224. Recentering the Fear with Nine of Swords Rx + Eclipse Medicine

 

Eclipse season blessings to you, sweet Wild Souls!

 
 

Air date:
April 20, 2023

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About the Episode

Eclipse season blessings to you, sweet Wild Souls! On this week’s episode of the podcast, we dive into these Eclipses, and into our Anchor Card for the week ahead: Nine of Swords, Rx. When Nine of Swords shows up in a reversed position, it invites us out of fear and worry and into a more rooted place. Together, we will look ways to skillfully work with this energy in conjunction with the Eclipses, allowing some fear to be recentered within us. 

Plus, we answer a listener's question about how to approach our Tarot practice during health challenges, or other stressful times. 

Lindsay’s Links:

Learn more about Lindsay and dive into all of their courses, journal posts, and free resources by going here!

Download the FREE Ultimate Soul Tarot Card Guide here!

Got Q's for the podcast? Ask them here!

Help Turkey and Syria: 

https://www.akut.org.tr/en/donation

https://whitehelmets.org/en/

Defend the Atlanta Forest and Stop Cop City!

https://defendtheatlantaforest.org

Support 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: illness, health/medical diagnosis, anxiety, paranoid thoughts, fear, parenthood, mentions of surgery and emergency surgery, hospitals, and relationship to body

The content in this episode contains references to mentions of illness, health/medical diagnosis, anxiety, paranoid thoughts, fear, parenthood, mentions of surgery and emergency surgery, hospitals, and relationship to body. We have done our best to identify difficult subject matter, but the labels may not be comprehensive for your personal needs. Please honor your knowing and proceed with necessary self-awareness and care.


Transcript

[Introduction]

[0:00:00] 

(Instrumental intro music)

Welcome to Tarot for the Wild Soul, a podcast that explores the Tarot through an inclusive, soul centered, trauma informed perspective for growth, healing, and evolution. I'm your host, Lindsay Mack. 

Hello loves and welcome back to Tarot for the Wild Soul podcast, Lindsay here. And as always, I am so delighted and honored to be gathered with all of you here in this virtual shared gathering space. So thank you for being here. 

We have so much to get to today, we have Eclipse talk (Lindsay laughs) at the top of the pod because we're in an Eclipse season and I think it's important to name and to talk about what that kind of energy means because it's pretty huge. We are going to talk about our card of the week, and we're going to answer a listener question. 

So I want to just land us in space by reiterating: We are officially in an Eclipse portal. And for those of you who've been listening for a while, that's not like a new term to me but it has always been what I've called it. An Eclipse portal just represents and acknowledges the span of time between one Eclipse and another; Eclipses always come in pairs. So it's roughly two weeks. This one starts around April 19th to the 20th. So right when this episode is dropping is our New Moon Solar Eclipse in Aries and then on May 5—about two weeks from now—we'll have our Full Moon Eclipse. 

[0:01:48]

So starting a little before Eclipse season, and sprinkled, kind of floating in after the May 5th Eclipse—this Eclipse energy sort of like permeates before the actual Eclipse and after the actual last Eclipse. So Eclipse energy is big, it's very wide, it's sweeping. Eclipses just really straightforwardly bring transformation. But more than transformation, they bring excavation. They bring realization, and in that way, in my personal opinion—I'm sure maybe some people have talked about this, maybe they haven't—if you were to ask me, “Lindsay, you know, what Tarot card best represents the function, the medicine, the kind of like, you know, way that Eclipses show up and how they work.” And I would say, “For sure, Judgment,” which I've talked about on the podcast before. 

Judgment is Eclipse energy personified, and vice versa (Lindsay laughs). Eclipse energy is Judgment personified. Judgment is ruled by Pluto, and Eclipses are very Plutonian. Pluto energy excavates, it digs out, it reveals. It reveals. So this isn't about like some horrific, terrifying realization. It's finally really putting into words, something we've needed to say for a really long time or it is finally acknowledging, “Fuck, I really need help” or it's finally being like, “I need to take the first step in my recovery.” Like, it's that kind of thing. Where it's not necessarily new; it's just a new wrinkle, a new layer, a new level of realization for us

And Judgment is very much about the blindfold coming off in a—you know, I have found Judgment doesn't show up for me a lot. But when it does, it's actually quite on the surface. It's like “I'm finally realizing like, that person in my life was really not a very good friend. And that's super painful but it's impossible to ignore.” You know, it's showed up for me when I realized like “Wow, this way of doing this is not working.” Blindfolds just, it's off. It's not like we're “more awakened” or “more enlightened” or we're above anybody. It has nothing to do with like conspiracy theories or some like rant, you know? It's just that deeply felt, deeply universal human understanding, where we might look back and think, “Oh my gosh, like I should have known.” Or, “I did know, maybe on some level, but now, here we are,” right? And I can't unknow it, I can't unsee it, I can't un-realize it; it's here. And my job is to be committed to the transformation that's going to naturally move through me upon changing through this realization. 

And that's true of both our work with Judgment and it's also true of Eclipses in general. They just do bring about unbelievable change. And it can be very different changes, like for an example—and this is just a gentle content warning for surgery, for hospitals, you can just skip a couple of seconds down the podcast—but I will never forget. I mean, like I walked into the ER, last May, when, (Lindsay laughs) like the Scorpio Eclipse was like happening, like literally when it was, it moved, like into Scorpio, the Eclipses basically began while I was in that emergency room and realized that I had to get my gallbladder removed. And that is, you know, in one way, very much an Eclipse thing: you realize that, you know, this thing that I had, it wasn't a very long amount of time, but you know, just can happen to people who are postpartum, gallbladder issues. And I hadn't had issues for a long time, but long enough that I knew something was wrong, and I needed some care and that was very clear to me. 

[0:06:47]

So it can like be that on the nose, or it can be like this one I'm going through have had a shift with my family care dynamic inside of the lead up to this Eclipse. I've had massive health news in the last few days—that's honestly been fairly life-changing and that's caused me to have a number—I'm okay, I am. But like, it's just very big. And like, I've had a huge professional hurdle that I've crossed and like, I honestly because I'm so busy and have a young kid kind of forgot we were even leading up to the Eclipse (Lindsay laughs) this past week. And so when I learned that I was like, “Tsk. Yes, of course. Okay, great.” And remembering that the Eclipses to me—it helps me so much to map them to Judgment because Judgment is the work we must do in order to get to the world. Judgment is the work we have to do in order to let go of those like Saturnian-style cycles, the like, no offense to Saturn, but like the shitty life lessons that we kind of have to go through, but don't really want to, you know? 

So, there's something incredibly powerful in that mapping and in that understanding that Eclipses do excavate. And it doesn't mean we weren't doing our work, it doesn't mean we were unwilling to see—even if we were unwilling to see—or we're not willing to acknowledge, maybe we weren't ready, maybe the time wasn't right to, you know, to fully acknowledge what was under the surface, maybe it wasn't time to have that conversation, right? 

Eclipse seasons are, I think, for good reason, and not really a time to do a ton of like, ritual work and spell work. And I don't think many people identify why but I would like to identify the reason that that makes sense to me, inside of my own experience, my own personal practice. I think that a part of it for me—and this is not just true for Eclipse season, but it is especially true of that particular time—is that we are being invited to let the Eclipses lead the way. And so when we do spellwork, it does typically lean into this idea of like, we have a sense of what we're looking for and what we want and what we'd like more of and what we'd like to clear. And during these next two weeks, it's not to say like don't do your spellwork, because like if you really have a call to do it, go for it. 

But it's very wise to allow this whole experience to wash over us, to let the de-layering process truly penetrate to the deepest level because again, every layer that Eclipse portals, identify and clear away is ready to be sloughed off, it is ready to go. Even though it might be really intense to take that symbolic blindfold off, we are ready to let it go. 

[0:10:08]

So that's sort of my two cents, a bit, about this Eclipse. And about this, you know, Eclipse seasons in general, last thing I'll just say is like, I'd say this is good, you know, stuff to keep in mind all the time, but just do take care to be incredibly gentle with yourself over the next few weeks. Because this, it's it's heavy, it can be very heavy, can bring up a lot. It can bring up a lot of old stories or beliefs, it can be painful to go through Eclipse energy sometimes. So just be very, very patient, be very, very gentle. It takes a lot of energy to excavate. 

You know, like I know for myself, like one of the things that I think I'm really being invited into by Spirit right now is something that I don't really particularly kind of want to do. There's like a lot of different things that I'm being called to do right now and I'm having to work through some resistance to it—because it's like, my own stuff, my own beliefs of what that means and what that meant. And I think like, in my opinion, again, that's a big part of the reason that we take so much care with the body during Eclipse season, because it is intense, and it does ask a lot of us. 

So I'm hoping wishing that the easiest, most fortuitous, fruitful (Lindsay laughs) Eclipse season, you could possibly hope for—because the medicine and the nourishment of it is so great. It's the experience of it that can sometimes be very intense, you know? And that leads us really quite nicely into our card of the week, which this week is Nine of Swords reversed. 

So Nine of Swords reversed, put quite simply, quite succinctly, is a freeing up and away from fear. Specifically, something that we might have felt a little nervous about, shaky about, afraid of. Nine of Swords, in general, tends to be—with all due respect—pretty woefully misunderstood, I think. In that, in most literature, it's really only discussed, and this card I think, is unpacked only at its surface level, for the most part. I don't think that's always true. But for the most part, that's true. 

[0:12:56]

The way that it's typically unpacked is that Nine of Swords is often just spoken of around how it can tend to make us feel. So very often we’ll read something about this card in a book or in a guidebook and it'll say like, “anxiety, fear, nightmares, like worst case scenario”. And I'd like just take it a step further if I could, this card doesn't, it doesn't bring those feelings. This card helps us to work with those feelings—if we're having them at all. It helps us to be the self parent. It helps us to reparent ourselves and to be our own loving, warm, sturdy guide and parent, through maybe a situation—that could just all be in our minds, it doesn't mean it's any less of a stressful distressing situation. Like if we're worried about something while we're waiting to hear news or whatever—that doesn't mean that we don't deserve a lot of care intending. That's when we deserve the care and tending right? We always do; we always deserve that care. 

So Nine of Swords doesn't predict anything like that. It doesn't forbode anything, it doesn't call anything to us. It doesn't say, “You will be afraid,” or “You will move through this experience of fear.” I think Nine of Swords acknowledges that there's often fear and anxiety and most of us—especially in the world now—there's a hell of a lot to be nervous about, worried about, afraid of, wondering about. Right? 

This card, when right side up, is an invitation to be the kind of parent that we maybe had always hoped to be or maybe that we got from our own parents. If there is, you know, a closet in our room, that the little one in us is like, “Oh my god, what if there's a monster in that closet,” part of our work in Nine of Swords is to be is to let that self parent sort of bubble up and take the “magical flashlight”, as I've called it before, and kind of say, “I'll take a look for us,” and shine a light in there. So if we’re like, “Oh my god, this thing could happen.” It's maybe not googling it, but maybe it's asking somebody who can actually speak to like, “Oh, these are the potentials here,” or “Wow, like, your numbers around this are so off. Like, here's actually what the net of this is,” or “Here's what the numbers around this are.” 

There's something about—in a very measured and deeply wise and compassionate way—checking in. Like Nine of Swords is always my heads up that if my brain is telling me like, “Oh my gosh, this is a disaster,” to actually do a little digging and see if that's true. Or if my brain—as it loves to say is like, “Someone's mad at me,” or “They don't like me.” If it's sort of a safer relationship, or if there's, like an ability to actually ask that question, I've sometimes will straight up ask people, like, you know, “I don't know, like, everything's okay with us, right?” Or whatever. And sometimes, if I'm close enough, I'll even say, “My brain is inviting me into this idea. Is it true?” Like, you know? 

[0:16:24]

Some people don't really they're not comfortable with those kinds of questions, so if we're having that worry about someone, we can also say, “I'm loved by a lot of people. A lot of people love me. A lot of people love to be around me and like, it's okay, if this person does not.” And obviously, this is all situation dependent. If we have messed up, if we are causing harm, if we are kind of taking up more space in the room than is appropriate; then we want to ideally, repair, we want to sort of move back, do more listening than we talk, really receive someone else's feedback and be aware of how that makes them feel. This has to do a little bit more with those really heavy-duty paranoid thoughts that tend to feel just really—they can freeze us, you know? They can make us feel very, very isolated and sort of trapped in our own thinking. 

Nine of Swords reversed is a lifting up from that kind of freeze; it's a thaw from the freeze. So this week—and I know that this has to do with Eclipse energy just because I can feel it. There's a lot that's possible this week around kind of our worst fears, or our heavy fears, or our kind of more persistent worries or anxieties around certain things. Being able to get lifted a bit this week, maybe not like everything, maybe not the biggest thing. But there's something about this Eclipse season, that has to do with getting answers to things that have have have plagued us or finally acknowledging what hasn't worked—so that we can kind of do our due diligence around opening up to something different or considering something different, trying something different, even if it brings up some resistance. And Nine of Swords reversed is basically like, “Well, after we've looked in the closet, we found that there's no monster in there, then what?” Then maybe we party, that maybe we go to sleep and can actually sleep in peace. It represents the ease that can come when we have answers, even if they're not answers that we particularly love or are happy about. So if we've felt like we've sort of been middling around or sort of floating around options, like “Oh, my gosh, what do I do here? What do I do there? Should I do this or this?” This Eclipse season is kind of an invitation to just try something new, to reflect on how maybe things that we used to be afraid of or that we were worried about have changed.

There's something inside of this Eclipse season as well about moving up and forward in particular areas of our life. So if we're called upon to be of service in a particular way, if we're called upon to make a change, if we're called upon to tell someone how we feel—and that's all Aries energy, This first New Moon Solar Eclipse is in Aries so that's connected to Emperor. So that idea of like, Emperor being a huge part of this Eclipse portal does have to do with a really strong kind of top-down review of how we are of service and what nurtures us, in that big, expansive, beautiful sharing. Like we're really being called to come forward and share a lot more of ourselves and that could be just having a one-to-one chat with someone about what's been on your heart, or that could be like speaking more broadly to your community, or anywhere in between, right? It could be filing a report, it could be leaving an amazingly constructive compliment, it could be telling someone you're in love with them. Like, wherever you're at, that's the vulnerable energy of Emperor is like, “Oh my god, like, I should not be this tall, like, you know? I might be—.” So it's going to bring up some stuff about like, our vulnerability in that way. It felt like, “Why should I grow tall and spread my wings and share,” and like all those different other really valid (Lindsay laughs) feelings. 

And weirdly Nine of Swords reversed being here is basically letting you know—letting all of us know—what you might be afraid of around your Emperor-ness, around your Aries-ness. This might have already passed, there might be different guardrails in place, there might be different boundaries that you've put into practice that weren't what they were a few years ago, weren't what they were a year ago, right? That we've grown and changed. So why wouldn't our relationship to certain things grow and change? Right? 

[0:21:34]

So there's something about here, the opportunity to reflect review, and notice where we're being called to expand and come further forward. And noticing our resistance about it, maybe our fear and our worry about it. There's something for us again this week, a really, really powerful and important place to kind of root down inside of that, is the fact that yes, some of those fears and worries are—all of them—are completely valid feelings, they're all worthy and valid. All of them, though, might not be true. So we want to check in about it. We want to tune in about it, we just want to see, like, “Is that actually true for me? Do I want to do this, do I not? What kind of, what would I need to have in place for me to feel comfortable enough to do this, this, or this?” Right? So all of that is wrapped up in this week, in this Eclipse portal, all of it. It really is. 

We have the opportunity to really transmute, shift, our perspective, our feelings, around stuff that's pulling us into worry, into anxiety. There's a chance to really make some ground-level pivots with how it is; how those worries and anxieties are either keeping us locked in something old, keeping us in a story that's no longer true. It's a lot less about like making these huge, sweeping changes and more about a gentle reflection around like, “Oh, yeah, that was true. But that was when, you know, my life was this way or this was different, or I didn't have…” you know, whatever, this guardrail, this boundary. So we're just looking at that, looking at that this week, that may just naturally pop up. 

And if you're sort of finding yourself already in that, working with that really lovely, tender, inner caretaker is very, very helpful. And it's really just working with the self-parent to help to tend the parts of us that might be feeling a little bit more afraid, you know? So, a lot of powerful work for us this week. And I think again, if I can just say this, that it's less about like leaning in and doing the work and more about like letting it bubble up for us. Just noticing. Letting it lead the way. You know, we may have an idea of like, “what I want to clear out at Eclipse season” and like with all due respect, we can't really have the most effective—like we want to let the Eclipses show us what's ready to be cleared not let our kind of will and ego lead the way. 

Will is great; I'm about freewill (Lindsay laughs). Like I think that kind of beautiful utilization of ego and soul together and being like “This is what I'm ready to let go of.” It's great. In Eclipse season, and with this card of the week, Nine of Swords reversed, there's something really important here about watching, observing, letting ourselves be led, rather than leading the way if that makes sense. 

[0:25:00]

So we're going to end with our listener question. This one is from Emili and there's a content warning on this of illness and medical diagnosis. So if that's not feeling like something that you're available to receive right now, we can say goodbye here, and I'll be sending you love and meeting you at the end, or at our next episode of the podcast. And for those of you who feel open to this, we can journey on together. 

So Emili asks, 

Lindsay, I've been diagnosed with a big medical thing in the last six months. There's good weeks and bad weeks. And life keeps going, you know? I've been a listener forever and I feel like you might be able to relate and give me some advice on this topic. Sometimes I have a great Tarot practice. I read for myself and friends and plenty of people. But when it comes to being sick, I can't seem to trust my readings or find myself not wanting to know what they'll say. On the other hand, I know the healing power of this tool and I don't want to just ignore that it's in my toolbox as much as yoga or meditation. How can I tap into the Tarot that I know and love and times when I just don't feel like it's working? I value your advice, and I'm so grateful for your work. Thanks. 

Emili, I am just sending you so much care, so much warmth. I'm so sorry that you're dealing with a big medical thing. There's (Lindsay sighs) it can be so hard, so isolating. The mental toll can be so great. I'm glad that you have tools in your toolbox. I'm so glad that you feel connected to the Tarot. And your question, your inquiry makes all the sense in all the world—maybe even more than you know—that the Tarot would feel inaccessible, or not particularly helpful during all of the kind of, during all of the moments, inside of this season of your life and I think for great reasons like you mentioned. “Health stuff”—and I’m using that in heavy quotations—is so vulnerable and it brings us to our knees in moments. And there are times where we just really want the Tarot to be a cosmic parent to tell us it'll all be okay. We want answers. We want to know that we're okay. We want to know that like—we want answers that the Tarot can't ultimately really give us. 

[0:27:47]

So in speaking directly to your question—which is: “How you can tap into the Tarot that you know and love in times where you just don't feel like it's working”—is to really remind yourself and keep very front of mind and heart, that medical stuff, health stuff, particular seasons of life, do make us just so… do put us in a different state of mind and different frame of mind where we might feel again, very vulnerable, very scared, very worried. And again, we kind of want, we want answers. And I've been there so many times where I'm just like, “I legit need. I mean, I just want to hear that this is okay (Lindsay laughs), like that I'm okay even if I might not be okay.” Like or I want to know how this is going to end or I want to know like when it'll end and like—we want to start with being very tender, very gentle with that because that's as valid and as appropriate as anything could possibly be: that you want that in certain moments or that you don't feel like it's working.

When we're in that space, where we don't feel like a tool like that is working—especially because the Tarot often maps a story about what is and what might be and what was—when we're going through something as like intense as a health issue, where it's about our body, like this, like the part of us that if it is not, you know, if our health gets upended in one end or another like or if we're dealing with health stuff, it naturally makes us think about mortality. It naturally puts us in a, again, very vulnerable, very heightened state of mind. And it is so normal to want to reach out with very shaky hands and be like, “Tell me what the fuck is going on and when this is going to be over?” 

I don't know if I'm describing your experience, but I do think I'm likely hitting on some part of it because I've gone through so many really tough health and injury experiences, diagnoses, myself that I know that feeling really acutely. And it's not fun, and it makes you feel like you're the only person in the world going through it. It's incredibly isolating and frightening. So again, I'm just, I'm just with you. I'm really witnessing you in this. 

I cannot read Tarot for myself in the typical way that I do when I'm going through a big health thing, or when I'm going through, like a lead-up to a procedure or surgery. It doesn't, it is not helpful to me, in that standard way of like pulling a card and whatever. The only way that a regular pull and interpret practice helps, is when I'm refining even further than I usually do, my readings, or grounding them into a space of saying, rather than, “Can you tell me what the outcome of this health issue is going to be? Can you tell me something about my health?” Actually reporting on that inner protector, more than letting it lead the way. 

So when the inner protector, the brain, the more hyper-vigilant part of us is really concerned about us during a health event, that part of us usually takes over and wants to pull cards to figure out if everything's going to be okay. So that is when we usually have readings that are framed up, like “What is going to be the outcome of this health issue?” Will I be okay?” Those kinds of questions. 

[0:32:04]

How I personally recommend that we might go about shifting that to feel way more supportive is: turning to our deck, perhaps closing our eyes, and saying, “There is a part of me that desperately wants to know if everything will be okay. I feel afraid. I feel isolated. I feel awful. I feel—” you know, we add in our own two cents, “—maybe abandoned by Spirit. Like I did something wrong.” Again, some heavy stuff can come up when we're going through how things. Whatever is on our heart. And then before we pull a card, we say, in the midst of these feelings, “How can I support myself through them?” And we might pull a card. You might ask, “What's a message for me from Spirit to hold on to, to hold close to, as I go through this situation? What's the number one most important thing that I could offer my attention to right now? That could help, even if I don't totally understand why?” 

We're choosing not to let those parts of us lead the reading and opting to, instead, stay a little closer to the soul, the witness, the internal observer, leading the way—if that makes sense. It doesn't seem like much of a shift but it's one that has massive reverberations. Because the Tarot cannot tell us. I have tried. (Lindsay laughs) It just can't tell us the outcome of certain things and it won't. And when we ask with that kind of intention in mind, what happens? We get frustrated with the tool and we're like, “This is fucking bullshit,” and we put it away or we feel disappointed or betrayed by it. And those feelings are, again, valid as fuck but the Tarot was never truly, it cannot adequately predict anything because the future is not fixed, which is very scary. And you know it is. It's very uncomfortable. 

What it can do for us specifically, when we're going through the kind of season you're going through, Emili, is it can help us to stay very close to ourselves. I'm going through—it could be a lot worse, so just want to acknowledge that and acknowledge my blessings and my gratitude for those blessings—I'm going through kind of a tough time right now, it's just hard. I also received some health news the last week that's been just like, just a lot, you know? And like, just there's a lot of different things. It's just been. It's been tough, you know, just hard. 

I was just sitting with Spirit, who I'm mad at right now, you know? (Lindsay laughs) I am. You know, for the last year or so, I've just been kind of mad at Spirit. And I want to, like normalize that, just to say, like, that happens. Where we feel kind of angry with God, it just does. It happens. 

[0:35:53]

I'm still listening, and still doing as best as I can, what I'm being asked to do. But I'm angry, you know? I'm upset about it. And I was just asking, I was just doing exactly what I'm framing up for you—which is a big part of my practice is that I name and acknowledge, like, “Spirit, I'm moving through this, this, and this. I'm feeling really mad at you about it. And inside of all of that, you know, what card could I hold to, what card would you have me receive that could help me understand what to reach for in this time?” And I pulled Nine of Pentacles. And then some qualifiers. And if I had not been practicing Tarot and teaching it for as long as I have, probably would have, like, thrown my deck out the window and been like, “Fuck you, how dare you.” 

But I understood what it meant, which was “As much as you can, inside of this time that kind of sucks. Can you reach for what’s sweet? Can you hold—” and it made me think, and I trust these initial flashes, like I felt my daughter. Like her sweetness and her presence in my life and what a gift that was. I felt such gratitude for like the food in my fridge. And like the deliciousness of the dinner that I'm lucky to have tonight, like any of us who are housed and fed are so lucky. You know? I felt I felt the blessings in like the trees that I get to look at every day, like, there's a lot to love. And there's also a lot of hardship going on. 

So it was their way of saying, “Keep the most important thing for you inside of the season is to stay very tethered to the sweetness. Stay really tethered to the good shit.” It's not their way of saying “Everything's going really well for you” or “You have to try to like think positively.” It’s just their way of saying “Where are the gifts? And how can you stay really close to them?” 

So that's another thing that I'll say is if you get like, a “sweet” card for your situation, that doesn't mean that your experience is being gaslit or bypassed by Source or by your cards because I know it can feel that way. Sometimes I really do. I really do. (Lindsay laughs) You know, I do. So know that it may be, that what we're being asked to do is to sort of stay more rooted or tethered to something sweet or something nourishing inside of this really shitty time. Not like “we gotta think positively” or we have to do anything different do more labor. 

[0:38:57]

And I will also say to the other note, if we get a more bitter card or spikier card, perhaps, like if we're asking about a health outcome and we get like The Tower. In my opinion, that does not mean that we're gonna be moving into—first of all, I'd want to know precisely what question you asked and what (Lindsay laughs), like, what you how you framed it, like, I'd want to know that. But let's just say we were like, you know, “What's the outcome of my health?” Like, let's say that like kind of scared protector really framed that question up and was like, “What's the outcome of this health issue?” And we got The Tower. What I would actually say if I was working with you is that The Tower might in fact be showing up to help identify that that inner scared protector is not the best driver of your readings “car”. 

So it might be that we have to kind of shift the foundation in the framework of who gets to actually even—who's even asking the question, I know we're getting really into the weeds here. But trust when I say this will help you; I really believe that. Because when we shift the foundation of the part of us, it's asking the question, it shifts the answers we get. And let's just say you ask with a little bit more of an observer role, like “I'm going through this, this, and this, how can I best take care of myself?” And we get The Tower. I think then I would ask, “Okay, Tower is really heavy. How—can be heavy. What are some Anchor Cards for me inside of this Tower experience that I can hold to, so that I can remain nourished and supported through it?” You know? 

So it's all—that's why my style in terms of the process of Tarot Anchoring—this is all Tarot Anchoring. This is all like, in moments exactly like what you're describing when we like, cannot read for what we're going through, how do we stay tethered to our deck? You shift the way you ask the question. It might be that you don't read right now, Emili. It could be like, what are some cards that feel really special, really lovely, really nurturing, really important to you that you want more of? What might be like to take a break from your deck for a week and put those like one to three cards on your altar? Like, if Three of Cups is one of them, maybe there's like a group that you join online or like a circle, a text chain, that's really supportive and important to you, or like a beautiful family member, or even just your ancestors, your beloved dead, your Guides; those are a part of Three of Cups too. 

[0:41:44]

So like, maybe that's on your altar. Maybe don't even pull a card. And you’re like, “Today, I want to call Three of Cups into my life, I'd like for there to be more nourishment, more support.” Maybe The Star is on your altar, because you're like, “Fuck this, I know I'm in a Tower. I don't need to get The Tower, maybe I'm in Tower (Lindsay laughs), and when I'm calling on is Star, so that while I'm going through this burn, in this fire, I can have some cooling rain to like soften that a little bit,” right? 

You know, who knows what. You let me know. You can write me and let me know how this lands and let me know if you have any follow-up questions. I just want to say something else that I'm sure a lot of people maybe have some—they might not like it, they might disagree. That's okay. I feel like we can disagree. I've given other people this advice, too. If you're going through a particularly difficult time and there are certain cards in particular, that like when you see them, you go on a spiral—take them out of your deck. You don't have to, I just want to give you, if you need some sort of permission, please take them out of your deck. You're not bypassing, you're not not doing the work—that’s horseshit anyway (Lindsay laughs). Truth be told, you don't have to be exposed to something that activates you. 

Spirit—if you know let’s say for you, it's like if you see The Moon one more fucking time. If you're in a moon, like season, and you know it, you don't need to see it six hundred times. You can take it out of your deck. It's starting to hail where I live and so if you hear that, it's the hail. (Lindsay laughs)  I don't know if it'll show up on mic. But yeah, like really feel free to take it out. Just take it out. Because if you need to know something Moonie, your deck will find a way to give it to you without The Moon card being in there; you'll get other medicine, you’ll get other support. So yeah, thank you for trusting me with this question, Emili. I really hope it helps. And I have—yeah, just let me know how it all lands. And I'll be thinking about you. 

[Conclusion]

[0:44:06]

I have two questions for this community. Email me, email us, email the team at info@tarotforthewildsoul.com, and let me know how these things land. Number one, would this community like some sort of very, very affordable subscription mode, like a Patreon-style thing, that could possibly have these kinds of Ask Lindsay’s as a part of the subscription on a monthly basis, so every month we could gather over zoom and we could like to work these questions out together? Because I feel like I would love to do that with y'all. Yeah. And what would you want to be a part of it? I've been thinking about this for so long, but I don't really like Patreon. So we've been looking at other models, but I'd love to gauge the interest level. I know like emailing is a pain in the ass. But just if you have a big feeling about it either way, let me know. And let me know what you would love to have as a part of that. 

And the other thing too, is that I've been considering possibly doing Ask Lindsay's like live with people. So, for example, this question was asked by someone named Emili and it might be that every once in a while about every month, I might invite, let's say, Emili on and we might answer this question with Emili, live with me on the podcast. 

So I'd love to know if that would be helpful because sometimes I'm asked these really beautiful questions and it's been very nice to get some feedback from folks, usually very like, the answers really touched them. There are some times where I do feel like I'd love to be like, in dialogue rather than a monologue (Lindsay laughs). Just out of respect, sometimes for the person asking it, like, it would be nice to go back and forth with them and see in real-time if it resonated, and if they had follow-up questions, etc. 

[0:46:23]

So yeah, I'd love to know from all of you. Those of you who, you know, are listeners, how those things like land. Would you like them? Would you not? As it does seem like what's really being longed for right now is community and more kind of one-on-one live work. I know that's where I want to be, I don't really want to be in, like, a giant group space. Like, it feels better as more intimate groups. So yeah, just general stuff. Let us know how you feel about it. And either way, whether you email us or not, whether they whether you care about working, you know in group or membership or whatever, I just love you. I love that you're here. I love that we're together in this space. And until we connect again next week, please take exquisite care of yourselves.

 
 
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225. MONTHLY MEDICINE: May is Reclaiming

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223. Catching the Wave with The Magician