Hello! So it’s that time where I’m pulling a spread for the month ahead.

I always look forward to these now and I’m so happy that I’ve been doing them and I’m also really happy that you all are enjoying them. I’ve been getting a lot of great feedback on these episodes.

So yeah, it just, it means a lot to me. And in fact, so something that would be super, super helpful for me and the podcast, if you have been enjoying these episodes or you just enjoy the podcast in general, it would be so kind and wonderful if you would leave a review on Apple or Spotify or just wherever you’re listening from. And to be honest, asking for stuff like that is actually really hard for me.

Me asking you all for a review is actually a form of exposure therapy for me. In fact, I’ve actually been working on this in therapy because it is something that’s forever a present theme in my life. In fact, recently, last week, actually, I had surgery, the second surgery I’ve ever had in my life, and accepting help. During a time where I honestly couldn’t even like get on or off the couch by myself, it’s actually really hard for me, which is frustrating, but I am working on it and I’m getting a lot better. This last surgery has helped me practice accepting help.

I did have a few days where I felt like I was going backwards, not with accepting help, but just like in the recovery process. And I attempted to start seeing clients a little too soon. And it was a bit too optimistic about kind of what I was going to be capable of.

So I did have to ask for help there. And honestly, like...only just now able to laugh for like a few seconds at a time without being in agonizing pain. So if anyone’s ever had any sort of like abdominal surgery, they understand what I’m talking about. So I’m going to try not to laugh too much during this episode. But yeah, anyway, long-winded way to say it would mean so much to me if you enjoy this work, if you would leave a review about what your experience has been like listening to the podcast.

Another update. Let’s see what else is going on. There’s a lot going on actually. Oh, I have the Summer Solstice Summit happening at the end of the month. Yes, which has taken up so much of my life the last several months, which damn, it came up so fast. I started planning this summit back in December, January, beginning of this year. And back then it felt so far away.

And now somehow it is in four weeks. So if you’re interested in attending that, you can actually use the code TTDPOD for a 15% discount.

So also the discounts are only good for three weeks, the next three weeks. So be sure to use that code before it expires. If you forgot the code, that’s okay. You can just go to the website, www.thetarodiagnosis.com/summersolstice. And when you go to the summer solstice page, there’s another, a different code there. It gives you the same discount. Honestly, just like having different discount code names lets me see where people are getting the codes from. So if you do get it from this podcast, it will help me know that you got it from this podcast if you use TTDPod.

So just to tell you a little bit about the Summer Solstice Summit, if you’re not already annoyed with hearing me talk about it or see all of my emails, also thank you for hanging in there with me.

You know that I am someone who I normally never...emails unless it’s the episode announcement or

I’ve created an offering. I don’t send a ton of emails. So even trying to promote something like the summit has been very difficult for me. So that’s also been exposure therapy. I’m just experiencing all kinds of things. personally, this year. So, but anyway, I digress. If you don’t know about the Summer Solstice Summit, it is a three-day event that brings together leading experts in the tarot world and the witchy world, and it offers workshops and presentations and ritual experiences, and it’s all virtual.

So we are bringing these experiences to you. You don’t have to leave your home. You don’t have to pay for a flight, for lodging, none of that. You can attend from the comfort of your couch or your altar, wherever you are in the world. And I’m actually kicking off the weekend by leading a workshop on asking better questions and spread crafting in tarot. And then Danielle Park from Oak Moon Tarot is going to walk us through elemental pairs in the tarot. Jordan Hale from Psyche Magic is going to explore the concept of magical motherhood. Cecily Saylor from Typewriter Tarot is going to help us embrace our creativity under capitalism. tarot as an ally. And that’s just all on Friday.

And then Saturday, we have Maria Alviz Hernando from, actually, she just published Tarot Tableau, and she’s going to be teaching us how to read tarot tableaus. And then Chelsey Pippin Mizzi from PipCards Tarot will be presenting on curatorial tarot and how we can create meaning in the tarot instead of just looking for it. Then Jenna Matlin, author of Will You Give Me a Reading? And then she’s also publishing The Tarot Book of the Dead, which is so exciting. And will be walking us through The Long Farewell, the story of our death from grief’s perspective. And then Alexander Kriech from Dogstar Oracle is going to be our resident astrologer. And he’s going to be talking to us about the...Beyond the Moon, exploring family dynamics and the fourth house in IC. And then we’re going to be ending Saturday with Meg Jones Wall from 3AM Tarot, who’s going to be presenting on tarot numerology. So that’s all Saturday.

And then Sunday,

we have Mehr Lungani from Chaos to Cosmos exploring tarot as a therapeutic language and how to integrate IFS and narrative therapy in our tarot practice. We have Victoria Smith Murphy, who’s going to be expanding on her work from last year’s Summer Solstice Summit on how tarot works, bringing the theory to life. And then we have Marcella Kroll, author of Healing the Liminal and then the recent Initiates Oracle. She’s going to be walking us through Bone and Blood, ancestor work for our magical practice and our spiritual path. We have Thomas Whitholt from Hermit’s Mirror, who’s going to be teaching us about bibliomancy and working with words. And then finally, we’re ending the weekend with Vaughn Postema and her engaging workshop on trickle-down tarot. Wow.

Okay. So that’s a lot. Don’t worry. The whole weekend is recorded and your ticket includes access to all of the recordings for three whole months. That’s something that I actually expanded from last year. I think last year it was... 30 days. I know it wasn’t three months.

So you’re getting an entire three months. So yeah, last year I noticed a lot of people had emailed and they were saying they needed an extension and I ended up extending it anyway. So I figured three months should be plenty of time. If you have to step away for a day or you know you want to attend, but you maybe can’t be there this weekend, but you want access to the recordings, all of that’s there. But your ticket includes so much more than just access to the event. I know, there’s just so much happening. I’m so excited. I love this and I hope that you all are seeing the value in all of this because there really is so much.

We were lucky enough to have some sponsors for the summit this year. And so I put together three massive...giveaway bundles. And so at the end of the weekend, I’m going to be giving away all three of those to three different attendees. And these bundles are sponsored almost entirely by Nicholas Bruno from Somnia Tarot. But we also have goodies from Hem Incense.

So yeah, you’re going to be getting signed tarot decks from Somnia Tarot, signed tarot books. Also, I’m giving away signed copies of Dark Shadow, Golden Shadow. You’ll be getting lots of incense and other magical goodies and some other surprises that I’m not sharing with folks. It’ll be, I don’t know, I like opening a box and realizing that, you know, there’s some surprises in there. So yeah, you have that to look forward to and everyone who attends will automatically be entered to win. So yeah, super exciting.

Another component that is included in your ticket is 30 days of free access to my private membership community, which I know I don’t talk about as much as I should, but I actually have an entire private membership community called The Symposium. And I host live monthly workshops in there. There’s discussion spaces. There’s depth-oriented tarot work.

We have book clubs, reading rooms. It’s just a really... lovely space with some of the most brilliant and warm and curious folks. And I just, I feel so lucky to be a part of it.

So, okay. So I think that is it for all of the updates for my life personally, and also the Summer Solstice Summit that’s coming up. So let’s go ahead and get into what this episode is supposed to even be today, which is the month ahead reading for June.

So because it’s June, I did want to honor the summer solstice. So I was putting together a spread that is kind of a nod to the experience of stepping outside of the dark and embracing kind of the light of the sun. We’re going to start by exploring what’s kind of been hidden and then end with what growth looks like. It’s honestly really a play on a spread that I created a while ago that I titled Messages I Avoid. I’ve just been thinking about avoidance a lot lately. It’s come up a lot in my therapy practice, so that’s probably why. Okay, so now’s the time to grab your cards if you would like to pull alongside me. I’m going to be using the Joie de Vivre deck.

It’s actually one of my favorites. It feels so perfect for this time of year. It’s very light and bright. It’s summery. It’s whimsical. It’s magical. All the good things.

And I have some really sweet memories with this deck. I actually remember exactly where I picked it up and the experience of choosing the deck, which is very rare for me.

I was actually in Flagstaff like maybe two years ago.

And I was at this lovely witchy store. I cannot remember the name of the store.

And I just felt so drawn to this deck. I kept going back to it and like picking it up and setting it down. And I was telling myself, oh God, I do not need another tarot deck. But I just like, I don’t know, I would look at it and then I would walk around the store and I would look at other things and then I would go back to this deck. And yeah, I finally left the store with it.

So I think the deck picked me.

Anyway, grab the cards that you would like to use. I’m going to read the spread for you now and then I’ll repeat the questions for each pool so you don’t have to try and remember exactly what I’m pulling for. And also reminder, folks who receive my emails get access to the spread and photos of the cards. A lot of folks will reach out and say, I want to see what the cards look like that you pulled if you get my emails. you would see that. So head over to my website, make sure you’re getting my emails. And yeah, we’re going to go ahead and jump in. So the spread is just three cards. I’ve been enjoying three card spreads lately. I feel like they’re kind of like the right amount of cards, not too overwhelming, but not too short that you feel like, you know, you’re still left with. questions.

So card one is what have I been avoiding or what have I kept hidden? Card two is what fear, belief, or need is keeping this hidden. And then card three is what growth becomes possible when I release this. So again, this is going to be a general reading. So I’m going to try to use words like we, us, our, and explore whatever cards I pull through more of a psychological, psychotherapeutic lens. All right, so we’re going to go ahead and pull for card one. What have I been avoiding or what have I been keeping hidden? Clearly, I couldn’t choose which one I wanted to go with for this one, so I used both. Avoidance and hidden. So what have I been avoiding or kept

hidden? Okay. We have the two of wands. All right.

What I’m going to do, I’m going to, sometimes I will interpret cards as I pull them. And sometimes

I like to pull all the cards and then give an interpretation. So lately I’ve been enjoying that.

So that’s what I’m going to do.

So card two is what fear, belief, or need is keeping this hidden or contributing to our avoidance. And we have, oh, interesting, the Eight of Swords. Okay, that feels fitting for that prompt. And then finally, card three, what growth becomes possible when we release this? And that is, oh, the Seven of Pentacles. How sweet.

Okay, so we have, we’re starting with the Two of Wands.

So what have I been avoiding or what have we been avoiding and kept hidden? The Two of Wands is interesting because, you know, it’s honestly one of my favorite cards.

And the way that we can read this card is actually pretty layered, especially when we’re thinking about it as a card of avoidance or a shadow even, if we’re thinking about aspects of it that we’re keeping. hidden because symbolically it feels like a card that’s very heavy with possibility. You know, there’s literally a globe in this person’s hand.

The world is available to us. Options exist. You know, what are we going to choose? But in this case, because I’m looking at this through a lens of avoidance, it kind of makes me wonder what movement has not happened despite the possibilities. that exist for us.

So I wonder if what is being kept hidden is not necessarily tied to lack of opportunity, but maybe tied to an avoidance or lack of commitment. Because if we think about it from... archetypal therapeutic standpoint, this person is standing in between two wands. We could look at this as, and this is a wands card.

So there’s a lot of creativity and desire and passion and fiery energy here.

So we could look at that as standing between what we are dreaming and imagining and in between what it looks like to actually take action on what we are dreaming and imagining. But they’re in between those two wands. So there really isn’t any movement happening. And so, you know, typically we see this as a card of planning and contemplating and, you know, researching and all this like consideration. And there isn’t yet a step forward. But I’m wondering, is there ever going to be a step forward? Is this... Representing analysis paralysis, you know, when we are faced with all kinds of possibilities and opportunities and ideas and desires, we can actually become pretty overwhelmed with the responsibility that we feel in choosing the right path, the right dream, the right desire, the right thing. And there’s actually a decent amount of research on decision-making and how when we are presented with an abundance of options, it can actually reduce our ability to take action.

And so here we are seeing this person holding a globe, which, oh my God, so overwhelming.

The sky’s the limit type of experience, which can feel really great for some people.

Decision-making research actually shows that it can keep us stagnant and reduce action, especially if we become preoccupied with wanting to avoid regret or wanting to avoid making the wrong choice. I see this a lot with clients, especially neurodivergent folks, and something that tends to ease...discomfort of the overwhelm of like the options of it all is sharing with like your partner, your coworkers, your friends, or really just remembering this yourself that being offered maybe like max three things or giving yourself three options, for example, is usually more helpful than leaving something open-ended or throwing a barrage of options at them. This also makes me think of some components of existentialism and how we, you know, well, for the most part, can choose our future. I mean, clearly there’s a lot of, you know, limitations and that’s a bold blanket statement to make. But from an existential perspective, like, you know, yeah, like we have free will and that can be both liberating and terrifying at the same time because... every decision that we make or choose takes us down one specific life path. And yet at the same time, choosing that path ends up potentially closing off other paths that we could have taken. And so there’s some like inherent grief that exists there.

And that can also keep us in between these two wands and feeling, you know, worried, like, well, what if I chose the wrong path? And yeah, I think that... can sometimes be the dilemma that’s embodied in this Two of Wands.

And it kind of makes me wonder if the figure in this card is maybe not just considering the possibilities, but maybe confronting the existential burden of freedom and of the concept of choice itself. Sticking with the theme of avoidance here, I also think there’s a little...of an illusion within this card at least as it pertains to the spread and I think the illusion is that planning is progress and I want to be careful with what I’m saying there because yes planning is a form of progress however it can also be a form of avoidance especially if you are only staying in the state of planning and preparation. And, you know, I’m actually thinking of the stages of change now. And, you know, when you’re like stuck in like contemplation and preparation and you’re not ever actually moving into action. And this can become a false sense of security in a way to...

Kind of protect yourself from the ambiguity that inherently exists within taking action because we never quite know what’s going to happen once we actually make a decision. All right, let’s move on to card two.

So card two was what fear, belief, or need is keeping this kind of hidden outside of our awareness?

So the Two of Wands was what was hidden, and that could perhaps be indecision, choosing to stay stagnant between these two wands. And so with the Eight of Swords, we’re looking at what fear or belief is the reason behind this avoidance or stagnation.

With the traditional interpretation of the Eight of Swords, folks often kind of center this idea of self-imposed limitations. But I think when we really take a good, hard look at the imagery here... then things can get a little complicated with that traditional narrative because, and I’ve talked about this a bit on social media where the figure in this card probably did not bind and blindfold themselves. Clearly someone or something else did that because the imagery just doesn’t sit well with that classic interpretation.

While the Eight of Swords definitely speaks to the role of, you know, cognitive distortions, thought patterns, and perceptions, I do think it also invites us to consider where those originated. And I think the origins of, you know, those cognitive distortions, thought patterns, perceptions, beliefs, narratives, you know, all of the words that we connect to the suit of swords. I think that’s where we can kind of swap the narrative with this card and say, okay, well, we didn’t intentionally bind and blindfold ourselves. Someone or something else did. And that’s what I’m talking about. Perhaps the origin of those limiting beliefs. So when this card appears in the position of this question, you know, what is kind of keeping this hidden? I am wondering, you know, if I go back to kind of the normal question that I apply to this card, well, who benefits from us remaining stuck or who benefits or what benefits our unwillingness or inability to make a decision? You know, who benefits from us being trapped in a cycle of self-doubt?

And I think this question shifts the conversation from... just kind of like pathologizing the individual in this card and shifts it more to a broader relational systemic influence because you know throughout our lives we are constantly receiving implicit and explicit messages about who we should be, what’s acceptable to think, do, feel, desire, all the things.

And also how much space we’re allowed to take up. I mean, look at this card. It is literally confining this person to a very specific space. And if we’re thinking about it through this lens that I’m talking about systemically or relationally, we’ve been taught to believe that we are only supposed to exist in this space. So then if we look at these two cards, Side by side, the Eight of Swords and the Two of Wands, the Joie de Viv deck is, again, it’s very whimsical, very beautiful, but it does take inspiration from traditional Rider-Waite-Smith decks.

But if we look at these, these figures are still in between and confined to something.

And I think that that’s important to pay attention to here.

There’s an experience of stuckness. There’s an experience of containment. That’s a better word that I’m looking for, containment. And so I’m thinking about, especially in families, relationships, institutions, cultures, communities, there’s often a level of reward for compliance and even more so a discouraging of disruption of the status quo become most uncomfortable when we are trying to change or when we are in this two of wands experience of perhaps making a new decision or moving away from where we are and towards something else.

We’re just making decisions outside the norms of what has already been established for us.

These folks are usually the same people who benefited. from us just remaining the same and going along with whatever unwritten or unspoken rules have existed. And I think this is why the Eight of Swords often evokes a lot of questions about personal and collective boundaries. Just like I was saying a moment ago, there’s also the saying that the people who kind of push back against the boundaries that we set are often the people who benefited when we didn’t have any boundaries.

And growth and decisions that promote growth. can threaten those established systems that have been created because anytime there’s any form of transformation, that requires a renegotiation of expectations, a renegotiation of how am I going to exist in this space in between these two wands or in these eight swords. And to go back to the two of wands as a form of avoidance. Often we will not choose to make a decision because we are worried about disappointing someone.

So our kind of staying stuck or staying where we are or not making a choice persists because we are avoiding discomfort. You know, we don’t want to, we don’t let somebody down. We’re not trying to challenge, you know, this set in stone narrative that we’ve existing in. Also, it might be scary to abandon the roles that we’ve been so conditioned to exist in, even if we’ve outgrown those roles and even if those roles no longer benefit us or support us.

And then with this eight of swords, I think the blindfold introduces another layer to this dynamic where we can start asking, okay, well, what’s... hidden away from our awareness? And how is that contributing to my decisions or lack thereof? What’s difficult to acknowledge?

From a psychoanalytic, psychodynamic perspective, we look at symptoms as emerging when aspects of our experience are left ignored, unexamined, the unexamined life.

And I think the blindfold represents that level of unconsciousness and lack of awareness towards, you know, any sort of internalized beliefs or relational patterns, cognitive patterns, that are operating underneath that level of awareness. So, the question is not just, you know, what am I refusing to see because the blindfold exists? It’s also, what couldn’t I see?

What was happening that, I was not aware of that contributed to my inability to make a decision. Okay, we are moving into card three now. So card three is what growth becomes possible when we start to release everything that we just explored in the two of wands and eight of swords.

And something that I want to point out right away about this seven of pentacles or in the joie de vivre deck, they use the term coin. So seven of coins is, so traditionally we see one figure In the Rider-Waite-Smith imagery, one figure kind of leaning against their shovel, looking at, you know, this bush with all these pentacles on it, seemingly waiting for something to grow.

And what we see in the Seven of Coins is a tree that’s sprouting. And there are these two adorable mystical creatures. They kind of look like, I don’t know, maybe deer. But they’re on either side of this tree that’s sprouting in the middle of them. And I love this imagery because if we go back to the Two of Wands and the Eight of Swords, earlier I was speaking about the experience of containment and how in the Two of Wands, this person is standing between these two wands, you know, the wands containing them. And then with the eight of swords, this person obviously like stuck in all these swords being contained. And then with the seven of coins, there is no containment. These figures are actually, you know, outside looking at this tree that’s sprouting. And I think that’s so sweet. And from an imagery perspective, to be able to move from those levels of containment to freedom feels comforting.

So back to the question at hand, what growth becomes possible when we release everything from the Two of Wands and the Eight of Swords? So again, with the Two of Wands, we had kind of that like potential hidden avoidance and then the Eight of Swords, maybe systemic, collective, implicit, explicit, learning, internalized beliefs that kept us stuck there.

And the seven of pentacles, I think, speaks to a lack of urgency that is actually really healthy.

Because in our modern world today, urgency is everywhere.

And rapid transformation, quick fixes are constantly being thrown at us.

Whereas I think the seven of coins depicts... the pausing and the examination that is really important when we are trying to make a change or when changes started to happen.

So when we go back to the two of wands and then the eight of swords, if we’re going to stick now with this like urgency, a lot of times people won’t make a decision or move forward or change because they know that there’s a whole process involved and they just want to get to the outcome.

They just want the end goal. And so they’re trying to avoid all the work that happens in between there, which I really think the seven of pentacles represents. You know, in this case, it’s two figures in the traditional imagery. It’s just one, but it does usually depict this, you know, kind of... And also this, I feel like admiration for what’s happening, this patience, this kind of knowing that there is a level of investment.

And I think in many ways this card challenges those dominant narratives and dominant pressures of life today where there is this expectation of immediate gratification, immediate change. You know, we live in... systems that reward speed and constant productivity and instant results.

And the seven of coins or seven of pentacles offers us something radically different than that.

I think it reminds us that meaningful change, meaningful growth, transformation unfolds slowly and intentionally. And I do think it’s important to remember that this growth, this change, this transformation tends to emerge when we are repeatedly practicing that which we have committed to. And to remember that there’s a process of gradual adaptation to newness.

And that repetition and that gradual adaptation is what leads to sustained effort and satisfaction eventually over time. Something else I love about this card, Seven of Pentacles, is that I think it’s also asking us to cultivate a relationship with the idea of becoming, with the idea of trusting the process. That’s a phrase that we use in the therapy world a lot.

We tell our clients, hey, it’s going to get worse before it gets better. You have to trust the process. And I feel like the seven of coins is very much a trusting the process card and knowing that the goal isn’t just the destination, but learning to be an active participant and fully engage in the experience of getting to where you’re going. Well, that is our spread for June.

That felt pretty heavy, honestly. I was expecting something kind of light and airy, especially because of the deck that I chose. It’s a very light and airy deck. So, yeah. That reading actually surprised me a little bit, but I do hope that it meant something to you. And as always, please let me know your thoughts. I love to hear what cards came up for you all.

If you pulled alongside me or if you have different interpretations of what I pulled, you know, leave a comment, send me a DM, shoot me an email. Yeah, I love learning from all of you and hearing what you have to say. And I hope I get to see some of you at the Summer Solstice Summit, June 26th through 28th. Don’t forget to use that code TTDPOD to get your discount.

And I hope that June treats all of you so well.

Below is an edited transcript of this podcast episode. If you’d prefer to listen instead you can listen wherever you get your podcasts like Apple, Spotify, or YouTube.

Before we dive into today’s episode, I want to share something really exciting. The Summer Solstice Summit is back. This is the second annual gathering where tarot readers, witches, therapists, and creative practitioners come together for a weekend of learning, reflection, and magic. This year’s summit takes place June 26th through the 28th, and we have an incredible lineup.

Presenters are going to be exploring topics like advanced tarot systems, ancestry and death work, psychology and creative practice, expanded divination methods, and so much more. It’s a three-day virtual event, which means you can join us from anywhere in the world because it’s happening over Zoom. And if you can’t attend live, every session is recorded so you can watch at your own pace. So if you love the intersection of tarot, psychology, ritual, and creativity, this weekend will be so fulfilling and inspiring for you.

The feedback from last year’s summit was so overwhelmingly positive. Folks were buzzing for months as they implemented everything that they learned and said that the energy was so magical and supportive and warm. You can learn more and grab your ticket at thetarotdiagnosis.com slash summer solstice or via the link in the show notes. I hope to see you all there.

Hello. I’m really excited to be doing this episode. I’ve been looking forward to this one since last month because last month I decided once a month that I was in the beginning of the month, I was going to do a collective reading for all of you listeners of the Tarot Diagnosis podcast. And yeah, I had so much fun doing March’s collective reading. And yeah, we’re going to do one again for April. I decided I was trying to figure out what spread do I want to do for the collective? And yeah, I was kind of, I don’t know, looking through the archive and I kept coming back to the Celtic Cross. And I was like, oh, do I really want to do that though? But then I was looking at other spreads that were, I don’t know, four or five cards. And I was like, oh, I don’t know. I’m not really feeling inspired by any of these. I just kept going back and looking at it.

And originally I was going to talk about the stages of change and use my modified Celtic cross spread as I adjusted and modified it for the concept of the stages of change. And it just didn’t feel right. I was like, no, I’m not feeling this. I’m scrapping this. And then I was like, I’m just going to do the original Celtic cross spread. And so that’s what we’re doing. We are doing the big, meaty, 10-card Celtic Cross spread for April’s month ahead. And I’m going to be using a new deck. And it’s a deck that I recently acquired. And it’s... It’s really special. I don’t know. There’s something about this deck. It’s the Earth Magic Tarot by Daniel Martin-Diaz. And it’s just, it’s stunning. And every, I don’t use it as often as I did when I originally got it. But I will say, every time I grab this deck, the cards that come out or the readings I experience with it just feel different. I don’t know how to describe it. It just, it is what it is. Yeah.

So, all right. So we’re diving in. Celtic cross. I’m a little nervous. 10 cards. Hopefully this isn’t an absurdly long episode. I’m going to try and keep it brief, but we’ll see what happens. All right. So if you’re not familiar with the Celtic cross, also, actually, before I go there, I have decided that for these month ahead readings, I’m going to post a transcript of the podcast and some images and maybe some discussion on Substack. So you can head over there too and follow along and read the transcript. But yeah, I think I’m just going to get into it.

So Celtic Cross, again, for those of you not familiar, is one of the OG AU weight spreads from the pictorial key of the tarot. And it’s 10 cards and it’s the present or self, the problem, the past, the future, the conscious, the unconscious, influence, your influence, external influence, hopes and fears, and then outcome. So we’re going to be pulling for all of that. And as always, if you want to pull alongside me, that would be lovely. I really do enjoy when you all do that and then you send me an email or a DM with photos or talk to me about a card that you pulled or if you pulled one of the same cards I did. That’s also exciting. I love when that happens. So yeah, feel free to shuffle and pull alongside me and see how your cards relate to the discussion and reflection that’s coming up for the cards I pull.

All right, so we’re starting with card one, the present. And again, this is a collective, I’m looking at these as collective readings. And if you’ve been around for a while, you know that I don’t read from a divinatory future predicting lens. Like I really do just like to turn it out with the cards and figure out what it can bring up from my own subconscious and the collective unconscious and see, yeah, just where we can go with the cards.

So this one will be for all of us. Also, this deck shuffles like a dream. It’s my favorite deck to shuffle.

Okay, card one, the present/ self. The Hanged Man. Okay, we’re starting with a major. No big deal. So, you know, the Hanged Man is a perfect card, I think, for us collectively right now, because I think as a society or really just the world in general right now, I think we literally all feel upside down. But beyond looking at this literally, it feels like we’re kind of in this liminal space, suspended between maybe two different worlds or two different lives, suspended between the life that we used to know and the life that maybe we’re headed towards or that we don’t know what we’ll be experiencing.

Traditionally, we know the hanged man is an archetype of pause, kind of this intentional inversion and surrender in some ways. I think at a societal level though, this kind of feels like a nod to the fact that we can’t go back to how things were because in this liminal upside down space that we’re in, we have now seen things from a very specific perspective that we cannot unsee. And we’re also suspended in a state of ambiguity, you know, uncertainty, especially financial uncertainty, political uncertainty, spiritual uncertainty, and also from just an existential standpoint, a lot of ambiguity there.

Yeah, it almost, you know what this card, it almost kind of feels like there’s this feeling of I should probably get down from here. It’s not looking too good. And realizing that we can’t just step down, like we’re kind of stuck here. And I think that speaks to a level of helplessness and exhaustion that so many of us feel right now, just exhausted by systems and experiences that we can no longer trust. And yet we still have to depend on them, which feels so disorienting. And I mean, even just like that level of disorientation is wrapped up in The Hanged Man as well.

It doesn’t feel good to be suspended for who knows how long and not being able to really maneuver in your world and in your environment in a functional way. Going back to what I said just a second ago, though, the hanged man, obviously suspended in this kind of liminal space. There’s also this kind of like forced reframing of life that I think is happening here and a forced reframing of perspective, especially as we know it, like I mentioned earlier, like we are seeing things in a way that we’ve never seen them before. And in this upside down space, we’re really having to figure out how to reconcile all of this and whether we can tolerate the discomfort of seeing life differently in this upside down liminal space, knowing that we might not have the capacity or ability to fully stop it right now.

That’s the hanged man for the present moment.

Okay, let’s talk about the problem. So card two is the problem. I think we all know what the problem is, but let’s see what the cards say the problem is. Let’s see if the cards agree with what we all know the problem is.

That’s actually really funny. Oh my God. Not what I thought, but fitting. Okay, so I pulled the world. The problem is the world, literally. Oh my God. Oh my God, that’s actually really funny.

Okay, in all seriousness though, we know that the world is an archetype of completion, individuation, integration, wholeness. And, oh, you know. This is interesting as the problem. I think, and I’m going to reference, this kind of feels relatable to the hanged man. I think it might represent our need as the collective to kind of accept with what I was saying with the hanged man, that now that we’ve seen things from this new perspective, the problem of the world is, I don’t know, perhaps our resistance to accept what we’ve seen.

And that, I mean, to be literal, like the world isn’t maybe what we thought it was. You know, the systems that we thought helped the world go around are being exposed. And I think so many of us are really coming to terms with the brutality of what is humanity. Because for centuries, much of humanity has been in such denial about that. And the world as a problem is just so fitting because the systems and structures that exist that are problematic are global. They’re intertwined. They’re so deeply rooted in every aspect of our life and how we live in this literal world.

But I think the challenge here is also how do we, as a world, experience the integration that is inherent in this archetype without dissociating, without full disconnection. And I think that’s really hard in today’s world, you know, in these moments that are just shrouded in volatility, geopolitical conflict, and in a sense that us as an experience that us as just ordinary, regular people bear the highest cost of the systems that we have little to no control over.

So yeah, tarot, the world is the problem. Oh my God. I don’t know how much more literal the cards could have gotten.

Okay. Moving on to card three. Card three is the past.

Hmm. The Page of Cups. Wait, this feels like nostalgia. Oh my God. Is the Page of Cups the nostalgia card? I’ve never thought about this card as nostalgia until just now. I’m having one of those like epiphany moments. You’re getting to experience that with me. This is really exciting because I’ve actually spent the last year just reflecting on and reading about nostalgia and how it’s a form of grief, but also something that can be very dangerous. I mean, what we’ve been seeing politically is weaponized nostalgia. This is a fascinating card to think about. But it makes so much sense because at its core, nostalgia is the mind’s attempt to return to a time that felt safer, simpler, more coherent.

And it’s more likely to be experienced when folks are feeling disoriented, overwhelmed, or uncertain about life. And yeah, I mean, in that way, nostalgia is not just us kind of like focusing on old memories and wishing we could go back to a different time. It’s a coping mechanism just as much as it is a form of grief. In fact, a lot of folks like psychologists and sociologists who are studying and have studied nostalgia have found that it can actually intensify during times of social instability, economic uncertainty, cultural transition. That’s a big one.

And so societies are on the precipice of something new or things feel unpredictable, the people who live within that society tend to gravitate towards the past. And it’s really easy for these folks to mythologize earlier times, decades past as more moral, better, prosperous, unified, even when the evidence suggests, not even suggests, when the evidence clearly tells us otherwise and tells us that it’s a complicated, layered, complex dynamic.

Other folks who studied nostalgia. And I can’t believe that this is what’s coming up for me with this card. I’m just like nerding out right now because I was reading so much about nostalgia over the last year. But weaponized nostalgia specifically shows up when there are movements or leaders or even the media tend to kind of invoke the past in a romanticized way as if it’s something that’s been lost that we have to refine and discover and bring back and hold and not lose and be gentle with.

What’s interesting about this though is they’ve also found that in that type of weaponized nostalgia, the loss of the past is typically needing to be blamed on somebody. So that’s an interesting component to think about in terms of kind of like where we are politically right now. But yeah, oh my gosh, I can’t believe I haven’t thought of The Page of Cups as nostalgia, but it fits, especially because I’m pulling this card in the past position. And, you know, there’s a youthfulness about this card, obviously, because it’s a page. But I view all the pages, regardless of the suit, as curious. And then we can expand on that curiosity based on the suit. And so here we could be curious about our emotions, our needs and what was working for us before versus what’s working for us now.

Okay. Let’s move on to the next card, which is about the future.

Oh God, no. The emperor. Okay. So I’m always the first one to try and humanize the emperor. Let me just start there. I will always challenge folks to step outside of their initial kind of like knee-jerk reaction to this tyrant. And I’m being so hypocritical right now. But damn, you know, if nothing changes, the Emperor really suggests that as a future, we’re headed towards dominance and control.

I did warn you all that this deck does not mess around. It can be a very intense deck. I blame, I’m blaming the deck right now for giving us the emperor, but I am going to take my, I’m going to take my own advice right now. And we are going to try to reframe the emperor and look at it through a lens that maybe we’re not used to traditionally looking at it through.

So if we do that, maybe all hope is not lost because, you know, what if the emperor is us? What if the emperor is us as the collective? What if we are the ones in the future that get to call the shots, that get to set the firm boundaries, that get to demand justice? What if we are the ones in power? It’s a really nice thought to sit with, isn’t it?

I don’t have anything else to say about this one. I’m honestly kind of annoyed I pulled the emperor because yeah. If you like it, hit a little too close to home. And I also don’t want to bypass, I’m very anti-toxic positivity, but I also love the cognitive flexibility that tarot promotes. And we would not be, I’m saying we, but really I’m talking about myself right now too. But we also, those of us who use tarot, would not be using these cards to their fullest potential if we did not allow ourselves to go into the space where I just went and being curious about other ways to experience an archetype aside from our first initial knee-jerk reaction.

That flexibility is really important and I think it’s hilarious I’m talking about this right now because the emperor is the epitome of rigidity. And here I am on the heels of just talking about this card saying, we need to be flexible. So yeah, but anyway, I don’t have anything else to say about the emperor.

Okay, moving on to the next card in this spread, which is representing the conscience.

And we have the sun. Gosh, I feel like this is a lot of majors for this spread. Interesting. Okay, as the conscious, I think we’re craving, and again, us as the collective, we’re craving clarity, truth, the transparency that comes with the sun, a level of hope, exposure also, like expose all the things, shed light on everything. We want to see it all. We want everything to be exposed. And we also want the ability to move forward and grow and flourish.

You know, we want the truth out in the open. We want relief. We want coherence. We want life to feel lighter. We want to have more knowledge. We just want to feel human again too. I think we are experiencing the sun as a craving for what is obvious and undeniable in terms of what is happening and what needs to change.

You know, we can see this culturally and the desire for the folks to be just told the truth, for there to be public accountability and mutual recognition. And again, the exposure of hypocrisy. I think this, you know, and it’s so, I have to take a moment also to that I used to hate this card. I mean, for several years, I was like, every time I would see this card, I would just groan and be like, oh my God, I’m so sick of like toxic positivity and shine light and all this stuff.

And I did so much work trying to figure out what is it that I’m so resistant to about this card. I just had a moment where I was just like talking about this card and reflecting. I’m like, oh damn, okay. There’s a lot of personal growth that’s happened with this card because I’m talking about it in a way that I never would have talked about it before. And that actually feels really good. So yeah, I think the sun is representing the need for things that are hidden to be shown.

And I also think this is a card about trust. Really being able to identify who we as a collective can trust to have our best interests in mind, lead us and care for us. And what groups does that look like?

All right, let’s talk about the unconscious now.

Okay, not a major. The two of cups, interesting. I feel like this one might be saying we need to look at ourselves. And I know that this is typically like a relationship partner dynamic, but they’re also facing each other. So I feel like it could represent a reflection of the self. And this goes back to my discussion a moment ago about like, hey, let’s experience some cognitive flexibility and think about the cards through different lenses.

But yeah, this could represent maybe a reflection of the self and our need to look at what our own contributions to the world are and get real about areas where we might be active, but also might be complacent. I think we can also look at this as maybe the collective psyche, like the collective unconscious maybe, being driven by such a deep need for recognition, reciprocity, and connection. Because people so desperately want to be seen, they want to be heard, they want to be acknowledged, they want to matter to other people.

But I think we all crave those things and we also crave repair. And repair, especially when a relationship has been damaged, whether that’s between two people or one person in a society or multiple people in a society or a world or whatever. There needs to be some sort of repair that happens in order for us to feel safe and like we belong. And yeah, have some sort of like sense of just mutual exchange.

Something that’s coming up for me that feels kind of interesting about this Two of Cups right now though and especially because again I’m thinking about this as a collective reading and it just really feels like I’m just obviously just talking about the state of the world because that’s where I feel like this reading went but I think something that’s important to point out is when you have polarized societies they can look like they’re driven and organized by hatred.

And yes, that exists and it’s absolutely present. And underneath that, there is also profound deprivation, often deprivation in terms of human connection and understanding, and also shame, so much shame. I mean, I see this, I mean, every time a new story breaks and I’m like, You know, someone’s exposed for something that is like the opposite of what they stand for. I’m like, oh, it’s because they’re just, you know, shrouded in shame.

But also loneliness and the fragmentation of the self, social mistrust. I mean, there’s so much of that that I feel like can exist. And also the shadow component of this Two of Cups. You know, we as a society and as a world are starving for connection. And we’re not looking at maybe how in our starvation, we’re actually perpetuating exclusion.

Okay, moving on to the next one. I think we only have a few cards left. I warned you, this was a long one.

Okay, now we’re going to explore our influence in all of this. Oh my God, another major. This time, the lovers.

This is interesting, especially on the heels of the Two of Cups. Because a lot of folks, I feel like, look at the lovers and the Two of Cups as very similar. I tend to take a different approach to the lovers. I tend to look at it as more of like, an autonomy agency card. It’s also traditionally a card of choice.

And also I think our values, it’s a card that’s so much more than what the literal artwork looks like, where it looks like a couple being joined together. I think it’s actually more about some level of alignment and again, like our relationship to ourself and the choices that we make.

So I think collectively as the influence card, this is suggesting that we have a lot of influence and help shape like at least our own kind of immediate environment. So if we feel like we don’t have a lot of control over the greater kind of global world, that can make us feel helpless. And that’s when we start dissociating and become complacent. So we need to look at the choices that we’re making that help us feel more aligned and connected and safe and whole in our at least immediate life.

And speaking more to the choices, I think there’s a lot of strength and value here because the choices that we make about who and what we affiliate with, whether or not we’re complicit, loyal, responsible, who do we stand besides? What are we normalizing? What do we reject or refuse? And what sort of sacrifices are we making? All make a bigger impact than we realize.

And to really just kind of drive home this concept of choice especially in the influence space of the spread, it feels like it’s reminding us that our influence is strongest when we stop saying that we don’t have a choice. Because I think there’s always a choice, even if we feel like it’s not the perfect one.

Okay, moving on. Three more cards. We are getting through this. Oh my God. We’re gonna make it. I was so excited to do this, but I was like, oh, this is going to be a lot. I think I’m okay.

Oh, also, I don’t know if I mentioned this at the top of the episode, but I’m actually recording this, which feels extra special, during the full moon. And if my very brief light research is correct, this pink full moon is all about growth and renewal. So that feels particularly resonant based on the spread today. So I’m recording this on the full moon. You all won’t hear it for several days, but just know that that full moon energy was present.

All right, a few more cards. Let’s talk about external influence now. Let’s see what we got. Oh, that card flew out and it is in fact another major and I cannot believe this is the card that came out for external influence. It’s the devil. You can’t make this shit up. That’s actually hilarious.

Okay, so painfully apt. The devil as the external influence. I mean, yeah. I mean, we’re by compulsion, fear, exploitation, addiction, systems that profit from dysregulation. I think given the theme of this reading, that is totally on brand. The devil as external influence. I mean, wow. It’s almost as laughable as getting the world for the problem. I mean, gosh. Is there anything else to say for this? I mean, what else is there?

I think looking at this archetype through the lens of external influence, in all seriousness, I think it’s speaking to how that type of energy thrives when we are all kept overstimulated, chained, ashamed, scared, dependent. I think this card as the energy of external influence is very much like, oh, I need you trapped so that I can gain the power and the money and all the things that I want. Because if you’re not trapped, then I can’t move into the space of power that I want to be in.

So yeah, that, I mean, that very much feels like this, this whole like being trapped too with the overstimulation, I think is really important to remember because of how much exposure we have to news and to stories that we otherwise, you know, decades ago wouldn’t have had access to. And how often forces that don’t have good intentions, people who don’t have good intentions, rely on that level of overstimulation in order to propel themselves forward and leave us behind.

All right, let’s move on. Next card is hopes and fears. This card does double duty. We’re looking at it through two different ways, which is my favorite.

Okay, we have the eight of wands for hopes and fears. Oh, this is like the urgent card. Like things are moving so fast. I think, okay. Yeah, in terms of hope, this makes sense. So I think collectively we all want, we all want things to move very quick and just as we can just like get it over with. And, you know, so we can hopefully get to this like other better side.

And yet I think the fear is, oh my God, we’re moving too fast. Things are happening too quickly. This is scary. How do we make it stop?

Shifting back to the hope side again, I think the eight of wands speaks to how we want momentum. We want breakthroughs. We want swift communication. We want quick change. We want signs that we are not going to be stuck here forever.

And I think the fear side of this card is just as strong. Whereas the speed of events and the speed at which things are happening feels unsustainable, unlivable. I mean, again, like in news cycle stories, geopolitical conflict, market crashes, military escalation, social media. I mean, all of this. We don’t have time to digest any of it. Everything is happening so quickly. And yet, again, on the flip side, the hope, we want things to move fast so we can just get it over with.

Okay, we made it. It’s the final card. And this episode is going to be so much longer than I wanted it to be. If you have made it this far. If you have lasted and you have stuck with me through this Celtic cross spread, you’re the best. Thank you for not making me sit through this alone. I’m not going to do a 10 card spread like this again for a long time.

Okay. The last card is the outcome and it’s the four of swords. Okay. I’m not mad about it. I’m not mad that it’s the four of swords. It could have been worse. Actually, this feels right for kind of where my brain went with the eight of wands and the devil. I’m still forming my thought. So every time I see the four of swords, I always think about our nervous system for some reason. It’s just where my brain goes.

And our nervous systems cannot stay in a perpetual state of emperor, devil, eight of wands, mode, momentum, whatever you want to call that cycle without eventually just collapsing. Because what we’ve been living through collectively is intense overstimulation, overstimulation at a level that our human nervous system just wasn’t designed to sustain.

Again, so the devil told us that our environment thrives on keeping us hooked into these cycles of stimulation and honestly reaction. And then the emperor in that future position that it was is saying, tightening control of those structures and systems allows for me to demand attention and compliance. But remember, we also looked at the emperor in the position of maybe that’s us. So not all doom and gloom there.

But by the time we reach the Four of Swords, I think we are reminded that we cannot gain the clarity that we are so desperate for, that we’re so hungry for, until the barrage of chaos and the just submerged wisdom that we’re trying to find is offered to us. This Four of Swords always feels like an intentional retreat to me. It’s eliminating outside distractions. It’s getting rid of all of the overstimulation and allowing us to fully tune in and make sense of everything that we have at some point consumed or experienced or thought.

I think the Four of Swords here is really powerful. And honestly, it feels like a really good card to pull in the outcome position. It might not be some super happy, exciting, triumphant card, but I think it does suggest that we’re headed into a space or we can, if we really take a look at our role in this and what role we can play moving forward, that we can move into a space of mental clarity and peace. And I think it’s important to remember that it’s in that space that we’re able to strategize more effectively in order to create the life and the future that we all deserve.

Additional commentary not in the episode:

After reflecting on this spread, there were a few additional thoughts and ideas that came to mind. I wish I would have spent some time comparing the Page of Cups and Six of Cups when it comes to the idea of nostalgia - but perhaps that’s a future episode.

Regarding the World as the problem, I think we also need to consider how much of the worl’s literal past we have ignored and refused integration. I believe that specific type of bypassing is what has led us to where we are today and was worth noting with this archetype.

When I was writing Dark Shadow, Golden Shadow, my publisher asked me to explain why I spell magick with a “k.” It seemed like a small editorial request, but my answer actually reveals something much bigger about how (and why) I exist at the intersection of tarot and psychology.

In the book, I wrote:

“Magick with a k is fueled by intention, autonomy, and free will.”

So when I use the word magick, with a k, I’m not referring to supernatural powers or invisible forces that we expect to deliver specific outcomes or grant us our wishes. I’m referring to our capacity to participate in our own life and create our own transformations - think true Magician energy. Magick, with a k, is something we engage in, something we create, something that fuels our autonomy and makes us feel good in the process.

For some folks, that might look like sitting at an altar, crafting a spell, imbuing tinctures with intention, or moving through a ritual that feels deeply symbolic and meaningful. In many ways, this kind of ritual becomes a form of psychodrama - a way of engaging the imagination and the subconscious mind so that our intentions become both embodied and psychologically potent in a way that makes them significantly more likely to happen. (This is the true form of “manifestation” by the way…I also cringe at that word these days and how it’s steeped in spiritual bypassing, but more on that in the future I’m sure).

For others, magick might look like walking through the woods, breathing deeply, drawing in the essence of the earth - all of that dirt, pine, and dew, and imagining that earthly breath circulating through their body in a way that nourishes and restores them, all while thanking Mother Nature in the process. While the forms that magick can take are endless, the mechanism in which it functions is similar and it all starts with ritual, intention, and connection. And it’s that particular intersection of psychology and magick that has fascinated me for years.

But conversations about magick and tarot don’t seem to go as deep as I, and many others, want them to. In many online spaces, the practices of tarot and magick have become performative, aesthetically crafted moments specifically designed to garner our attention for a like and a follow. And because of that, I’ve found myself craving something slower, more thoughtful, and more meaningful (which is also why I deleted TikTok, but that’s also another topic for another day) - a space where tarot and magick can be explored with open curiosity and without rigid boundaries or the need to perform, and where everyone has something brilliant to add solely because they’re having their own human experience.

That’s one of the many reasons I created my membership community and also why I started hosting the Summer Solstice Summit because I was exhausted (and bored) with the performative, algorithmic magick and I was craving that true magick, with a k, that is fueled by intention, autonomy, and strengthened in community.

But to be honest, I was so fucking nervous that the Summit would be a total flop. But I continued planning and spent weeks crafting a list of people who I would love to hear speak in a space like the Summer Solstice Summit anyway like tarot practitioners, scholars, witches, therapists, and artists whose work I deeply respected. Then I nervously sent emails asking if they would be interested in presenting and wondering if anyone would even be willing to take a chance on me.

To my surprise, the response was overwhelmingly supportive. People said yes. They were excited. And just like that… the first ever Summer Solstice Summit had a lineup.

But then my anxiety shifted to something else, because now it needed somewhere else to go, right? And I worried about whether people would even want to attend an event like this - especially without any history of me hosting something like this before. I had no proof to offer them that the event would be successful. I would joke with friends that I was terrified it would turn into the Fyre Festival of tarot conferences. OMG, remember that catastrophe? Great documentary, though.

Thankfully, people did take a chance. In fact, a lot of people took a chance. What surprised me most, though, was the feedback we received. Some people shared that they had never experienced a virtual event that felt so warm and connected. Others described the entire weekend as feeling like a kind of intellectual and spiritual nourishment.

One attendee wrote:

“Can’t say enough how glad I am that I attended the summit. Three days well spent in community with inspirational, educational, and entertaining presenters covering a huge range of topics from Astrology to Shadow Work. I ended the weekend shocked that it had gone so fast and inspired to dig deeper into many of the covered topics. I’ve probably got enough material to keep me busy until next year’s summit!”

Another said:

“I cannot believe this was the first summit. The content, the management, the accessibility and inclusion, the amount of learning, the joy and the absolute magic were incredible. There was something for everyone!”

And another shared:

“This event opened the door to fresh perspectives and possibilities. The Summer Solstice Summit is a safe space with a strong sense of community. The desire to learn and assist everyone in understanding the material is well-supported by attendees, presenters, and admins alike. If funds allow, I will definitely attend again next year!”

My goal was to create a space where we could gather, be curious, explore ideas, and nurture ourselves and others through thoughtful conversations about tarot and magick and that’s exactly what happened. Mission accomplished.

And I cried more than once at the messages I received from people about how they had been feeling so low, and the summit reinvigorated their practice and led to new friendships and professional connections. It was a true weekend of magickal, collective effervescence.

After the summit ended, I wasn’t sure if I had it in me to do it again. Hosting something like this is a tremendous amount of work, and last year it happened during a particularly difficult period of my life. In fact, one week after the summit ended, I moved into my own place for the first time in nearly eighteen years. Between planning the event and navigating that life transition, I was stretched pretty thin.

Plus, how the hell could I top that first summit? There was no way we’d all get that lucky to have so much fun again. So, for a while, I genuinely wasn’t sure if I would do it again. But then the emails, DMs, and comments began rolling in.

“Are you hosting the Summer Solstice Summit again this year?”

So I did exactly what I did last year: I started searching for people who had something thoughtful to say about tarot, astrology, magick, creativity, psychology, and spiritual practices - people who approach these subjects with depth, curiosity, and authenticity. The result is this year’s lineup, and I genuinely could not be more excited about it.

Over the course of three days, presenters will explore topics ranging from ancestry work and bibliomancy to tarot numerology, creative practice under capitalism, and the psychological dimensions of working with the cards. And so much more of course. I mean, look at the presenters! They’re all known for their depth, ingenuity, and ability to explore tarot and magick in a meaningful and healing way.

So, here’s to round two of the Summer Solstice Summit! And, of course, you’re invited!

We’ll be gathering virtually via Zoom the weekend of June 26th-28th beginning at 9am PT and ending at 5pm PT.

If you’d like to spend a weekend exploring tarot, ritual, psychology, and creative spiritual practice with a community of thoughtful practitioners, early bird tickets are available here.

I hope to see you at the summit!

I am so excited for this episode today because I received a lot of wonderful feedback when I shared a collective reading for the year ahead for 2026, with many of you requesting more frequent tarot check-ins like that, or even monthly readings. Honestly, so fun. Why did I not think of that? So, thank you!

You all, as listeners, always have such fascinating thoughts and fun ideas. I am listening. I love your suggestions. Keep them coming. I’ve decided to kick off March with a collective reading for the month ahead…energy to consider. We’ll see where it goes. And if you know my work or have been listening for a while, you know I don’t read predictively.

My relationship to tarot is rooted in its psychological underpinnings and its ability to allow us to think outside the box, access unconscious material, and be curious about ourselves and the world around us in ways we might not have been able to without archetypal images to help guide us. These readings will be invitations to be curious.

I think I’m also going to use a different deck each reading. We’ll see where it goes. Everyone knows me for using Tarot Vintage, and that will always be my one true tarot love. But I have so many decks that I don’t get the opportunity to work with that often. Doing a monthly series about month-ahead readings will offer a little structure and nudge me to use some of these other decks. At least that’s what I’m telling myself I should do. We’ll see, because today I’m actually going to be using Tarot Vintage. That is what it is.

For now, I plan to do these collective monthly readings with a different spread each time. That may change in the future. You’re along for the ride with me. I’m letting things flow and be free, which is mildly uncomfortable for me. I’m practicing some self-exposure therapy and modeling doing something even if I haven’t completely figured it out yet.

I’ve always had fear and anxiety around seeming ill-prepared or like I don’t know what I’m doing, which is okay. None of us actually know what we’re doing. I’m human. Nothing is perfect. The whole point of starting The Tarot Diagnosis was to allow myself to continue to grow and step outside my comfort zone. There’s more of that here.

I’m rambling now, and you’re here for tarot. So let’s do that.

Like I said, this month I am going to be using Tarot Vintage. If you want to see the images of the cards I pull, along with the spread I’m pulling to, I recommend you sign up for my email list because those are the folks who get to see this. You’ll also get notified when the episodes go out. I think I’m also going to be posting this on Substack as well. I’ve been active over on Substack and have been enjoying writing and exploring other avenues there. I’m thinking of transcribing these monthly readings and posting them to Substack. If you’d prefer to read along, or want to read instead of listen, or maybe you started listening and forgot and now want to read it, you can go over there and I’ll make sure the transcript is there.

Today I’m going to be using my “Why Is Everything Fucked?” tarot spread. I chose this spread because everything is currently fucked. The world we live in, the people who run it, the people who protect the people who are doing terrible things. The majority of us are desperately trying to get by and take care of ourselves and our community. It felt fitting.

Card One: The Current Chaos - Ace of Pentacles

The Ace of Pentacles is not traditionally associated with chaos. It usually references new opportunities for growth, some sort of material potential. However, we are reading this card as it relates to the specific question, so we’re stepping outside the box.

I like to conceptualize the suit of pentacles as systems and structures beyond just monetary or tangible things. If we’re looking at the Ace of Pentacles as a cog in the wheel of systems and structures, we could think of it as representing the beginnings of new economic frameworks, new institutional norms, new systematic rhythms of life and relationships, new infrastructures as they relate to the environment, the programs that assist people, the list goes on.

The Ace assumes more nuance and significance when we’re looking at it as a representation of chaos. We often think of Aces as the beginning, something at its inception. It’s this new seed, or seed of a new idea, that’s not formed yet. It’s not stabilized. Through a systemic lens, it could look like a liminal in-between phase, a threshold where old configurations are loosening up while the new configuration hasn’t been fully anchored yet.

When we’re experiencing liminality and ambiguity, we’re likely to experience internal and external chaos and anxiety because there’s so much unknown. As humans, we are biologically oriented toward predictability. Systems and structures, whether financial, political, familial, or ecological, function to reduce uncertainty because they are riddled with predictability. But when these systems begin to falter, shift, transform, or disintegrate, we register that as a threat, even when the eventual outcome might be better for us.

The chaos symbolized in the Ace of Pentacles may be referencing the destabilization that accompanies systemic reorganization. When cultural norms evolve, technologies emerge, economic shifts occur, or things change in our environment, adaptation is required. Collectively, we are trying to figure out: Do we want to adapt? Do we want to push back? What is growing that we feel good about? What is growing that feels dangerous and needs to be stopped?

We’re on the precipice of new systems and structures. None of them have a blueprint or image of what they might grow into. I love a good garden metaphor. When you buy a packet of seeds at the nursery, there’s a picture on it. You know what’s going to bloom. We don’t know what this Ace of Pentacles might turn into. That uncharted territory inevitably feels chaotic.

Card Two: What Have We Not Considered - Death

If the Ace of Pentacles helped us realize that chaos is emerging because new systems and structures are beginning to take shape, the Death card represents the inevitability of endings.

Death represents the dismantling of systems and structures that no longer serve us. Institutional frameworks that were once supposed to provide security and equity are now perpetuating inequity and insecurity. Economic structures that promised growth are producing unsustainable strain. Cultural narratives that once touted unification are rooted in exclusion for many.

We are seeing demands for change and transformation. The Ace of Pentacles showed new systems emerging, but they can’t stabilize while old ones remain intact. The Death card reminds us that endings are often uncomfortable and painful as we wait for something nourishing to emerge next.

If this card represents something we have not considered, it may be that endings, even when we welcome them, are painful, awkward, and destabilizing. It speaks for itself.

Card Three: My Role in the Resolution - Ten of Pentacles

The Ten of Pentacles is typically a card of legacy, families, and intergenerational patterns. If we continue with pentacles as systems and structures, we can view this as intergenerational structures from a communal and collective standpoint.

This Ten positions us within a network of relational, historical, and collective bonds. Instead of simply answering the question, it seems to ask one back: What part do I intend to play in this transition? What part do I need to play? What part do I want to play?

Are we passive observers to systemic collapse and eventual renewal, or active participants reshaping its trajectory and helping form its future?

The Ten of Pentacles emphasizes that the systems we live in are not abstract. They are created and sustained through our daily behaviors, decisions, financial choices, relational practices, and what we invest in or divest from in our communities.

This is a legacy card. Legacy is not only what we leave behind for family. It is the narratives, values, and modes of existing within systems. To engage this card is to confront our position, actions, and contributions to current structures and the creation of new ones.

I believe Mary K. Greer talks about this card as representing a role within a larger framework or drama. We need to consciously choose the role we want to represent. Will we perpetuate inequitable systems through inaction, or contribute to building sustainable, ethical, and inclusive structures? What does that look like?

It reminds me of Viktor Frankl’s belief that meaning emerges not necessarily from circumstances, but from our responses to them. What is our response? The Ten of Pentacles frames systemic chaos as a reckoning to clarify our values and modify what our legacy will be and how we will construct it.

Pentacles are about building and sustaining. That process is unglamorous and chaotic in itself. We have to get real about what our participation will be in building new communal life and step outside our own bubble, step out from behind our devices, and ask: What does my contribution look like? How can I contribute to creating the world I want to live in?

Card Four: What Awaits on the Other Side - Page of Swords

The Page of Swords is the archetype of intellectual curiosity. We’re asking questions and perhaps experiencing an intellectual awakening. Pages represent developmental beginnings. We’re learning what it means to embody discernment.

Pages are not experts or masters. They are learners and apprentices. In relation to this question, if the Page of Swords awaits us, we are apprentices to new ideas, new ways of thinking, interacting, and building in response to what is demanded of us as humans. At its most basic level, it represents a new way of thinking.

There is a shift in cognitive frameworks. Language is evolving. The narratives assigned to us are evolving. The way we speak about labor, identity, climate, gender, and power dynamics shapes the structures we build. The Page of Swords embodies curiosity, courage, and the willingness to question inherited assumptions and explore alternative ways of existing and communicating.

Because this is a Page and not a Queen or King, it is inherently imperfect. If this awaits us, we must remember that cognitive, ideological, or narrative restructuring can be awkward. We are figuring out new language, structures, systems, and ways of communicating.

There will be stumbling. Pages do not have all the answers. They are curious and willing to explore and find them.

Because this is a Sword (not the Page of Wands) there is a sense of reality and groundedness in what will be developed. This is not a dreamy fantasy. There is reality in what it will look and feel like. Intellectual reorientation does not necessarily mean utopia, and it may not feel fully supportive right away.

From a therapeutic standpoint, this Page energy reflects cognitive restructuring and reframing. When outdated beliefs dissolve, new ones emerge. Collectively, the Page of Swords symbolizes a new generation, literal and metaphorical, committed to challenging how we believe our world should be.

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Someone asked me recently: If you had to personify the algorithm, what would it be? They were probably expecting something else, but I blurted, “The Hierophant.”

In tarot, the Hierophant is the keeper of sanctioned knowledge. The word itself, rooted in ancient Greek, refers to a spiritual leader with special, divine access to the afterlife - basically answers to what so many folks seek. It’s also an archetype of hierarchy and institutional power, so yeah, it makes sense that the algorithm would be the Hierophant. Part of me is annoyed by my own comparison, because I want the Hierophant to be a wise mentor (two things can be true, though I guess).

But the reality is, the algorithm (like the Hierophant) is the institutional voice - the intermediary between power and visibility, deciding who gets amplified and who dissolves into digital silence. The algorithm tells us what’s valuable by choosing what to make visible. The Hierophant is similar - the intermediary between heaven and earth, the holder of divine secrets, the one with the ability to sanctify or silence. Both authorize the “truth” and decide what is “right,” or allowed.

For centuries, this Hierophant/Pope archetype wore robes and was a well-defined, visible authority. You knew where he sat, what he stood for, and whose doctrine he upheld. His power had a face that you could point to, argue with, or opt out of. But as the algorithm, the Hierophant is invisible and to argue with it is to be silenced, and to opt-out is to disappear. Yet, we kneel anyway.

Before this algorithmic era, artists and creators (which anyone who posts on social media is a creator in some way) were local. Writers hoped for a byline in the city paper. Musicians dreamed of a feature in Rolling Stone. If you made it into those pages in 1998, it meant something… and would often result in some sort of celebration - a dinner, champagne, or a story your family would tell for decades.

Now, anyone can go viral and that virality isn’t really all that special. Well, maybe it is, for some. I’ve seen people pop bottles and get cakes for reaching a certain follower count. And no shame if that’s what excites you, but it still doesn’t feel like it holds the same weight as recognition before the algorithm.

Public acknowledgment has become both more accessible and more diluted because the algorithm has democratized visibility and simultaneously depleted its gravity. Yet, more people are chasing it than ever.

And I keep wondering about the psychological underpinnings of that drive - this longing to be lifted above the sea of creators, even for a split second. Because what used to be fifteen minutes of fame is now really more like fifteen seconds.

What does it mean to crave that? To create primarily in hopes of catching a lucky hitch on the back pegs of the algorithm? Speaking of pegs, I’ll never forget the summer my orange Mongoose got pegs. Suddenly I was the coolest kid on Devonshire Street. I was the Uber of the neighborhood. Didn’t want to walk home from school? Hop on. Want a ride to the pier? Hop on. Need a ride to the sand park where we can hide under decrepit structures and suck splinters out of our fingers for the next week? I can pedal us both there and back. My fame lasted the entire summer. Thank god cell phones didn’t exist back then I wouldn’t have gotten a break.

And I didn’t have to keep adding features. There were no constant monetary upgrades, paint job, snack bin, or weekly reinvention. They didn’t mind standing on the pegs. That was simply enough.

Now you have to say something profound every week, something clever, better optimized, something that signals relevance, or is re-painted to look cleaner and better - or maybe scuff the previous thing up so now it’s gritty and lived in, but whatever you do, don’t stay the same. The algorithmic Hierophant doesn’t like that.

But why do we feel compelled to keep people’s attention? Because attention is currency. And we are cogs in a wheel engineered by billionaires who require our engagement to remain billionaires. Without us opening the apps, there is no ad revenue. Without creators producing content, there is no ecosystem for them to monetize.

And yet, it’s a double edged sword because there is benefit to us too. We’re so much more connected and able to experience, learn, and grow because of this. So we’ve been conditioned to feed their machine. And occasionally, we’re “rewarded” with a slight uptick in views and a spike in engagement. But only just enough to light up the reward circuitry in our brain and give us just enough dopamine to bring us back again tomorrow.

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It is eerily similar to slot machines. I, unfortunately, know this intimately. My dad is a gambling addict. His drug of choice? Slot machines. In fact, the only real quality time I get with him is sitting beside a glowing machine with crisscrossing lines that make no sense. You get a whole row of matching symbols and you think you’ve won. Turns out, not a winner. You put in $20. Now you’re down to $2. But don’t worry - the machine lets you win occasionally. Here’s an “extra” $10. But now you’re down again. But wait, you just hit a bonus round and got a free play. You’re back to $20 and the original investment is restored. So you keep playing and the cycle continues.

The algorithm works the same way. You post. Silence. You post again. Silence. Then one post hits. And honestly, maybe not even because it’s your best work, but because it caught the right algorithmic current at the right time, or because, like slot machines it knows how the dopamine system in your brain works. Regardless, you feel chosen, blessed by the algorithmic Hierophant who has anointed you a few hundred, or thousand likes.

But we can’t keep talking about the Hierophant without also bringing Judgement into the mix. Quick break to maybe pull some cards on this one:

Judgement asks:

Who are you creating for?

What purpose does this serve?

What is it you seek as you kneel?

Going back to the traditional Hierophant - when religious authorities and doctrines helped shape people’s inner worlds, it was obvious. The rules were written down and the systems of belief were clearly defined. You knew who was in charge and what they stood for and if you disagreed, you could argue with it, or simply rise from the pews and walk away from all the stained glass windows.

But, now, it’s different because instead of us studying the system, the system studies us. And almost all of us participate, because we really don’t have much of a choice. Or do we?

CW: Extensive discussions on death, panic attacks, and grief.

I’m no stranger to death. I was nine when my Uncle Barry died. He was a regular, loving figure in my life. Though, I’d sometimes hide from him when he was about to leave the house because he was so overzealous with his hugs, and as a large man, I didn’t like the feeling of being squished by him. I’d usually peek around the kitchen corner to see him standing at the front door, calling out my name to say “bye,” waiting for me to come running so he could scoop me up and give me one of his “bear hugs” that everyone knew him for. I’d yell “Bye, Uncle Barry!” in the opposite direction thinking I was sneaky enough to throw him off my actual location. He’d share a knowing smirk with my dad and head out.

At his funeral, I wore a navy floral skirt, my black Mary Janes peeking out beneath the hem that was an inch too long, with a navy button up top I got at Limited Too. Around my neck was a gold necklace that belonged to my mother. She’d sometimes make me wear it when we were going somewhere fancy. I hated the texture - it was thick and always pulled on my hair and pinched my skin if I moved a certain way.

The day of his funeral was the first time I ever saw a dead body. Not even double digits yet, I bravely walked up to the casket to see Uncle Barry one last time. My mind raced while I scanned his pale, grey skin. “Why are his lips purple?” I asked, looking up at my mother. Her face frozen, eyes wide, and mouth puckered. She looked at me like that, all perplexed, for what felt like forever before she walked away leaving my question hanging in the air above Uncle Barry’s lifeless body. It was my cousin Mary, who was two years older than me, but just as tall as I was, who walked up and told me it was because he was “cold and dead.” A year later she would also teach me what the word “cunt” meant.

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I took a seat in the pew next to my parents and listened to stories and eulogies of the man who traveled the world with the United States Military fixing airplanes. After everyone was done sharing, a line formed for final respects to be paid before he was buried. I watched as relatives tucked notes and trinkets into his jacket pockets, and along the insides of his silk-lined casket. I was suddenly overcome with a sense of urgency. I wasn’t prepared. I didn’t have an offering. I couldn’t be seen walking up to the casket one final time empty handed, I thought. I stood frozen in place. Then my hand reached for the scratchy, gold necklace around my neck and I tugged on my mom’s arm. “Mom, can I leave this for Uncle Barry?” She shared a look with my father and they whispered back and forth before she nodded her head and walked with me to tuck it into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. I felt relieved, not only because I was able to leave an offering, but now I’d never had to wear that scratchy necklace again.

That night, I went home and communed with the dead for the very first time. I remember the dream like it was yesterday, even though it was almost 30 years ago. Uncle Barry’s face was one with the sun, floating atop the most vibrant, sprawling meadow of wild flowers - purple, pink, red, yellow, orange, and white. The grass was so highly saturated with green it hurt even my sleep-filled eyes.

Uncle Barry’s floating head, (which now, as I write this, reminds me of the sun from the Teletubbies, but that show wasn’t around back then so I couldn’t make the connection) was filled with a massive smile. He was waving to me and seemed so happy. The days following, my alarm clock would go off randomly throughout the day, even after I had unplugged it. I was convinced it was him getting me back from hiding from his bear hugs.

After Uncle Barry passed, a long list of family and friends no longer present in the flesh continued to grow. By the time I was 30, I was well acquainted with death. Yet, suddenly it felt different with my maternal grandmother whose own death grew imminent. For some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to visit her in her final moments. It was just a few months ago I was sneaking her Taco Bell because she told me the nursing home food was atrocious. I kept saying I had time more time. But time ran out, just like it always does.

My mother called me as she sat beside her nearly lifeless mother and held her cell phone up to my grandmother’s ear. Her shallow, unconscious breaths amplified by the phone’s speaker rattled against my skin. I held back my tears as I said my final goodbyes, 5 miles away, through a cell phone, in my apartment, leaning on my kitchen counter. I’m embarrassed to this day.

Each friend and relative who has died since I was a little girl has visited me in my dreams. Every single one except my maternal grandmother, whom my body would not let me see in her final moments. I convinced myself she was punishing me. She was well-known for being able to hold a pretty solid grudge, after all. After she died, I buried my grief and shame in poems that I’d write and then hide away in drawers, confused by my own weakness - telling myself it was a fluke, until it happened again.

I had just moved to Phoenix, Arizona when my Aunt TT started dying. For weeks the family was up and down with hope and despair. One minute there was good news and the next, the cancer had spread too far too fast. She was the true matriarch of the family - especially once my paternal grandmother passed. She was the oldest of ten - the only woman who never broke my father’s heart, the sister that raised him, the woman that raised me.

When it became clear that time was, again, not on our side, I booked a one-way ticket home. I had to be with her. Then the familiar freeze set in - the same paralysis I’d felt five years earlier, standing in my apartment kitchen, five miles from my dying grandmother, unable to move.

The day of my flight, I lay in bed in the middle of the afternoon, catatonic. This can’t be true. TT can’t be dying, I repeated like a mantra. I couldn’t recall a single memory since the age of five that didn’t include her. I have no memories to write home about with my mother; with TT, they are endless. Of course I would be with her. My body refused.

It’s 12pm on a Tuesday and I’m laying in my bed. My flight leaves in three hours and I’m 40 minutes from the airport. A half packed suitcase is open on the edge of the bed with random clothes haphazardly tossed inside. Tears stream down my face. I sit up and suddenly I’m rocking back and forth, not by choice. I’m doing math in my head. If I leave in 20 minutes, I’ll make the flight.

My body stops rocking and suddenly I’m laying like a starfish across my bed, clutching my phone. An hour has passed. I’m walking dangerously close to the line of really missing my flight. I jump up and throw more clothes in my suitcase.

Suddenly, I’m on the floor, gasping for air. I can’t breathe. I try to stand, but my knees won’t let me. I crawl to the edge of my bed to try to climb up from the floor. I’m begging to breathe, clutching my chest. My training kicks in and I exhale slowly and deliberately. I draw a full breath in and realize I’m not about to suffocate on the edge of my bed after all. Another 30 minutes has passed and I officially will not make my flight in time. I crawl back under the covers in my bed and sob. Everything aches.

I don’t even recognize myself. I am the person who everyone relies on to fix things. I am the calm amidst the chaos. I am the organizer. The boss. The one everyone calls when something needs to be fixed or taken care of and here I am having a panic attack at 2pm on a Tuesday while the one woman who mothered me more than my actual mother ever could lay dying in a hospital bed half way across the country. I call myself pathetic. Then I call my father, so I can tell him I’m not coming, and hear his heart break one more time.

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I imagine this is what it feels like to lose a parent. I often wonder if I’ll feel this gutted when my biological mother dies, it’s hard to imagine I will. And that makes me feel horrible too.

It took close to a year before TT visited me in my dreams, but she finally did. She was happy, partying, dressed in leopard print and sequins and a purple wig, just like when she was alive. God that woman was a party personified.

But seven years later and my grandmother still had not visited me, until this week. It’s been twice in three days that she’s appeared in my dreams. The first was pleasant. She was smiling, healthy, and vibrant. But the one after was terrifying. She was laying in bed, writhing in pain, alone.

We were in her house, just the way I remembered it. Crisp white linens on her bed, ruffled valances above the windows, delicate coasters by the bedside. Her water jug next to the lamp. She looked distraught. I attempted to soothe her. “Can I lay with you?” I asked. She snarled. Her body jostled erratically like the scene in The Exorcist when the girl is possessed by an ancient demon.

Suddenly a black hole appears and we’re both being sucked into it, but in opposite directions. I woke up in a puddle of sweat.

Over the next few days I tried to make sense of my dream. As a therapist, there is this constant feeling you have to cope with - knowing you cannot fix people, solve all their problems, or take their pain away. It’s a tough feeling to cope with sometimes, when I just want everyone to be okay. It was a feeling similar to that which accompanied this dream - I couldn’t heal her. I couldn’t heal me. I tried to lay with her, to make up for the moment when my body wouldn’t let me, but then she became possessed. Even in my dreams, grief prevails.

What I understand now is that these dreams are probably not visitations. They seem more like dramatic, Shakespearean plays poetically portraying the shame of my avoidance and reminding me that love does not make me brave, and responsibility does not make me immune to fear. That sometimes the body won’t do what the mind wants it to. That sometimes we do not get a final moment, or a last offering, or the right words. That sometimes all that remains is the ache of wanting to lie beside someone and still being unable to out-maneuver avoidance and grief, even in sleep.

I remember growing up and the adults around me always lamenting about how quickly time was passin

g. I never understood it. As a child, time felt like trudging through thigh-high mud and never reaching my destination. But now, I get it. I have no idea where the last year went. A few days ago I scrolled through the camera roll on my phone beginning in January and wrote down highlights I captured each month. I was shocked at how much I had done outside of work and the podcast. As a Capricorn, I am deeply dedicated to my work, my craft, and all things related to productivity and accomplishment. So, sometimes I get tunnel vision and forget to live my life outside of these specific endeavors. But, I was pleasantly surprised to have two to three highlights each month of this year. However, I was still perplexed at why it felt like this year went by in the blink of an eye because I remember reading that time slows down for us when we have new experiences.

In fact, there is research that suggests when we do the same thing each day, it feels like time speeds up. But when we have new experiences, time slows down. So, as I was sifting through my camera roll feeling pleased at the decent amount of new experiences I’d had this year, I couldn’t make sense of why it still felt like time was passing by quicker than I could fully experience it.

Even now, as I sit here and type this out it is 1:32pm MST. I let myself sleep in today (well, Barley let us sleep in today lol) so we didn’t get a morning hike in until 8am. Then I ran an errand, grabbed some coffee, came back home and made breakfast, replied to some emails, did some admin work, a few chores around the house and before I knew it, it was 1pm. “Where the hell did five hours go?!” I honestly felt like I had wasted half the day, then I reminded myself of everything I did in fact get done this morning.

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I also remember growing up and the adults around me saying, “Time flies when you’re having fun.” So, maybe time feels like it’s moving so fast because I’m having fun? I am relatively happy with my life. There are some pretty drastic things that have happened to me over the last few years that shook me to my core and made me question everything, but I think I’m probably the most content I’ve been in my entire life (aside from the normal anxieties that everyone has - finances, politics, global warming, health, etc. lol no big deal right?). But despite those worries, I think I really am enjoying this ride, and perhaps that’s why it feels like time is flying. My issue is, I don’t want it to go too fast, but I know there’s not much I can do about that.

I’m reminded that we’re headed into a Wheel of Fortune/ Magician year from an archetypal tarot perspective. With the Wheel, it’s spinning regardless, our job is to figure out how to find our way to the center so we’re not being flung about recklessly by the inevitable rotations. At the center we’re better able to see what’s happening, prepare for any future mishaps, and feel calm despite the rate of speed things are moving around us.

The center of the Wheel isn’t without discomfort though. We’re still moving and trying to figure out where to direct our attention, but at least we can see everything. We don’t have a good vantage point at the edges. One way I’ve found to crawl my way to the center is through ritual. In fact, ritual is one of the few experiences I have where time significantly slows down. Whether it’s fire scrying, sigil crafting, or pulling tarot. It’s like being sucked into a vortex where instead of life going at 3x speed it slows down to 0.5x speed. And honestly, I love it. I often wonder if this is how Buddhist monks feel and if that’s why they always seem to slowly glide around seemingly unbothered - they’re in this 0.5x speed vortex of life. I don’t think I’d like to be there permanently, but it is nice to know I can visit whenever I want to.

Last year, one of my goals was to commit to a weekly ritual (beyond tarot). While I wasn’t perfectly consistent, I’d say I was at least 50% consistent and even just putting in half effort to a weekly ritual practice yielded beneficial results. I overall felt more at ease, the least anxious I have EVER been in my entire life - even with living alone for the first time in 18 years. I credit that to the psychodrama and therapeutic effects of ritual and witchcraft. Even though I’m not someone who engages in this practice as a way to connect with “spirit” or “deities,” I find immense value in being present with the elements.

So, my hope for all of you in the coming year is that you all find your own rituals to help you ease into the center of the wheel.

Happy New Year!

The first time I remember anyone reading my cards was when I was 16. A few weeks prior, my best friend and I were hanging out at our usual metaphysical shop/bistro for lunch and after school homework when we saw they had a tarot reader in-house that day.

We both looked at each other and without hesitation walked up to her to get our cards read. She took one look at us and said, “Are you both 18?” Despite feeling like we were, we were honest and said “no.” She didn’t want to turn us away entirely, so she read our palms instead.

My aunt Carol was the family witch. My dad used to poke fun at her after learning she’d dance naked under the full moon with her coven by laying out silverware for dinner in the form of a cross on her plate alone. They always had a good laugh about it.

Carol heard about my failed attempt at a tarot reading and immediately told me to come by her house the next night. Of course I listened.

I showed up around 7pm and despite it being a school night she had a cup of coffee ready for me and started pouring Bailey’s Irish Liqueur.

She walked me around her beautiful fairy-garden inspired yard to the back corner near a bench hugged by flowering bushes and tropical plants. She asked about school, life, and family before guiding me back inside to her kitchen table.

A traditional RWS deck appeared along with a large altar cloth. She lit a stick of incense, shuffled the cards and asked me to cut the deck before she began laying down a tableau. Carefully studying each card in relation to the one next to, above, and below it. Her eyebrows would burrow a few times and she’d look up at me to study my face as if it were bringing more clarity to the cards.

“The men in your life are causing you stress,” she said, almost casually. I laughed, too loud and too fast, because it was easier than admitting how close she’d struck. Back then I was orbiting people who should’ve had no gravitational pull on a sixteen-year-old. Men twice my age whose light I mistook for warmth. I didn’t know what grooming meant and I was avoiding the coercion and other painful moments that had happened to me by convincing myself I was simply exploring, savoring new freedoms, stepping into my own desire. In retrospect, I was just wandering into rooms where I never should’ve been invited. And I also hated my dad at the time. So, yeah she was right, men were causing me distress.

I remember the Knight of Swords, Knight of Cups, and Death appearing close together in this reading and her being fascinated by the juxtaposition. I hardly knew anything about tarot at this point so I was eager to drink up anything she was pouring regarding the cards’ meanings.

I remember leaving with a plethora of answers, questions, and insight that night. I’d not ever been to therapy yet, but I was pretty sure that whenever I eventually did go, the feeling I’d have in that room would be similar to the feeling I had at Aunt Carol’s kitchen table with a tarot deck.

Aunt Carol didn’t walk into a room. She floated. This only added to her magical allure and somehow I always felt her presence even if I didn’t see she had walked in the door yet. Growing up my dad would have massive gatherings with anywhere from 30-70 people in our house, on the patio, or in the pool. Our house wasn’t even that big, but somehow everyone found a space to cozy up in. And despite all of that energy swirling, I’d feel the exact moment Carol arrived. It was as if she was a silent siren and her presence alone drew me towards her. I’d always somehow feel at ease and slightly anxious around her because when she looked at me it was as if she was seeing all the parts of me only I knew about.

Even my little sister agreed. And while my sister and I have very different religious and spiritual beliefs, the one thing we do agree on was that Aunt Carol was magickal.

When I first found out Carol was sick, I pulled a card for her. It was the Ace of Cups. I have a deck I use for art and gifting cards. So after I pulled this card, I stuck it in an envelope with a note about what this card meant for her at this point in her life. I thanked her for being the first person to read my cards all those years ago and for igniting my love of tarot along with a few other sentimental notes. I created a charm and spell bag and gathered up my favorite incense for her and sent it on its way across the country.

My aunt Kathleen was there when the box arrived and said Carol cried, unaware that she’d ever had such an impact on me, or anyone, for that matter. That broke my heart and changed the way I think about how open I am with the people who have impacted me. We need to tell people more. While they’re alive. We always wait until they’re dead, standing next to their lifeless bodies, eulogizing their qualities and love and magick - and they don’t even get the chance to hear it. It’s a travesty, really.

Aunt Carol died today, but I know she passed feeling loved, valued, and impactful. And tomorrow marks three years since my aunt TT passed. I wrote about her here. My grandfather died in November too and several other friends and family members over the years. Why does everyone die in November?

To honor Carol’s life and magick, I pulled tarot. A tableau, actually (but I skipped the coffee and Bailey’s this time). I’ve been playing with the tableau concept since I found out she was sick last year - it felt like a return to the tarot womb in a way, as her kitchen table tableau is where my fascination with tarot was conceived.

I laughed when I saw the Eight of Pentacles in the center of the tableau. If you follow me on Instagram, then you know this card follows me incessantly. I’ve grown to self-identify with it. To see the Queen of Swords above and the Queen of Pentacles below was startling, as the QoS is the archetype I love the most, she feels protective. My friend Mandy portrayed me as the Queen of Pentacles in her Mystic Storyteller Tarot deck and I had a hard time accepting such a compliment.

I found myself reading the tableau in a variety of ways, but overall this felt like a too clear reflection of my life right now. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed that a few Knights and the Death card didn’t show up like they did when Carol pulled for me, but then again, it’s nice to see a progression into the King and Queens two decades later…

Originally, I had planned an epic two/three week solo road trip, a wild, sprawling pilgrimage to as many state and national parks as I could manage, but life had other plans. Things came up that made that trip not possible. But that’s okay, because once my tires hit the open road, that initial feeling of disappointment softened into gratitude. The trip I did take still gave me what I needed: time to breathe, to wander, to remember myself.

I’ve always preferred road trips over flying. There’s something about the hum of tires on asphalt that pulls me into a meditative trance. Being out there on miles of empty road stretching in every direction, nothing but sky and dirt and the occasional hawk soaring overhead (I saw a few this time, plus a roadrunner while on an oceanside trail!). It is somehow terrifying and liberating all at once. It reminds me just how small I am and just how vast and impossibly powerful this Earth is.

It’s so easy to forget that Earthly vastness when we’re glued to our screens, when our thumbs are scrolling endlessly, when the next headline is another heartbreak. We weren’t built to carry the entire grief of the world in our pockets and touch it with our fingertips multiple times a day, but here we are…

Road trips are both my way out and my way in. Out of the noise, the headlines, the pressure. Out of the version of myself who is always on call, always “available,” always needing to do something to distract myself. And in toward something quieter, older, wilder. A self that knows how to listen to my own needs. This month was more about me wanting to reconnect with and tend to myself. I’ve experienced so many changes and transitions, losses, heartbreak, and joys over the last three years. Some I have shared publicly and some I probably never will.

These travels let me tend, nurture, and simply…be. There was something sacred about wandering alone through a sleepy downtown, cradling a warm cup of coffee as mist curled around distant hills and pine trees. Or standing barefoot on the coarse, cool sand of the West Coast, staring at the ocean as if she were an old friend, but one who could swallow me whole in an instant, and I wouldn’t stand a chance.

For some people, that thought is terrifying - the ocean tossing you around like a ragdoll and pulling you into her depths never to be found again. For me, it’s a strange kind of comfort. I’m macabre, sorry not sorry lol.

When you grow up parentified, when you are the one holding everyone else together, you get used to living with the illusion that you’re in control, that everything will fall apart if you don’t keep your hands on it all. Moments like this with Mother Nature dismantle that illusion in the most merciful way. Standing there, confronted by her primal rage, her roaring beauty, her capacity for both ruin and renewal - it’s like breathing the sharpest, cleanest air. It fills my lungs and rushes into my bones, leaving me with a kind of bone-deep euphoria that no human-made escape can replicate.

While I was away, I had a realization. Someone whose work I deeply admire, Britt Hartley (the author of No Nonsense Spirituality) recently shared a video saying she couldn’t understand how people could find nature calming or beautiful. She spoke about the inherent destruction in nature - the earthquakes, wildfires, floods, and other terrors that strip away everything in their path.

Normally, I’m in near-complete alignment with Britt’s work, but this one didn’t sit right with me. I’ve been sitting with it, turning it over and over in my mind. And I think I finally understand why I feel the way I do: it’s not in spite of nature’s destructive force that I find peace, comfort, and beauty. It’s because of it.

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There is something profoundly liberating about standing before something so powerful, so unbending, so utterly indifferent to my existence, and realizing there is nothing I can do to control it. Nature invites me to practice the difficult lesson of letting two things be true at the same time. Mother Nature can hold me in perfect stillness, gift me with hugs of mist, rolling hills, cotton candy clouds, and cleansing waves meeting my toes, and also destroy everything I love in a split second. She is both sanctuary and storm. Balm and blaze. And my job is not to manage or control her, but to surrender to her.

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It was during my second life, those messy, monumental teenage years (12 to 20) that Almost Famous really hits home for me. Like the main character, I was this kid sneaking into a world of music journalism, talking my way into venues and interviews long before I was really old enough. It was a wild, exhilarating time - one full of creativity and possibility, but also a lot of chaos and, honestly, some danger. I grew up fast and hard and not just because I was 14 on tour buses or in back alleys with a tape recorder in the face of a musician who was holding a beer in one hand and a joint in the other, but also because my home life allowed me to be in those places to begin with. And nostalgia for me is tangled up with all those memories. Some are sweet, some are bittersweet, and some are just plain complicated.

So why bring all this up? Because nostalgia is a powerful thing. It’s like a time machine for the soul, and sometimes it’s comforting, but other times it can feel like a form of grief (that whole longing for a piece of ourselves that’s no longer accessible). Which brings me back to Almost Famous. I think I’ve avoided it because it’s not just a movie to me, it’s like one gigantic mirror. Watching William chase truth, passion, and belonging in such a distinctly similar way that I did means confronting my own hunger from that era, the ways it shaped me, and also the ways it almost swallowed me whole. But maybe that’s what nostalgia really is: a form of reckoning.

Because I’ve been deep in thought about nostalgia, I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole of books that I have begun voraciously consuming and I’ve already learned and discovered so much about this ubiquitous sensation. Did you know that up until the early 20th century nostalgia was actually considered a mental disorder? The medical world saw it as a disease that was potentially fatal because, well, they saw people die from it.

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I’m particularly fascinated by how nostalgia seems to be so layered. On one hand it can offer us insight into how to live in a way that is meaningful, fulfilling, and in alignment with our values (perhaps when we reminisce about times in our life where we were happiest…like all those pottery classes you took in college, or the years you spent prioritizing friendships, etc.) Yet, on the other hand, it can be a dangerous tool used to control, gaslight, and harm (like the current U.S. administration).

On top of that, tarot has an interesting role when it comes to nostalgia that I'm equally curious about. The artwork, collective symbolism, and archetypal underpinnings are inevitable pathways toward nostalgia and worth looking at as a tool for nostalgia exploration and integration.

So, I think that’s where I want to spend some of my time writing (you know…when I’m not working on all of the writing that goes on behind the scenes of The Tarot Diagnosis podcast and its constellation of projects).

Oh, and (because tarot lol) I created a spread for nostalgia exploration. Let me know what you pull/ discover!

I’m curious, do you all think about nostalgia? Do you experience it often? What’s it like for you? Have you found you experience it more during pivotal, transitional, or developmentally significant times?

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TT collected overripe bananas. She loved them. So, like clockwork, whatever bananas we didn’t eat that week and that got too ripe on the counter, she’d grab and toss into one of the many tote bags on her shoulder on her way out the door.

“See y’all t’morrow,” she’d say, drawing a cigarette up to her lips with one hand and flipping her purple wig out of her face with the other. I can hear her voice (that southern drawl with hits of her British roots) clear as day in my head.

My dad’s side of the family is both southern and British. So, their accent is a mix of both. In fact, my grandmother kept her British accent until the day she died despite being in the US for half a century. Because she raised her kids in the south, my dad and his ten siblings all say things that sound both southern and British. For example, my dad says Tuesday with a British accent “Choose-day” so it’s kinda funny when he says, “Y’all bottom line is, we need this here fixed by Choose-day.” Imagine a blue-collar dude with a cigarette, southern accent, and then random proper/refined words said in a British accent. TT was the same and she always called me “Darlin’” - my dad does too, usually only when he’s in a good mood, though lol.

Today would have been TT’s 70th birthday. It would have been an all-out bash, y’all. She’d probably have a crazy wig on. Hell, she’d probably have three lined up that she’d switch out throughout the party. She’d definitely come wearing at least two different animal prints, something sparkly, and a statement necklace or Mardi Gras beads.

She’d make a beeline for the fruit platter and secretly hope no one else would, just so she could take all the leftover fruit home.

When you’d ask her how she was doing, she’d say, “Oh, you know, I’m still here.” I can hear her voice clear as day reverberate in my head, echoing like an excited child yelling into a canyon.

TT was a prominent figure in my life. She cared for me in ways I wasn’t even aware I needed to be cared for. One of my first memories is when I was four or five - it was a sleepover at TT’s house when she lived across from the elementary school, just a block away from my childhood home. It was late, past sundown, when she asked if I wanted a snack.

I was shocked and said, “I can have a snack this late?” She laughed and said, “You can do whatever you want when you’re with me.” And boy…did I hold her to that statement, especially as a teenager.

There weren’t many days when TT wasn’t at our house growing up. At one point, it was so frequent that if she wasn’t at the house, I was asking why and where she was instead. She’d be over especially on the weekends when my parents would go out. When I was younger, she’d let me climb up onto the kitchen counters and rummage through ingredients and encourage me to make something delicious for her. I’d mix silly things like powdered Jell-O, overripe bananas (her favorite), taco seasoning, and milk - just weird stuff. And you know that woman always enthusiastically took a bite.

But it was when I was a teenager that I really tested her statement of “being able to do whatever I want” when I was with her.

She let me be the rebel. From pretending to be my mom and going with me to get my nose and lip pierced at 13, to letting me drink alcohol with my friends and snickering when she saw me fill the vodka bottle back up with water to hide my shenanigans. (Spoiler: someone eventually realized that bottle was all water. Oops.)

On the weekends when my parents would leave, I’d tell her I was also going out but that I’d make sure I was home before they got home. She’d always give me this stern look and point her finger at me and say, “You better be back here.” I’d just say, “Love you, TT,” and run out and do god knows what (well, I do know what…but that’s another story lol.) I always made sure I was back in time, though. I never wanted her to get into trouble.

The nights I didn’t go out, we’d cuddle up under blankets and watch horror movies, which was kind of our thing. She’d joke about needing Xanax before we watched some terrible, gory film - most likely the SAW franchise. I can’t believe she sat through those with me. Hell, I can’t believe I sat through all those.

She knew all my secrets. She eventually became my diary after she told me my mom was reading mine. But she always had my back. She had everyone’s back.

Something I’ve found to be beautiful in talking to people who knew TT is that everyone mentions how “special” she was. To me, she was the epitome of magic. For example, she never wanted anyone to stop believing in Santa - no matter how old you were. And if she was around, there were going to be trails of glitter, music, laughter, and a smile and wink.

At her celebration of life, I spoke about her through the lens of tarot - the Queen of Cups specifically and the description from the Wandering Star deck:

“The Queen of Cups represents the feminine ideal. Intuitive and emotionally intelligent, she navigates life with grace and strength. She is a caregiver but will not be taken advantage of. She is creative and whimsical but still practical and motivated. If you find favor with this Queen, she will draw you into a deeply intimate relationship, and she will treasure you throughout your lifetime.”

And that is so true. TT treasured her family beyond measure.

In fact, she was so overjoyed with the outpouring of love she received in the end that in one of our final conversations just a day before she passed, she held her hand to her heart and, through tears, she said:

“Oh, how wonderful it is to fall in love with my family all over again.”

Grief comes in waves. It’s been two and a half years since she passed, and yet I recently found myself crying over a sheet pan full of broccoli, playing Kryptonite by Three Doors Down (one of her favorite songs), and listening to a voicemail she sent me on repeat because I missed her so much and was so desperate to hear her voice.

Today, I cooked breakfast (eggs with a side of peanut butter toast and a super ripe banana in her honor) and had a conversation with her at the table. I wished her a happy birthday and thought about all the things that have happened in my life since she passed. She’d have wanted me to pull cards for her birthday, I know it. Perhaps I’ll do that later to honor her once more. For now, I’m going to let my grief continue to spill over because it’s my love for her and it has no where else to go.

Each year, TT would call me on my birthday. I’m grateful I wasn’t able to answer this day, because now I have this message. I’ve shared a small clip of it here.

I spent the whole first half of this year preparing for the Summit. And now… it’s done. It’s so bittersweet. It was an absolute blast, and everything went off without a hitch. I couldn’t have asked for a smoother experience - especially for my first time organizing and hosting a conference. Deep down, I was like, oh god, please don’t let this be the Fyre Festival of tarot conferences, lol. I wasn’t worried about the presenters, though, I knew they were going to bring it, and damn did they ever. I was more anxious about tech issues and time zone mix-ups. But everything went almost… too well. It was so lovely. Shout out to Daylina Miller (aka The Witchy Journalist) for being the best moderator/ conference partner I could have asked for.

And then, just like that, real life came rushing back in.

The weekend after the summit, I moved into my own place. That might sound like a big deal (and it is) but emotionally, it’s felt oddly… normal. I don’t really have the words for it yet. Maybe it’s because my former partner and I are still best friends. We hang out all the time, and there’s still a lot of softness and mutual care there. So while technically it’s a big transition, it doesn’t quite feel like one yet. Maybe the feelings will catch up later. Or maybe this is just what the outcome of a long process of compassionately uncoupling looks like.

Between the Summit and the move, my nervous system is craving rest, but also a kind of movement that feels like freedom. I’m planning to escape the Phoenix heat in a few weeks and then I’ll be finalizing the plans for a road trip through some of the National Parks on my bucket list. Nature has always been the one entity that soothes me. It’s reliably gentle and generous, always offering what I need to feel centered again. Lately, I’ve been feeling called to do some solo (or semi-solo) traveling. Living in Phoenix gives me easy access to places like Montana, Wyoming, Washington, and Oregon. All of them have been calling to me so loudly lately. It feels less like travel and more like a sort of personal pilgrimage. And honestly, there’s some intense urgency beneath it all. A part of me is desperate to witness these wild places before they’re decimated by the current administration.

Before the Summit, I went back home to Florida for a week with my girlfriend. That trip was magic. The weather, though humid, felt like a warm, familiar hug. The salty air was like endless kisses and the Gulf of Mexico sang her usual lullaby of healing waves. It was everything my soul needed.

Even more special was the time I got to spend with my cousins, Anthony and Derek. We grew up like siblings. I hadn’t seen Derek in a while, and when we met up, we both cried. There’s something that guts me about watching this big, burly man cry. I love them both so much. We spent several days reminiscing about all the wild shit we got into during our teenage band days. One day, I’ll write about that era—it was chaotic and golden and deserves to be remembered out loud.

I don’t really have a neat wrap-up here. I just felt like sharing. I never really had a plan for this Substack. I think I wanted it to feel like Xanga or LiveJournal. Remember those?

Instagram and the podcast have been curated for you. This space feels like it might be for me. I’m mostly hoping this helps ease my discomfort around sharing parts of my life I don’t usually talk about publicly. I have zero expectations and infinite gratitude for those of you who want to hold space for me here, though.

Enjoy my photo dump….

(Pictured above: A Saguaro cactus that’s roughly 100 years old.)

We’re about to step into a full week of high’s in the low 100’s in Phoenix, AZ. More than 90% of the time, living in the desert feels like an endless challenge in trying to resist resistance. That might not make sense, but the problem is I want to like this place. I really do. But, the landscape, with its harsh and unyielding grit, contrasts so sharply with my intense cravings for the lush, tropical greenery I grew up with. I long for the days when I could just drive to the ocean’s shore and accept healing in the form of sandy toes and crashing waves, or walk to the bay and sit on the pier with only the company of a Blue Heron and a few stingrays gliding beneath the surface of the water. Now, I wonder if the sounds of Florida’s nature will be too loud or overstimulating.

The desert is so quiet. So hot.

(Pictured above: Barley and I hanging out at the hidden beach that was tucked away in the back of our neighborhood.)

I also miss the sensation of the soft, dewy grass under my bare feet while Barley (my dog) and I stepped outside each morning. I miss being greeted by the chirps of endless Blue Jays, and Cardinals, the buzzing of bees and dragonflies, and songs of grasshoppers. Hell, sometimes I even miss being suffocated by the thick Florida humidity that I know I’m inevitably going to bitch and moan about when I visit next month. I hate being sweaty.

Lately, my mind and body have been so hungry for the very place that I used to dream of leaving. And yet, the thought of moving back feels like failure. Do I dare accept defeat? Why do I feel like it’s wrong to know I might end up back there one day? That’s probably an entirely different conversation.

(Pictured above: Barley and I on one of our morning walks in Florida. Its’ hard to believe this summer he will have officially spent more of his life in the desert than the tropics.)

Right now, my home is in the desert, with its wide-open skies and rugged terrain that doesn’t naturally invite relaxation…at least not for me. Desert rats (an affectionate term used to describe folks born and raised here) bask in what they call the “majesticness” of this place. I don’t know if I will ever fully understand that because I feel like it invites nothing but discomfort.

Is that the lesson for me?

I can’t melt into the hot sand and coarse gravel like I could the soft soil and silky grass. Instead, this terrain demands toughness, resilience, and grit. But…I’m tired of being resilient. I’m sick of having grit. I don’t want to be tough.

I want to be soft.

I want to be nurtured, lulled to sleep, and mothered by mother nature herself, not tested and provoked by what feels like the depths of her shadow - the sharp parts of her she’s ashamed of.

(Pictured above: Cave Creek, AZ)

The desert’s unique beauty (yes, sometimes I do think it’s beautiful. Two things can be true, right?) is raw and unforgiving. And while its vast emptiness can evoke a sense of freedom for some, it can also accentuate loneliness and isolation, forcing you to face yourself in ways you never have before (hmm, sounds like tarot and therapy lol). But it really just makes me miss cozy afternoon thunderstorms, when rain would dance on the sidewalks and nourish my garden while washing away the dust of the day…renewing life in a way that felt sacred. A tangible reminder that this Earth is alive - a reminder I don’t get in the desert. I desperately want to hear the gentle pitter-patter of residual raindrops slipping from the eaves of my roof and onto my milkweed (which was always plentiful for the butterflies). I haven’t even tried to grow milkweed here. My rosemary, thyme, wildflowers, and even desert approved bougainvillea, all shriveled up in last year’s record-setting summer heat. It makes me miss the calm after the storm when the cool, salt-filled air zips through the branches of the towering oak trees that line the streets of my hometown; a stark contrast to the relentlessly dry, still, oven-like heat that dominates these lands making it feel dead, over-done, fried to a crisp.

(Pictured above: My Zoë baby (RIP) enjoying her last few weeks on the patio in Florida.)

I find myself sitting here in reflection and wondering if this is all some unfortunate karmic lesson. I remember the days I used to beg for the rain to stop. I would sob at the sight of storm clouds, pacing back and forth checking for signs of flooding. Only because the intense Florida storms had flooded the first home I ever purchased and led to some significant storm related trauma that I had to spend the next two years healing from. And here I am, in the driest, most cloudless desert sobbing tears of joy and relief the moment a single storm cloud appears in the endlessly blue-brown, sunny sky. The irony is not lost on me.

Yet, amidst this struggle, there are moments of unexpected grace here. A few weeks ago, for instance, was one of those days. The weather was still cool and crisp in the early morning - a gentle reprieve from the harsh, unyielding sun that never seems to sleep here. Even at night, during the summer, remnants of the sun linger, because even the moon is no match for its heat with her inability to cool the evenings below 100 degrees.

Barley and I set out to explore often when the weather allows. Recently we were determined to find a piece of nature willing to tend to the aches and pains of my grief and yearning. We navigated through mazes of rocks, each step feeling like both a cautionary tale and a gift of adventure. I’m convinced in another life I would have been an avid rock climber. Bouldering (if you can even call what we do bouldering) is my favorite part of a hike. As we navigated a steady incline of jagged rocks and gravel, the desert slowly revealed itself in a new form.

(Pictured above: Hiking in Arizona with Barley Boiii.)

From our vantage point, the mountains stood confident and proud, their rugged peaks softening with the faintest hint of a cloud forming above them. In that moment, the desert transformed from a landscape of relentless struggle into a canvas of awe and calm. I let myself breathe it in and soften into the breeze it offered.

It’s in these quiet (chilly) moments, when the desert reveals a small glimpse of its gentler, dare I say “softer” side, that I find the courage to stay here just a little bit longer. Though I still often wonder how long I’ll be able to tolerate the arid valley, how long I can bear its sadistic ways (I know I’m being dramatic and I don’t even care. It’s fucking hot here). I try to remember that even in a place defined by harshness, there exists a capacity for renewal and wonder, though. Each hike with Barley, every climb that reveals a breathtaking view and an “awe moment,” reaffirms that even the most challenging environments still hold the promise of joy, peace, and a nurturing hug from mother nature.

(Pictured above: Arizona when it’s hikeable.)

Maybe the “lesson” here is in being present, aware, curious. Just like everyone else, it’s easy for me to be in my head wishing and wanting things to be different - craving familiar comforts. Maybe it’s about finding awe in (to me) the most unlikely of places, and discovering more about myself and the world around me in the process.

So, here I am, gazing across a valley that I regularly curse and resent, accepting its brief moment of tenderness in the form of a cool breeze that rustles what little leaves these barren desert trees have. I find myself desperately trying to enjoy the moment, listening intently to the music of the leaves that mimic the sound of water bubbling through a rocky creek. I am torn between accepting the feeling of awe and feeling anger at this audible trickery. Why can’t this be real water? I’m doing it again. But I catch myself and return my focus to how gentle this moment really does feel. I’ve learned to take what I can get here - even if it's a mirage. And I’m reminded that, sometimes, beauty and solace are found not in what is expected or what I think is needed, but in the quiet, persistent effort to see and feel magic in even the driest of places.

I’m sharing this essay as my very first Substack post, open to all subscribers, for two reasons. First, this year I’ve committed to showing up with more openness and vulnerability. Second, I’m intentionally placing myself in the uncomfortable (yet necessary) position of being seen, even though it’s one of my greatest fears. Third, today is Mother’s Day and that felt like an appropriate day to honor the women who have mothered me, likely without realizing they were mothering me.

Side note: Not all of my Substacks will be this lengthy, I just had a lot to say. I also don’t know how long I’ll share on Substack. Perhaps until I feel it’s run its course for me. Either way, thank you for being here. Thank you for holding space for me

Photo credit: Viva Luna Studios

The Curse (and Longing) of Depth

I’ve had a title in my head for a while now - How Being a Therapist Has Ruined My Life. It sounds dramatic, maybe even a little alarming, but it holds a truth that I’ve been sitting with for some time. At first, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with this phrase. Do I turn it into a podcast? Do I just write about it for my own self-reflection? I also worried it might send the wrong message. I don’t want anyone (especially my past, present, or future clients) to think my job has actually ruined my life. If anything, becoming a therapist is the best thing that could have ever happened to me.

Okay, so being a therapist (and also going to therapy) hasn’t ruined my life (hence the title change), but it has fundamentally changed how I engage with people and the world around me. . .and sometimes that feels complicated, confusing, and isolating.

Here’s the thing no one warns you about when you become a therapist: as you deepen your understanding of humanity, relationships, and yourself, it becomes almost impossible to tolerate anything that isn’t meaningful, profound, or….deep.

But, maybe this is just a me thing (fellow therapists and non-therapists alike, feel free to weigh in), but I find it increasingly difficult to engage in superficial interactions. I crave depth - deep, meaningful connections where we strip away the small talk and get to the heart of who we are and how we exist in this fucked up world.

I want soul-level conversations, the kind where we’re gawking at the stars together while swaying in a hammock, flanked by the cascading red rocks of Sedona wrapped in a rare moment of magical, platonic intimacy. That scene is a true story by the way. One of my all time favorite memories.

These kinds of connections seem elusive in today’s world. Or maybe I’m just different for craving them. My friend Adrit still pokes fun at me for straight up asking him one night at a bar if he was happy. His reaction was one of absolute shock. “What?!” Did you just ask me if I’m happy? At a bar?! Shannon, you're hilarious.” He ordered another beer and flipped it back on me: “Are you happy?” Meanwhile, I’m like…wait, am I not supposed to ask that? Maybe it’s my neurospicy-ness. Maybe it’s the therapy. Maybe it was him. Sorry, Adrit - love you dude. Whatever it was, it’s hard to tell these days.

Still, I’ve found ways to create spaces for the kinds of connections I long for. My tarot and psychology community, The Symposium, was built with the idea of fostering this level of platonic intimacy, connection, and depth. By all accounts, it’s been successful - at least, that’s the feedback I’ve received. I get so happy when members tell me they’ve made strong connections with other members and have their own little tarot and mental health meetups. I mean…that was the goal.

The irony, though? I need my own connections. I’ve always put myself in the position of being the one holding the space, the one ensuring the connections happen in all aspects of my life. While it’s rewarding, I’ve been reflecting on how much I might need to pull back from always “doing the doing.” And…I can’t help but wonder: Do I do all this “doing” because it acts as a shield? Is it the ultimate form of self-protection? Putting myself in positions where I can’t truly be seen because I’m helping others be seen?

When you’re a therapist, your whole day is about making sure other people are seen and that you function as either a mirror or a blank slate for them to explore their own inner world. And… after a while that can have a negative effect on you. You become conditioned to be a space holder. A guide. A healer. It makes it difficult (at least for me) to step outside of that role and be the receiver. I’d rather not think about it, but I know I need to.

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The Lineage of Women who have Held Me

I’m reminded of a former therapist of mine, Mona, who was always telling me to “graciously receive.” Sorry, Mona - I’m failing a bit over here. Well, maybe not entirely. I’ve been lucky to make some of my own deep and meaningful connections over the last few years because of The Symposium and The Tarot Diagnosis podcast for example. Folks I never would have connected with otherwise. For that, I am eternally grateful.

Despite these connections and my other friendships, therapy and being a therapist has not only made me crave deep and meaningful conversations, it’s also made it hard to actually talk about my own personal experiences. I know, it seems like I’m contradicting myself. I touched on this a moment ago when I mentioned how as therapists we are meant to make sure other people feel seen. And while I crave connections that allow me to be seen, I have a hard time having deep talks about myself. When you become a therapist, your entire career and the majority of your days is spent holding space for other people. Sometimes you can forget that it’s okay for other people to hold space for you. The problem is, this imbalance has been ingrained in my own personal relationships - thankfully I have some wonderful friends who really do genuinely want to know about me and my inner world and how I am doing. I am so grateful for them and those moments, even if I don’t allow them to linger.

This is one of the reasons I decided to experiment with Substack. Writing this (re-reading this and re-reading this, and re-reading this…omg I have to stop), is forcing me to step into a space of being seen in ways that I need on a deeply healing level and also in ways that terrify me so much that I sometimes want to throw it all away and hide inside a deep dark cave. So in some ways, I’m allowing you all to witness my own self-therapy. Please don’t perceive me. Ahhhh!

Jokes aside, over the years, I developed a habit of withholding - keeping my emotions, struggles, and needs locked away because I was so used to being the listener, the container for others. This pattern just leads to resentment, though. Over the years, my relationships became one-sided, not because the people in my life were selfish (well, some of them were), but because I never gave them the chance to show up for me in the ways I needed them to.

I’ve worked hard to break this pattern in my romantic life, but it has taken effort and I’m still working on it romantically and platonically. Learning to share, to be vulnerable, to allow others to hold space for me, it has been one of the most difficult and necessary shifts I’ve ever made. This year, I’m actively challenging myself to let others in, to practice reciprocity in my relationships, and to unlearn the belief that my role in life is to be the sole emotional, physical, and financial caretaker at the expense of my own needs.

Of course, it’s not just being a therapist that has made this difficult. There are layers - personal history, trauma, codependent tendencies, deeply ingrained patterns of caregiving that started in childhood. But being a therapist has, unfortunately, reinforced it.

Sometimes, when I’m reflecting on this experience I think back to the plethora of remarkable supervisors, mentors, and therapists I’ve been honored to work with. Women who have held space for me over the years and seen me at my most vulnerable and my most rigid. Women who have helped shape not just my clinical work but my entire way of being. I wonder if they’ve felt this same feeling.

I want to take a moment to honor these women and remember what they’ve instilled in me. And yes, I know I’m using a space that I’m supposed to practice being seen in as a way for other people to be seen…but baby steps.

My therapist in grad school, Rebecca, quite literally saved me as a person and gave me the courage to be a therapist. I still check in on her on LinkedIn from time to time - hell, I even send her an occasional email every few years just to remind her how amazing she is. I am beyond grateful for the impact she had on my life.

In fact, one session she looked at me and said, “You are heroically well-adjusted.” Those words have been etched into the fiber of my being ever since. She has no idea the impact and healing power that statement had on me when I had felt so broken and lost. Now, I hold that phrase close, offering it to clients who, in their own way, embody resilience and unending courage. To speak it aloud is to recognize the quiet heroism in another - to reflect back the strength they may not yet see in themselves.

Sharing this phrase, this belief in someone’s inherent strength reminds me of a conversation Rebecca and I had once, where she said everything she shares with me comes from a long lineage of women imbued with wisdom. She said that by sharing it with me, I, too, become part of that lineage. And when I pass that wisdom on, it continues its journey and those who choose to share these words and wisdom with others, also become a part of the invisible string of human connection.

Then there was my internship supervisor, Sue, who taught me that we don’t lose our humanness when we become therapists - that we aren’t robots. That simple wisdom gave me permission to exist as a full person within this profession rather than some detached, clinical observer. She taught me what it meant to exist with clients beyond the therapy chair, to really step into their world (metaphorically). Sue is the embodiment of empathy. I think about her and hear her voice in my head daily.

Then there was Dolores, whose passing two years ago was an immeasurable loss to the counseling community. Dolores became like a mother to me and was the most brilliantly creative Empress and Queen of Cups of a woman to ever exist. She embodied warmth, wisdom, and intuitive compassion, teaching me that those who truly belong to a religion (hers was Catholicism) accept everyone without judgment. She welcomed all of my queer clients with love and empathy, ensuring that each one felt safe in a nonprofit space that had known religious affiliations. She made sure they were seen, valued, and never othered - a quiet but powerful act of radical kindness that I am forever grateful for. And my clients always made sure to tell me they appreciated her.

And yet another woman in my lineage of therapeutic feminist wisdom is Caroline who opened my eyes to non-traditional healing modalities and showed me that it’s normal to feel love for your clients. I still have a voicemail saved from five years ago - one that I cherish. I had called her office manager to share some significant trauma progress I had made because I knew Caroline would have been over the moon about it since our work together had solely focused on me finally being able to do this one thing. Caroline called me back, left the sweetest voicemail, and ended it with, “Love ya!” Many therapists would cringe at that, might even call it a boundary violation - but to me, it meant the world. I loved her back.

Then we have Mona, a red-headed, yoga loving, pistol of a woman who was maybe a little too much like me to be my therapist, but she saw me. She really saw me. Every session, she would look at me and say, “Shannon, repeat after me: ‘I will graciously receive.’” She knew how hard it was for me to let others take care of me, to accept support instead of always being the one giving it. I hear her voice in my head at least once a week now, telling me to graciously receive. It’s still hard, but I’m trying, Mona - I really am!

Each of these women have played a crucial role in my development, not just as a therapist, but as a human being navigating the complexities of this work and this life. They have mothered me in ways I never knew I needed to be mothered.

Self-Awareness as a Double-Edged Sword

Another unexpected challenge of being a therapist is the relentless self-awareness that comes with the job. Self-awareness is often hailed as the cornerstone of growth, but the reality is that it can be a double-edged sword. On one hand, it allows me to recognize my own behavioral patterns, make necessary cognitive and emotional connections, and understand my motivations with a depth that many people never reach. On the other hand, it can be fucking exhausting - like living in a house of mirrors where every thought, action, and emotion is subject to dissection, analysis, and curiosity.

Sometimes, I can’t simply experience things without analyzing them. I notice the subtle shifts in dynamics in my friendships. I pick up on inconsistencies in conversations. I recognize the underlying fears or defense mechanisms in my own behavior almost as quickly as I see them in others. And while this insight can be invaluable, it also makes it difficult to just be. Sometimes, I wish I could turn my brain off, just exist in a moment without interpreting it in real-time. And yes, I know there is a therapeutic intervention for that. And yes, I am working on it. And yes, I know this is not just a side-effect of being a therapist, but also a symptom of trauma. Two things can be true.

Plus, this level of awareness also makes therapy for myself difficult. I’m hyper-aware of the process, the interventions, and the techniques being used. I can’t just sit back and receive therapy the way many people do. I’m constantly observing, mentally naming concepts, and unfortunately, predicting my therapist’s next move… or worse - judging why they didn’t ask me the question I thought they should have. My brain refuses to fully surrender to the process sometimes. So, while I work hard to employ more somatic practices into my healing to counteract this experience, I also rely on tarot.

Tarot as a Practice of Surrender

Interestingly, one of the few practices that has helped me step outside of this relentless self-analysis and surrender is tarot. While tarot serves as a tool of insight for me, it has also become a practice in stillness…an exercise in surrendering to something beyond my analytical mind. When I pull a card, I allow myself to sit with it rather than immediately dissect it. It provides a structured way to engage in self-reflection without slipping into endless over-analysis.

Tarot is one of the few spaces where I can let my intuition lead rather than forcing my intellect to dominate. It reminds me to slow down, to trust the process, and to find meaning in the unknown rather than grasping for immediate conclusions. In a profession that demands constant interpretation, it might seem odd that tarot (which requires constant interpretation) gives me permission to step back and let meaning emerge on its own. It has become a supplement to my own self-growth, not by giving me answers, but by allowing me to sit in the discomfort of not having them right away.

And yet, despite all of this, I know that self-awareness is ultimately more of a gift than a curse. It allows me to grow, to course-correct, and to deepen my relationships in ways that are meaningful. The challenge is learning how to hold it lightly, let it be flexible, mobile, imperfect, and always evolving.

So, maybe “Being a Therapist Has Ruined My Life” isn’t entirely accurate. Maybe it has just complicated it in ways both frustrating and beneficial. It has forced me to reckon with myself, to push beyond comfort zones, to confront the parts of me that I might have otherwise just ignored. And maybe, just maybe, that’s the most healing part of all.

I have a few reasons for this: First, there’s been a surge of interest in this intersection, so I want to bring more visibility to the topic for newer listeners. Second, I’ll be traveling over the next few weeks and won’t be able to record a new episode. So, whether this is your first time listening or a revisit, I hope you find new insights in this conversation.

🚨 Exciting Announcement! 🚨
I’m hosting a Summer Solstice Summit from June 20th to 22nd, featuring more than two dozen of my favorite tarot and astrology practitioners! These are brilliant minds—therapists, psychologists, astrologers, and innovative tarot thinkers—coming together for a three-day immersive experience. I’ll be sharing more details soon, but for now, head over to TheTarotDiagnosis.com and click the Tarot Conferences tab to be the first to get updates!

Now, back to this episode…

During this episode, I explore and pull cards for different parts of ourselves—such as the exile, the firefighter, and the manager—while weaving in Jung's theory of the Self, the persona, and the shadow. I even share a personal example of an exile through the lens of the Eight of Swords, and I spend time processing The Eight of Cups and The Lovers. Plus, I discuss how The High Priestess is the most fitting archetype to represent the Self.

Let me know what cards show up for you as you pull alongside me!

🔮 Decks used: Pagan Otherworlds & Tarot Vintage

💡 Have a topic you’d love to hear about? Submit your ideas here!

If you love The Tarot Diagnosis Podcast, please hit those ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review! It really helps more people discover the show.

Don't forget to subscribe to our email list to get all kinds of free mental health and tarot goodies on our website, as well as access to our private membership community ⁠The Symposium⁠!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.TheTarotDiagnosis.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Follow The Tarot Diagnosis on Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@TheTarotDiagnosis⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Audio Edited by Anthony DiGiacomo of⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠Deep Resonance Sound⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Contact: DeepResonanceSound@gmail.com

Music by Timmoor from Pixabay

At its core, Motivational Interviewing is a therapeutic approach designed to help people work through ambivalence and move toward change. I spend time talking about how the four fundamental MI processes (Engaging, Focusing, Evoking, and Planning) mirror the journey of the Suit of Wands, making this an exciting and dynamic pairing.

Join me as I explore how each card in the Suit of Wands maps onto different aspects of MI, using a fictional client case study to illustrate these concepts in action. From the Ace of Wands igniting motivation to the Ten of Wands warning us about burnout, this episode walks you through how tarot can help us better understand the change process.

If you’ve ever felt stuck in cycles of procrastination, burnout, or self-doubt (or if you just want to explore new ways to approach personal growth) this episode is for you! Tune in for a nerdy and insightful blend of tarot, psychology, and practical self-reflection.

Want to find out all of the ways you can connect with me live this month? Join us inside⁠ The Symposium⁠!

If you love The Tarot Diagnosis Podcast, please consider leaving a 5 star review on whatever platform you listen on. It really is a HUGE help and allows more people to see the podcast!

Have a topic you’d like to hear about? I'm always interested in hearing your suggestions!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to submit a topic!

Don't forget to subscribe to The Tarot Diagnosis email list to get all kinds of free mental health and tarot goodies on our website, as well as access to our private membership community ⁠The Symposium⁠!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.TheTarotDiagnosis.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Follow The Tarot Diagnosis on Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@TheTarotDiagnosis⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Audio Edited by Anthony DiGiacomo of⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠Deep Resonance Sound⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Contact: DeepResonanceSound@gmail.com

Music by Timmoor from Pixabay

Join me as I walk you through the neurobiological and emotional mechanics behind toxic relationship cycles and share insights from the minor arcana that represent these forces. I also talk about the reversed behavioral characteristics of the Knight of Cups, the role of cognitive dissonance, and the pointed, yet nurturing guidance from the Queen of Pentacles for reclaiming stability and self-worth. The Moon, Wheel of Fortune, and Eight of Swords make their role known in this process as well.

If you’ve ever wondered why you find it so hard to walk away from a toxic relationship or want to develop a healthier relationship with yourself, this episode is a must-listen! Tune in for a blend of mental health wisdom, neuroscience, and tarot magic.

Want to find out all of the ways you can connect with me live this month? Join us inside⁠ The Symposium⁠!

If you love The Tarot Diagnosis Podcast, please consider leaving a 5 star review on whatever platform you listen to us on. It really is a HUGE help to us and allows more people to see our podcast!

Have a topic you’d like to hear about? We’re always interested in hearing your suggestions!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to submit a topic!

Don't forget to subscribe to our email list to get all kinds of free mental health and tarot goodies on our website, as well as access to our private membership community⁠The Symposium⁠!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.TheTarotDiagnosis.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Follow The Tarot Diagnosis on Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@TheTarotDiagnosis⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Audio Edited by Anthony DiGiacomo of⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠Deep Resonance Sound⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Contact: DeepResonanceSound@gmail.com

Music by Timmoor from Pixabay

We discuss the power of projection, the role of archetypes like The Emperor, and how pattern recognition can guide deeper insights. Thomas also shares his journey of blending tarot with academia, how this tool can reframe our thinking, and why he doesn’t currently read tarot for himself.

Don’t miss this thought-provoking conversation about tarot as a cognitive tool!

You can find Dr. Thomas Brooks on Instagram@impulsegnometarot, or check out his podcast,The Psychosocial Distancing Podcast. 

Want to find out all of the ways you can connect with me live this month? Join us inside⁠ The Symposium⁠!

If you love The Tarot Diagnosis Podcast, please consider leaving a 5 star review on whatever platform you listen to us on. It really is a HUGE help to us and allows more people to see our podcast!

Have a topic you’d like to hear about? We’re always interested in hearing your suggestions!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to submit a topic!

Don't forget to subscribe to our email list to get all kinds of free mental health and tarot goodies on our website, as well as access to our private membership community ⁠The Symposium⁠!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.TheTarotDiagnosis.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Follow The Tarot Diagnosis on Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@TheTarotDiagnosis⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Audio Edited by Anthony DiGiacomo of⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠Deep Resonance Sound⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Contact: DeepResonanceSound@gmail.com

Music by Timmoor from Pixabay

To bring this concept to life, I introduce a fictional, therapeutic case study, analyzing a tarot spread where Cups and Swords are absent, revealing deeper emotional and cognitive blocks. I also offer practical applications for identifying and working with omissions in your own readings.

Side note: I didn't explore the absence of court cards, but I will be exploring this in an upcoming workshop inside The Symposium!

Inspired by my clinical musings on silence in the therapy room, I reference the following study in this episode:  Koudenburg, N., Postmes, T., & Gordijn, E. H. (2011). Disrupting the flow: How brief silences in group conversations affect social needs. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47(2), 512–515. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2010.12.006

Want to find out all of the ways you can connect with me live this month? Join us inside⁠ The Symposium⁠!

If you love The Tarot Diagnosis Podcast, please consider leaving a 5 star review on whatever platform you listen to us on. It really is a HUGE help to us and allows more people to see our podcast!

Have a topic you’d like to hear about? We’re always interested in hearing your suggestions!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to submit a topic!

Don't forget to subscribe to our email list to get all kinds of free mental health and tarot goodies on our website, as well as access to our private membership community ⁠The Symposium⁠!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.TheTarotDiagnosis.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Follow The Tarot Diagnosis on Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@TheTarotDiagnosis⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Audio Edited by Anthony DiGiacomo of⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠Deep Resonance Sound⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Contact: DeepResonanceSound@gmail.com

Music by Timmoor from Pixabay

In this kickoff episode, I explore The Aces in tarot through the Transtheoretical Model of Change, also known as the Stages of Change. If you’re part of The Tarot Diagnosis community, The Symposium, you might recognize this concept from a recent workshop. This episode serves as a deep dive into how each Ace corresponds to a different stage of change.

Precontemplation → Ace of Cups: When we’re unaware that change is needed. What are we oblivious to that needs to change?

Contemplation → Ace of Swords: The moment clarity strikes, but doubt lingers. What’s the story we tell ourselves about change?

Preparation → Ace of Pentacles: Laying the foundation and gathering resources. What support do we need?

Action → Ace of Wands: Taking bold steps toward transformation. What’s one small action we can take right now?

Maintenance → The Fool: Sustaining progress with curiosity and resilience. How do we keep moving forward?

Throughout the episode, I pull cards to explore each stage more deeply, offering prompts and reflections for your own tarot practice. Plus, I’ve modified the Celtic Cross spread to align with the Stages of Change—head over to Instagram (@TheTarotDiagnosis) to check it out!

If you’re ready to explore transformation through tarot and psychology, this episode is for you. Listen now and let’s dive into Tarot Therapy!

Want to find out all of the ways you can connect with me live this month? Join us inside⁠ The Symposium⁠!

If you love The Tarot Diagnosis Podcast, please consider leaving a 5 star review on whatever platform you listen to us on. It really is a HUGE help to us and allows more people to see our podcast!

Have a topic you’d like to hear about? We’re always interested in hearing your suggestions!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to submit a topic!

Don't forget to subscribe to our email list to get all kinds of free mental health and tarot goodies on our website, as well as access to our private membership community ⁠The Symposium⁠!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.TheTarotDiagnosis.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Follow The Tarot Diagnosis on Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@TheTarotDiagnosis⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Audio Edited by Anthony DiGiacomo of⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠Deep Resonance Sound⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Contact: DeepResonanceSound@gmail.com

Music by Timmoor from Pixabay