When Cecily and I first met, our shared enthusiasm for the divination rituals sparked an instant connection, one that's grown into a profound exploration of Tarot and IChing we're thrilled to share. Picture a bridge spanning across time, connecting the ancient wisdom of the IChing's hexagrams walking side by side through the Tarot's Arcana. This series promises to be a fascinating tapestry of history, personal narrative, and the art of divination, where listeners are invited to journey with us through time-honored practices that remain as relevant today as they were millenia ago.
We delve into the symbiotic relationship between these tools and the rhythms of nature, viewing them as conduits for tapping into ancestral wisdom and the natural world. The sacred art of inquiry is celebrated, as we disclose our personal methodologies and insights into using these ancient systems for reflection and growth, urging you to discover your own connection to the cosmos through these rich practices.
Let's not forget the practicality of such esoteric knowledge—our dialogue extends beyond personal growth to touch upon its application in everyday scenarios and even business ventures. Whether you're drawing your first breath upon the path of divination or seeking to enhance your existing practice, this series is a call to embrace the transformative power of intuition and ritual in your life. Join us as we celebrate the intertwined paths of Tarot and IChing, guiding you toward a more profound understanding of self and the world around you.
Resources:
Cecily Sailer is a Tarot reader, writer, and coach who supports and mentors folks in developing a more mystical and spiritual relationship with their creativity, themselves, and their lives. Cecily is the founder of Typewriter Tarot, a project that support Creative Spirits by offering spaces of magic, creativity, inspiration, and community.
Connect with Cecily:
Kat HoSoo Lee is a trauma-informed Spiritual Business Mentor and host of The Rooted Business Podcast. She uses the tools of somatic and emotional alchemy to guide soulful entrepreneurs to approach their business as a spiritual practice. This allows them to cultivate businesses that are rooted in conscious values, ethical marketing and purposeful service.
Connect with Kat:
This podcast is made possible with sound production by Andre Lagace.
When Cecily and I first met, our shared enthusiasm for the divination rituals sparked an instant connection, one that's grown into a profound exploration of Tarot and IChing we're thrilled to share. Picture a bridge spanning across time, connecting the ancient wisdom of the IChing's hexagrams walking side by side through the Tarot's Arcana. This series promises to be a fascinating tapestry of history, personal narrative, and the art of divination, where listeners are invited to journey with us through time-honored practices that remain as relevant today as they were millenia ago.
We delve into the symbiotic relationship between these tools and the rhythms of nature, viewing them as conduits for tapping into ancestral wisdom and the natural world. The sacred art of inquiry is celebrated, as we disclose our personal methodologies and insights into using these ancient systems for reflection and growth, urging you to discover your own connection to the cosmos through these rich practices.
Let's not forget the practicality of such esoteric knowledge—our dialogue extends beyond personal growth to touch upon its application in everyday scenarios and even business ventures. Whether you're drawing your first breath upon the path of divination or seeking to enhance your existing practice, this series is a call to embrace the transformative power of intuition and ritual in your life. Join us as we celebrate the intertwined paths of Tarot and IChing, guiding you toward a more profound understanding of self and the world around you.
Resources:
Cecily Sailer is a Tarot reader, writer, and coach who supports and mentors folks in developing a more mystical and spiritual relationship with their creativity, themselves, and their lives. Cecily is the founder of Typewriter Tarot, a project that support Creative Spirits by offering spaces of magic, creativity, inspiration, and community.
Connect with Cecily:
Kat HoSoo Lee is a trauma-informed Spiritual Business Mentor and host of The Rooted Business Podcast. She uses the tools of somatic and emotional alchemy to guide soulful entrepreneurs to approach their business as a spiritual practice. This allows them to cultivate businesses that are rooted in conscious values, ethical marketing and purposeful service.
Connect with Kat:
This podcast is made possible with sound production by Andre Lagace.
Hello and welcome to our. I guess this is a joint podcast episode, right, cecily? Because you're going to release it on your podcast, we're going to release it on my podcast and I'm really, really excited for this start of the series.
Speaker 2:I am excited as well. Yeah, I'm looking forward to this exploration. I'm going to learn a lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let me give people a little bit of context for what I'm talking about here, because I think I just got a little too excited and was like excitement. So Cecily is somebody who came through my program business Optimus Mentorship, and she uses Tarot as this wonderful divination tool. I have used her services in my own personal life. Actually, when I first purchased my property, she really helped me out and gave me a lot of guidance and I really felt like that session that I had with you was like a deep rooted connection back to my grandfather's spirit in particular. And just the way that you talk about the Tarot, the way that you are connected to the elements, the way that you are connected to nature, I just feel like I had so much to learn. And so when you were working on your offer to present to the world, I was like I think I need to take that, I think I need to be in the student role with you, and so this is a little bit of an extension of me being your student.
Speaker 1:But then also my background is in the Yi Qing, which is a separate divination practice, and I don't know. I just really wanted to like nerd out with you for like on a regular basis, and so that's why I asked you to come on this show and we're going to go through. Today's talk is going to be about like an introduction to the Yi Qing, introduction to the Tarot sort of our ways of relating to these divination tools and then we're going to meet every season. So there's going to be five other episodes beyond this one where we go into some of the parallels and differences. We'll sort of pick a energy of the season and explore it through a couple of hexagrams through my tradition and maybe a couple of Tarot cards through your tradition, and sort of see where there's like an interweaving of these traditional practices that spans geography, spans time. So, yeah, I had to like cool down my excitement to like actually get that out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you for inviting me on this exploration with you and, conversely, you know, going through your program, which has its roots in Taoism and also the elements and seasons and cycles, has been really so helpful in just thinking about creating and building my business in a sustainable way and incorporating some of the things that are so important to me. You know, thinking about the elements, thinking about the seasons, thinking about how we can move more in the spirit and flow of nature. So, yeah, what a lovely pairing.
Speaker 2:I'm excited to draw some connected lines and learn from you and share what I know, to the extent I can.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and if you're watching this on YouTube, we've also got Queenie with us. It's Cecily's dog and she's just like giant furball. So if you want to see Queenie as well, she's out there in the video lands. So I think I roughly mapped out like some of these like touch points that I'd like to play with in this episode. Of course we're going to meander because I don't know how else to do interviews and do podcast episodes.
Speaker 1:So some of the main concepts that I really want to like touch upon is really brief history, impossible to get into like the full history of either one of these systems, but really brief history to place ourselves as modern humans in the bodies that we, in particular ourselves as individuals, occupy, then the cultures that we occupy and sort of like how do we sort of interplay that with the history of these divination tools? I also want to get into a little bit of like the contrast between arcana and cannons, which is our version of the arcana in, and each thing, and then we'll get into a little bit of like how we personally set intentions, how we ritualize these things and why images and kinesthetic rituals are so powerful and why they're so important and how do we get back to those roots and, of course, we're going to interweave all this with animism and the elements, and then we'll finish up with like how can we actually use these tools? Now that we've like nerded out and talked about the philosophy and the context and the history of it, how can we practically use them as a tool that helps us? For me, the each thing connects me back to myself and that's always been my sort of like running theme and thread with the relationship with the each thing.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, does that feel cozy?
Speaker 2:Come to you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Do you want to start, or do you want me to start with the history? What's a good place?
Speaker 2:It does not matter to me. What would you prefer? I believe your history is more ancient.
Speaker 1:I don't know how old the tarot is, but I am going to venture to guess that it is a little bit more ancient. So I actually woke up early this morning because I needed to review my history on the each thing, so I'm going to look at some notes here. So approximately 1000 BC is when we first got a chance to like get the first iteration of the each thing. That was done by one of the stages called Fushi, and what he did is he created the original trigrams and hexagrams. And so, if you are familiar at all with the each thing, it is a book of pictures and each picture is a representation of six lines, either broken or solid, and if they are solid lines, that's a representation of Yang. If they're broken lines, that's a representation of Yin. And depending on how the Yin-Yang balance is expressed through those six lines and I can show you if you're on YouTube, you can see I have a tattoo of one of the each thing hexagrams and so depending on the placement of whether it's a Yang line or a Yin line, it has different sort of energies. And so Fushi is the first person who came up with the original eight hexagrams, or rather the eight trigrams, and then, a little while later and I couldn't get an exact time, but I got like a time span of when this individual was alive, more between 1152 and 1050 BC King Wen took those trigrams because it's a trigram is three of those lines and he placed them into a hexagram, sort of a confirmation. And so that's where we end up with 64 is because there are eight of these trigrams and you can pair them with any of the other eight and that's where we get eight times eight is 64. And so he would be the second sage who gets quite a bit of credit in the each thing. And then Confucius, who was alive somewhere between 550 and 480 BC, is another one of the sages that gets a bit of credit as well, and so he was able to add just commentary and context.
Speaker 1:I'll say that the philosophies of both Confucianism and Taoism both have their roots in the each thing.
Speaker 1:For me, I don't personally really relate to Confucianism as much. There's a lot of structure and cultural context that don't really align with me, but my spiritual practice is Taoism and that's where I come to this space, and so everything that you hear me talking about with the each thing is going to be coming from more of a Taoist viewpoint versus a Confucianist viewpoint. One of the things that I think is really important to name is that it has gone through rounds of almost being destroyed, and so in 200 BC, the Chin State went through this like massive burning of the books in China. Same thing happens with Mao Zedong, and I feel so lucky that I get to look at. I actually brought four translations with me to this podcast recording because I feel like I needed my friends here with me and I feel so lucky that we actually get to read these texts as modern humans and get to play with them and get to continue to learn from them. So that's really brief overview.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's amazing. What a history and a trajectory and, yes, how wonderful that we have these texts remaining and that it's kind of hard to, I think, fully eradicate a set of ideas and an approach and a philosophy. Those people have certainly tried and I'm glad that you're here bringing it back to us in your own way too.
Speaker 1:So tell me a little bit about the tarot.
Speaker 2:The tarot. Yeah, the history is not quite as old as I mentioned and starts in medieval Europe around the 1400s, when wealthy Italian families began to commission artists to create beautiful card decks for them. So playing card decks would be created by these artists and there's not. It's a history that's a little hard to fully pin down and trace from one point to another in its progression and evolution. But as the decks evolved there was an aspect of Italian culture in which there would be these parades held where, kind of resembling something like Mardi Gras, where different archetypes would be kind of paraded through the village like the fool or the emperor, and so some of those things started to make their way into the card decks. So the cards would have that playing card set that we're kind of familiar with, like this progression of numbers and different suits, and then these larger archetypes that kind of reflected something social or something in the social order and also in, I guess, the spiritual order began to be added and so that's what's called the major arcana in tarot. And so it originally came out of game playing but then later evolved for divination, and it's unclear who took that on or when that began, but that has continued to evolve over the hundreds of years and one of the two of the most famous or well-known decks in modern history are the Smith Rider weight tarot and then another one called the Toth deck or the Thoth deck, and those were designed respectively or Arthur Waite was the originator of the Smith Rider weight deck and Pamela Coleman Smith was the artist behind that deck and he was originally part of the Order of the Golden Dawn, which Alistair Crowley had a big part in, and so the Thoth deck kind of represents Crowley's sort of branch of that Order of the Golden Dawn and Arthur Waite kind of branched off at some point, and so those two were created early in the 1900s and the Thoth deck is much more intricate and there's a lot more deeper, complex symbology in that deck and so it's kind of a study unto itself and I'm not actually very familiar with it.
Speaker 2:With the tarot deck that Waite created has been since the 1900s like probably became more popular and was used by more people. You know, like in the 60s and 70s is like more and more people got into a kind of alternative spirituality and then as we get into the modern era, more interpretations of that tarot deck have evolved and it's a really beautiful space because it's so visually centered that artists, many artists, have reinterpreted the tarot and on their own representations of the archetypes, and we're in a moment now where tarot is very popular and very mainstream, and that's kind of been helped by Instagram, I suppose. And, yeah, they've just become more widely available and, I think, less taboo in a way that they might have been several decades ago. And so, you know, on the one hand that may be kind of like diluting the art or but it's also kind of a free form art and a free form practice in a sense, since there isn't, like, maybe, such a rich history of documentation and kind of practice that has been more formalized.
Speaker 2:There has been some, of course, but it has like a lot of fluidity and this like evolution, where people can really kind of make their own impact or imprint on it.
Speaker 1:That leads me to a question that I've been dying to ask you actually is. You know, in preparation for taking this course with you, I spent so many hours looking through so many different tarot decks. I eventually landed just in a state of like exhaustion just because I love Kim Kranz's work with other decks, and so I just landed with her deck, which I brought with me here. I love, I love, love, love her imagery. But do you have a deck that you feel a personal resonance with, and is there a reason why you're drawn to one deck versus another? Is it really just from a matter of feel? When I was asking people and trying to like, crowdsource, like where I should go, people were just like, just hold the deck and look at the visuals and see if it like lines with you and I just like I got a little bit overwhelmed with too much choice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a lot out there. And it's also hard because when you're shopping for decks you can't really see everything inside the deck usually unless you're in a store and they have like a copy you can dump through.
Speaker 2:I started with the Smith Rider weight deck just because it is so well known. So a lot of like the teaching that you'll read is based, or things you might hear on podcasts are based on those what seem like original images. They're not the original. You know their older decks, like the Marseille, but that deck kind of formed the basis, I think, for modern tarot as as broadly understood. So I started with that one, just so you know. I kind of went about it in this sort of book learning way, which is not what I advise people to do now, which is why I created a whole workbook to help people get to know the archetypes and the tarot through their own personal experience and through journaling and so. But I started with that deck to kind of like get a little encyclopedic about all the stuff that was said about the different cards and then once I felt pretty familiar with that, I started to branch out into other ones and it kind of comes and goes. Like sometimes I'll get a deck that seems exciting in the moment and then I work with it a little bit and I'm kind of like, well, I don't know if I really dig this one that much and then I'll give it away. Or, you know, I have these mystic messages that I send a tarot card with a poem. Sometimes I'll use them for that. And, yeah, sometimes I'll use one for like a year or several, you know, period of several months and then it'll kind of phase out and a new one will come in.
Speaker 2:I was using a deck called the Pagan Other Worlds deck by Usi. It's a design studio, it's called UUSI and the artwork is just stunningly beautiful. So I was using that deck for a while until something happened to one of the cards and I just didn't replace it. These days I'm using, I sometimes use the Theodore Pavlov deck and so he's got. These are also very similar or, you know, somewhat based on the Rider Waite deck, and I also recently got the Liberation Tarot, which came through a Kickstarter with a group of like activist artists and organizers, including Adrienne Marie Brown, and the imagery in these cards are really beautiful. So I've started kind of using that one more recently. So, yeah, you know, it's kind of like I feel like it's dating. It's like you have to go out and like interact with it and play with it and see how you feel about it and invest a little bit to find out, before you're like, yeah, I don't think this is a good fit. Or like, yeah, let's keep dating for a while.
Speaker 1:Let's see where this goes. Yeah, love it. I'd love to share my favorite Yiching texts, if that's okay with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was going to ask you how do you? Pick what you turn to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because there's so many. I think I probably have 20 different translations of the Yiching and I brought four in particular just because I thought that they were. They're the ones that I sort of like turn to all the time. So for me, this one again YouTube go if you want to find the visuals, but I'll put all these links in the show notes as well. But this is the Complete Yiching by Taoist Master Alfred Huang. This is like my absolute go to. The reason why I like this one so much is because the Yiching cannot be separated from Chinese culture and because so much meaning is held in the characters and even just like how the characters evolved, because each of the hexagrams has a name and so like knowing the sort of like character characterization of how that particular word came to be has so much depth. It's like an entomology study in and of itself. And so this gentleman lived through the Cultural Revolution and was one of the. He was young when he went through the Cultural Revolution and, like he is one of the I don't know preservationists of the Yiching, and because he's so connected to Chinese culture, I feel like there's a lot more depth and nuance in this one and I think, too.
Speaker 1:Something that I want to name in this is I've got an Asian face. I've studied Eastern medicine, I've studied Chinese medicine, and this is not my culture. I think that it's so easy for people to be like, oh she's Asian, she must know about all Asian cultures, and that is absolutely not true. I probably have more in common with a white woman on the West Coast than I do with somebody who's like a Chinese born woman, and so to me that feels important to name, because I'm looking at this as an outsider as well. I don't have the same context and the same understanding of the culture. I mean, I bring in my own Korean culture, but even that is one step removed because I'm a Korean American, and so I feel like it's important to name that when we're studying traditions and texts and contexts from other cultures, like where do we place ourselves within that, so that we aren't unconsciously appropriating or maybe putting on a facade, because I could very well just sit here and be like, yeah, I know everything about this because I'm Asian too, and like that would feel really icky and unethical to me, and so that feels really important to name. So this is my go to text. If I were to say you know, if you wanted to get one text, get this one.
Speaker 1:The second text I would recommend, and just because it's like such a practical book, I like this. It's called the Yi Qing workbook by RL Wing. I don't always love the commentary because it feels a little bit more prescriptive than the Huang book, whereas Huang is more like. This is what the character means, this is the energy of the elements that are being expressed. The place where I get a little bit like, oh, don't do that is when, like Yi Qing texts turn it into a prescription for how you should live your life and it turns it into like an advice thing, and so I would take the commentary with a grain of salt with the RL Wing, but I like using it.
Speaker 1:I mean, this is why I got so excited about your course and your program is because I love when there's like a workbook that I can work into and like have a personal experience with it, and so when I go through this workbook I can look back and be like, oh, I pulled that hexagram during this particular time in my life and you know it's interesting to sort of like look back and be like, oh, how did that actually turn out Like, how like did it actually follow the energy of that hexagram when I look back into it, and you know, it gives me a deeper understanding of each hexagram, because I've got my own personal life story sort of written into that book. So those are the two that I like, would recommend, like, would recommend. If anybody is like, where should I go? There's 10,000 different texts out there, so that's, that's where I would go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a new one as well, by Benabel Wynn, who is also a tarot person and she does really exhaustive texts. I don't, and she's an artist. I don't know how she's able to like create all the things that she creates, and I'd be curious. I purchased that book but haven't had a chance to get into it. I'll be curious, yeah, what you think about it.
Speaker 1:Definitely going in my shopping list.
Speaker 2:One thing I want to maybe bring in is like the different ways that you interact with these two, and of course I mean or maybe not, of course it's probably not obvious to everyone, but when you're working with tarot it's like you shuffle the cards. There are all kinds of different ways. You can choose the card or several cards that you're going to, you know, bring in as answers to your questions or as messages, but the eaching functions a bit differently and I wonder if you could talk a little bit about, like, how you get your hexagram and that process.
Speaker 1:So there's a couple of different ways and again, this is where I get like so excited and curious about how you work with this hero as well. But there's a couple of different ways that we can work with the eaching deck. So before you just like jump into and like read the book cover to cover, because that's not how it's meant to be played with. Way back in Fushi and King Wednesday, how they used to actually read divination was by heating up the shoulder bones, like the scapula blade of oxes or the shells of turtles, and based on how the cracks happened, whether they were solid or broken lines. That's how they would then interpret the etching. We don't do that anymore because that's not nice to turtles.
Speaker 1:So our modern modern, in quotation marks our modern way of doing things is either by using yarrow sticks, which is like a about 30 minute process, or by throwing three coins. So typically what I end up doing is just throw coins. I do have yarrow sticks. They're in storage right now and it actually took me like two or three seasons of growing yarrow and harvesting them and then drying them, and so I'm still new at using the yarrow sticks because I've not had them for long enough to have a deep relationship with them. But it's this really beautiful dance of like you separate out the stalks and yeah, I'm not going to get into that because it's a whole process but essentially the easiest way to do it is throwing three coins. I have three pennies right in front of me and, depending on the order of if it's like head, head, tail or tail, tail, head or all heads or all tails, it gives you the kind of yin yang line that you're looking for.
Speaker 2:Through like a numerical value. It's like heads equal. This tails equals this and you end up with like six, seven, eight or nine it's, and those sorry. So, it's.
Speaker 1:I don't know the exact numbers, because the yin is like an even number, yang is odd numbers. I think six and nines are like the unchanging. And this is where like things get fuzzy, because the way that I categorize them is head, head, tail, tail, heads. So you build up the hexagram from the bottom, because it's like a plant that's growing up out of the ground, and so the first, you know set of coins that you throw gives you a line. The second set of coins that you throw gives you the second line right above it, and then you do that until you get all six lines.
Speaker 1:And actually, before I came on to record, I threw coins for our episode and for our series and I asked the question of how to approach like. For me, it's less about like what is the future going to look like? And more about like how should I conduct myself in these moments? How, you know, what am I supposed to learn from this? And so then it ends up being more of an internal process than I like. These things need to turn out exactly right, and I think that that's where divination can turn into a little bit of a mutated thing, where people start to then cling to it for like external validation that something's going to happen and our little human brains cannot possibly contextualize like all the good that's in the world when we're like in the midst of a hard thing. So I asked the coins, how do I approach this podcast series with Cecily? And I mean I should stop being surprised by the things that come up.
Speaker 2:But it's hard not to.
Speaker 1:I know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, continues to amaze. I'm so excited to know what it said.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's double fire. So it's the fire hex or fire trigram right over the fire trigram. It's hexagram 30. And in this text, the Huang text, he translates that to brightness.
Speaker 1:And it's really about like two passions coming together. If you think about fire as like the thing that we're like really so excited about and I don't know, I just was like what when I, when I pulled it, I was like that can't be right, so perfect, right. And then the translation in this RL wing is synergy, and so it's really about like two energies coming together and creating something bigger From here, it says. This hexagram suggests that you and the object of your inquiry are dependent upon each other. Working together, the interaction of your spheres of influence can achieve significant needs. These synergistic interactions will provide ideas and inspirations, generate surplus energy for continued growth, and refined communications and perceptions.
Speaker 1:So I guess we need to make a deck together to probably where they all come together somehow Maybe jump 17 steps, maybe through the process of like learning about the tarot and you learning about the each thing. There's somewhere where they like converge and we can create something together. But yeah, that's, that was what came up.
Speaker 2:Very cool. Yeah, I wish I had pulled some cards. Maybe I'll pull some as we keep going and share it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So how do you work with the tarot? What, like, what sort of intentions are you holding when you're drawing cards? I've seen spreads. I've not worked with spreads yet. I feel like that's like advanced degree level tarot. I've just been pulling a card when I feel pulled the call, when I feel called to pull a card.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, it's so individual and versatile and it really I get like kind of to come back to the dating metaphor it really is a relationship that you get to develop with it and you get to kind of explore how you want to show up and how you want to engage with it and how often and how you want to bring yourself into the moment. And I, you know, for me I try to. You know, I think there's like a group of the world that sort of sees tarot as a parlor trick or you know some kind of like. Let's like wow ourselves with what they say. And I don't really experience that a lot necessarily, but like when I would be out giving readings in public or at events or something, you would sort of encounter the people who would come to your table and be like show me what you got, kind of thing, which I think I can see where that comes from but sort of undermines the great profundity. I think, like what you know, the same thing that happened with the hexagram that you pulled, speaking so directly and beautifully to the moment and the occasion and giving really like almost guidance that feels even more exciting than we want to let ourselves get excited about. There's always with tarot, I think, that element of like surprise and validation.
Speaker 2:And so when I come to the cards I take some, usually take some time to like get quiet, hold the deck. I say I guess what would be like a little prayer of just you know, I kind of start with like I'm grateful for this day, I'm grateful for this life. I'm someone who got sober from alcohol, which was kind of like how this whole, the whole my whole life turned toward tarot and spirituality. So I say some gratitude for that and then I try to like add on a little bit of gratitude for whatever is going on. And then you know if I'm in kind of a rough spot or like really wrestling or grappling with something or really just like worked up about a situation. Sometimes I'll either speak that out loud and just kind of like let the energy of whatever I'm holding find language, either in my mind or again spoken just to those whatever spirits may be listening. So I take some time to just kind of connect with the deck and connect with.
Speaker 2:I see tarot is like a technology, like an interfacing technology, where you can look at the cards, like the cards function sort of like a telephone between yourself and your subconscious, or yourself and your subconscious, plus like benevolent spirits that are helping you through life or ancestors or elements or you know, whatever people might think of as their spiritual team, I guess.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, I take a moment to like connect with whoever may be showing up to share messages with me through the cards.
Speaker 2:I'll shuffle the deck and, like you know, sometimes I'm just asking, like what do you want me to see today, what would you like me to know? Sometimes, if I'm doing a spread, like on a full moon or a new moon or the turning of the season or some particular occasion, you know I'll kind of work that into the intention and also into the questions, yeah, and then I try to close whatever I pull, like usually with a little bit of writing, but also again like gratitude, and kind of treat it like a small ritual that has like an opening moment and a closing moment. You know, I think there's also a way and I do this sometimes too where it's just like I'm a little more harried or on the go and it's like let me pull a card and it doesn't have the same, like you know, spiritual attention that I'm giving it most of the time and I try not to feel guilty about that, but I try to, like more often, do the intentional approach. But yeah, that's kind of how I come at it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that you kind of relate it to like telephoning within and also to whatever spirits they want to show up. And you know, that's my experience of the each thing as well, and I don't know if you've read the Golden Compass. It's a series and they talk about the each thing and then they, instead of using a tarot deck, it's like a, like a device that these kids like, feel into and to me, like that's like the most like accurate way that I've felt it is, it really does feel like a spiritual practice. It feels like and in a world where everything is so fucking mental, like like mental oriented, mind thought oriented, it's so nice to have something that is a tangible thing, like you are holding a deck of cards, you are holding coins, you're holding your sticks and interacting with it in this very kinesthetic way, and I feel like we've lost so much of that and it's inspired me to bring ritual into other aspects of my life that are outside of playing with spirituality. You know how can I say? Every time I walk into my barn, I touch the right side of my barn door and I say thank you for being here. You know, it's in these little moments, where we build relationship with things that our ancestors believed that had spirit. You know I was listening to a podcast episode.
Speaker 1:In the title of the podcast is animism, is the normative culture, and if you think about, like our entire human history, you know some of the ways in which the translations of the each can talk about, like fushi and king, when are like, like these people were like so different and they looked at nature and they, you know, were following the rules of nature and it's like, yeah, like we all have the capacity to do that. Like why do we like relegate that to our like you know ancestors 45 generations removed? Like we can still sit with.
Speaker 1:You know the, the trigrams, the eight trigrams are representative of heaven and earth.
Speaker 1:Oh gosh, I have to remember them now you know wind and thunder, water and fire and lake and mountain, and so it's like we can sit with all those elements and really just like be in the presence of that and like try to understand how we as humans can connect to nature and how we are a part of nature and how nature can connect within us. And to me, like that's like what that telephoning feels like is, it's just like direct line to something that's bigger than us. And yeah, that's that's all I have to say about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how is it for you when you come to the each thing? How do you yeah?
Speaker 1:Similar to yo.
Speaker 1:Like I think that the common threads that I love is that it's a stillness practice for both of us, it's a gratitude practice for both of us, it's a way to like take a moment out of our very busy lives and to like look within and ask these questions that, like you know, you know they're ruminating in your head like yeah, like they're bouncing around in there.
Speaker 1:So like, why not create some sort of like ritual to like help ground that in some form of communication in in one way or another? And you know I I'm in between houses right now. I was just telling you right before we hit record that like there's something about your energy, cecily, where, like you help me find a house, because you helped me out when I was sort of grappling with the purchase of my land back in the fall of last year. My husband and I are just finalizing the details for our condo purchase this week and so, to be quite honest, like I've not had the same relationship with the each thing that I normally do when I have a grounded place that I can come to and like having like an altar set up.
Speaker 1:I like having a table set up where, like, I can actually be in that space and and sort of create like a spiritual groove with it. But you know, they talk about in these each thing texts like even how you store the Yaro sticks and how you store the coins is important because it's like there's a reverence for them there, and so, yeah, I think that there's a lot of similarities in how we approach our divination practices, even though they're two different tools. It's kind of we're talking about the same thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned all of that and it brought to mind this benefit or this function of the practice that I think, like even if you didn't believe that the messages you got were like significant or useful just the part you do before you pull, before you throw your coins or Yaro sticks or pull a tarot card of like sitting down, say, like getting still separating from the busyness and the distractions of life, being with being with yourself, being with your concerns and finding language to kind of articulate what it is you're trying to inquire about.
Speaker 2:We'll take you through this process of because, yeah, like you said, everything, so much of our lives is so mental and there's so much like ping-ponging and noise in our minds, and when we slow down and take the energy of whatever it is is kind of consuming us and try to kind of like consolidate it into a clear question, that process of distillation and clarifying I think is so beneficial to take that noise and that clatter and get it into something that has like a core and a center, that like, even if you only did that part, you would feel better, even if you don't have like the answer. So I just think that's another beautiful element of divination that like helps us get serious about what we actually care about and what's like on our hearts and on our minds.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I also wonder about the art of asking a question for you, because you know, like I said, I spent the morning sort of being with my books and being with my workbook a lot actually here and realizing that the nature of my questions has changed so drastically Because I've been using this workbook since I was probably in my 20s and a lot of those questions, if I look back on them, are like, are things going to work out between me and my husband? And you know this like outcome based questioning and, like I had shared earlier, so much of the way that I question things now is really about like how should I approach this? You know, like what am I meant to learn from this? Like those kinds of questions. And I also think you know, just to sort of bring it into like a practical sense of the word, it gives me a sense of like what it is that I might need.
Speaker 1:So the last time I actually pulled this Hexagram 30 was during the middle of a BAM launch and like I pulled that and realized I've been doing everything by myself, like I was like a literal one women show and was looking at it was right when I was going to like start like recording all the video curriculum for my program and like, just like my schedule looked really, really full at the time and I pulled that card and realized, like in that moment, oh, I need help. Like like the card for, or the, the Hexagram, was telling me that, like the thing that's missing in my life is another partner in this. It's another sort of like synergistic energy in this. So that's when I asked actually Nadine, who is a holistic money coach, to come and coach with me alongside me in BAM for a cohort, because I just really needed help and space to like take some of the things off of my plate and to like bring someone like her into my BAM program, just felt so aligned and so perfect.
Speaker 1:And so, you know, sometimes the hexagrams, the cards, you know the divination tool helps illuminate what is actually missing, not just like pointing us towards like what's present in there, like it was nice to get this one because it was like like this, like deep feeling of like oh, that's what's here right now, you know, versus like that's what's missing, yeah that's really.
Speaker 2:That's great that you have a workbook where you kind of see where you were the last time you pulled this, and I think that's a great practice for anyone using divination to have some kind of way of recording when you got something or, like you know, journaling about what messages you get and being able to look back Because I think you the message comes through for you in the moment and often I guess you know like most of the time, 90% of the time, I feel like I can understand something about what the cards are saying. But, as you like, live through what is then the future and look back. You have all this life experience that brings more nuance and texture to that, that hexagram or that tarot card, and it just deepens your understanding. So I think that's really cool and I also love how, in one sense, it was sort of like here's what you need, and in another sense, maybe it's saying like here's what's possible, here's what's like set up for this, maybe yeah, but I think the questions are really important and it's I certainly encourage people to avoid yes or no questions or like outcome questions, like will this happen?
Speaker 2:Because there's not in the tarot, there's not like yes or no card and to really focus on open ended questions like you're talking about. You know how can I navigate the situation. What's the best way for me to show up to this relationship? Why am I feeling like this? What do I need? You know things that have that can open, I guess, the window for like a more textured response and that center yourself in the present moment with agency.
Speaker 2:So it's not like what is life going to like hand me, will it give me this husband? Will it give me you know, whatever versus like how can I, you know, handle, deal with it. I just feel like that's more empowering. So it's a way to empower yourself to like figure something out and make a choice and then take an action.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and I love this concept of agency because that's really ultimately like what it comes down to is, like you know, divination tools are not like fortune telling tools. It's not like I can see into the future. It's really about how can we center you said it so beautifully, did you say like, how can we center on agency within this? Because it's like I think any tool, whether it is a coach or A book or you know, tarot or each hang or coins or whatever it is like if it takes the agency away from you, like this is the thing that, like I can't stand about. You know, sort of like the dark, shadowy side of coaching is.
Speaker 1:I see so many ways in which agency has taken away from people and then we create more entangled relationships versus, like, when we are actually coaching and mentoring people correctly, it's always going to give that power back to that person. You know that should always be our aim and I think that that is something that comes through for me is like, when I play with the each thing, I feel a lot of my ancestors and I can sort of feel their hands at my, at my back, and it's always about like, like you have, like you have to take the agency that we didn't always have is how I interpret like more recent ancestors, I guess.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I like that made me feel suddenly the sense of beauty in this notion of working with ancient divinatory practices that you and what you said is really important about lineage and appropriation and connection to the origins or, you know, respecting the origins and not having some sense of origin, but just that they help us kind of like connect with a practice that's really old and that goes back through time to a place that's like hard to imagine, like our brains can't calculate, like 600 years, you know, yeah, and that like humans were asking the same big questions back then, and like we're so focused on what's new and all of these platforms, new technologies, new apps, you fucking everything, and it's like what about the old stuff? What about connecting with nature? What about looking at pieces of paper or bones, or so I think that's really beautiful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, love it. I want to kind of dive into a little bit of like the nitty grittiness of it. I'm just going to throw some words out there and however you want to play with them, I just welcome it. So, elements, archetypes, imagery yeah, I don't know how you want to, where you want to weave from there, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's, that's great, and I might talk too much, so just not do it, do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the elements, the archetypes, the imagery. That's a huge part of tarot. Just for folks who may not be familiar, tarot has 78 cards and there are four. There's like five subsets of the cards and four of them are suits, like the ones we see in a playing card. They're not exactly the same symbols, but in the tarot you have pentacles, wands, swords and cups, and each one starts with an ace and goes through, goes up to 10. And then there's four court cards the page, the knight, the queen, the king. So there's 14 cards in each suit and each symbol or each suit is connected to an element. So the pentacles, which look like coins, are connected to the earth element and like denser material, building things, resourcing ourselves, you know, because earth moves more slowly than the other elements. There's kind of like a more patient or longer timeline kind of feel to the pentacles. The cups are associated with the element of water and water is associated with the emotional side of being human. So when you're working with cups you're talking about feelings and your relationship to emotions. And then you have the wands, which are basically like sticks that have like a little bit of green growth on them and they're associated with fire and the way I think about that, and the fire element is kind of like the vital spark of life, like whatever animates life inside the physical form. You know, kind of like the light of the sun brings us into the growth of spring and that's a kind of invisible mechanism to us. That happens in plans through photosynthesis, right, but that sun energy is alchemized into this like growth and you know, flowers bursting open and things getting taller and green spreading around, so that's fire. And then there's the swords, which are connected with the air element, and air is connected with a mind. And that becomes easier to remember when you work with tarot, because the swords cards are kind of the scary, some of the like more unpleasant ones, just like our thoughts can really do a number on how we experience life. So, and swords are kind of, you know, cold and hard and we can associate that a little bit with like rationality. So the swords would be the realm of like communication, thought, logic, boundaries.
Speaker 2:And then you have the fifth set of cards, which is called well, first, I should say, when you take the suits together, it's called the minor arcana. So that's 56 cards total. And then there's another set of cards, 21. No, 22 cards that start with the fool, which is numbered zero, and goes through to the world, which is number 21. And then in between you have these archetypes like the lovers, the chariot, the devil, the tower, the star, the moon, the sun I won't name them all, but they are these larger archetypes that don't have like a suit associated with them.
Speaker 2:So I think of them kind of like, if you imagine, the gods of Greek mythology that like lived on Mount Olympus, that the major arcana are like those big kind of god, like energies that represent the work we're doing on a soul level. So these may be lessons that carried over from another life or from time spent in the spiritual plane between lives, and here we are on earth, kind of still working with those soul lessons on the earthly plane. And then the minor arcana to me have more to do with like the smaller, shorter rhythms of life down here, so like kind of phases in our relationships or in our work, or you know, things are working on internally. And then I'll just add that arcana means like secrets or mysteries. So the major arcana are like the big mysteries and secrets and the minor arcana are the more maybe mundane secrets and mysteries.
Speaker 2:And then, to touch on the imagery part, I will say that I had a tarot deck for a really long time, for probably 10 or 15 years, that just sat in a closet because I thought you had to have like a psychic. You had to either be psychic to like use them well or you needed to be raised by like a witch grandmother who taught yeah, I own one anyway and I had. I was neither of those things. And then I had a boyfriend move in. I had a small house. I felt like there was too much stuff and I was like we got to get rid of stuff. And he had this deck that was zombie themed. I was like you don't need this, I'm going to give it to my step sister. I'm like she'll be into the zombie deck. And then we did a reading and she had some like crazy things going on and the spread was just really. I was like, oh damn, this is the stuff works, like this is real, just like looking at the guidebook using this little spread. And that's what I was, like I'm going to learn this, this is, this is what I've been looking for.
Speaker 2:But as I kind of started working with it more, I have a background as a writer and so you know telling stories and writers are interested in what it means to be human and our own experience on earth and how we navigate all kinds of everyday and terrible and wonderful and spiritual things. And I realized that this is a storytelling device, just like writing, but it's coming to us through these symbols and these images and so it doesn't have I mean, it does come into our brain, like our brains will start working to sort of analyze and figure out what they're saying, but the visual imagery, I think, lands for us on a visceral level. I almost feel like there's a gut response to cards that then like kind of rises up through cognition, and that was one thing that I just found so beautiful and appealing about. It was like it's interested in the very same thing that writers are, but it comes at it from this other angle and lands in your body in a different place. So that's my riff on Rhymes and imagery.
Speaker 1:I'm freaking out a little bit over here because I've not had anyone explain the, the elements of the tarot deck and the minor major Akana in that way and I'm over here being like she's talking about the age. So I had mentioned earlier there are eight central trigrams. So trigram meaning there's, you know, lines of three, and then you take those trigrams and you pair them up with other trigrams and that's when you get the hexagram and that's why there's 64 of them. But the, the, the trigrams are paired, so heaven and earth are paired together and the energy behind that particular trigram is like mother, father energy, it's creation, it's nature, it's cosmos, it's the pentacles, which is like that non-changing Cosmic energy that's like swirling around us all the time.
Speaker 1:And you know we as humans can do all sorts of weird shit here, but like generally, like earth and heaven are gonna be fairly stable, and then you move on to fire and water, where they're paired together and I think of what you were saying about the swords and air is it's, it's forms of energy. It's like how we as humans, like we need these vital pieces of the elements to live, like we need water, we need warmth, right, and then we get into wind and thunder, and that's all about movement, it's about development. I think you had said here it's that vital spark of life and and I'm sitting here being like, do I have them? I'm coming up with this on the fly right now. So like coming up with these associations on the fly right now. So it's like you know, is air more Wind and thunder? Is fire more fire and water?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think that's gonna be a fun part of this. Exploration Over the series is kind of like different ways of looking at those bridges and, yeah, how, and I think that's kind of the point with the elements. And one thing I love about Both of these systems though I'm way less familiar with each thing, but like, if you're gonna work with them and know what they represent, then You're going to have to think about the elements. And when your attention goes to that more and more or for me, what happened was like I started to. I've always loved nature, but it gave me like a new lens for Feeling like the fire energy of something or the water energy of something, and also kind of getting curious about the combinations of energies and how they because that's what everything is that we're looking at is some like combination of energy coming together and we don't actually know.
Speaker 2:What energy is or where it comes from. We only understand it in terms of its manifestations, exactly Like. We can only measure it by, like, how tall that tree got or how many watts of electricity are coming through here, how fast the wind is blowing. But we can't really like trace energy to a thing, and so it gives you this lens to look at the world of like, and I think that lens brings you closer to nature inherently. Yeah, absolutely More of us were doing, we're doing yeah, and then, like this one does feel actually really something like the pairing of lake and mountain feels like parallel to how you describe cups.
Speaker 1:It's like about consolidation, it's about stillness, it's about social interactions, there's emotionality involved with it, and so I'm like it's so fascinating to me that, like you know, we're we're in lots of different locations here. Like China is massive, and you know, italy is just like a world away for people back in those times, and still we were always looking at the same elements, essentially, and coming up with similar stories and feeling into the energies of like what is water, like what is fire, like you know what's earth like, what are what, what are the heavens like, and trying to Describe it in Words that will never be able to like reach a full description of it.
Speaker 1:You know, that's the thing that I love about writing is I can write about Love and never get close to really being able to describe what love actually is, and that's the first line in another one of our seminal texts in Taoism, which is the Dao De Ching, is the Tao that can be named, is not the Tao at all, and it's this idea of like we're going to spend our entire human lives trying to figure out how to coexist with these energies and it will never feel like this complete arrival state.
Speaker 1:So there's, there's that piece, and then what you were saying about the minor and the major arcana, we have Our version of that is the cannons.
Speaker 1:So we have the upper cannon, which is the first 30 hexagrams, and it's the energy of young, it's the energy of heaven, it's the like description of what is Always changing and never changing at the same time, which is like the natural phenomena of the cosmos and the earth around us. And then we have the minor arcana, and lower canons is how we talk about it, and it's more of the yin aspect. So, like the social dynamics, the human affairs, the like Dramas that play themselves out, and so I just find that so interesting. Is it like? Like, in these two different traditions, there is still this concept of hey, there is something that is massive, that is the setting that we all live within, and then there is something about the like, the, the minor tips and the challenges and the dramas that we have in our human experiences, and this is how we can explain it within the context of this big picture that we're all living in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. It's so interesting, how? Yeah, it's like I think it gets to some sort of essentialist nature of humans which is like we are curious, we want to understand the world and then, you know, so many different cultures have developed different frameworks for Bringing some understanding to that and just inherent, like you know, like what you said about the dow, like the dow that Can be named is not the dow. It's sort of like If you think you've pinned it down to something, like you're not in the dow anymore. Yeah, and like the arcana's Meaning mystery and secrets, it's like you can't know, like we're gonna Bring you into the mystery and bring you into the secret and you get to explore, but there's just there's, there's part of it that you can never distill into your, uh, human perception and kind of conquer or you know Um fully understand.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, which then, like a part of my own practice with the yi ching is um, when I throw coins and I get the hexagram and I look up the, the trigrams that make up the hexagram, before I consult the books, I like to Sort of like invoke my past ancestors and just sit with those two elements for a minute and be like okay, so like what would it look like? Like you know, if we're gonna use, you know, the, the fire over fire that I pulled today, um, what happens when fire meets fire, you know, and this image that I came to was like two people coming to a hearth together you know and it's like, like the like warmth and the like reciprocity of sharing story back and forth with each other and like Like that is the feeling that I get when I sit with this hexagram.
Speaker 1:That might be unique to my own experience of it, but to me it's like the more you can personalize these things, the the deeper relationship you have with them. And Then, when that hexagram comes up again, it's like this old friend that you're meeting again, um, versus something that you just pulled out of a book and like consulted a book for the answer. You know, I think, always, always, always. Like go back to the wisdom that you already have within yourself, like we all know what you know wind feels. Like we all know what earth feels like. Like can you sit with these elements and like Come up with your own explanation and poetry around, like what that element actually invokes and feels like for you?
Speaker 2:I love that. I love that a lot and I think, for both systems, if you work with them and you're not like coming at them like In the predict the future magic eight ball kind of way and you come with that curiosity, that there's um An opportunity. I feel like working with both systems helps you develop your connection with your intuition and especially when you're willing to like sit with what you see and see what feelings come up inside, you see how your body reacts. Like life will show us eventually if our intuition is On. You know was like showing us the right direction or not. Like we will find out. But before that, if we're working with each hand or tarot, we get some of that Affirmation or validation, I guess, around what we've been sensing.
Speaker 2:Like the felt sense we've already had. So, you know, maybe it's like we suspect and hope that this collaboration and these podcast series will bring together these different kinds of stories or, um, spread a little warmth and fire to you know, other people who might be listening.
Speaker 2:But then when you see the hexagram show up for you it's like, oh, my intuition was Onto something like what I was feeling was is being affirmed here, and so we get this like kind of shorter turnaround time with our intuitive sense, and so I really liked tarot as a way for people to develop more connection with intuition, because the world we live in does not that teaches us how to do that or want us to really do that, because it's not going to take us in the direction of the systems that want to use our labor or want us to spend our money, um. So, yeah, I love that. That came up for me as you were talking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, love it. So Now that we have like nerded out about like philosophy and context and like all the things that we find wonderful, um, when we take it down to the practical level, how can we bring these divination tools into our lives and what can we expect when we work with them?
Speaker 2:I guess, yeah, I mean, I think it's. I guess what I might recommend or advise or offer as a suggestion is to start with curiosity and to stay with curiosity, um, and to be patient with yourself and with Whatever you're working with. I think are for me, coming from a like good student kind of upbringing. There was this impulse to like learn it all and like know it all, and it's an expand, ever expanding universe like you just can't. You can only deepen your understanding and also deepen your relationship to the Mystery at the same time.
Speaker 2:Like they go together the more you know the more you don't know, um, so you know, being willing to move slowly and gradually and taking it in the you know it can be fun, I guess, with tarot, or helpful to start by pulling a card On days when you feel like it in the morning and doing what you described like looking at the image, seeing what comes up, coming to your own conclusions. Not looking at the book, because I'll also say that the guidebooks that come in tarot decks are usually small, so they're they're not going to give you all the nuance and some are definitely better than others, but, um, you might go to that language and find that it doesn't really fit what you're feeling, because it's just one interpretation or just a couple of interpretations.
Speaker 2:So I think it's nice to sit with the card, go through your day, maybe look at the guidebook at the end, but come back to the card to say how did I feel this today? Or like, how did I experience this? Or where did this come up? And Doing exactly what you described, which is developing a personal relationship to the archetypes, and it's such a heady uh Space. So for humans, we need to, like, find practical examples and applications, and your life is a great place for that. Um, so, yeah, I would come to it with respect, curiosity, with the amount of investment you want to make and no pressure on yourself, and also never using the practice against yourself. Like these cards think I'm a jerk? Or? Um, these cards are affirming my guilt or my judge, my self judgment? Um, I feel like they are always Working in our best and highest interests, and so we should bring our thoughts to kind of looking To that space first.
Speaker 1:Love it. That feels really practical, actually, and not just with divination, but with with life. Um, I think, everything that you could have said, you could have just taken the context of Turn it out of it and it would have applied to life in a really beautiful way Um, I think, what I would like, teacher, and yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I think what I would like to add is that, like this conversation makes sense On your podcast because it is all about the tarot and all about divination, it might not make as much sense At the outset on my podcast because my podcast is called the rooted business podcast and it's for entrepreneurs and in Particularly I speak to, like, spiritual entrepreneurs, um, but I'm going to argue that it's such a beautiful way. If I should back up a little bit, my community is all about how do we, despite the fact that we are born with this condition of Uh being born in the modern age instead of the paleolithic age, where we have to interact with capitalism and it is a necessary thing that we have to do on a daily basis Like, how can we, even within the context of that, still maintain integrity To our roots, which is always going to go back to nature? And so, if I can use and borrow that analogy that you made earlier of, like, this is a tool to help us Communicate with ourselves and with nature. That's how I see it is. It is such a beautiful tool for anybody who's wanting to take on any sort of project, whether it's an art project or a creative project or, you know a business project or the project of a committed relationship like. Like we can all benefit to look at nature as a teacher In the midst of all those big projects.
Speaker 1:That can feel again like a very, very human experience. But really we are, you know, humans having this experience within this bigger cosmos of nature, and I think we've Divorced ourselves and separated ourselves to a point where, like I look at so much of the disease whether you want to contextualize that in the concept of like society or bodies or culture or relationships like so much of those diseases come from us not being able to connect back to our source, which is nature. And so anytime I can have a tool that I can reach for and connect back to nature in some way and have, you know, like, let's say, my launch isn't going well Like have that sort of explained to the context of nature, like I always find comfort in that. So that's why I see the practical usage of this. It's not, as you know, like Tell me the fortune, tell me the future, sort of a way. It is a, yet again, another teacher that, if you're open to it, has so much depth and learning that you can learn from.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was beautifully said and I would just add that I I feel like it can be A nice navigation system in a way, and I think even for the wonderful people that you work with, who are spiritual entrepreneurs and probably have some distaste for capitalism but also want to make money and want to, um, have the resources they need to live the life that they want, there's this like constant struggle for how to create that balance or how to live inside of capitalism in alternative kind of ways, and I think it's really hard, I know, I know I think it's really hard to, yeah, to like pluck out the implants that capitalism has given us, because it's been.
Speaker 2:You know, it's just like the water we swim in and, yeah, there's some parts that we can see very clearly and other parts that take longer to identify, and so I think tarot or the each thing can kind of be a kind of anti-capitalist Navigation system or a way to like kind of check in. And also, I love to think about my business as having its own, as its own being, and like I've had an astrology chart done for my business and I found out like she's very old and she's kind of grumpy and she wants to help humanity. But she's kind of disappointed in them and I kind of think of her, like Rebecca from um Ted Lasso, like I feel, like I want to, I want her to have that energy, um, but I can do a tarot reading to kind of talk to her you know and see like what do you need?
Speaker 2:What are you wanting? How do you feel right now? Um? So yeah, anyway there's. It's a great space for creativity too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah love it. So, for those of you who enjoyed this conversation which I hope you have, because we've now talked for an hour and a half almost oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:It's going to be longer, but can I show you the cards I pulled real quick. Yes, yes, please. Okay, so the first one is the student of vessels. This is the Liberation Tarot deck and it's really interesting because the guidebook says like describes each image. It says a Chinese woman kind of dancing in this like green field. So this is the page of cups, which is really about curiosity and trying to understand things that are not fully understandable. Like a traditional version of this card will have a fish coming out and the person is like looking at the fish and kind of wondering, like what's your life? Like when do you go? What do you know?
Speaker 2:And they don't speak the same language, but they're like I want to know you. So we have this one and then we have what's. They call it the portal in this deck, but it's wheel of fortune. So wheel of fortune is kind of like fortunes are spinning, things are changing, like there's opportunity or it's a little bit of giving us throwing more mystery icing on top. It's like, yeah, something will be shifting, but we're not going to tell you what.
Speaker 1:So isn't that exciting? Like I love all three of the images that we pulled and how they, like, each describe a different facet of this relationship.
Speaker 2:I feel like I think we'll need to pull. Do a little divination before each episode.
Speaker 1:That's great. So, yeah, if you are interested in this kind of work, I want to just like point you towards Cecily. She's got a podcast out. You know, I'm just saying that because I want people from my podcast to like go check her out and she has a year long program. You're going to have to remind me what it's called now because yeah, it's called the creative magic collective.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes and I'm going to be in it because I was part of the process of you writing the sales page for it and I was like, oh my God, this is what I need in my life. So I'm going to be in it and I think part of it is you get a beautiful book that you have written and, again, YouTubers get the joy of seeing this. I'm so excited to get this in the mail. It's called tarot for creative spirits beautifully illustrated, lots of journaling prompts. Anything that Cecily does is done with such deep intention and I'm just, yeah, I'm really excited for being part of your creative magic collective.
Speaker 2:I'm so glad you've come on. Come on the adventure, yeah. And can I say for I don't specifically serve people who run businesses, but I'm sure there are people in my audience I know there are who run their own spiritual practice and who are spiritual entrepreneurs, and I encourage you to keep listening to Kat's podcast, the rooted business podcast, and check out her business alchemy, alchemist, mentorship, which is a really beautiful way to kind of reframe or investigate the structure of your business and develop your offers and focus on sustainability. And there's a great discovery process for discovering your dowel and kind of like the root of your purpose that's probably connected to your business. So highly recommend.
Speaker 1:Oh, I feel so seen Same, yeah. And then if you're just wanting to like nerd out about dowelism and each thing, I have a free course up where I take you through 12 of the hexagrams to the energetics of the year. You can find all that info on my website. And then I'm going to start opening up like very, very limited spots for each reading. So those will be on a donation based process and I'll be donating all proceeds to I haven't decided which charity yet. It's probably going to be some sort of horse related charity, because that is my life, and so those will be opening up on my website very soon as well. So keep an eye out for all of that Please reserve one for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and how can people find you, cecily?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can find me at typewriterterrocom or on Instagram at typewriterterro, and my podcast is called your Creative and Magical Life.
Speaker 1:Love it All the podcast places, yeah. And then you have an option for folks if they want to just buy the book, right yeah you can just buy the book.
Speaker 2:By the time this comes out, it will be up for sale, so you can get the book on its own and work through it on your own, though you can also have a beautiful community of people like Kat and others who are going on their own journey along with you, and you got group support. You do journaling sessions once or twice a week, so you can just come and pull your card and write and yeah, so both are available. I get tarot readings as well and do coaching around creativity and spirituality.
Speaker 1:Love it. Yeah, I mean highly recommend being in a group situation with Cecily. I know I'm really really looking forward to it. And then for myself, if you're curious, you can find me Kathosulee on Instagram or Kathosuleecom, which is just my website, and it's getting a whole new makeover right now, and so in a couple of months it's going to look really different. But if there's any sort of connection point, those are the two places, and I'm super friendly, so you can just DM me too. That's just how I like to roll with people. So thanks for hanging out with us for this really lovely intro, and then we'll be coming at you with a new episode on a seasonal basis. Thanks, y'all.