Why Should We Embrace Enchantment?

Megan Hamilton  0:00  
Megan.

I'm Megan Hamilton, and this is the embracing enchantment podcast. Welcome. I'm so glad you're here. I'm so glad I'm here. I'm so glad this is happening. I've been wanting to start a podcast like this for at least since the beginning of 2024 so a little bit about me. I'm very curious about alternative forms of spirituality. I'm a tarot reader, a professional tarot reader. I think my first introduction to all of this stuff was when I was around 18 in high school. I went to a psychic fair with my friend Veronica, and the thing I remember the most was this overwhelming feeling, and all I could think of to describe it is sort of just like tapping into a bunch of different frequencies. And I mean that in a very sort of non literal way, really, what I felt was overwhelmed. It felt a lot like anxiety, but a little bit different. And Veronica and I used to, you know, play psychic games with each other. Uh, and then around that time as well, I had started to use my playing cards to do what we now might call cardimancy. And so I would ask the cards a question, and I would say, even numbers are yes, odd numbers are no. And I would ask a question and then pull a card and see what came up. What I didn't know at the time was that our Modern playing cards are built on the structure of tarot. And so for my 23rd birthday, my best friend Jennifer gave me a tarot deck. And if you're this is your first time listening to this podcast, you should know that if you're curious about stuff that I'm talking about there, you can go to the YouTube channel and watch it on video. It is a version of the rider, Waite Smith tarot deck. That's the one we probably most associate with Tarot. It's the one I use for my professional readings. And I started playing around with it, I would find and maybe you notice this too, if you play around with Tarot or Oracle, whether you are, you know, curious about it, or you sort of use it on the regular. Maybe you'll relate to I would pull it out when I was feeling, usually sad, or if I was in the middle of a breakup or like I wanted to know something about whether or not somebody liked me. That's what I was used Tarot for. And in fact, a lot of tarot readers will tell you that that is, you know, people come to you for money questions, career questions, love questions. Those are the big ones that come up on the regular. And so that was something I used on and off for many, many years. And then I would say, about seven or eight years ago, a few things came to be I realized that I was probably somewhere around the midpoint of my life. I'm 50 now. I just turned 50 on the solar eclipse, and we're in the path of totality where I live. So it was sort of a hilariously big deal as somebody who also is really interested in things like astrology, the sun and the moon. But I realized, okay, if this is the halfway point or thereabouts, I'm actually going to have to take some action on things that I would like to achieve in my life, right? I've always wanted to write a book. Well, that book's not going to get written unless I start it and I'm like, halfway through. And most of us have this, once you get to a certain point in your life, you think, Okay, well, like, if this is going to happen, I'm going to have to take action. So I'd always been really interested in the moon in general, and moon cycles, and I started to read a little bit more about it, and I read that when the moon is new, it's a great time to manifest, to think about what you'd like to invite in your life. And when the moon is full, it's a great time to release, to let go. What are you ready to to to give up? What's you know, this is a common phrase that people use. You probably hear it a lot, but like, what is no longer serving you. And so because the Moon is always in the sky, and because it's something that happens regularly, I decided to align with that to keep myself intentional right. Really lean into what do I. Want and what don't I want anymore. So I started combining that with journaling, and I would journal about what I wanted and I would journal about what I didn't want. And then that evolved to adding tarot cards into the mix. So I pulled out my tarot cards that I had gotten from my friend Jennifer, and I would use them in combination with journaling, just sort of doing my own thing, not really knowing exactly what I was doing. I always used the book, and then slowly over time, as I became more involved with different Tarot practitioners and their different ways of doing this, I developed my own way of doing it, and then in late 2020 I opened up professional tarot readings. And I'm also a speaking coach. I'm also a musician. This stuff is going to come up, for sure, but by that point, I had taken several workshops. I'd read a lot of books. I was doing it on the regular. I'd been practicing with friends, and I felt comfortable. I'm also as a coach. I have a lot of coaching training, and, you know, reading Tarot and coaching sort of overlap so much so, in fact, that I developed a coaching program that involves Tarot this year, and recently found out that a lot of people do that, and I'm an Aries, so I like to, I like to, I like to think that I invented it. I did not. I'm sure of it, but it does work really well together. So going back to like, why I started this podcast, I'm obviously interested in all of, all of all of this stuff. I'm interested in symbolism. I'm interested in terror. I'm interested in psychic abilities. I have become interested in astrology. It is something that doesn't stick with me, so I leave it to the experts, because, for whatever reason, I just can't keep it in my head. Somebody asked me a few years ago if I would like an Akashic reading. And I was like, I don't know what that is, sure. Let's go for it. I've had Reiki done on me. There's different, you know, human design came up. And I was like, Okay, what's that? Let's try that. So there's all of these different forms of what I call meaning making that exist out there that the more I you know, dove into tarot, the more I became aware of all of these other ways that you essentially, in my eyes, connect with yourself, right. So often we get lost in the shuffle of life. And somebody's like, Well, what do you want? And you might say, I don't even know. So this is a way of staying intentional. For me. It's making meaning out of life. And listen, 2024 has kicked my ass as a small business owner. It's been a difficult year after having a knockout year last year. So that was very a hard pill to swallow, especially leading up to my 50th birthday, because I was like, All right, my business has been going now for several years. I've got some projects on the go. I sort of know how the year plays out. So this is the year where I can really lean into celebrating how far I've come. That was not to be, not only in my in my life and my business and my practice. Did things sort of not work out. But you know, globally, it has been an incredibly difficult year, and remains at this point in time, you know, late October, as I'm recording this, a very difficult time. Lots is happening around the world. There's a lot of suffering. The environment is crumbling. Environmental Disasters are happening more regularly. Politically, things are very charged and complicated and frustrating, and so all of this combined and this, you know, feeling like I like I was feeling leading up to my 50th birthday. I really felt lost, so I started to dive deeper into my practices, and I would say that my connection to spirituality in general has grown. I've learned that I like to make meaning out of things. I like it. If I find a feather and I think of that as a sign, I like it. If I pull a certain card, and I feel like maybe that's my grandmother speaking to me,

I like it that keeps me. The word I can think of is like sparkly. It makes me feel i. Enchanted, right? That's why we call this podcast, embracing enchantment. How can you bring enchantment into your life during these difficult times, to stay connected with yourself, to stay connected to the world, and to keep going and still experience joy, wonder, curiosity. That's why we're here. And one of the things I'm going to do for each of these episodes, they're going to run every two weeks, and some of them are going to be solo me talking about stuff, either talking about a practice that I know a lot about. So for example, one will be on tarot, one will be on Shadow Work, or just talking about, like, trying out a new practice, and my experience of that. And then on alternate weeks, we're going to bring in some of the most incredible guests who are experts in these topics that I've been referring to. So things like human design, things like astrology, things like ritual and and tarot, right? There's going to be all kinds of different perspectives. And one of the things I want to do for each episode is pull a tarot card and get us thinking. And so you know if you're following along, if you've already decided yes and you've hit subscribe. Thank you. Every time you hear me pulling out a card, maybe you pull out a journal and listen to how I'm describing the card and write down whatever comes up for you.

All right, so what's the card we're going to pull? Again, I use the rider. Waite Smith deck, king of wands. This is actually pretty funny, and you will find out a couple episodes later, king of wands.

Wands are in the Minor Arcana within Taro. Let me just give you a quick description of this card. We have a king sitting on a throne. He is wearing an orange tunic. He has a yellow cape with salamanders that look like Ouroboros, which is a the snake sort of eating its tail. He's wearing a green collar and a necklace that has a little fox on it. His hair is red. His crown is gold, but it looks like its flames. He's holding a very large stick that has sprigs of growth coming out of it that is a wand that's one of the symbols, one of the suits of tarot. Beside him, on his throne is a little Salamander. In the background, we can see sort of hints of desert. The sky is blue, and on the throne behind him, there are lions and more of those Ouroboros, salamanders. And one thing that we really want to notice about this king is this King is ready for action. This king is not sitting passively. He's looking forward, and he is ready to jump up at any given moment. He is not relaxed. In fact, it almost looks like his hands are in fists. So wands are in the realm of fire, right, hence all the orange, all of the flames. We associate Wands with creativity, Spark, growth, passion, hotness. And by hotness, I mean sometimes, you know, a little bit hot headed, ready to go action. And so kings are in the court cards the Minor Arcana are divided into four suits. Each of those four suits are sort of organized like a modern playing card deck. And so you've got your ACE all the way up to your 10, and then you've got your court cards that go page all the way up to King. And in Tarot often and and listen, there are as many takes on Tarot as there are people, but we think of the court cards as, or I do some as sort of an in between the Major Arcana, and we'll talk about that another time, and the minor arcana. So there sometimes people associate them with specific people in your life, I tend to associate the energies associated with them. So the king is often and again this, this will depend on how you approach Tarot is either the first or the last in line. Like I said, there are so many different ways of approaching this. I think of the king as the final, biggest expression of the card, social, outward facing leadership. So this is about, what do you care about? What gets you out of your seat and going? What do. You feel passionate about and where that needs attention in your life. I'm gonna I'm gonna leave that, that Tarot direction, with you. So that's why we're here. That's we're gonna talk about all this stuff. We're gonna get incredible guests. I really encourage your feedback, and I'm gonna tell you how you can do that. We have some very exciting episodes coming up about shadow work, tarot, human design, shamanism, and honestly, so much more. I have the very good fortune of being in touch with some absolutely incredible world experts on this stuff. And not only that, they are beautiful humans, and I cannot wait to introduce them to you so you can find all of the information and takeaways from today's episode in the show notes or at embracing enchantment.com. Please subscribe, follow wherever you get your podcasts, and we would love it if you'd leave a review, or, even better, a voice note. Even best, help us spread the word. I'm going to put all of the information at the bottom about how to tag me, how to find me, how we can connect. And until then, I'm so glad you're on this journey with me, and Here's to building an enchanted life. See you later you

Transcribed by https://otter.ai