Episode 166. Beginning Anew with the Sun + Podcast Pause

Episode 166. Beginning Anew with The Sun + Podcast Pause

Air Date: June 3, 2021

[Introduction]

[0:00:00]

Hello, Loves. Before we dive into our episode today, I just want to take a brief moment to let everyone know that enrollment for my eight-week Tarot course, Tarot for the Wild Soul, which starts on Wednesday, June 9th, that enrollment for that is going to be closing on Monday, June 7th at 9pm Pacific / midnight Eastern.

This is a totally brand-new, rebirthed version of this course. It's just — it continues to kind of blow my mind with how powerful and with how deep it is. We go over all 78 cards of the Tarot through a spiralic, nonlinear, seasonal framework. It's a very, very unique way of learning Tarot, one that I'm really enjoying teaching and creating material for.

There are two hour weekly live calls with me every week for the eight weeks of the course, where you can ask questions, where you can connect with your fellow participants in breakout rooms. There's so much deep, sort of creative inquiry prompts, exercises to engage with for your own learning in our gorgeous workbooks. It's just a really, really special course.

And yeah. And if you're drawn to working together this summer, I would be absolutely honored and delighted to join in the course journey with you. So again, enrollment does close soon on Monday, June 7th, end of day, 9pm Pacific / midnight Eastern. And then we will begin our course journey on Wednesday, June 9th.

© All materials property of Lindsay Mack and Tarot for the Wild Soul So thank you so much for being here. And if you'd like to know more, and if you'd like to learn more about the course, sign up for the course, you can go to tarotforthewildsoul.com, or you can click the link that will take you directly to the course page in the show notes for the podcast. Thank you again for being here, Loves.

(Instrumental intro music)

[0:02:31]

Hello, Loves, and welcome back to Tarot for the Wild Soul podcast. I am your host, Lindsay Mack. And as always, just so endlessly thankful and grateful to be gathered with all of you in this virtual shared space. Thank you so much for being here with me today.

So this is a really special episode for a couple of different reasons. The first is probably most significantly that this is our final episode together before our extended podcast pause.

I have all the feelings (Lindsay laughs) about our pause. There's tremendous contraction, there's wild expansion. Expansion can feel just as uncomfortable as contraction sometimes, so there's lots of big, evolutionary discomfort, which is always a great sign that something is growing, up-leveling, entering a necessary phase of rebirth. And so I'm holding all of the feelings that are arising (Lindsay laughs).

And, you know, in light of that, I feel a lot of grief. There's been a lot of tears. Even though it's just a pause — it might even be a short pause — there's something about it that feels big. And perhaps I won't know why until a little bit later.

But I do know whether this pause be very, very short — just a couple of months — or whether it be a year before we connect again, because I do think that might actually be possible, that that kind of time might want to be offered to this, what I do know is that I will certainly be back in this space and will likely have new, or at the very least, fresh things to say with hopefully a little bit more overflow in my cup.

It's been, you know, quite the year (Lindsay laughs). And I've been blessed and privileged to have felt a call to serve this year. I've had so much creative overflow with my offerings, with my courses. And that's wonderful, but it is starting to catch up with me a little bit.

© All materials property of Lindsay Mack and Tarot for the Wild Soul And I do know that for my process and really, I think, for anything, space, time, and nourishment are needed sort of across the board to allow for there to be new inspiration and a little bit of new life breathed into it.

And I’m… I love this podcast, this podcast is its own being, as kind of out there as it sounds. And it's pretty clear to me that it wants to evolve and change to kind of match my growth, especially over the last two years in particular.

It feels like it really could come back from this pause in kind of a really super different form. Maybe there could be different opportunities for education and community engagement in the new format. It might be really not that different at all. But maybe internally, it will feel differently for me. It could be externally super different (Lindsay laughs).

I really don't know. I'm walking into the mystery, just the same as you. I think, just simply put, I'm ready for a pause. The podcast feels ready for a pause. There just needs to be a little bit of, a little bit of space and time in order for there to be, again, some necessary change, some perspective.

And my deepest hope, and I think that's a part of all this is... you know, I don't often share things like this, but when I first started this podcast, you know, a couple years back, I had a lot more time on my hands. It was a lot easier to freely offer this podcast. It’s always been a huge energetic extension. And I don't say that, like… I love doing this podcast. Again, it's a privilege to do this podcast and a joy.

But it does require quite a bit. Now the episodes are transcribed. Now they're, you know, handled with a lot more… there's a lot more hands on deck. And I want to make sure that I have a little time to brainstorm about ways to make that a bit more sustainable for me, for my energetic output, for my team. So yeah, a gentle pause just, for a million reasons, just feels absolutely appropriate.

[0:07:31] So this is a full pause, which means that there won't be any Monthly Medicine episodes while I'm away. But I would strongly recommend if you are not signed up for my newsletter that you do so because I will — I always offer a little bit of an additional channel download in my monthly newsletters.

© All materials property of Lindsay Mack and Tarot for the Wild Soul But now that I'm not doing Monthly Medicines in this podcast space, they will likely be really kind of deliciously robust (Lindsay laughs) going forward in my newsletter space. And by extension, maybe even my website space. Like, we might do a full blog post for each month and then link out to it in the newsletter, who knows.

My newsletters are a really lovely source of learning, of podcast extras, of, you know, typically sometimes even taking a theme I've talked about and diving into it a little bit more deeply, special spreads that I don't share anywhere else. So I highly recommend signing up for it, not just to stay in touch with me over this pause, but to receive special incentives that only my subscribers do.

And I'm also going on pause with Instagram (Lindsay laughs) for most of the summer, again, just in the same spirit as sort of a pause in the space. So the link to sign up for my newsletter is in the show notes. It's also on my website, tarotforthewildsoul.com.

In addition, in the show notes, there's also a link to a special journal post on my website that goes into just sort of a little bit about what I shared here regarding the pause and also lists some of my favorite episodes if you kind of want to go back down memory lane and explore some of the back podcast eps while we're on pause together.

And of course you know you can always find me, again, at my website. You can always email us at [email protected]. I will likely have a moment or two, other than the Tarot for the Wild Soul course starting on June 9th — I will probably take some time before I do another course.

But it won't be too long because I already have — my body is exhausted, but I have a million ideas (Lindsay laughs) for different offerings that want to come through. So there will probably be a gentle break after this course. But there are still going to be offerings. It’s, again, just creating the necessary space to allow for that kind of growth to happen.

So you'll still hear from me. We’ll still be in touch, even though I'll just be drawing a little further back into my own sort of self care and filling my own cup up. But you can also see some of those specially chosen past episodes that I personally really like on that journal post. That's also in your show notes.

And eventually, I’ll be touched back in on Instagram, albeit probably less so, little by little. I'm pivoting way more toward newsletter. So if you want to stay in touch, that's a great place.

[0:11:16] So it's interesting. We are giving The Sun card in this episode its due. We're offering it sort of its own spotlight today in some fashion, speaking about it on its own. We’ve talked about it in other card collections, but have never really spent some time with this card, just kind of one-on-one.

And at first glance, it might even seem like there might not even be that much to get to. The Sun is deceptively a pretty simple card. And that’s not to say that certain Tarot cards can be really straightforward.

But all that we're talking about here, kind of what happens when we change — like, the process of change and of what happens when we have a realization that we've grown, what happens when external change links up with our internal growth... like, all of those things are a huge part of life and sometimes are a really bumpy, challenging part of life.

You know, we don't always know — we talk a lot about... it’s spoken about a lot in wellness sometimes to, I think, a damaging degree. Like, we just have to do our work, we just have to keep working. And there’s such sneaky ties to capitalism in that. It’s really hard to hop off that hamster wheel. It's essentially the same kind of energy that goes into the puritanical invitations that come with organized religion, that come with… yeah, I mean, self-improvement can get real funky really fast. Like, really (Lindsay laughs).

So what we're talking about is what happens when we take a moment to acknowledge in our lives how far we've come and how much we've grown today? Not when we have what we're looking for, not when we've reached the finish line — it doesn't exist. There's never going to be a time when we're going to be at peak, when there's going to be a climax, you know (Lindsay laughs).

That doesn't happen. We're cyclical, spiralic beings who are constantly evolving. And we're also sweet human beings with these nervous systems, and these brains, and these thinking minds that want everything to be predictable and linear and don't necessarily cherish or champion big steps, big growth.

[0:14:28]

© All materials property of Lindsay Mack and Tarot for the Wild Soul And also, in equal measure, don't really value celebrating ourselves. We are really, really uncomfortable with that, understandably so. It implies a kind of — you know, for some of us, we might feel icky about that. Like, “Oh, I'm not done. I still have so much more work to do.” Or, “You know, I’ve really messed up here. I have messed up in the past. Like, I can't offer myself that kind of love, or that kind of witnessing, or that kind of appreciation. Because then maybe I'll never grow, I'll never learn.”

But the reality is that so many of us are starved for exactly that. For the love, and the appreciation, the witnessing, the parenting of our own self. Being able to say, “You did an amazing job. You're doing a great job.”

Now (Lindsay laughs), we might immediately think, “I’m not doing a great job.” And yet, you are because you're here. You're doing the best you can.

And all of us are. It's such a weird thing to verbalize, but we place a lot of energy — rightly so, right — on externals. On sort of where we are, what it looks like, what it is, what's successful, what's not, what worked, what didn't. We place so much on that. We really rail on ourselves. We can beat up on ourselves: “Why am I not further? Why haven't I figured this out yet? Why don't I have what I want?”

I think that we don't talk about those vulnerabilities much. But that's everyone. And it can be so easy to look outside of ourselves and think, “Well, that person has it all figured out. They have everything I want. They have this; they have that.”

And yet, we are not comfortable acknowledging that we are all on the journey to our dreams. Like, we're all sitting on, warming the eggs that will one day hatch, will one day be these baby birds that will take up space in our nest in completely different ways. We're all doing that with all kinds of different things.

If, you know, we're on our journey to become a parent, in whatever way that looks like for us. If we are wanting to write a book, we have a book in us. If we’re longing to move in this direction or that direction. It could be that life takes us in a really different direction than what we're expecting. But it doesn't make the journey any less or more valid. It doesn't mean that you aren't where you're meant to be right now, you know?

[0:17:44]

© All materials property of Lindsay Mack and Tarot for the Wild Soul So what The Sun card invites us into as an energetic archetype is actually far from simple. It's not complicated. But it flies in the face of the story, like, “I have to keep going, keep working, keep improving.” You know, keep going, going, going.

It actually provides us with a bit of an interruption in order to shake that cycle awake in us. That we're never there, we always have to keep going, and we must be doing something wrong because we're not where we want to be. Or this isn't enough, or we're not enough, or whatever it is.

The Sun card is, you know, ruled by the sun, which is connected to Leo. Leo is the ruler of the heart space. This is a moment — The Sun card is very unique in comparison to the other cards in the Tarot. It brings a totally different invitation, especially to the other Major Arcana cards.

It's right at the end of The Majors. It comes really after a very long journey in sort of the underworld, doing all of this heavy, heavy, major excavating work, where so much of our journey in the Major Arcana that precedes The Sun is all done in the void, is all done in the unknown. There's very little that we understand prior to The Sun card.

And that's a lot like life, right? Like, we have a decision. We have a moment in our lives, something happens. We don't know the why. There are some things that we never know the why around with life, ultimately.

We have something that happens, we’re at a crossroads, we can go left or right. Or there's a moment where we wanted to go left, but there's only a right-hand turn. And we start this journey that maybe we wanted, maybe we wanted and now are terrified of, maybe we didn't expect and we're having to sort of adapt to.

Why is any of this sort of relevant? Believe it or not, it's all kind of wrapped up in The Sun. So it's all wrapped up in Leo themes. It's all wrapped up in what it means to bring about, other than The Strength card, which is also, you know, connected to Leo. These are the two cards where we do the most work in facing the things that feel really scary. And rather than running away from them, we offer them some love. We stay. We extend a hand in friendship.

[0:21:02] And what The Sun card really invites us to do is a couple of different things. One, to sort of engage in a kind of a re-parenting process with our inner child. To normalize what it is to say to them, “You're amazing. You're special. You're valued. I love you. You can trust yourself. You can

© All materials property of Lindsay Mack and Tarot for the Wild Soul trust yourself. I know that you didn't always get that messaging from the adults around you, but you're getting it with me. I love you. It's safe to play. It’s okay to be here.”

Number two, we're extending that kind of heart-centered courage, that willingness to be with what scares us a little bit, knowing that we don't really have control. And knowing that we're ultimately sort of in the wildness at all times. We are extending that kind of, you know, offering of the devotion of our presence to ourselves around self-celebration.

The Sun is a time when we begin anew. When what has been unclear, some aspect of what has been unclear, again, becomes clarified in an impactful way. It might not be everything. It might not be all the things. It might not feel as satisfying to us as we might want.

But the perspective, offering us the gift of time, the ability to look back and think, “Whoa, there's been a lot that's happened here. How can I celebrate, honor, ritualize, bow to what I've been through, the courage that it took to do this? Holy shit. Can I simultaneously hold all the work that I still want to do, still need to do, and honor how much I have grown in the last six months, year, five years, ten years, fifty years? Can there be a both/and?”

And this is really where the Leo heart connection comes in. “Can I be with the discomfort that inevitably comes up for me around celebrating that?”

Because I think if we're being honest with ourselves, most of us do have a lot of discomfort in celebrating our growth. We have a really hard time being here and being in gratitude and appreciation toward ourselves. Being able to say, “Damn. Like, you did this. You're amazing.”

Somehow — I think it's mainly the influence, to be honest, of organized religion — but there's never a willingness. We're so allergic (Lindsay laughs) to giving ourselves that care or that kindness. It's because we assume it'll make us not want to do any more work when really, the opposite is true. When we're given a kind word, when we're given some feedback, some witnessing like, “This was really hard, and you did it. You're doing it. I love you. Like, you're amazing.”

When we sort of dismantle and deconstruct the patriarchal mechanisms within ourselves, like, “I can't ever, you know, be soft with myself. I can't stop, I can't” — like, all those different things. When we can take a pause around that, notice where we get uncomfortable, we can start to loosen it. And there can start to actually be some change.

© All materials property of Lindsay Mack and Tarot for the Wild Soul It takes a lot to proverbially place our hand on the head of that lion, to make contact with this part of ourselves that we don't always want to face or look at. And yet in doing so, there is an unbelievable, unmeasurable expansion of the heart space.

[0:25:41] That's what happens in Strength, too. We learn that the very thing we've been sort of avoiding, not wanting to face is actually — again, can facilitate a massive transformation when we show up to something or to a situation with our heart as open as feels appropriate and safe. Rather than closed off, when we're in willingness, it transforms the engagement we have with this part of ourselves or with another person.

And some of that magic is absolutely woven into The Sun card. Look at, you know, the ways in which the sun is so similar to the energy of the heart. You know, the sun can burn. It can be really intense, when it's too much. It can also, and does also, wake the whole earth up. It draws its warmth and light and draws growth up from the earth. It allows things to blossom.

This is exactly the same as when we shine this heart light onto ourselves. It allows things within us to grow, not to wither, you know?

And we learn over time. You know, Leo is fixed fire. We learn over time, like, “Whoa, that's too much in one direction, not enough in this direction.” We learn that as we navigate what it is to sort of be in relationship with ourselves.

But really, and I don't have any, you know, basis of — I can't link back to any particular example or lineage to sort of back up my claims. This is just sort of my own understanding of, like, sort of feeling into The Major Arcana.

[0:27:33] But I actually think that we start our journey to The Sun card in The Chariot. I actually think it extends back that far. The Chariot is also a very relevant card for us to talk about, because a), we're moving into Cancer season in just a couple of weeks, so we'll be in the medicine of The Chariot.

These are very Chariot times in general. There's a lot of kind of outgrowing, shedding the sort of crab shells, proverbially, that don't really serve so that more vulnerability, more honest conversations can happen. More of us are shown or, for some of us, it's about placing the crab

© All materials property of Lindsay Mack and Tarot for the Wild Soul shell back on and allowing that to be aligned sort of protection for how we move through the world. So wherever we are in the spectrum, that relationship is beautiful.

But The Chariot, as many of you know, completes the journey that we go on in Line One of The Majors. And I think this is where our journey to The Sun really starts. Because we're a choice in The Chariot. And it's a hard choice. And all of us know this choice. We know it in our bones, in our heart.

In The Chariot, we have a choice to make. We are kind of symbolically in an egg in The Chariot. And this egg is warm. It's cozy. It looks wonderful. It works — technically.

But we're starting to get a little big for our egg. It's a little tight in there. We can't really do much in the egg. The egg is not really the ideal vehicle to — you know, we can’t, we're not going to take it with us when we inevitably outgrow it. When we inevitably are ready to stretch out our wings and fly, our egg will not be an appropriate container to hold us in that space.

And so in this card and its positioning at the end of Line One, we realize that some part of our egg, some part of our life that has allowed, enabled us to grow, to grow to this point, has to be left behind in order to continue forward. That there's — it's actually not possible for us to evolve to fly with this particular egg.

It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the egg. There's nothing wrong with an egg that a baby bird (Lindsay laughs) has gestated in. It's perfect and ideal. But we also wouldn't want to hang out in it forever. You know, there's just a natural leaving behind that happens with life that is meant to be normalized, also ritualized, also grieved, and honored.

Animals move through this process so instinctively. We as human beings are so different. So in The Chariot, we have a choice. And we all know folks who've sort of refused to make this choice, and yet the choice is still available to them.

Will we stay with our egg? With what works? It does keep us protected. It is likely really stifling where we want to go. We may not know what's on the other side of that egg. We can't know unless we leave it.

But we have, again, that choice. Will we stay sort of with this chariot that looks so good, that works really well but ultimately doesn't take us all that far? Or will we expand out and beyond it and begin to walk in a different direction, begin to move in a different direction, towards

© All materials property of Lindsay Mack and Tarot for the Wild Soul something different, toward a sort of part of the forest that the chariot can't really come with us in because it would fall apart? (Lindsay laughs) Wouldn't be the appropriate container to hold us.

[0:32:29] In order to move into the wild path of Line Two of The Majors, we have to pass through this decision. It's not really possible to move through that kind of an underworld journey, that kind of a deep dive, that kind of a chrysalis energy without making that decision. And as I was speaking about before, there are so many times in life when these moments arise, when things look good.

There's nothing technically wrong with them. There's nothing wrong with our egg. And yet we've outgrown it. And normalizing that kind of… that particular kind of evolutionary process, I think, is really important.

Because we're often speaking about, you know, how do we survive when things change, and the winds shift, and they're so wild? You know, how do we get through challenging times? How do we step away from things that are really not working?

But what happens when something is wonderful? There actually isn't any problem, but we've just outgrown it? That's what really happens in The Chariot. This is our first step into listening, honoring that intuitive whisper that says, “I could keep going with this because it's working. But I'm longing for something more. I'm longing for something different.”

And this doesn't have to — we’re not giving up security or safety in doing this. But there is a sense of evolutionary discomfort that can come up. That journey starts with The Chariot, of us saying no to the mind in some way, to the thinking mind, to the ego, to that sort of, you know, linear-ness that the thinking mind loves us to be in, and starts to initiate us into a more spiralic path.

We move through all of Line Two, where we don't know anything that's going on. Nothing. We're, you know, taking journeys with this Hermit. We're placing our hand out toward a lion, toward a part of our self that's hard to acknowledge or honor. We're spending time with Wheel of Fortune, with Justice, with The Tethered One, with Death. We're moving into Temperance. Like, it is a full shift from caterpillar to butterfly in Line Two.

[0:35:14]

© All materials property of Lindsay Mack and Tarot for the Wild Soul Line Two is by far the most challenging line. And we walk through all of it not knowing what the fuck is going on. We don't know what we're moving toward. We don't know what's happening. It looks like probably nothing is happening. And it's in our Line Two journey that we can keep looping back and thinking, “Why did I step away from that chariot?” (Lindsay laughs) Like, “What did I do?” Right?

And then we sort of hatch out of — proverbially hatch — we sort of drop our chrysalis, emerge with our wings wet as these butterflies. And then we move into Line Three, and it's not that much easier. We have The Devil, which is profoundly confronting. I mean, The Devil is a beautiful liberation. And there's so much radical reclamation of self, of all that we are inside of The Devil.

And yet there's a lot of confrontation of old stories, of old, you know, stuff about shame, stuff that was placed there that's meant to be sort of uprooted in our being. It's intense work.

Then we have The Tower, which again, is a huge liberation, but not always an easy one. We still kind of don't know quite what we're building toward. We have The Star, which is a wonderful exhale after a lot of really intense, you know, inhales and journeying. But it's still not necessarily an easy card. There's a lot to navigate and confront in The Star too.

And then we move into The Moon, where all of this sort of void energy reaches a kind of a peak. Moon energies, Moon times, Moon seasons are very — when we start feeling like we're back in something old, when old echoes of the past come up, and we just kind of don't know how to be with them or handle them, it can really feel like we're in deep Moon energy. And it really is the most sort of… the time of the proverbial night where everything is the most unclear in The Moon. Where we're traveling the furthest in and down that we do, really, in the Tarot.

[0:37:45] And if we think of ourselves, of these bodies as a kind of a valley, as a kind of a landscape, we've been walking at night for a long time. For almost a line and a half. And then all of a sudden, we start to hear the birds. And the sky doesn't get lighter, but it does start to change a little. And then things do start to change, we start to see some color. And then more color.

And things around us, we’re able to look around this landscape and think, “Oh my god, this is really different from what it was when I left my chariot. I’m… I’m different. Like, this isn't the same as it was. Holy shit.”

© All materials property of Lindsay Mack and Tarot for the Wild Soul And then all of a sudden, the sun fully rises and crests over the mountain, and the sun floods into the valley of our being. And we realize the depth of how much we've actually grown. We realize how much the landscape has changed, maybe in really challenging ways.

But, you know, I think about this a lot when I visit the blast zone at Mount St. Helens. That there's still so much up there that is evocative, and there's so much visible evidence of an event such as the blast that took place all those years ago. And the juxtaposition between all of that, all of the dead trees that are sort of bent and frozen in time, and all of the new flowers and growth that are just kind of living around it.

There have been times in my life where I've felt a bit like that landscape (Lindsay laughs), where the light kind of shines, and I’m like, “Oh, you know, there's some scar tissue here. And there's also a lot of wildflowers. Here's a lot of growth, oh my goodness.”

The Sun card offers us a new beginning, some kind of perspective that we were not able to touch in with before. Some kind of ability to see a larger picture, to take a moment and actually look around it. It does illuminate more than what is typically illuminated. And it allows us to have a bit more of a 360-degree view of what is possible, what happened, how we've changed and grown, since we've left our, quote, “chariots.”

[0:41:06] Now, I want to just go back to The Chariot for just a second. Because leaving our chariots behind is sometimes wildly joyful. Sometimes we're like, “Bye.” It's a graduation of any kind, right?

But sometimes our Chariot decisions are: “I could probably keep doing this forever. And could, like, get away with it. But there's a deeper pull over here.” So Chariot decisions sort of run, you know, the full spectrum of possibility.

But most of the time, we don't realize ultimately, when we graduate from something, when we leave that egg behind, like, what we're going into is, like, “Whoa, a whole new world to sort of take in.” And for much of our experience, we're sort of surviving in this world, we're moving through this time when not much is clear.

The Sun card offers us a perspective of clarity. And even more than that, an invitation to deeply, radically celebrate our growth and how far we've come.

© All materials property of Lindsay Mack and Tarot for the Wild Soul You know, you may be 15 years old. So if so, I invite you to imagine where you were, you know, at, you know, when you were half the age you are. But you can think about, for most of us, where we were when we were 15. You know, for some of us, it's a lot of years ago, for some of us, that's not so many.

You've likely changed a lot in that time. And there have been decisions along the way that have helped you to become who you are today. There might be some feelings of regret or, “I shouldn't have done that.”

And yet, here you are. You've made it this far. How might you celebrate that you made the best choice that you knew was available to you at the time that you made it? Might have made a different choice today, but at that time, you were doing what you thought was right and best. How can we be with just that?

[0:43:31] The Sun card is so radical, and so big, and so much of an important… climax is the word that wants to come to mind, interestingly — that it actually dictates and carves the path for the work that we do in The Judgement card, the work that we do in The Sun. Being able to see, to acknowledge, to sort of begin anew.

Because it does mark a moment where we have enough perspective to sort of shift our direction. Like, we know enough. It’s enough of a rebirth, enough of a clarification in The Sun, enough of, again, a radiant clarity, that we're sort of able to say, “Whoa, there's so much about myself, about my own journey that I can really acknowledge and honor here.”

For me, this feels so kind of multi-generational that it always involves my inner kid and really reminding her of her brilliance, them of their brilliance. I also think of my ancestors and how they likely never did this, or maybe they did.

Or, you know, there's something about that that feels really powerful, which is a very natural extension to jump to Judgement, to the Judgement card. Because Judgement is where we take the core of that idea and go, “Well, wait a minute, let me look at, like, all of society, and all of these structures, and all of the ways in which now this blindfold’s coming off. I can sort of see everything.” Judgement’s really intense, and it is a further kind of radicalization of our perspective.

© All materials property of Lindsay Mack and Tarot for the Wild Soul And from there, we have The World, which actually allows us to move to a different level. Like, we can't — these are the last three keys on the piano. And The Sun is not just, “Woohoo, yeah.” It's actually the acknowledgement of a hard journey, one that was done largely internally, that is now ready, in some way, shape, or form to be externalized.

[0:46:10] You know, this is something I've spoken about before on this podcast in general but also in this episode that, you know, my teacher, Michelle Sinnette, has really taught me this, has really illuminated this to me. And it feels really true from my own life experience, that internal work is — like, when we see that an external change has happened that's big, and impactful, and soul-guided… it took years, likely, you know, for the most part, years of internal work, and of yeses, and no’s, and closed doors, and open doors to get to that point.

You know, we do all of the internal work before an external shift. Otherwise, we can make an external shift, and we're still going to have to do the internal work that goes along with it.

And The Sun card offers us a really beautiful opportunity to think about some of these things that we don't really give a lot of time to. We don't think all that much about celebrating where we are. I know for myself, that's often something I'm a little uncomfortable with, actually (Lindsay laughs), because I'm so always aware of, like, what I want to do, the work that needs to be done personally and collectively.

And it's hard to downshift and say, “I deserve this,” you know (Lindsay laughs). It's hard to say, like — you know, it's hard to remind myself and to interrupt that narrative, that by celebrating me, I'm not taking away from my continued commitment toward my evolution or my growth in some way.

So this card is a huge high point in the song of The Major Arcana, and it does really offer us the chance to begin anew. It is a chance to form a different kind of relationship with our self, one based in a willingness to acknowledge and celebrate hard work, and long journeys, and discoveries. And to acknowledge how much courage it takes to leave a chariot behind, you know. And it does. I’m speaking to all of you because you've all done that. Me too.

[0:48:47] It’s hard to trust when we've outgrown some kind of egg (Lindsay laughs) that's held us in some way. And yet The Sun card is a rebirth and is an illumination of something that previously was completely unclear to us or partially unclear. And the perspective that we’re offered allows for,

And we see the proof of that in Judgement and in The World. It's also an opportunity — and there are other Tarot cards that dip into this pool — to play, to engage in what feels like fun, to actually be in touch with joy.

Joy is a really present energy in certain Tarot cards. I think joy is pretty different from the energy of happiness. I think you can have anger, you can have grief, and still be in joy. Joy — it can coincide with anything. And I think joy is fairly radical, actually. Because really, it allows for us to find the gift in this moment, even when things are not so great, as they can sometimes not be so great, for some of us or for all of us.

But really, to acknowledge: you were once a seed. Now you're a full-grown flower. You were once over kind of in this part of your inner landscape, you were once where you were. Now look at where you are. We want to blow right past that.

I think that's part of why The Sun card is, like, even for myself — like, I used to teach this card in, like, two minutes, and then you're past it, because it's really easy to oversimplify it. This is really an invitation to take a moment and honor what has been, what it took for you to get where you are, and celebrate that you're here. It's no small thing.

And doing so is one of, again, the last three major tasks before we move out of the cycle that we're in and move back into The Fool. So it wouldn't be a part of The Major Arcana invitational piano (Lindsay laughs), as it were, wouldn't be a part of the color scheme or the the spectrum of Major Arcana color if that weren't a really important part of what we as human beings are meant to get a little bit more intimate and familiar with.

[0:51:52] So it is a new beginning. It's a new beginning in the way that we treat and regard ourselves. It's not always a big shift or a big pivot in another direction. It is us, with us, in a deeper, more heartfelt way.

It's offering ourselves the very Leo-centered gift of our own gaze, of seeing ourselves, witnessing ourselves, celebrating ourselves. Like, clapping for ourselves. And letting that, by extension, be a gaze of loving warmth that extends into others, onto others and their own path.

© All materials property of Lindsay Mack and Tarot for the Wild Soul It can be so easy to believe, “Other people have it all figured out. They never go through this.” And it's bullshit. There's nobody that doesn't go through this. There's nobody that doesn't look sort of out at another person and think, “Ugh, man, they really have it figured out” (Lindsay laughs). It's everybody, I think.

So how can we disrupt that really painful pattern that we're the only ones who have trouble celebrating our growth, that we're the only ones that have trouble accessing joy, that we're the only ones that have difficulty appreciating how far we've come? You're not. We're not. We’re all in it together.

And The Sun is a powerful example of what is possible when we start to turn, again, that warm, transformative gaze on ourselves. Things do begin to bloom and grow in different ways.

[0:53:46] So I encourage you to play with your relationship to this energy. Like, how does it land in space with you? How do you engage with it? How can you call upon it this summer in particular?

I’m thinking of Venus in Cancer, right, which we’re going to be in for a lot of… well, you may be listening to this episode a while from now, but at the time for recording, Venus has just moved into Cancer. And, you know, The Chariot being connected to Cancer, I don't think that's an accident.

Like, this is really looking at, you know, Venus is so much about our ability to receive, like, where we are in that kind of work in our lives. There's constantly love, beauty, sources of joy and things that we cherish in front of and around all of us, but how we make ourselves available to those things — that's really different. That's a really different thing.

So to relate to Venus in Cancer, there's a sense of looking at our Venus work through the lens of The Chariot. Like, what ways in which you've been… you know, how, in terms of your relationship to Venus themes, how might it be time to do your own Chariot work here? And how might it be time to call upon The Sun to help illuminate some of your growth in that area, too?

You know, I can look back, and I've got a lot of work that I'm still doing in my Empress/Venus realms, for sure. But I can look back and really see, like, “Whoa, there's been just so much willingness, so much courage.” And that's important, because all that's ever in my head is, like, “Oh my god, I'm so… I need to do all this work in this area.”

© All materials property of Lindsay Mack and Tarot for the Wild Soul And it is a dismantling and a disruption of this story that I'm not a perfect being right now as I am, because I am, and so are you. And we can still have work to do. It doesn't need to make us flawed in any way. There’s a lot of people that profit off of that. We don't need to continue that cycle, right?

So yeah, I encourage you to, again, sit with how The Sun card shows up for you and what messages, what illuminations it might be bringing into your life right now. Because although we're not in Leo season, and although you may say, “Look, I'm still so deep in my Line Two journey. I'm not at my Sun card yet.” Yet, it's here for you. It's what I was asked to talk about at our last episode before our big pause.

So I encourage you to treat it as a guest. Maybe an unexpected guest in the midst of your line to walk. You know, what might it be bringing to your door? What medicine, what gifts might it be bringing forward for you today?

[Conclusion]

[0:57:06]

So I love all of you. I will miss all of you. Again, I don't know whether or not this pause will be, like, a couple of months, whether it will be a lot of months, but I do know I will be back. And I do know that if you want, feel drawn to connect and continue to listen to the podcast, I'm sure there will be no shortage of things that I'll have to say (Lindsay laughs).

So who knows whether or not the new form the podcast will take will be so different to the eye, or whether it will just be internally different. But I look forward to whatever kind of rebirth process wants to happen with this offering. It has certainly been happening with literally every other part of my work, from website to courses to making space for other offerings that are going to start coming forward next year in 2022.

So I’m just bowing to all of it (Lindsay laughs) as best as I can. And I'm grateful, always grateful, ever grateful to be with you.

So thank you again from the bottom of my heart, Wild Souls, for being here. It's been, and will continue to be, a pleasure and a privilege to be gathered in this virtual space with you. And until we meet again, please take exquisite, loving, gentle care of yourselves.