232: Coming to Clarity with Queen of Pentacles
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About the Episode
Welcome Cancer season! We have the glorious Queen of Pentacles accompanying us through our last week in the month of June, inviting us to tend to our bodies and listen to the wise messages they may have for us. Anytime we work with Queen of Pentacles, we are invited to touch base with these physical vessels of ours, offering them whatever nurturance and love they might be calling out for, and allowing them to be the oracles that they truly are -- helping to center and calibrate us in a direction that will be truly helpful to us. We also answer a sweet listener question about how the Court Cards can help us to reclaim our magic.
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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: relationship to the body, diet culture, eating/food, chronic illness, pregnancy, parenthood, mental illness, physical death, cancer, birth, ancestral trauma, ancestral trauma related to intuition/magic/spiritual practices, and trauma
The content in this episode contains references to relationship to the body, diet culture, eating/food, chronic illness, pregnancy, parenthood, mental illness, physical death, cancer, birth, ancestral trauma, ancestral trauma related to intuition/magic/spiritual practices, and 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]
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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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(Instrumental intro music)
[0:00:20]
Hello, loves, and welcome back to the podcast. Lindsay here. And as always, it is truly such a joy to be able to gather with all of you on a weekly basis. If you're new to this space, welcome. If you're not new to this space, welcome (Lindsay laughs). We're gonna dive into our Card of the Week and answer a listener question. But first, I just want to say Happy Solstice again, and Happy Cancer season. It definitely feels very powerful.
Ever since starting to do my seasonal offering, Spiralic Tarot, where I'm casting and channeling for the season, like ahead, starting at the first day of every Cardinal astrological sign, which corresponds to the two Solstices and the two Equinoxes of the year, respectively. Hopefully, that makes sense. I personally really feel a huge difference from Cardinal sign season to Cardinal sign season.
So from March 21st to June 21st, we've been in Cardinal Fire and Wands energy, which is connected to that is just so potent, and it's all about kind of fits and starts and how are we utilizing our energy. Whereas Cardinal Water, even if we're out, you know, having the summer or the winter of our lives out in the world, very social, the Cardinal Water season of the year is super, super internal. It just is. And even if we want to be social, this one, in particular, is particularly internal (Lindsay laughs), which we'll talk about on Friday's episode. This one is all about the cards for sort of the last week of this month of June. I don't even know what's going on, this year is so fast. And then Friday, in time for July 1st, we'll have a Monthly Medicine episode. So yeah, just hoping that this transition, seasonally, has been super supportive, really medicinal, really sweet. Yeah, just happy to be here with you.
[0:02:45]
So our card for this last week of the month of June—again, I cannot believe I just said those words, I feel like we transitioned into this year two minutes ago—is Queen of Pentacles, which I think is really, really sweet. And there was a jumper that came out with Queen of Pentacles: Page of Cups, Reversed. So we’ll weave both of them together and see what we got. So our kind of theme, loving invitation to bear in mind, that I got for us this week is Coming to Clarity.
So the theme for the month of June was Breaking Away. And my guess is that this breakaway process, now that we've reached sort of the end of the month, like upon reflecting, there were a number of things that I thought would be sort of breakaways that aren't actually going to break away (Lindsay laughs). Like they're not going to happen. But there are other breakaways that happened and unfolded that were really surprising and unexpected. And I think that that had been sort of the idea of this month even in our Monthly Medicine, like there are going to be things that are just kind of going to be complete, that we're going to find ourselves thinking, “Whoa (Lindsay laughs), you know. Holy smokes.”
[0:04:19]
So we are wrapping up our time in this particular frequency, this particular invitation of breaking away, of really profound change, really, really intense new beginnings that are emerging for all of us, with a very quiet, gentle frequency, which is really, really lovely. And I think that this is serving to bring us back home in a way because July, which we'll talk about in just a couple days, is extreme. It has almost no connection whatsoever, energetically, to external. It's all about the internal process.
And now we know that external change, it's very hard to come about from and without that internal process, right? When we try to make external change happen without the internal work first, the external change typically falls apart. It doesn't last. It doesn't really go the distance. And with this flip happening between kind of breaking away and it being internal for us this month, but also highly external, that there were certain things that we were moving away from, be they perceptions and processes.
Like one of the biggest breakaways that I feel like I engaged in this month was around something that I was really believing was a huge problem and through working with a wonderful processor around it, realized, I don't actually think it's not even as bad as I thought it was. I think, like, everything's actually great. It's just different than what it was before. So I'm in a big space of comparison and judgment that actually really isn't even warranted, which was a massive liberation and a breaking free from something that I had really been belaboring under. So I encourage all of y'all to kind of touch base and be like, “You know, what was my perception of breaking away versus what actually came forward for me.” Because I think that can be a very healing process.
[0:06:41]
But between that big, transformative kind of chrysalis-to-butterfly type of energy, and July's medicine, we have this beautiful bridge in the form of Queen of Pentacles. Queen of Pentacles I'm getting for us this week is an important reminder that we are now out of Gemini season and in Cancer season (Lindsay laughs). And so downshifting is important. Downshifting is crucial, actually. It doesn't mean isolate. It doesn't mean don't be active in our lives and do what we're doing. It does mean that it's time, timely, that we touch base with the body, touch base with some kind of review of the self.
One thing that I really got is that for a lot of us, there's a big call coming from inside the house, which is always the case when we get a Queen. It's just some part of ourselves that is so longing to be in communion and connection with us. Not with us in our social lives, not with us in our kind of persona. Just singing, painting, doing art, laying down reading, like whatever form of connection feels really nurturing, and alive, and enlivening. That's what we're being drawn toward.
Queen of Pentacles is about physically kind of adjoining our body to the earth in some way. So like physically being in bodies of water, physically being on the earth, on sand, on dirt. It's a nurturing, and a tending, and a caretaking of the physical vessel, which I think is probably helpful and important for all of us, (Lindsay laughs) in some way.
[0:08:49]
This card, I think it's important to name, is not invested in diet culture, it's not invested in going back to a “pure” or “better way” of eating. In fact, it might be like, it's much more like, “What's the body asking for? Can we honor that call? And really like give the body, rather than the brain, what it wants, you know? Can we really answer that?” So, Queen of Pentacles for us this week, is an opportunity to touch base and in doing so, we connect with this theme of the week and come back to clarity. If we've been just exhausted and dragging, we may not have a ton of time to stop, and really pause, and really be with whatever's going on. But Queen of Pentacles says, “Can you go about something and be even more gentle, even more nurturing, even more kind to yourself? Can you take the whole spectrum of needs of the body into account?”
You know, because very often when we connect with Queen of Pentacles, what we're doing is really giving the body the respectful audience that it really wants and is craving from us all the time. And in a way that feels safe, and that doesn't overwhelm our capacity to cope, what this card can help us to do is to listen and receive a very deep truth from the body about something that we may have felt really confused about. So for example, if we are going through a flare and we're really tired, but there's something that we feel like we might be kind of pressuring ourselves to do or we might sort of be trying to like, almost like, cover our eyes and jump without really thinking about it. Being like, “Well, I am in a flare and it doesn't really feel supportive, but I'm going to do this thing anyway.” Really leaning into Queen of Pentacles for a week, for a couple days, for a really strong hour or so even, is usually enough to get us kind of right with ourselves. It's usually enough to get us to go, “Okay, you know, I can't do this, or if I'm gonna do this, this is what it's going to require of me.”
[0:11:12]
But then the bigger systemic question has to come in, which is like: are these endeavors something that we can potentially change our relationship with ongoing? Like, is the fact that we're doing something that feels kind of unsupportive to the body a larger message about—like, I was just really being confronted with this the other day around like, something that I really wanted to do, my body did not want to do. My body is, I think, sometimes wiser than me and my mind. Not, you know, I think we're all working in beautiful systems, but my body often knows things that are so much more aligned and true than my wants, as temporal and changing as they might be.
And I really had to, even though there was disappointment about a change, I really had to acknowledge, like, my body does know better here. And it was reflective of just a little bit of something that I didn't want to really see, which was that me embarking on this thing that I had to change was really me acting in a deficit to myself, like that there was a lot more of me giving than me receiving in this particular situation. So changing was, changing it, was really important. No one was doing anything wrong. It's just the awareness like, “This isn't for me right now.” Not all of us have that option.
So this is about, even if it's not about changing something, or opening to, or discovering something specific, Queen of Pentacles is like, hand on heart, body on earth, reconnecting with the parent, the caretaker within ourselves, toward ourselves, and connecting with the larger caretaker, that is a parent, mother, beloved, holy, you know, one to all of us—the earth, that's also here to hold us. That's also here to nurture us.
[0:13:31]
And when we are in the arms of something bigger than us, when we feel held in the ocean, when we feel held on a field, when we feel held somewhere that gives us a lot of sense of being nurtured, it can help things become so much clearer, especially if we feel that we've kind of been bypassing the body a little bit. If something is really needed to be known, Queen of Pentacles, the body is going to tell us, you know?
Now where does Page of Cups, Reversed, our kind of little jumper, feel into all of this? It adds a wrinkle that I think is really helpful: that the inner child also has things to say when this card shows up reversed, that there's some part of our creative life force that's not really being as honored as it could be. Now, again, a lot of us do not have the time, the space, the ability to engage in that, which I think is valid. You know, it's like very, very valid, that we wouldn't necessarily have the time to paint, sing, or create the way that we would normally, while some people have an abundance of time and that's, you know, all they've got is time.
So that's also important to know that we're all doing the best we can, but when this card comes up reversed, it is helpful to know and helpful to remember that, typically, it means that the inner Page of Cups within us is, has, something to say, something that we may not have had the time, space, or wherewithal to open to. So if Gemini season is a party in a packed room with lots of people talking, with lots of different things going on, Cancer season is like being out in the sea, or walking, or moving closer, moving into the water, you know, from the shore, where there's a lot of space. There may be a lot of beloveds, but there's a lot more space around us.
And so, it's interesting that, even though we're not in July yet, that there is a part of us already—the body, the inner kiddo, the creative center, the wise heart of our being—that are coming up right away to be like, “Hey, we have a date with one another. We have something to sense into, figure out, feel into together, like, you and me.” And so that, that coming to clarity that's possible this week, the theme of this week, when we've really offered those parts of ourselves that are really strongly calling out to be witnessed, to be listened to, to be heeded.
[0:16:39]
When we honor them, when we let them speak, when we let them sing to us, when we let them let us know where we may be needing a tweak, needing to adjust something to honor them more fully, there can be a) so much more clarity, and b) so much more space for not only ourselves, our nervous systems, but for us to do, to take part in, what we'd really like to do.
Sometimes what these cards bubble up or show to us can be tricky to communicate to other people. Sometimes it makes us realize that we kind of need to change our plans. We need to change what we thought we were going to do, and those changes are okay. Remember, we’re still in June. We're still in that energy of breaking away and this is a really big part of that. We can make all the plans, all of the intentions in the world, but there's nothing that's going to take the place—no matter how smart something looks or how good it looks on paper—for that deep visitation of the heart that will let us know, “Hey, you're not getting fed here. You're not getting what you need here, or this really wants your attention.”
So, in whatever way that kind of applies to you and your life, really let these two archetypes, these two allies, be the gentle, loving, beautiful mirrors and teachers that they are, that they want to be to you during this time. Like Queen of Pentacles is amazing for nourishing the body in ways that it is so wanting and so longing for, and Page of Cups, Reversed or right-side up, is an incredible ally for us to recover our creative lives and our creative selves. And in doing those two things, there is such a blossoming, such a flowering open that can happen. So that's what I have for you today, this week, as a humble and very potent sort of cap on our work and the medicine with our month in July.
[0:18:56]
So our question today is from somebody called TBA and I don't actually know if TBA is their name or if it's to be announced (Lindsay laughs). Like they were gonna share it but then didn't. Maybe it's an internal mistake on our end. So TBA, let me know what and whether you'd like this to be shifted in some way in the transcript.
But they asked a question, and their question was,
Hi, I'm really interested in The Court Cards and I have a question. The same question popped up for me when I was working through the Rewilding the Tarot course—
which is one of my Soul Tarot courses—
Lindsay was on maternity leave at the time so I never really got an answer to my question, and I'm hoping for a bit of clarification now. The concept of ‘reclaiming our magic’ is not something I have a frame of reference for. Could you explain that concept or maybe offer an alternative term or way to view this? I would love to understand so I can connect with this concept. Thank you.
So, what this person is talking about is the way that I teach, I think, the Court Cards in general, but specifically Queen of Wands. So when I talk about Queen of Wands as an archetype, when I talk about the Queens in general, and sometimes even Page of Cups, what I will share is a term called “reclaiming our magic”. So here is what I mean by that: every single one of us—and this is going to veer potentially into cheesiness. So just, if you feel like it, go on the ride with me.
[0:20:44]
Every one of us has gifts and medicine and magic to share that is as unique as every flower. Again, cheesy. In a field of tulips, no two are the same. And even if, you know, we’re planting the exact same variety of apple tree, (Lindsay laughs) you know, no two trees are exactly the same, and that is true with people. For us to incarnate as human beings, means that we have a huge responsibility to heal, to expand on the legacy of our ancestors, whether that's healing a harmful legacy, or reclaiming something that had to be dropped by an ancestor or by someone in our line, because it wasn't safe for them to engage with what they were doing. And some of us, it's not really about blood lineage so much as it is about a magic and an essence that's been flowing through us since as long as we can remember, that is not in any way appropriative, that is not taking from others, something that truly lives in our root system of being and of magic.
So an example of this, I guess, is if we take all of us and look at all of our gifts as intuitives, right? Each and every one of us is intuitive, and some people have a hard time accepting that inside of themselves, but it's the truth. And I don't mean to argue. I don't really feel like I have to argue (Lindsay laughs). We just are. Every one of us is intuitive. Some of us… You know, I'll speak about a family member of mine who, I don't have their permission to speak about their story, but who deeply struggled, struggles, with mental illness.
And separately, and both as a part of their mental illness, extreme self-esteem issues and extreme issues about their own level of intelligence—which they're an incredibly smart person, but they have a lot of hang-ups about that, again, that are personal to them. And this person in my family never pursued higher education, which is fine, and never really felt that they had many gifts to share, never really felt like they had anything that they were any good at. And this person has ushered every single person in my family who has been dying into death.
This person has been with them at that threshold. They're very comfortable in that threshold. While everyone else kind of shies away and is out of the room, that person is right there. That person is very comfortable and in fact feels a devotional call to tending to some of the members of my family who have been very sick with cancer, taking care of their bodies, helping them with the bathroom. And as far as I know, even when they were a teenager working in a hospital setting, they were very gifted at that and it was not a problem for them. In fact, they had a real affinity for it.
[0:24:33]
Also, as far as I know, that family member has never considered that that was a calling of theirs, that that was something that they had huge medicine around. And that is a part of, I believe—with humility and respect to that person, knowing we can't ever know anyone like better than they know themselves. Well, I guess what I'm talking about is an exception to that, but I wouldn't want to be presumptuous about what I know about this person. But as a witness to this person, I'm not the only one who feels this way. I do believe that that is a part of this person's magic medicine and calling on this planet.
And if they had heeded that call, who knows what might have been transmuted? What kind of, you know? Obviously, this person I'm talking about dealt with huge illness, so it's not their fault that they weren't able to pursue that. But I can look at that. It's easy for me to say, right? They had to move through their own stuff to potentially be open to that, and it was just a little bit too hard for them in this lifetime.
Reclaiming their magic, reclaiming our magic, has to do with us recognizing that intuitives are not just supposed to be doing, all intuitives are not meant to necessarily be doing—what we would call, as a very binary way of looking at it—“spiritual work”. It's about being connected to, “What am I? What do I feel delighted to do, excited to do? What do I want to do? What feels good to do?” Because we all know, their profound intuitives working as lawyers, bookkeepers, doctors, nurses, death doulas, who aren't working at all, who are the person that people come to in the family who can hold those spaces. Same with birth, you know?
As far as I know, that person in my family, that was never their thing. Birth was not their thing. Death was their thing. They were very available to that and very comfortable in that space. So I say that because, to me, I think that there's a lot in life and a lot ancestrally—even if we're not, if we don't have a clear awareness of our ancestors—there is a lot that can keep us feeling like a particular kind of magic isn't for us. If we've had anything inside of our lineage, our line, ancestrally, where we live locationally, life circumstances, like if we've had a trauma inside of our line for any reason, it can leave us feeling like, “It is absolutely unsafe for me to practice, root into, and open to, reclaim this magic.”
I've mentioned this on the podcast before but my really dear teacher friend, Julia Inglis, who runs Sacred Familiar and who teaches these incredible doll making workshops. I remember in one, I've gone on pilgrimage with Julia, and I've had the pleasure of doing readings with her and she's incredible. And there was one point where she was talking about making a doll. I think we were in Scotland because she taught me and the other participant how to make dolls while we were out there. And she said, “It's incredible and a healing even to be carrying these dolls around with us, like little wool dolls.” She was like, “There was a time where we would have probably been put to death for even having them on our person.”
[0:28:43]
And that I think is locked within Queen of Wands. Queen of Wands can help us to feel into—and it's pretty thick with debris for many of us—can feel into that kind of thing, can help us to sense into like: is it safe now? You know? Which is a healing for the ancestral line within us, I think, and for our soul being and for all of those ancient, unknowable, more spiralic parts of us. Because if we're not careful—and let's take it out of the mystical and the magical for a moment. If we grew up as a highly creative person, constantly hearing from our family that that's nonsense and that we shouldn't spend time on it, then we may spend our entire lives pushing that creative fire out of the way, or away, or denying that, which is incredibly painful.
So reclaiming the creative magic within us might have something to do with us feeling like, “I actually can paint. There is time for me to make these drawings. There is time for me to sing. There is time for me to make music. And what I was told, isn't my truth. It's not a truth that I have to carry.” So Queen of Wands holds a big spectrum for us around feeling like we have the courage, the willingness, the awareness, to say, “This is the way my intuition, my magic, my medicine shows up for me. This is my gift.”
[0:30:29]
We absolutely can have checkpoints. It's like, “This is not taking from anyone. This is not appropriation. This is not… you know? This is my calling and I feel very called to reclaim that. You know, feeling that healing sense around like, it's safe for me to do this thing. Now, it's safe for me to, like, make this doll.” Like, you know, and it wasn't at one point and my nervous system, my soul, still holds that fear.
And then, as simple as—which most of us experience that feeling of like, “Oh, I'm not really intuitive, right? I'm not really intuitive. I don't really have a gift. I'm not really, you know.” A lot of us go through that. Queen of Wands says, “Of course you are.” But if you're comparing yourself to someone else and the way that their intuition comes forward, then you're going to be perpetually, like waiting a long time (Lindsay laughs), you know, to have a sense of like, intuitive enough, which is, you are, we all are.
So I hope that helps. That's what I mean by reclaiming our magic. It's that I believe that we all have magic. We all have gifts within us. And that all of us have big stuff, whether cultural or you know, systemic, or past life adjacent, or a little bit of everything and then some other things that keeps us from feeling like we can really take time with that part of ourselves.
[0:32:13]
So reclaiming it is a really big initiation and rite of passage where we say, “I'm going to make time for this. It's safe for me to do that. If it is, in fact, safe for us to do that. So I hope this helps. Thank you for asking that question. Glad we finally got it, got to it for you. And I thought it was a good one to answer given the fact that we pulled two Court Cards (Lindsay laughs) for the medicine of the week ahead. So this one's a shorty, but I think that's okay. I'm really hoping that these energies soothe, and lift, and help to make this week really lovely. I'm hoping that all of you have an absolutely beautiful week ahead and I will catch y'all. This is a double episode week, on Friday the 30th with our July Monthly Medicine and until that time, please take care of yourselves.
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[Conclusion]
(Instrumental exit music)
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.
[0:34:33]