Your Creative & Magical Life

Holiday Rest, Creative Cycles & the Fours of the Tarot w/ Arianna Smith

• Cecily Sailer / Arianna Smith

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Dreading the holiday push as your creative well runs low? 

In this episode, featuring recurring guest Arianna Smith, we explore the tricky balance of managing and riding our creative energy — and our obligations — while tending to our body's need for rest.

The episode starts with a little catching up — we chat about recent offerings and some of the new perspectives we're inhabiting around creativity and visibility. We also talk about devotion versus discipline, and how "internal consistency" can sustain our craft when external output wobbles.

Then we get into the coming holiday season and the tricky paradox of slowing down at time when we're called upon to travel, cook, spend money, clean, and decorate. 

Which bring us to the Fours of the Tarot — Four of Pentacles, Four of Wands, Four of Swords, and Four of Cups — and how we understand these archetypes and the messages they offer around slowing down and restoring energy. 

Arianna offers a quick Tarot pull to see which Four wants to speak to you, which you can follow with this three-card spread, if you want to go deeper:

+ What's blocking me from slowing down?

+ How can I connect with the Four that showed up for me?

+ What's a next good step to help me take it slow?

Finally, we explore cycle-aware planning that actually fits real life: seasonal shifts you can feel in the air, lunar timing for planting and illuminating, and hormonal rhythms that explain late-night bursts or sudden dips better than any productivity tip. 

Come for the tarot, stay for the relief of a kinder rhythm, and leave with one small change you can make today. If this conversation helps you, subscribe, share this episode with a friend who’s running on fumes, and drop a review so we can keep making thoughtful episodes for you.

Check out Arianna's work and hop on her email list here!

This podcast is a production of Typewriter Tarot. Learn more & join us:

SPEAKER_00:

Hello, creative spirits. Welcome to another episode of your creative and magical life. I'm your host, Cecily Saylor, a warrior for your creativity and your magic, a tarot reader, a witchy Capricorn in Austin, Texas, who spends a lot of time talking to her dogs. Before I get into the episode, I want to give you a little update on what's coming up, how things are going, little tiny bit of behind-the-scenes stuff to address the fact that episodes are coming out slowly, about one a month, not my desired pace. But I have that problem as a creator and business owner where I get excited about creating new things and having new channels. And so there's just a lot of different pieces to my creative project, my creative enterprise, to typewriter tarot. And I am just one witch, you know, magic will only take me so far. Magic will not yet edit my podcast episodes for me. So I've started editing them myself, partly out of cash flow consideration for a little while. And you've met my editor in the star episode, Chantal, who's amazing. So much love for Chantal. And I hope to bring Chantal back for more of her beautiful services. You still will hear her music in these episodes because now I've figured out how to put it in myself. And I've gotten a platform called Descript where I can edit the episodes by looking at the transcript, and I can trim the transcript and it will edit the audio for me, which makes it so much more possible for me to make a better episode for you. But it is still time consuming. And so there was this lag where no work was really happening on the podcast, even though I'd been recording a few more interviews. So now I have a nice little stash of episodes that I want to bring you, but they need to go through the process. So I'm super glad, I'm super relieved, I'm super excited to bring you this episode, which was recorded about a month ago. Ariana Smith is back on the show. And in this episode, we get into we kind of warm up and talk about creativity and some of the things that we've been developing. And then we get into holiday time energy and the way that feels like a nice portal for rest and relaxation, but often becomes another set of reasons or impulses to actually stay busy and keep doing a lot. So we're gonna talk about that tension. We talk about what it can look like to rest, different forms of rest. We look at the four fours in the tarot: the four of pentacles, the four of wands, the four of cups, the four of swords. And we talk about how you can work with these cards to understand what kind of rest might be helpful to you or help you imagine what that rest can look like. And I think it's a really helpful episode as we move into Thanksgiving here in the United States and then into the winter holidays, which come quickly on the heels of Thanksgiving. So we didn't present it super clearly in the episode, so I edited it out. There's a very simple tarot spread in here for you to try using the fours. And then in the show notes, I will put some other questions you can use if you want to do a longer spread to reflect on what rest can look like for you right now. So look for that if you want to try it. And the stuff about the fours comes a little bit later. So I hope you'll stay through the episode, enjoy the conversation. And then, in terms of what's coming up next, Ariana and I recorded an episode on artificial intelligence. I'm gonna get that one to you next. I'm just gonna put these episodes with me and Ariana together in this little block, I think. And then I've also got a beautiful interview for you with an IFS therapist, an internal family systems therapist. We talk about parts work, we talk about working with our parts. This therapist does a little reading with me using a deck that focuses on internal parts of the self. It's very, very nourishing, very supportive, um, very interesting. I've also got an interview with the guys from Austin Seance, which obviously I wanted to get to you on Halloween. Ha ha ha ha. Like, oops. Um, even funnier, I wanted to get you a series of interviews for the whole month of October around the paranormal, the supernatural, high strangeness, all of my favorite things. But that didn't happen. And then we're also gonna finish out our journey through the major arcana. We've still got to do the moon, the sun. Those are recorded. The judgment episode is scheduled, and then we'll finish with the world, hopefully in 2026. And yeah, then we'll keep moving from there. I want to get you more solo episodes that are shorter, that are more focused. I've got some reflections on this year that I want to share with you. So, you know, we will see what my body can do, what my calendar will allow for, but the desire is certainly there. And I just appreciate your patience. If you're tuning into the show and enjoying the show and appreciating it, I appreciate you. Last thing I'll say actually is that as Ari and I are working together and kind of figuring out this collaboration, it's getting more structure around it. We're creating outlines, we're setting some more time limits on our episodes, we're pre-planning a little bit more. So they're gonna get a little tighter. They're gonna get, you know, they're just gonna keep getting better. And hopefully they'll keep arriving at a good pace so that you can enjoy them. All right, here's this latest one with more to come. Enjoy. Ari Smith is back. Ariana Smith, the therapist, the copywriter, the tarot reader, the witch. Ari, welcome back. Good to be with you.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you. Thank you so much. That was an excellent introduction. Okay, good. I am yes, I am a witch. Ari, how how have you been? What's new for you? I think since the last time I saw you, we were both traveling and we might have both been going to a similar place. So I went to New York City with my partner. I tagged along for work, although she corrected me. We were staying in Jersey City, but we went into New York City for other things. So New Yorkers will understand that distinction. And then such a juxtaposition went to rural North Carolina to meet my partner's aunt and uncle and just chill and relax. And it was such a juxtaposition because being in New York City and being anonymous, being the least interesting person in the vicinity, it was so nourishing for me on so many levels. And then since then, I mean, I can talk about all the things swirling in my business. Do you want to hear? I just hosted a workshop about human design and sustainable business. I've been kind of obsessed with human design since I got a reading in 2022. If y'all are listening and you're in Colorado or Denver, I I host therapist chill out gatherings. And so we have a book club later, and then we also have a tarot and chill gathering. So I'm going to get to gather with my local witches. And I also was invited to do a group tarot reading for a local group therapy practice, which I am so excited about. And maybe we can talk about group events today. But what I was up until 2 a.m. last night working on was my pitch party, which is basically a part co-working, part workshop for therapists, healers, heart-centered entrepreneurs that want to be more visible next year. They want to be featured on podcasts, publications, channels, and they don't know what the fuck they're doing. Or they want to refine their approach. So I was up late last night. And in doing that, I actually was looking back at the email I initially sent you to initially be on your podcast. Yes. Because I think that is one of the reasons I was like, let's do pitch party, because it's so many doors open when you just put yourself out there and you just let your work be seen. And I alluded to this earlier, but you were one of the very first podcasts that I talked openly about tarot, that I was like, I am on this podcast as a witchy person first, not as a therapist or a copywriter who happens to be a little witchy. And I just want to thank you and just like offer gratitude because you saying yes to that just like opened the door to so many things. And I want to offer that magic to other people who are like, I don't know what I'm doing. And so probably by the time this comes out, the party will have passed, but they'll probably still be, I'm making like a whole pitch kit for people. So I'm looking at all my past pitches that got accepted and deconstructing them. I'm doing templates and trackers. So if this comes out after November 5th, still take a look at it and see if there's something else that you can get from it or when I'm running it again.

SPEAKER_00:

Amazing. Yes. Pitch Party sounds really cool. All of your offerings lately have, you know, I've only known you since you pitched. So um I haven't seen your offerings for like years and years, but since we've gotten to know each other, you've been coming out lately with some really cool stuff. And they're different, they kind of like span, you know, some different things. And I think it's really cool how you are holding these different angles of your work. I think a lot of people get really twisted up about like, well, I'm this, but I'm also this. And like, should I have a website for each one? And like, how do I brand these different things? And I think it looks really natural the way you're just weaving things together. Like, you do have a therapist audience, and then copywriting can be for like anyone who's got a business, and then tarot is for everybody who cares about it. So um, yeah, you're just a great example of how we can be many things and still offer from that place of self-knowing.

SPEAKER_02:

So yay.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you. I appreciate that reflection. I do have to have a separate website for my therapy practice, just Licenger. Otherwise, I would have it all together.

SPEAKER_00:

There's reasons to do either one, and I don't think one's better than another, but at least in your email list, sometimes it feels like an organic. Maybe you have two email lists. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01:

Do you? I well, okay. I mean, I used to because I was like, we might have talked about this. I was really hiding my witchy side, and I was like, I don't know if people want to see this. But since honestly, being on this podcast, I was like, why does this have to be separate? And so I've really been shifting my newsletter to not necessarily be strictly witchy, but not be like, yeah, I'm gonna talk about writing with the moon phases, and I'm gonna talk about human design, and I'm gonna mention tarot spreads that can help you with your business. And that's not gonna be the focal point because that's not all that I am. Cool. Yeah, thank you. What are you up to?

SPEAKER_00:

I am delivering the final parts of my creative channel offer, which is a six-week guided journey to help you clear the creative channel, connect with the creatrix as an energy, imagine and feel the creative channel within you. And it's going really beautifully. People are having some nice breakthroughs and coming to a different relationship with creativity that is less polluted with the crap of capitalism, the fears, the the anxieties. I mean, some of that is still there. It's an ongoing struggle for all of us, but we get to go beneath that and see that we have this relationship with creativity that is sacred, spiritual, and we get to reclaim that. So that's going really beautifully. And right now I'm developing something called creative enterprise. I'm starting to see how creative channel is the inner work of resetting that relationship with creativity. And then as people are coming to the end of it, they're getting some big downloads and clarity around what they want to create. People are like, I'm starting to write my website, or I realize I might want to take a pilgrimage as a road trip around the country to get to know my matrilineal line and maybe write about it and share about it. And I'm like, oh my God, that's amazing. So then creative enterprise is going to be more focused on the external side of the creative endeavor. I think creativity wants to have this sacred private relationship with each of us, but it also wants to go out and be in the world and to be received and to build bridges between people. And so the creative enterprise, there's gonna be a workshop. It will also have happened by the time this comes out. I'm gonna do another like longer course, but I'm doing a one-off workshop to explore that all the stuff that comes up around visibility, rejection, making money or not making money, platforms, technology. I mean, we can't cover every little thing, but we're gonna start that process of moving people out of the place of I've had this idea for a long time and I'm just sitting on it to okay, I'm gonna do the thing. I'm gonna do it little bit by a little bit. It makes me sad when people are like, Yeah, I have this idea, but I'm gonna wait until my kids graduate or this or that happens. And I'm like, no, the best time to start is today. Maybe that's not true. Timing is its own thing, but it saddens me sometimes to see people waiting years to do something that they already feel called to do. So a lot of my creative energy has been going toward creating those things and communicating and understanding what I'm offering. I got to go to a farm in upstate New York around the time that you were in New York, and it was a communal living situation and just an extremely beautiful place. So that was super interesting.

SPEAKER_01:

I yeah, just have to interject. I remember reading that newsletter and I love it, and I love your newsletter so much. I love that it just feels like you're writing to I know you're writing to your people, but it just feels like you're writing to me. And you're like, let me tell you about this farm. And I remember that. So that seemed like a really awesome experience.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it was great. It's called the Farm at World's End, and they offer these self-guided residencies. So you basically pay for your room, you bring some groceries, and you get to wander around. You can help on the farm, you can sit in the barn and write or make stuff, or there were there was a couple that was working with wool, they had Icelandic sheep, and so they had gathered wool and they were cleaning it and then doing whatever you do to turn it into thread. And one of them had knitted 40 sweaters already, like really good sweaters, and I was just blown away.

SPEAKER_01:

So people just come, they just come there, and do you have to pay to be there, or you just have to come and like contribute?

SPEAKER_00:

You do have to pay to be there. It was very reasonable, and I think the rates will probably remain reasonable through the year. I know the farm is needing to raise money, so if y'all need a getaway, I would go to their website and you just fill out a little Google form and then pay your money. And then yeah, you have a room for a week. And my room was in the main structure attached to the big old barn. And I had a room overlooking the little pond, and then there's cabins around the property that don't have electricity, but they have a wood-burning stove, they're really cute, it's really marvelous. I can see why you like it. That's very Alaska vibes. I want to ask you if you ever want to take a guest, I'm up for it. I'm just gonna invite myself. Just gonna invite myself.

SPEAKER_01:

I feel like also you and my mom have this kind of unconscious connection happening because last episode you were like, wait, Wasilla. And then my mom had bought your workbook.

SPEAKER_02:

Right.

SPEAKER_01:

She was like, Oh yeah, that's just my mom. She's like, Oh yeah, I just checked out the podcast and I saw the workbook and I just thought I'd check it out. And so then since then, you sent me your workbook. And then the last time I talked to my mom on the phone, you know, we like send photos of each other where we're at in the workbook. And of course, I'm hopping all over, I'm coloring with my felt pens, I'm journaling. But my mom, who is a retired art teacher, is actually using watercolors to move through hers. And I was like, Can you send me some photos? So you'll see that in my newsletter that goes out next week. And I asked her to send me a selfie, my wonderful late 60s mother, like, send me a selfie, mom. And of course, it's this beautifully framed photo of the workbook and stuff. And then she also said, when you sent the workbook, you sent her a postcard from Texas, which you sent one for me too. I don't want to give spoilers, but she was like, I need to send her something back, you know? I just need to send her. Yeah. So I feel like there is some kind of energy happening there for you. And because my mom's an art teacher, she's big into creativity. Oh, I was gonna say something else around this. This is kind of a tangent, but not really. I wanted to reflect earlier what you said around the creative channel and the creative enterprise. I feel like we just shifted to Alaska. Um, but I really wanted to speak to that piece because it's like maybe there's like some kind of collective energy happening because we're both sitting with like, okay, how do you get your work out in the world when it is such a vulnerable, sacred, personal thing? And I don't know if this is the case for you, and maybe you cover this a little bit in creative enterprise, is it's like our creative work is so personal, right? But then we're putting it out there for people to commodify, to reject, to um conflate, and how do we do that dance? And then we also wanted to like make money from it, you know, it's such a weird way. I'm sure you have thoughts around this, but I did have to notice that thread where we're both like, okay, how do you get your thing out there?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Yeah. And for all the reasons you described, I am taking the position that taking your work out there in some way, whether it's micro or bigger, is a spiritual journey. It's a spiritual path that you can choose to walk for your own self-development and growth, because it will force you to confront everything that you're talking about, the fear, the visibility stuff, these questions of having this sacred gift, this sacred energy that you're channeling, interfacing with the material world that has a lot of limitations and a lot of unfortunate obstacles that we will encounter. And so choosing to try and navigate that is deeply rewarding because you will find people you've never met before. You'll find people who are very kindred to you, who are thinking about the same things, who care about the same things, who are doing their own things that are really interesting. And yes, there will be rejection or people won't get it, or whatever. But if we can choose to focus on how we handle that and also the gifts that come back that are not just money or not just recognition, then there is something incredibly just profoundly rewarding in that is my argument.

SPEAKER_01:

That was a beautiful soundbite. I just want to soak that in. Getting your work out there is a spiritual path. It's not just a professional path, it's not just a creative path, it's a spiritual path.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And it's not for the faint of heart, but I get the sense that, and this is probably the people that you work with is you reach this point where you're like, I can't not do it anymore. I can't hide it anymore. This is just so uncomfortable. And so it's like you have to make a choice of like, what am I gonna take to sleep? Am I gonna lean into the fool energy, right? And just trust I have everything that I need. And I think also what's feeling so alive for me as you share is like it is a spiritual path, it's an individual path, and it sounds like there's a place for doing it with other people. Do you see any? I don't want to say pros and cons because that really simplifies it, but what do you see for people that are doing the path alone and for those that are doing it with other people, with like-minded folks? Even just a creative partner.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, a couple things I want to say really quickly. First, a spiritual path, I think it's also like a vision quest, which sounds really cool. Because you have this vision you're seeking, you're looking for, you're trying to bring into the world and you're questing out to do that. And in terms of that breaking point where it's I can't keep holding it back, I just want to note that the amount of energy it takes to hold the desire and hold the idea or the vision or the call and to continually put it aside and suppress it and delay it, that's a lot of energy you have to use to keep it at arm's length. And you can start using that energy to actually make it instead of keeping it in a box. And then in terms of doing it with other people, yeah, I just think anything we do with other people, you know, if they are aligned people more or less, or people on the same kind of path, then it becomes less lonely. You get more ideas, you find out that everyone else is struggling with exactly the same thing. You get other information about different ways it can look and different ways you can find your path through it. You have people to laugh about it with, you have people to complain about capitalism with, you have more jokes, more laughter, more magic, and also more connections. Because if the, you know, if your folks are aligned in some way, they're gonna know other people or they're gonna be part of your audience too. So that's another reason lately. I feel like I've shifted a little bit out of one-on-one work and still doing it, but and offering these group guided journeys where it is a solo journey, like you're getting a digital care package and you do your own work with that, but then we meet up once a week to talk about how it's going, what's coming up? And those conversations are just so refreshing and rewarding and bring up so many other little pitfalls we run into the way.

SPEAKER_01:

So yes. Do you think I'm like, sign me up? Uh, do you think that there is some kind of I'm just marveling at the the current that it feels like we're both tapping into because I was literally writing an email to kid you not, like an hour ago, about how pitching is personal work and it opens you up to deeper work. And yes, it's for your business, but I was just really thinking about you know what pitching has done for me. And I've talked about this, like it's made me grow, it's made me nourish and care for parts of myself that I didn't think needed attention. It's helped me really get comfortable with rejection and realize I'm really not that important. And the balance of like, you need your ideas to land with folks, right? But also they need to land with you. That's a big dance that we have to take in capitalism. What I think is exciting about what you shared is it feels like even though we haven't seen each other for a couple months, or we're tapped into a really similar current and we haven't known each other for that long, but then here we are doing these really similar but really different paths around how to do it in our own way.

SPEAKER_00:

This goes to the magic of the whole thing. You sent me a great pitch, and I have a small podcast. I was like, I'm getting pitched. This is cool, and this person sounds interesting. And I said yes, and then we have this conversation, and then we're having more conversations, which was not anticipated from the outset.

SPEAKER_01:

I think part of that has been because I've been letting myself just be me and not fit into a certain box.

SPEAKER_00:

I think all of this is relevant and feeds into what we're about to talk about. Oh, totally. This notion of our creative cycles, how our energy moves creatively. I think that's another part of what I'm focused on in creative channel, is that we have little internalized capitalists within us that want to be like, creativity, give me, give me the juice, give me the goods, help me get rich, help me get out of my job, help me, whatever. Like it's an extractive resource that just needs to show up for us. And no, creativity is an energy, it's a relationship, and it sometimes it's flowing powerfully. I think of like the river, speaking of creative channel, sometimes it's flooding, sometimes there's been a lot of rain, and sometimes it's dry. And that changes, it's always fluctuating. So, how do we listen to that, tune into that, tend to that, and listen to our bodies? And this was your beautiful topic idea. So, I want to hear from you what's been going on or what your experience has been lately as you've been in this big creative burst.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh my gosh. Well, I want to give a nod to Lindsay Mac because they talk about the seasons of your business. I've been thinking about creativity and I have been tuned into the lunar phases of creation and my menstrual cycle and hormonal cycles and all of that. And then I was learning. From their course around the seasons of our business, and it just got me thinking, we aren't machines, right? It's hard because as a copywriter, I'm on retainer for folks where I'm having to create consistently. There are times where I can just write and it just flows out and all the ideas are there. And then there are times where I'm like, oh my gosh, I forget how to spell things. And at the same time, there is an expectation for you to be creatively consistent. So even if you aren't being paid for your creative work, there's still this expectation that you are consistent. And um I think a lot about consistency. And you and I both email, we have a weekly-ish newsletter, and you know, the lore is to be consistent with your email list, to be consistent with posting, to be consistent with blogging. And I don't know if we're designed to be consistent, and also we need some level of touch points to build trust with people, right? So I think a lot about knowing what your creative cycle is, what are the supports where you can be creative, you can honor your creative cycles, and also still pay your bills? What is the mindset that you need around this? And how do you both nurture, I'm like just throwing out all these questions, how do you both nurture your creative channel and honor it, but also not extract from it too? I only have questions, no answers, successfully.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it raises so many questions. And to the consistency piece, one thing we've been exploring in Creative Channel is this distinction between discipline and devotion. And I think that a lot of creative people feel like they need to get on this schedule or this regimen where they create for an hour three times a week, or every morning they need to write five pages or a thousand words or whatever. And I think that can work for some people, but I think when we impose a routine on ourselves, when we become rigid in creating that expectation of ourselves, it doesn't account for the fluctuations of energy. And discipline is just like not that fun for anyone. I mean, it is maybe an honorable trait, or under capitalism, it certainly is, under our puritanical origins. But devotion, I think, is something that gives us more flexibility and it honors the fact that we are working with something greater than ourselves, and that it is a gift to get to be with that energy and use that energy and shape it and collaborate with it. And so if we think of it more as this is a gift, this is a thing I get to do because I am human and I don't want the external world to smash that for me. I am devoted to maintaining its aliveness and to deepening that relationship by showing up regularly with a kind of irregular consistency, let's say, yeah, that does honor my capacity and my ability as a person living under capitalism with a lot of responsibilities and demands, but that also honors what creativity is bringing to me. And so recently, like I went to the farm. This is the dilemma in the modern world is like you're gonna take a week away to go to for me, this farm where my days are open. I don't have anything scheduled, I can move around how I want to. But in order to get there, I have to pre-arrange a lot of things and wrap a lot of things up so that I'm not working that much when I'm there. And then when I come back, I have to dive in and start up and catch up. And there's a lot of emails in my box, and I gotta, you know. So even when we take these windows on the other side of that, I came back. There was the normal catching up. My partner was traveling, so I've got to do all the dog walking or I'm gonna do any cleaning that I want to do. And then I had set up three events in a week of different kinds. And by the end of last week, I was like, put me in the ground. I'm my bones were tired. I went to massage chiropractor energy witch, and I hadn't seen her in a while. It was so needed. And sometimes she's channeling things for me, and she's like, Yeah, you don't have to run yourself into the ground to have success. And I my moon is in Capricorn, so the moon is the body. Capricorn's extra discipline, and so my body will work, but my body's getting older and more brittle. And so after that feeling of being wrung out, it's like, okay, I have to remember, you know, when I have a creative burst of energy, I will try to flow with that as much as I can. But I know also for people with ADHD who can get really hyper-focused on something, and this is something you mentioned, and maybe you'll speak to it. There's this like, okay, the energy's flowing, so I'm in the flow until it's gone. And then you're up until two in the morning, but you got to get up at seven and you're not 21 anymore. And so one thing we talked about in Creative Channel with someone who expressed that same experience was like, what about going in with a timer? Like having a ritual at the start of your creative process and a ritual to bring you out of it. So we're not just switching between these two worlds. But part of that ritual can be okay, it's 11 p.m. I do need to go to bed at 12:30. So here's my timer, and it's gonna make a very pretty sound when it goes off. But those are just some thoughts about because the other thing is like, yeah, we can learn about our creative cycle, but it's also changing all the time. It's not on like an automatic repeating cycle.

SPEAKER_01:

So yes, yes. No, it's so funny. I was like, girl, your Capricorn moon is showing, like just set a timer and follow it. Um, no, thanks. Um, so I have a Gemini, I have a Gemini moon. I love this. It's like your body. So my exhaustion shows up a lot more in my nervous system. And I've managed chronic pain for several years, which is very much a nervous system thing in my case. And so that's interesting of thinking about your moon, showing how the ways that you can keep pushing. And yeah, I can do a lot, but then my nervous system is just like, please stop, please stop, please stop. And I think there's something here around, and this has been my dance, and by no means figure this out. You know, sometimes we have parts of us that hold scarcity. Oh, yeah, that are like, well, it's here, so I gotta get it out while it's here, you know, and it won't come back. And I think another thing that I wanted to speak to that you shared is there's an internal consistency and an external consistency. And often we highlight more of the external. Am I publishing my newsletter every week? Am I doing this? But when I actually look at, and this is not the case for everyone, I'm pretty consistent at turning to my tarot deck almost every day. I'm pretty consistent to writing morning pages, even if it's just a couple lines. And that's not things that people see, but those I think are more important than in the long term than what we're doing externally. So I guess what we could offer folks is first off, consistency is so convoluted from a capitalistic perspective, right? It implies that we're machines, that seasons don't happen, that our output is the same during that time. But I think we also can frame it like, what do you want to be internally consistent about and externally consistent about? Because the internal consistency feels more about the devotion aspect, and then the external consistency feels more about the discipline, however, that shows up for folks.

SPEAKER_00:

I hadn't thought about that, that internal and external devotion versus discipline. So that's super helpful. That gives me more to think about. And at the same time, it's a reminder or just something I want to emphasize that we also tend to think that creative consistency is just the external part. And we don't count the yeah, conversations with tarot cards or the morning pages where we're purging the thoughts and clearing the channel. We don't count the walks in the woods where we turn off the podcast and just listen to the trees, listen to the birds, or periods where we're just still and we're resting more and allowing maybe a recent creative burst to digest and integrate before we go forward again.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, what you're describing also is capitalism doesn't see those things as part of the creative process. Right. And I have said this for years. I'm like, my best writing doesn't happen when I'm at my laptop. It happens out in the world. I'm writing when I go out and I notice, you know, what's been alive for me is just noticing the angle of the sunlight changing as we go into fall. And it's when I sit down to my laptop that I'm capturing ideas that I'm going it through. And so I try to keep that in mind. That's a little hack I've given myself because sometimes I'm like, I'm only productive when I'm at my laptop, but I'm like, no, like your best things come, and best is even a qualifier that I'm hesitant to use, but your most alive things come when you are actually not sitting at the conveyor belt of production, of creative production. I wanted to offer also what has helped me with my creative cycles. And we're gonna go into human design another time, but I am working on a blog that what did I call it? I'm gonna name it just to give a teaser. Creative by design, honoring the rhythms of your creativity with human design and tarot. Um yes. And I'm talking about creativity being a pulse, not a product. So that's been sitting with me. I have that in big bold letters on my screen right now. So we'll go into that another time, but I like tracking and paying attention to my cycles. And it started just with tracking lunar phases, and I would just pay attention to what was happening during waxing, waning, full, new, and how my energy was during that time. And then I compared that to what was happening in my hormonal cycle, which I was already tracking because I have PMDD, speaking of like inconsistent. And so then I noticed that my hormones were actually more connected to my creativity than the moon cycle and more powerful. There was still an overlap there. Wow. And I know exactly why I was up until 2 a.m. last night, and I won't be this way in a couple weeks. And I just know that I need less sleep right now because of how my hormonal cycle is. So I think when we are honoring our creative cycles, there is something about tracking and noticing, but then also accepting. And then if you can, planning. So it, you know, I can't always do this, but if I'm starting a new copywriting project, I try to do it around my internal rhythms, but for external, like with my clients, they do the lunar cycle. So if I'm because I'm like, that's collective energy that's impacting the project. And so I will try to schedule it around a new moon and I'll know that that person might be like pretty scattered. And then if I'm scheduling like a feedback call, I might want to do it more around the full moon. So then it's illuminating the things under the surface that they may not be able to name, but it is important for their work. And then the same also with my tarot readings. If you're planting a seed for a new idea, let's do it around a new moon. If you really want to illuminate some deep shit, full moon, you know. And then I also try to pay attention. This is probably a very nerdy thing for me. People probably don't think this much about it, but I also pay attention to my seasonal cycles. So during the winter, I can't have a meeting before 10 a.m. my time. And I also don't want to leave the house after five. But then during the summer, I'm like, yeah, the sun's up. Let's do this. So I think these are all tangible examples around how even though we are working within the confines of capitalism, maybe there's just one cycle that folks can notice and track and see what they can shift. Um, what do you think?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, this is all super interesting the way that you've made these distinctions, hormonally, lunar, internal, external.

SPEAKER_01:

Seasonal.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and I think like the seasonal one for me was the first one that I really latched on to. And shortly after getting into tarot, I came upon the wheel of the year notion and these eight stations of the wheel of the year organized around the equinoxes and the solstices with halfway points in between. And that was huge for me. It was the first time I could start to think about time on a different not the first time, but moving through time day to day, month to month on a bigger scale in connection with nature, which is something I've always felt uh uh drawn to, interested in, devoted to. And I think because you know, seasons are just they're pronounced. You feel them in the air, you see them in nature, your clothes change, the light changes. So we have a lot of and they're slower. So there's more to notice, we have more history to lean on, and we have emotional connections to the different seasons. And so that's a great place to start if you're doing this for the first time, is to start with the seasonal stuff and just notice where is your energy.

SPEAKER_01:

I love that invitation to just start first with the seasons because it's so obvious, right? The examples I gave are pretty nuanced and also may not align for folks. They may not, you know, or they may not have a consistent hormonal cycle or anything like that, but the seasons are consistent. We can deny our internal experience, right? But we it's hard to look out the window and it's 30 degrees outside and it's snowing and not deny that that's happening right now. I remember a big thing for me was I would always fly back to Alaska for the holidays. And a big choice for me once I started listening to my seasonal rhythms was actually not flying back during the holidays. I am gonna start doing that more now that there's some shifts in my family, but initially it was just so freeing to be just like, no, like I don't want to fly in the holidays, I don't want to go up there in Christmas. Why don't I go up there during the summer and the fall when it's a little bit more aligned? And so that was a really nice rhythm that I found with my family of like, and this is maybe something to think about with the holidays, if there's these expectations of like we spend the holidays together, we do this, or we output this, it's like, well, maybe we can do it at a season that actually makes more sense for us, right? And so we got into a different rhythm around how we would visit each other and how we would connect. And also, I think about for anyone who is a service provider, in my case, a therapist, we're trying to slow down, but often there's a lot coming up for our clients around the holidays. There's grief, there's family dynamics, there's financial layers to this. And so even if you can listen to your own rhythms, there is an awareness of like, if you hold space for others, that's going to be impacting you. So, what does that mean for you? I also was thinking about, you know, the opting out, if it can't be external, it can be internal. So I think I'm maybe tapping into a little bit of the eight of swords energy of sometimes we feel really stuck about what we can opt out of. And maybe you have kids, and so opting out of Christmas is not an option, but is there an internal opt-out that you can do? Is there an internal opt-out of this is gonna be my financial limit, right? Or we're only gonna do one activity this week, or we're not gonna host, we're not gonna host dinner, we're gonna do a brunch, an easy brunch, a potlet brunch. That's a little bit more external, but even an internal opt-out of I'm not gonna obsess over if it's the right gifts or not. Or I'm not going to shop online after 9 p.m. or whatever that is. We kind of have this theme of like internal, external, and I think it also matches with how we can engage with this pacing too, because capitalism has us believe that we don't actually get to listen and we can get into this trance of capitalism and productivity, and it takes so much. I don't know how much how it is for you, but it takes so much energy to slow down. It's like you think it would be easy to just like stop what I'm doing, and maybe this is just how I'm designed, but I get momentum around things and I have such a hard time slowing down. So hard. And I can share though this tarot spread that we were talking about too. Should we segue to that? Yes, let's do that. Because this is we love tarot, right? Um so before this podcast, I was thinking of all the stuff that I had to do, but also listening to my body and my nervous system. And it was like, it was very much telling me, like, if you don't slow down, we're gonna have a we're gonna go into a deeper pain player. And so I thought about what cards connected to slowing down for me, and the fours came up as some really gentle, lovely anchors around that in different ways. And so do you want to talk about the fours or can I like invite folks how to do this spread that I did before this podcast?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, let's introduce the fours.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, and how we connect them to slowing down. Yes, okay, because I think it's different probably for me and you, like our connection to the fours is different, but maybe there's some similar. So I I think the four of the swords is like the most obvious, and I'm using the light series tarot right now. And the light series tarot for the four of swords is literally a a person cocooned in a nest. And so I see four of swords as a call for rest, a call for laying horizontal, literally, but also like a mental break too, a mental slowdown. Like, can you put down the swords? Like, how do you connect to the four of swords?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, I cosign all of that. I will add that the four of swords follows the three of swords, and then the two of swords as well. And actually, interestingly, I think starting tomorrow, we are in the period of time that the four of swords governs it's third piece of Libra season. So it's got like a 10-day period. So we're like at the end of three of swords time right now. And studying with Christopher Marmalejo has revealed this other arc in that progression where two of swords is this withholding. We could compare it to I have a creative vision and I'm not doing anything about it. Like that holding, I'm gonna I'm gonna pretend I'm blind to it. I'm gonna pretend it's not there. I'm gonna keep doing what I'm doing, I'm fine. And then three of swords is a Saturn card, and it's like, no, we can't hide it forever. The honest thing has to come out, which will create some kind of breakage, maybe some kind of pain or grief. Maybe it's like, oh, I wish I'd started this three years ago and I'm sad about that. Or in a relationship, it's like, here's how I really feel, and I've been afraid to tell you that. And here's some of my pain around being honest, and here's some of your pain about hearing something that is hard to say. And then the Four of Swords is like, okay, that was a lot of psychological labor to call out the thing and say the thing and share the thing. And now we, yeah, like you said, we need this cocoon, we need a place of stillness, we need a little sanctuary for ourselves to just be in solitude. And I think solitude is an incredibly powerful form of rest. Some people find it uh uneasy and uncomfortable. And if that's you, I think that's a great place to explore because we are the person we spend the most time with in life. And the more we can befriend ourselves and find joy in being with ourselves, then we can distance ourselves from a lot of these distractions or other people's needs and desires.

SPEAKER_01:

I see Four of Swords as you know, some people might see that nest and be like, Oh, you're just like sitting and meditating. Sometimes for me, my favorite Four of Swords is the zoning out to a really good TV show that I like. Just giving my brain something else to focus on, some kind of mental break that maybe is stillness. I do need those times, but sometimes I need just like distraction. I just need to be hooked into a storyline. So I did want to offer that for folks with busy the busy brains club. With the Four of Pentacles, I think it has these traditional connotations around your finances and your security. When I think about the Four of Pentacles as a way to slow down, I do think a lot about the body. I do think a lot about scarcity and like, do I think I don't have what I need or do I truly not have what I need? And I think of the Four of Pentacles as like a chair, thinking about all four legs on the ground. Do you have all the things that you need? I remember my therapist gave me this really great analogy years and years ago around like, you know, our life is like a chair. And if one leg is wobbly, we can do okay. But if two are off, then we're having a really hard time. And so if we want to look at four of pentacles practically, if this is a card that you connect with for slowing down, it's like, what are the legs of your chair and how are they each doing? And maybe there can be an acceptance if you got a wobbly one, if you have both off, or maybe you don't have to fully fix that wobbly leg, we can just get it a little bit more stable. What I mean by that tangibly is for some people, the four legs are our family, our health, our relationship, and our work. And so maybe things in our relationship feel a little bit wobbly, and that's okay. We just have to accept that that's the season of our relationship, or maybe our career feels a little bit wobbly because we're like, oh my gosh, AI is taking over. I'm gonna take my job. And you're like, okay, I can't really change that, but maybe I need to skill up a little bit. Maybe I could feel a little bit less wobbly around that. Once again, that's implying doing more, but another option. How do you connect? I love your the way you describe the two, three, four of the things and the progression there.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I love everything you're saying about the Four of Pentacles. I think in my workbook, there's an exercise for the four pillars where you look at what they are, and I think you draw them, which I remember having fun doing. And yeah, a card of like shoring up, stabilizing in that card as well. In the writer weight, the Smith Wait deck, there the figure is separated from the village, the city that's behind them, and they've got the four coins arranged around their body. So yeah, how am I resourced? How am I held up? Sometimes it is money. Do I need to like pull back and focus on paying off some debt? Will that give me more security? Or just a time to check in what's supporting me? Are my thoughts or feelings about that support true if I really look at the facts?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, maybe the four of pentacles is also an invitation to slow down spending. You know, it could be as simple as why am I spending this money on this? Is it compulsive? Is it feeling like I have to, or do I want to? Should we talk about the four of wands? I actually really loved connecting four of wands and four of cups to slowing down because I feel like the four of swords and four of pentacles, it's like those are kind of clear slowdown interpretations, but the four of wands and four of cups aren't always as clear to folks. And so I have some thoughts on that. So before before we got in the podcast, I pulled all the fours out of the deck and shuffled them. And I was like, okay, which four do I really need to anchor into right now that I need to connect with? And the four of wands reverse showed up for me. And what I connect to the four of wands for slowing down is like stop and smell the roses kind of thing. Are you getting so focused on doing and completing and finishing that you're not actually pausing to look around you and see what you can celebrate and see who you can connect with? And so when I received this in reverse, I was like, oh, are you really not connecting with what you do get to celebrate right now and what you do get to lean into and feel secure about? So that was my thought. If folks get the four of wands as their slow down card, it could even also be like literally slow down and make plans with someone. I also see the four of wands as an invitation to celebrate a milestone that isn't often celebrated. What milestones are you not celebrating in your life or business? How do you connect to the four of wands and slowing down?

SPEAKER_00:

Again, I agree with all of that. And would just add or emphasize, I suppose, that the celebration piece is incredibly powerful in the creative cycle. Like you said, we're always like, do the thing, finish the thing. Okay, people didn't hate the thing. Great, on to the next thing. Go, go, you know, and there's no pause for what did I make? Yeah, how did it go? I worked really hard. Let's celebrate that it happened, that I did it, that we did it, or whatever the case. And I I like that word milestone with the card. I do think celebration is a restorative element. I think it also honors creativity because it takes us a little bit out of that extractive cycle of just keep giving me, keep providing. It's like, let me pause and appreciate. And when creativity feels appreciated, it's like, okay, we love working together. Let's keep going because I see. That you appreciate me and you appreciate what we're doing together.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes. Yes. I love this. I feel like you were just giving me extra insight into receiving that card. The Four of Cups, I see it as an invitation to look at what is being held out to you that you are either accepting or rejecting. If I were to pull this card for myself and slowing down, it would be like, am I dissatisfied with the way things are? And is that why I can't slow down? Or if I were to slow down, would I actually see something, feel something that I don't really want to feel? What's your connection to the Four of Cups?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, we can go to the two and the three of Cups. Yeah. The two, these people are coming together. In the three, there's more people coming together. And so again, relationship cards, those are cancer cards. And then the four, you just get an individual who's a little bit withdrawn looking as this cup is offered, and they already have several cups. So sometimes it feels like the social exhaustion, just like, yeah, relationships are work. A little similar to Four of Swords energy, but like the rest you need after even the good stuff of the relationships, the socializing, the playfulness, the listening to conversations and taking in information and contributing to the social atmosphere. So that's one layer. And then I think another piece that I talk about is to go to human design. I know that the key for a manifesting generator is to wait to respond, to not just immediately say yes. And so that card is to me the thing that the manifesting generators are trying to do is the waiting to respond. When you pause and you stop, like something came into your field, an invitation, a can you do this? A do you have the bandwidth for this? And instead of the automatic, well, I don't want to lose my job, or I don't want this person to be mad at me. So I'm gonna do it. There's a pause where it's what does my body say? How much energy do I have? Do I actually want to do this? Or what are the other trade-offs I'm considering as I make this choice? So yeah, your friends are like, come to this Christmas party, and you've already got a Christmas party scheduled the next day, and you're like, Well, I don't want to leave them out. But your body's like, girl, how are you gonna do all these parties? And you just sit with that for a second and you're like, you know what, I gotta decline because I'm really focusing on resting during the holidays in a brand new way. And so yeah, where you look within before you say yes or no.

SPEAKER_01:

And then there is an element, I love this. I actually love this interpretation. I think there is an element of sitting. Oh, it's also generators that have to wait to respond to some man gen and generators. And so I think there's also an element of saying no is gonna make you sit with a discomfort. It's not like you're gonna have to sit and be alone with the like, oh my god, do they hate me? Which loops back to the binary that we're conditioned is either do they like it or they hate it? Do they like me or they hate me? And so I feel like with four of cups, there's a real invitation to sit with the discomfort of saying no, because when we say yes to one thing, this is very generator or manifesting generator, when we say one yes to something that's not aligned, if it's not the right cup, then we don't then we can't see that cup that's coming out the other way that's actually meant for us. So there's a real patience in this card, too. So when I did this card, so folks listening, you can pull out all the four of the cards of your deck, you can shuffle, pull out the card, and then go back to where we talked about each of these cards, and they'll get a little mini reading on what that four might be communicating to you.

SPEAKER_00:

So that's where you would take out the four fours and shuffle them and see which one comes up for you, and then compare to what we're talking about. Okay, yes, good. I'm looking for my fours right now. Yeah, what fours did you try this? They're all hiding. I haven't seen one of them yet. There's one. There's the other. I can't find one of these fours. This is a disaster. Well, do you have yours out? I do.

SPEAKER_01:

Do you want me to draw yours for you?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm gonna shuffle and just tell me when to stop.

SPEAKER_02:

Four of ones. Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Time to celebrate. That's fair.

SPEAKER_01:

Wait, so yeah, we both got the four of ones.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, that feels good because I do feel like I'm having more energy. There are things I feel like I have the energy to be creating, but there are things to celebrate. I feel like celebration is a little bit more of an active recovery, active restoration. So and tomorrow is Friday, my Venus day. As a Libra rising, Venus is also your goddess, your planet.

SPEAKER_01:

Wait, so that means Venus is both of our chart rulers because you're Taurus rising. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00:

So Friday celebrations for both of us to restore energy. We covered a lot. We did, we really did. Thank you for coming back for these explorations to our listeners. Thank you for joining us. It is always a pleasure to have you here. And I'll point you to our email list once more because we would love to connect with you through other aspects of our work. So we hope this conversation served you and entertained you a little bit. And we'll talk to you next time. Thank you so much. Many thanks to Ariana for coming on the show yet again and joining me in these rich explorations of the tarot, of creativity, of just living life in a creative and magical way. I'm excited to continue these explorations. Ariana and I are meeting about once a month to give you a new episode. And I encourage you to head over to Ariana's website, ariannasmith.com, which will be in the show notes. And there you can sign up for her newsletter so that you can hear about some of her offerings like Pitch Party before they happen instead of after the fact. And if you're not already on my email list, I think you might enjoy hearing from me there as well. That's where I share more about upcoming offers, workshops, some of my special magical products and projects. You can sign up for my newsletter at typewritertarot.com. When you do sign up, you will also get the first three journaling prompts from my workbook, Tarot for Creative Spirits. So you'll get the journaling prompts for The Fool, the Magician, and the High Priestess. And thanks for being here. Thank you for listening. It's beautiful to transmit these thoughts and explorations to you across space and time. I'm wishing you a beautiful week, a beautiful month, a beautiful holiday season. And I hope and plan to have another episode for you very soon. Until then, enjoy your creative and magical life.