231: A Tarot Reading for the Solstice ☀️
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Many Solstice Blessings to you and yours, Wild Souls!
Air date:
June 19, 2023
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About the Episode
Many Solstice Blessings to you and yours, Wild Souls! Today on this special episode of the TFTWS pod, we dive into the medicine of the Solstice, and Lindsay offers up a very special Soul Tarot collective reading for this beautiful threshold.
Lindsay’s Links:
Enrollment for Spiralic Tarot: Summer closes TODAY! To enroll or learn more, click here!
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Download the free Ultimate Soul Tarot Card Guide here
PODCAST EDITOR: Chase Voorhees
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTIONISTS: Meghan Lyman, Terri Wanjiku, Annelise Feliu, Valerie Cochran
PODCAST ART: Rachelle Sartini Garner
Land Acknowledgement
Honoring and acknowledging that this podcast episode was recorded on the unceded land of The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, currently called Portland, OR, with the deepest respect to the Kalapuya Tribe, Cowlitz Tribe, and Atfalati Tribe.
Please Note
CW Tags: mental health crisis, death, birth, difficult relationship with a parent, parenthood, and blood/injury
The content in this episode contains references to mental health crisis, death, birth, difficult relationship with a parent, parenthood, and blood/injury. We have done our best to identify difficult subject matter, but the labels may not be comprehensive for your personal needs. Please honor your knowing and proceed with necessary self-awareness and care.
Transcript
[Introduction]
[0:00:00]
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(Instrumental intro music)
Welcome to Tarot for the Wild Soul, a podcast that explores the Tarot through an inclusive, soul-centered, trauma-informed perspective for growth, healing, and evolution. I'm your host, Lindsay Mack.
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[00:00:20]
Hello, everybody. Lindsay here. Welcome back to the podcast. So delightful to be gathered with all of you. I hope that you're having a very, very sweet day and that this episode is greeting and finding you well. Always, always so happy to be here with all of you, as mentioned before. Usually, we do our Card of the Week and our listener question, but this week is a special week because it is the week of our Solstice. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, our Summer Solstice. For those of you in the Southern Hemisphere, your Winter Solstice. It marks the shift out of the, what I like to call the Fire season of the year, our Spring cycle here in the Northern Hemisphere.
I call it the Fire season, for those of you who don't know, because we move into Spring in Aries season. So even though we pivot to Taurus and Gemini seasons, the fact is that Aries is Cardinal Fire. And even though we're moving to Earth and Air with Taurus and Gemini, that whole span of time, from the first day of Aries season to the last day of Gemini season, we're working with that element of Cardinal Fire that’s sort of painted over the whole spectrum of the season. And because Aries is Fire, we're working within what? The Fire season. It's also a lovely way to kind of frame up that season because obviously, the period of time from May 21st to around June 21st is not Spring for everybody, right? It's Fall for a whole half of the world.
[0:02:11]
So honoring it as the Fire season, the Fire cycle of the year, the Fire spiral of the year, whatever suits you best, is a very powerful way to think about it, right? And of course, we're talking about like Wands fire. So we're talking about sensing into kind of what is my, where am I, right? How am I being invited to work with this inner flame? What does the inner flame look like right now, and from day to day? Because it changes all the time. All of that is really our focus in the Fire spiral of the year. And on June 21st, on the Solstice, we're going to pivot into our Water spiral of the year. Because on or around June 21st, we're going to move into Cancer season, which is Cardinal Water. So the whole structure flow, rhythm, of what we've been invited to pay attention to, work on, or focus is changing inside of that.
Water spirals of the year are very much about the inner journey. They're very much about discovery. It's absolutely an energetic shift of cooling, rather than a gradual heating up, right? Intensifying. It's not to say that Summer or Winter aren't incredibly intense seasons, but being inside of the water of it all can be really medicinal because it helps us to remember, whether we're going through the Summer or the Winter, that it is still a time of inner journeying. It is still a time of deep reflection, right, and of that word “journey” is very, very powerful and very much aligned with any Water season of the year.
This is also a very significant time—the solstice of it all—because on June 21st, when we pivot into the Solstice, we're moving into Cancer season, The Chariot is connected to Cancer. So we're moving into our Chariot season inside of a, basically, a Chariot cycle from June 21st to September 21st, inside of a Chariot year. So there's many many layers of Cancer medicine, of The Chariot medicine. We've talked about The Chariot like literally ad nauseam, and yet what else are we to talk about? It’s a Chariot year. Everything goes back to that. It's the main focus and the main point of orbit right now, in this particular time in 2023.
Understanding that we're marinating in Chariot medicine can help to, I think, make sense of a little bit of what we're going through, can help us to find a North Star, can help us to draw in some anchoring, some support. You know, it can be really, really powerful.
[0:05:32]
If you want to dive in and receive a ton of beautiful channeled medicine, around this particular Water season ahead, my seasonal offering, Spiralic Tarot, is open for enrollment only until end of day today, only until June 19th end of day. So if you want to take advantage of that, if you want to learn more about what I'm talking about specific to the season, get channeled downloads for each of the astrological seasons inside of this season, I highly recommend, you know, taking the leap and signing up. So that being said, we're going to talk today, specifically, rather than doing kind of a Card of the Week pull, we're going to talk about our reading for the Solstice.
The Solstice is one of eight sabbats, or eight really important thresholds, in the Wheel of the Year. We have four Cross-Quarters, two Solstices, two Equinoxes. Equinoxes have to do with—I mean, on paper as a definition—Equinoxes which happen in the Spring and the Fall, respectively, have to do with equal amounts of day and night in one night. So whether we are moving through them in March or in September—which is when they happen—every time we go through an Equinox, there is an energy and an invitation to restructure and review, always.
There's always—because it has to do with balance—it has to do with taking stock of kind of what's going on, and do we have what we need for what we're about to embark on. Because the Equinoxes really do take us through a more visually transformative time, right? We move into the Equinox around March 21st. There really isn't much evidence that Spring is here, right? Probably in the Southern Hemisphere, it's still pretty fucking hot (Lindsay laughs), you know? And there's, there's probably not a whole lot of evidence. And yet when we get to the next Equinox, we're completely going to be moving in the other direction.
[0:08:11]
So when we get to that Spring Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere, we start, things don't really look too, too much like, you know, warm and spring-y. But the Equinox lets us know like, “Marshall your resources, take an inventory, what do you have? Because you're about to move from not really very spring-y to completely riotous blooming open, life starting, from a really slow time.” And the opposite happens at the other Equinox of the year, where we're where we've been going, going, going. And now the time has come to kind of gather, and harvest, and make sure we have resources close, because things are going to be slowing down and getting colder.
Solstices are about, respectively, depending on the one that we're experiencing, welcoming back the light or welcoming the night. In the Northern Hemisphere, on June 21st, we will welcome back the night because we're experiencing the longest day of the year. So we know that, and I actually don't think technically June 21st is the longest day of the year. But again, it's a symbolic gesture, right? And it happens on the first day of Cancer season. So that's where we kind of find it. but it's not always, again, the longest day. Depending. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.
But for those of us—again, on this first day of Cancer season, June 21st—even though we have the longest day and the shortest night, from that point on, the nights are only going to get longer, very slowly. So we're welcoming that back while honoring the light. In the Southern Hemisphere, they're welcoming the light and honoring the night, because in the Southern Hemisphere, this Solstice in June is the shortest day and the longest night. And from there on out, the night is only going to get shorter and shorter. The light is coming back for folks in the Southern Hemisphere. For us, the night is coming back.
How beautiful that the Earth can hold that duality within itself, right? That one part of the Earth can be welcoming back the night, the other part can be welcoming back the light. And inside of the paradigm of the Solstices, for each of the hemispheres of the Earth, we are both bowing to what's here and welcoming what's to come. So I think not to get too like cheesy, or whatever about it, I do think that the Solstices are a) a time of profound celebration, and b) a time that really shows us what it is to die well, to live well, as best as we can—however well is defined for us, right? Because that is different.
[0:11:16]
We understand that change is inevitable. We understand that death is inevitable. We understand that there are certain inevitabilities of this life that are coming, right, that there are certain non-death related changes that are coming. And yet, the gifts of what's here are so profound. So any Solstice we move through is a beautiful opportunity to bow to the gifts of what is here and open to the fact that inevitably they'll change. Inevitably, they’ll be different, right? And it's even more comforting if what's here is really, really challenging.
The Solstice reminds us nothing is forever, nothing. Nothing is forever, even if what we're going through is particularly searing. So, again, not to be cheesy about it, but (Lindsay laughs) I do think that. Like, I do really feel like the Solstices are just, they shine a very strong light on what we need to see so that we can bow to it, while also welcoming in the inevitable and what it is that we're hoping for and desiring for. So there's so much medicine to be accessed here, you know?
I also think that the card of our collective year starts to change shape a little bit on the other side of the June Solstice. I have no evidence for that (Lindsay laughs), but it does always feel like there's an acceleration on the other side of that. There's a mellowing out on the other side of that. I do think, because collective card years run in series of nine years. So the last Chariot year we had was 2014. And I'll admit, that was a pretty impactful year for me. I had a nervous breakdown. That was the year I came back to reading Tarot again after a little bit of time of being away and certainly not doing it much for other people. Knowing that I wanted to do it professionally. I got married. I went no contact with my mom. So, impactful, memorable year.
But I do remember The Chariot and the medicine of The Chariot absolutely reaching a breaking point around this time and then cooling off for the rest of the year. It wasn't that there wasn't a lot of hard work, but the intensity. I think of the denial, that I was going to keep trying to make these various chariots work, that fell away. So, denial is a big part of Chariot years. It can be really hard, you know, to really acknowledge like, “This is not gonna work (Lindsay laughs). You know, I just need to do something different.” And for many of us, this has been coming for a long time, way, way before The Chariot year, right? So there's a lot to be celebrated here.
And I, you know, now that I'm a parent, I will admit like sometimes pre-parenthood, I just sort of let the big spirals on the Wheel of the Year, like the big Cross-Quarters and the big kind of sabbats, I never really honored them too much. Because my work is connected to the honoring of them, like talking about it with y'all and pulling cards on it, I always really felt really nourished, but never did much personal celebration or ritual, not too too much. But this year, having a child, it is definitely making me think more about like, filling my own personal, familial cup with celebrations and things. And I don't really have much advice on how to really honor and like move through the Solstice in a way that feels meaning meaningful.
I would say, finding your own meaning and letting your own circumstances dictate how you want to work with this day, if you want to work with this day, is really nice. Like, is there a call to go to the ocean? Is there a call to go to the city? Is there a call to party and to dance, you know, and like be with people? Is there a call to be more solitary and somewhere quiet? There's no wrong way to do it as long as it doesn't, you know, bring harm to you or anyone else.
[0:16:23]
So, yeah, we made it. We’re at the midpoint of the year. We made it. Isn’t that incredible? Isn't it incredible that we're welcoming back the night, welcoming back the light, bowing to the night, bowing to the light? What a glorious reminder of the, I don't know, agony and the ecstasy of being alive (Lindsay laughs), and how life is a series of that—nights and days, symbolic nights and days. So I'm excited to move through the threshold with all of y'all. And it is—make no mistake—a threshold. It's a movement out of this Fire element, movement into the Water element of the year. We're moving out of Cardinal Fire, moving into Cardinal Water. Cancer is a very different energy than Aries is. Aries, Taurus, Gemini is very different from Cancer, Leo, Virgo, you know, very different. So we're about to dive into a very different time, likely one of some pretty big changes.
And to honor that, I did a little reading for us. So I'm going to be kind of diving into those cards and talking a little bit about how we can work with them. And I encourage you to do your own spread for yourself personally, because collective and personal can make harmonies with one another. But this is for all of us collectively listening to this, whenever we listen to this.
So the medicine, the message, the gift of this Solstice threshold to us came through in the form of The Tethered One. This makes so much sense to me and I feel like it's the threshold basically saying, “Just keep going. Keep going.” Things still don't feel a hundred percent clear, settled, solid. Not quite sure, you know, exactly where we're going. Not quite sure exactly what's going on. We're kind of doing what we're doing here, knowing that it's not quite going to be forever. And, you know, maybe for you, it's one small area of life, maybe it's a lot of areas. That's true all the time, right, but particularly true now.
The Tethered One isn't a long period of time, but it is a sustained period, and a very profound period of time, where we are very quite literally, energetically, in a little chrysalis. So when we're in a chrysalis, we don't know what's going on outside of that more internal experience. And due to the Neptunian nature of this card, we are not totally clear on what's going on (Lindsay laughs), because our view, our perception isn't warped, but it is just not maybe exactly rooted and we just may not have all of the information. The only information we have is what's inside of this little cocoon. I think that this is an interesting parallel because The Chariot is kind of similar to that energy in its own way, right?
[0:20:00]
The Chariot is very much about like a baby reaching full term in a womb, a bird reaching like its full growth inside of an egg before it hatches, and we're coming out of that, you know, moving out of that tinier space to a much larger world. And in many ways, that is The Tethered One. But what The Tethered One is really responsible for is helping us to clear and honor a death process. It's very concerned with helping things to die away. It does a lot of the work that happens in the Death card. The Death card is very much about clearing, and obviously transformation, and death, and turnover, but the Death card is more interested in the composting. The Death card is very interested in like, “What are we doing with this turnover exactly? What are we helping to nourish in its place?”
The Tethered One is really like being kind of held in place so we can see the things that are necessary, fully, like and again, remember that because we're in this little chrysalis, not, we don't have a 360-degree view of everything. But what floats up within that chrysalis is what we are meant to see. So we may not know like the full vision of like, where it's going, where we're taking it, or whatever, but what comes up in sight of that tightly held space is what is ready to be witnessed and seen. And for some of us, it could be like, you know, something related to our business or it could be something related to our fears about our business.
It could be something about something completely personal—relationships, dynamics, our children, our parenting, whatever it is. But this is all deeply connected, and there's not much we need to do with this. It's just to understand that it's a wave we're being invited to surf, right? So remember that with The Tethered One, with any Major Arcana card, we don't make those waves happen. We respond to them. We surf them, right?
[0:22:31]
So that's really beautiful, because we want the Solstice to help us to clear out, right? We're in a Chariot year and Chariot is very much about birthing. We are leaving things behind, but it is very much focused on like, the centering of The Chariot, I believe, is on preparing us for the path, that we're ready. We're going to be ready to kind of take on foot, or in another kind of more accessible vehicle. And the particular containers and systems of support that we've had around us are just not quite cutting it for what's going to be needed down the line. So we are leaving things behind inside of that transition in The Chariot, but it's more focused on where we're going. Again, The Tethered One is deeply devoted to letting things bubble up and be processed, so they can absolutely be cleared and we never have to go back to them again. Ever.
So Death card work; witnessing, realizing, awakening, very deep inner journeying. These kinds of like, there's an awakening energy to this Solstice and what it has to offer to us. And there's, there definitely is a little message inside of this, that's like, “Don't try to outrun this, don't try to go anywhere. Like trust in the medicine of this Chariot year, and the pace and the flow.” These underworld journeys can be really slow and really excruciating. It can be really hard to sustain it. With The Tethered One, it's not forever. There is like a holding of something that can be really intense. But there are lifts. There are breaks.
So with that, if we can try to bow to this energy and work with it, let it take us. Let it allow it to help us to bubble things up. So we can really see them and witness them and acknowledge them. It can be incredibly powerful, you know? Like there's hardly any greater transformative energy than The Tethered One, right? So very Piscean, very Neptunian, very powerful.
[0:24:59]
What we're getting ready to bow away to, to say goodbye to, what's going to start fading back starting at the Solstice and moving through the rest of the year is Eight of Pentacles. Which is really interesting, because I think Eight of Pentacles is such a like close cousin to Chariot work. Because Chariot work, it's very much, our Chariot work happens very much in process, right? There's, like, it's almost like if we're thinking The Chariot as literally like a car and we're kind of at a crossroads, and we're trying to figure out how to kick it into four-wheel drive so we can make it work for the road. We're trying all kinds of different things. We need help with the engine, we get help with the engine. We're like, “Oh, this car's too big.” So we retrofit it. We’re like, “Oh, I don't know if we need four-wheel drive.” So we install it, or whatever symbolic gesture we might do there. The car people are probably like, “Oh my god.” (Lindsay laughs) But you get the idea, right? We're trying to make the vehicle that cannot really be a reliable vehicle for us on this path be that way in a retrofitted manner.
So there's a lot of trying and a lot of the spirit of Eight of Pentacles. Like, “I've tried everything, I've tried to do this, I've tried to do that. I've worked on this, I've worked on that. I've tried to offer this thing, I've tried this thing.” And eventually, we get to the point where we are invited with Chariot work to stop trying. And then the work becomes about trusting that it's okay to leave this particular chariot behind for something different, something unforeseen, something amazing, something new, something that isn't what was but also is so much better, right?
So that Solstice, I really do think, in Chariot years does change the nature of the work that we do with The Chariot. Around this time, like the halfway point of the year, kind of marks a shift where we're no longer trying to make the chariot work for this path. We're willing to leave it so that we can embark on the path in a different way. We're inviting in freshness, we're inviting a new flow, which is wonderful. So by giving up and saying goodbye to and letting Eight of Pentacles fall away, it's not that we're not working toward mastery in areas. It's not that we're working hard. It's not that we're trying to figure things out. It's that we're not trying to make something happen that is just not meant to happen anymore. It means that we're letting go of one part of the efforting that we've been doing to make something work that's just simply ready to be let go.
Now what we're welcoming in is Queen of Swords. To leave behind a chariot, to leave behind this work, is a big deal. So all kinds of different thoughts and stories and emotions can bubble up and it's important to draw on that Queen of Swords energy—that sword of truth—to slice through some of the noise and get clear on what's true while also honoring the experience. Anytime we leap into something new, try something new, embark on something new, anytime we're in an energy like The Tethered One that's so kind of intense and underworld in nature, and there's a lot of unknowns, it can really trigger off a lot of contraction. So the more gentle we are with ourselves and the more we can draw upon that deep, inner wise one to kind of say, “Hey, okay, there's a lot of emotion, there's a lot of brain noise. Let's kind of try to clear a space to go through it all and to just sense into like, is this from fear? What does it need from me? If it is, what's the truth? Right? Is there a difference between this experience and truth?”
[0:29:10]
It’s, you know, that’s just Queen of Swords. It’s like decisiveness, considerate, sensing into. And I think the other thing about Queen of Swords—being that we're moving into Cancer season—you know, Cancer is very tender. And there's the crab shell, which is the part about Cancer energy, and I think Cancers, that we see. And then an inner life that not everybody has privileges to. That exists in all of us, like there's Cancer and, you know, fourth house in everybody, right? So, where does that live in us and what kind of boundaries might it need, right?
Queen of Swords is also about good, healthy boundaries. My beautiful therapist once invited me to think about boundaries as a wild rosebush or a blackberry bush. But rosebushes are really helpful, because if we think about the, you know, a really big, beautiful one, it smells so beautiful. The colors are gorgeous. It's so inviting, but if you try to, you know, touch it or try to get yourself in there without respect, it's going to sting you. Like great, the thorns will prick and they will hurt. So we can come close. We can smell the flowers. We can harvest rose hips, if it feels ethical, and right, and good—if we have permission. And also, right, like, if we are responding to that rosebush in a way that is not totally aligned and respectful, we're going to draw blood.
[0:31:26]
So without, technically speaking, drawing blood, boundaries can be so strong that they sort of speak for themselves; like there will be either gentle or really clear consequences to kind of moving too closely to a rosebush without being in respect of the plant. So thinking about boundaries, thinking about what helps us to clear some of the louder thoughts that can often come during very big changes and very big transitions, will be really helpful to think about.
And sort of how to put all of this together, when I pull a card on, you know, where is all of this, you know, what can help us to Anchor into all of this work, I got The Moon card. So, very Piscean transition and threshold, a probably, a tremendous amount of unknowns, or a little amount, depending on what you're going through. If you have a lot of internal pressure to try to make things make sense, or happen, or work, or whatever, really, I'm getting very strongly that there, it's going to be almost impossible. This doesn't mean that the Water cycle of the year or the rest of the year is going to feel Moon-like or Tethered One-like. It means that this particular transition is really drawing us very far inward.
So trying our best not to necessarily make it about the external or what we're going to do, you know, here or there, that is really, really important. So hopefully that helps and serves and feels really good to receive.
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[Conclusion]
[0:32:56]
So thank you so much as always for being here with me, Wild Souls. I'm wishing you all of the Solstice blessings in all of the world, and we will catch each other next week. So until then, please take care of yourselves.
This podcast was edited by Chase Vorhees. Podcast art by Rachelle Sartini Garner. And this episode was transcribed by one of our absolutely brilliant and beautiful transcriptionists, all of which you can learn more about or read about on our website tarotforthewildsoul.com.
If you wish to dive into more of my work, learn more about Soul Tarot, work with me in any kind of capacity, I'm always creating new things for us to do together, but you can find all about our self-led courses, and classes, and new offerings on tarotforthewildsoul.com.
And if you want to be the first to know about any new offerings, any new projects that I'm doing, if you want to benefit from discounts and early birds, and all kinds of lovely newsletter-only offerings, you can sign up for the newsletter at the link in our show notes. And finally, if you have a question for me to answer at the podcast, or if you'd like to work with me live on the podcast, or if you'd like your question answered on the podcast, please click the link to Ask Lindsay and send me your Q’s.
Thank you so much for being here.
[0:34:41]