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Aloha and welcome to your Heart Magic, an illuminating space where psychology, spirituality and heart wisdom meet. Here's your host, Dr Bethann Kapansky-Wright, the clinical psychologist with a mystic mind.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 0:35

Aloha everybody. Welcome to your Heart Magic. This is Dr Bethann Kapansky-Wright, and today we are finishing our Archetypes of the Tarot series with the card the World. I feel like this episode and also this card, they're just so synonymous. The world is about completion. It's about finishing the journey of something, and as I was making some notes to share today about this card, I was thinking how this is a episode series that I started back in, I think, 2023.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 1:12

I started it about a year and a half ago where I decided to talk about tarot archetypes, and we have traveled from the journey of the fool and taken the fool's journey and come all the way out at the card the world, which signifies a completion of the journey. It's both an ending and a beginning, and something else that I love about this episode is that this marks episode 101 for your Heart Magic. Last week's episode was number 100. I don't even remember if I announced it on the podcast. I think it kind of I missed it. And so here we are in this 101 energy, which is a little bit more of a beginning, but it is starting the next cycle of like what will this be? And so, as I have come to completion with the series and it's December I'm thinking about. What do I want to create on this and bring to your heart magic in the new year? I very much have the world energy going on right now. So, just as an overview, the world itself is card 21 in the Major Arcana and, as we've talked about, the fool takes this journey and starts out at card zero with nothing but the belief of possibility and optimism and taking a leap of faith. And one of the most beautiful cards, I think, in the tarot deck is the fool. We should all be so fortunate to be fools and embrace that beginner's mind and embrace that sense of striking out and starting. There's something about the optimism of a beginning that is so beautiful and it's shiny and it's exciting and there is so much faith involved oftentimes when we are starting something fresh or starting something new, and then as the full is traveling on this journey, the full runs into what any of us run into on our journey.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 3:14

Life is not about just taking a beginning. It's not always about well, I'm going to go in this direction now because that didn't work out, and I'm going to go this way because I got bored. Now because that didn't work out and I'm going to go this way because I got bored. There's a lot of life where we are in the in-between and we are learning lessons that help us grow and help us become and help us learn things like inner strength and relationships with others. We learn about our spiritual connection. We might learn what holds true for us and what doesn't. There are life lessons and world lessons that we learn on the journey, sometimes the hard way, and so when we have struck out and we started something new and we are following the path of the full and following that journey, we always get to kind of the marshy in between, middle of the mountain place, where it's not quite as glamorous, it's not always as exciting, but there's so much value to be found in that space we can't skip that part of the process.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 4:27

Archetypes is that no matter where we're at on our individual journey. If we were to each draw out a map and maybe relate to each archetype and say, here's where I feel like I'm at right now, here's where I am on my path, we can always reconnect with something that we have passed through. We can always find the fool, even if it's something that feels tired or we feel like we need a fresh set of eyes. We can always reconnect with that. But often in life there are endings to things. Not everything goes on forever, and that is what the world signifies. As the fool has taken this journey, there is a time where we reach the destination point or we reach the mountaintop, and of course we all know the proverbial what happens when you get there. Well, it's not the end, it's just another beginning. The world itself signifies the completion of a journey. It is about coming full circle, learning the lessons, having a sense of graduation or commencement from something. It signifies the ending of a cycle, a pause before the next cycle begins, where we can just appreciate and be in that sense of fulfillment or completion. It can signify if it's a card that's pulled in a spread that you have finished something and you are about to make a major shift into something new, into some new cycle in life.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 5:50

The world is often synonymous with themes of success, not letting fears hold you back. It is the card that happens before we once again become the fool. So a lot of times it symbolizes like we did it we found the light within, we conquered the fears, we went through all the lessons on the surface, we went down into the underworld, we learned the lessons of hardship and challenge and how to find our diamonds in the mud. We came back out and opened up to the star and the sun and the moon and our connection with spirit, and we are standing there at this space saying what a journey, with a sense of completion and, of course, completion always signifies so what's coming next? And that segues so beautifully into this time of year.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 6:45

This episode will be released on the third week of December. We are so close to the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025. And I just love that the world and this episode all tied in, to be coming out this particular month, because one of the ways that we can connect with the archetype of the world is through these endings in our life that all of us experience. We all go through the ending of a calendar year and the beginning of a new one. We all have birthdays, we all are under the same moon and we all go through the moon cycle where every 28 days, we reach the full moon and there's a sense of completion. That is perhaps a small microcosm of the world, and the macrocosm would be these endings in our life that don't happen all that often and we really can feel something is coming to a close, and so one of the ways that we're all working with the world archetype right now is doing whatever it is that we're doing as we prepare to move into the new year, and for many of us, that might look like doing things that close out the year 2024.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 8:04

And, of course, there's things going on that are celebratory and holidays and all sorts of ways that people might honor the holy days and honor these days of the year, and those are beautiful reflection points because we'll often find ourselves thinking about what was I doing this time last year? You know, what was Christmas of 2023? Like? What was New Year's of 2023? Like when was I at last year as I stood at the cusp of entering into this new territory? So holidays can offer us a natural reflection point, and then many of us will be taking that a step farther, because we genuinely enjoy inner work.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 8:45

I love inner work. I love taking time in my journal to inventory and to summarize what happened this year. What are some of the lessons that I learned? What am I taking with me? What wisdom have I integrated? And it's going with me and it is just part of me now. And what can I leave behind and say well, that was an experience that happened this past year and that is not something that I want to take into this new cycle and all of that wonderful reflection and contemplation and integration work are the kinds of things that take place when we are at the completion of something and when we are having a natural ending and beginning in our life. I think when we tune into them they are organic reflection points that we can just easily tap into. And if we have extra emotional bandwidth, then we go the extra mile and we really make it personal and we take some time to do the journaling activities and to reflect on where we've been.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 9:48

And then I think the world also ties into so many of our personal triumphs and the personal cycles that we go through, and those are very individual. Those could be things like crossing a threshold and moving into some sort of a new cycle in life. Maybe you change locations, you might change a job, you might end a relationship, you might make some sort of internal choice within you where you've made a decision towards something that feels really meaningful to you and you strike out and say I'm done with this and I'm going to be moving in a new direction now and I'm going to be making a conscious effort to do so. So there's many ways that this archetype can show up in our individual lives. This archetype can show up in our individual lives and I often think when we're going through a rite of passage.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 10:39

For myself, I can think about when I got married, when I moved from Alaska to Kauai. That was huge. The world energy like huge, huge the world energy. There was so much around endings at that time in my life and truly having this very tangible thing going on and really saying the goodbyes and appreciating and graduating myself from some of the spaces that I'd occupied. And then I think there's times that the world happens in a much quieter way and there's not some big event that it's attached to Maybe we didn't even make a big decision where we say I'm going in this direction.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 11:20

Now we might just realize that some things we were grappling with, some things that were hard for us, some soul lessons that we've been working on, have shifted and we find ourselves standing on this new ground and we say this no longer holds the weight that it once did If we have been working through something and it was painful or hard or challenging, or we found ourselves getting stuck in sticky attachment to something. We might do that work, and then a time might come where we feel this internal shift and say I am no longer where I was at. With that, this no longer feels sticky. I feel like I've cleared so much space within me. I feel like I've opened up so much room now for something new to come through, and so it's not like anything in particular happened that gave us that world energy. It's more like sometimes endings show up and they sneak in really quietly and we'll have a moment where we catch a glimpse of ourself and we see our journey from a higher perspective and we realize that we have traveled through some sort of a cycle and we're standing on new ground. So the world can be a card that can have big energy to it and oftentimes it can be tied into something big. But I also love that we can find a lot of personal meaning in the world and personal meaning in our own journey with this card and have those moments where we realize that we have completed something and we might not show it from the outside, it might not be an external change that we could even put into words and tell people, but we can feel a sense of graduation within ourselves and that we no longer need to walk the steps we've walked. We don't have to learn the lessons. We're done with them and we're ready to move into something new.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 13:11

So I thought I would share an example of a time in my life where I definitely had completed a cycle, and I'm going to read a short poem and then tell you the story behind it. You would never know this from reading the poem and it's something I'm not sure I've even talked about this on the podcast. So this poem is called A New Cycle of Light. So this poem is called A New Cycle of Light. It was first published on my poetry blog Sunshine in Winter back in 2022. And I since cleaned it up and included it in a passage from my new book Small Pearls, big Wis. Goodbye to something that held you in its stead.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 13:57

But every ending is also the soil for a beginning, and just as summer's soft blue became fall's golden hue, then winter's whale spew and spring's bright dew, so too do you have your own turn of seasons, with permission to embrace the bittersweet, diaphanous pain of change, finding gratitude for all that has been allowing what's next to begin to arrange, for there is always something round the bend waiting to be discovered, and if you keep your heart open to life, you will see there's more life waiting to be uncovered. Deep breath, chin up hearts open wide, allow what's passed to slip from your grasp and prepare to receive a new cycle of light, big old world energy. And that poem and something in that language that really struck me as I was reading it. That's so true about this card is that the other side of the coin of an ending is the beginning, and so sometimes we have a sense of completion with the world, and it's beautiful and it's happy, and it's celebratory, and it's sad. It can be grief-filled, it can be hard to leave behind a cycle. Sometimes we're ready, sometimes we're not ready, and here it is anyways. Oftentimes it's a little bit of both, or we just know that it's time, but we still grieve what is passing and slipping from our grasp. And so I wrote this poem after this 365 day lighthouse challenge that I did so.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 15:39

In the town that I live in, there is a lighthouse that's about like 1.3 miles from where I live. It's not that far, and when we first moved into our new home here back in the summer of 2021, I started running to the lighthouse about a week after we'd moved into our place and I didn't set out on that first run and think like I am going to do this every day for the next 30 days or do some kind of challenge. But I realized after about a week that I'd run to that lighthouse every single day. And it really wasn't about distance, it was such a nice little easy jaunt because it wasn't that far and it was just enough to have a really good jog. And somewhere in that I decided to do this thing that I called the 365 day Kilauea Lighthouse Challenge and I set my own guidelines and rules. But I was like I'm going to go to this lighthouse for the next year, I'm going to go every single day and I am going to do this to mark this rite of passage.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 16:40

And at the time I had another. It was another world cycle in my life, moving into this new place and moving to a new town on the island. I could just feel all these things changing and it really signified a sense of beginning a new cycle. And so I did this and decided to create this container because I wanted to have an experience where I visited the same spot in nature every day, really tuned into the land, here what changes were going on in the area. I also put the intention that it was ceremonial and that I receive whatever healing I really needed for my journey, and I could probably do a whole podcast talking about the kinds of things that happened.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 17:25

And one of my rules was that I could run it, I could walk it, and one of my rules was that I could run it, I could walk it and on occasion I could bike it. And I didn't say you can only bike it once a week or you can only do this. I just wanted to give myself different ways to get there and the event that, like I was sick or injured or something was happening or I didn't feel up to running, and in the end I'd say I ran it probably 80% of the time and maybe biked 20%, and I did it. I did it for 365 days and it was really wild because, as I was counting these days and sometimes it was really hard, sometimes we went and did something on the island where I'd done something with my family and we'd hiked or gone running somewhere else, and then I'd get home and like, oh my gosh, I better go to the lighthouse or I'd have to make sure that I went and did that before the day started. I did it on holidays.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 18:16

I did it in a rainstorm, like this crazy windstorm once where a neighbor was like in the yard like batting something down and these high, high winds, and I'm on. I think I biked it that day and he looked at me and he goes do you go every day? And I was like every single damn day, my bike in the wind, and that's how it felt. You know, it had been such an adventure. And so, about a week from it, I started having this sense of graduation. Like I could almost hear like all the corny music like Chariots of Fire and you know these theme songs that are these triumph songs, and like well-loved movies going through my head, and I was having flashbacks of all the times I ran it and I was feeling excited and so sad and so, like, what do I do?

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 19:08

And so when the last day that I did it, I was so proud, I decided to make myself some swag and I, like ordered a ball cap online and created a little graphic and made myself something to commemorate this journey, which was really fun, and I felt so proud of myself and like I had done what I'd set out to do and I also had such a sense of like, oh my gosh, what's next? I didn't have relief, like, oh yay, now I'm free. Part of me knew that that would be really nice, because sometimes it was really arduous, that like, no matter what else I did, I was going to have to go to that lighthouse every day, and so part of me could feel the freedom. But part of me, like, was really anchored into my routine and anchored into the lighthouse and having a sense of presence with that part of the land there and the animals and the birds and sometimes I would see whales out in the ocean and just having such a sense of earth magic and earth presence in that space. And I felt like I'm not ready to lose this shit.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 20:12

And so I wrote this poem because, as I've often talked about on here, part of writing for me is helping myself through life phases and cycles and trying to embody the energy and the wisdom that I want to step into, especially if I'm not quite there yet and I wasn't, you know, my dear girl, of course it hurts to say goodbye to something that held you in its stead. That is how the poem begins, and that was acknowledging this part of me that's like I don't know, that I'm ready for this to end. And yet my wiser self was like, well, you could do another, like 365 days, if you wanted to. You can keep doing this, but there might be other things calling you and it's okay to make different choices, and so that is really the essence of the world.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 21:01

It is the idea that we can't stay in the same thing forever. There's no growth there, and there are some things we can stay with for a really long time, and they're just meant to be part of our life. For a really long time. I probably go down to the lighthouse now like once a week or something like that. I still run to it, but not like I used to. I just don't have the draw anymore. It's really nice to know that it's there, and sometimes, when I run down now, I will be like hello, old friend, it's so good to see you again, and I'll kind of smile at the Beth Ann from June of 2021 to June of 2022, who did this crazy thing that I will never repeat again, but that was what it needed to be at the time and it wasn't meant to go forward with me. And that is the world.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 21:47

Sometimes we have an ending and it's very satisfying and we're ready, but sometimes there's sadness and there's fear around letting go, even as their celebration, and we just can't stay in the same space, though. We are here for growth and we are here to continually learn, to keep becoming the full, and so we pass through that world energy in so many ways in our life, and it's beautiful and it can be sad, and it's filled with grief, but also so much love and celebration and ceremony around it, and we prepare to embrace the beginning, and sometimes there's a pause where we just let our feelings sift and drift, and the beginning doesn't always show up right away. Sometimes we have an in-between time where we find our way again and allow things to be a little bit of the ending and the happiness and the celebration, but also the sadness. And what do I do with myself now? I'm not quite sure what my heart is calling me towards. And that, too is a beautiful space to be. Every ending always leads to beginning, and there's always a void space in between so that creation can take place.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright : 23:00

So, wherever you're at today, thank you for joining us. I have loved doing this series. I am a little sad to be ending it, but I am ready to move on to new things and to talk about new things, and I am going to be taking some space to think about what still feels authentic to your heart magic and what direction do I want to move this podcast in in 2025. So more on that later. For now, have a beautiful week, happy solstice to you and happy holidays and, as always, be well, be love, be you and be magic.

Intro/Outro Music : 23:46

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