your gaze away from it, without letting yourself get lost in the story of like, “Well, I have all this to work out. But what about this?” The what-about-this-es, if they're meant to come in and take center stage in your life, you will know it. I am here to tell you: you will know it. And if it was something that's meant to be reprioritized or centered in some way, that it can come through. It'll be so clear, it might already be in your hands to begin with.
Most of the time in Seven of Swords, it's a deprioritization of the stuff that, unintentionally so, aren’t the things that are actually really worthy of our time, attention, and energy. So we're letting go of the things that are just not important and really amplifying what is helping to bring our attention to what really just does need tending.
We don't need to do this alone. We can call on Spirit for support. We are always moving through, as human beings, times of uncertainty. One of the greatest, greatest gifts we can give ourselves is to cultivate a spiritual practice, cultivate any kind of caretaking practice that is not hinged on giving us answers but instead is able to hold us through those seasons of uncertainty. And that, I mean, that's Soul Tarot, ultimately. It’s like, Tarot that can be with you through anything; archetypal interpretations that are actually helpful for the lived experience, and not so much the conceptual and not so much the possible, but more like, you know, how can we really weave these into what's going on right now?
[0:43:03]
So how do we ask for help? How do we wisely work with, skillfully work with, uncertainty? What comes up for us? How wild does it get? You know, what are the things that try to pull us away from it, the ways that the mind tries to protect and pull us into like, “everything's going to shit?” And really, everything's just uncertain, you know?
So depending on where we are, some of this may apply for some of y'all in other ways than for others. Like, I'm sure all this will resonate differently for everyone. Because all of us are going through different experiences as related to this. The more we can be with this time of enormous changes, the clearer we can be, the more we can remember that we are, in fact, in a time of enormous change, the better it is for us because there are going to be moments this month and beyond where it's just going to feel like nothing's happening. It's just going to feel like we're just circling the same bullshit drain. An enormous amount is happening, actually. It's a huge time of invisible growth.
How do we hold ourselves through that? So when the rubber really meets the road, when we really are being invited into something new, and it starts to be a lot more clear where we're going, how do we actually say yes to it, and potentially not be so exhausted that we're unable to, you know?
So hopefully this helps. And yeah, I really thank you all for being here. It feels very big to receive this. It resonates for me, personally, to be sure, and hopefully, it's useful. It's definitely a time of growth through, when I say destruction, I'm not talking about anything that's a big Tower destruction, but the inevitable death of what no longer serves, right? And so we're doing that really brave, bold work now. And February is really setting the stage, setting the scene, for planting seeds, big seeds of intention where all of this is concerned. And again, I'm honored to be on the journey through it with all of you.
[0:45:34]
So I'm going to complete this episode by wrapping up with a listener question. And it's actually — I swear on my life. I did not do this on purpose — but this question is actually about The Tower. And although it was pasted here, I kind of forgot when I started to talk about The Tower, but nice to weave it in for this last part of the episode.
So this question is from Anick, and Anick asks:
My card for 2023 is The Tower. I have to admit this makes me anxious quite a bit.
I'm trying to expect the unexpected, but can't help but from trying to envision what it will look like. I'd like to hear from you about how I could approach this Tower year more calmly and positively.
How would you approach this? Thank you for taking the time to consider this question.
I'm honored that you trusted me with it. So in preparation for this question, and again, I prepared this question, again, before I started recording, and that's why I didn't totally make the connection while I was just talking about The Tower. I went back and looked — because a dear friend of mine used to do a lot of Life and Birth card work, I happen to have a list of all the years of my life and all of the subsequent Tarot cards that I transited through on those particular years — and so I went back and looked at all of my Tower years, and very interesting to sort of see it all.
For me, personally, they were all very challenging years. They just were. And they all gave me kind of everything. So there were — essentially, there's no way to know what kind of Tower experience you're going to be in until you're in it, right? The whole point of The Tower is to uproot anything that's built on a false foundation. And when I say “false” that doesn't mean you're false, or I'm false. We don't know what we don't know.
We construct these things, and then we keep constructing, and we hear the foundation’s a little wobbly here, and we think like, “eh, I’ll just do whatever we can do.” And then, all of a sudden, The Tower comes in and just, like, knocks the whole thing down. And it's like, oh my god, like what? Like, all this work? Like, everything's falling apart? Like, that's the very natural normal response. That's the ego, the brain, the heart of it, the soul of it.
Sometimes it's just like, oh my god, like how much, you know, how much can come apart here (Lindsay laughs)? Like how bad can this be? How intense can this be? And I've found from The Tower that, a lot of the time, it can really outdo itself. I've also had some incredibly soft, gentle, profound, blossoming things, you know, experiences of blossoming with The Tower.
So I want to just acknowledge that The Tower is nothing to fear, and it can be uncomfortable, depending on our experience with this card, depending on how we deal with Tower experiences. I don't, you know, Tower experiences are not always easy for us. But if we've had a lot of trauma, it can be a little harder. Sometimes not because we're so used to the chaos, depending on what we've got going on.
[0:49:34]
How you could approach The Tower year more calmly and positively: I would say, one, by marshaling your resources, by looking at how you process, who you process with, who supports you, who holds you through these Towery experiences. How do you hold yourself? What tools help you? What practices help you? And I'm not even talking about spiritual. Like, if bowling is — bowling is amazing — and if bowling with a group of people that you love is a part of your medicine, then like, that's what I'm talking about. That's also a practice.
So like, whatever it is, you know, whatever ritual, I don't care whether it's like you watching your stories with your partner, versus, like, being at your altar, like, it's all a ritual, it's all practice, and I believe in all of it is (Lindsay laughs) as having like medicine to offer. So I do know that, like, having a place to land those things at a time when — because Tower seasons can be a bit intense — it can be really helpful knowing that you don’t, you can breathe through these Tower experiences; you can take them moment by moment.
I think it also might be helpful for you to ask questions of your Tower card. So if you're in a Tower year, personally, what I would do — and I have done this, it's been super helpful — is I would put The Tower down in front of me, and I would ask it questions. And I would say like, how are you showing up for me this year? What Anchors can I call upon to help me to be with whatever you're going to bring up for me? What's the most graceful, easeful way to work with you this year? And see what comes up for you, you know. See what comes up.
[0:51:49]
Again, there have been times where my Tower years or Tower experiences, it also depends on the card you are going through at the same time.
So, I remember, I believe it was 1998. We were all, collectively, I think, yeah, going through a tough, we were all collectively going through a Justice year, Justice-High Priestess. And I was going through a Tower year. And that was for sure one of the worst years of my life. Absolutely, like, no question, it was horrific, and I survived it, you know. Like it was really hard.
But also what happened in 1998 opened the door for me to become a mom to my daughter. It totally opened my eyes and started me on my path of realizations about my gender, and my identity. It helped me to embrace my body in different ways and listen to my body. I would say it's the year where I started to come into way more of a Two of Cups relationship with my body — like, for real. It brought up a lot of stuff with my partner and I, but ultimately, I would say it created a new foundation that we're standing on today.
So I think that I don't say this to assure you that Tower experiences are always hard or bad, even though I am speaking of a couple of them that are hard and bad (Lindsay laughs). I think I'm speaking about those because I can tell you that they all happened to me, personally, on purpose, in a very strong way. Very strong. That there was no question there. There were a lot of questions at the time. But now, in retrospect, I can look back on those years and think, oh my god, like, I would never be here without that. I would never have realized this without that. And it was important and necessary, even though it was challenging.
So even if it is hard, I have never, in my life, gone through a Tower season and thought, “Well, that was just bullshit,” you know? It might feel that way in the moment. And again, I'm not speaking for everybody. You're asking me, so I'm speaking from my own experience. As much as I hate to admit it — and I do a little bit (Lindsay laughs) — there's really never been a Tower experience that hasn't taught me and offered me some tremendous gifts even though it can be challenging to go through.
So, support, nurturance, really upping that quotient of how you care for yourself, taking it real easy, and just, you know, and being as gentle with yourself as possible, including with your fears about The Tower, you know, like, including those fears about how you feel about Tower and what it all means to you and what you're worried it means to you, like, just being super sweet in the face of that. And I think finally asking your Tower card, excuse me, some questions and just being like, “Hey, what am I, what's coming up for me around this right now?” you know, and kind of going from there.
So I hope this helps, and I'm wishing you the most like easeful, beautiful Tower year that anyone's ever had (Lindsay laughs) really. Thank you so much for trusting me with this question.
—
[Conclusion]
[0:55:42]
Thank you to everyone for listening to this podcast. I love all of you. And until we meet again, please take exquisite care of yourselves.