Crys: Okay. So this is exciting. This is something special we've decided to do for our Substack, and JP and I are tarot witchy nerds. So I, for the last two years, this could be counted as the third year have pulled a spread for my entire year. And that's I pull a card per month. And a card that is the theme of the year.
And I asked JP, have you pulled a year spread? And he said no. And then five minutes later he was like, yes...
JP: I'm like one of those weird tarot nerds. Cause like I have this like science-y background. So it's like the weird like dichotomy of JP where it's I don't know if I want to do tarot or not, but then when you mentioned it, I'm like, hell yeah, I want to do tarot all the time. I love tarot.
Crys: I am such a wishful skeptic. I want all the magic to be real. And there are definitely science parts where I understand our intuition is smarter than we are, and we pull connections together between things that we see. So that's where I'm at...
JP: I mean, even if that's the case where like you pull these cards and you're like, "Oh, I understand how this relates to my life," it's still insightful.
Crys: A hundred percent. And what made me have the idea for doing this monthly review of the cards is, I don't really review mine until the end of the year and look and see what popped up each month in my memory. Also, I have a terrible memory unless prompted, so it was really good for me and really popped up a lot of thoughts. It made me realize how absolutely awful and hard 2020 was. Like, I knew that in a theoretical aspect. "Oh yeah, 2020 is hard for everybody." But when I went back and looked like month by month and realized just how miserable it actually was...
Because I don't live in misery. I don't like that place, and so I don't keep it in my brain. It was really helpful to be like, "Oh wow. Like I came through a lot and that's really cool to see where I am now."
So we can do it more often!
Okay. Let's go over, this episode, what we pulled for our theme for the year.
Mine was mother of wands. The card deck I use uses familial references for the court cards rather than king, queen, page... and what's the other one?
JP: King, queen, page, and dear brain... What happened? Isn't it prince, page?
Crys: Yeah...
JP: So mine is page, knight.
Crys: Page knight, I think. Yeah. Some might use prince and princess, but page and knight sounds right to me. And mine uses father, mother daughter, son. And what was your year card?
JP: Okay, so my deck is the Madam Clara 5-cent Tarot deck because I love this deck so much. And instead of the suit cards -- wands, cups, sword and pentacles -- it uses knitting references, which is fantastic. Except for matches. I don't know where that one comes from, but Matches instead of Wands. Needles instead of Swords, Buttons instead of Pentacles and then Cups, because why not?
One more caveat to this deck is it has four additional Major Arcana cards, which are amazing. They work so well. And they are The Unknown, The Beyond, The Universe, and The Messenger. I have one of those cards later on. So I just wanted to mention that, but my card of the year is the Knight of Needles.
Crys: So Knight of Swords in traditional? Excellent. The Knight of Needles. I just imagine you like jousting around with a needle right now.
JP: So what is your Mother of Wands mean? And then I'll go into what the Knight of Needles means.
Crys: I just wanted to say my deck is the Wild Unknown Tarot.
I love how colorful it is. Very rainbowy and dark at the same time. Okay. So Mother of Wands, the notes I have ... each of the ... wow... can't even remember words, but each of the elements is Wands, Swords, Cups and Pentacles, is associated with an elemental ; fire, water, earth, and air.
Wands... fire creativity, passion, ambition, spirituality are the notes that I have for it. And that the mother or queen figure focus is about growth, development with knowledge and wisdom. The site I use to read into the cards is Biddy Tarot. If you want descriptions of what each of the cards often means traditionally and what it brings up, that's a really good place to go.
So what I really liked about Mother of Wands, for me, is this focus on creativity, getting things done. A wholeness. If you think of the mother figure, they are often spread out over many realms with family, home, career , growing things. I love the mother figure cards and this really reflected to me where I do feel that I am in my career right now.
The mother figure is a connector. And I'm putting myself into a lot of social spaces, whereas in years, previous I've been very much in my own space, reaching out to friends and having and building one-on-one connections, but I'm moving into a place, more of authority and connecting with people, not one-on-one, which is really difficult for me to comprehend.
The connections that made for me is really stepping into full creativity. Stepping into creativity in my business, not just words on the page. Being ambitious, not stepping back, a mom doesn't get time off. There's always something to be done in some realm of your life. But you also do have to take rest time and figuring out how to do that best.
So the notes I had as things to remember as I go through this year are be bold, be social, make connections and embrace attention.
JP: That's exciting. I think that's a fun read into kind of like where you're headed this year, which I think makes a lot of sense and the stuff that you've told me about how you're going to be taking up this more like leadership role or this community role. So I think that's a really good card for this year.
Crys: Yeah. And one of the notes I really liked about the Mother of Wands versus the Father/King figure is that it's more of a growth and Tens and Kings tend to signify more of completion and full authority. I really liked that the Mother/Queen cards reflect a place that I'm much more comfortable in, that is in growth and development with knowledge that you already have.
I feel like it's really reflective of where my year seems to be going and where I want to focus it. How about you?
JP: I pulled this card last for my yearly pull, and my cards for the year, aren't like the best, but ... so I really got excited when this card showed up. Because I was like, "Oh, hell yeah."
So Knight of Needles. First off ,the suit of swords I use an app called Galaxy Tarot if I ever want deeper understanding . the app itself is free and then there's a little bit more you can pay if you want more info on symbology. Fantastic. Yeah, I love it.
The suit of swords is associated with air and it's for thinking, speaking and mental energies. And then Knights are all about movement, travel and change. So the deck that I use, the Madam Clara deck, every card in both upright and reverse position have about three key words. So that it just helps you. This is why I liked the deck so much. It's just because I'm not going to spend all this time memorizing all the meanings.
The three words of the Knight of Needles is unstoppable, action hero, and courage. And I got really excited about it. I looked into some of the deeper meanings of it ,and it's the person who is being the problem solver, the debater, passionate about ideas and just being this kind of unstoppable force.
And I liked taking up that mantle for this year, because this year is when I really want to get the publishing rolling. I have plans of releasing a minimum of three, we'll see where we go from there, but it just it represents what I want this year to be. So I got really excited.
Crys: And I liked that the card is idea focused, because with the Clifton strengths I... what is the idea? Strength? I want to say ideology, and I know that's not correct.
JP: Ideation?
Crys: Yeah. That's one of your, is that, is it your number one or is it just really high?
JP: It's within the top three.
Crys: Okay to end this, we're just gonna read off what the rest of our year is, and then each month we will reflect on what the past month brought out and how we see the card connecting to our past month and then what we expect or what we need to focus on in the month, moving forward with our next card.
All right. So for my year I have:
January is the Three of Swords reversed
February is the Father of Swords
March is the Two of Pentacles
April as the Five of Swords reversed
May is Judgment reversed
June Two of Cups. And I fucking hate that card and always pull it. And we'll talk about that when we get to June
July, the Son of Pentacles reversed
August the Daughter of Wands reversed
September Ten of Cups,
October Five of Wands reversed
November Six of Pentacles reversed
December Ace of Swords reversed
And when we get to reversed, I have a reversed for January. We'll talk about what the reversal means in tarot for people who aren't familiar with it.
JP: Unfortunately, it's not like uno reverse. Yeah, I'm going to throw a little jokes here and there.
All right. So for
January Two of Buttons reversed
February Four of Needles reversed
March Six of Needles reversed
April Three of Matches
May Page of Cups reversed
June the Hierophant reversed
July Four of Matches
August the Queen of Cups
September the Hermit
October the Unknown reversed, which is part of that new major Arcana
November Seven of Needles
December Six of Cups reversed
Crys: Excellent. All right. We will come back with our January/February talk next.
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