Finding the Tools Within: The Magician's Journey to Self-Connection

What if the most powerful magic isn't found in spells or potions, but in the simple act of coming back to yourself? This episode dives deep into The Magician card—the first numbered card in the tarot's major arcana—exploring how this archetypal energy teaches us about the alchemy of self-awareness and healing.

Against a plain yellow background with no distractions, The Magician stands with tools already at hand. One arm points skyward while the other points to earth, embodying the hermetic principle "as above, so below." This powerful imagery serves as our gateway to understanding how disconnection from external noise allows for reconnection with our inner wisdom—a practice that's increasingly rare in our distraction-filled world.

Through therapeutic insights and personal reflections, we examine how pain and joy exist in equal measure within us. The depth of our capacity to feel one equals our capacity to feel the other, creating a profound duality that The Magician helps us navigate. We explore why sitting with our pain—rather than pushing it away—transforms it into wisdom, and how awareness itself becomes a magical act of change.

The Magician holds a powerful truth: we already possess everything we need for healing. The cups, swords, wands, and pentacles represent tools that have always been within our reach—symbols of emotional wisdom, clear thinking, creative energy, and grounded strength. When we recognize these internal resources, we become the alchemists of our own lives, capable of turning lead experiences into golden wisdom.

Whether you're in therapy, considering it, or simply on your own healing journey, this episode offers practical wisdom for reconnecting with your inner magician. We invite you to pause, create space for silence, and discover the strength that's been within you all along. What magic might you create when you truly recognize the tools you already possess?

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Transcript

Introduction to The Magician Card

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to Heart on the Table, a tarot-inspired podcast for mothers, healers, and humans in the messy middle of becoming two therapists, two moms, one card at a time.

SPEAKER_03 0:10

Every other week, we pull a tarot or oracle card and explore its symbolism through the lenses of trauma healing, attachment theory, motherhood, and intuitive wisdom. Together, we weave our clinical therapy knowledge with personal connections to motherhood, spirituality, magic, and womanhood.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

Reflecting on what it means to mother yourself and others. Across timelines, triggers, and transformations. I'm Brie Levitt, licensed clinical social worker. And I'm Miranda Peterson, licensed clinical social worker. It's part sacred space, part cozy couch chat. Expect laughter, insight, and a whole lot of heart.

SPEAKER_03 0:50

Hello. Thank you for joining us for our third official episode. This episode is going to be about the magician. And we spoke a little bit last episode about how the major arcana of the tarot is sort of like a progression or a story. So today we are going to be talking about the magician, which is naturally the next card in the story.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

The next progression in the story. They look more intentional than the fool looked more like, you know. The fool looked more lax, I guess I should say. The magician has some tools, which look to be the pentacles, the cups, the sword, the wands. And I'm noticing the magician holding like an object in his hand pointing up and then pointing one finger down at the ground beneath him. And I think what also stands out to me in this card is the flowers. There's not necessarily a background of any kind. Like we couldn't really pinpoint where the magician is, but they're just like the background is yellow. And there's a lot of just like flowers around this card, which I think for me represents like some kind of growth. What do you notice?

SPEAKER_03 2:36

I first want to say that something caught my attention as you were noticing was like the cups, the sword, the wand, and the pentacles, which I are all like classes or suits or whatever of the remaining deck. And I remember reading about it somewhere that they represent the four elements. Is that right? Mm-hmm. Yes. Okay. Like earth, fire, air, water.

SPEAKER_02 3:02

I've heard it as earth, fire, air, water. I've also heard it as like mind, body, spirit, energy. Okay. And I've also heard it as like thought. Oof, how does she talk about it? Thought, behavior, sp energy or spirit, like something, something along this similar lines. I can't recall exactly, but yes, I have also heard them as what you were saying. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 3:26

I just found that that's something that I've never noticed before. So when you pointed that out and I connected it to the supposed classification or meaning behind those four items, it was just that is something new for me. And I like, I mean, even further than the air, like the elements, the thought, the mind, body, spirit, and what was the other one?

SPEAKER_02 3:51

There's the energy. Mind, body, spirit, energy. Yeah. And then there's another way that some describe it as like thought, behavior.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

Emotion.

unknown 4:02

Thought.

SPEAKER_02 4:03

Behavior, emotion.

SPEAKER_03 4:05

They those make that is something I noticed for me as I was listening to you talk about what you noticed. I think the biggest thing that I notice is just the above and below. One arm raised, one arm down. And I talked a little bit about that in the last episode, which I think I'll come back to some more. Just the as above, so below, as within, so without. I want you to come back to that more so I can hear more about that. Yeah. I think as we get into what this symbolizes in a therapeutic context or everyday symbolism, I think that could be something that I want to talk about. I also like noticing the infinity sign above the head. There's obviously a center, and you go out to one end of the infinity, and then you come back to the center, and then you go out to the other side of the infinity and you come back to the center. I think there's probably something there that we could, you know, glean symbolically from. I know last time we talked about even the symbolism of the number itself. I'm just noticing that the one is like a is a Roman numeral one, so it's got the you know the center pillar and the lines across the top and the bottom. And almost to me kind of looks like the magician. Yeah. So those are what I notice when I look at this image.

SPEAKER_02 5:26

Yeah, I think one thing that I'm just thinking about and connecting this back to healing, something that I notice about the card is it's different from the fool in a sense of like the fool, we could very much place them in a location, right? Like there was some mountainous looking things behind the fool. The fool had like a cliff in front of them, we think. Maybe it was a step, right? Listen to our last episode. We don't really know what was beneath the fool. But I think what's so interesting about this card is there's none of that. Like the background is just yellow, which it's when you said you noticed that the this is the Roman numeral for one. I thought you were gonna say it kind of looks like an I, like the letter I. It does. And this card very much resembles I, right? Like connecting to ourselves. Um, and then coming back to like you can't place them anywhere. Well, I think the importance of this is like connecting to the tools that we have in front of us, right? Also, just like with the flowers, like there's in connecting to ourselves, like there is some potential for new growth and growth to happen. And I feel like there's almost a meaning behind the color yellow. I was thinking that in my brain. I was like, what could yellow possibly mean? What do you make of the color yellow?

SPEAKER_03 7:00

Because I think there's some significance to the fact that the magician's wearing red robes as well with white underneath. I think there's definitely some color symbolism in this one. I almost feel like okay, I'm gonna go with the the clothing that the magician is wearing. Yeah. Red and white. I feel like, I mean, white is the color of sort of like the undergarment closest to the person, closest to the body. And I feel like that's very symbolic of innocence. And I feel like red on top of that is maybe more like the experience that comes with just venturing, right? This is the next step in the the next card in the journey of the major arcana. And I feel like red somehow symbolizes symbolizes just the in a more literal sense, red is the color of blood.

SPEAKER_02 7:54

I was thinking that. Red almost symbolizes like the body, right? And I this card is very much about connecting back to what is already within reach, right? Like the table has the tools, the table is very much within reach of the magician, and I think like the red robes can symbolize like connecting back to ourselves.

SPEAKER_03 8:20

It kind of feels like an initiation of some kind. Right, whereas the last episode about the fool was more about crossing that threshold, right? Whatever came next came next. We don't know what that is. This feels more like I've maybe I've been here before, but I know how to I know how to reconnect with myself, or I know, like, right? That's it feels initiative, yeah. And maybe even ritualistic. I mean, there's obviously items on the table here that the magician is going to need and knows that they're going to need.

SPEAKER_02 8:58

And knows that they're there.

unknown 9:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 9:01

Right? We were talking in our last episode around the fool and how when people are starting therapy, we are telling them to go backwards to reconnect with being more childlike and approaching life with more curiosity and reconnecting to what's already within us. And I think that this very much symbolizes like just that. Right. If we're identifying this too as like the next step in the fool's journey, the fool's journey through the major arcana is all about learning the secrets of life to help them self-actualize. So it's like, I don't know why that's making me emotional, but it is like step one. The first secret is coming back to ourselves. Coming back to I, which the fool was already somewhat like connected to, I would say. But the importance here, like the secret behind this card, and one of the secrets that I would imagine that the fool would learn stepping into the magician is the importance of connecting back to I.

Reconnecting With Our Inner Tools

SPEAKER_03 10:07

I feel like whereas the fool can go anywhere in this journey, right? You might always need that reminder to come back to one's intuition. Yeah. Like it's so easy to lose one's way. And I think we've talked about this before, but in order to be found, you do have to kind of get a little lost. Yeah. And that can happen at any point, right? Whether you think you've come this far in this healing journey or in this journey of life, the secret of life, you might forget, right? It's always easy to forget and come back to it again and again. This is the natural progression of the fool. The fool was just happy in their existence. They're just carefree, happy to exist, happy to be themselves. And I think the difference in this linear progression for the magician is just the understanding of I am and this is my power. Kind of like back to the the duality, right? This card I feel like embodies duality with the one hand up and the one hand down, right? One arm up, one arm down. One arm is even holding the candle, and the candle is also do like has a duality to it. It's lit on the top and it's lit on the bottom. And I think back to the concept of everything has two sides to it. We talked about this at the end of the last episode, right? The the two sides to what if. And I don't know that the fool is really thinking about the two sides to what if. The fool is just, again, happy to exist. But that just goes to show like the natural progression of these cards, right? As a collective human experience or as a collective unconscious experience that we just fell into at the end of the last episode, and now we're picking back up at the beginning of this episode, is just the, you know, everything has two, two sides, two, two perspectives, two experiences. And the other side of what if, I think a lot of the time, again, we get stuck in the the negative, right? The the fear, the anxiety, and the other part of that is curiosity. We talked a little bit about that last time, and the potential with what if. And I think one thing I was going to share last episode, and I'm glad that I saved it for this episode, was at some point in my experience, we talked a lot about like the importance of attachment, and it's important to have those relationships so that we can understand how we can love ourselves, for example. And we can't do that without it being modeled for us. And I think part of just the natural experience of individual individuation or self-actualization is just realizing that we can come into power to be able to do that for ourselves. I remember a specific part of my life where I felt like I just came to the realization that nobody was going to do it for me and that I had the tools, I had the learning, I had the experience, I had the wounds to learn from, to grow from, to change from, and I could do it. It then became my responsibility. And I think that's an important part of individuation or self-actualization is realizing that you have the capacity or the power to be able to do that for yourself, to be able to show up for yourself in ways that maybe you've not been able to experience before.

The Importance of Coming Back to Ourselves

SPEAKER_02 13:55

Yeah. Yeah. One first thing, I was just like pondering more on this card as you were speaking. And I think like coming back to like how this person, all we see is this person. We don't see a location, we don't necessarily see a connection to anything external, right? Like this is very much about like this person. There, there is nothing like external here that's going on. And last episode, we were talking about the importance of like just reconnecting to ourselves. And I think it's striking that that's like the first part of this journey is reconnecting to the tools that we already have within us to be able to take the next step into the journey, right? Like it's not about becoming anything, it's not about performing anything, like it's about reconnecting to simply just us and what we all have within us and able to take the next step forward and in being able to begin healing, right? And it reminds me, I was just thinking about so one of the things that I do with my clients is lifespan integration, right? And like the first, so it's a trauma modality for those of you who've never heard of it or know nothing about it. What we do in simple terms as the therapist, I kind of help clients create like a timeline of their life. And we use some pretty generic terms for the very beginning of life that are just applicable to anyone. Like you were born, you open your eyes for the very first time, you arrive at the home that you live in as a baby. So things like that, right? But the purpose of that is that we're trying to get clients to reconnect back to themselves before anything else shaped them. And I think like that one shows up in sort of some of our conversation around the fool, but also in being the first step in like the secrets of life and what we're trying to learn on this journey through the major arcana. Like we're trying to reconnect back to simply just us and the tools that we have within us. And it just hit me like the similarity there of like, oh yeah, that's like that is what I'm doing with clients is trying to get them, we're just trying to reconnect back to like what is within us. And I do, I have experienced clients when we're doing lifespan for the first couple of times trying to build internal resourcing, right? Where they they do connect. Like, I'll ask after we do a repetition of the timeline, like, what are you noticing? And people will notice. I can speak from my own experience in lifespan. We were targeting some stuff just around like patriarchy. And one of the cues that my therapist put in was like, you're like, you're a toddler, you're a little baby and you're developing teeth, and you bite and chew on little toys. And I remember just thinking, like, I have bite in me. Like I bite, I chew on little toys, like just me like using my body, right? And it just connected me to like some of my own strength. And that session was quite profound because I remember at the end of it, I don't remember exactly what she said, but she said something along the lines of while there may be nothing that you can do about living in patriarchy, you can remember here what you do have control over. And it's you, right? And I think that's like visible here in the magician, like disconnecting from everything that may be going on externally and coming back to the tools that we have within us. And that really stood out to me because she was like, of course, like we're not gonna be able to change patriarchy in your session, but like you do have power over what you deem as important and as how you move through it. And I was like, dang, like she's right.

SPEAKER_03 17:40

I love that. Yeah. I think as you're just describing the importance of like an absence of a background, the absence of the external in this card. I was just thinking about something that was said to me when a couple of weeks ago we went to get our own cards read. Yeah. And something that was said to me was change is going to happen. I don't remember the word for word verb, but like change is going to happen when you sit in silence, when you sit in the quiet. And honestly, reflecting on it, I haven't had many moments of silence since then. But how often do we forget how important that is? Yes. To just sit and quiet, maybe close your eyes so you know you don't have any visual input. But sit in the silence and see what comes up. How important that is. We tend to forget our own strengths. Yeah. Or what's going on for us internally because there's so much external output or input and making space for that, turning that maybe into a ritual every day. I was told to do that for at least five minutes.

SPEAKER_02 18:56

And it's hard. I don't really know if I've even done that over the past what three weeks or so since we got our cards read. And I think that's speaks to like why we forget.

SPEAKER_01 19:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:07

Because we live in such a fast moving world. I mean, I'm just on the social media kick right now because I'm like I've disconnected for one day. So I'm like, I'm like an expert on this now. I feel so connected. But like I'm teasing, right? But like I think that just speaks that I've been disconnected for maybe two days and how profoundly different I feel. The importance of like making that time. We forget because one, I don't think that our society encourages us to sit in silence and to just be with ourselves and to feel like we I mean, coming back to this card, to be with ourselves and to recognize that we already have everything we need.

SPEAKER_03 19:53

Right. Every little spare moment we have is spent usually, right? Usually spent taking in more information about what we could possibly need. Try this new thing, it's going to help you, it's going to save or change your life. I haven't made as much time for quiet as I probably need to. Doesn't mean that I can't start now. I think past me, couple years ago, me, right, would have caught that, noticed that I hadn't done, you know, that I hadn't sat in silence with myself, and probably would have like guilted or shamed me about it. Past me would have beat myself up for it. And that only serves to prevent any change. Yeah. That does nothing but dig a deeper hole. And today me would just notice it and say, Oh yeah, maybe I am able to make some time for that today. You know, be a little bit gentler and not as critical. Yeah. Reconnecting with the validation piece of it. I was trying to think of this card in terms of the four elements or the four experiences sitting on the table. But all in all, the importance of creating space or making time to just sit with oneself. I mean, some people, right? That is what therapy is. Exactly. That is the hour they're able to make for themselves on a weekly or every other week basis. Yeah, like that is it. And if that's as much as one can do, then that's important. Are you in therapy right now? Not currently. I need it there. I am, you know, giving more thought to maybe it's something that I need to look into. Same. But I was in therapy for like 10 years, and it was the most valuable experience of my life. If I could recommend it to anyone and everyone in my life, I would.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:51

I think it's just a powerful space to be able to sit again with yourself, but have another person witness that with you. Right? Like we don't need to try to navigate the rhythms of life on our own. We can have someone sit and witness and create a space for us to feel seen and heard and to also, you know, point out our strengths. And those are things that we are so easily forgotten.

SPEAKER_02 22:18

Yes. I'm not in therapy currently. I was I say that loosely because I feel like I have like I she's on like speed dial if I need her, right? Like we're we still have relationship. And I did a little therapy after my most recent birth. But all that's to say, like, I think what you were saying about therapy pointing out your strengths. I often see occasionally some discourse online about therapists wanting to keep you in therapy. And while I do believe in long-term therapy, I love having relationships with my clients. I love if my clients ghost me and then a year they're like, hey, I want to come back. I think that's great, right? But as therapists, I do believe that we should be turning people towards their strengths. I'm not trying to keep you in therapy forever. I'm trying to help you recognize through our relationship the tools that you do have, the tools that you have access to, and that that exists within you. And that sometimes we might need a little bit of help in a safe and secure relationship to be able to recognize those. But the purpose is you recognizing that it exists in I. I'm coming back to that real manumeral I over and over again because I'm just like, Yes, it's so important.

SPEAKER_03 23:40

I love that, and I don't see therapy as the purpose of trying to keep the client stuck in therapy forever. I think when therapy is client-driven, there's so much room for growth, so much room for change. Yes. And I mean, for myself in those 10 years, there were days when I showed up and didn't have anything of importance to really talk about, but the fact that I still had a space where I could show up, where I knew someone was just going to get me made all the difference in the world. Even for the days I had nothing important to talk about. And, you know, I did see it as like a maintenance thing in those time periods, right? Like it was, I don't know, sometimes I've heard it like into just going to the gym. It's just to, you know, keep that connection, which is for some people, can be hard to find outside of the therapy room. It can be.

SPEAKER_02 24:35

I remember when I very first started therapy in 2018, I believe it was. I remember when I started with her, there was like maybe it was early on, maybe like our fourth or fifth session, where I was sitting in the waiting room and I was nervous because I was like, I don't know what I'm gonna talk about today, but I really like her. So I was like, I don't wanna, I wanna keep going, but I'm like, I don't really know. And I remember telling her, I was like, I don't really like have anything to like process or talk about today. Like things are going well, I feel pretty good. And I remember her telling me, like, okay, like that's okay. You don't have to be feeling like you're in crisis mode to be able to show up here. And I think the importance of me, I mean, I just felt when she told me that my body relax and just be like, okay, like I can just exist in this space and she can turn me toward myself, right? In this hour, if that's the least that she can do. Because there is not a lot of opportunity for that in life unless you intentionally create that space yourself. So I just, and now I share that with my clients when they're like, I don't really know what we're gonna talk about today. I'm like, that's okay. And sometimes I think those sessions can be the most valuable ones because those sessions when you're not in crisis, when we're not in hypervigilance or depression where we're really feeling shut down, those are the sessions where we have opportunity to really learn and to really integrate, right? Or to just be, to just like disconnect from the external and reconnect with ourselves because we're not in crisis. Like there's room for new learning in our brain when we are just I don't really know what I'm gonna talk about today.

SPEAKER_03 26:31

I love that. I think it's the other side of processing the pain is getting curious about who you are.

unknown 26:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 26:38

And having a space to explore that to where you're not dysregulated. You know, maybe you are regulated. That means you have the opportunity to get a little curious, to get a little more acquainted with yourself, and growth can still come from that.

As Above, So Below: Understanding Duality

SPEAKER_02 26:55

Yes, and we need that. Like we we do need that, and I think that is represented by this being like card number one, right? Like, this is the first secret that the fool encounters. We need to connect to what's within us so that we can identify our strengths to continue on this journey so that we always have these to fall back on. Will you tell us what you were going to say about like your so above, so below, and kind of like the imagery that you see? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:28

So the saying goes, as above, so below, as within, as without, as the universe of the soul. And I actually I connected really strongly with that saying at some point, and I still do, but at some point it had become such a monumental thing in my life. Like I actually have a tattoo of a tree of life. So the quote is by Carl Jung, and it goes, No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell. Oh, I like that. And I think it was just a reminder. I mean, nobody comes out of this life unscathed, so to speak. Everybody is going to go through something difficult. Everybody is going to experience trauma at some point or another, in some way or another. And I think with the as above, so below, again, with back to the tree of life, like the capacity to be able to feel so much pain and sorrow is equivalent to your capacity to feel as much joy and happiness, right? Like if somebody lived their life in the middle without experiencing much at all, right? Didn't experience any hardship or trauma or difficult times, at the same time, they're also not experiencing the other side of that, which is the capacity to feel joy, love, hope, happiness. And I think what I was mentioning earlier with the magician and the symbolism with one arm raised and one arm down is just that duality as a whole. You can't know one depth without also knowing the other. Yeah. The capacity for one equals the capacity for another. And I think a lot of people get stuck. I've heard clients say before, you know, I just want to feel good. I don't want to feel bad anymore, which is valid, especially if you felt bad for a long time. I also think that in that saying is a rejection of one in favor for the other, and the two cannot exist without the other, if that makes sense. Yeah. We talked about this a little bit in the last episode at the end of The Fool, was just therapy being a space for individuals to sit with their pain, right? Pain when it's not recognized tends to kind of rule our lives. Shows up in every Facet of our lives, and that's exhausting. Yeah. When all you're experiencing is pain. I think the process for transforming that into capacity for joy and happiness and love and hope and all of the other good things is to be able to sit with that pain, to listen to it and you know, hear what it has to say. It has things that it wants you to know. It's, you know, it gets bigger and louder and weighs more on you when you don't, when all you do is shove it away. It just wants to be loved. This pain just wants to be loved. And therapy can be a space for people to do that. It's scary. Absolutely. To face your pain, to hear what it has to say. Sometimes it's as a result of what we've done ourselves, or sometimes it's a result of what has been done to us or what has happened to us. And the fact that we had no control over that but still experienced the pain anyways. Yeah. It's not something we can live without. It's a constant, much like change and not to say that we have to be stuck in our pain, but to just to turn towards it and to give it the care and the attention, the love that it needs, the space that it needs has the potential to transform it into something different. The visual that I get is like a gaping wound. Yeah. I mean, if we never tend to that wound, it's never going to stop bleeding. It's never going to stop showing up in our lives when we least expect it or when it's inconvenient. If we sit with it, listen to it, you know, really give it the medicine that it needs.

SPEAKER_02 31:46

You said in your healing too, that there was a moment where you just realized that nobody was going to do it for you. And I often tell my clients that like we are not to blame for the things that have happened to us most often, right? But it is as adults, I tell my clients, it is our responsibility to learn how we heal. Right. Like we may have had no choice in as children over the things that happened to us. But as adults, it's only our responsibility to like put forth our own healing. Because if we're just constantly waiting around for somebody to give that to us, or somebody to apologize, or for someone in our lives to maybe take accountability, we're just putting our healing on pause.

SPEAKER_01 32:38

Right.

Transmuting Pain Into Wisdom

SPEAKER_02 32:39

Right? We're putting our healing in somebody else's hands, which we don't have control over them, right? I think like the card shows that the tools are there. They have always been there. And what an important question to also be exploring is like, what do we do with the pain? Right? Like, what do we do with the difficult emotions? What do we do with the emotion of anger? What do we do with the emotion of sadness? So I think in this card we can look at like we have options, right? Our emotions are trying to tell us something. And what we do with those sometimes is really hard. I'm thinking of like anger. Well, if I'm feeling angry towards someone or something, it's usually like I need to identify some boundaries. Boundaries are fucking hard. I tell everyone, I'm like, listen, I'm gonna be very real with you here. I know that you don't want to set a boundary. It's hard to set a boundary. And your body is telling you that your boundaries are being violated. So it's like, because I've heard people say it's just easier not to set a boundary when you tune into yourself and you recognize what it is doing to you to not set that boundary. Right? So I think just the like identifying what it is that our emotions are trying to communicate to us. And I think one of the reasons that people disconnect from that emotion is because our emotions are telling us that change needs to happen often. If we are sitting in difficult and painful emotions, something needs to change. And change is so hard.

SPEAKER_00 34:15

Yes, right?

SPEAKER_02 34:16

Like when people say, like, well, it's just easier not to. And like, I get it. I really do. I understand that, like, yeah, it's going to take some identifying, like, well, what are my tools? And how do I even use them? How do I use a sword? How do I use a wand? Like, what do I even do with these tools that I've been disconnected from? But I like for everyone to orient to the ways as to which it's harder to not step in to change because we're paying the price for that.

unknown 34:45

Right?

SPEAKER_02 34:45

To be stuck. And yeah, it's hard to change, it's hard to set boundaries, it's hard to figure out what to do with our painful emotions, it's hard to figure out how to tend to the wound if no one's ever shown us how. But like there are still consequences to not trying to move. Does that make sense? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 35:07

Yeah. I think what came to mind as I was just listening to you talk about the way that these emotions or these, you know, internal stimuli are messengers, right? They're messengers, they're being sent to us. Yeah. And we need to pay attention to them. I tend to, when I feel most connected to myself, I tend to magically think. I like magical thinking. Just in terms of, as I was thinking about the magician and what it symbolizes, what came up for me was alchemy. And alchemists, you know, in stories and in fables, they can turn lead to gold. They can, you know, I think the philosopher's stone or you know, the secret of life is within their realm. Yeah. Like they're capable of understanding that. And I think the magical part of that is turning something, you know, that's difficult or that's not holding a boundary, for example. That's not appealing. That's not something we want to do. And seeing that as lead, then holding that boundary or establishing that for ourselves and protecting ourselves has the capacity to turn into gold, has the capacity to turn into something that could benefit us far more than if we just stayed stuck. Yeah. That change, that transmutation, you know, turning pain into wisdom. Right. Like at the beginning, right? Absolutely. It's hard to see what might come of it. I think we talked about this earlier too. Like it's hard to know where we'll end up exact in this place. Yes. But that shouldn't prevent us from taking the first step. Taking that first step will lead to another step, will lead to another step, and before you know it, you'll realize that change has occurred.

SPEAKER_02 36:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:53

And, you know, the more that you practice that principle, right, of transmuting lead into gold, the more you're able to recognize exactly what happens in that process. But it is magical and it is powerful. Yes. And it can change your life.

SPEAKER_02 37:09

I like that you brought up the alchemist because in the book Tarot for Change, she talks about the magician as like the alchemist and how she calls like behavior change truly magic. I think that's so important for anyone who's on the journey of healing to recognize. Like when we practice awareness, which is what this card is encouraging us to do. It's encouraging us to practice awareness within ourselves. When we create change from that, that is magical. Right? Like it is a bit miraculous when we are able to become aware of some of our patterns that hold us back and actually use that awareness to propel ourselves forward. Disconnecting from everything but ourselves and our internal is difficult. Right. Which is why people seek out things like therapy, which is why it can be valuable. But yes, there's a piece there where it's not only are we connecting and becoming aware of what tools we have within us, we're also becoming aware of the ways, like we were saying earlier, some of the thinking and some of the things that we do that keep ourselves stuck. Yes. But without any of that awareness, how would we like how would we ever create change? Right. So I I usually say like change doesn't often look like what we anticipate it will. But I identify like any time that we are out in our day-to-day and we're identifying a pattern, or we're identifying our social anxiety, or we're identifying anxiety, depression, or some of the ways as to which we feel stuck when we are identifying that period. That is change taking place. It's the awareness of it. And sometimes it takes a really long time to create enough space within ourselves to just pause and create some awareness. But I tell everybody that's where we start. And like the magic of the tarot cards is like we have said, and I'm sure we'll continue to say, is that these cards have been around for a very long time. And the reason why they withstand the test of time is because the images in them, we connect to them, right? So again, this being the first step on the journey, coming in to ourselves, creating awareness, it's not necessarily that we're like taking change right away and we're changing everything. We are creating enough space disconnected from all of the external, from all of the rigid rules to just notice what is within, right? And sometimes we might be noticing our strengths, and sometimes we might be noticing the things that we want to change, but both of those things are important because without that, we can't create change. So it is a bit like alchemy, right? Where we are identifying what needs to be mixed in order to create change. And I think even like you were saying, you know, the candle on the image of the magician is lit from both ends. The infinity symbol, there's two ends there. There's the two different ends, right? Like we are recognizing both. We are tuning in to the internal of both, what we wish to change and creating awareness around maybe the ways as to which we in our day-to-day move away from where we want to be going. And also creating space and awareness around the tools that we have to create the change that we want.

SPEAKER_03 40:46

Absolutely. I think, you know, to go along with that, like making the unconscious conscious or bringing it to light, shedding that light on it. Yeah. You know, what stays in the dark will likes the dark, right? And until we kind of sit with it, I mean, we can go meet it there in the dark. Yeah. And sit with it. And it's sometimes scary to be in a dark place, right? Sometimes scary to to sit with that for some time. Nobody likes to be in the dark. We're scared of it from a very young age. But there's also incredible potential. I mean, if you think about, I know one of the the sayings goes that you know, think of it like you've just been planted.

SPEAKER_00 41:28

Right?

SPEAKER_03 41:28

You're in the deep dark soil. We all originate from a womb where it's dark.

SPEAKER_02 41:33

Yeah.

The Magic of Creating Awareness and Change

SPEAKER_03 41:34

And, you know, then we're born, going back to that timeline. Yes. And I think that doesn't just happen at the beginning of our life and then we never experience that again. I think we experience it constantly, and it's whether or not we can recognize it. And in the moment, like our thoughts are powerful. They can shape our reality. And I mean, along the lines of like CBT, for example, those challenging those thoughts, are they real? Where do they come from? Can we change them? Or change our perspective? We have the power to be able to do that. We are the magician. Yes. We are powerful. We have those tools. We just have to make the unconscious conscious. We have to pay attention to those patterns. We have to pay attention to the thoughts. And is that, you know, how they shape our reality? Is that something we can change? Right? How we relate to them. How we relate to our pain. Is that something we we can change? Yeah. Our pain doesn't have to rule our lives forever. I think, again, when we feel that way, when the pain, you know, rules our life, is usually because we don't have a relationship to it and it's begging for one. And just like it's important to for relationships to be modeled to us, right? Like that's how we come into the world. We need that relationship. We need that nurture. And at some point in our lives, we recognize that we have to be able to give that to ourselves. It comes externally for the longest time. At some point, we have to go out into the world and realize that it's up to us.

SPEAKER_02 43:12

And it's up to us to figure out how to access it if it was difficulty accessing it as a child. Right.

SPEAKER_03 43:19

We have to go back. Back to the kind of, you know, re-weaving our story. Yes. We might not have had much say in how our story was written to begin with, but we can go back and change how that looks and write it differently from there on out.

SPEAKER_02 43:36

So as we're closing today, like we said, we want to leave you all with something to reflect on, whether that's through your own creativity or journaling or even just taking a minute while you're driving. Usually when I'm like, okay, I can access silence right now, the only time when I'm in my car by myself. I'm thinking about just like sitting with yourself and identifying what some of your strengths are. Because I don't think we are encouraged to do that often. And I always notice in my first sessions with clients when I say, like, what are some of your strengths? People are taken aback by that. And they have to pause and think about it. But I think that it's just an important thing to identify within ourselves. Like, what are some of our strengths?

SPEAKER_03 44:25

What about you? I love that. I think that's incredibly valuable. And I think it's something we don't often think enough about. One of the stories that came to mind, I believe it's Celtic or Norse, but is the image of a rocky shore where an individual is looking for gold or hidden treasure in the stones. And that serving as a metaphor for seeking wisdom or soul gifts that are already part of the land or already part of oneself. The image is just, you know, they're looking on the rocky shores and they don't realize that the gold is within the rocks. They either haven't dug deep enough yet or they haven't realized that it's already there. So as part of the reflection, I would just be curious about, again, related to strengths, where your gold lies within yourself.

SPEAKER_02 45:14

I love that. Okay. And then just kind of in conclusion, just remembering with the magician, like the big takeaway here is really just connecting, and maybe I should say disconnecting from the external and recognizing what is already within ourselves. Beautiful. Okay. Thanks so much for listening to our second episode on the major arcana. And there will be more episodes soon to come. You can follow us on Instagram, you can follow us on TikTok at Heart on the Table Pod. Okay, thanks for listening. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us in today's conversation. We hope this space offered you a spark of meaning, a reminder of your own strength, or simply the comfort of knowing you're not alone in the messy middle of becoming. If you enjoyed this episode, we'd love for you to share it with a friend, subscribe, or leave us a review. It helps this little community grow. You can also find us on Instagram and TikTok at Hard on the TablePod, where we share more reflections, tarot polls, and behind-the-scenes glimpses of the podcast. Until next time, may you keep noticing the magic woven into your everyday life. Please remember, while we are both licensed clinicians, this podcast is not therapy and does not create a therapeutic relationship. The conversation's here for educational and reflective purposes only. If you are seeking mental health support, we encourage you to connect with the licensed provider in your area. Thanks for listening.