Seasonal Shift Into Leo

Speaker 0:06

Hello, friends, and welcome to episode nine of Darkness and Light. I'm your host, Wendy Rule, and this is a podcast about myth, Magic, and nature. So as this episode lands, we are right at the end of Cancer season, with less than a week to go before the sun moves into the sign of Leo on July 22nd. So it's an interesting transition to move from the watery realm of cancer, which we were swimming in last episode, and into the fiery realm of Leo. We've just enjoyed our beautiful Cancer Dark Moon a couple of days ago. So the Moon is once again waxing, growing stronger. And last episode, when we were moving toward that Cancer Dark Moon, we were celebrating the energies of the Void, the great fertile darkness of potential. And now as we prepare to move into Leo, we're going to explore what happens next when something begins to stir in that darkness. So let's take a moment to explore some of Leo's unique gifts. Firstly, Leo is a fire sign, along with Sagittarius and Aries. And Leo's way of expressing that element is Fixed Fire, fire that wants to stay put, to be an anchor, to be a focal point. So it makes sense that Leo's ruling planet is the Sun. So we had the Moon ruling Cancer, and now the Sun ruling Leo. And think about what the Sun does. It is Fixed Fire. All the planets in our solar system circle around the Sun. It's the focal point, this magnetic energy that draws energy toward it, but also radiates out its own glorious light. So there's a sense of generosity to this Leo energy, like the Sun, shining all across the world, generously sharing its light. Or I like to think of Fixed Fire like a campfire that naturally calls us to create a circle around it, all warming ourselves in its beautiful glow. A couple of episodes ago in episode seven, I went on a deep dive into the energy of the Sun, exploring the god Helios, the God of the Sun, the Sun itself. So we're not going to go deeply into that solar energy in the same way with this episode.

Speaker 3:23

We're going to take a slightly different path and focus particularly on creativity, and our guide will be the glorious god Apollo, God of light, creativity, and divination. In episode seven, I spoke about the Sun and our inner Sun, our Solar Plexus, and the Sun in our birth charts, our astrological charts, as being expressions of our identity. And Leo is associated with self-expression and with creativity, and the two really go hand in hand. Leo moves us from that cosmic creativity of Cancer, of the Void, of the endless potential, of the womb, and moves us into personal creativity, an expression of ourselves as individuals. Leo calls us to shine in our creativity. But what do we mean when we talk about creativity at such a broad term? Well, I believe that creativity is our human gift, our human birthright. All of us are creative. Every single one of us. If you go back to childhood, you see kids playing together, what are they doing? They're creating, they're making, they're inventing, they're imagining. Creativity is part of our human story. All of our knowledge of ancient cultures comes out of the creative expressions of that culture. Story and song and art and statues and buildings. And in fact, culture itself is human creativity. We're creating all the time, each and every one of us. We're making choices about what we wear, how we decorate our homes, what music we listen to, we're cooking, we're gardening, we're making businesses and relationships, we're dancing, we're playing musical instruments, we're picking up paintbrushes, we're sewing, we're weaving. It's a natural part of the human story. But in this culture that diminishes the value of art, that creative aspect has often been taught out of us. So we have to make a conscious effort to stay engaged with that creative flow that is our birthright, that creative spark. It's part of us. It's part of every

Apollo: God of Light and Creativity

Speaker 6:16

human.

Speaker 6:39

Our mythic guide for this episode is the glorious golden god, Apollo. And Apollo is the brother of the goddess Artemis, who we spoke of in episode five. Apollo is associated with the energies of light, of creativity, of beauty and poetry, of culture and refinement. And he's aligned with the energies of the Sun and can be considered a Sun God, but not in the same way that Helios can. Helios is the Sun. Apollo is like the Sun, a much more human representation, even though he's a god. He appears as a golden, beautiful youth in his prime. Gods like Zeus or Poseidon or Hades are often depicted as mature, bearded men, but Apollo is always shown as eternally youthful, beardless, and he epitomizes everything that ancient Greek culture loved. That refinement and beauty and radiance. He's associated with rationality and reason. He sees patterns in things, wants to bring things into order. But interestingly, he's also associated with divination. And divination feels way more chaotic than the rational mind. But I believe that this is showing how Apollo helps us to access that raw material of inspiration and then form it into something beautiful, something refined, into art. If you remember back a few episodes ago, I told a story about the god Hermes and how he invented the musical instrument, the lyre, and then he gifted the lyre to Apollo, and Apollo then took that lyre and out of that he made gorgeous music. So Hermes was that initial inspiration, but it was Apollo that refined this potential and gave it form, created music rather than just noise. And it's in a similar way that I believe Apollo helps us to access the hidden potential within ourselves, within the world around us, and then refine it and give it form. He helps us to create.

Divination As Creative Practice

Speaker 9:21

So Apollo is the god of divination and prophecy. But what exactly is divination? Well there's a hint within the word itself, divine. Divination in all its myriad forms helps us to open up to the energy of the divine. It lets Spirit speak to us and through us. Some form of divination appears to be present in virtually every known human culture. It might be reading the stars or casting bones and sticks and stones and shells and watching how the patterns form, maybe interpreting dreams, entering trance states, seeking messages from ancestors or spirits, observing natural phenomena like clouds and birds and animals. And it's also using symbolic systems like the runes or the tarot or the i ching. In the same way that creativity is part of the human story, it seems that divination is too. And I think these two energies really speak to each other. And although it might seem incongruous to think of this god of reason and clarity and light also being a god of divination, I actually think it makes sense. Creativity begins in the not knowing, in that void of potential. When we create, we start from a place of uncertainty and of emptiness. And it's a realm that the rational mind can't fully control. We don't quite know where inspiration comes from. It's beyond the rational. And it's the same with divination. With both, we open ourselves to the divine and feel a spark of spirit moving through us. This unifying force, this interconnecting web that moves through everything. When we practice any form of divination, for me that's tarot, I love that. But not only that, I'm often receiving messages from nature or from anything else, you know, synchronicities, opening up to that and thinking, okay, there's a message in that somehow. Whenever we're practicing that, we're opening ourselves up to spirit, but also to our own deep selves. And I think that that's kind of how creativity works too. That we're willing to receive that insight or spark or inspiration from wherever that might come from, maybe our deepest selves, maybe the fairies, maybe the stars. But we have to be open in both cases. We have to be willing to open ourselves to the universe and to dive into the depths of our inner beings.

Delphi Oracle And Earth Wisdom

Speaker 13:08

Apollo is the god that rules over the Delphic Oracle. In ancient days, Delphi was the most important oracle site in the ancient Greek world, and it sits high on the slopes of Mount Parnassus, overlooking fields, and far below the sea. You can go there now and see the ruins. It's, you know, it's huge. But back in the day, it was a central meeting place for the Greek-speaking world. And the Delphic Oracle was a human woman known as the Pythia, so a prophetess, like a priestess of Apollo. And different women would take on this role over the many, many, many years that this oracle was active, thousands of years. And she would go into a trance and then speak some kind of riddle-like truth and offer her wisdom, and then the priests of Apollo would interpret this. And she would sit on kind of like a tripod over a crack above the earth, like this fissure in the earth. And it's thought that toxic fumes would be emerging out of this fissure, and she would be essentially tripping out on these fumes from earth, from the depths of earth. Kings and generals and everyday people too would come and consult the Oracle and ask an important question like, should I embark on this war or should I take this journey? And then the oracle would reply in these riddles, Apollo's priests would interpret it. So once again, the irrational, the non-rational, this wisdom from the Earth's depths is brought to surface, and then through Apollo is given form and reason and is made rational. So this raw energy is given form. And carved above the entrance to Apollo's temple at Delphi are the words, know thyself. Know thyself. That's what divination does. It invites us to know ourselves more deeply, to bring our conscious mind to the unconscious. Before Apollo was the ruling god of Delphi, ancient traditions suggest that the ruling deity was actually Gaia, Earth herself. So this ancient oracle was actually an Earth oracle, and it was guarded by a female serpent or dragon, which became known as Python. And Apollo conquered this dragon that was supposedly terrorizing the countryside. So he killed this giant serpent, but in its honor he named his priestess the Pythia. So there's this really interesting connection. This God of Light is also connected with these cthonic Underworld energies, this Python that comes from the depths of Earth, this temple that essentially belongs to Earth, to Gaia, and this priestess who communicates with the depths of Earth in a dreamlike trance, receiving directly the messages from Earth. So there's this meeting of the above and the below, of darkness and of light, this God of light and yet connected to darkness. This God who brings form to the formless.

The Muses And Sacred Inspiration

Speaker 17:41

For the Ancient Greeks, inspiration was thought to come from the nine Muses. And the Muses are the daughters of Zeus, the sky god, and the goddess Mnemosene. And Mnemosene is the goddess of memory. She's an ancient goddess. There's this union of Zeus, who's known with his symbol of the lightning bolt, and then Mnemoseni, memory coming together, and out of that they create these nine goddesses of creative inspiration. And I really love that. I love that union of this spark that seems to come out of nowhere, this lightning bolt that ignites the potential that's held within memory, our lived experience. And then it somehow gets lit unexpectedly by this flash, this lightning bolt. And I can see that in my own creative process with songwriting. I might have an initial inspiration, that lightning bolt, that flash of, oh yeah, I'm gonna write about that. But it's my lived experience that I then actually create with. That's that pool of memory. So these nine Muses, each one is assigned a particular realm of human creativity. And this is ancient days, so you know, there are things like epic poetry, music, dance, comedy, tragedy, but also things like astronomy and history. So there's no division between the scientific and the artistic. They're both seen as creative. Ancient poets traditionally invoked the Muses before beginning any kind of work, and they were asking for inspiration. So Hesiod in the Theogony, Homer in the Odyssey, they start by saying, hey Muses, I really want to tell this story. Can you help me to do this? Bring me eloquence, help me to sing, help me to write as beautifully as I can. In the excellent recent translation of the Odyssey by Emily Wilson, she translates the beginning of the Odyssey, the first couple of lines, as this "Tell me about a complicated man. Muse. Tell me how he wandered and was lost". Homer calling on the Muse to say, Tell this story through me. Let me be your vehicle for conveying this story about a complicated man, Odysseus, a man of twists and turns as he's often called. Many ancient works of art depict Apollo as the leader of the Muses, who channels their inspiration into beautiful form and expression. He's often depicted playing the lyre, that same lyre that he received from Hermes, while the muses sing and dance around him, and in this form he's called Apolo Musigetis, Apollo leader of the Muses. These days the term muse has become simplified and in a way corrupted. It's a much more basic version of that older idea of these goddesses. We'll, hear people talk about their muse, their artistic muse, and often this refers to, or usually it refers to, a human woman, especially over the last few hundred years, where there was an imbalance, and women were seen as the inspiring force, the beautiful muse, but not the creator. themselves, and of course that's changed now. But yeah, this idea of the muse, this inspiring, transfixing lover who inspires the creative artist. But this is a very reductive way to consider the energy of the Muses, because the Muses are goddesses, they are the embodiment of inspiration itself. The Muses activate what is within us, they represent the divine creative impulse moving through us, linking human imagination with the sacred. So even if you don't think of this creative force as the nine Muses, and there's no reason why you necessarily should - this is relevant to a particular culture at a particular time - you might still like to consider that idea of a spiritual divine force, a universal force of activation, of inspiration, of that initial spark.

Creative Block And Trusting Cycles

Speaker 23:29

So we've talked about inspiration arriving, but what happens when it disappears? It can feel very confronting and upsetting to go through a period of feeling creatively blocked, of feeling that we've lost that spark, of wondering if we ever even had it. Of feeling that we just don't know where to begin, feeling uninspired. And I've experienced that over and over and over again. There's been times when, you know, I've looked at my collection of back catalogue and thought, I don't know how I did that. I don't know how to write. I wouldn't even know where to begin, to start making an album or uh writing a song. And it can be really scary. This self-doubt sets in. But I also know because I have been that through that so many times, I've learned now to trust in the cycles. Creativity, the flow of creativity is part of Nature. Nature is in a constant state of creation and destruction, of life and death, things growing and dying. So if we remember that we are part of nature, then it can bring some solace and reassurance to our own creative cycles, our own cycles of darkness and light. And we can remember that we need our fallow times, however uncomfortable those times can feel, when we're feeling blocked, uninspired. But nature reminds us we need our winter times, we need our Dark Moon times. Often when we feel that we're creatively blocked, what's really happening is that we're incubating, and it's not until afterwards when things start flowing again, and they will, if we give them time and trust, when things start flowing again that we can go, oh, okay, that year of not writing or not creating or not painting or whatever was actually really necessary. It was in that fallow time that I found my new direction or a different passion. It was actually during one of these very dry times when I felt very uninspired and blocked and I guess a little depressed too. It was after Persephone had come out, and you know, this was this big opus, years and years of work, and I was also processing my dad had died, and everything just felt really blah. Yeah, it had been like two years and I hadn't written a song, and I really was thinking, do I even know how anymore? Got no idea. Anyway, I decided that I would take myself on a healing journey, and I went to Greece to an island that I really love called Ikaria, where I had been studying Greek the previous year. So I went back there. It was Winter, and I was pretty much the only tourist on the island. Well, not really, but pretty close to it. And I was high up in the mountains, looking down over the sea. It was really, really beautiful, and it was just what I needed. But I also was kind of pushing hard, like I should do something, I should go hiking, or I should go to this ancient site or do something every single day to try to ignite this creative fire, and it just wasn't happening. I just was feeling pretty bereft and really began doubting myself. So at that stage, I was pulling a tarot card every day, and I was writing in my journal, and that morning I pulled the tarot card called The Hanged Man. And the Hanged Man is this energy of release, of opening to spirit and just letting go. It shows a guy with his hands behind his back, hanging by one foot from a tree and just releasing an opening to spirit. And I thought that's just what I've got to do. I've got to just be here, stay here and not do anything. Just sit and watch the sea, guitar in hand, and just see if anything comes through. Make the space for it, you know? So I did just that, and I stayed there all day, and finally this song came through, and it was called A Thousand Ways to Start a Fire, and it was such an incredible relief. But yeah, I was actively using divination to help me move through this creative block. And what the card said was trust. Stop trying, just trust in the flow. And once I did, then the muses were able to come and visit me, and that song emerged out of that experience. So I really believe that divination can be an extremely helpful tool for the creative process. In my case, that card said, trust, just trust in the flow, let go, stop trying, allow room for the muses to come and visit you. But other times when I've done tarot for creative guidance, I've had cards like The Chariot, full steam ahead, or very practical things, just do the work, like an Eight of Pentacles, you know, just practice. So if you have a preferred form of divination like tarot or oracle or runes, I'm going to suggest that they can be extremely helpful tools in our creative journeys. They can be guides for opening up ideas or suggestions or guidance or even warnings. In a way, that hanged man card was like, hey, just stop, slow down, stop trying so hard. It was telling me to get out of my own way, just to open up to spirit and to trust that creativity that's part of nature and part of me.

Nurturing our Creative Spark

Speaker 30:32

I often feel that the process of making something new, a creative project, is like building a fire. We start with the initial spark, with following some kind of fascination, something that has ignited our interest. And we start with that little spark, but that spark won't sustain itself. A spark will go out unless it's fed with intention and attention. So we might get thousands of these little sparks of ideas. And in our one human lifetime, we can't possibly follow every single one of them and build a fire from every one of these sparks. But the ones that we choose to say, this is important, I'm going to follow through with this, we start with that little spark, and then we have to build it gently and slowly like a campfire, stick by stick. We can't just walk away from it when it's young or the wind will blow it out or the rain will fall on it. We have to patiently nurture that flame. Once it's established, it will kind of blaze on its own, it will pick up its own momentum. But when it's small, it's very, very vulnerable. And we have to protect that little fire from all the dangers that will put it out. And that's things like saboteurs. That's the one who says, Oh, that's not a very good idea, or I doubt you'll be able to do that, or that's too difficult. That's outer critics and also our inner critics can come and stamp that fire out, that little spark. And then one of the shadow sides of Apollo is perfectionism, of needing everything to be excellent, and that can hold us back too. That can stomp out that fire. When in fact, creativity needs to also have an aspect of play, of creating for the joy of it. We're not gods, so our creative output is never going to be perfect. So being overly serious about our creative output can actually really stomp out that fire. We need to be very tender and very gentle, and then we need to be strategic. What log can go on next, what action needs to be taken, and before too long, that fire is blazing, and then it becomes that fixed fire energy that radiates out to others and calls them in, that radiates out and says, bask in this beautiful thing that I've made, be part of it, jump on board. But those early days are very tender. Those early days of any new project, those early days we're very vulnerable. Sometimes we need to keep that flame, that little spark to ourselves for a while, until we know that no matter what anyone else might think or say about it, it's not going to put it out. It's shining brightly in its own right.

The Craft of Creativity

Speaker 34:00

Creativity isn't just about opening up to that flow of inspiration to the Muses. Creating something also requires skill and craft. So creativity is inspiration, but it's also discipline. It requires us to show up, to practice. And as you practice and apply yourself, you get better. And sometimes that practice can feel very boring. There are parts of the creative process that can feel quite dull, repetitious, practicing again and again and again and again until we get better. But Apollo reminds us that creativity is also refinement, that we take the time and put the effort into making something truly beautiful, that we hone our craft, that we're willing to learn, that we're willing to continually refine our gifts. And yet, sometimes it can feel like all you're doing is stretching canvases or cleaning brushes or tuning the guitar, getting your 10,000 hours in, but it's all part of it. That willingness to dedicate time and energy to make something that really matters to you. And part of that dedication to the craft of creativity is also recognizing the value of limitations. Limitations of form or of time can become a creative container, like a crucible. It can concentrate our energy. Editing is a necessary creative stage. When I'm recording these podcasts, I often record for like two hours. I sit here and I'm just chatting away on a theme and letting myself go off on tangents. And then that's a whole other separate creative act, the editing of each episode. And I find that deeply satisfying to cut away the thing that you think is beautiful, but you also know it's not necessary. It doesn't actually add to the integrity of the work. Or it might be working within a really tight colour palette, or structured poetry, working with rhymes. I always loved as a kid, and I still do with writing songs. I love the restriction of rhyming poetry because it really tightens up our available options. So I'm fascinated by that, by creative restriction. And sometimes that restriction can be a restriction of time as well. Like, how much time do I have available to dedicate to this? Sometimes when we have this great big open expanse of time, I guess kind of like those couple of weeks when I went away to Greece to write something, but here's this big expanse of time that was really quite daunting. Sometimes having less available time can make us more dedicated to using those cracks of time that we do have. So my early days of writing all that material was done in the wee small hours when I could find tiny little cracks of time. And that is not a sustainable thing. I was deeply, deeply exhausted. But there was something valuable about it as well. I had to make a conscious choice to say, I'm choosing this creativity, I'm choosing to do this. I'm going to cut back on doing this other thing in order to do this. And it reminds me too of that energy of the crossroads. When we get to a crossroad, we've come from the direction of our past, and then we have to make a choice. And we choose one of the available options, and we know as soon as we step out on that path we've chosen, we have essentially edited the options of all the other paths. We've said, this is the one I'm choosing. So that choice becomes a creative act too, an act of commitment of cutting away the infinite possibility and saying, no, this is the one that I'm choosing. Because we can't do everything. And part of our creative journey is that act of refinement that Apollo reminds us, choose what you're going to chip away. Stand by that choice. In recognizing the limits of our creativity, whether that's skill or available time or available resources, but then working within those limitations. That brings potency. That is refinement. That is that gift of Apollo.

Creativity Culture And Community

Speaker 39:40

Apollo is a god of culture, not just of individual creativity. He's the god of the human impulse to make meaning together, to share the same stories, myths and art and dance and music, so that our individual creativity becomes part of something bigger, becomes part of a collective cultural identity. It became a cultural and political heart of the Greek world, where people from all over the Greek speaking world were coming to this meeting point, and it was regarded as the center of the world. And there's an egg-shaped stone at Delphi. It's in the museum now, but they have a replica at the ancient site. And I guess it's maybe a meter or a meter and a half high or something like that. And it was known as the Omphalos, which means belly button. So this center of the world. And the myth goes that Zeus wanted to know where the center of the world was, so he sent out two eagles, which are his totemic bird, in opposite directions. They circled the earth and then they met again at Delphi. So Delphi is the center of the Earth, which I just think is so symbolically beautiful. This notion that, first of all, the oracle, this point of wisdom, wisdom that emerges from the depths of the earth is connected with this sense of centering. Then we have our know thyself maxim above the temple of Apollo. So knowing yourself becomes centering, and it connects us to that solar energy, which is Apollonian, the Sun as being the center, the center of our solar system and the center of our personal identity. So in the same way that the sun becomes our center, our personal center, this omphalos at Delphi becomes a cultural center, an anchoring experience. And this is the collective experience of creativity. So there's this link between creativity, divination, and also this sense of center, of the omphalus. And what does the omphallus do? That center, the belly button, it connects us to the womb. Back to that energy of the void. That's those vapours rising up from the depths of earth. That's that epic Python snake emerging from earth. So somehow our sense of self, of center, is connected to our creativity, what we make, how we make it. And remember, I'm not just talking about painting and dancing and music and writing. I'm talking about everything we make in our lives, that it's a reflection of our deepest selves. And a culture identifies itself, its sense of identity is linked to its creativity, its myths and stories and dancing and music and art. That's what makes a culture. Or think of subcultures, modern subcultures now. People choosing to dress in a certain way, listen to a certain type of music, dance in a certain way, says, hey, these choices that I'm making, these creative choices, are forging my personal identity, and they're part of cultural identity. So essentially an individual creates a work of art, creates something, channels that gift of the muses, of divine spirit, makes a thing, and then it enters into the community and it becomes a culture. And in turn, the thing that each individual, each of us create is shaped by our culture, by fashions and traditions. So we create culture, but culture also creates us. Our creative journey doesn't end once we've made something. It requires us to share it with our community, with our culture. It needs to become part of the collective, like the sun shining its beautiful light. That's that gift of Leo generously shining its light. We create and then we share that creation.

Heart Centering Then Tarot

Speaker 45:09

Before we pull our tarot card for today and do some actual divination, let's get ourselves into the zone. Letting your breath soften and slow, feeling the weight of your body on chair or floor, bringing yourself to right here and right now. And take your awareness to your Heart Chakra. And the sign of Leo rules the energy of the heart with its generous, loving gifts. So the Heart Chakra sits in the middle of your chest at heart level, three chakras below, three chakras above, the center of your being. Now take your awareness to the direction of North. Work out where North is, wherever you are, and allow your imagination to extend northward, starting with the part of your body that faces the North, northern wall of the room you're in, the northern horizon and beyond the northern horizon, the North Pole, the North Star, North forever. And feel that you are at the beginning of North. North begins within you and extends out. And now South. Take your awareness to the South, the part of your body that faces South, the southern horizon, the South Pole, the Southern Cross, South forever and ever and ever infinite South, and draw that energy of South into you and know that you are at the gateway, the beginning of infinite South. And East direction of sunrise. Allow your imagination to lead you beyond the eastern wall, eastern horizon, East forever and ever and ever. Feel how you are at the gateway of infinite East, and then West, extending your imagination westward, direction of the setting Sun, western horizon, West forever. And recognize that West begins within you, extending westward, and feel where these four points meet within you, within your heart, North, South, East, and West, and then take your awareness to the direction of Below, down through spine and legs and feet, down through floor, below building, down, down through layers of earth and stone, down to Earth's red core, and further still, below Earth, below that goes on forever and ever and ever. And draw that energy up and recognize that you are at the beginning of infinite Below. And now take your awareness to the Above, out through the top of your head, out through roof and Earth's atmosphere, out into the infinite above, above that goes on forever and ever and ever. And let The Above pour back down into you, meeting the energy of Below and your Heart Chakra. And feel now these six directions meeting: North, South, East, West, Above, Below, creating the seventh direction of Within. You are your center, like the Sun is the center of our solar system. You are your own center. Glowing, creative, generous.

King Of Wands And Leadership

Speaker 49:54

Alright, let's shuffle these tarot cards, shall we? Let's see what comes up. Hey, this is a nice one. King of Wands. That's perfect for this episode. The suit of Wands represents the energy of Fire. And the king aligns so nicely with Leo, that association of Leo with the lion, that regal energy. And the king in the tarot holds the energy of competence for whatever element they're representing. This is complete competence and mastery of the element of Fire. And the element of Fire, as we explored, is strongly connected to creativity. And of course, I read all the court cards as holding all the genders, so we can all hold this sovereign energy, this mastery of the realm of fire, and therefore of creativity. In this card, and I'm reading from the Smith Rider Waite t deck, the king is holding a wand lightly in his right hand, and he's kind of perched almost on the edge of his throne, almost as though he's about to get up ready for action. And that Fire element is strongly associated with action. Fire wants to move, it wants to change things. So this king is ready to step out and create. And that energy of mastery that the kings hold in the tarot aligns with the positive aspects of rulership. A good king, a good leader places the well-being of the community above themselves. The king protects and guides and inspires. That's the energy of a good king. That's the energy that Leo is holding to be a central focal point that radiates out generosity, light, positivity, guidance to the people, to the collective. Of course, in our current culture, we are seeing exactly the opposite of that. We are seeing leaders, people in position of power who are putting their personal individual well-being above the needs of the people. So this King of Wands coming up for us now is a reminder not to lose hope. This is possible. This archetype of the true king, of the leader who is there for his people is real. We can call that in, and we can call it in within ourselves too. This competence of the realm of fire in this case, our creative competence, our skill, our mastery in the creative realm. We can be striving for that regal sovereign mastery. So yeah, in this Rider Waite deck, the king is sitting in a red robe, and his throne is decorated with lions, very fitting, of course, and also with lizards or salamanders. And the salamander, this actually turns up in a lot of the court cards in the suit of Wands. But often that lizard, it might be salamander, it might be making a partial loop, like a partial circle. But with the king, the lizard makes a complete circle. It's like the oureborus of a snake with the tail in its mouth. So that indicates this sense of completion, of mastery, of competence. So he's ready for action, ready to do what the people need. There's a lizard down at his feet, kind of like a companion. The Queen of Wands has a black cat, which I really love, but the king has this lizard, this little friend down at his feet. So he's connected with that realm. Salamanders are associated with the element of fire in mythology. And his beautiful cloak is very generous, very abundant, and it too is covered in these lizards or salamanders eating their own tail. So this king is ready to serve. And that's our role in this Leo season, our reminder to harness that creativity within us, to be of service to our own creativity, to do whatever it takes in order to honor that creativity that is our human birthright. So I think this king has come here to remind us to stand in our sovereign power that is our center.

Patreon And Closing

Speaker 55:27

I am going to be talking more about this card in my next Patreon episode, my Magic Monday video, this coming Monday, every Monday on my Patreon page. And the one that follows the release of each podcast episode, I talk about the card that we pulled. And that gives me a moment to contemplate this card as well, because I'm always thinking on my feet when I'm chatting here on the podcast, which is great too, because that is that form of divination of what do I notice? What comes through for me? Trust my initial instinct. And it's also nice to dive into some of the traditional meanings of this card. So I'm going to be talking about that more on my Patreon page this coming Monday. I would love you to check it out. The reason that you're not hearing any advertisements in this podcast is a conscious choice on my part so that we don't have our flow broken, that we can just immerse ourselves in the episode. And the reason that I'm able to do that is because of the support of my Patreon community. It's a huge amount of time and effort that I pour into this podcast. And without my Patreon community, I wouldn't be able to do that. So if you are able to pitch in and help support this journey, or even if you just like it and want to go a layer deeper, I do weekly videos, I pull tarot cards, I sing songs, it's lots of fun. It's just a really lovely community. It really feels very warm and supportive of each other. So if you're interested, head over to patreon.com/wendyrule. And you can jump on board for about the cost of a cup of coffee or a glass of wine each month, five USD. And if you're not able to do that right now, I totally get it. I really do. This podcast is for everyone. Everyone gets the same podcast, but just know if you are enjoying listening to it, that one of my wonderful Patreon members has helped support that journey. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm looking forward to returning again in a couple of weeks. And the next episode will be about the festivals of Lammas in the Northern Hemisphere and Imbolc in the Southern. So another Wheel of the Year seasonal episode, which is always fun for me. In the meantime, I wish you a wonderful couple of weeks, and I'll see you back here then. Blessed be.