Below is a transcript of the episode as generated by Otter.ai. (*please note, this transcript has only been edited to put in line breaks for easier readability and may contain errors where a word or phrase got lost in transcription.)

[0:35] Introduction to The High Priestess

Hello, hi everyone. Welcome to Your Heart magic. This is Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright and we are continuing our archetypes of the taro series. Today we are talking about the card the High Priestess. And we are going to be looking at who is this mysterious character in the tarot deck?

And more importantly, what does she mean as an archetype that applies to some aspect of the human journey and also applies to some aspect of who we are, and how we understand ourselves how can we apply her to our own experiences, and learn to embody and intuit the High Priestess in our own life? Remember, archetypes are symbols, they are a collection of ideas and perspectives that represent some greater aspect or I guess, not greater aspect, but a aspect of the greater whole.

 That is the human journey. And since we are humans on this journey, they also reflect back an aspect of the greater whole, that is us. And so when we look at the archetypes and this is what I love about the Tarot so much. It helps us tap into these different aspects and essences of self, and helps us see ourselves in a new light, get to understand parts of our experience in a new way.

Perhaps put new vocabulary or construct a new idea around how we might experience ourselves. And in so doing better understand this journey of being a soul in this body on this human path.
 
So the High Priestess is the second card and the Tarot deck. And our journey begins with card zero begins with the fool. And the fool is on this, excavation this exploration to strike out and step out into the big brave world and take a leap of faith. The Fool is sort of the quintessential, I'm going out the front door with my backpack on my back and I'm going to see what adventures I find.

A fool leaves the village it leaves the home base in order to go explore the greater world. And the first stop is meeting the magician who teaches the full all about how we can initiate magic in our own life, through our words and our thoughts and our intentions and how we can be these capable beings who have the power to create and to co create.

So the magic is card. Our magician is card one and it's a very active card. And there's a lot of very inspired fiery energy on that. And the High Priestess is a completely different tone in the deck. The High Priestess is card two. And the High Priestess is a card that is about passive receptivity. It is about wisdom and the deck itself. I believe on the traditional cards. The High Priestess is sort of this priestess looking woman and she's usually dressed in blue and typical depths.

And she is sitting in front of a veil and the veil represents the veil that lays between the unconscious and the conscious like our subconscious and like what we don't know what we can't see what is in the shadows and the conscious world, which is where the fool wanders on up to her and says hey, what's behind the veil.

[4:18] An Invitation to Go Beyond The Veil

And the High Priestess is the character who instead of saying here, come on, and let me give you a tour and just pull back the veil. She will serenely smile at the fool and say, You know I can't show you what's behind the veil. I can't tell you you have to find it yourself. You are welcome to go and but what you might experience once you cross the veil will be your own. It will be your own initiation it will be your own rite of passage. It will be your own gateway into mysteries and to truth and into knowledge.

So we see the High Priestess and various literature and mythologies and movies. Anytime we have the mystery character of often represented by a woman, though you don't have to be a woman to embody the High Priestess is just how it is in the tarot deck. But by a wise being, who just gently points you in the direction of the veil, or maybe it's the keeper of the veil, or whether it's a veil or a chalice, or a crystal ball or something like that.

And they're not trying to trick you, they are not doing anything other than being sort of big guardian of this space, this threshold that represents stepping into a different awareness when the seeker passes through. And the High Priestess knows the value of receiving wisdom, from our experiences, the High Priestess knows the value of having a direct relationship with the mysteries and from that direct relationship, using that to come to our own conclusions, our own ideas, our own perspectives, and our own experiences on what those mysteries mean to us and how we understand them. She very much embodies that line from Morpheus, in the matrix, when he says to Neo, Neo, like, I can't, I'm gonna mess it up.

I knew this by heart that I didn't have to refer to it. He says something like Neo I, oh, I can only show you the door, or show you the path, you're the one who has to like walk through it. And that's really the idea behind the High Priestess, she shows us where a gateway as a threshold to no knowledge or information is. But she doesn't tell us any more than that. We are the ones who make the choice to walk through it. So I often think of the High Priestess as the one who also kind of is the keeper into like the underworld and going down into our chambers of self going down into some sort of cave that is shadowy.

And in that space, there holds the potential to have a sacred experience some kind of magical experience, where we face our shadows, or we seek a prophecy or a vision or something that we feel our soul has been calling us toward and we can't quite figure out what it is. But we know there's some kind of knowledge that we're meant to find. She is this keeper of that knowledge. And again, she doesn't hold the exact knowledge. It's more like she keeps the threshold. And it shows you the doorway to walk through in order for you to access the specific knowledge that you need for your path for your soul path. She is the most mysterious part in the tarot deck, I believe. And part of what is fun and kind of interesting even talking about her is there's this sort of essence, this quality that is hard to put into words, because the High Priestess is not about here's this book, go read it and you have the answers.

She is more like here's a blank journal here is you know, points you in the direction right? Maybe you are seeking answers from your life at this time, she hands you the journal and tells you go sit by a tree, or go find a wild place and listen to your heart and write down whatever comes through.

She just gives you the initiation, that you need to figure it out yourself. I often think when we are going through a dark night of the soul, or when we are going through grief, or some kind of passage on our human journey that represents a descent into something more dark inside of ourselves or dark and our life. And we are trying to grapple and struggle and face whatever it is whatever challenge or difficulty or darkness that we've encountered, whatever a known factor that we've encountered, that she is the one who again stands at that threshold.

And as we descend, we go through this initiation within ourselves and within our journey where we seek out new information we seek out new knowledge we seek to take whatever it is that we're going through and figure out what wisdom am I meant to learn from this. And as we learn that wisdom and come through that rite of passage and perhaps prepare to exit our metaphorical cave. With this newfound wisdom in hand. She is the one who again stands there and sort of serenely smiles because she knew we would find it. And we would find what we need for journey at that time.

And she stays at that threshold. As we take whatever new wisdom it is that we've learned. And we leave our metaphorical cave and we go back out into the greater world, and continue on our own journey. And we take that wisdom and integrate it into our life in some shape, or form through living better through living bigger, having a more expansive version of who we are or what we're capable of. Perhaps we take that wisdom, and we begin to use it to help others and help them find the gateway to go through their own dark passage or their own soulful passage.

There's many things that we do with that wisdom. But she doesn't go with us, she just kind of stays at that veil, and is always the invitation to go a little bit deeper and to trust our intuition to pay attention to our dreams to use the ingredients that are already showing up in our life and use those as a rite of passage into the self.

[11:12] The Value of Conscious Receptivity

So today, we're just going to look at a few ideas of how do we intuit the High Priestess and learn to embody her and our own life. And one of the first things that I wanted to share is that I do think that in order to connect with this archetype, we have to learn to value and work with the energies of receptivity of distilling wisdom, of being more still, and waiting and knowing that the answers come in time, we can't always be in a rush to figure something out.

This is challenging for many of us. I think our society least Western society, more often is set up with a lot more masculine energy, more of that magician energy, I have to figure it out now, and I need a plan. And I need to get going with my plan. And I need to have the answers. There's sort of this activity to it. That is very, again, action oriented, and the High Priestess is passive. She is the second card in the tarot deck two is a passive number. It's not an active number. And it is a number that represents receiving serenity knowledge, really being in a space of intuition and trust and receptivity and consciously allowing the answers to come to us.

So the magician might say, I want to manifest my next step in my life. And here's how I'm going to do it. And the magician might sit down and write down an intention list, write down a, what avenues might I have to activate my intentions at this time, the magician might figure out their first step that they're going to take to try and move into the world and enact whatever it is that they are, whatever that next step is, that high priestess would be much more likely to say, I'm going to sit with it a while longer, I'm going to let it present itself to me, I'm going to let my next step unfold. I'm going to sit with my soul. And every day, when I start to feel a little bit lost, just say I trust my soul to show me the next step. And I draw it into me. And it comes to me with ease. And it comes to me with grace. And I am supported on this path.

The High Priestess knows there's value and feeling lost, that there's value and not knowing that we don't need to be in a rush to get it all figured out. That there's always time to piece together our bigger picture self later on. It's a different kind of energy, it's a different kind of quality. And neither of those is better than worse than none of the archetypes are about that they are just a reflection of different qualities that we have inside of us. And that we can use on our journey in order to work with that journey with a little bit more grace and ease and empowerment. I have strict I want to say I'm much better now at the patient's piece and the receptivity piece.

But I've shared on this podcast before that on this journey that's been kawaii for me that when I first got over here, I was very impatient. And I I think that if somebody had said Do you have the qualities of the High Priestess? I would have been like Well, of course I do. And of course to some extent I did we all do. This isn't a out, do you have them? Or do you not? This is more about growing those qualities. But at the time, I would have said, Well, I'm really intuitive. And I followed my soul path my heart to kawaii without knowing exactly what it was going to look like I trusted I was the fool I loved.

And now I'm over here and I'm just like opening up to spirit and opening up to what's my next step. And I probably would have drawn on my previous experience as a psychologist and things that I'd learned from round one of my private practice back when I was in Alaska. And I probably would have drawn on my experiences that I went through after my spiritual awakening and my divorce.

And a lot of those experiences were about learning to trust the process, learning that even shadows and darkness are a rite of passage that if we stay with them, that we will come out into a greater space, a lighter space, we will have new wisdom, there's always something waiting on the other side. And I would have felt like that I kind of knew those things, based on those experiences in that previous knowledge.

[16:15] Lessons From The High Priestess

And what the High Priestess really had to teach me was, you know, sort of this dear one, you learn beautiful things on those previous passages of self, there's value and then you've integrated them, I'm so happy that you can regurgitate those lessons and teach them to other people, and write about them and all of those beautiful things.
But you are about to undergo a new passage of self, you're about to go through the labyrinth. Again, you're about to walk through this maze again, and you're going to learn even richer experiences of me, you're going to learn how to trust and deeper ways you're having, you're going to have to learn how to be patient, when the next step isn't showing itself to you.

And a month goes by two months goes by six months goes by, you're going to have to learn what to do when nothing goes as expected. And you're the rite of passage that you thought that you were on this kawaii adventure and delving into the unknown kind of gets hijacked. And there's different passages or rabbit holes that you go down in this underground labyrinth. And you're going to need to work with the loss of a beloved to Hogg that happened, like completely unexpectedly and within our first year of being on the island and was so traumatic and hard for us.

There's other doorways down in that labyrinth that I went through that didn't derail me from this greater question of what is kawaii, they all lead back to this greater question of my experience here. But they took me on the side routes and took me into new spaces within I'll say, the cavern of my soul, and understanding my journey. And the High Priestess would say so you know some things about what it is to embody me, but you're about to learn a whole lot more.

And I really had to learn how to slow down, I had to learn how to receive, I had to learn a lot more about surrendering, and letting go of the plan and reworking the plan. And you know, kind of feeling into it and saying, Well, I don't know what to do right now. So it must mean that it's not time to do anything yet. And what I'm going to do is maybe just keep doing the things that I know how to do and trust that this next part will show itself to me.

The High Priestess always has something to teach us. Because knowledge is ever ever going. Truth is ever revealing itself to us. We never master one aspect of any archetype. We never master, the High Priestess because she is the mysteries and she's the keeper of the mysteries. And the mysteries are infinite.

So there's always something new to learn. And something that has served me well over here is just accepting. There's no way that I know all the mysteries, I don't want to I do not need to know the secrets to the universe. I just want to know the secrets and the revelations and the insights that are specifically meant for me to understand and are specifically meant for my journey. The High Priestess knows what wisdom she holds. And she knows what wisdom that she might still be seeking, or were her like Soul Sister, or somebody else holds that wisdom and she will point you in that direction and say what you're seeking is not behind the veil that I'm standing in front of, but I'm going to guide you to go over there.

There's a different threshold that you might be interested in exploring and I think you might find what you are looking for there. There's with stone to the High Priestess that has nothing to do with the ego, and everything to do with true knowledge and understanding what knowledge she's received and what she knows and what she doesn't know. And I think, again, that quality of patience, and waiting, and not being so hasty to figure it out and being able to admit the things that we don't know, there is so much wisdom in that, instead of pretending that we have all the answers. Those are the values that the High Priestess keeps.

And she ignites that inspiration inside of us to say, there's truth and not knowing. And there's beauty and not knowing and there's wisdom and knowledge found, when we say, well, I don't know what I don't know. And part of why I'm here is to find my answers to that. And that is part of the wisdom that we're here to embody.

[20:58] Becoming Students of The Universe

So in order to become the High Priestess, or at least, work with that archetype inside of us, I wrote down become a student of the universe. And what I love about this is this idea that each of us has an invitation to be like the Scooby Doo of the universe, and be an investigator of what does something mean if we are curious about something? If we want to learn about moon cycles, or astrology, or taro, or crush anything, it doesn't have to necessarily be spiritual.

This is a spiritual podcast, but it could be something else. Let's say you want to learn about creativity, or art, or dance, or science somehow, you want to travel and you want to learn? What's this room place all about? And why should I go? What do people love about it so much, we give ourselves permission to be the student to be a participant and to go experience it, the High Priestess knows the value of experience, that some things can't be captured and words, they have to be captured through the experience of offering ourselves an opportunity to engage with whatever it is that we want to know about.

Whether that is through reading a book, or traveling or taking a new class or experiencing it ourself in some shape, or form. But then the real magic comes, when we get to figure out like, what's my point of view on this? What does this mean to me? How does this apply to my own life? When I allow myself to tap into this new talent, or this new gift or this new field of thought, or this new study? How does this speak to me in a way that is meaningful? And what is my direct experience of it? And that right, there is how we gain wisdom. It's how we gain knowledge.

We don't just memorize what somebody else said and regurgitate it back and think that we know a lot. We digest it. And we think about how is this meaningful to me, or we experience it. And we make meaning out of our own experiences and and that meaning there's wisdom there, there's something that we have to teach others, or to understand about the mysteries, that is our own unique brand. It's our own unique voice. It's our own unique point of view.

So I think giving ourselves permission to become a student of wisdom, of knowledge, of investigating of studying the things that we're fascinated by. I've often said that if you want to see yourself, or be intuitive, and you want to grow your intuition, start with recognizing you're already intuitive, you are already intuiting things in your life, it is changing this mindset, that we have to reach a certain level of mastery to say I understand this. And it is instead shifting that mindset to say, Well, I'm already intuitive, or maybe I have basic knowledge of astrology, so I'm not going to call myself an astrologer. But I already have a relationship with the stars.

And I'm growing that relationship and every time I read something or look at something or have a new insight about a astrological transit or what is happening with a moon, or what it means when you say the sun is now in Aquarius, and it's Aquarius season, like what does that even mean? If you don't know the language of astrology, that might mean nothing to you.

But if you start to study that language, it might come to mean something. And so what does that mean for you? What does that mean for your life? It's a if it's Aquarius season, how do those qualities reflect something in you? How might they end inspire you to live, or to fix your focus for that month ahead, that Aquarius season ahead so that you're engaging with the idea of it being Aquarius season in a meaningful way. That is really what being a student of the universe is all about it is this idea that we don't have to pretend like we're the master teacher, or that we know everything. It's giving ourselves permission not to know to investigate, to be curious to learn, and then to think about how is this meaningful to me?

And what do I think about this new wisdom that I'm learning, and sometimes it might not be meaningful, or we might say I learned all this stuff, and it doesn't really resonate for me at all. But at least you know, now, it's not something out there, that is mystery mysterious and you do nothing about it, you now have some form of direct experience or knowledge, even if it's a little bit.

[25:57] Connecting With Your Wise Being

So we want to become a student of the universe. And the other thing that I think we really want to do is to connect with our own wise being, I think, being the High Priestess requires us to value two different knowledge sources. One of them is what sits outside the veil, what can we seek out and even though the High Priestess herself, is passive, and is not out there adventuring, she got to the place of being the High Priestess by experiencing something.

However, she came to hold the title of high priestess, it was taught to her somehow, she had to receive the wisdom, whether it was through direct teachings, whether it was through her own experience, she probably went through her own rites of passage in order to hold that title, within whatever mythology or story that we might be thinking about with real examples of a high priestess, she knows there's value and the outside world, and she's not entirely disconnected from it.

The High Priestess is the priestess who might track the moon cycles, or listen to what is going on in the world around me. She knows that there are things happening within the greater collective that show patterns, and that show some sort of theme or wisdom that helps Intuit predict, have a sense of what might be coming next, the High Priestess kind of receives what the elements with the winds are saying and listens to the news on the wind, if you will, and has a sense of something is stirring, something is happening again, she doesn't have to know all the answers. But she has that intuitive sense that there's more here than meets the eye.

So we want to know that there's value in again, being a student of the universe, seeking out knowledge, reading other knowledge, making it become meaningful for us. At the same time, she also knows that the true answers are really found by going with n, that the knowledge that we hold is often within us. And sometimes, there's like beautiful quotes that you might see, I see these a lot and like Instagram or social media somehow, and it will have like some starry backdrop, and it says something like the secrets of the universe are within you.

And I love the idea of that quote, and it's kind of baffling for some people. Well, they're like, Well, what does that mean? You know, if the secrets of the universe are in me, like, how do I access them? Are they in some part of my brain that I'm not aware of? Is there something that is there some way to like, unlock that within me. And we often unlock the mysteries within us through living our life, through being a student of the universe through learning about other things. And then taking those experiences taking that wisdom, taking somebody else's knowledge, and taking space to go inwards, and applying it to ourselves.

[29:15] Creating Space To Receive Knowledge

So when we think about this idea of accessing knowledge inside of ourselves, the way that we're going to do that is usually found through creating space, and is found in the pages of our journal. It is found when we have a dream, and we write it down. And maybe we do some sort of dream work around that there's so many ways that we can do dream work to tap into these beautiful messages from our soul, and to tap into what meaning they hold for us. It is found when we go out in nature and maybe sit and meditate by the water or under the sky somehow and we have a new insight about our life it might be found

When we make art, or when we are doing something creative, it might be found in yoga class and having a spiritual moment, maybe doing something where you are engaging in some kind of spiritual activity. And you're doing it because you're mindfully wanting to create space to experience something that is a little bit more of a transcendent quality, you are hoping to meet with spirit or meet with something inside of you, you are hoping to shift your way of being and slowing yourself down and being more mindful.

And in that space, whether again, like I said, it's a yoga or a moon circle, or a scrapbooking class, there is the potential if your intention is that you are hoping to listen to yourself, and to engage with yourself and engage with the wise being inside of you. There's the potential for wisdom to come out in that space, there's the potential for you to have an insight to have an epiphany to have a revelation, to learn something about who you are, and how you see yourself and how you see the world around you.

So if we're not taking space for ourselves, and we're not being in that, to energy, that passive energy of receiving, it can be harder to engage with the High Priestess aspect of ourselves. And I do think that there's nothing wrong with doing something active as a way to make space. Like when I said earlier, if you are actively going to plan your journal time, and you have questions and prompts that you're going to use, that could be a beautiful way to set your altar of self, and to engage with your deeper self and to see what comes through.

But I think even if we are actively planning to cultivate some sort of space for spiritual wisdom to come through, it's helpful to have space within that space, if you go on a retreat weekend. And it is some sort of a spiritual retreat. And this weekend is packed with activities where you're listening to somebody talk, and now you're doing I don't know, a here's a class on like, How to Play Sound bowls, or whatever. Those are the bowls and the singing bowls, you know, and now you are in a group setting and you're supposed to talk about something, and the whole weekend is so crammed full of stuff, and there's no space to reflect or to distill, then you're probably missing valuable moments and opportunities for knowledge.

[32:52] What Loss Taught Me About Receptivity

I remember when I lost my brother Brent. And I was really going through what I think of as kind of the thick of my grief, like the heart of my passage of grief. And this would have been in the winter of 2016. I, he died in January of that year. And it was really January, February, March, April into May, that I was going through what felt like the most painful moments to me.

And the pain didn't lift when June hit. But that was when I noticed a lightning and some of that was seasonally supported by summer coming and just by being in a little bit of a different space of self. But those moments of heaviness and grief and they were happening during the heart of an Alaskan winter solstice was December 21. So January and February and Alaska tend to be still really dark. And even though the light starts to slowly come back in February and by March, at least in Anchorage where I lived, you start to have longer days and more of a sense of normal light returning. It was a really great winter that year.

And so we had a lot of snow we had a lot of gray spring took a long time to come. And there was a sense of darkness and density and grayness. And I remember being almost like Hasty on what to do with my grief. I knew that things were changing, having lost Brent, I was having experiences of hearing from Brent having a sense of his present presence, so many synchronicities were showing up. I was getting like all the angel numbers. I was finding pennies and feathers everywhere. I could feel things stirring intuitively within me.

And even before he passed, I was having a sense of something stirring in my soul and I started having these very prophetic dreams. seems like some sort of big change was coming for my life. I never would have guessed that was it. But I was I was listening and I was dialed in enough to know something is shifting within me. And I was having these interesting urges to really break the paradigm of who BethAnne was, you know, it was kind of interesting.

People who knew me back then, would often say something like, Oh, do you know, do you know about down or what she like, and it wouldn't be uncommon for somebody to say, you know, who knew me more in a social way? Oh, like, Oh, she's really fun. She's super colorful. She's a really bubbly person. You know, she's a mountain runner. I don't know what else they would have said about me. But I remember people saying, Oh, she's so colorful, and she's really positive and all of these things.

So I was some sort of this like unicorn prancing around and costume, you know, wearing bright rainbows. And I spearheaded a lot of fun things. I was part of a friend group. And we were always doing fun things like Let's wear crazy costumes and go downtown. And you know, do a, I don't know, like we did the pirate pub crawl and encourage one year and we had had parties at this fun restaurant and had appetizers. And, you know, people just really knew that side of me. And it was really bubbly and upbeat. And all of that was part of who I was.

But I had this much more deeper side, the spiritual side, the thoughtful side that was starting to come out in my writing. And it was harder for me to put that into language and to share it in social settings, perhaps wasn't even always appropriate to share and certain social settings. And it started to really bother me, I felt like this one dimensional person, were people like I was tired of being like rainbow, bright, BethAnne and being pigeonholed into this kind of very shallow mold of self.

And now when I look back on that nobody was trying to pigeonhole me, I just had something deeper in me that was ready to break my own mold, and break out of that sort of self imposed image. And I was having these urges to do things like dye my hair brown or black, it was it's blonde, and you know, kind of shock people or look different somehow. And I didn't understand what those were about.

[37:21] Intuiting The Voice of My Soul

And now I get it, something more deeper and soulful was inside of me, and it was letting me know, you're ready for change. Change is coming for you. You are ready to break your own paradigm itself. And as events unfolded in my life, and I lost my brother that became that was the veil, right? If the High Priestess was kind of standing there as a figure in my life. And she was saying there are things inside of you that are calling your attention. And they are ready to let themselves be known.

The High Priestess and me knew without me even consciously understanding it, that I was about to go through a deepening of understanding who I was, that my soul was seeking to expand that on my soul path, if we want to call it that, that it was time to step into a bigger version of self, that I had a lot of interior work to do in order to better understand my relationship with the mysteries with spirit that I was about to be called into working with the Akashic records in a way that I never envisioned for myself, some aspect of me some high priestess aspect and knew all that.

And after I lost my brother that became the gateway grief was my gateway that I stepped through. And it acted as a catalyst to start to be able to access all of those things. And when I was going through, again, the thick of my grief, I was already kind of primed on something shifting.

And so I knew that losing Brent, that ultimately what would come out of that, outside of just the very naked human grief that I have as a sister, and you know, have have not only that he's gone but really had during that time, I knew enough to be like this is a rite of passage, their spiritual growth and this if you pay attention, and I was really impatient, and wanting to know what that growth was, whether it was that I was supposed to teach grief, whether it was I was supposed to come out this new person. I really had to work on learning to not over interpret my experience too soon, to not over teach my experience too soon. I was so used to being in the position of psychologist and using my life experience as one of the many knowledge streams that helped inform me of To how to support other people, that I was tempted to write about it too soon to use it to support others in their grief.

And there was nothing wrong with relating to other people and appropriate ways and beginning to write more about it. But there was wisdom to be found and just letting it be messy, and not needing to do something with my grief, just letting those feelings be what they were, there was wisdom to be found and stepping out of the role of teacher and stepping into the role of just receiving and healing, and not chomping at the bit to get going with what's next on this journey, and to not bypass my grief and bring in something new that I could get excited about to kind of prove to myself that life was going on.

There was wisdom to be found and just sitting with death, and sitting with what was it that Brent, as he like as who he was, and his human form, was no longer physically here on this plane. What was it to understand that that essence of Brent was no longer like just no longer period? What did that mean? And I really had to understand death, at least from that vantage point, and understand what it meant that he was no longer here. And yes, I could feel him in spirit form. But it is not the same thing. That who he was on his human journey was no longer there was wisdom to be found in grasping on to that.

And that was its own rite of passage. That was where I was dancing with the shadows. And just understanding this is what it means to cease to be. And what do I do now in order to take that wisdom and take the light from it, and use it in a way that helps me live more expansively. And so some of the wisdom that came from that time was it taught me how to live better, and it helped me be brave enough to make some big changes in my life. It helped me to really appreciate everything about who Brent was, The Good, the Bad, everything in between, and really kind of take a step back, and be like, that was his journey here on this planet as a soul, you know, in this lifetime. That was what he had to experience.

And there was beauty and all of those experiences, even the ones that might have been more painful experiences. It taught me to take the best of him, the things that he really loved, like Rocky Road ice cream, or he loved like, just he loved good food he was so Hobbit like in that sense. You know, he loves Star Wars, and he loved kawaii, he loved being he was his best self. I think when we were over here on this island as a family, it taught me to take the best in him. And to value that and to figure out how can I move forward where I honor these things that he loved, not because I need to recreate him, but because I want to remember him.

And remembering it helps me not only honor who he was, but it helps me honor the sanctity of life, these sacred moments that sometimes feel like we don't always notice that they're sacred when they're going on. But when we're no longer here, and somebody's no longer here, you see that these memories that you've have with them that there was something sacred in them. He taught me so much.

[43:30] Grief As A Rite of Passage

And that rite of passage taught me so much. And it was during that time that I really was seeking something. And ultimately, what was meant to come from that, I think is what did come from that I realized that it was time to step into my spiritual calling. And that was bigger than what I envisioned for myself at that point in time. But I remember having an Akashic reading.

And at the time, I was still working with the individual, this lovely woman who used to read for me, I'd yet to step into becoming a reader that was coming the second half of 2016 and I remember asking like something more is there for me, like what is it and I was about to be called to go to Canada and go to this water ceremony. I was about to make these massive changes to deciding to go to kawaii I was about to start putting together poetry books, like all this stuff this doing was coming.

But I remember and this Akashic reading her saying you have to learn to become your own wise woman. It's like you're running around to all this other stuff. And you think the answers are there, or you're trying to be the wise woman for everybody else. Like you know, the good doctor, right, the psychologists that people come to and you have the answers because I had this sort of particular brand of wisdom at that point in my life. And you have have to learn to become the wise woman for yourself. You have to learn how to show up for yourself and to stop trying to be for everybody else. But you need to learn to be for yourself.

And yes, you will absolutely come to learn about new things, you is something caused to you, you will likely go to new ceremony, you will go to new places you will learn from others, you will grow your knowledge. But none of that is going to make you more than what you already are. You have to find the wisdom and the knowledge that you have inside of you. And you have to learn how to use it for yourself. Whoa, I mean, those words you all like, they were a game changer for me. Because I did I felt like everybody else knew the answers. And even though I knew that I had some answers for myself, I think I saw other people as wiser than me. And there are always other people that are wiser than us.

But that doesn't mean we diminish the wisdom that we already have. It doesn't mean that we let go of our power and say, because they know more about whatever it is that we think they know more about, because they know more about the angels, or they know more about philosophy or because they've traveled around the world.

And I've not really left the country or the state or the territory that I'm from, because they learn this and I have it that somehow they hold more wisdom, we can acknowledge the wise being inside of ourselves, while still acknowledging that we don't hold all the mysteries, we don't hold all the answers. We don't hold all the secrets. But we do hold some mystery, we do hold some answers, we do hold some secrets. And we are the only one who knows that first self.

So the High Priestess understands the value of seeking outside of themselves. And she understands the value of going inwards and creating space and receiving and making space for what we already know. So this is spontaneous.
 
As I was telling this story, which I didn't plan on doing today, I usually will just open myself up to whatever wants to come through when I make these podcasts. And every now and then I'll think about experiences that I might share. And sometimes I'll share those experiences. Sometimes I go in a different direction. This time in my life wasn't the one that I thought I was going to share today. And I happen to have a poem called WISEWOMAN that I wrote that was inspired by this Akashic reading and this period of my life and I wasn't even planning on sharing it today.

But the poetry book, cranberry dusk that I wrote it in, is sitting by the chair that is by my desk that I'm making this podcast from and so I just reached down and you know, wouldn't you know, it opened it up and kind of open very close to the section that it's in.

[48:05]  Wise Woman: Embodying Truth

So I am going to share this poem that I wrote called wise woman and it was inspired by this time in my life.

I've passed this like so many times, she watched me shift from young maiden to wise woman in the blink of a few winter's eyes, where have the days gone?

I've ran these words so many miles, they can tell you the shape of my steps, and know the weight of my heart, by the weight of each strike, how far I've traveled on foot. There are journeys we make within and the journeys we take without.

I've pressed my palms to the earth so often, she long ago bade me welcome, inviting me to sit, stay for a while and tell her of the radical dreams I seek for the earth in my life.

I keep searching for the truths of my heart, by the way of the stars, by the shift of the clouds, by the grace of suns rises and sets. They tell me the secret of growing pains that it takes to become.

They tell me that you can't use people to plug the holes and you're sinking ship, that you must learn the ever changing nature of water and how to swim strong for yourself.

They tell me that the purpose of any good truth is simply to learn how to live it.

And ultimately, that is what the High Priestess teaches us. Not only how to experience truth for ourselves, but how to live in it, how to descend into the cave and knowledge to walk through the veil to journey Whether we're on a specific rite of passage, or whether we are just sitting in our journal and going inwards, and it's like a super juicy journal time, and we really tap into some insights and guidance that day, she teaches us to go into the depths, and to distill knowledge and to collect that knowledge and to take it back step outside of the veil and live it in our life. We live that truth, we become that truth, we integrate that truth. I've never needed to circle back and learn the lesson of being the wise woman because I know now that I am the wise woman, you are the wise woman, you are the wise man, you are the wise being.

Each of us holds that inside of ourselves. And if you want to engage with the High Priestess inside of you, some fine journaling prompts might be what wisdom do you already hold? What do you know about life? What do you know about the part of the world that you live in? What do you know about spirituality? What have you learned? That has been an insight or a wisdom for you? What do you know about your heart? What do you know about how your heart loves and what your heart has had to teach you about love? What do you know about God?

What do you know about the numinous? What do you know about spirit? What aspect of knowledge and this creator ginormous Vassilis Tree of Knowledge, Akashic library of knowledge that we all hold some aspect of? What do you hold? And can you see that inside of yourself? And can you understand that it will be ever evolving, ever growing, ever changing, so that when life throws you curveballs, you are able to be the high priestess and serenely smile and say, okay, there is new wisdom waiting for me here, if I take the time to distill it. And if I take the time to tap in, and I don't have to force that wisdom, I don't have to force that knowledge. I don't have to be impatient for the answers to come. It was interesting.

[52:09] Final Reflections

I had a very, very busy summer. Very busy summer. It is August 27, as I'm making this podcast and I've got one more thing on my to do list to top off summer that is run the Kawaii marathon next weekend. And I am very much looking forward after that to having a fall season here, where things are a lot slower. I have this this really amazing, beautiful summer there good things happened. I choreographed a musical and I was marathon training. And I had a lot happening in my work life and my creative life.

But I spent a lot of time externalizing the summer being like very outwards, that rainbow bright energy that I talked about earlier, that kind of unicorn energy and what I shared in Alaska that I was tired of, I embodied a lot of that energy this summer. And some of the things that I was doing that exactly like I did in Alaska in a much more expanded way. But I felt like I spent a lot of time like in the outer world this summer, more than I like more than I more than I, I let's put it this way. If I did this all the time, I would be so out of balance, and so not in relationship with myself. But I accepted that it was just a busy season and that there was wisdom in that season. And there's a reason that so much hit all at once.

And as I am moving into this idea of fall, I'm saying that with a smile because our island I live in an island a fall here is not like Orange Leaves and super cool weather. But it is slightly shorter days, there is a cooling of the weather at night. There are the subtle shifts on the island that I love, love, love tapping into, I love noticing where the sun rises as we because it becomes um September on and how it will slowly change as we get closer to winter solstice. I love autumn equinox, and reflecting on what happened the first part of the year and what's left of the last part of the year. And where am I is I balanced these energies of summer and winter and kind of stand on the cusp of fall in my heart and in my life. I love everything about it.

And I can't wait to write more and to distill more and to reflect more and to take the wisdom from the summer and to take the experiences where I didn't really have the space to access what wisdom I learned from those experiences.

I can't wait to write about it and to do what I said earlier kind of set the space on the altar of myself to understand what new learnings did I gain this summer what These experiences mean to me, How have I changed as a person? Because of some of those experiences? How do I continue to grow? How do I have new spiritual knowledge, because I had these experiences, I learned that there's value and activity, and that there is value in busyness and that there is a time and a space in my life for me to be more outwards, and that there's a time and a space to be more inwards.

And I can't wait to have a little bit more of that inward energy now and distill those experiences. And to show up for myself, as my wise woman is my High Priestess, and really look into what did I learn? And what do they gain? And how can I use that and my words and teachings perhaps, to give to other people, because that's what I tend to do. I'm excited for that. And so that is what it is to be the high priestess to know that we are always learning always evolving, we never arrive. And there are always opportunities for new wisdom and new growth.

And we embrace that in one hand, while in the other, accepting the fact that we already have the wisdom, we already have the knowledge that we can both be ever seeking, ever growing, ever evolving, ever thirsty for our knowledge of how we might expand on this particular incarnation of who we are in this journey, while at the same time knowing that the answers are already within, and that if I didn't want to do anything this fall, and I didn't want to distill those experiences, I just wanted to enjoy the fall and not right and not reflect that. There's wisdom found there too, that it doesn't have to be one way or the other, that there's wisdom in every aspect of our experience. And that is what the High Priestess teaches us.

[56:54] Coming Up Next Week

All right, with that we are pausing for today and ending episode 33 of your heart magic. I love myself some angel numbers. So I love that we're talking about the mystical, magical High Priestess today, when it was the very magical episode 33. Coming up next week, the art of compassionate detachment, we are going to be talking about what does compassionate detachment look like? And how do we compassionately detach in our lives when we are invested in somebody or an invested in someone. 

But we realize that we are overly fixating or overly attaching to somebody else's journey, or we are really stuck on why did they do that. And I can't believe they did that. And we are like trying to almost like solve the riddle of somebody else. And we're just not able to let go, we're not able to release. We are nursing energy, that there's some sort of attachment there. 

And we need to figure out how do we take a step back? How do we divest ourselves of where somebody else is at? How do we invest and where we're at? And how do we work on being as non sticky as possible, so that we're able to allow the experiences in our life to flow through us to like water to flow through like crystal water? How do we distill and let go and release. 

And so we'll be talking about boundaries and about relationships and letting go and how to do so in a way that we still care. We still have compassion, we still hold love in our hearts. But that sticky attachment maybe isn't there as much. So we're going to be looking at ideas around that. And I look forward to bringing that through next week. 
Until then, have a magical magical week and be well be love, be you and be
magic.