• The High Priestess is a lesson on waiting audaciously

    Written by

    moth sinclair

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    It’s interesting to me that the High Priestess follows immediately behind the Magician. The Magician is very high energy. You’re incredibly focused and hyped about your goals that you make magic happen from seemingly thin air.

    Only for you to grow up and become the High Priestess immediately after…

    The High Priestess in the traditional RWS is a card of waiting, introspection, and meditation. The energy that the Magician created is now turning into something hidden from view.

    This is important because it relies on the RWS image of the Magician to make sense. The Magician is calling energy from the Heavens and directing it to a point on the ground. What goes up must come down (at my command).

    The Magic that hits the ground then takes root to blossom into the desire the Magician had in mind. Which implies that something is growing, underground—out of sight. The High Priestess understands this and is seen waiting on the dream to manifest. Confidently. Alone.

    There’s power that builds when you choose to be invisible for a season. You can let your confidence build. Pull together a vision. Figure out what your next move is. All without interference—because you know you’re right about this.

    You’re just waiting on the vision to manifest and prove you’re right.

    “The people who are bold enough to believe more in their ideas and to put them out there without being asked to, are the ones who tend to succeed.” — Erifili Gounari

    I can’t count the number of times I’ve gone into a project really excited to pull it together. Only for the work to not produce immediate results which causes me to get nervous and bail. I start to question myself and I’ll search on Reddit to see if anyone made the same decision I did and what happened when they did.

    But the reality is, more often than not you get what you called forth. You may just have to wait on it. You may just have to watch as the desire you have transforms little by little until it becomes something worth giving birth to (HT: the Empress). You may just have to close yourself off from the world in order to prevent others from introducing doubt.

    How long are you willing to wait for your desires to manifest. Or, are you going to let your lack of confidence sabotage things too soon?

    “In a year when almost anything can be generated on demand — an image, a track, a thousand words in any style you can name — the one input that cannot be synthesised is judgment: the taste that decides what is worth making, and what to cut.” — Oana Leonte

    Knowing when to quit and when to hold is such a skill.

    The High Priestess is the exemplar of that skill. If you sit still and listen long enough you’ll know if this time is thee time. But, you have to be sure of yourself, a radically honest with yourself, in order to master the skill.

    And sometimes in order to make sure you’re radically honest with yourself, you gotta close yourself off from the world to hear yourself think. Because sometimes entertaining everyone else’s opinions of what you’re doing ain’t worth derailing the vision.

    References

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  • The Magician is the Opening Act not the Headliner

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    moth sinclair

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    I love a fresh start—a rebrand, if you will. And the Magician is peak rebrand. That high energy you feel when you start a new project and things start working out. The pomp. The circumstance.

    It’s so fun.

    You can get easily addicted to the Start.

    Starting fresh feels better than the drudgery of the Messy Middle. You have all the hype but none of the drama that taints the imaginary You that accomplished the thing.

    So, if you’re like me, when things get messy, you “learn” from your mistake and start fresh again. This time is new and improved though. But, if you keep starting over, you never really get anywhere. You’re just creating a First Draft of your goal over and over with a different coat of paint.

    I realized this when watching a video about Milo Winter, the author of Age of Scorpius. I don’t know how I ended up in this rabbit hole but I’m fascinated by the whole thing. Largely because I’ve been there—not at Milo’s scale of course.

    I feel like it’s a rite of passage to put a big project out in the wild, hype it up, and then fail spectacularly.

    Thankfully, unlike Milo, I didn’t go through this when TikTok existed, much less Music.ly. But, watching Milo repeat the same mistake I, and countless adults have made, brought home a few lessons that I really needed to learn.

    The Magician is adept at starting but not at completing the Work.

    At number 1 in the Tarot, the Magician only has experience beginning. They have Zero idea what the finished product looks like nor any idea of the actual work required to complete it.

    The Magician’s greatest Strength is in believing in the idea before it even has form. You’ll get just enough delusional energy to get going even when the odds aren’t in your favor.

    The reason why believing in the value and beauty of your own ideas isn’t second nature is because that belief often has to be a little bit delusional. It has to come before you’ve got external evidence and feedback proving to you that it’s good. – Erifili Gounari

    Of course there’s a catch though.

    If you only rely on Magician energy to move your project forward, you never actually get to the good parts. You never actually make the masterpiece—only the rough sketch. That’s because the Magician’s energy needs guidance—guidance that often comes from spending excessive time on a project, or gleaned from those with more experience.

    For so long in my life I kept starting over, thinking that I had figured out what went “wrong” the last time and that I could correct it this time. But watching Milo Winter do exactly that, and clearly fumbling, really taught me that you need to actually edit the draft and put that edited work out there in order to keep the momentum going.

    Mastery isn’t in the 10,000 hours you spent writing first drafts. It’s in the 10,000 hours you spend afterward editing, reworking, and tweaking based on feedback. It’s the targeted practice that only comes when outside folks judge your work and tell you what isn’t working. It’s the 10,000 no’s before the 1 yes. It’s the days, weeks, and months of revision before publication.

    You can’t keep starting over.

    Eventually you have to allow your brain the ability to progress past level 1 so you can get to the endgame sooner rather than later. Commit to your decisions, lock in, and then tweak things as you get more information. The more you do that, the more your life will become the one you’ve always wanted.

    People who seem always to get what they want in life are often people who simply know what they want and can direct their energy. – Rachel Pollack

    References

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  • From hero to Zero: The Fool in the Tarot

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    moth sinclair

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    Zero in most Tarot decks, the Fool is considered the main actor in the play of the Major Arcana. The Fool represents that moment where you wake up and realize you can no longer play out the script for your life as-is. The moment when you’ve finally had enough of the status quo and you bet on yourself to change your life.

    This implies that you already went through the moments of introspection—the drama—that pushed you to the point of not just wanting to start over but taking a risk to do so.

    It’s giving Oedipus Rex, in that you ignored all the signs that things were one way until the moment when the truth was undeniable and you had to do something about it.

    The Fool in the Rider-Waite-Smith is clearly privileged enough to have some nice clothes, a wand, a bit of power (it is said that the bag attached to their wand contains each of the suits), and the good health (or Strength) to carry it all gracefully.

    They aren’t starting from zero, from nothing, actually—they have assumed the identity of the Zero. And, I think that distinction is so important. The choice to start over—to abandon everything—requires privilege not available to everyone.

    Our cultural survivorship bias romanticizes people who risk the last few dollars in their bank account to make it big. The start from the bottom and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. A big feat for sure, but not actually a normal one.

    In reality, the Fool is making a calculated choice. A bet that their existing skill set, life experience, and the few resources they have at their disposal will result in a better life—whatever better means.

    There’s potential in being emptied out by life—in hard resetting everything to go on a journey of discovery.

    References

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