In episode 12 of Living Tarot, I talk about how to approach your tarot practice in daily life. There is a lot of information out there in internetland about how to effectively create your own tarot reading practice.  That much information can lead to overwhelm, anxiety and avoidance.  My goal in this episode is to give you some clear and concise ways to start incorporating your tarot reading into daily life.

• I give some pointers about daily card pools and how to ask effective questions that won’t traumatize you.
• I also talked a little bit about goal-oriented spreads for your day or your week and how you can use the Tarot to help you more effectively achieve those goals.
• I speak to the importance of using Tarot as a tool in daily life when so many of us are feeling especially anxious and overwhelmed.
• Finally I talk about My 7-week Tarot course Practical Tarot for everyday intuitives that is open for enrollment right now and teaches tarot for real life situations. This intuitive tarot course is all about integrating your tarot practice into your everyday life as a practical tool for decision making, managing anxiety, and empowering you to move forward towards your goals with confidence. 

Connect with Sheila:

Sign up for Practical Tarot for Everyday Intuitives here – https://www.starsagespirit.com/practicaltarot/

To book a tarot reading, virtual tarot party, or distance Reiki session with Sheila click here – https://www.starsagespirit.com/services/

To read more about Sheila’s offerings click here – https://app.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=18090641

Or on Instagram www.instagram.com/starsagespirit

Check out this episode!

Transcript:

Sheila M  0:05  

Welcome to Living Tarot. I’m your host Sheila Masterson. I’m a tarot reader and teacher, an energy healer and medium and creator of Practical Tarot for Everyday Intuitives. Each week on this podcast, I’ll share my own experience of embracing and growing intuition and interview guests about how they heard the call of intuition, embraced the adventure, and embodied the tarot along the way. Join us and learn how you can stop second guessing. Empower yourself through intuition and live intentionally with the Tarot.

Welcome back to Living Tarot. This week, I’m excited to talk about a topic that’s pretty important, whether you are a brand new reader or somebody who considers herself to be more established. I’m really interested to see what comes from this episode for all of you because we’re talking today about building a sustainable self Tarot practice and what that looks like. 

So, there’s a couple things at play when we talk about building this practice. So if you are brand new to Tarot, and you’re just learning to read for yourself, wonderful, I welcome you. If you are a reader who has tons of years of experience, you may still find something here. We can be our own worst enemy sometimes. I speak from, from a lot of personal experience of being my own worst enemy with my readings. But hopefully you will also get something out of this episode. It’s really meant for everyone. 

So, to get started, I really wanted to talk about this today because I think it’s important For us to establish routines now more than ever, in the era of COVID, and having a lot of anxiety and intense feelings that we’re processing, there’s never a better time to be keeping track of your readings. And I will tell you, I can be very sporadic about keeping track of what cards I’m drawing and what day and what questions I’m asking. And so the number one thing I will recommend is having a place where you can write down the things that come up in your readings, especially if you’re doing like a longer term study of what’s coming up for you. It can be so incredibly powerful to actually be capturing that information. Like any good habit building a sustainable self tarot practice really means finding an easy way to incorporate into your daily life. And so when we’re trying to build good habits, it’s really important to have repetition. So one of my deepest beliefs about Tarot is that it does not always have to happen in this big beautiful ceremony where you burn incense and, and meditate and do all kinds of stuff. That’s lovely if you have the time for it. But my wheelhouse is really making Tarot sustainable, and a piece of your real everyday life. And I fully recognize that for many of us right now, we do not have tons of time to do those things. Maybe you have children at home with you. Maybe you have a partner who is in your space more than usual. Maybe you’re in a house with a lot of family and it’s just a little complicated to find your own time and if that is the case, I am sending you so much love and grace because I know it can be so challenging. But what’s really important is finding just the small moments where things might be messy, there might be background noise, there might be something else going on. But you are still giving yourself the opportunity to step aside and just pull a card and see what’s going on. It doesn’t always have to be super elaborate. So I want to give you that permission. It’s a wonderful way to connect to get very spiritual to meditate to really drop in. But it can also be something that is like a quick daily check in that doesn’t require a whole lot of ceremony, or things to be perfect or for you to be emotionally neutral.

So I do really want to talk about that. One of the most popular ways to start is to just pull a daily card, and I think this is a fabulous way to get started. It’s a really good way. It’s something I do every day. And it’s a really good way to stay consistent and also to see what’s coming up for you on a particular day. There are some specifics about this that I think are important to address though. One of the things that I see happen a lot for people, especially when they are newer readers is pulling a card with a question like, “what will I experienced today?” Or “what can I expect today”, something like that. And I really encourage you to not ask questions in that way for a couple of reasons. When we are coming from a trauma-informed approach, it is important that we not ask questions that are going to set us up for failure. And suppose for example, that you asked your deck “What am I going to experience today?” and pulled the 10 of Swords, or pulled the tower card? You’re kind of going to be walking around for the rest of your day, waiting for the other shoe to drop or like waiting for something scary to happen. Or waiting to feel past trauma come up. And that can even do more damage than the actual thing happening without you knowing it’s going to happen because it brings up extra anxiety, this feeling of dread. And so what I would suggest, kindly, instead of saying, “What I experienced today?” is shifting the question just slightly to something like “What energy Do I need to embody today?” Or the question I asked most days is what? “What energy Do I need to embody to feel successful today?” And I’ve been very intentional about structuring that question in that exact way, because it’s not consistent across the board. What makes me feel successful on Monday might make me feel lazy on Thursday. And so, each day I got that opportunity just for a minute to check in. with myself and really see what card I could embody to feel successful that day. So that’s a really lovely way to check in with yourself and to really see what’s coming up.

 I have also noticed when I track that reading on a regular basis, that I will see weeks where I am like working my way through a suit, where one day I pulled a page of wands, and then the 10 of wands, and then the nine of wands, and then the eight of wands, and I’m like, Is this some sort of joke? Or is this really happening? And it can be really interesting because over time, as you write these things down, you can start to see themes that are weaving through different periods of your life. And maybe you’re in a very creative time and you’re pulling a lot of cups cards, or maybe you’re in a time where you’re extremely focused on your career. And you are pulling a lot of wands and a lot of pentacles because you’re trying to marry up what you’re really passionate. About with that ability to make money and build structure. And so it can really enlighten you where your focus is, especially at a time like this when a lot of us are feeling a little bit unfocused. So it really builds on itself as you go. And it gives you the opportunity to reflect back on these patterns. And also to notice what cards you work with very easily, what comes very naturally, and what feels uncomfortable, which can also help open your mind a little bit about your attitude towards certain cards. Because we all have cards that we find challenging, and it’s not as simple as the  “negative cards” in the Tarot. Some of us really struggle with the cups, we struggle to be in our emotions. We struggle to sit with that discomfort. Others of us are extremely emotional, very easy time connecting with emotion, but a really hard time maybe connected with reality and building a career and really establishing relationships, and a healthy way in which we aren’t overextending ourselves emotionally and so we might struggle more with Pentacles. So it can really show you where your strengths are where your weaknesses are and also with themes are coming up through your life as time goes by.

Hey there I wanted to let you know that my seven week Tarot course Practical Tarot for Everyday Intuitives is open for enrollment now. This course will help you stop anxiety in its tracks, effortlessly make decisions and read Tarot like a pro in no time. It’s time to learn Tarot for real life situations and you don’t have to do it alone. What would be possible if you could choose to prioritize developing your intuition as a tool for discernment, stronger relationships and effortless decision making. Practical Tarot Everyday Intuitives is a seven week Tarot course that helps you go from Tarot newbie to tarot reading whiz by using my tarot-informed decision-making method to tune in to intuition and move from indecisive procrastinator to confident decision maker. I know from personal experience that intuition is the key to learning Tarot quickly and providing accurate, actionable and empowering readings for real life situations. As I said, this is the last time I’m going to open the course for the rest of the year. It’s a great time to tune in. We’ll be working together on a weekly basis, both with prerecorded video courses, and live q&a session so you can bring all of the questions that come up from the weekly lessons to me directly, get your questions answered, and get some insights. If you would like to sign up. The link is in the show notes today. Or you can head over to starsagespirit.com/practicaltarot. I’d love to have you. 

So that can be a really lovely way to get started. For some people, they might hear that and be like, Oh, nope, no a bitch. I don’t have time every day to pull a card, and I get it. I really do. I know things are really crazy right now. So another way to do this would be to give yourself a reading for the week. And if you know that things get really hectic is your week goes on if you’ve got kids in school, if you are homeschooling, and working full time, God bless. Seriously, I don’t know how you do it. I’m sending you so much love and grace. I’m not. I don’t know how you do it truly. And what I will say is that sometimes when we do have a more hectic daily life, this can be a good option. And so what I try to stay away from again is those questions about what will I experience and to focus instead on you know, where can I draw strength This week, you can still ask about like, what obstacles might come up. So I will ask sometimes what obstacles might I encounter this week, but I always give myself some information about how to overcome them as well. So if I said, what obstacles might I encounter this week? I would also say what resources do I have to overcome those obstacles or to work with those obstacles, or to learn from them? Because that really takes some of the dread out of things, and can offer you a little bit more detail about exactly what it is that’s going on. And that can be extremely helpful. You’re also giving yourself a reading again, when we talked in the episode about asking good questions. You’re also giving yourself a reading that’s empowering you and giving you the questions that you need to start to make better decisions for yourself through the week. And what happens is, when we do come up against that negative thing, so to speak or that obstacle, it’s less scary because we kind of knew it was coming. And also, we’re already aware of what the resources we have to call on are. So it kind of takes some of the fear out of things. So that can be a really wonderful way to handle things. And again, with a weekly reading, I would encourage you to take at least like five minutes just to take some quick notes on what came up. 

There’s also really wonderful apps. If you’re a super busy person, you don’t like to take handwritten notes, or if you’d like to voice dictate notes. I’m trying to think off the top of my head. I know Labyrinthos is a really good one. It’s free and it will allow you to track your daily card pulls. And you can choose to manually enter the physical cards that you pulled rather than using like the digital because you can get digital readings on there as well. But off the top of my head, that’s one that I use sometimes to track things. And it’s very easy. You can download it on your phone, you don’t have to keep a notebook, but also a really good option for capturing that information.

So, one of my favorite options and something that I do a lot is a goal oriented card of the day towards whatever a weekly or daily goal might be. So bear with me while, I describe this one. This is one of my favorites. Because I’m a very goal oriented person. I’m kind of always focused I on the prize, and if you set goals for the week, or a goal for each day, you can draw a card for the week or the day to tell you how to achieve that goal. So this can be really, really helpful. And if you are like me, you might be struggling a little Bit with brain fog, and exhaustion with everything going on in the world right now. And so what can be extremely helpful is to have that extra direction where we are looking at something that will specifically help us achieve our goal. 

So for example, if I wanted to make sure that I wrote three blog posts one day and I drew the four of swords, I would know that taking lots of breaks in between each blog post would help me get things done. Now my natural inclination is not to do that. I use the Pomodoro method. I set a timer for 25 minutes I kind of work through things and then give myself a break work through things and then give myself a break. But in general, I stay pretty focused on the task at hand and I don’t like to like get up and give myself a separate time. But if I pulled the four of swords, I would know it was really important to incorporate rest in between each blog that I write, so that I actually have the time to let my brain kind of reset and rethink things. And that would be very important for me, like I said, because it’s not my natural inclination. But if I pull that card at the beginning of the day, then I know that that is what’s coming up for me. And it allows me to be a little bit more gracious with myself, when maybe I’m in the middle of writing those blogs, and I feel exhausted. So that can be really helpful. And I like this approach because it’s very direct, and very actionable. 

So you can also say, hey, my goal for the week is to write- I’m just going to stay with blog posts, 10 blog posts, how can I approach that? What should I do on what day and pull a card for each day of the week? And that will really show you you know, maybe one day you get the four of swords and you’re like, well, that’s not looking great for being focused and energized. And the next day you get like the eight of wands or something and You’re like, yep, that’s my day. That’s the day I’m gonna focus on doing that. But it can also show you things like, for example, I do this blog, and I do one on one client work. And maybe I have a day where I’m doing a lot of creative work. So if I pulled the queen of cups one day, I might say, okay, that’s a really good day for creative work. I’m going to focus on that. So I can really give you an action plan for the week. And especially if you are a person like me, who keeps a planner likes to write out goals for yourself and really be focused on everything. This can be a really helpful way to view your week, and a really productive real life tarot reading, where you’re incorporating what you’re doing in the reading with your real life. 

Finally, probably the most important way to read for yourself and to build it into your life in a sustainable way is to read on Big stuff that you have going on. If you’re mulling something over if you’re really frustrated in a relationship, if you’re looking for your ideal job, but you’re not really sure where to look, read on it, really look into it for yourself design your own spread. Or if you don’t like to design your own spreads, look one up online. And there are so so so many Tarot spreads out there. And I’m a huge proponent of kind of designing intuitive spreads, especially when there’s something that you’re going through over and over. And I think some of us, especially those of us, who read on a regular basis for clients can kind of forget, because we spend so much time doing it. And we get so used to it and we might use it in some spots, but think it doesn’t translate over into other areas of our life and we get we have like some hang ups about it. I think those of us who read full time. But part of the reason why we learned this in the first place is so that we can really reflect and give ourselves the answers that we need in the moment and take an objective bird’s eye view and everything that’s going on. So what questions might you feel called to? What might give you the deepest insight into what you really need right now and what empowering questions can you ask about that? So I hope that’s given you a little bit to think about today. 

And if you already know that you are interested in learning Tarot, my course Practical Tarot for Everyday Intuitives is opening up again, September 21 for my second run.  I’m really excited. It is a seven week course where we take you from brand new beginner to tarot reading expert, using my Tarot-informed decision making process, you’ll learn how to interrupt anxiety in its tracks, and really get clear answers to big questions in your life. So if that is something that appeals to you, I would love to have you and that link to sign up for that waitlist is also in the show notes today.  I hope that this episode has been helpful for you. And I look forward to speaking with all of you again next week. 

Thank you so much for listening to Living Tarot. If you loved today’s episode, please leave us a review and subscribe so that you never miss an episode. This helps us reach even more budding intuitives. Feel free to share on Instagram and tag me @starsagespirit and let me know what you learned, what surprised you, and what you’d like to hear even more of. As always, if you want to hear more about my courses, or book a reading with me, or for full episodes show notes you can head over to starsagespirit.com

Ads:  Sign up for Tarot for Real Life  or Join the Waitlist for Practical Tarot for Everyday Intuitives

In episode 9, I dive deep on four reasons why you might want to get a professional tarot reading. You will probably recognize yourself in some of these reasons and what I really wanted to do was normalize outsourcing when you’re feeling overwhelmed or too emotionally attached to an outcome.

• I go deep into symptoms of needing an outside opinion on tarot readings.
• I speak to you how stress and overwhelm can cloud your ability to get a clear tarot reading on your own.
• I also talk about how to give yourself permission to spend your money and energy on self-care even if it’s something that you could, in theory, do for yourself.

Connect with Sheila:

Book a Tarot or Reiki session at starsagepspirit.com or find her on Instagram instagram.com/starsagespirit.

This episode really stressed the importance of knowing when is the right time to get a professional tarot reading. I also discuss issues of self-worth and the challenge that can come up around investing in yourself on something that might seem unnecessary or that you can do yourself. What’s really important to remember is that when we have too much buy-in to the outcome of a reading or too much emotion tied up in it it’s very difficult for even the best readers to find clarity. Outsourcing your tarot reading to a professional shows tremendous wisdom and courage and it can save you a lot of angst. And I also talk about the importance of doing your research before choosing a reader and making sure that you understand the service that you are purchasing so that you aren’t disappointed and you can get the maximum clarity through that tarot reading.

Check out this episode!

Transcript:

Sheila M  0:05  

Welcome to Living Tarot. I’m your host Sheila Masterson. I’m a tarot reader and teacher, an energy healer and medium, and creator of Practical Tarot for Everyday Intuitives. Each week on this podcast, I’ll share my own experience of embracing and growing intuition and interview guests about how they heard the call of intuition, embraced the adventure, and embodied the Tarot along the way. Join us and learn how you can stop second guessing, empower yourself through intuition, and live intentionally with the Tarot. 

Welcome back to Living Tarot. On today’s episode, I’m going to talk about a question that I get asked a lot which is when should I get a professional reading and when can I just do the reading for myself. And this is something I hear a lot. It’s also something that I think there is a little bit of shame about in the community. I think when it comes to specialty readings, or your ahead readings, or anything that’s kind of like fun and exciting, it’s very acceptable to go and participate in something fun. But if you’re struggling, it can sometimes be seen or internalized as weakness, or like you’re not a good enough reader. And so I really wanted to address that today, I wanted to talk about four different scenarios where you might find yourself feeling called to get a reading from somebody else. And also kind of take apart some of the shame that surrounds that. So let’s get started. So it’s simple I personally have experienced as a reader, it’s something I’ve heard reader friends talk about quite a bit. And I do think that there is some inherent shame as in not being able to do it yourself. If you’re a professional reader, especially, I think there is a lot of shame that surrounds that. And there’s a couple of things about this, that that bother me. So the first thing is that there’s really nothing wrong with reaching out when it’s something that you feel you can’t get clarity on. And in fact, I would say that it is more, more harmful and more frustrating to keep spinning your gears and to not accept that you kind of need somebody else’s help in the situation. Rather than just trying to force your way through or pretend it’s not happening. In my in my mind, it is a sign of an ethical And a grounded reader when you can accept that I’m not getting a clear read on the situation and I really need to outsource to to someone else. Or maybe I’m too emotional or whatever it is. So I really do encourage you. If you are a reader and you are feeling pressured to not seek out help from someone else, I really do encourage you to ask yourself, why that might be and what’s coming up for you that you feel that you need to be able to do everything yourself. The other thing is that not every reader has the same understanding or the same sweet spot in terms of their readings. So some people are extremely predictive readers, they find it very easy to predict. Some people are relationship readers, some people are career readers. And so you might be asking a question. That’s not really In your sweet spot, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with seeking out somebody who is really an expert in that. So, I did want to talk about that a little bit. And we’ll kind of get into it a little bit more as we talk about each of these four reasons why you might seek out a professional reading rather than doing it yourself. 

So Reason number one would be that you keep asking the same question over and over, and you’re not getting any clarity. So either you keep reading on the same situation and one day you’re getting, maybe you know, the four of cups and the next day you’re getting the 10 of cups. And then the next day you’re getting the five of swords and you’re just feeling very, very confused at feels like the energy of the readings are not in alignment with each other. Maybe you’re feeling a little bit of a frenzy, where you’re just kind of pulling card after card because you’re getting very confused. I love you, I have been you. I send you so much love and understanding. But for God’s sake, put down the tarot cards, give yourself a break, step away. Give yourself that opportunity to get a little bit of space between you and the question that you’re answering. Even if it feels super urgent, even if you can’t imagine putting it down right now, and really give yourself the opportunity to step away for a couple days. And I’m serious when I say this, give yourself that space. And then come back to the deck. Ask the question again, see if it feels different. If it feels like you’re getting a little more clarity, if you’re getting just that little bit of space has adjusted your ability to really connect with the question to connect with what your deck is trying to tell you, and to really approach things in a reflective and understand Way, rather than putting a ton of pressure on yourself to find the answer right now, because what I’ve found through several years of practice now is that when I find myself getting into this mode, I’m pulling card after card. And I’m confused and I can’t quite get clarity. And I feel that almost like desperation for clarity, that it’s really important that I give myself that little bit of space. Because sometimes even coming back later in the day, coming back a couple days later, could add a huge amount of perspective that was not there before. So I really do encourage you to try that first. Especially, especially given the way the world is today. And I know many of us are trying to be mindful about how we’re spending our money and our resources. And so I do really encourage you to see if you can figure it out yourself because Part of this whole Tarot journey is really being able to sit in the tough stuff with ourselves, to outsource when we really need it, but to try to give ourselves the space, and the time and the energetic and mental resources, to be able to come back to those same questions, or that same set of questions, and seek a new answer and seek greater clarity and greater understanding. And you can usually tell if you’re there if you’re feeling a little less urgency in the question asking and a little, a little more understanding and compassion for yourself, which is almost always where those answers come from. When we’re coming in with that desperation and that frenzy. It’s very hard to get a clear understanding, which isn’t to say that you shouldn’t ever pull if you feel that way. I am a very, very firm believer that you should come to your cards with whatever is In that moment, but I do think it’s really important that when we, when we approach something that is difficult that we don’t instantly outsource our power to someone else. My entire philosophy behind reading is really to come from a way that empowers myself and also empowers clients that I’m reading for. And so I am always looking for ways to bring the power back into my own hands, to make myself feel more comfortable more at ease, and to be able to sit with those messy emotions, or those complicated feelings that can come up and also to deal with that sense of urgency. And really notice what’s true about that urgency and what just feels true. And so I do really think that that is a good time. If you come back to your cards after And you still feel that you cannot get that clarity, you’re still feeling very confused. Or if it’s just not in your your area of expertise, and you just feel a little foggy about how to ask about it, or you just don’t feel like you’re getting the kind of answers that can provide you with actionable steps forward, then I would really encourage you to seek out somebody else. And just to get that, that outside perspective.

Just like you know, when we, when we struggle with mental health things we seek a therapist, or when we struggle with medical things, maybe we seek an herbalist or a doctor, that it’s just their expertise and they will maybe have an easier time answering that question for you. And it can really take the pressure off. I have also had this experience of as soon as I booked the appointment for the thing that I want to talk about that I’m suddenly a To read on it, it’s kind of that same sensation as you’re feeling really sick and then you go to the doctor’s office, and all of a sudden you feel better, it’s like, it’s like you the pressure is off a little bit and you’re able to see a little bit more clearly. So sometimes just taking that pressure off yourself by booking the appointment can also provide some clarity. So that’s reason number one. Reason number two, you’re too emotional about the situation. Now we touched on this a little bit in in reason one but I do want to talk about this because I am a huge proponent, and you’ll hear me time and time again talk about the fact that I have come to my cards when I am very emotional and very upset more often than I’ve come to them when I’m peaceful and calm. That’s just the type of person that I am. I am a highly emotional person. I’m a very sensitive person. I deal with a lot of energy on a daily basis. I have some passion trauma that I deal with. And so, I use my cards very specifically to help me with anxiety, with depression with other mental health struggles, and also with the struggles of daily life and feeling disappointed, frustrated, and 2020 especially so many of us dealing with this global pandemic, a huge amount of uncertainty that always existed but was never quite so directly in our faces. And so, I really do encourage you on a regular basis, to normalize coming to your cards when you are emotional, when you are in perfect, without ceremony or without need to make it a huge ritual or production but just to make it something that is a functional part of your daily life, which is one of the main tenants of my course practical, terrible for everyday intuitives. And one of the main things that I teach in our course How to really show up even when you are emotional. That said, we do have things that come up, you know, catastrophic breakups, job loss, highly stressful events that can be very wrapped up in emotion and self value and self worth and can really cloud our ability to see things clearly. And so I still encourage you to come to your deck to ask questions when things when things are going wrong, and you need that that pause and that clarity and that something to reflect on something to kind of interrupt that anxiety process. But I do think that if you’re finding that that is kind of a consistent state, first of all, I’m a huge proponent of therapy. So find yourself a good therapist talk it out, but I consider other Tarot readers And spiritual healers to be kind of the spiritual therapists and sometimes, that’s exactly what we need to find direction and clarity in our lives. It’s a huge a huge part of my business and what I do with career Tarot and giving people and empowering people to make the best decisions in different career moves. And so I really do encourage you if you feel like you have so much emotion wrapped up in something that you can’t quite see things clearly that you’re not, you’re not getting any kind of clear answer from your cards. Again, same philosophy as with situation one, where you can give yourself a little bit of time and see if you deregulate a little bit. If you start to calm down, if you start to feel more clarity, you can come back and see if it works out but especially when we are in some of the heavier emotions, grief, anxiety, maybe we’re recovering from trauma, it can be very helpful to have somebody else hold the space for us. Because I have had the experience of going in and having a reading done, and feeling so incredibly nurtured and taken care of that I can finally see, even as they’re pulling the cards, I can see what’s going on and I can get more clarity. And again, it’s similar to just like scheduling the appointment kind of takes the pressure off. But being in there with somebody else kind of holding that burden for you can offer a huge amount of comfort and a huge amount of clarity that it’s very hard to get when we’re under this fog of heavy duty emotion. And so I do really encourage you, if you are feeling that clouding of emotion or too much emotion, or too long, a prolonged period of emotion. I really do encourage you, that’s a great time to Seek out a reading to ask for a referral. 

Hey there, I want you to be the first to know that I am offering a free training Tarot for Real Life – Get your Shit together with the Tarot on Sunday, September 20, 2020 at 12pm eastern time, this workshop is extremely powerful. It talks about the top mistakes that new Tarot readers make. We’ll cover the neuroscience of Tarot and how it can stop the anxiety cycle, and the exact steps to follow to start reading effectively and efficiently for yourself. This is where the spirituality of the Tarot meets real life situations. And my goal is to have you leave that workshop, either with a reboot to your tarot reading or if you’re a brand new beginner with a good idea of how to get started. So you can sign up for that Free workshop in the shownotes today or if you already know that you are really interested in signing up for a tarot course, I will be opening the doors for my Tarot course for the last time for 2020 the course is called Practical Tarot for Everyday Intuitives. It is a seven week Tarot course that takes you from brand new beginner to tarot reading Pro, and helps you learn how to bring that practice into real life, how to use the Tarot to help you make complex decisions effortlessly. So if that sounds good to you, you can sign up for the waitlist in the show notes today. 

Situation three is extreme stress and overwhelm. So I speak from experience when I say that those of us who do readings who are healers who are caretakers, and this goes above and beyond just People who do this for a living, but also people who read for themselves for for their own spiritual practice and for their own information, if you are going through a prolonged period of extreme stress and anxiety, if you are taking care of a sick loved one, if you are living through a global pandemic, if you are dealing with environmental stress in an unsafe neighborhood, if you are a person of color and you are feeling intense anxiety right now, because of police brutality, and white supremacy, then I encourage you to give yourself a little bit of space and again to go to someone who can really offer you a safe space to process everything that’s going on. It can be really hard to come into even just reading for yourself if you are under that kind of intense stress and it can be hard to give it the kind of energy and attention it deserves when you’re already working from a depleted place. And when we do feel that kind of chronic stress, that overwhelming feeling of just intense, intense stress, we can really struggle to have the brain space even just for for our daily lives to be fully present in our daily lives, to show up for the people who need us to show up for ourselves. And so this is one of those times when we can find our practice just kind of slipping kind of falling by the wayside. And if you know, for example, that you have a really stressful time coming up, either with work with family stuff, if you know that you’re acting as a long term caretaker for someone and you really are feeling that stress. It can be very, very helpful and very therapeutic to schedule time for yourself. Schedule an appointment with When else, you know that you will hold it, you know that you won’t move it. And that is not always the case with our own personal practice. And so it can really offer you a fixed time something that you are committed to. It offers an ability to be accountable to taking care of yourself to getting that clarity. And so if you are entering a period like that, if you know that you have something coming up, or if you’ve just been that person who’s like, oh, I’ll go next month, I’ll go next month, and it’s been like, I don’t know, more than two months. Maybe just schedule something, even if it’s farther out. Even if you can’t imagine having time right now. Most of us especially now, with so many readers, working online through video chat, can take at least a half hour 20 minutes, 60 minutes, whatever it is out of our day to really kind of check in, have somebody else hold the space for us live Listen to what we have going on and provide us some sort of feedback and insight. So that is situation number three. 

And then our final situation is if you’re really feeling called to, and this might sound obvious, but it’s not always because one of the things I’ve found in my personal practice is that and part of it is also like my relationship with money. My relationship with investing in myself, is that I think why should I pay for something that I can do myself, but I have found myself at times, feeling really called to get work done by somebody else, whether it’s energy work, whether it is a reading, just because I want to or just because I found someone whose work I really resonate with, and I want that kind of connection and so I’ve really found that if you are finding that kind of persistent thought coming up, if you follow somebody on Instagram, and you really love their work, or you love the way they write about things, or their slightly different perspective, even if it’s very different than your own, it can be a really wonderful exercise to give yourself the opportunity to go and treat yourself to that. And it doesn’t have to be a full hour it can be, you know, a half hour reading some people do parties. You know, it doesn’t have to be a super long reading in order for you to really feel that connection. And I do want to say that also, I have had incredibly profound readings with people who were coming into a party and we’re getting like a 15 minute reading and and called me or emailed me months later and said, Oh, my gosh, you know, I thought, you know, I was not really into it and and, you know, I thought the reading was interesting, but I didn’t really know how it was gonna work and then months later This is and this happened. And it was exactly what you said. And I’ve also had my own experience of getting, you know, a shorter couple card reading that was extremely powerful, and just very, very potent. So I really do encourage you. Even if you don’t have a full hour, even if you don’t have the resources to pay for a full hour, there are a lot of really wonderful opportunities and a lot of really talented readers who offer smaller offerings, shorter offerings, more accessible offerings, and can really offer a different perspective when you’re just really feeling called to that. And then there is also the element of you know, just something that sounds kind of fun. I I’ve seen readers do all different stuff that I just think is so creative and so innovative, and I just have to have it when I see it. I’m like, Oh, that’s so fascinating. Liquid an interesting way of looking at things. And so I do think that that when you see that that can be really exciting. And a good example of that is I know a lot of readers do your ahead readings around the new year or the end of the year into the new year.

Birthday readings, business, right? You know, all different kinds of things that people come out with throughout the year. So if you are seeing something like that, like, give yourself the permission, give yourself treat yourself, as I say, in parks and rec. And really give yourself that opportunity to take care. Because it is important. And I think that it’s easy with this work in particular to put things off and to say, Oh, well, if it’s still bothering me, like I’ll do it in a month or I’ll do it in two months, or I’ll do it next time I get paid or whatever it is and I’m not telling you to go into debt to get a tarot reading but I am telling you that it’s okay. And you don’t always have to justify every single thing to yourself, especially if you are a person if you are a professional reader, and you’re spending a lot of time holding space for other people, and putting a lot of energy out there to other people, and especially right now, when so many of us are feeling overwhelmed and maybe a little more anxious than usual with everything that’s going on in the outside world. So those four reasons again, just to recap, are you keep asking the same questions repeatedly. You’re too emotional about the situation, extreme stress and overwhelm and you’re just playing feeling called to it. So those are the reasons I also want to say and give a little bit of a caveat here, that I can be very helpful. Do your research before getting your reading. One of the things I’ve experienced as a reader is because I do multiple things. So I am a medium and a Reiki healer and a tarot reader. Sometimes people don’t fully read the descriptions of my services and assume that if they get a tarot reading with me that I will be communicating with their loved ones in spirit. And I know that that is how it works for some readers. It’s not how it works for me. Every once in a while somebody will show up but generally, I consider my tarot readings to be reading kind of like the Earthbound human energy flow less than the spirit side energy flow, and there’s absolutely messages that I’m getting from spirit guides and ancestors and angels. But it is not a communication with your loved ones who have passed. And so make sure that you read people’s descriptions. I do encourage you listening to podcasts, finding people on Instagram that you really resonate with. If you’ve been loving somebody posts for months and and you just love everything that they do book a reading, I mean, I pay that person for their time, first of all, but also, you know, obviously that is someone who’s reading style and who’s writing style and whose channeling style really connects for you. And I do encourage you to either go through a referral, or go through somebody like that, that you really connect with the way that they see the cards and the way that they see the world because it can really offer you a deeper understanding with In the reading, because you’re already feeling more comfortable, you’re already feeling like you’re connected with that person a little bit. So I do really encourage that as well. I will at some point, do a full episode on choosing the right spiritual practitioner for you. But I did just want to kind of put that in here at the end of this episode just to give you some ideas about how to get started looking for that. And of course, you can book with me through my website, Starsagespirit.com. I do have openings and I do readings every week. So that’s also a great option, just a shameless plug for myself there. But that’s all that I have for you today. I will be back next week with a brand new episode. And if you have any questions, you can always send them over to livingTarotpod@gmail.com and I would love to hear them. 

Thank you so much for listening to Living Tarot. If you loved today’s episode, please leave us a review and subscribe so that you never miss an episode. This helps us reach even more budding intuitives. Feel free to share on Instagram and tag me @starsagespirit and let me know what you learned what surprised you and what you’d like to hear even more of. As always, if you want to hear more about my courses, or book a reading with me, or for full episodes show notes you can head over to starsagespirit.com

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For episode 7 of Living Tarot, I dive into one of the most popular types of readings I do, relationship and love tarot readings.   We all know that when it comes to matters of the heart we can all be extra sensitive.

• I discuss some of the hangups that people have about asking for relationship advice in a tarot reading.
• I also talk about how important it is to normalize reading tarot to look into your love life, and how it can offer valuable perspectives on your motivations and your partners, and how to get clear action steps and problem solving insights.
• Relationships are complex and that’s why I also discuss a variety of ways to ask questions and how to approach a reading to deepen your connection and more towards understanding – which goes above and beyond just romantic relationships.
• I also give some pointers on asking about your love life if you are looking for love.

Connect with Sheila:

Book a Tarot or Reiki session at starsagepspirit.com or find her on Instagram instagram.com/starsagespirit.

Check out this episode!

Transcript:

Sheila M  0:05  

Welcome to Living Tarot. I’m your host Sheila Masterson. I’m a tarot reader and teacher, an energy healer and medium and creator of Practical Tarot for Everyday Intuitives. Each week on this podcast, I’ll share my own experience of embracing and growing intuition and interview guests about how they heard the call of intuition, embraced the adventure, and embodied the Tarot along the way. Join us and learn how you can stop second guessing,  empower yourself through intuition and live intentionally with the Tarot.

Welcome back to living Tarot. Today we’re going to talk about relationship Tarot. So probably how most people think about the Tarot, Especially people who are looking at references in pop culture and society at large. It is probably the it’s probably very close to number one in my business is probably kind of split between career and relationship Tarot. There are so many things you can read on obviously, but those are kind of the two heavy hitters for me. So we’re going to talk about situations that you may want to use Tarot to help give you some insight in relationships. And this isn’t just romantic relationships. This is true of all relationships. I will be speaking today more through the lens of romantic relationships, but consider this to be true for all relationships, anything that I’m talking about today. So we’ll look at some of the common types of readings that I do. And give you some new ideas maybe about how you can use Tarot to get insight into your own relationships. So here we go. So again, like we talked about in the last episode, when we talked about career Tarot, again, relationship Tarot can really help hold up a mirror to your relationships and also to your responsibility and your habits in relationships. It can show you how your past trauma so that 10 of Swords type of energy can show up in all different types of relationships in your life, but especially in romantic relationships and how we can start to notice how we are triggered or otherwise activated in our relationships and how we can start to take responsibility for that and improve the quality of our connection and our understanding of both ourselves and the other person. So

Unknown Speaker  3:10  

the first thing that relationship Taro can really help us do is separate emotion from reality, which is a little bit about what we’re talking about here. So feelings are not facts. That’s a big, you know, Instagram meme that I see a lot, but it is true. And it can feel very true and especially for people who do really struggle with trauma, especially childhood trauma, or trauma around the way that they received love from a young age or the way that they were exposed to romantic love, whether that is through their parents relationship or through relationships that they saw. on display growing up, but it can really form our long term opinion about our expectations and relationships, our expectations to be let down or for people to meet a certain standard that may or may not be possible, and what Taro can really do and a common reading that I do is one that really offers a lot of reflections. So what do I think is true? or What am I afraid is true, versus what is actually true. And these are important questions to ask because especially with something that is so full of emotion and so full of vulnerability, it is really hard for us to get out of our own heads often when it comes to romantic relationships especially and so with a reflection type spread, you can really start to compare where a lot of your fear and anxiety might come up in the relationship against what is actually true and what is actually happening. Because what I’ve seen over and over and doing this type of reading is that what we invent in our heads is never as bad as what is actually true in reality very, very rarely is that the case and normally, we kind of let our imagination run away with us and really fall into this trap of of catastrophizing at times and, and thinking that things are really, really wrong. And on the other side of things sometimes, especially when we’ve invested a lot of time and energy in a relationship, we can think it is, it is worth You know, there is kind of this, this fallacy. I’ve already invested this as much time and therefore, I should continue to invest time, I should continue to invest energy, if I just wait a little bit longer, this person will come around. If I just give it a little bit more energy, this person will finally see. And that’s not always the case and the other. The other aspect of this type of reading is it will really confront us with what’s true. So if we are on the other side of the spectrum, and we are extending the benefit of the doubt to somebody who maybe is not really deserving of it or is not really interested in it, it can really help us to confront that and to gain some clarity around what is really going on and where our blind spot might be in the relationship. And so that can be that is probably one of the more potent readings that I do personally in my own life and Also one of the readings that seems to have a really profound effect on clients as well, and can be really emotional and really, really heavy to sort through but also extremely clarifying. And one of the things that I speak about, in my course Practical Tarot for Everyday Intuitives is the fact that when we come to a reading, especially when we’re reading for ourselves, always be ready to hear a know or always be ready to hear that what you are hoping is going to happen is not going to happen. And if you aren’t ready to hear that know yet, if you aren’t ready to hear that things aren’t going to go your way then don’t ask the question yet. 

Sheila M  7:49  

Because if we, if we ask before we’re ready, because we really just want to have the answer. It can cause us to stop Taj and, and to, to kind of create this almost like a, like a hissy fit, you know, where we’re like, I’m not, I’m not doing this, I’m not recognizing that this is happening and I, I speak very much from my own personal experience when I say this and also from my experience of doing, you know, thousands of readings for other people and really seeing this displayed because so often we can fall into the trap of thinking that just because we want something to be true that it that it is and this type of spread can be very confronting. But it also saves us a lot of time and a lot of energy that we might be expending that maybe is not really being appreciated and not really being accepted and not really being reciprocated. And so it can really, it can really force us to have some honest conversations with ourselves.

Hey there, I want you to be the first to know that I am offering a free training Tarot for Real Life – Get your shit together with the Tarot on Sunday, September 20, 2020 at 12pm eastern time, this workshop is extremely powerful. It talks about the top mistakes that new Tarot readers make, will cover the neuroscience of Tarot and how it can stop the anxiety cycle, and the exact steps to follow to start reading effectively and efficiently for yourself. This is where the spirituality of the Tarot meets real life situations. And my goal is to have you leave that workshop, either with a reboot to your tarot reading or if you’re a brand new beginner with a good idea of how to get started. So you can sign up for that free workshop in the show notes today, or if you already know that you are really interested in signing up for a tarot course, I will be opening the doors for my Tarot course for the last time for 2020 the course is called Practical Tarot for Everyday Intuitives. It is a seven week Tarot course that takes you from a brand new beginner to tarot reading Pro, and helps you learn how to bring that practice into real life, how to use the Tarot to help you make complex decision effortlessly. So if that sounds good to you, you can sign up for the waitlist in the show notes today. 

So along with that, you can also use these, the spread that will help you to kind of ground you in where the relationship is at the moment. So it’s kind of like a mirror of the relationship. What you bring in what kind of energy you bring how you show up in the relationship, how your partner shows up in the relationship? What dynamic is present at the moment? What dynamic is are you kind of evolving into you can also in the same mirror spread, you can also see what might be kind of like slightly underneath the surface and the relationship that maybe needs a little bit of attention and discussion, what maybe needs to rise up a little bit, but maybe also you need to let cool so sometimes we are, we are so obsessed with with solving the problem in our relationship and fixing everything that we need to kind of step back and allow things to cool down a little bit before we can actually fix anything. And so it will also hold the mirror up and let you know if you need a little bit of space in order to do that which can be really lovely. And then from there can also provide you with action steps to start to move forward. So not just to, not just to, okay, go home and break up with this person, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m saying things more like, hey, it looks like you are holding your emotions in because you’re afraid of what their reaction will be like. And I think what you really need to do is actually express some of that stuff. Or maybe you do need to lose your cool a little bit. Maybe your partner feels like you don’t care and and they’re looking to see some sort of emotion or maybe your partner is extremely emotional, and you’re just not really recognizing them or meeting them where they are and they’re looking to see a little bit more vulnerability, or it can show you things about the dynamics of their relationship. So I’m seeing you As the king of cups, it looks like you always have to be the one leading and being vulnerable first in order to get that kind of that kind of reaction and reciprocation out of your partner. Maybe for you, that’s no problem. Or maybe it’s a huge problem. And and you never know how these things are going to play out for people. And so with this mirror type of spread, it can offer you just a real opportunity to get an outside kind of an outside perspective that can really clarify where you both stand in the relationship and how you can start to take some actionable steps to move forward to either come back into harmony to maybe sometimes create some some ripples to see you know, what might be just below the surface that needs to rise. up, and what maybe you need to either decide to let go of and move on from, or what you maybe can’t let go of and move on from and will really will really help you see all of that reflected. And so those are kind of two of like the major, major spreads that I use with people. But I also do when it comes to relationship readings, a lot of a lot of channeling and those type of readings. And also, people tend to come in with a lot of questions. And I did want to talk about the dynamic of this a little bit too, because I also do a lot of like free question sessions where, where people will just kind of come in and they’ll ask things and I’ll pull cards or a couple cards, and then just kind of go from there as well. But one of the things that I really wanted to talk to when it comes to relationship Tarot is the fact That I really want to normalize this. I do experience this thing through years of reading now where people will come in for a reading and say like, oh, like just something more general or I’m just kind of you know, interested to see what comes up and and you know, I might touch on some things I might say some things about the relationship.

And then like towards the very end of the reading, they’ll be like, oh, but like, could you just like, see like, what’s going on in my relationship? And and people there’s always like this like embarrassment around it or like, a little bit of like humiliation. About Can I really ask this or is this like corny? It is, it is absolutely. Absolutely appropriate to ask about your love life. I really want to normalize this. I think it is. It is so normal. It is a huge part of our lives. And asking about relationships is is a huge, huge part of our long term happiness in life. And, and, you know, not to say that everybody needs to be in a relationship by no means but like, when what I experienced is people having like some embarrassment or some shyness about really being open and and honest about what they really want in those sessions and I, I think it’s very, it’s very interesting but I also think that there’s nothing wrong with it. And so I really want to normalize that and to encourage you that if you have questions like that, please come in and ask them Don’t Don’t you know, don’t make don’t make your reader guess at what’s going on. And and really, if you if you have something like that, that you’re looking for clarity on ask for it because it can really help direct the reader to to watch You really need to focus on at that moment. So along with that, I also want to say that I another thing that can happen a lot, and especially when it comes to relationship readings, is emotion. I mean, there’s there’s inherently a lot of emotion tied up in this. A lot of self worth a lot of trauma sometimes. And so, another thing I want to say just kind of off the cuff is that it’s also extremely normal to have an emotional response in a session. I have experienced a lot of people who cry or who become really emotional while we’re working together and they always apologize and I just want to say you do not need to To apologize for your feelings to anyone, but especially to a reader. We are we are used to holding space for you to have an experience. And especially for me if you come in with to a session with me, I fully expect that we will be working with deep emotional things, and that it’s completely normal for you to have an emotional reaction to them. And that you should also normalize it for yourself that when you are confronting these things that can be really overwhelming sometimes and really heart wrenching that it is okay to have that kind of reaction. Even if you’re not used to having it in front of people. I guarantee that whoever your reader is, sees the light and it is completely normal and nothing out of the ordinary test at all. No need to apologize. And so I did want to say that as well. And then finally, the third type of reading that I do that can be really, really potent and really helpful is kind of a what’s what’s ahead or you know, what, what does my ideal partner look like? What’s kind of coming up in in my love life over the next few months, so kind of more. And I don’t really consider myself a predictive reader. I am definitely I identify a psychic even though I don’t really like that word, and I don’t really think it works in the way people think that it does.

But I do readings where I look at what kind of energy you’re going to be working with in your love life over the next few months, sometimes over the next year. And again, similar to what I talked about in the career episode, can really give you some ideas about the trajectory, maybe what still needs to be healed a bit, where you could consider putting yourself out there a little bit more, and what resources you really have to call on to help you navigate the challenges and really see and find the partner who is going to bring the most joy and satisfaction into your life. And so, those readings are a little bit more about kind of future gazing type of things, but they’re not. It’s not really meant to be Oh, in June, you’re gonna meet this person. Occasionally, something like that will come up, but it’s more along the lines of I really see you You know, Sometimes we’re moving out of a breakup. So I might see you kind of transitioning out of that over a couple months. And often what I see in this type of work is the cycles that we’re working within. So a lot of our progress is cyclical, where we might feel like we’re moving forward and then feel like we took a step backwards. And then we feel like we’re moving forward again. And then maybe we take a small step backwards. And so I see this a lot, especially with these kind of relationship trajectory, type of readings, is really giving you the peace of mind that not all of your progress in terms of choosing partners and connecting with your partner and really feeling that understanding for yourself and really being able to advocate for yourself in relationships. Not all of that is linear. And just hearing that hearing what some of these cycles can look like, can be extremely, extremely valid. are dating for people who are going through a lot of turmoil or are holding themselves to like a state of perfection or, or of timing that they’ve kind of invented in their head that maybe is not in alignment with how things are going in their lives and can create this friction. And so I do a lot of readings like that, where we’re kind of looking at the cycles of what kind of relationship energy you’re going to be dealing with over the year. And so if you practice these things for yourself, these might be some new ideas for you. You might already be doing some of them. You might be looking for more insight on how to intuitively read off of that because all of these are kind of baselines of where I start in a reading and because I do have that intuitive connection, I will then sometimes get an extra question here, or I think there’s something else I need to draw another card there. And I do encourage you, especially when it comes to readings like this that are so incredibly personal, to give yourself the opportunity to stray from any spreads that you might have, any book that you might have, to really sit down and intuitively connect and really feel it and really understand and have that compassion for yourself. So I think that can be extremely helpful. And if you are interested in getting a reading or some outside advice on your relationship or anything else, you can always find my availability for Tarot sessions or Reiki sessions. Over on my website, starsgespirit.com and right now I have openings for September and October. And if you’re interested in learning more for yourself my course Practical Tarot for Everyday Intuitives is currently open for enrollment, or will be opening very soon. So you can get on the waitlist for that through the show notes today. I would love to have you. I talk a lot about relationship Tarot in the course and also about how to read intuitively and to start to kind of create intuitive spreads based on what you’re trying to get to the bottom of whether it’s in your career or in your relationship in that course. So I would love to have you and as always, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me at LivingTarotpod@gmail.com and I will be right back here with another episode very soon. Bye for now.

Thank you so much for listening to Living Tarot. If you loved today’s episode, please leave us a review and subscribe so that you never miss an episode. This helps us reach even more budding intuitives. Feel free to share on Instagram and tag me at @Starsagespirit and let me know what you learned, what surprised you and what you’d like to hear even more of. As always, if you want to hear more about my courses, or book a reading with me, or for full episodes show notes you can head over to starsagespirit.com

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In Episode 6 of Living Tarot, I speak with Winifred Tanetta-Costello, Visionary Healer, Reiki Master Teacher, Tarot Reader, Mentor and Witch. She is the founder and facilitator of The Witching Well, an online magickal community for earth-centered seekers who are ready to grow their spiritual practice in meaningful, tangible and accessible ways. Winifred and I discuss how embodiment brings magick into reality and how Winifred embodies the High Priestess.

• Winifred shares how she “decided” to be a witch and what becoming a witch really looked like – from playing “witch” with neighborhood kids to running her own Magickal community.
• She discusses how intuition led her both to open her brick and mortar store, Awentree, and how it also ultimately led her to release that physical space this year.
• The importance of teaching from a place of compassion and humility when connecting other with their own intuition.
• We discuss the challenges around listening deeply to intuition, and how knowing something is right for you, and intuitively guided, doesn’t always mean that it’s easy.

Connect with Sheila:

Book a Tarot or Reiki session at starsagepspirit.com or find her on Instagram instagram.com/starsagespirit.

Connect with Winifred:

https://awentree.com/ or instagram.com/awentree

Check out this episode!

Transcript:

Sheila M  0:05  

Welcome to living Tarot. I’m your host Sheila Masterson. I’m a tarot reader and teacher, an energy healer and medium and creator of Practical Tarot for Everyday Intuitives. Each week on this podcast, I’ll share my own experience of embracing and growing intuition and interview guests about how they heard the call of intuition, embraced the adventure and embodied the Tarot along the way. Join us and learn how you can stop second guessing., Empower yourself through intuition and live intentionally with the Tarot. 

Welcome back to Living Tarot. Today on the podcast I am hosting my wonderful friend Winifred Costello. Winifred is a visionary healer, Reiki Master Teacher, tarot reader, mentor and witch. She’s the founder and facilitator of The Witching Well, an online magical community for Earth centered seekers who are ready to grow their spiritual practice in meaningful, tangible and accessible ways. She also founded Awentree, originally a brick and mortar witch shop in 2006, and recently transitioned her store to be fully online. She views witching as a mystical path, and craft that facilitates deep healing and transformation through direct encounter and embodiment practices. Winifred identifies as an earth which she has experience and training and Goddess traditions, Old World witchcraft, fairy seership folk magic and Tarot. She’s a national guild certified hypnotherapist, past life regression facilitator,  and currently studying neuro linguistic programming. Winifred is an avid outdoors person actively hiking, backpacking, camping and organic gardening. She lives with her husband, dog and two cats in western Massachusetts. Winifredis a friend of mine, from a business group that her and I were both in this past year, we got to know each other online, really loved talking about Tarot and business. And in this interview today, we really talk about how she’s kind of worked through different, different stages of her life and how the Tarot has kind of come into play through different experiences, and how she brings a lot of that embodiment practice into her daily life, what her intuition looks like, and how she really embodies the High Priestess card. So I hope you enjoy this week’s episode. Let’s dive right in.

I am So excited to have you here with us today when a friend so let’s just start off by telling us who you are what you do what you bring to this world. 

Winifred Costello  3:09  

Awesome. Hi Sheila. I’m excited to be here as well thank you for the opportunity to talk about nerd out on all kinds of spiritual Tarot stuff that I’m super nerd about that stuff I’m very passionate about. And she wants to know what what do I do in the world? Yeah, so I am. My biggest thing is about being very public and out of the broom causes closet hopping out of the broom closet around what it means to practice an earth centered spiritual tradition. I in particular, do identify as a witch, although a lot of folks that I find in me that practice these traditions, maybe don’t use that word that’s maybe not a word that works for them personally. So whether someone’s pagan, Wiccan, a witch, I’m just really looking for a spiritual path that feels accessible and relevant in really speaks to their soul. And is recognizes the earth is sacred and cycles of the seasons and the moon and the shifting tides. I’m very much driven to provide real tangible information, hands on skills, Authenticity, like support them and empowering them and embracing their spiritual agency around that. I’ve been called to this work since very young and it was all the some mentors on my journey that really empowered me and I know for a fact that mentors I met when I was younger, I’m really I was very much seeking healing in a very active way through my 20s. And the healers and mentors I met, like literally directly impacted my life by empowering me and my life, like very much in a very positive and different direction than it would have if I had not met them and gotten to know them and work with them. So I kind of see I’m passionate about making pagan paganism and witchcraft. accessible and helping stop the misinformation that’s out about around those traditions, but also about empowering people to be able to reclaim their personal power and step into their healing and embrace the personal growth and transformation much as my mentors helped me do that.

Sheila M  5:15  

That’s awesome. I love the way you said that too. And because I think that often when people hear witch or witchcraft, they go to a very specific place where, you know, they see you know, the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz and have this idea or, or Salem, you know, and I love how you talked about kind of taking apart some of the mythology and stuff that is around that and some of the negative connotations and also even within the industry, trying to make things more accessible and more personal for people, because I think that’s so important. So I know that that was kind of brought about by by your own journey. And your own mentors along the way. Tell us a little bit about like baby witch Winifred like, what were you like what kind of got you into all of this?

Winifred Costello  6:10  

I love this question I get asked it a lot. So I usually start with like, like most folks who come to these traditions like practicing witchcraft and paganism at an earlier age. So I got into this stuff is like for sure. I was definitely aware of what it was to be pagan and choosing to be pagan. By the time I was like in ninth grade. But prior to that, I was definitely an unusual kid. Like most people start off. And I had some pretty interesting experiences and encounters, mostly with a very intense dream life. I used to have very, very intense dreams. I used to call them visitations. And was this not unusual kid. I was just like, you know, trees were my friends. I did things different than other kids. And somehow in elementary school, I I got in my head this idea of like that I’m gonna be a witch. I have no idea. We didn’t really watch a lot of TV. I’m a 70s kid. There was some witchy stuff out there on the in TV Land. But we didn’t really watch like we our our TV was very controlled back in the 70s like you watch Saturday morning cartoons and I think mutual Omaha the animal show on Sunday night or something. So it’s not like I remember seeing something on TV necessarily. And this is before the internet before video games. I don’t know where this idea that being a which was something one could be but it popped into my brain. It definitely bought like fifth and sixth grade. And I remember this one summer where I decided I was going to be a witch we really had no idea what I was doing, which is really it’s very sweet and lovely. But the the truth of it was that it was very much through nature. And my my idea around witching was that it was about being outside and plants and nature in the moon and So I was compelled to make my little neighborhood friends play a game I called witch with me.

Sheila M  8:09  

This is amazing.

Winifred Costello  8:10  

And the really funny thing is that, so I grew up something called unchurched. So my parents were really, they’re really neat, unique people. So in one sense, they had conservative politics, but in the spiritual sense, they were super progressive way ahead of their time. So my mom is Irish. My dad is Italian. It’s I call it the Boston mix. And it’s the Boston I love it. And so they made a conscious choice when they would marry not to practice a religion, which in the when you consider They married in the 50s. That’s really progressive. Um, anyway, yeah. So we were raised not in any religion. And I didn’t step foot in a church until I went to a wedding like in my teen years, so but we weren’t raised without A sense of spiritual spirituality. But we were, I was really encouraged to have a very independent approach. And my mom used to my mom was really unusual, like, I look back on her life. And so she never referred to God as God, he she only referred to him as the good Lord. And she was very adamant that if you wanted to connect, right, you wanted to connect with God that you went outside in the backyard to the tree and talked to the tree. And that’s how you talked to the good Lord. So I always tell people like is it kind of curious that the, I ended up being sort of drawn to nature as representing divinity. You know, so a lot of interesting things sort of kind of contributed to that. But my neighborhood friends, like I was the only kid that did back in the 70s. Everybody in the town I grew up, you went to church or you going to synagogue, nobody didn’t do one or the other. I was like, literally the only kid. It kind of ended up meaning that I was pretty isolated. And I didn’t have a lot of friends because a lot of parents would let their kids play with me when they realized we didn’t belong to any church. thought that that was very odd. So I, it’s really weird, but this is like a suburb of Boston and like I was born in the late 60s, I believe it is, um, you know, so there was this one neighborhood family that allowed they were very devout Catholic, Irish Catholic, and they allowed their kids to play with me, but they were always proselytizing to me. They saw me as like the little uncouth even child, because I remember being like schooled by them on because I didn’t know anything like they like I didn’t I didn’t know anything like, like I was raised in a very secular spiritual, the Earth is the spirit, your spirit or your spirituality. We live so. Um, yeah, so I had a really unusual start. It just sort of organically fed me into aligning as a pagan later as a teenager.

Sheila M  10:48  

Yeah, it’s, it’s so fascinating to me because my experience was so opposite. Like I was raised, very Catholic and very conservative I didn’t even meet anybody. I mean, I’m sure I met somebody at some point. But like, I didn’t have friends who weren’t Catholic until high school. Like I didn’t even I didn’t even have awareness. Really. I knew other religions existed. Obviously, Jesus was Jewish. So, um, so I knew something about that, but but I didn’t have like a different experience. Other than that, until I was like in high school and college. And so, I had kind of like, the opposite experience, which I think was isolating in like, a different way because I always felt like two different people because I didn’t connect. I didn’t connect with like, the religion that I was brought up in, even though my family like, we would leave church and I would look at my parents and like, they clearly got something out of it. Like they felt the way that I feel about the work that I do now. So I’m like you, you know what I mean. But like, I thought I was the weird one, because I just wasn’t I didn’t get it, you know. And so I always felt very divided like I was that person and also, you know, from the time I was really young I got all of these impulses and stuff and didn’t know what was going on. Like I was reading people without realizing that I was reading people and and i would say i was like listening to the air to hear who is going to come upstairs next to my house, but I was literally hearing energy. Right And so, so it’s very interesting to hear about the complete opposite experience. And I didn’t have any real awareness about excuse me about witches in general. until probably like when the craft came out, which I don’t know what year it was, but I think I was in like, eighth grade or ninth grade or something and like, then we all want it to be witches like so bad and then it was like, being a witch like had like a moment, but it’s very interesting to me to hear about like a background Where you weren’t kind of you were left kind of open and available to whatever want it to come in for you. So I think like, kudos to your parents, first of all, because I think that requires a great release of control. 

Winifred Costello  13:14  

Right? Well, it’s, it’s really ironic because in other ways my, you know, my parents were very sheltering and they My mother was very conservative and her political views we did not see eye to eye, we actually butt heads a lot. But she raised me to be a very independent thinker. That was something that was really important to her. And she raised me based on my father and her had encountered things that didn’t really make them feel really great about the church, and each in their own different respects. And so they, but they were spiritual people. So they felt like it was most important for one to have a direct relationship with divinity and then it’s really just instilled that in me and then I think I also had as a very young Girl I was very connected to animals. I had a really, really deep we had, you know, we always had pets, we had a dog. I always had a deep relationship with animals. And I’m just I would I would find myself at a young age arguing with people about animals have been sent in and having a soul. And like I said, I was definitely odd, like people thought I was a strange kid. And I remember when I was in high school, and I had, like I said, Everyone went to most people went to church or synagogue. So I had some friends that were very in very devout families. And so they were really disconcerted by the fact that I identified as pagan. So there was a I went through this time period when they tried to convert me to be Christian. And my question was always, do you believe animals have souls or sentience, and it was something that was just how I felt about things and when I would hear the responses from, you know, what Christian leaders are pastors or preachers, it just didn’t jive with me and then a couple of them brought me that like, in High School couple friends brought me I went to two Christian services because they felt like I couldn’t decide to be pagan if I’d never been Christian before, which is like as an adult is really strange. That’s a strange idea. Um, so I was like, okay, and I went to these two different church services. And after they were all very curious as you I felt anything, and I said, it seemed very nice, and the people are very friendly, but much like what you’re saying. I said, but beyond Ruby, I appreciate everyone’s very friendly and welcoming, but no, nothing really lit up in there for me. And then I would ask the animal soul sentience question and I’d be okay. I’m out. Like,

Sheila M  15:33  

yeah, yeah, I think I’m one of the things that I see kind of over and over with. A lot of a lot of my guests on this show. And a lot of my friends who do spiritual work is that sense of a greater sense of autonomy. I think then other people had like, okay, like, that just doesn’t work for me. You know, like, I’m gonna go in this slightly different direction

Winifred Costello  15:59  

right now. No, I was grown up, okay, many years forward in my spiritual path. I understand that I somehow organically as a child as a teenager, I was an animist, but I didn’t have that word or the vocabulary when I was young, but I knew that that’s what I was seeking. Like, I was seeking to find a path of spiritual practice that aligned with my just how I felt about the world, which was like an animus worldview. And I, like I said, it wasn’t much older than I even heard that term. And but when I heard it, I was like, Yes, that’s it. Exactly. Yeah.

Sheila M  16:31  

So you kind of got on this path from an early age, you had mentors that helped you and helped you develop your practices and everything. And then you recently decided to close your physical location of your metaphysical store Awentree. And I know I kind of listened to your whole I listened to another podcast before we met personally. He talks about like, how much love and care like went into the design of the store from putting crystals in the wall and, and just like a true labor of love and a very intentional setup to the store and everything. And what inspired you to really want to open the store in the first place? This is kind of a, I know a long story question, What inspired you to want to open the store in the first place? And then what inspired you to like kind of release and let go of something that had been such a huge labor of love? Like, how was that kind of guided by your intuition or spirit?

Winifred Costello  17:36  

Um, so it’s a great question. And I say lots of words. Let me see if I can be succinct. So I met the woman who became my Reiki Master Teacher, my Reiki Master Teacher, she had a beautiful spiritual and spiritual inspired magical shop, New Age metaphysical witchy shop in a town nearby and I met her Her in my mid 20s and she’s in my Reiki training with her I learned a fair bit a fair amount of astrology training with her and most importantly she really helped me step into my power my first like claim my power and my healing stand in my truth like claim my voice and stand in that the truth of it. And she really helped me get out of my own way as a tarot reader, Tarot teacher, as a healer, she she really did everything from personal empowerment like really about like, how can like she was an amazing mentor and her greatest gift she’s still around She’s a friend of mine. Like we call each other cosmic soul sisters so I was always as a mentor, she was never let above you. She was always like, you too can do this. You can do this too, was always like what’s possible for you like, like, I would have a lot of admiration for her. And I easily could have put her on a pedestal but she was very much Nope, this is possible for you to and that was really tremendous. And she had a store and when I met Her went into her store, I went there actually, to get my Natal Astrology chart read. I was working with another healer at the time who recommended a reading with her. And the second I walked into the store, I was telling people, I just knew something clicked. So I always had this idea that there could be some sort of work other than that, what I would call mainstream work, but I’d never really seen anyone doing it. So I couldn’t even describe what it was I knew I was meant to do, because I hadn’t actually seen anyone doing it, but I knew I would know when I thought it’s like a very strange kind of mystical paradox. So I walked into her store and I met her and the second we met, I was like, like, this is like a new a new It was like a new car. So like I knew our souls, had a contract to me, that she like would be an important influence in my life. And I was very directly inspired by her in her store. And I always used to tell her would one day when you retire, that’s going to be my time to open my store. And she would always be very sweet. She’s like, if you have a vision, just go ahead and do it. You know, don’t don’t wait on me and I was like, No, that’s just I just know intuitively that’s the timing. And you know, fast forward 10 it was like 10-12 years later before I actually opened and created an open entry. From that moment it was maybe it was like 12 or 13 years later was the right moment arrive. I always saw a tree is a great like the daughter of the granddaughter of her store Apogee that’s not her store close to now. And I really wanted to create a hub like I really wanted to create an oasis where seekers could gather where witches could gather pagans, spiritual folks, mystic seekers could gather and it was in and it was like, okay, it was okay to come in and say, I have these intense dreams and then they they come true or they’re, or they my soul speaking to me my dreams or I have these intense psychic moments or healing, or I feel drawn to, you know, practice witchcraft are all the things that kind of go with all the All of what it is to practice an alternative spiritual path or alternative living where you’re more about listening to the earth and listening to others. I really wanted to create an oasis, a space of inspiration and access, like a almost like a resource. Yes, it’s a it was a business. So you know, like, you know, for business, you got to bring money in to stay afloat. It takes. I just tell people, it takes time, money, resources and energy to create a space like that.

But I really wanted to offer what, what what I had experienced when I met my mentor, but also I didn’t meet her tools in my mid 20s. And I started seeking in my teen years, and I felt very blessed. I even met my mentor. But I have wished I had met someone like that sooner. And so I also wanted to provide a space where people could get access to resources and teaching materials and spiritual supplies and healing and readings. Were the folks when I was a Taurus sun Scorpio rising, so we’ll kick it till it’s real. So I’m very much into like, like, let’s be unpregnant I’m a pragmatic earthy, which you know, like, let’s get real. Let’s not just like, I love this. I love Salem, who doesn’t love Salem? If you’ve been to Salem, Massachusetts, it’s it’s awesome. But there’s not this isn’t bashing on I know wonderful healers and readers in Salem that are amazing folks that do amazing work there. So this sounds like a weird generalization. I really don’t mean that cuz I know some amazing folks there. But um, I didn’t want it to only be like, the external part of what we see a lot of times depicted in witchcraft, like they’re really like now he’s seen on Instagram, like the curated picture I wanted. Yes, that’s very powerful and beautiful, who doesn’t aspire to that in their practice? But I know that that’s what where we start and I wanted something that was very real and raw and help people practice everyday magic in their life, right where they are right now with what they got. So that was what

Sheila M  22:55  

I love that so much. I love that you kind of drilled on that, because like you’re saying there’s there, there’s absolutely a time and a place for everything else. And like you said, just because people are reading there doesn’t mean that they’re not for real. But I think there’s kind of this kitchiness to that environment that leads to just kind of a surface level understanding of things and also because I know we’ve talked about it a lot because we are friends. Kind of bringing these things into everyday life and and a practicality to it that it doesn’t need to be like a whole big ceremony and like you can have respect and dignity in what you’re doing without it being like a perfectly timed and organized and resourced offering because not everybody has all of those resources.

Winifred Costello  23:51  

It’s true and I also a big thing and people stepping into these, like when we are claiming your own spiritual agency. It is on us on a lot of ways to claim that and I think what happens is we run into a lot of self worth issues, and permission issues. And so we get in our own way. And I think we can put a lot of excuses between ourselves our spiritual practice. And the more excuses like I don’t have the right tools, the right although the right clothes, the right timing, those things are wonderful. And when we can do those things, are we going to get bigger transformations and sure for sure that’s going to happen and there is a time and a place for them. But at the same time, there’s nothing more powerful than then reaching for your magic right where you are in the moment you’re in with what’s right around you like folk magic is a very powerful magic that’s I people I don’t really like low and high magic I like more like raw, like raw magic versus curated magic, more than low and high. That puts it is one of the things about how I practice witchcraft and paganism and all these kinds of things is also trying to pull the hierarchal energies out of it and habit me and become more circular because I think that these are like More Earth circular traditions and not that linear hierarchal states. So that’s another secret part of my mission, I guess are not so secret.

Sheila M  25:08  

Yeah, yeah. And I think especially important now, as like, accessibility is having more more of a moment I think in, in the spiritual world in general, and people are needing to be more accountable to the languages that have been kind of passed down from, from very, even though this has kind of been a more fringe thing. There’s still a lot of patriarchal and white supremacist things that do get mixed in. And I think it’s really interesting, like you’re saying about trying to teach in a way that is not hierarchical, because it happens a lot. And I and even in your description of your relationship with your teacher, how you always felt like, you were kind of on the same level and you were like learning together and she wasn’t trying to be like, I’m like, I’m in charge and I’m better you know, like it. No Yeah, I really like resourcing you well,

Winifred Costello  26:03  

Right? Like the guru the Guru is I call it the guru thing. And then like, um, yeah, so I just wanna say we’re always all unpacking like you know our like our baked in supremacy, white supremacy and patriarchy. That’s something we’re always working on to clear and heal and you know, deconstruct, but at the same time, I think my best all my best mentors didn’t do the guru thing. But I have and I have encountered witchcraft teachers that very much did the guru thing. And and New Age teachers and things like that, too. I mean, it can be anywhere. It’s not it can’t you have to keep an eye out. I think for that. pitfall. I once heard a great phrase, do not confuse your spirituality with egoism. I think it’s how it goes like and what is very important one knows the difference. My being spiritual right now or my being about ego, which I heard that line long, long time ago, not saying I always get it perfect. I’m a human I certainly have, I’m always still learning myself on how to better embody these things and how to unpack my own unconscious bias and baked in white supremacy and patriarchy, we always are faking that, like trying to take the encoded stuff out, you know, but yeah, yeah, definitely a resources now to help us do that work.

Sheila M  27:21  

Yeah. And I think that’s one of the things you know, it’s one of the things I always try to do, and I’ve always connected with teachers who do that as well, because even even my own experience with when I kind of started seeing and hearing spirits and stuff as an adult I did as a kid, but I kind of blocked it out and forgotten about it, you know, like a lot of people do. And then when I was really kind of going through my second awakening, so to speak, I was talking to my Reiki teacher about it, and he was very intentional about Like not doing the work for me, well, he knew what was going on before I knew what was going on. But he also respected the fact that I might not be ready to recognize that yet, and did not just say like, hey, you’re a medium like, this is gonna happen, you know, he kind of said it in a gentle way that I did not pick up on it. And then I came back to him and I was like, Hey, I think this is what’s happening. And he was like, Yes. And I was like, Well, why didn’t you just tell me and he was like, you know, you really it’s your path and you really need to be the one that decides and ultimately me telling you that you have an ability First of all, it doesn’t mean that you necessarily have to do . And second of all, doesn’t it kind of takes away your ability to really learn and and be participating in your own learning process. If I’m just telling you You are like labeling you, you know and I think that’s something that I really strive to do in my teaching and when I work with people is really teach them how personal it is. And even though because even with clients who come in I, I hear people say to me all the time like I can’t do what you can do and I’m like yes you like we all can everybody has this experience. 

Winifred Costello  29:23  

So it’s about empowering is what you’re saying and also to like not denying them their destiny, their own destiny of discovery around coming into like, you know, claiming their own skills I was telling you you have to be a spiritual detective. That’s what I tell my students be steered natural detective in your own journey. 

Sheila M  29:42  

I love that that’s that’s so perfect. Because I think that’s so true and, and so much of everybody wants like the answers like they want to skip to the end. But if you don’t, if you miss the middle part, then like, you don’t Know the why and you don’t have the same, like the same experience of the journey and you don’t have the same appreciation for it. And you feel doomed by your like initial judgment of the outcome. So rather than like understanding the why, through experience, you just kind of cut to the end and then you’re like, Okay, well, this isn’t what I wanted. And so the whole time, you’re just like, this isn’t what I want. This isn’t what I want. This isn’t what I want, instead of like, exploring and and being like, Well, what do I want? You know, and and figuring that out? Because I think it takes like you said it disempowers people if you just kind of like give them the answer,

Winifred Costello  30:39  

right, totally. And I always say to people, doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how many candles you burn for a spell. If you haven’t done the work that needs the pre work or your homework or your soul work that needs to, like come before you. Like put that flame that match to the candle. The maybe you’ll get lucky and the candle spell will work but maybe you’ll just burn a bunch of candles and still be in the same place. Because you haven’t done the work that you the foundational work that really needs to happen. Because really when you finally ignite the candle in your candle spell that should be like the period at the end of the sentence should be backing up all the work you’ve done leading up to that moment, preparing to be ready to create real transformation in your life. And then the actual spell is like, kind of a combination of it. I mean, yeah, the spelling does the work, but you have got you can’t skip can’t skip that stuff. You’re talking about like those steps before and during and even after, you know?

Sheila M  31:32  

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. 

Winifred Costello  31:34  

And so, I didn’t answer your other question. Yeah. Um, so um, alright, so I found it all entry. I actually found it with my which my best my best friend. We’re still best friends. Um, so we co founded the short stories. We co founded in 2006. We literally built the store from scratch, like literally, it was a raw space. We built the walls. That’s why as you were in the other interview, like You know, we ship crystals into the wall, we do symbols before we seal them up and painted. Like we hammered the nails, we paint, we help with the paint. The whole process on from the ground like inside is inside an old hundred year old brick building but from the inside from the ground up, we built it with our pants like this one crazy summer in 2006. And I bought her out when she moved away in 2009 to marry her husband and start a family. So I’ve been the sole proprietor since 2009. And then the store was has experienced incredible growth and been done many through many phases. It’s almost like a like a child. If you think back to who you were when you were a child to a teenager or to your 20s to 30s it’s almost like the store has I can see that the store has been on a similar journey of growth. And the last few years were like this, just unbelievably blessed there. Like it was just really an amazing time to be to be part of this. To be part of the town of very much in the early wave of the restoration of a really sad Street and that was the store was was a very magical process from our entry as a brick and mortar to the whole neighborhood to everything. And I love, love, love our entry, the brick and mortar at everything we built in did there. And at the same time, I started to outgrow the physical limitations that a brick and mortar inherently has, like you have a lot operations you have to be there. taking time off becomes complicated. There are a lot of other projects that have become like available for me to work on and do. And as much as I adore my store. It was no interesting. And it was incredibly successful in an interesting way. It was almost like a becoming like bigger than I could really do. I couldn’t do it all I couldn’t do all that the physical store required because the physical store was growing very busy even with team members and lean into my own personal projects. Like I I have an opportunity to write a book on Oracle deck I’ve helped create. I didn’t do the artwork I just helped create co create, like, what’s the system of the deck? And what’s the structure? And what kind of like how many cards and what will the cards be about. And I’m my bestie, who I co founded the store with. She’s an amazing visual artist. She’s the illustrator and the cards are completed. And the only reason we haven’t wanted that because I need to write a book. But what I was in like, which I’ve got 2000 words in on the guidebook, and there are other I’ve had invitations to teach him more and more locations and it was just starting to almost like it’s like I literally outgrew the store. I’m in the way it was like having the brick and mortar. And I was like straight I guess we would say like 120 20 strategizing with my team member like how could we support winter Fred continuing to grow and these other arenas and like, I’ve initially were thinking we would just grow heart my team member to be more and more like a manager of the space. So I could, you know, be a little more free from the physical day to day operations. But then along came COVID in, like, in COVID happened. And, um, and, you know, there’s, there’s just like, which is, you know, obviously COVID is a huge, not good thing. But there’s also no accident to the timing of things. And so I really think that, like the writing was on the wall that as much as I love everything about my brick and mortar, and I will always love it and cherish it, and I will miss it in that incarnation. I think it was time. I think it had long since become time for me to be willing to listen and open up to like, what, what’s next? What next possibilities could How can our country go forward in a different model that supported me in a better way? So I could say yes to these other really exciting projects that I’d like to say yes to you, but also still honor the mission of one I wanted the impact I wanted to make and why I opened the store in the first place. So when COVID happened, it forced to shut down like I’m in Massachusetts. So we had a more strict shutdown like than some other states had. So we had a profound shutdown. So the store was shut down profoundly for over two months. And I had to go 100% online. And the hidden blessing in the tragedy or the not awesomeness of COVID is those spirit in a weird way gave me an opportunity to step into another potential vision that kind of secretly go along with and wanting to, to create so when the building changed ownership, and it just kind of it just got live – spirit spirits always writes the writing on the wall for me.

Sheila M  36:48  

Oh, yeah, I can completely relate and we talked about this for a second before we started recording, but I tend to be the type of person that needs to be thrown like thrust forth into things by spirit, rather than somebody who can gracefully let go of things and just allow, and I really, really struggle with that tower card energy. So yeah,

Winifred Costello  37:08  

I always feel I’m a Taurus sun sign so I’m like, loyal to a fault. But in the end, I’m also a Scorpio. I’m a Scorpio rising, I have a lot of Scorpio in my chart. So in the end, when it’s time, like, I will hang on, I will hang on, like white knuckling something till it’s long past, like, long past time, like go, because that’s just my nature. But then, in the end, when the writing’s on the wall, and it’s in spirit, it’s like a neon sign just like there was a neon sign it was time to open and then there was just as loud and neon sign as it was time to let that physical location go. I wonder hasn’t gone anywhere but in the mission and the vision hasn’t gone anywhere, but just the location. But man, it was like, it was like Bang, bang, bang, like it was like a clue. My one teacher I know it calls it Kubrick’s like the spirit like throws a cubic right at your forehead. It became really clear SoI I closed the brick and mortar July 31 of this year just shy of its 14th anniversary.

Sheila M  38:10  

Hey there, I want you to be the first to know that I am offering a free training Tarot for Real Life – Get your Shit Together with the Tarot on Sunday, September 20, 2020 at 12pm eastern time, this workshop is extremely powerful. It talks about the top mistakes that new Tarot readers make, we will cover the neuroscience of Tarot and how it can stop the anxiety cycle, and the exact steps to follow to start reading effectively and efficiently for yourself. This is where the spirituality of the Tarot meets real life situations. And my goal is to have you leave that workshop, either with a reboot to your tarot reading or if you’re a brand new beginner With a good idea of how to get started, so you can sign up for that free workshop in the shownotes today or if you already know that you are really interested in signing up for a tarot course, I will be opening the doors for my Tarot course for the last time for 2020 the course is called Practical Tarot for Everyday Intuitives. It is a seven week Tarot course that takes you from a brand new beginner to tarot reading Pro, and helps you learn how to bring that practice into real life, how to use the Tarot to help you make complex decisions effortlessly. So if that sounds good to you, you can sign up for the waitlist in the show notes today.

We really met like just before COVID kind of became big and then we’re both working through an incubator course together and during like the height of COVID and the anxiety and From the beginning, it’s funny because when you have like, a bunch of witchy people together I feel like everybody kind of starts to pick up on stuff. And what was funny is from the very beginning when you were talking about the store, I can’t even remember what you said the one day but I was like, she’s gonna close that store. Like, I could, I could just like feel it and I was like, it’s just time for that like transition, but again, from the outside, much easier to say than when you’re on the inside. Like you said white knuckling and being like, this is my baby. I created this, you know, right. 

Winifred Costello  40:33  

It’s hard but it’s my baby but it’s also that I very feel I’m very much feel like a priestess in service to the mission. Yeah, that is always been like the burning light. And it is not easy to own a brick and mortar. It is not. Hey folks, if you’re thinking of owning a brick and mortar, it is the most rewarding, awesome thing and hardest thing you’ll ever do. Especially once the internet it’s great. The internet is so amazing. It brings a lot of really opportunities that weren’t there before. But it does make it trickier to run a brick and mortar successfully for many years. And I weathered Lehman Brothers shortly after opening, so I have weathered a lot of things. And I and the mission is always what drove me I always felt like very much like a priestess in service to the mission. And so I didn’t want to turn my back on the integrity of the mission and that was a big reason why I wanted to be absolutely sure. It was the right decision. And so I was impressed on people it was not reactionary, it was very much responsive. And I I spent all of that locked down on many long five and seven mile walks and meditating and reflecting and pulling cards and I got readings from others and they all said the same thing. So I did and in my own inner voice, and I feel like the store I wondering has is very much his own higher soul and all the things I’ve weathered the store Always was like, nope, you’re meant to be here, hang in there, it’s gonna turn and then and it was. And I remember those days questioning, like, should I stick with it like with Lehman Brothers and some of those early days like, Oh my gosh, I keep the storage I keep the store. And, um, and spirit was always like, yeah, nope, keep the store keep the store. And that was really interesting because when the higher soul, the oversold our entry, the other spirits that live there and our support and service to the mission. When when the exec counsel, like all of a sudden that was a super clear, they’re like Stein is just time time to let it go. And I’m like, okay, we’re on. We’re going. Yeah, often very quickly. It happened, like within three weeks.

Sheila M  42:39  

Yeah. So let’s talk about that for a second because you’re in this huge transitional time now. And I’ve, you know, I’ve had the good fortune to be able to kind of witness you from the outside kind of going through this process, with, in my opinion, a lot of grace because I i understand that impulse to Like, I don’t like I don’t want to let it go, like I want to serve, serving everyone that I’ve been serving and I feel like this responsibility almost to have communities. So can you talk a little bit about kind of how your intuition has has played a part in that and also, how it shows up for you whether it’s like, you know, physical clairaudience, clairvoyance, whatever it is that like really kind of sets and I know for a lot of us, it’s multiple things, but, but kind of how do you know like, how did you know for sure, like you said, like, how did it become really clear?

Winifred Costello  43:37  

I think, well, I’m very kinesthetic. I’m very I am visual, very visual, and I do hear things. My husband always says, you know, that makes you sound crazy. And I’m like, Yes, but you know, a lot. So, this was very kinesthetic, though. Like I my strongest operating system for receiving information is kinesthetic, and I just felt it in everything. I just woke up and just felt it in every part of my body. Like I just felt they felt like it’s like it felt aligned. It just was like it was it was this almost like a calm came over me and I was like this I’m making the call and I’m in it and I didn’t feel alone and I didn’t feel I felt calm and that’s how I knew if it wasn’t the right decision, I would have a nagging or an anxiety or a spinning and it was it was just as calm and assured I just felt calm. And it’s a big decision. So how calm I was also as an indicator it was the right thing. And also for me, I have like a I would call like a spiritual court of allies that are I feel very blessed and grateful for that. And they stand I always call reference them as they stand behind me. Like and I call you might call them a committee or council but and then the store has its own spirits that kind of, like you know, operate to and they were just like in a big circle behind me. And, and they were just all very calm and supporting it was not you. It’s hard, a little hard to always articulate these kinds of things. But it was just clear like they were just they were like felt very unified. There wasn’t any one particular guide kind of going I don’t know about this, it was just like, a very unified, like, this is right, we got you. We’ve worked this is orchestrated, and then someone wants that to me recently as this was happening, it happens so like all the strange things that mitigating factors like the fact that the building changed hands like literally the pretty much the week Kovats, like right before a shutdown happen, and, and it wasn’t on the market. Like this was like a behind the scenes as an investor approached the owner, like the fact that happened like that, like the whole bunch of factors came together quickly. And my experience is always when, when you’re going one way and then a bunch of factors suddenly, almost like you’re blindsided, that’s not really the right word. But suddenly, like The car gets spun around and you’re clearly going into different like your, oh, I guess we’re going this way now and you’re calm and aligned and it feels totally right. You know spirits got like mother or mother fate or destiny has her finger like mother fate has their finger on the pulse of, of what is happening, and they’re in good hands. It’s kind of how I feel. Yeah. Does that make sense? 

Sheila M  46:21  

It does. It totally does. And actually, it reminded me of, so Gosh, what years, two years ago, I guess. November of 2018. I had I woke up one day and I never so this was back when I was at my corporate job and I was doing Tarot and and teaching yoga and Reiki on the side but I’ve kind of been going through this whole thing and again, once again, I felt like I was being two different people like I was being like, work business and nobody in my life really other than like my my partner really knew what was going on. Like I was coming to private about everything, even though I had clients and stuff, I wasn’t really fully being open with everything with my friends and people I was close to. Because again, I was worried that, like you said, everybody was going to think I was crazy. And and so I had this experience of, I almost never took a sick day, at my last company for seven years, almost never took a sick day. And I just woke up in the morning and I was like, I can’t, I can’t work today, and I work from home. Like I worked from home then too. And I was like, I can’t go in today. And that happened three days in a row. Like I just had this like I took three sick days, which like, like I said, I’m not taking a sick day and like seven years before that, and I was like, okay, like something is shifting. And it was like during those three days I did like a lot of meditation and a lot of yoga, a lot of going for walks like you said, and I just I had this like realization on the third day it was like, Yes, it’s time to go like it’s just Go, you need to make a plan. And that’s when like, that was literally when I made the plan. And it took me I think six months to actually do it. But I was like, Okay, this is when I think I need to make this move. And it was very similar. Like you’re saying it was like, it wasn’t. It was scary once I decided, but like, in that moment, it was like a call, like, yes, this, this is the right thing. And it just, it feels so obvious. It feels like the decision has already been made, which I think was something like you were articulating there too. And I think it’s so interesting that that’s how it felt to you. And I do want to stress to people that it’s not like, I decided and then I was like, Okay, great, like, everything’s fine. And I think the same for you like it’s still it’s very emotional. There’s second guessing there’s a lot of different things that come in, even when you are coming from a place of being very intuitively aligned with the right thing. It does not mean that it’s easy.

Winifred Costello  48:57  

Totally thank you for saying that. That’s really amazing. important stuff to point out. Because I think there are a lot of misconceptions. And, um, and Awentree has an online presence and has an online aspect to the business that has been growing. And it allows me to be able to reach more people and work with more people and to break free of the location based restrictions. And there are so many people seeking support around Earth centered spiritual traditions, and they may not live in the northeast, like where I am, they might be a lot of many of them live in areas where it’s dangerous to be out of the closet, or you could lose your job or, or other kinds of things. So like, I have always want like, like I said, I’m still being true to the mission of really providing that center in that oasis. Like, in many ways, it’s become more possible, like online because I can reach more people in locations where they don’t have maybe a progressive community or a local store or something like that. It just opens up It frees up. And it also frees me up to maybe go to other communities and have been requested to come in and teach and, and it just, it basically expands the container by by shifting the model, but I know but you’re right. Like it isn’t like, Oh, I just snap my fingers and I want like one does not walk away from a 14 year business that they built that was very successful, pre COVID. And it was it was hanging on through COVID. But it was clear that it was clear that this was creating the opportunity for me to step into the next thing that I really, for the last year or so have been really kind of percolating in my heart to do.

Sheila M  50:37  

Yeah, yeah. And I, I do think that’s really important because I think, you know, the doubt can come back in fear can come back in just the general kind of chaos of shifting into something else is, I think even when you do know that you’re on the right track and have that kind of, like you said spiritual team cheering you on and Still not always like a simple decision and not always like every day I wake up and I’m like, yeah, this is it like this is okay. Right.

Winifred Costello  51:09  

Well, and to your point, that’s a really good point. So I did also get readings with other folks. So I’m a reader. Can I read my own cards? Absolutely. Did I read my cards during that? Yes, I did. And it was saying the same thing as the readings I went and got with others. But I had one of my spiritual elders, read my cards. At the end, the one of the traditions I’m in, you get a reading at the start of the year. And it was really interesting because they didn’t even before COVID was even on anyone’s radar. And I can and it was really interesting, because they brought up the summer in July, and that there would be this like a blip on the radar was kind of because that that’s kind of how it came through. But that everything would be fine. Like, like I would have to make a decision that might seem frustrating and upsetting and causes stress, but that would be but it was the right thing. decision, I’d be fine on the other side of it, that actually, it would open up a lot of things that had not been able to be opened before. And then I got a reading when things were going down. And, and, you know, COVID the new owners and I knew that there was tension and I got a reading with another different another trusted mentor. And they had this they picked up on that they were saying the same thing. So you know, when you like, I always say to people, like, why, why book the reading with the other person, if you can read your own cards, and there’s a phrase like you can’t be and see ya at the same time. And also, if you’re too emotionally close to something, it’s good, like I know, you read for for folks, it’s good to get reading to somebody when you feel too close to a situation or too emotionally invested. So it’s always good to get that Self Checker by having another trusted reader read for you. And it was very curious to me when the second reader started saying almost summer verbatim, and they didn’t know each other they were not they read in two different modalities like one reads with cards, one reads was channeled Like they don’t even use the same tradition. And they were saying some of the same sentences and the same timing of July and and July hadn’t even come yet. You know what I mean? So that also was really helpful for when those moments when we’re doubting and guessing, having spiritual tools that you can work to work, like reach to having spiritual practices that ground and anchor you. Like, I did not lean into my spiritual practice this hard in a long time. And I’m so grateful for them. Yeah, because, because I, they, they’re there for a reason. And they’re our practice and our anchor and our core foundational practices for our reason. And I think we can have a tendency folks have a tendency to abandon or run away from their spiritual tools or their practices, whether it’s meditation or exercise or yoga or getting a root whatever it is you do. I think when crap hits the fan, people can run away and drop it like kind of let go of this. It’s like you’re in the car at cars getting out of control and dependencies that look like a steering wheel. It’s like no steer into it, like lean into practices lean into your tools. And that really in those moments, I was like, oh man, am I doing the right thing? Like, trust me, my husband asked him like, I think 1000 times Am I making a mistake? And I was very grateful for our my witch knowing and also my spiritual practices and tools and that I had other readers I trusted I could go to to like check in on.

Sheila M  54:25  

Yeah, I love that you brought that up too, because that’s one of the things that I talked about. And I’m probably going to do a whole episode on it like when to get a reading even if you are a reader, because one of the things that I think people who read do is like put a lot of pressure on themselves to like have the answers and there are so many things that I can read on and and see very clearly but like you said, whenever it’s like a huge decision, and there’s a lot of emotion kind of wrapped up in it, it can be really challenging to see clearly and one of the things I talk about in my course is you To be ready to ask a question and hear the answer that you don’t want to hear. Yeah. And that’s really hard. Because I think, you know, sometimes I was I feel that where I’m having that moment, and I’m like, I’m not ready. I’m not ready to hear no to this thing right now. And so I don’t think I can read on it right now. So I’ve had very similar situations where, and that’s actually what happened again, when I kind of knew that I had to leave. Then I also went and got readings from people that I trusted, and verbatim. I mean, they said the same phrase, verbatim, that like is not a phrase that people say like they were all like, Oh, well, I guess it’s time to put your shingle out. And I had never even heard that phrase before. Right. In two weeks, three different readers to me, and I was like, Are you kidding? This is validation, right? Yeah. And that’s the thing is, I think it can be so powerful to validate how you’re feeling and you don’t you don’t have a that emotion sitting on top of it, it’s still an emotional experience. But you don’t have all of that emotion trying to like sit on top of you while you’re doing a reading. Even if you’re great at clearing things out, compartmentalizing, it is really hard when you’ve invested so much. And also when you feel such a sense of responsibility. And you know, like you said, you still have this whole online component, you weren’t ready to be done with our country as a whole. So to be like, let me just let this go is a huge decision. Especially I think, because you were successful, it wasn’t like you were letting it go, because it wasn’t like you weren’t doing well or whatever. Like you were, you were a successful brick and mortar business. And you were saying, Okay, I think that this is not the right thing anymore.

Winifred Costello  56:47  

I think it was very much like the like I said, like we literally had some of the best months ever and to start a 2020 before the COVID head like oh the irony, but at the same And the whole point is about being in service to the mission and it became very clear that the best way I could you know really keep invest continue to invest in our country and the vision and the mission and be in the best alignment to be able to serve that and the ultimately the mission was to let the story not – it would be foolish to hang on out of fear. It was clear it was time to let go and trust and and and trust that spirit knew like was guiding where we were headed next. Not that you give up your own authority you’re still listening and partnering it’s like a collaboration co creation. But yeah, like at a certain point when is holding on actually choking off the very energy that you are seeking to receive. And that’s pretty clear. I want to say I know your Tarot. So it was very much like an eight of cups.

Sheila M  57:47  

That’s literally what I was gonna say I you were at like this very like eight of cups moment where you were making a decision that’s best for you. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not hard and that there’s not like grief with it. Like you’re Kind of seeing it there and knowing. But like, knowing that there’s something better ahead if you can, like, let go of what’s there,

Winifred Costello  58:08  

right? They always tell people yeah, run it cups. If you look at the person in the classic card, they’re not look their back is they’re not looking at what they’re leaving behind. They’re looking at the path that’s ahead of them. And they know that there’s more to be there’s more, there’s more to the to the path that lies ahead. It’s they just know when it’s when something’s complete and full. And it’s time to let like let go of what’s done and open to what the next leg of the journey hold.

Sheila M  58:34  

Yeah, yeah. And I think it’s so funny because I think I always kind of think about these situations in life as like the energy of a card and literally when you were talking earlier, it’s so funny that you said that because I was like, I was like, Oh my god, this is so eight of cups, like, like knowing it’s the right thing. It’s still a really challenging thing to leave behind. Because again, it is it’s like your baby, you know, it’s a it’s an emotional thing and it’s it’s the thing that you’ve cultivated and it’s more than just the store itself, it’s the community, and that sense of, of creation. But knowing that, like you said, moving forward is allowing you all of these different opportunities and this ability to reach people who would not be able to reach these kinds of resources necessarily where they live or in their community or in secret sometimes, you know, and I think that’s really important. And so I love that you brought that up, which kind of transitions us into our next thing and what’s funny is I don’t know if they’re going to come out in this order, but I I started doing interviews and I kind of like accidentally set them up in in like, card order, which was very not intentional, but I was like, I really see you like personality wise, as like the High Priestess card because you do so much of spiritual work, but also specifically in how you teach with, like helping to connect people with their own authority and their own agency and their own sense of intuition. And you do it through a lot of different modalities. And I think that that’s what like really kind of drew me in on that because I was a little, I was having a hard time narrowing it down at first because I was like, She’s so many things. But I do think that like what you do in your business, and the wishing well, which we’ll talk about a little bit more in a second. But what you do with all of these programs is kind of like, set people up with their own sense of authority and to connect on their own and to really trust that wisdom, and you also live it, which is like what you’re going through right now is the perfect example. And even though that’s kind of like an eight of cups situation. It’s that high priestess sense that’s guiding you through every step of the way. And also, I feel like how you kind of present in your business. So it’s really funny because I was like, Oh, I did. I did. I’ve interviewed one of my friends who was a fool and then another person who is the magician. And then I’m like, Oh, this is like so weird how this is working out? 

Winifred Costello  1:01:08  

Yeah. It’s no accident. There’s no coincidences. It’s all some sort of divine synchronicity. I so that’s really interesting. I always that’s a really good point you’re bringing up so I think of our our souls evolution, our healing, like that. First of all, I think that healing is our everyone’s birthright. Like by being born onto the planet. I kind of see I kind of aligned with the idea that the earth is sort of like the school school for spirits. And we incarnate here and we have work to work on, lessons to unpack evolution to either say yes to or not to free will, I believe it’s free will. free will and choice is also in play. So I always like in one’s spiritual journey or the whole enchilada. That’s an okay word to use is like a, like a circle. everything to me is very circular. So I feel like it’s like a wheel and we stand in The center of the wheel. So that’s sort of like a high priestess stance in the center of the wheel. And it’s a mini spokes wheel. And how many spokes your wheel has is personal to each is to each individual. And you know, one thread like one spoke with the wheel could be a healing modality one spokes of the wheel could be a divination tool, like Tarot or some other art or astrology. One tool could be like herbal medicine, or you know, functional medicine once one spoke B, just being a mom or being in a family or having pet like doing your, the, like the Dharma, like the actual being on the earth plane, the physical reality. So I feel like it’s our work to claim our personal power and claim ownership of standing in that center of the wheel, and deep listening and doing our inner work and the inner knowing so that we can understand at what point in time when we encounter something happen unfolding or manifesting in our life, what spokes Do we need to sort of like reach out to and Access in any given moment to help empower us to either show up for our life and enjoy it, or move through a transition or manifest a new project or solve a problem. And it might be in a myriad of those folks like you might be one might be three might be all eight of them. Like, each individual knows what’s ultimately best. I really believe like, like, there is no problem that we encounter that we don’t have ultimately have the solution to there is we have all the tools we need within us at any given moment. It’s about understanding how to recognize and access them and giving ourselves permission to to claim them for ourselves. And that’s not about stepping on other people or power over. It’s very much about standing in your truth and sourcing power from within. So I hybris is perfect because I kind of think we’re all like working on being your own high priest or priestess or priestex like whichever word works best for you.

Sheila M  1:03:52  

Yeah, and I i absolutely. I see that 100% because I do think that like ultimately what you’re doing Teaching is for everybody to be their own High Priestess or priestex. Like you said, I think it’s really important because we spend so much time and I talked about it in my high priestess course, actually, that we spend so much time from the time we’re born learning from other people rather than learning from ourselves. And we’re all like, we’re kind of programmed to get information from outside of ourselves rather than from within. And so I think it’s so interesting that that’s you have all of these different modalities. And in all of your work, that’s kind of like what you’re doing. Even with the story, it was kind of like you were like drawing people in and giving them all of these resources. So I know that you’ve transitioned the store to be online, but also simultaneously while you were running our country, the physical store and now into the online store. You also have a monthly membership called The Witching Well. Can you talk to us like a little bit about that program and what you do in it, and how It kind of plays into this whole High Priestess vibe for everyone?

Winifred Costello  1:05:04  

Um, well, I’ve community is my jam, I think I finally can claim that I’m always I’ve always been known for creating communities and being very involved in community like when I had a corporate job that was a big thing I was known for. And like in coaching, like having a coaching an organic like a sort of a coaching approach to life. I also you know, have some training like in NLP and other things help support that. And The Witching Well is, I call it the uncoven, so this is not to bash on covens covens are wonderful, amazing spaces when and when you can find the right coven, it can really be an incredible experience. Um, but at the same time covens are often location based, they can be complicated, like or just have a lot of structure that may or may not fit the modern witch or the modern pagan. And I also so the witching was I call it the uncommon experience. Or collective. So we functioned like a collective, and we gather around core values and a mission rather than, like a like a coven. It’s a lot of the you know, ethics and core values that one would want in a coven are there and the benefits of what’s in the coven, but we don’t have like the structure of a coven. Because we’re not one tradition. It’s more about opportunity for me to mentor and empower folks to claim their spiritual agency and to understand what tools are in that that wheel that are speak to them mostly that are available for them to develop that they can then be their own High Priestess. You know, ministering to themselves or to others if that’s what they’re called to do, as well as family or other professional. So that witching well is it can be a magical collective or magical community for Earth centered spiritual seekers that want to grow, grow and build spiritual, like a pagan Wiccan witchcraft, like Earth centered traditions that are relevant, meaningful, accessible and tangible to them. That’s what we do there. I love that. 

Sheila M  1:07:02  

I love that that’s so beautiful. And I know you’ve been doing it for a while. So you also have kind of this collective experience that grows in in like how you structure things. And that this transition has also opened you up to have more time for like this community and being a little more creative. So I know you have the witching well, which is opening soon. And I’ll have information all about that in in the show notes for this episode and everything. So there’s people are interested in kind of checking it out or maybe dipping a toe, they can get a little bit of that experience with you. And I also want to talk about you mentioned it quickly earlier, but your Oracle guidebook I know you kind of have an idea in line of when you want to release it, but can you talk to us maybe just vaguely as much detail as you’d like to share about kind of what what type of Oracle deck it is and what you’re going to be doing with it.

Winifred Costello  1:08:01  

Yeah, so I have I am co creating the Oracle deck with visionary artist and illustrator of Melissa Pandena , too, so I can’t give her credit for, you know, for the visual artwork. We co created this. We’ve known each other for a long time we met on a Halloween Eve which so like, yeah, we met at an Irish session and in a cool Irish pub on the thundering rainy Halloween night. So it was it doesn’t get much richer than that.

Sheila M  1:08:28  

Yeah, I mean, matters. Like, Witch level 100 

Winifred Costello  1:08:32  

Yeah. Um, so we co created and founded Awentree together. And she’s a massage therapist, that was kind of like some of the artists that some of the things she was bringing to that. And then as I said, I bought her out because she married started her family and she’s been more into our art career in recent years. So she approached me about let’s choose, like, I think that our next thing to do together is this Oracle deck, and so it’s very much revisionary healers. Which is seers mystics that would like to have an Oracle deck if you think of like a lot of old European witch traditions, when you went to the witches edge of the forest she might cast bones or some other augury or divination method as part of like working in a healing session with you to get that like a lot of times like the healer will want to kind of like converse with spirit on your behalf and with you to sort of see how can they best help you or serve you in your healing that you’re seeking. Um, and if you think of it, like from a spiritual prescription, I know prescription is kind of a touchy word in this world. But um, but so like, like how do you get the right soul medicine for what you’re seeking? And so we wanted to create a deck that could really speak to that worker that that spirit worker and so it has like, it has a like a upper world middle world underworld coming ponent it has like a lot of her and I have similar backgrounds. So it really brings together an integration of a lot of our traditions and has like elemental energy has like that wheel energy. It has like a cloth that you can use it with, like you like that adds another layer to it. So the deck is all painted. It’s these about 40 to 45 cards that are really pretty amazing. So Melissa power drew all the paintings and I’m working on creating a guidebook that will help you understand the system and also be able to like, you know, have some readings and how could you apply the guidebook like Okay, so I’m at that visionary healer, how can I best maybe work with this as a tool in my box when I’m on either for myself or if I’m working with a client.

Sheila M  1:10:43  

Brilliant. My gosh, that sounds so cool. I love I love how you described that to like the finding the witch in the woods. He’s gonna, you know, all of the old school, you know, things that I think have kind of fallen out a little bit and really bringing that kind of have older wisdom into the modern day, which is like, perfect for what you do. So I’m so excited about that. So that’s expected in winter of next year? 2021?

Winifred Costello  1:11:12  

Yeah, we’re hoping it’s really waiting on me to finish up that book. So now that’s one of the projects I can have. I can have time now to get going. Um, I’m like, you know, about 2000 3000 words in on a 20,000 word project book. So, but I’ve put a lot of, like structural, like, you know, it’s not like I haven’t thought about the book for a long time and been taking notes on it. But now I need to like paper to pen to paper and bang it out. So we’re, um, I know, Melissa is chomping at the bit to have it come out in 2021. Yeah, so kind of our target date.

Sheila M  1:11:46  

Very exciting. Oh my gosh, it’s so cool.

Winifred Costello  1:11:49  

It’s pretty it’s kind of overwhelming and it’s exciting. This I haven’t I haven’t really been able. It’s one of the things that when I love my store, don’t get me wrong. I love every bit about our country. It takes a lot of emotional, mental, spiritual and physical bandwidth to have a physical store. So it was hard to have the bandwidth that I wanted for these other projects while having the store. So I’m very excited that now frees up so much of that for me to get things other things happening in the pipeline.

Sheila M  1:12:16  

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s so important to, to keep from like that. Like, there is a level of I think like spiritual burnout and stuff that can happen when you are doing a lot of this work. And I think having something that really inspires that creativity and that like intuitive connection to creativity, that is really exciting and keeps things fresh and keeps you innovating. I think both in your personal practice, but also like I’m sure in your teaching and everything as well, because everything that you’re doing is kind of like setting that up. So I think that’s really exciting. Thank you. I’m excited. Yeah, so I like to kind of close things out, I have just kind of like one more question, which is a little bit of a loaded question. But if you could give one piece of advice to people who are struggling to connect with their intuition or struggling to trust their intuition, what would you kind of say to them? Maybe they’re a baby witch maybe they are a person who is in an environment where they’re not really encouraged to be intuitive, what would you say?

Winifred Costello  1:13:25  

I think most importantly, if you’re really questioning or self doubting your own intuition is to anchor it into the physical in some way. That could either be by having a pulling a card every day and writing in a journal. Or if you have a different whatever your divination tool is, whether it’s pendulum work or augury or Omen walking, just that you do it a few times a week if you can’t do it every day, but that you documented it –  one, it could be dreamwork anything that you’re so our soul is always speaking to us. And the reason the intuition those intuitive arts are so quiet Because that’s the vehicle that our soul kind of kind of get direct access to have a conversation with us. And so the more you can get in the habit of writing down what you’re receiving, and making notation so that as months and time pass, you can look back and go like, Oh, right, this event’s happening today. And Geez, that dream I had, that dream is pretty much was telling me or that reading or that moment I used the pendulum or the birds were flying a certain pattern that just had a feeling the more you can document and observe and record your own journey. And look, have it as a resource of yours, how your soul is talking to you. So I think that our souls, every one of us has to learn the energetic language of our soul. And the best way to do that is a – through practice, b- that practice needs to bring it into the physical earth plane in some way and c- documentation so you can have something that you can look back to over time to validate to give you that validation that Oh, right. So one of the biggest things I discovered through keeping like a dream journal was that It literally took me five years to discover what exactly was going on when I would dream up black bears. And because I kept the dream journal when it finally enough, because those dreams didn’t happen that often because they were related to very specific giant events in my life. So I had to have like, literally years go by for enough documentation to occur or light bulb could finally go on. Yeah, and that was a huge breakthrough for me. So again, I think people aren’t patient enough. And so I think we can document because it can take months, the way the soul speaks, and the spirit operates, as you know, and I know I’m preaching to the choir here. I know you know, all this, but spirit has its own timeline, and it’s very different than us here. And so it can take a long time for something to really come forward. So I think people end up doubting and the best, that’s the best way to develop your confidence.

Sheila M  1:15:48  

Yeah, yeah, I think that’s so important and and a really beautiful way of saying it is kind of bringing that physicality because it’s easy to write things off, I think, especially if you’re not kind of seeing I’m writing repeatedly. And I know that was my experience of everything happening in the beginning, you know, so I’m really cool. So I will I will have this all in writing and in the show notes, but where can people find you online? How can they work with you? Where should they go to look at all of your awesome offerings. 

Winifred Costello  1:16:19  

It’s pretty easy. It’s Awentree. So it’s everything I want you so it’s Awentree.com. It’s @Awentree on Instagram, and there’s a page Awentree on Facebook.

Sheila M  1:16:28  

Awesome, awesome. Thank you so much for being here today, Winifred. I appreciate it so much. I am I’m happy to have somebody who is both and a friend of mine and also somebody whose work I admire so much and, and really like you’ve shared so much of your journey and I know that it will connect for the people that it’s meant to connect for. So I’m so I’m so appreciative of you being here today.

Winifred Costello  1:16:52  

Thank you, Sheila. I’m so excited to be here. This is super fun. I could talk well, we’ve already talked a long time. I could talk to you all day like you’re I love nerding out with other healer-type folks and witchy readers?

Sheila M  1:17:03  

Yeah, yeah, this is awesome. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for listening to Living Tarot. If you loved today’s episode, please leave us a review and subscribe so that you never miss an episode. This helps us reach even more budding intuitives. Feel free to share on Instagram and tag me @Starsagespirit and let me know what you learned what surprised you and what you’d like to hear even more of. As always, if you want to hear more about my courses, or book a reading with me, or for full episodes show notes you can head over to starsagespirit.com

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In Episode 5 of Living Tarot, I discuss how tarot can be a useful and effective tool for navigating career changes and crossroads.  So many of us have blind spots when it comes to our careers.  We get tunnel vision and it’s hard to see clearly.

• I discuss the types of readings that can be helpful when navigating career crossroads.
• I also speak to how tarot can help you to navigate multiple options instead of just focusing on one thing.
• I explain how tarot can help with goal-setting and achievement by acting as a tool for reflection and investigation.

Connect with Sheila:

Book a Tarot or Reiki session at starsagepspirit.com or find her on Instagram instagram.com/starsagespirit.

Check out this episode!

Transcript:

Sheila M  0:05  

Welcome to Living Tarot. I’m your host Sheila Masterson. I’m a tarot reader and teacher, an energy healer and medium, and creator of Practical Tarot for Everyday Intuitives. Each week on this podcast, I’ll share my own experience of embracing and growing intuition and interview guests about how they heard the call of intuition, embraced the adventure and embodied the tarot along the way. Join us and learn how you can stop second guessing, empower yourself through intuition and live intentionally with the Tarot.

Hey there, welcome back to another episode of Living Tarot. Today on the podcast I’m going to be talking about navigating career changes and transitions with Tarot. In today’s episode, I really want to focus on some of the more practical ways to use Tarot. Whether you are a full time reader or you are somebody who casually dabbles. Tarot can really provide a lot of insight and especially when it comes to career can help to take some of the emotion and some of the kind of the boxy way we can think about our current career trajectory and turn it on its head a little bit. So we’ll be going into that on a little deeper level. And I’ll talk about some of the ways that I use Tarot in sessions to work with people on their careers.

 So let’s get into it. Starting out, one of the things that I see happen a lot, I do a lot of career readings. And so I see a lot of people who come In, and they’ve kind of planned their whole career based on either what their company has told them is available, or what their family has told them as available, what they heard in college was available. And as much as it can give us a little bit of a map to follow in our career, it can also really narrow down our ability to be creative, to accept new ideas and challenges and to think outside the box a little bit. And so one of the things that tarot can be really great for is offering us kind of a shift in perspective and getting us outside of our own. Our own kind of cultivated thinking on what our career should look like, can look like, and the directions in which it can expand and grow.

So with that said, some of the bigger things that I use tarot for are things like career trajectory. So sometimes I will sit down and do a reading with a client who is looking for kind of what to focus on over the next year of their career. So they might be happy with the position they have. They like their company, they’re in a pretty good position. And they’re just wondering what will help their career most long term. So whether that is getting more training, volunteering to be on a certain team are to take on a certain type of project. They’re really looking for insight on how to very specifically grow their career and to be intentional with how they’re using their energy throughout the year. And so we might do a full year spread where we go into what the energy of the year is going To bring professionally and what they might experience over the next 12 months, and how they can best serve themselves through some of the challenges that might be coming up. Sometimes we look very directly at what challenges they’re going to face. And all of that is great because it provides a lot of info. And it usually serves as validation for something that they’re already feeling. So most of the time, what I’m saying isn’t coming totally out of left field, it may be something that they didn’t even tell me about that they were already considering doing a training on something that came up and happens frequently because you know, we are all intuitive and people do have an understanding of what they really need to do in a given moment. And so when they come in, I can provide a sort of validation that helps them to feel more grounded and comfortable making that decision. And it can also provide them with a greater sense of calm going into it, and a greater sense of accomplishment, and agency over what steps to make next. And so it’s not about coming in and having the cards, tell them exactly what to do and how to do it and what to expect. And when to expect it. It’s more an offering of what they might be up against what they might be facing, and how they can best approach that with grace and understanding and with the greatest outcome in mind for them, and really to empower them to make the best decision for themselves in that moment. So that’s kind of the first way that I work with people.

The second way is that when people are feeling a little bit out of alignment with their career or like, they thought they were going to like something and they maybe didn’t like it so much, and they’re really looking for, what should I really be doing? What is my ideal career? Or what is the ideal position for me, I, I have this sensation of not quite knowing how to put my finger on what doesn’t feel right about my job, but I know that something isn’t right. And so in those kind of sessions, where we’re looking at your ideal work, it can be very helpful because often, it’s not terribly different than what the person is doing. There’s just some element that’s out of alignment, whether maybe you’re in a support role, and you need to be more in an individual independent working mode. Maybe you prefer to be in a supervisory mode, and right now you’re not or maybe you need to Be able to set your own schedule and and you’re not in the position that you have. And so when we do this ideal work type of spread, it can provide insight not just into the type of work that is ideal for you, but also the structure of that work, the emotional input and output of that work, the time commitment and the energy commitment, and can really help to give you some valuable information about why you’re not feeling in alignment with the work that you’re doing, even if it might look good on paper or sound good or even if you really like most of the things about what you’re doing, and just are having a hard time closing the gap between that level of satisfaction that you’re hoping to achieve. And so, in an ideal work spread, we can really look at who you are as a person What the position is like that would be ideal for you and how that compares to the position that you’re actually in now, because usually the disparity can come up pretty clearly and pretty quickly, and show some insight into how and why that might be. So that’s our second second type of reading. From there, we also have time to the timing piece. So when is it time to make the next move in my career or for entrepreneurs? When should I release this next offering? What should I be working with right now? What should I be working with over the next couple months and when would be kind of the most opportune or the most successful time to release this next project that I have covered? up, or when is the best time to really focus on creative pursuits or when is the best time to buckle down and focus on setting up structure and support in my business. And so those sessions can be extremely, extremely helpful because especially for for people and and this one I see a lot of entrepreneurs and solo business owners come in and look for because sometimes we have a lot of emotional attachment to projects that are very personal. I speak from my own experience of really wanting people to have a certain experience of of my work and I get very excited when I have some new creative projects coming up. 

This podcast is a perfect example. And I can want to like throw myself into it 110% every single project, but I have recognized And over time, realized how important it is to time these things, right, because when we try to push really hard on something or force something out, it can really lead to us dropping the ball on other projects or other things that we do regularly. Or it just might not be a time when people are ready to hear it. Or you might not have the kind of creative energy at that time to really bring a project to life. But in a few months, you’ll have a little break and then a little time to actually tune into that. And so when we do a reading, where we’re looking at timing and everything, it can be very helpful. To again, look at what the natural energy that we’re going to be having in a certain time period is and help us really effectively use our resources so that we’re not spinning our gears because especially for entrepreneurs, it can be very easy to get distracted by shiny object syndrome and constantly chasing around something that we’re really excited about and really passionate about that looks really good. But it’s just not really well timed or doesn’t quite fit into our business as it is. And not every single project necessarily needs to happen either. And so with these type of readings, sometimes it can help people discern what is most important, if it is a project for right now, if it’s something that needs to be placed in a parking lot or in kind of like a project backlog where you can kind of go through periodically and see what jumps out at you. But it might not be something that is in alignment with your business and the goals that you set for yourself that year. So that can also be very enlightening. 

Hey there, I want you to be the first to know that I am offering a free training Terrell For real life, get your shit together with the Tarot on Sunday, September 20 2020 at 12pm eastern time, this workshop is extremely powerful. It talks about the top mistakes that new Tarot readers make will cover the neuroscience of Tarot and how it can stop the anxiety cycle and the exact steps to follow to start reading effectively and efficiently for yourself. This is where the spirituality of the Tarot meets real life situations. And my goal is to have you leave that workshop, either with a reboot to your tarot reading or if you’re a brand new beginner with a good idea of how to get started so you can sign up for that free workshop in the show notes today. Or if you already know that you are really interested in signing up for a tarot course. I will be opening the doors for my Tarot course for the last For 2020 the course is called Practical Tarot for Everyday Intuitives. It is a seven week Tarot course that takes you from brand new beginner to tarot reading Pro, and helps you learn how to bring that practice into real life, how to use the Tarot to help you make complex decisions effortlessly. So if that sounds good to you, you can sign up for the waitlist in the show notes today. 

That kind of leads me into another reason, which is to help you really set and align your business goals for the year. So just like a lot of readers do, sessions each new year for kind of their personal year ahead. I also do business year ahead readings or career year ahead readings, where we’re very specifically buckled down on your business and career. So especially for entrepreneurs, we’re looking at what you’re goals are and and for for just regular career readings, we’re really looking at what your goals are for the year how to really prioritize those how to not get distracted. And it also usually entails looking at what those distractions might be because just having that knowledge can help us recognize them quicker, and kind of shut it down if we’re finding ourselves getting really distracted. And so that can be extremely helpful and extremely enlightening for opening our eyes to possibilities and also setting us up for success and making us accountable to what we really want and to keep checking in with those goals throughout the year. So that is one of the offerings that can be extremely potent, and I do have people who still reach out to me, you know, months later and we do a check in every now and then, like once a quarter just to to check in on health. Things are going and how we’re feeling in alignment to those goals, and how we might need to shift a little bit. And it’s been extremely, extremely exciting to see how it has helped clients to stay really, really focused. And to hear feedback from them on how the quality of their time working and of their lives even given so much going on in the outside world right now with a global pandemic and an upcoming election in the United States. How it has really helped to keep them grounded and focused at a time when it is very, very easy to get distracted. And so it’s been really exciting for me to see how, over time the reflections that these cards hold up for people in this, this mirror that they provide really, really helpful To serve as something that is clarifying and very intentional. And so that is really a huge part of my philosophy with reading Tarot is recognizing that Tarot is really a mirror for all of our human experiences, and each card is an archetype that represents an energy that we all experience at different times. And so within those 78 cards, we really are provided with this, this reflection of exactly what we’re going through in a given moment, what we need to prioritize how we’re feeling energetically how we can find support and how to carry that support with us. And how to call on it when we need it and how to effectively use all of the resources that are at our disposal without pushing ourselves into burnout or exhaustion and so I’ve really found that that can be a very, very potent and effective type of reading for for career and business Tarot and then finally, and these are just kind of the primary ways that I use it it is by no means the be all end all of career Tarot. But I did want to mention a couple specifics just to give people some ideas if you read for yourself how to how to really create and start to cultivate your relationship in more of a business setting. 

And then the final way that I use this is really making choices. So, we all kind of come to different crossroads. So, navigating crossroads and career where we might feel like what we are doing is no longer in alignment for us. We might be feeling called to one or more other things, we might be feeling called to add something maybe a side hustle, especially millennial generation. Having a side hustle has kind of become the norm because of a lot of the financial struggles that millennials have faced since graduating most of them either right before or in the midst of Great Recession, and now with dealing with a second recession and their early careers, really experiencing and me to be creative and to find other options and also a little bit more control over the Our financial lives. And so I do work with a lot of people who are trying to find either additional work or work that is more in alignment and are facing that career crossroads that they’re trying to navigate. And it’s important to mention here that in American culture, a huge amount of our self worth and value is tied up in our career and our work. And so it can be extremely, extremely difficult for us to agree to give up that level of control or to open ourselves up to the possibility that we might have picked not the wrong thing, but maybe just not the long term thing. And to recognize that the resources that we’ve put into something may be needed. be shifted and put somewhere else. And there’s a lot of pressure from basically the time that you’re, I guess, like a junior senior in high school, to really choose something that you’re essentially going to do forever, which I don’t really think is realistic for most people. I think for some people it is absolutely, but I also think that for most people, their career is a lot of Crossroads where they have to make choices. And so this is probably the reading that I do most often is this kind of career Crossroads navigation, where we look at different options and different ideas that you have and really look at what each of those entails. And it’s not about again, it’s it’s not about giving our power away to a deck of cards or letting the cards choose for us what we should do. It’s instead about getting information about what each option holds, so that we can make the best choice for ourselves. And that is what it’s really, really all about. Because it doesn’t really do you any favors. If you go into a reading and you think you’ve been offered your dream job and you’re so excited and you can’t wait. And you go into the reader and you ask, should I take this job? And you get the answer? No. Because then what are you left with? Nothing. And I will talk about this a little bit more in an episode that I do on how to ask the best questions in a reading but this this style of reading was really born out of recognizing that often Yes, no questions don’t really give us the information and tend to disempower us, rather than tuning us into our true feelings or our intuition. And so, when it comes to this Crossroads spread, it can really provide a lot of information and a lot of clarity. And it can help trigger the intuition of not just me as the reader, but also the client who’s sitting with me and and if you’re doing this for yourself, you know, it can help trigger your intuition around. What exactly it is that that you need to see about this dream job. Okay, it’s your dream job, but you shouldn’t go in guns blazing because your new boss is a micromanager. So just be aware of that or maybe, you know, you were offered two jobs and one seems better than the other but instead, it would have you you know, taking on too many putting on too many different hats or having to be too divided in your time or working too long hours, or maybe The boss kind of changes the job description once you get in there, you know, and there’s, there are so many different things that can come up around this. And so with this type of reading, it can really offer you a very holistic and robust understanding of what exactly, you’re looking at in different scenarios. And if you are in a place where you are just a little bit confused about where to go and have a couple of different ideas about what you might like to do, it can really help trigger your intuition and show you very clearly which path is correct or maybe which two paths are correct, or how to blend something that you were interested in into, you know, a side business or something that you do a little bit more maybe for fun even in in your regular life and it It will tell you things about that work like you can expect to make, you know, a good living off of this type of work, or maybe, you know, it would take you a long time to get to a place where you were making a good living. Or you would really have to have your heart in this work because it’s more of a service type of thing. And you’re maybe not going to make as much money from it as you would hope. And not to say that it’s all about money. But but that is certainly an important consideration when we are talking about career. Or perhaps it’s time, instead of money that’s important. So maybe it’s more important for you that you have something that allows you to be flexible with your time and your energy. And maybe you need something that allows you to set your own hours and there’s there’s a lot of different ways to look at this and to ask the questions in a way that can be extremely informative and really helpful to navigating all of those different diverging directions that are seemingly unrelated Related, and can help really give you a holistic picture at what’s going on in your career, what you’re kind of butting heads up against, and where you really need to start taking steps in a new direction. 

So those are some of the ways that you can work with that. I am right now working on putting together a more robust, spread grouping, so a little bit of a, a mini training type of thing on creating some more robust spreads for people who are more advanced readers. And also if you are interested in learning some of these spreads that I’ve been talking about, I will be teaching them in my Practical Tarot for Everyday Intuitives course, which opens up at September 21. And so you can Sign up the for the waitlist, the waitlist will be available in the show notes for this episode. And if you are interested in getting a reading with me, you can head over to my website, starsagespirit.com and see what’s available. I am open right now for readings in September and October. And really looking forward to connecting with some of you. If you have comments, questions, anything came up for you that you found particularly interesting. You can also send me an email at livingtarotpod@gmail.com. I would love to hear from you. I’d love to hear your questions. And I’m always looking for ideas of what you would like to hear on future episodes. So you can do that now. I will see you all or speak with you all next week.

Thank you so much for listening to Living Tarot. If you loved today’s episode, please leave us a review and subscribe so that you never miss an episode. This helps us reach even more budding intuitives. Feel free to share on Instagram and tag me @starsagespirit and let me know what you learned what surprised you and what you’d like to hear even more of. As always, if you want to hear more about my courses, or book a reading with me, or for full episodes show notes you can head over to starsagespirit.com

Ads:  Sign up for Tarot for Real Life  or Join the Waitlist for Practical Tarot for Everyday Intuitives

In Episode 4 of Living Tarot, I speak with Davis Carr, a tarot reader and astrologer based in unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe Nation (aka Ottawa, Canada). Davis and I discuss her journey into divination, tarot, and astrology and how she sees the birth chart as a map to connect with your authentic self.  Davis’ work focuses on practical applications of astrology and the ways which astrology can lead us to a deeper understanding of ourselves.  She is the true embodiment of the Magician card and we will talk about why that suits her and how it has helped her continue to innovate in her work.

• We talk about Davis’ introduction to divination, and when she knew that she was being called to this work.
• We discuss how important it is to show up for clients as a clear channel, and to deliver readings without judgement 
• We also speak about how trusting your intuition is a more of an ever-evolving journey than a destination.

Connect with Sheila:

Book a Tarot or Reiki session at starsagepspirit.com or find her on Instagram instagram.com/starsagespirit.

Connect with Davis:

https://www.meridiantarot.com/livingtarot or instagram.com/meridiantarot

Check out this episode!

Transcript:

Sheila M  0:05  

Welcome to Living Tarot. I’m your host Sheila Masterson. I’m a tarot reader and teacher, an energy healer and medium, and creator of Practical Tarot for Everyday Intuitives. Each week on this podcast I’ll share my own experience of embracing and growing intuition and interview guests about how they heard the call of intuition, embraced the adventure, and embodied the Tarot along the way. Join us and learn how you can stop second guessing. Empower yourself through intuition and live intentionally with the Tarot. 

Welcome back to Living Tarot. I’m so delighted to have my friend Davis Carr on the podcast with me this week. Davis isn’t a tarot reader and astrologer based in Ottawa, Canada. Using the birth chart as a map, Davis helps people connect to their authenticity resolve the tension in their lives and discover how they can evolve and grow to become the best version of themselves. She uses Tarot to interpret messages and uncover the subtle energies at play, and helps guide her clients toward their own inner knowing. Above all else, she acts as a channel between her clients, the higher self and their guides. Davis is passionate about making astrology and Tarot as accessible as possible, and is currently working on a series of foundational astrology classes as well as co creating the Hollow Valley Tarot coming in 2021. In this episode, we talk about Davis’s work, how it has evolved over time, and how she really embodies the Magician card and the subtler energies that kind of weave throughout that card. I hope you enjoy this episode. Let’s dive right in.

Today I have Davis Carr on Living Tarot with me and I’m so excited to have her here. And we met several months ago in a business development type incubator program and hit it off right away because we are both Tarot readers and connected on that. But Davis I’m so excited to have you here today. Can you tell us who you are, what you do, how you bring life into this world? 

Davis Carr  2:33  

Thank you so much so much for having me. It is a pleasure to join you in conversation and I’m just really excited to dive deep and chat with you about Tarot and get super nerdy about intuition. I am a tarot reader. I am an astrologer. I am also an energy worker. And, you know, magic and astrology came into my life about four years ago. Now, but it really has been in the last two years, but I felt a really big calling towards doing it and creating a container for my practice. And that’s like really how radiant Taro my business was born was just me really wanting to figure out a structure and container through which to share my work with the world. And just like I got really excited about magic in astrology, and I wanted to share that with people and I wanted to meet people like you who are also into these things and have really nerdy conversations about Tarot and intuition. So I’m living my dream basically. 

Sheila M  3:37  

I love that so much. I love that whole I agree and relate on a lot of different levels. And I know we’ve had conversations offline about this, but tell us a little bit about your background and kind of how things started for you like what, what initiated you into this whole calling 

Davis Carr  4:00  

Yeah, well, my my background is in nonprofit communications and in digital marketing, so I have a pretty, I have a pretty traditional background for a digital marketer. As a kid, I was really obsessed with Harry Potter and Digimon. And I loved I like was really into the fandom. And so I started, I taught myself Photoshop and Illustrator, and I’ve taught myself how to code because I wanted to be part of these online communities. And it was through participating in these online communities that I started to write. I got really into fiction, and it just really was this underlying creative current throughout my life. I went to university and studied liberal arts and philosophy. And very interestingly ended up studying sort of the history of Western civilization through my undergraduate program, and I was very much focused on post modernism and post writing realism, killing God and tearing down all of the institutions. And that while I was there, I just got really involved in so many different forms of communications projects. So, right I was involved in the school newspaper, and I did posters for the theatrical society, and I was the communications officer for these theatrical society. And when I graduated, I just felt like, I had this collection of skills. And it wasn’t until I figured out that, like, the word communication is what I want, I needed to type into Google to find the jobs. I could do like that. That was really the first time that I was like, oh, okay, here, here’s a label for, for who I am and what I do. And for a very, very long time, my life was very much devoid of magic. I was very, I would say much more along the political and ideological end of things like I’ve always worked for nonprofits. In sort of that leftist environment, and that’s been very much part of my upbringing, and as part of my belief system, but it was just very practical for me, I was just like this I show up and I do I have skills and I should, I should give my skills towards a good organization that does good in the world. And it wasn’t until 2016 that I actually met a, I made a new friend at one of these progressive organizations, and she had a tarot deck. And she was the first person I had ever met who just had a tarot deck like she just had this thing that that she used on a regular basis. And until then, I’d only known about Taro as just like a thing which is dead in movies. But she had this deck and it was very progressive and feminist and so I followed her lead and I bought the same deck and I boAtheught a guidebook and that was really my first foray.

Sheila M  7:01  

And okay, so before that, did you like what kind of what were you taught growing up where you kind of taught about tuning in with intuition? And then once you’ve got your deck, did you do a program? Are you self taught? Like, how did that work for you?

Davis Carr  7:21  

So my background is I’m raised by two Atheists. One, my father grew up in a very religious household, a very conservative religious environment. And he very much rejected that growing up. And then my mother grew up in a very progressive socialist household. She grew up in Geneva, my grandfather worked for the International Labor Organization and my grandmother worked for an organization called the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. So it was like her environment was very much like, pacifist, socially progressive Like all of these things, and so that was very much the milieu in which I was raised and you know, I would say like feminism was more of a religion than anything else in our in my upbringing which I’m very very grateful for. But there’s a huge gap in my knowledge around religion and it is it was very much framed as God does not exist that is not for you like that is not a thing. So my now getting more into spirituality has been a really really big change and is something that I to be honest with you and really recommend like struggling to reconcile with like it is a very big a big left turn for me. But it also feels like coming home and a lot of ways because as a kid I loved mythology and I loved you know, I love the idea of connecting with something bigger than yourself. And and now of course, because I have studied traditional astrology, I actually can see the ways that all of these patterns are embedded into Western thought in general and all of our ideology. So I’ve sort of I found I’m coming towards figuring it out. But yeah, it’s very, this is not typical for my family, for sure. 

Sheila M  9:26  

I think that’s so fascinating to me too, because my experience was so opposite, in that I was raised in this very conservative, very Catholic upbringing that I always struggled to connect with, in the way that I saw my parents Connect, like, my parents would leave church and they felt like great, I’m like, you know, like, renewed and I felt like I was the weird one because I just did not connect with it in that way. And so it’s so interesting to hear from somebody who had like the complete opposite upbringing but kind of has ended up in a similar place. And I know even though we do different things, I think it’s very interesting because I’ve kind of struggled to reconcile that past with the new version of spirituality that I’ve kind of always known but had a hard time connecting with or feeling the authority or the agency to connect with as I was growing up. So I think that’s so fascinating. 

Davis Carr  10:27  

Yeah. And it’s, it is really fascinating because, you know, we each grow up in our own circumstances, and you don’t know what it’s like for other people. Something you know, something as simple as the idea of prayer. I don’t know how to pray. I prayer is not a part of my life. I was listening to a podcast episode about prayer, and it’s like about prayer and astrology and it was with one of my astrology teachers, Atutu Baba Dasa, who’s very spiritual in his approach. And so yeah, it was all about prayer. And I realized, like, I don’t know what this action is. And then of course, you know, I did some thinking about it and a tarot reading is our prayer. Like when I sit down and connect with my guides, that is prayer, but I’ve, I’ve had to cut like, Tarot was my way into intuition. astrology was my way into intuition. Whereas I think for other people that was, it’s more. I don’t know what it is for other people. That’s not my experience. Yeah. But I never say yeah, 

Sheila M  11:40  

yeah, I think that is so I think it’s so interesting. And so, so you got this terrible rash you started to learn? And what was your experience like with that? Did you teach yourself Did you take courses like what kind of helped you deepen that connection with something that you didn’t think? Have context for a really, really.

Davis Carr  12:02  

So the first two years of my practice, it was very light. I had the guidebook I had my deck and Around this time, like I really do have to credit just the burgeoning of what I call Tarotgraham in general, like Chani Nicholas is obviously a really really big influencer in this field. And it was through her work that I discovered astrology. And so Tarot and astrology have always been hand in hand for me. And Channing Nicholas does these new moon workshops and for about two years, every single month, I like most every more or less every month, I would buy one of those and I would sit down and I’d write out all of the transits and everything she said and I would, I didn’t know she would say things like sun squaring Saturn and I didn’t know what it meant, but I just absorbed it. And I would do full moon rituals and New Moon rituals and I would usually do a tarot spread and I journal about them. And that but that was pretty much it. And it was very, it was very private. It really wasn’t something I ever shared because I felt so weird doing it. This was also just in my life in general. It was the first time I was living in Ottawa, which is the city where I grew up and where I currently live. It was the first time I was living in Ottawa, in my own apartment with a roommate, because I had gone to school in Halifax, and then I lived in Toronto. And so it was my first time feeling like an adult in this way and really feel I shouldn’t say feeling like an adult, but I really felt like in control of my life and a very, very different way than I ever had before. I was working, I had, like my vision in front of me. And so those those lunar rituals in my bedroom, were just so precious to me, because they were truly just for me. And I would occasionally post them on social media. But that wasn’t the point. It was just me slowly learning this language and studying something that I really enjoyed. Yeah, and I think and then I think that’s so interesting to like you were saying, like this first kind of sense of being an individual away from every other, like influence that kind of shaped you, you know, and I think there’s, there’s so much of that, how old were you then? So I was 20. I was 25 ,26, 27. And what I would consider to be like the first stage of my spirituality. Yeah, yeah, like right up until my Saturn return, basically. And then as my Saturn return kicked in, we’ve sort of gotten got into this this new stage of the business. Rolling Yeah, but for so long. Yeah, it was it was very private. And it was personal. And it was just for me. And then the change happened very, very suddenly. And I like it was very vivid for me because it was February 2018. I was in Geneva, visiting my grandmother with my mother, my brother, my sister in law, and my eight month old at the time, nice. My grandmother lives is she’s currently 97 she, she’s wonderful and amazing. Amazing. Yeah, she’s great. And so she lives in this retirement center. And it was all I don’t know how many of that’s five or six of us in a one bedroom flat in this retirement center in Geneva. And I remember when I was packing, not I was looking at my tarot cards, and I thought, should I bring these? And I said, No, whatever. I don’t need this. Like, I’ll just what I’ll just keep going and While I was on that trip, you know, there was a lot going on obviously, like if you’ve ever spent an extended amount of time with an eight month old, who’s just learning how to walk, you know, it was also there were eclipses happening there was astrologically speaking there was a lot happening in my chart. And while I was there, I just felt so many emotions, and so overwhelmed and I all I wanted was a way to make sense of them. And like I objective things that could tell me what I was doing. And I didn’t bring my cards. And I didn’t I didn’t have an outlet and all I could think was like, I wish I had this thing like this is what it is for and it is this is what the tools for and I don’t have it right now. And so in lieu of that around this, this time, like I started looking at podcasts and other ways that have sort of getting my fix and also around this time Tess Guyverson who is the city which on Instagram. They were interviewed on Lindsey Mack’s Tarot for the Wild Soul podcast today.

Sheila M  17:13  

Love LOVE Lindsay Mack. Yeah.

Davis Carr  17:15  

And I mean, like this story I feel like can really just like we told from there because listening to Lindsay’s podcast, as like, like for so many people it Her work is so different than what you find when you do just a Google search for tarot cards. And it’s really deep, and it’s really personal. And so I was attracted to her work and that led me to her course and all of that. Then, I came back from this trip and I literally turned to my partner asked like a shortly after I got back and just said, I’m really into this and I’m going to really commit to this like, just so you know, I’m I am getting into this. And I just said it and I spoke it into existence.

Sheila M  18:04  

And what was the response? Because I know, I know, for me, it was a really hard conversation to have. Because I came from this background of being like, like when we met and we had been together for a long time when everything kind of started happening for me that I was like a corporate project manager and a yoga teacher. And like, that was like about us. witchy as I was, and when it came time to be like, oh, and also spirits are talking to me. And also I just, like know, things that I don’t have an explanation for. I was real nervous to have that conversation because I was like, Oh, this is gonna be this is gonna be it like she was on the other foot. I’m not sure I’d be like, Oh, sure, honey, that sounds great. You know? 

Davis Carr  18:49  

Totally. Yeah. It’s a very scary conversation to have. Absolutely and I will say this is my partner is a wonderful and unique it. vitual and his response was like, okay, like utterly nonplussed and just like okay, sure if that’s what you want todo, like really he was very very nonchalant about the whole thing and he has been extremely supportive in general and and how we like literally the room that I’m speaking to you in is a den or like another bedroom in our apartment that I have completely appropriated formyself and for we call it the witchy room so of it so yeah, he’s

Sheila M  19:38  

I’m in my Reiki room. So this is like my practice. Yeah. Yeah, I love that I love like you were able to kind of step aside and have that conversation and, and having somebody that’s so like,

Davis Carr  19:54  

Absolutely it is. It is really it was really wonderful. But also I found it It was when we moved in together that I really started to have to intentionally carve out space for this my practice and also to share what I was doing. And it really did help me get more comfortable in just making this a regular part of my life and practically speaking, like, it’s awkward to have to tell your partner not to come into the room for 45 minutes to three hours because you’re doing trance work or whatever, you know, like, yeah, those are conversations you have to have with your partner. 

Sheila M  20:39  

Yeah, yeah. And, and I think especially when you have such different experiences of things and and where they might not come from that same background, it can be like a really big challenge. So during this time, how did that kind of shift how you were connecting with intuition and like, what What was that like to have that grow over time? And what does it really like look like for now? 

Davis Carr  21:05  

Yeah. I I’m really grateful you asked that question, because when I started this journey, I felt so insecure about my intuition. I felt that that was for witchy woo woo, soft spoken people who sit on mountain tops and meditate and, you know, like, all of those stereotypes. And, yeah, it really I really struggled with it. And it really did feel like something that not only did it not belong to me, but that it was weird that it was hard. And because it was hard, that meant I couldn’t do it. And you know, like all and I shouldn’t do it in general, because the only thing that matters is the political and all of these things. There was a lot of narrative around that and A part of it really just felt like I I couldn’t have done anything else. It really felt like a compulsion. When I, when I started to learn about Tarot and I read the book and I and listening to podcasts and hearing those people in the way that they connected, I really just felt like, I know, I want this. And I just kept looking for it. And I kept looking for it. And I kept looking for it until I started to find it. And it took a lot of different teachers. It took a lot of time. It looked took a lot of practice, it just you know of trying to do it over and over again. And then eventually what I realized is that I could just my intuition was just he was always there and the thing that was stopping me from listening to it was just my own brain and doubting it. Like once I just decided to believe that it was true. And I just decided to accept and say yes to everything I was feeling and my instincts and my gut reactions to things and just said, Okay, this is the truth for me and made that decision. It almost was like, I don’t want to call it a light switch, but it was a choice that I made. And then it just got practice saying yes, and yes, and yes to that. 

Sheila M  23:30  

Yeah. And I think that’s one of the hardest things. It’s one of the things I talk about in my high priestess embodiment workshop is how much we are taught to like outsource wisdom to other people our whole lives. And then people think that it’s just like, you make the switch. And it’s like, so easy to just like, oh, once I decided to listen to my intuition, it’s going to be like so easy immediately. And I think that, like what you’re speaking to is really true that like, you have to make the decision that you’re going to participate, but also that it’s not just like, it’s not like you’re just listening to a podcast, you know what I mean? It’s it’s a little bit different every single time. And I think it’s really important for people to realize that it is an active choice to listen to, like you’re saying, but it does take a little bit and, and a variety of inputs to figure out how it works for you. And I know that you spoke to that because it’s one of the things that I struggled with so much in the beginning because it is so individual that I wanted somebody so badly to just tell me what to do. I was like, just tell me how to connect to my intuition. Tell me how it works. Give me the guidebook. I bought so many books. I bought so many things. I mean, it was like, all of this struggle was like the whole genesis for my high priestess and, of course, but I love that you’re talking about it here because I think it’s so important for people to realize that you might need to hear people say something like 20 times in order to hear the person put the right combination of words together that you’re like, yes, that’s how it works for me. So I think I love that you spoke to that too.

Davis Carr  25:12  

I totally I am so resonant with everything you have shared it it’s so true. And I think back to my early insecurities when I was first reading Tarot especially because I would get anxious about I shuffled the cards wrong, is it reversed if I flip it like this, or if I flipped it like that like it and was all of these tiny things and what very practically speaking, one of the eat the best things I did for my practice is I just decided that this is the way I shuffle. This is the way I cut cards. So I divided them into for years I just divide I decided this is the way I do I divide them into three piles. And I take the middle pile because that feels the most random You know, I flipped from the bottom up, and that I just picked it. And I and I said, if so long as I do these things, whatever reading comes through is true. And I had like my little mantra and my little, like, recital, you know, thing that I would recite as I wish before a reading and I just decided, if I do these things, and if I do this ritual I have dropped in, therefore, I can trust all of the messages that come through. And so I think like, yeah, small things like that, if you just decide that they are true, they can be really, really helpful containers until you start to just embody that truth and really start to listen to that intuition. 

Sheila M  26:45  

100% that makes so much sense to me. And I think, I think it will to other people to just like hearing that and and how, how it can kind of shift over time too and it kind of moves along. with you as you, as you kind of strengthen things and build on what you’re doing, it will shift along with you in that practice tips too. So I know that you’ve started with tarot and then kind of gotten interested in Chani Nicholas and astrology. So what was that transition like and how did you kind of start to move just from from Tarot and intuition there into astrology because I know that’s like a huge part of your business now. 

Davis Carr  27:28  

Ah, so Tarot and astrology were always simultaneous. For me, they are parallel tracks. It’s just that Tarot is a lot easier to learn to do immediately, in my opinion. Now, I sort of think, Oh, cute, there’s only 78 cards. When you really get into astrology, it’s just so much more than that. But astrology also is a very, very difficult thing to learn when you are out lay person who doesn’t know what they’re doing and who doesn’t want to immediately spend $2,000 on God knows what it is one of the hardest modalities to learn, because there is so much information out there so much of what has been written in the last, you know, 20 to 30 years is there’s not a lot of there’s there’s not the underlying structure to it. So they’ll just say things like, oh, Venus means love, and trines are good. But there, there really isn’t that cohesive explanation. And so I started doing what a lot of people do, which is just looking up the different terms and looking up, like reading a basic book and trying to figure out all the sign placements and all of that. But it really was just me for four years desperately trying to piece together and astrological education, listening to podcasts, buying one off webinars, realizing like oh, I think traditional astrology is cool. I like that. I like that there are reasons for things, but not really knowing what to do. And then in the fall of 2019, I finally took the leap and signed up for the nightlight astrology course, which is a foundational, like, from the very, very beginning, like up until the more complicated concepts all about traditional astrology. And it was the missing piece that brought everything together. And so all of those four years of really memorizing and embodying the concepts and just sort of having all of this information loose inside my head, it finally had a place to sit. And so now I I just feel like I have gone from zero to 100 because I have the foundation that I’ve been looking for for so long.

Sheila M  29:56  

Yeah, I love that. I love that. So much.

Hey there, I’ve wanted you to be the first to know that I am offering a free training Tarot for real life Get Your Shit Together with the Tarot on Sunday, September 20, 2020 at 12pm eastern time, this workshop is extremely powerful. It talks about the top mistakes that new Tarot readers make, we will cover the neuroscience of Tarot and how it can stop the anxiety cycle, and the exact steps to follow to start reading effectively and efficiently for yourself. This is where the spirituality of the Tarot meets real life situations. And my goal is to have you leave that workshop, either with a reboot to your tarot reading or if you’re a brand new beginner with a good idea of how to get started. So you can sign up for that free workshop in the show notes today or if You already know that you are really interested in signing up for a tarot course, I will be opening the doors for my Tarot course for the last time for 2020 the course is called Practical Tarot for Everyday Intuitives. It is a seven week Tarot course that takes you from brand new beginner to tarot reading Pro, and helps you learn how to bring that practice into real life, how to use the Tarot to help you make complex decisions effortlessly. So if that sounds good to you, you can sign up for the waitlist in the show notes today.

I took a free training that you did earlier this year that was so wonderful about the shift away from like kind of the simplicity that I think a lot of people attribute to astrology which is just horoscopes and your sun sign. And you were really trying to teach people a quick way to go a little bit deeper and I know that you’ve been Working on teaching some like astrology intro type work this year. So how how has that shift felt for you and your business? And what is it been like to really follow follow your intuition into this kind of different place? And also like what kind of what kind of blocks and stuff are you coming up against as you do that because I know that there can be a lot of imposter syndrome when we do step into this role of like teacher 

Davis Carr  32:33  

Oh, yeah, – a lot of imposter syndrome A lot of you I know enough Am I enough of an expert A lot of you know that self doubt really nagging at me it’s it’s a really new shift for me. It’s really only been in the last I guess six months or so that I’ve really started to take seriously my calling in to teach astrology especially intro level astrology. More people broadly and really, except, you know, admit to myself that this is something that I really want to do. So I just, I fundamently – It really annoys me that the answers and the secrets and the the underlying thing that locks everything into place is hidden behind a $2,000 paywall. And that is not a slide into the you know, the folks who do like those 30 week long programs, they are important and crucial and so great. But now that I understand how simple it actually all is, I just want to share it with the world. And I think it’s such a shame that people the lay person doesn’t have this many wants to approach and and they might pick up things like what I would consider to be some bad habits in astrology around really personalizing or overly identifying with their charts or seeing a bad placement and feeling like it’s a it means they’re doomed. There’s so much opportunity there and there’s a lot of misinformation and so I, I really do see it as part of my calling to try to like, you know, stop that ignorance and really like give people information and really share that with them. 

Sheila M  34:32  

Yeah, yeah, and I totally relate to that. Because when I was creating Practical Tarot for Everyday Intuitives One of the things that like I was really seeing was that so many people were going through some very expensive and again, like very high price point offerings that are not accessible to everybody. And also coming out on the other side and still not really knowing how that relates to their life. So like they might know how to read sort of, but they maybe don’t know how to put together a spread for themselves or spread for like a real life situation that’s happening. And I was like, that’s, it’s so frustrating to me to see people spend so much money and commit so much time in so much energy to something and come out on the other side and not have a practical use for it. Because I always say, as as witchy and intuitive and connected as I might be, I’m always about trying to bring things down to earth and down to like reality and help you in your real life, not just your spiritual life, like that’s great and it’s super fun. Like I, I use astrology like basically for like, just interest and I have a very rudimentary understanding of things. But I think it’s like a fun thing to tune into, but it can also be incredibly practical. And I think that that’s one of the things that you’ve done really well with somebody If you’re offering so let’s talk about like, Okay, well, like how does this inform your life? Not just, I am this thing, you know what I mean? I’m a Leo. And that means that I love to be the center of attention or whatever, you know. And so I think that that’s so interesting. 

Davis Carr  36:16  

Yeah, it’s, it’s really important to me because it is it can be such a practical tool, and especially in the ancient or the Hellenistic tradition, there was a very big emphasis on looking at the chart as a reflection of your entire life. So it’s, whereas in modern astrology is much more psychological. They’re sort of using it to look at like, okay, where are your mommy issues? Like what What’s your relationship to money? Whereas the age the Hellenistic tradition is like, where what’s happening with the money in your bank account right now? What is happening to your job, the way that you make money, and so you know, you can see things in the chart that are so much bigger than me. Just your personality. It’s almost like it’s like it’s, it’s like a very cute human thing, right? We’re like drawn to this thing because we just want to know about ourselves. And I love that. And I, that thrill of recognition is so poignant with astrology. But then once you’re there, you’re starting to learn about it. It’s I love it, because it’s like, oh, by the way, the secrets to the universe are here as well.

Sheila M  37:27  

I love that. So why don’t we? I was just talking about it earlier, I was talking to a couple of my girlfriends who are in totally different businesses, but we have like a monthly meetup where we just kind of check in and talk about business ideas and stuff and and we were talking about that and I was saying, you know, people come to me for a tarot reading because they want me to tell them what to do. But that is not my job. As a tarot reader. My job is to really provide them the information and the background. So that they can be empowered to make the best choice for themselves. And so I think it’s very, very similar to what you’re saying here because it’s about empowering people with information and not giving them a tool so that they can opt out of participating in their lives.

Davis Carr  38:19  

Absolutely. I love that. 

Sheila M  38:21  

Which I think is why we’ve always gotten along so well when we chat about these things is that we have such like a similar perspective. And I think that I could do that, you know, and you could do that you could sit down and you could look at someone’s chart, you could tell them, probably all kinds of things about themselves. And that might all be true. But it’s so limiting if you just tell them, that programmed stuff, because then they feel like completely disempowered and like there’s no way they can participate and freewill has has no say which is not true. 

Davis Carr  38:56  

And that’s that’s the last thing you want to do and when I am doing Reading and when I’m working with a client, I really trying to be mindful that I am not prescriptive and I am not deterministic. And because it can be very easy to fall into that language of Oh, you’re a Leo, you love being the center of attention. And that is very not true for a lot of people. There’s so much more going on. Well, one of the things that I am quickly learning as I start to do astrology as a as a practice is that in exactly the same way a tarot reading is about consulting an Oracle and receiving that divinatory message. astrology is divination. Looking at the chart is the exact same process as asking the universe for a message. And as I am transitioning my business into doing more and more of the astrology work. I think my background as a tarot reader has been really helpful in Honoring that and bringing in that similar attitude to my astrology practice. Most most, you know, specifically because I trust that when a client and I sit down virtually, and we create the container that the messages that come through our session are the ones that they need to know the questions they ask or the ones that they need, or the answers that they need in this moment, the messages that I feel share to give the examples that I share from my life or from other charts, the imagery that I use, it’s all part of the divinatory experience. And I really have to trust that the client is going to get what they need out of the session. That is the intention that I set. And actually, once I, once I remember like, Oh, of course I should be dropping in and Doing my you know my prayers to mercury as I do before a terror reading I should and while I’m shuffling I should also be doing this for my client before we sit down in front of a chart. I love that I and I think that’s so important too and just to kind of like pause and take that moment to really remind yourself to because I know it can be hard as a reader, whichever way you’re reading or healing to because I know you also do energy work and to remind yourself that you are not tied to and responsible for outcome which is really challenging. So hard. That is one of the most difficult things to do as a as a practitioner, I think. And that is one of the early lessons that I learned from Lindsay Mack and from the Tarot for the Wild Soul Course. That has been really, really helpful. And it also is a big part of how I work with my intuition is that I really and I think this is going to segue nicely into a question you’re going to ask me later, but I really channeled the Magician when I am working and I having being a vessel or a channel or I think of it almost like a straw down my center line, like just, you know, a Yeah, exactly a little metal tube or something. That is, that is sort of that’s part of my practice. And that’s how I prepare for readings. And that’s how I work is really to make sure that I I am a clear vessel. And so once you’ve done that work and like the and I guess this comes back to our earlier discussion about how intuition works for me is like these practices and rituals are so important because that’s how I create the safety of trust. I have to trust That if I set the intention and make myself a clear channel that I am a clear channel, that is the only way it works like you really have to have that will. Yeah Spoken like a true mercury person, I am sure. But yeah, that is that is part of my process. And that’s how I that create that container to trust that whatever happens happens for a reason. And

Sheila M  43:24  

Yeah, I love that so much. I know. And that was actually the next thing that I was going to segue into. So you you beat me to it, but I know I had reached out to you beforehand and asked because you are a reader, and which not everybody on this podcast is but I’m asking kind of what which card you really feel like you relate to and embody and it’s so funny, because when you said the Magician I was like 100% I can see it because I feel like just from knowing you and knowing the way that you work so much of what you do is kind of boring. down these these kind of higher level ideas into something that is very grounded and able to be like used by multiple people but it’s taking a lot of like all of the different elements of the Tarot, right so we’re talking about, you know the channel and bringing in the emotional piece with the cups and like that passion and that drive with the ones and the practicality of like the Pentacles. And like bringing things like into that earthiness. And like the wisdom that comes with the swords and like kind of combining it all into one thing and being able to then teach that and distribute that to other people. is so it’s so beautiful, like the way that you have that ability to do that. And I know from you talking about it and from from talking to you about other stuff in the past, but that whole like channeling and trance piece is a huge part of it. Which I also consider to be a huge element in the magician card is this ability to kind of bring these very challenging and like overwhelming ideas down to earth, which can be like you’re saying, Mercury helped me to communicate this thing. It’s something that I experienced a lot, especially when I’m doing like mediumship readings, is trying to take this big jumble of communication and put it into something that makes sense and and gets like either an emotion or something that is not as like exact and precise, into words and into creation.

Davis Carr  45:41  

Well, you just described magic basically, right.

Sheila M  45:46  

True, true. Yeah. Yeah.

Davis Carr  45:48  

No, and that’s, that’s really what I love most about the work and it’s all it’s a little bit addictive. I don’t know if you found this when you’re when you’re doing a reading for someone Or like that feeling of having it all coalesce. And because for me and it’s the same with, with tarot readings as it is for astrology readings where you start with just all of these different symbols, and there’s there’s that moment as you’re looking down at the spread and thinking like, oh, what how? What am I gonna say, what, how do all of these pieces come together? But then you start and you start to layer everything on top of each other and you start to share and then the client responds and you’re like, oh, okay, that’s what this means. Now, what is this? What is this say? And then suddenly you realize that it’s all connected. All of these themes are relating to each other, and it’s really built on on itself, this really beautiful way. And I, you know, over the years of learning of doing Tarot as a reader, I just learned to trust that anytime I would try to hedge my bets. think oh, no, the client doesn’t want to hear this. And I would say what I thought they wanted, it just would never land. And then when I, I just said the thing that I thought it always resonated. And so once you decide, well, it’s not me, it’s the cars and my job is just to read what the cards are saying that it’s not you. It’s the cards. 

Sheila M  47:22  

Yeah, yeah. And I think it’s so funny how, how sometimes too, when you can be in that mode, and then come down to like reading mode that you can get in your own way a little bit by like, making it more complicated. I still remember this one, like stands out to me all the time. I was doing this reading for a woman who came in and I didn’t know her. She was like, referred by another client. And so I didn’t have a personal relationship with her. And it was one of my like, early clients that I didn’t know you know what I mean? Like I was one of the first clients that I didn’t have a personal relationship with. And so I knew nothing. About her except her name. And I’m there and I’m doing the reading and the Justice card keeps coming up. And I’m like, and we were doing a career reading. And I was like, I do not understand what is going on here at all. But like, it was like three different times that came up, like I didn’t reshuffle and then it came up again. And I was like, Alright, I just got to, like, take this, like, literally at this point, I think. And I was like, are you involved in the justice system? Because this card keeps coming up. And normally the way that I read it is not quite so literal, but but she was like, Oh, yeah, I’m a judge. Oh, my God. I was like, This makes way more sense now. I think I felt like I was losing my mind a little bit because I was like, why does this card keep bugging me, you know? 

Davis Carr  48:42  

Well, and that’s part of that Clear Channel, right? Like want the one of the biggest things that gets in the way of that channel is our own projections and our own anxiety and our own fears about what it means about us. But if you just let it all come from Through and practice detachment from that if you make that space to be like, Hey, are you a judge? I find the one that always comes up for me in readings is when clients come and say like, I’m really confused. I don’t know what to do. I just feel like I’m lost in the in like the fog. And then invariably, seven of cups comes up. But I’m like, do you feel confused? And it lost in a haze? And yeah, cuz you’re really confused right now.

Sheila M  49:34  

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and it’s so funny. And you can tell me I don’t know, like how many readings you have been doing recently. But right now during this global pandemic, what has been so interesting because it is the first time that there’s been a collective experience going on that I’m doing readings, and I’m finding these themes that weave through so many different readings. like four months, like around here, I live outside Philadelphia. And we were hit very early on with the pandemic and be locked down from like mid March. I mean, we were like really locked down. And so early on, I kept getting the hang in readings for people and I was like, I mean, we are like literally in suspension, like having our whole world turned on its head and trying to like figure out what the new normal is. It made so much sense to me. But it was like, almost comical how often it was coming up. I was like, I get it like the tower and the hangs on. I get it, like pandemic vibes for sure. But it was very interesting to see some of those themes as they were coming up. And again, if you get too much in your own head, it’s very easy to get distracted and be like, no like this can’t possibly still be true again. Like I feel like I said This earlier today, it must not be true. Oh, absolutely. And when you doubt yourself, you miss out on the beauty of that and of the collective experience. And I know for me when I share with clients like oh, yeah, everybody’s getting you know, Justice right now or judgment like that can really relieve some tension for people. Yeah, yeah. And that’s one of the things I’ve been experiencing too is like, I’m like, this is so collective right now. Like, is it? I’m feeling it’s what so many of my clients are feeling like it is such a, it almost is like a relief for people to hear that as much as they are separated from so many other people that the experience is still connecting them to other people.

Davis Carr  51:50  

Yeah, absolutely.

Sheila M  51:52  

And so, kind of bringing things full circle. So what does this look like now in your everyday life your connection with intuition with astrology with Taro kind of how do you use it for real? 

Davis Carr  52:10  

It’s really changed since quarantine obviously, like, like so many people my lifestyle has changed dramatically since March. And I it’s really been in flux Actually, I really feel like I am in a bit of a turning point and a bit of a restructuring moment with myself care practices and and am I like my magical practices in general. And a big part of that is the business. For so long. My main relationship with Taro was doing one on one readings, but I’ve made the decision to temporarily not be doing one on ones, mostly due to my day job as a nonprofit communicator. But also because I was doing a lot of astrology readings in June and July and I taught my foundations of astrology course and in May and June and so I really just need a vacation. So I’m really in this period of rest a little bit of a moon phase as I change a bit of my you know, my energy work has been a really big part of my personal practice. I’ve worked extensively with Ashley Stinson, who practices a form of energy work called energy archaeology. That is fabulous. I also have a discount code if people want to sign up for her for her lounge about we can put in the show notes. I love that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, she’s great. Um, so that, you know, really over like, initially, that was a really, really big part, a part of it and doing my energy work, but it’s really changing and I’m sort of figuring it out, but mostly Recently, I’ve actually been going through a bit of emotional turmoil in my personal life and a couple of things are really coming up to be processed and I’ve been turning to my tarot deck and it feels so good to like I forgot how good it feels to sit with your deck and pour your heart out and ask for help and be your most vulnerable and ask the question you’re most afraid of and then pulling a card and having it be the most gentle loving message shivers it Yeah. Yeah, no, that’s, I have not that’s the biggest. The biggest way that I have developed my relationship with my deck is literally by crying with it. And by asking it and being my worst self, and the most poignant readings I do are when I’m just like, why am I crying? so much? 

Sheila M  55:00  

Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh so so so relatable I think and it’s one of the things that I talked about in my course a lot is I think that there’s this idea that you need to come into everything as like this perfect Clear Channel and that is just not human like is that yeah god bless if you’re like that but like that is not most people’s experience. 

Davis Carr  55:26  

And I think that’s really important for us to name because we just had that big conversation about clearing our channel and not letting like our human emotions get in the way. I think we really should differentiate between reading for a client and setting that boundary and like and oh but also still allowing ourselves to be human when we are working with clients and like we don’t have to be perfect we can like be feel like crap and still do it does still valid. I had, you know, some of my favorite readings in the world. I have been in the worst part mood ever but I put me in a good mood because I know I guess I just have to like put that on a shelf for a little bit and then I always feel better afterwards. But then that experience Yeah, of like going to your deck, feeling totally messy with dirty hands as Lindsey Mack would say like, people should really, really like that is how you do the work is when you show up feeling like crap and you open yourself up to what the Oracle can offer you. 

Sheila M  56:28  

Yeah, exactly. And I think I do I think that’s really important to kind of differentiate because I am not coming in that way for clients and I am fully clearing me out for that. But I think that that’s one of the things that was coming up a lot when we were talking about this and it’s one of the things that keeps people from bringing their spiritual practice into real life, which is why I I really do want to talk about it because I think it’s so important to know that you don’t have to always burn incense and love candles and be post meditation or post yoga or whatever it is. And you can really just show up with whatever turmoil and whatever anks is there and give that all an opportunity to process. And in in my world is one of the most effective ways to use Tarot as like just a tool for reflection and for kind of bringing things down to earth. I’m like a highly emotional person and can be very like extreme with my emotions, and also have like a background with trauma that has contributed to that as well, which I think a lot of people do. And so having that as a tool that can help me process has been so so helpful, and to not need to show up as perfect because I think what was happening for me early on was, I felt like I always had to be like in that mode, like in In order to do a good job or in order to do good work for myself, and like more and more, some of the best work I’ve done has been in those moments when like, like you said, like crying onto my deck and like sniffling and just like pulling card after card until like I feel whatever is going on, you know? 

Absolutely, yeah, I think looking at your tarot deck and your Tarot practice as a method of self care in the truest sense of tending to yourself and figuring out what you need and asking for help from it is such a such a beautiful gift. And I really I encourage everyone listening who has a practice or who is you know, working on developing that personal practice. When you are vulnerable with your tool and with your modality it gives back right like yeah, 

Yeah, yeah, it’s beautiful. Um, and so I think that’s like the main stuff that I wanted to talk about. But I do have -I would love your perspective as an astrologer. And I am putting you on the spot a little bit to give us a little bit of like a rundown on some of the astrology stuff that people get really hung up on. So I normally play a little game at the end, but I actually thought this would be like kind of a fun way to talk about things. And so the first thing, the first little buzz word that I wanted to talk about was your Saturn return, which is a big, a big topic that I know a lot of people get into what’s kind of like your quick and dirty description of that and how people can use that time to like, effectively connect to their lives and how should they view it, I guess 

Davis Carr  1:00:00  

So a Saturn return is when Saturn returns to the place in the sky, the exact degree and exact minute where it was at the moment of your birth. There. So there we all have planetary returns. We have a solar return is your birthday. That’s what astrologers talk about. You can have a Mercury return, you can have a Venus return, you could have a Pluto return if you lived to the age of 250, I suppose. So, but the Saturn return gets a lot of hype, I think mainly because mostly through timing. So the Saturn return typically will happen between the ages of 27 and 29, although it really depends for people. But there’s a number of other transits and activations that happen in the chart between the ages of 24 and 29 that are very poignant, and I think a lot of the The Saturn return hype is actually some of those other transits that are happening. But that’s my personal theory. So but during the Saturn return people say because Saturn is the outer most visible planet, it represents endings structure, death, authority containment, it’s very much you know that cranky old man slash wise hermit. Saturn has a lot of different meanings. But one of the big markers that people It’s said to be a marker of adulthood, you are crossing a threshold because Saturn represents age and maturity. And for the ancients, that was the last visible planet so it’s sort of this big moment of Okay, you’ve fully been around the circle now you can enter this new stage of your life. The Saturn return happens every 27 to 29 years and for most people, that is a moment where you are making big decisions. Around the career that you’re you have with you’re going to have children it really is this big moment this Yeah, a portal into adulthood.

Sheila M  1:02:09  

Yeah, I love that so much. And, and this is really interesting so I didn’t get into astrology at all until after my Saturn return. I’m almost I’ll be 35 in a couple weeks and 

Davis Carr  1:02:22  

so you’ve gone through your second Jupiter return oh wow oh my god are going through it perhaps we’ll have to look at your chart to find out so exciting. 

Sheila M  1:02:32  

Um, but I realized the other day because I looked at like a like calculator to figure out when exactly it was. And I realized that right after it completed, I shifted my dating life and what I was looking for and completely so I decided to go back to online dating and have like a completely different attitude with it where I was like, Okay, I’m going to spend no more More than 15 minutes a night on us, I will commit to going on one date a month. And if I like the person, I’ll go out again. But like, I’m not going to be like, I need to be going out with as many people as like, I was like, I’m just making it simple for myself because I I just I don’t have the time or patience. You were making rules for yourself. Yes. And then. So within five months of that, I met my partner who I’ve now been with for five years. And I was like, it like blew my mind. I was like, Oh my gosh, when I realized the timing of like, when that returns finished, I was like, Oh my god, that’s so weird. That was literally like that month, I went on the first of five dates, the fifth one being my now partner, like once a month for five months. And I was like, This is so crazy. So I just I thought that was really cool. So I wanted to talk about that one. I also wanted to talk about what can people learn from their rising sign because they think that’s one of the things that’s really misunderstood by people. 

Davis Carr  1:04:00  

Absolutely, there is a huge emphasis in pop astrology on our sun science, which makes a lot of sense because it’s based around days and birthdays, and it’s very easy. The rising sign represents whatever zodiac sign was on the horizon at the moment of your birth. And for the ancient Greeks, this was the most important place and it was in fact, one of like the biggest contributions and like just distinguishing features of Hellenistic astrology is the invention of the ascendant. Fun fact for you, and so the ascendant represents the moment where the soul enters the material world, it’s going from the underworld into the light that and it is on the horizon, rising upwards, hence rising sign. So what the rising sign does is tell you what zodiac sign goes. In the first house, and there’s many different house systems as a traditional astrologer, I use whole sign houses folks could Google what that is. But what that does is what it tells you is whatever zodiac sign is on the first house, the sign that comes after it in zodiacal order, that’s going to be the second house to rise up. And then the sign that’s after that is the third sign to rise up. And so that tells you what zodiac signs align, which each with each of the houses and the zodiac signs sort of serve as the intermediary between spirit and the world and and you know, those those bigger forces and the material world. They’re what ground those forces into our life. Everybody has the same 12 houses. So, but everybody is going to have different combinations of signs and houses, planets and certain houses and houses. is telling you what part of your life, those energies are affecting. So there’s a house dedicated to your money. There’s a house dedicated to your siblings. There’s a house dedicated to your family and origins. There’s a house dedicated to your children, and so on and so forth. 

Sheila M  1:06:17  

Yeah. I love that I love I think that’s so important too, because, like I said, I am a Leo sun sign. I’m a Sagittarius rising. And I relate much more to Sagittarius, Leo, but I do still have like some of some of those elements. And obviously, there’s a lot more to it to an entire chart, but it was really interesting to me when I kind of learned about like, that kind of soul essence piece, like you talked about is like, I was like, Oh yeah, I was like that makes a lot more sense to me. And and, and it was kind of the first foray into it being more complex than just your sun sign, which I thought was really cool. And then because this is a podcast about in intuition. If you had to give people advice based on how they were kind of looking at their chart, and they want it to, and again, I’m putting you on the spot with this, but they want it to get a little bit more of an idea of how to connect with their intuition kind of based off of their chart, what would you tell them to, like pay the most attention to our look at? Just I know, I’m like, super putting you on the spot here.

Davis Carr  1:07:26  

Well, to be totally honest, my answer is to go to meridiantarot.com/livingtarot where I will put up links to my different resources. And I created a free download that is about your sun, moon and rising and it’s really designed to help put those pieces together. I am also hosting as we speak. It’s going to be at the end of the month but by the time this is released, it will be uploaded onto my website. I’m going to be hosting a workshop on how to read your birth chart. That really goes through what to do with it, and how to begin that journey. Because it’s a very, very complicated topic. But the non self promotional answer to your question is really the first thing I would advise people to do is Don’t panic. Because it is very overwhelming. And you are going to when you look up your chart, you’re going to see a ton of symbols, you’re going to see a lot of lines, you’re going to see graphs that you don’t understand, and it’s going to feel very, very overwhelming. And so in whatever astrology software you are using, go into the settings turn off aspect lines, if you see a button that says no aspect lines or you know aspects off, click it, that will remove the lines and it will make things a lot easier for you to look at. But just go slow. go really slow and take it one step at a time. And allow yourself to follow the vein of research wherever it leads you. Because when you are first looking at a chart and when you’re starting to figure, okay, Mercury and Libra, what does that mean? You know, it really you can just start googling some phrases and just see what comes up but only believe about 10% of anything you read like it really the amount of information out there is overwhelming, but most of it is crap. So, you know, you really have to be careful when you are first starting to research. But taking it lightly, giving it you know, a lot of play, being playful with it, taking time and trusting that it’s the beginning of a lifelong journey. And you’re going to have lots of opportunity to learn how the pieces all fit together. 

Sheila M  1:09:50  

I love that. I love that. And I think that’s I think that’s so important. There’s like this sense of like gentleness and I know we both share that kind of same philosophy with our Teaching of being like really kind to yourself and not needing to be perfect when you start out which I think is so important. And so with that where can people find you and obviously I will share your website and everything in the show notes but if people wanted to find you on Instagram on social media, your website if you can just give us the whole rundown you can find me on the Internet at Meridiantarot.com. I am on Instagram @MeridianTarot. I am also on Facebook if you want to get the BI monthly posts that I do over there and I have a newsletter that I suggest people sign up for especially if you are interested in taking more courses or working with me one on one. My books will be open later on in the fall. But in the meantime, I am going to be teaching lots more classes and workshops and good good exciting things in store. So I invite folks to find me On Instagram, sign up for the newsletter and visit Meridiantarot.com. 

I love it. I love it so much. Um, and I also know that you are in the process of working on your own tarot deck with a partner. So I’m hoping to next year have you guys on when your project is kind of coming to completion so that we can talk a little bit about what that process has been like, and share everything about the deck, which I mean, I love a new tarot deck. I have way too many. I love it. I love a new tarot deck. So um, so I would love to have you back on then. Thank you so much for being here today. And obviously we will have to have you back on.

Davis Carr  1:11:42  

Yes, please. I can’t wait.

Unknown Speaker  1:11:45  

Thank you so much for listening to Living Tarot. If you loved today’s episode, please leave us a review and subscribe so that you never miss an episode. This helps us reach even more budding intuitives. Feel free to share on Instagram and tag me @StarSageSpirit and let me know what you learned, what surprised you, and what you’d like to hear even more of. As always, if you want to hear more about my courses, or book a reading with me, or for full episodes show notes, you can head over to starsagespirit.com