Everything You Need to Know About Reiki
If you’re reading this blog post, you’ve probably heard of Reiki. Maybe you’ve received a Reiki session, or love Reiki and are thinking about starting a Reiki certification.I’m a Reiki Master, and I often find that even people who have received Reiki before don’t really know much about it. In this blog post, I’ll be explaining what Reiki is, the history of Reiki, the benefits of Reiki, what you might experience with Reiki, and how to weave Reiki into your ritual and spellwork practice.
If you’re reading this blog post, you’ve probably heard of Reiki. Maybe you’ve received a Reiki session, or love Reiki and are thinking about starting a Reiki certification.
I’m a Reiki Master, and I often find that even people who have received Reiki before don’t really know much about it. In this blog post, I’ll be explaining what Reiki is, the history of Reiki, the benefits of Reiki, what you might experience with Reiki, and how to weave Reiki into your ritual and spellwork practice.
WHAT IS ENERGY?
I’d like to start with energy. Reiki is energy healing and energy is a huge buzzword these days — but what is energy?
Everything is energy. This is something science has proven time and time again. Your table, your body, an orange, a tree, sound — our senses don’t detect the energetic movements of things like oranges and tables because they vibrate slowly and at a low frequency, but they’re still made up of energy.
We are all made up of energy. There is only one tiny basic unit that connects everything and makes up all of us.
WHAT IS REIKI?
Now that you know what energy is, what is Reiki? Reiki is a specific kind of energy work. It’s an energy healing modality that was channeled by Dr. Mikao Usui in Japan, which I’ll get into more detail about below.
The word Reiki itself means “Universal Energy.” It’s Universal Energy, spiritual energy, the energy of oneness, that can be channeled from one human being to another to facilitate healing.
Reiki has its own intelligence. You don’t have to be special to give Reiki, which is one of the things I love about it. We all have this energy within us--it simply gets awakened through a process called a Reiki attunement.
Learn more about different types of energy work here.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF REIKI
As I mentioned above, Reiki was channeled by Dr. Mikao Usui. He was born in 1865 in a little village in the mountains of southern Japan into a well-off Buddhist family and was always interested in healing. Later in life, he became a Buddhist monk and lived in a monastery but was still looking for something.
Dr. Usui wanted to find a method of healing that was unattached to any specific religion, accessible to everyone.
So he isolated himself on Mount Kurama fasting, meditating, and praying. After 21 days, he felt an awakening. A vision of light, a feeling of complete peace and oneness, and he saw the ancient symbols that helped him create the Usui Reiki system of healing.
He quickly came down from the mountain and moved back to Tokyo where he established a healing Reiki clinic and school there (around 1922). He wanted to help as many people as possible, so he taught several Reiki Masters, making sure Reiki wouldn’t be forgotten.
Those Reiki Masters trained some other Reiki masters, who further refined the attunement process and the hand positions used. In 1935 one of those Reiki Masters, Dr. Chujiro Hayashi, trained a Japanese American woman who originally came to him for healing, Hawayo Takata.
Hawayo Takata is the person who brought Reiki to the US. She returned home and spread the system of healing to others here, attuning 22 Reiki masters before she died.
BENEFITS OF REIKI
Now that you know a bit about what Reiki is and where it comes from, what are the benefits of Reiki?
I have found over and over again that Reiki will give each individual whatever it is they need. Here is a non-exhaustive list of some of the benefits of Reiki from my experience and from my teachers:
Relief of physical pain and discomfort
Release of limiting belief systems
Release of blocked energy and blocked emotions
Reconnection to your highest self
Reach a calmer, meditative state
Become more present and enjoy your life more
Open to your own self-healing power
Feel lighter and more in balance
Relax and reduce stress
Calm the ego
Connect you to who you really are
Align with your higher calling and purpose
Enhance your connection to spirit
Open your intuitive channel
And more!
WHAT CAN YOU EXPECT IN A REIKI SESSION?
You’ll typically receive a Reiki session laying down on a massage table, and you’ll always be fully clothed. Your practitioner will use a combination of hands-on gentle touch and hands-off (hovering).
Each individual’s experience of Reiki is unique, and there’s definitely no right or wrong way to experience Reiki. You might see color, words, and/or images. You might get intuitive hits, inspiration, and creative ideas. You might have an emotional release like crying afterwards, or the next day. Or maybe you just feel super relaxed. Maybe you fall asleep.
Personally, I often see color and get creative ideas and intuitive hits. I occasionally see images. I typically reach a calmer, more present, meditative state and deeply feel my connection with Source.
HOW TO WEAVE REIKI INTO YOUR RITUAL AND SPELLWORK PRACTICE
Attuned to Reiki? I love weaving Reiki into my ritual and spellwork practice, and you can do it, too! Here are some of my favorite ways to weave Reiki into my witchcraft:
Using Reiki to clear and/or charge my magical tools
Using Reiki in spellwork to charge my spell bag, candle, etc. with my intention
Using Reiki to open my channel to receive messages from my guides and ancestors
There are so many different ways to work with Reiki once you’re attuned. Get creative and follow your intuition!
EXPLORE REIKI FURTHER
Want to learn more about Reiki? Two of my favorite books are The Art of Psychic Reiki by Lisa Campion and This Is Reiki by Frank Arjava Petter.
If you’ve received Reiki before and are thinking about learning Reiki for yourself, check out this article to help you choose a Reiki 1 training that’s a fit for you.
The Four Types of Indigos & How to Thrive as One
An Indigo person is anyone who has the color indigo as the primary color in their auric field. I shared more about the birth of this term and who Indigos are in a previous post. As I shared in the previous post, according to Nancy Tappe, most of us are Indigos now.
An Indigo person is anyone who has the color indigo as the primary color in their auric field. I shared more about the birth of this term and who Indigos are in a previous post. Click here if you missed it and want to learn more about who Indigos are before reading on!
As I shared in the previous post, according to Nancy Tappe, most of us are Indigos now. A more important question to ask is, what kind of Indigo are you? Throughout Nancy’s work with Indigos, she identified four types: humanist, artist, conceptualist, and catalyst. Each Indigo helps progress and connect humanity differently.
Read on to learn more about the different types of Indigos and determine what type of Indigo you are. You may identify strictly with one kind of Indigo personality or a combination of two. I’ve also shared gemstones and activities that will help support each type of Indigo.
Humanist
Humanist Indigos are the social butterflies of the new world. Think Instagrammer’s and YouTubers with huge followings, political mavens, and teachers. Humanists are extremely social beings who feel driven to connect with others. They’re always thinking of new ways to communicate with people, primarily through technology.
Humanist Key Points
Social
Verbal
Relatable
Humanist Purpose
Connect humanity on a larger scale through the use of technology.
Humanist Support
Humanists are often pegged as overactive, due to their social nature. The humanist Indigo will benefit from grounding exercises and stones. If you identify as a humanist and feel off-balance, spend time in nature, meditate on your root chakra, and try carrying grounding stones like hematite, obsidian, and jasper. If you’d like to amplify your humanist traits, focus on your throat chakra, and work with stones like lapis lazuli and sodalite.
Featured card deck: The Ritual Deck
Artist
Indigo artists are, not surprisingly, the artistic powerhouses of the new world. Young people that are seemingly born with the innate ability to sing, dance, and create are the Indigo artists of today. These Inidigos are extremely sensitive and emotional. Unlike previous generations, when emotions were meant to be stuffed and kept quiet, the Indigo artist has no problem expressing their feelings.
Artist Key Points
Expressive
Emotional
Artist Purpose
Create a more expressive and sensitive human race.
Artist Support
Empathic artists Indigos will benefit from learning techniques to protect their energy when they need a break from feeling everything. Working with stones like soothing and protective amethyst or energy shielding labradorite will prove helpful for Indigo artists. If you’d like to amplify your Indigo artist traits meditate on your sacral and throat chakra or work with stones like carnelian and opal.
Conceptualist
Conceptualist Indigos are the systems-oriented engineers and inventors of the new world. These Indigos are introverts and happier behind the scenes observing rather than mingling with their Indigo brothers and sisters. They are the ones inventing new technology and systems enabling humans to connect and communicate on a larger scale.
Conceptualist Key Points
Introverted
Focused
Problem solvers
Conceptualist Purpose
Create better tools and infrastructure to help connect humanity.
Conceptualist Support
Quiet conceptualists can find balance through spending time with people they love and trust. Find likeminded people that you feel comfortable spending time with to get you out of your head from time to time. Working with airy stones like citrine, calcite varieties, or yellow jasper will bring some levity to your world. To hone your problem-solving abilities focus on your solar plexus and sacral chakra.
Featured card deck: The Ritual Deck
Catalyst
Nancy Tappe identified the catalyst group as the smallest group of Indigos. It’s also the group that is least likely to know that they’re Indigos, partly because they’re so detached. Catalyst Indigos are catalysts because they push and force us into new ways of thinking, often without even intending to. These Indigos have a strong sense that they don’t fit in here and can have a difficult time relating to others. Catalysts are often given labels, but it’s their seemingly odd tendencies giving them labels that are forcing us to start doing things differently.
Catalyst Key Points
Detached
Demanding
Feels like they don’t fit in
Catalyst Purpose
Challenge the human race in new ways to inspire change.
Catalyst Support
Similar to conceptualists, catalysts will benefit from spending time with people they love and trust. Because socializing can feel so difficult for the catalyst, they must find people that they genuinely feel comfortable with, even if it’s on rare occasions. Because catalysts are often viewed as offbeat, they will benefit from protective stones like hematite and black tourmaline. Meditating on the throat chakra and working with stones like sodalite and lapis lazuli will help give catalysts a voice when they do need to speak up.
Featured card deck: The Ritual Deck
Featured card deck: The Ritual DeckYou may find different Indigo labels, but these four are based on Nancy Tappe's work. I think they’re a great starting place to understand the Indigo phenomenon better. Crystal children and starseeds are a topic for another day! I believe it’s valuable to start with understanding the purpose and types of the Indigos before diving into these new labels. If you identify as a crystal child, your parents are likely Indigos, and you probably have a lot of Indigo in your aura too.
Rituals to Help You Thrive During Mercury Retrograde
Every Mercury retrograde, it feels like the whole internet goes crazy (including Instagram crashing, the technology breakdowns with Mercury retrograde are real!) for a while with memes blaming a whole slew of problems on Mercury retrograde.But the fact is, Mercury goes retrograde a few times a year every year, and it can be an incredibly potent time for your growth and transformation if you treat it as such. I really believe that all cosmic events happen for us, not to us, and we can let them have power over us or we can view them as empowering invitations to help us on our journeys in specific ways.In this blog, I’ll be sharing some rituals for Mercury retrograde to help you tap into the magic of this time. But first, what is Mercury retrograde?
5 Steps to Access the Akashic Field
Accessing the Akashic field, often referred to as “Akashic records,” can come off as an elite and secretive practice. Maybe you’ve read or heard that you need a specific prayer or guide to access the information held within the Akashic field. Prayer and guides may indeed help, but they’re simply not necessary. Again, I’m not knocking these tools, but I don’t want you to cut yourself off from a spiritual experience because you’ve been told you need something special to access this field of energy.
Accessing the Akashic field, often referred to as “Akashic records,” can come off as an elite and secretive practice. Maybe you’ve read or heard that you need a specific prayer or guide to access the information held within the Akashic field. Prayer and guides may indeed help, but they’re simply not necessary. Again, I’m not knocking these tools, but I don’t want you to cut yourself off from a spiritual experience because you’ve been told you need something special to access this field of energy.If you’re unfamiliar with the term “Akashic field,” it’s the same thing as the Akashic records.
If you’re unfamiliar with both terms or want to learn more about why some prefer the term “field” click here to read a previous post.
Here are my five suggestions for accessing the Akashic field.
Access the Akashic field in 5 steps
These steps are intended to be an ongoing practice. You can practice them all before sitting down to access the Akashic field or do them separately spread out over days. Each step will help you gain access to the Akashic field regardless of when they’re performed.
Raise your vibrational frequency
You’ve probably seen this term used in memes and on t-shirts more than anything else but it’s an important step when trying to access anything in the spirit realm. A slow vibration is closely linked to the physical realm, whereas a higher vibration is linked to spirit. Raising your vibration means you’re operating from a place of love and gratitude which is going to make this work come more naturally. Learn more about raising your vibrational frequency in this guest post from Reiki master, Deborah Arconti.
There are a variety of ways to raise your vibration including meditation, pranayama, some forms of yoga, prayer, mantra work, and creative activities. Keep reading, step two is a powerful tool for raising your vibrational frequency too.
Focus on your crown and soul star chakras
Your soul star chakra, located above the crown chakra, is the gateway to the Akashic field and where many believe your “records” are stored. Your crown chakra, a ball of energy located at the top of your head, must be healthy to access your soul star chakra. Focusing on your crown and soul star chakra are also powerful tools for raising your vibrational frequency. Win, win! Learn more about the crown chakra here and the soul star chakra here. These articles share tips to help you energize both of these chakras. If you feel that your crown chakra is strong and healthy skip ahead to the post about the soul star chakra.
Ask
An overlooked tool in any new practice is to ask for what you want. If you’ve practiced a soul star chakra meditation and are feeling in tune with spirit, the next step is to ask clearly what you’d like to experience from the Akashic field. Here are some suggestions.
What lessons am I here to learn?
Who was I in my most recent past life?
What lessons did I learn from my most recent past life?
What are some traumas I experienced in past lives? (Please, be cautious when asking to experience past life traumas. I recommend experiencing past life traumas with a professional in past life regressions. However, if you feel that this is something you are prepared to handle or need to process, it can be a powerful healing too.)
How can I live this life to my highest potential?
Where are some places I’ve lived in past lives?
What people in my life have I interacted within past lives?
Is __________ the best choice for me in this life?
Trust
You raised your frequency with a meditation, asked to experience a past life, felt a sensation that you were near an ocean, but it didn’t seem like a strong enough sensation so you completely wrote it off. Sound familiar?
In the beginning, it can be easy to question or completely negate your spiritual experiences. Doing deep spiritual work like this is not something that’s often brought up at dinner while growing up. Your natural instinct might be to dismiss your sensations! Maybe you’ve lived two or three decades of being told that the spirit realm doesn’t exist, or that it’s bad to try to access it. If this isn’t your story, that’s great! Trusting your experiences may come naturally to you. Otherwise, be nice to yourself and if you get a sensation, even a faint one, trust it 100%.
Practice
If you don’t feel like much happened the first time you tried accessing the Akashic field, keep at it. The more time you spend raising your vibration and getting comfortable with the sensations you receive from doing this kind of work (which will be experienced differently by everyone) the easier it will be and the more information you’ll receive.
Just like there’s more than one way to meditate, there’s more than one way to access the Akashic field. I encourage you to try these five steps, but if they don’t work for you it doesn’t mean you’re unable to access the Akashic field, you might need to try a different approach and that’s OK.
Using the Cardinal Directions in Ritual
The cardinal directions, North, South, East, and West, can help you with more than navigation. Each direction holds a meaning of its own and corresponds to one of the four elements. There are both simple and complex ways of using the cardinal directions in ritual.A variety of cultures honor the cardinal directions. This article is looking at them from a Pagan and Wiccan perspective. The four directions are often used by Native Americans on the medicine wheel. Neither way is wrong or right, just different, and for different purposes.Read on for meanings and three ways to start using the cardinal directions in your magickal practices.
The cardinal directions, North, South, East, and West, can help you with more than navigation. Each direction holds a meaning of its own and corresponds to one of the four elements. There are both simple and complex ways of using the cardinal directions in ritual.
A variety of cultures honor the cardinal directions. This article is looking at them from a Pagan and Wiccan perspective. The four directions are often used by Native Americans on the medicine wheel. Neither way is wrong or right, just different, and for different purposes.
Read on for meanings and three ways to start using the cardinal directions in your magickal practices.
Connection to the Four Elements
Each direction corresponds to one of the four elements; understanding these connections can help you better understand the energy of each direction.
North corresponds to Earth
East corresponds to Air
South corresponds to Fire
West corresponds to Water
A quick note about these correspondences. The elemental correspondences can vary depending on your location, cultural background, or intuition. Catherine Beyer explains this in her article The Five Element Symbols of Fire, Water, Air, Earth, and Spirit.
The Golden Dawn originated in England, and the directional/elemental correspondences reflect a European perspective. To the south are the warmer climates, and thus is associated with fire. The Atlantic Ocean lies to the west. The north is cold and formidable, a land of the earth but sometimes not a lot else.
If these correspondences don’t feel right to you, that’s ok! For example, if you live in the Southern Hemisphere, you may find that the correspondences feel off. You can reassign the elements in a way that feels natural to you or is in better alignment with your cultural background.
Direction meanings
Here’s a more in-depth look at some meanings and correspondences of each direction.
North
Physical body
Health
Chakra: Root
Element: Earth
Color: Green
South
Hardships
Challenges
Willpower
Chakra: Solar Plexus
Element: Fire
Color: Red
Three ways to use the cardinal directions in ritual
1. Add a layer of meaning to your ritual
The easiest way to start implementing the cardinal directions into your magickal practice is by facing the direction that makes the most sense for what you’re doing. This idea can be applied to oracle and tarot card readings, candle magick, ritual, spellwork, meditation, or working with the moon.
Here are a few examples:
Face North if you’re doing a meditation focused on your health.
Face East if you’re performing a card reading for the new moon because the new moon represents new beginnings.
Face South if you’re asking your guides about how to overcome a problem.
Face West if you’re doing a ritual to help you let go of something.
2. Calling the quarters for protection
The next time you’re practicing a ritual or psychic work start by calling on the four directions, this is also referred to as “calling the quarters.” Calling the quarters will bring you protection and the energy of all of the elements during your practice. It’s also said to create a sacred space that is connected to the spirit realm.
There’s more than one way to call the quarters. A quick google search will offer you a variety of options, but here’s one way:
Imagine each direction as a wind that you’re invoking into your space. You can even imagine a specific Goddess or God for each direction. As you call in each direction, stand facing the direction you’re calling in and ask it to join you for your ritual practice. Many like to start by calling in the North winds first because it will keep your ritual grounded. Rotate in a circle, going through each direction, asking it to join you. When you’re done performing your ritual work, release the winds, and thank them for their assistance and protection.
3. Altar placement
Whether you’re creating a new altar or updating your current altar, the direction it’s facing will have an effect on it. Try to place your altar in a direction that matches the season of life you’re in or want to be in.
Has your altar or sacred space been in the same location for a long time? It might be a time to rearrange and face your altar in a direction that’s in better alignment with your life. Check the meanings for the directions above and note which one feels like where you’re at or want to be right now.
What Are Tarot Birth Cards + How To Find Yours
Tarot birth cards, also called soul cards, are cards based on the numerology of your birthday that can give you more information about who you are.Birth cards can give you more information about your identity, your inner world, and your journey in this lifetime including your potential, key themes, strengths, and struggles.Keep reading to learn how to calculate your cards and discover their meanings!
Tarot birth cards, also called soul cards, are cards based on the numerology of your birthday that can give you more information about who you are.
Birth cards can give you more information about your identity, your inner world, and your journey in this lifetime including your potential, key themes, strengths, and struggles.
Keep reading to learn how to calculate your cards and discover their meanings!
HOW TO CALCULATE YOUR BIRTH CARD(S)
As with most things in tarot, there is no hard and fast rule on calculating birth cards. There are a couple of methods, and here I’m going to share the method that I use personally and have found the most powerful!
1. Write out your birthday numerically. For example, if your birthday is October 19th, 1994, the digits you’ll be working with are 10-19-1994.
2. Add up each individual number in your birthday. Keeping with the example above, that means I’m adding 1 + 0 + 1 + 9 + 1 + 9 + 9 + 4 to get 34.
3. Add up any remaining digits if they are greater than 22. Since I got 34 in the step above, that means I’ll now add 3 + 4 to get 7. So the number of your birth card is 7!
If you received a number greater than 22 in step 2, like in this example, then that’s it! But if you received a number equal to 22 or less, then you’ll actually have two birth cards.
Say the number you received in step 2 was 18. The number of your first birth card will be 18, and the number of your second birth card will be 1 + 8 = 9. So you have 2 numbers to work with!
Mary K. Greer is a prominent tarot teacher who has a specific method with birth cards. In her practice, the number 18 will identify your personality card, what you are here in this lifetime to learn. The number 9 will identify your soul card, which shows your purpose across multiple lifetimes.
4. Look up the major arcana tarot card that corresponds to your number(s). I’ve made it easy for you! Keep scrolling to learn what card is associated with each number and what it means.
WHAT YOUR BIRTH CARD MEANS
1: THE MAGICIAN
The Magician, the first card of the major arcana, is a path of manifestation. You may have a lot of ideas, and you’re learning in this lifetime how to channel them, pull them down, and make them manifest in this physical reality.
2: THE HIGH PRIESTESS
In this lifetime, you are learning to embody your lunar nature. You may have a naturally strong intuition and psychic abilities, or this may be something you work to cultivate throughout your life. Working on your psychic development as well as connecting to and honoring your intuition is important for your life path.
3: THE EMPRESS
The Empress as a birth card is an invitation to connect with your creative energy and your Venusian nature. This card is about magnetizing and attracting to you, rather than pushing or forcing. It invites you to nurture yourself and to learn how to receive in this lifetime.It can also indicate a need to explore your relationship with your mother or heal something in your matrilineal line.
4: THE EMPEROR
The Emperor is an invitation to take up space. Throughout your life, you will need to work with the theme of owning your right to take up space, to expand, to be an authority, and to build what you desire without apology.
5: THE HIEROPHANT
The Hierophant teaches us how to be a channel for the wisdom of the Universe, of our guides, of the angels and other cosmic beings. In the Hierophant, we learn to channel truth and to share it with others without overly attaching to outcomes, getting stuck in our ego, or recreating harmful systems of power and authority. Throughout your life, this is a lesson you are learning and an energy you are stepping into.
6: THE LOVERS
With the Lovers as your birth card, you will be learning how to honor and unite duality within you. Throughout your life, you learn how to accept and love all the different, sometimes conflicting, parts of yourself. Evolving through your relationship with others is another big theme of this card, inviting you to allow your relationships (platonic, romantic, business, family, etc.) to trigger you, open you, and evolve you for deeper healing.
7: THE CHARIOT
The Chariot brings an energy of fierce will and determination. But it’s also the number 7 and is ruled by Cancer, adding a more watery flavor and indicating a deeply spiritual path. With the Chariot as your birth card, you’re learning to explore sacred action, action as a spiritual practice, and to trust in the power of your will to bring you where you want to be.
There’s this idea of success and victory with this card as well, indicating that you’ll need to continually redefine over your life what success means to you and what you’re actually moving towards. Is it based on your ego? Or is it truly based on your soul’s mission and purpose?
8: STRENGTH
Strength as your birth card means that you are learning about your relationship to your own power in this lifetime. Strength invites us into a deep knowing of our own power, but it’s a soft, subtle power - not one that dominates, that harms, or is in your face.
It’s a more lunar sense of power, a deep trust in your power that allows you to surrender, to open, to be vulnerable, and to trust yourself and the universe. Stepping into this energy and this sense of power is an important theme on your life’s path.
9: THE HERMIT
The Hermit teaches us how to integrate our own knowing. The Hermit isn’t looking for teachers or knowledge outside of themselves, they know they have a path where deep internal seeking is required.
This isn’t about having a lonely life, it’s about knowing that your evolution comes when you allow yourself the time alone to go inside of yourself, to close off from the external, to integrate and process whatever has come up for you.
10: THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE
The Wheel of Fortune as a birth card indicates that in this lifetime, you are learning the balance between action and surrender. You’re learning to trust the balance of fate and free will, of control and trust. Major changes may tend to be a pattern for you, but know that they’re always in your highest and best good.
11: JUSTICE
Justice as a birth card is all about truth. You are learning to believe not what you wish was true but what is actually true - a difficult and powerful lesson. Justice holds a sword to cut away that which is not true - inviting us to look at the truth of who we are, the truth of who others are, and the truth of injustice in our personal lives and in the greater systems that overlay it all.
In the more literal sense, your life might be involved with law, contracts, and partnerships in some way.
12: THE HANGED ONE
The Hanged One is an invitation to step into a new perspective and to get comfortable with discomfort. You are learning how to surrender to what is, to be in the liminal space between where you’ve been and where you desire to be, and to sit with uncomfortable situations, emotions, and thoughts without judgement.
13: DEATH
Death, ruled by Scorpio, is a path of transformation. Your life is about death and rebirth, about shedding the snakeskin of the ego, continuously evolving into the most soul-centered version of you.
14: TEMPERANCE
Temperance is a path of alchemy and magic. Temperance teaches us how to alchemize our pain, our trauma, our shadow into our greatest gifts, into our purpose, into our unique magic. This is what you are learning in this lifetime with Temperance as your birth card.
15: THE DEVIL
The Devil teaches us how to see, claim, and love all the darkness within us. When we see, claim, and love all of our shame, our fear, and our shadow, it becomes a source of our power. With the Devil as your birth card, your invitation is to get deeply acquainted with your shadow rather than letting it run as unconscious programming, controlling your life.
16: THE TOWER
The Tower is a path of cleansing and burning down old structures- internally and externally. The burning down of internal structures can look like: deprogramming unhealthy ways of talking to the self, releasing old emotional patterns like codependence or manipulation, or finally releasing self-hatred and loving yourself. The burning down of external structures can look like moving homes or cities, fighting for restorative justice, ending unhealthy relationships, changing jobs, etc.This is an energy you are moving through throughout your life.
17: THE STAR
The Star, ruled by Aquarius, is a healing path. The Star is an invitation for deep personal healing of core wounds and traumas (from this lifetime and past lifetimes) that has a ripple effect into the collective, into your ancestral line, into your descendants.
With the Aquarius ruling of the card, your path could also involve humanitarian work and efforts, helping facilitate healing for humanity.
18: THE MOON
The Moon is a path of re-wilding. With this birth card, you are learning to tap into and connect to your wild, primal nature - who you were before the world told you who and how to be. Connecting with your wildness is a sacred path of connecting with yourself, your needs, and your desires - and being brave enough to claim and step into them.
19: THE SUN
The Sun is a path of being seen. With this card as your birth card, throughout your life you are learning how to allow yourself to be seen - not as you have been, or think you should be, or wish you were - but how you actually are in each and every moment.
Bringing all the parts of you - even the parts of yourself you don’t love yet - into the light to be honored and witnessed is how you release shame and step into your fullest potential.
20: JUDGEMENT
Judgement, ruled by Pluto, is a path of breakthroughs around judgement and criticism. You are learning that every judgement we have for someone else is just a mirror of what we don’t love within us. With this card, you’re learning to release judgement and criticism towards yourself first and foremost, and all beings everywhere.
21: THE WORLD
The World is a path of endless potential, of closing karmic loops. With the World as your birth card, there is the potential to end painful cycles that may have gone on through generations in your ancestry or through many past lives by doing your own healing work.
22: THE FOOL
Technically, the Fool card is actually 0. But in this practice, you can use the number 22 to identify the Fool card. With the Fool as your birth card, you are learning to release the ego mindset of “I know” or “I should” and step into a curious mindset or “what if?” Or “I could.”The Fool is the embodiment of a seeker, willing to take leaps into the unknown, trusting that they are fully guided and supported.
The meaning of your birth card will likely evolve over your lifetime. At certain points in your journey, you may relate to the card in different ways or feel into a different aspect of it. That’s great! Like life, each tarot card is complex and multifaceted.
You can start to get to know your birth card on a deeper level by meditating on it, journaling with it, putting it on your altar, and working with embodying it.
Interested in learning more about birth cards? I recommend getting Mary K. Greer’s famous workbook Tarot For Yourself and diving in!