Latest / The Woo Report: Everyday Spirituality / 7. Tarot 101 and Transformative Rituals with Lori Dyan

Transcript

7. Tarot 101 and Transformative Rituals with Lori Dyan · The Woo Report: Everyday Spirituality

• 0:00
  I love an oracle deck.
• 0:02
  They are typically light and bright, and you can ask the universe a question, poll card or two and receive a gentle nudge or guidance.
• 0:10
  But tarot cards have always felt different to me.
• 0:13
  A tarot deck includes the death card, the fool card, swords and coins and cups.
• 0:19
  And every card has such depth that when you're doing a spread, if you're not fluent in the language of tarot, it can be a tad overwhelming.
• 0:27
  I've dipped in to learn it a few times, and it's so fascinating, but I have in no way been able to master it.
• 0:33
  Lucky for us, today's guest, Lauri Eaton, has been reading tarot cards for 35 years.
• 0:39
  Plus, she's an expert in the ritual space.
• 0:42
  Her book, Burn Your Shit was an instant bestseller and I love this.
• 0:47
  But as she explains in a bit, if you're listening to this right now, the card she pulls for the collective in this episode is meant for you in the exact moment you hear it.
• 0:59
  Meeting you wherever you are.
• 1:01
  So if you're a visual person, this could be a good episode to watch on YouTube.
• 1:05
  But I'll also drop a photo of the card she pulls on Instagram for you.
• 1:09
  I just love the idea that the cards find us in the exact right moment to lend a hand.
• 1:14
  Our unseen helpers rallying for us, rooting for us in every moment and in this moment.
• 1:20
  I'm full of gratitude because I'm so happy you're here.
• 1:24
  Not only to learn some tools that can be fun and helpful, but also to be cheered on and supported.
• 1:32
  Hi, I'm Laura Scott Patty, filmmaker and woowoo enthusiast here today.
• 1:38
  To cut through the noise, pull back the veil, and cozy up in the space between reality and spirituality.
• 1:45
  Thanks for listening to the Woo report! Lori, welcome to the report.
• 1:54
  Thank you so much for being here and spending some time with me today.
• 1:58
  I'm so excited.
• 1:59
  Laura, I couldn't think of a better thing to be doing right now.
• 2:02
  I'm super pumped to be here with you.
• 2:03
  So I want to talk about tarot.
• 2:05
  So you have been doing this for 30 years or 35 years now.
• 2:11
  35 years.
• 2:12
  Okay.
• 2:12
  When society things about tarot, there is a wide range of how we feel about it.
• 2:19
  There's the spiritual and alternative healing peace where people can find it supportive.
• 2:24
  Then there is this like suspicious or skeptics piece where maybe it's just for fun or for entertainment.
• 2:32
  And then there's like the really conservative, maybe sometimes religious piece that yeah, demonic which I just think demonic.
• 2:39
  So funny word.
• 2:40
  Why do you think there is such a range around tarot?
• 2:44
  Like why why are people feeling all these different sorts of ways about it?
• 2:48
  It's funny because they always have felt all sorts of different ways about it.
• 2:51
  And and it is kind of misrepresented in the media and pop culture.
• 2:57
  But I get it right, because it seems it seems kind of wackadoo if you don't know what it's really for.
• 3:03
  And, and there are some pictures on these cards that look super scary guy lying in the swamp dead with a bunch of swords sticking out of him like that doesn't look fun.
• 3:12
  So it's definitely it can be self-perpetuating a little bit, but tarot is what you make of it.
• 3:17
  I always say tarot cards, astrology, numerology, any of these sort of more metaphysical or quote unquote occult kind of practices.
• 3:28
  It's all about intention and rituals, too.
• 3:30
  It's whether you're in church or dancing naked under a full moon, like it's intention.
• 3:34
  So I have a hammer.
• 3:35
  My intention with this hammer could be to hang a beautiful picture.
• 3:38
  Or it could be to go smash in a car window.
• 3:40
  Like, it can do either thing. And.
• 3:43
  And I think that these cards, you know, more often than not, people think it's either a party trick or it's like the devil's playground, you know, using them.
• 3:52
  And my tagline is woo woo without the cuckoo for a reason.
• 3:56
  Because I know what these cards are.
• 3:57
  I know how profound and practical they practically they can be used.
• 4:01
  And my intention is to put them in the hands of as many people as possible because they work.
• 4:06
  So how do they work? Tell us how they work.
• 4:10
  On that note, what's the tarot?
• 4:11
  What's tarot 101?
• 4:13
  It's really interesting because people often confuse as well tarot cards with oracle cards and Oracle cards.
• 4:19
  You can have any number of cards in a deck.
• 4:22
  They can be about any kind of theme, and they often have lovely little sayings or affirmations on them, which are an oracle deck.
• 4:28
  Yes, yes, beautiful.
• 4:29
  They can feel good.
• 4:29
  It's a feel good deck. Yeah.
• 4:32
  And it can give you a prompt of something to think about or write about.
• 4:35
  They're lovely tarot cards.
• 4:37
  Follow a system and this system is composed of two parts.
• 4:40
  You have a major Arcana and a minor Arcana.
• 4:43
  The Major Arcana is the sun, death, the tower, the devil, the world, the star, all the big ones.
• 4:50
  And they usually have a.
• 4:51
  Yeah, they have the, the word usually on the bottom of the card.
• 4:55
  And those are tend to be big life.
• 4:57
  Like you said, existential all humanity, collective unconscious, you know, our life path kind of messaging.
• 5:04
  And then the Minor Arcana is split into four suits.
• 5:08
  It's usually cups and coins or pentacles, swords and wands.
• 5:12
  And each of these suits has a different vibe to it.
• 5:15
  Kind of like each astrology sign has a different vibe to it.
• 5:18
  It's kind of like that.
• 5:19
  cups are often about emotions and love and, you know, the inner world coins or Pentacles.
• 5:25
  That's money.
• 5:26
  the material world swords are analytical.
• 5:29
  They're action oriented.
• 5:29
  They're the ones because they're swords.
• 5:32
  They're often very scary looking.
• 5:34
  And then, which one did I do once?
• 5:37
  Wands are all about, you see, usually the ones.
• 5:39
  They're the sticks with little buds poking out of them.
• 5:41
  So they tend to represent new cycles, new beginnings, passion, purpose, potential, that kind of thing.
• 5:46
  And each of these cards has a different, whether it's major or minor arcana.
• 5:50
  They have different, images on them, and each image tells a story.
• 5:54
  And then when you put them together, they tell the story of you.
• 5:59
  The story of you.
• 5:59
  It's like, that feels like such a big concept.
• 6:03
  You're like, okay, it feels ominous, almost like, yeah, or maybe he's at me.
• 6:07
  Am I projecting that? It feels ominous?
• 6:09
  Well, it can feel overwhelming because you're like, what?
• 6:11
  And I always tell people a reading, at least with me, is I always say it's a conversation with your soul.
• 6:18
  I am the interpreter.
• 6:19
  I'm not ever telling you.
• 6:20
  I think you saw this when you had a reading.
• 6:22
  I'm not telling you anything.
• 6:22
  That's super surprising.
• 6:24
  It's more usually the nudges you needed or the validation or the just breadcrumbs rather than, you know, say goodbye to the dog or you're going to meet Bob at Starbucks on Tuesday.
• 6:35
  Like, that's not what it is.
• 6:37
  Yeah, it's it's more a mirror reflecting you in the energy at the moment you're in and sort of what's to come or maybe to reframe, reframe things from the past a little bit differently, that kind of thing.
• 6:48
  That's what these cards do.
• 6:49
  I've kind of always seen them as like the darker side, as you just talked about, like the Oracle deck, you ask the universal question on the Oracle deck, you pick it.
• 6:58
  You're not going to get a death card.
• 7:00
  Normally I it's not the decks I use anyway.
• 7:03
  You're not going to get a cut says death.
• 7:04
  And so it feels safe.
• 7:07
  And yet you could still get some guidance.
• 7:09
  So are they scary or are they not? Yeah.
• 7:12
  Let me put everyone's mind at ease.
• 7:15
  I always tell people there are no bad tarot cards, okay?
• 7:18
  There are just bad tarot card readers.
• 7:21
  And again, it kind of goes back to that intention thing.
• 7:24
  But like the death card, it can scare the crap out of you.
• 7:27
  Or you can look at it as the message it is, which is transformational change.
• 7:31
  And what makes that card uncomfortable or yucky for people is their relationship with change.
• 7:36
  So if they embrace it, it's great.
• 7:37
  If they resist it, it can kind of suck even though the end result is still fabulous.
• 7:42
  So that's an example.
• 7:43
  I do readings all the time and people will get the quote unquote bad cards, the ones that look scary.
• 7:49
  And it's not like I'm blowing sunshine up everyone's but being like, oh, it's fabulous when it's not, but it's when I do readings.
• 7:54
  It's not just saying, oh, if you're in it, you know, like, this is this things are looking rough right now.
• 7:59
  It's it's more like, okay.
• 8:00
  And here's a way to reframe things so you can maybe move forward with a little more grace, speed, ease, or this is a way that you can do work to help yourself so you don't get into this kind of situation next time.
• 8:10
  Like there's usually work involved.
• 8:12
  And when you see these people who are, you know, just getting can we swear in this podcast, oh yeah or no? Okay.
• 8:18
  If you see people like getting scared shitless on, you know, out of a reading, it's not going to help.
• 8:24
  It's just going to it's just you're going to be in this like stressed out state.
• 8:27
  You're going to be in this fight flight freeze kind of moment that can be extended.
• 8:30
  I've had to deal with people so often who've had readings by people who are horrible at it, who scare the crap out of them, and then I have to, like, work to undo that, because.
• 8:40
  The messages that I give to you through the cards, you have free will, and you can do whatever you want with these messages, so you can ignore it and go about your day.
• 8:50
  Or you can like think about it, you can process it.
• 8:52
  You can re listen to the recording.
• 8:54
  That's why I insist people record them, because I talk so much and so fast that it's too much to remember.
• 8:58
  Write down and often, because my readings are from now to 6 to 9 months out, life has to happen a little bit for those messages and things to show up.
• 9:08
  but the thing that's that I find really interesting with these people who are who are getting freaked out by the cards is that there are no prophecies, there's no fortune telling, you know, and and I would never say to someone, you're going to meet the love of your life on October 1st, because the last day of September, you're going to be trolling the streets.
• 9:25
  Is it you?
• 9:28
  Is it you? Is it you?
• 9:29
  You get in the car, you know, like you've got to watch about confirmation bias.
• 9:32
  You got to watch about self-fulfilling prophecy.
• 9:35
  It's giving you a lay of the land.
• 9:37
  But you are meant to be a co-creator in your life.
• 9:40
  You are meant to be working in partnership with these messages, not just following blindly what they tell you.
• 9:48
  I love that.
• 9:49
  So when we did our reading, the other day, I did get the death card.
• 9:54
  No. You did. Yeah.
• 9:56
  No surprise here.
• 9:57
  Just surround it all the time with like, with with death.
• 10:02
  And I think the best way possible.
• 10:04
  But, but but it does make you sweat for a second.
• 10:08
  It just, it does make you sweat for a second until you.
• 10:11
  But but you know what?
• 10:13
  Isn't that what it's all about?
• 10:15
  are we supposed to kind of sweat up a sweat a little bit to figure out?
• 10:18
  Like to really take a deep look at ourselves and figure out, like, what is it that we need to transform?
• 10:24
  What is it that we need to change for sure and point.
• 10:27
  Yeah. And something like the death card.
• 10:28
  It looks super scary because the message is a big message.
• 10:31
  It's like there's big transformation coming and transformation is not sunshine and rainbows.
• 10:35
  It is usually going through it.
• 10:38
  You know, it is usually having some sort of experience or a reckoning dark night of the soul that you come out the other side looking at that previous iteration of yourself saying, I don't even recognize that person.
• 10:49
  That doesn't come from, you know, writing a poem and having a nap that comes from like being in the muck.
• 10:55
  And so that might be why a card like the death card, even intuitively, I mean, it doesn't help that there's like a skeleton on a horse and he's holding like he looks like the Grim Reaper, like that's not helping things.
• 11:05
  But even if it was like la la la, just seeing the word death can make people go, It can jolt you a bit, but it has your attention.
• 11:13
  Now for that message to to try to embrace change despite the inherent discomfort that comes with any kind of change because it's coming.
• 11:21
  So let's make it.
• 11:23
  Let's make it as easy as possible, knowing that it's not going to be that easy.
• 11:27
  So when you give people a reading, when anyone gets a reading and I know you do, you do daily readings on your Instagram and you do them for people one on one.
• 11:36
  when anyone gets reading, like, how do we know that it is meant for us?
• 11:40
  Like we're going to do a reading in a second and how do we know that it's it's just is it just it's just meant for anyone that's listening at that exact time or how do we know?
• 11:49
  Yeah, yeah, I love I love this question, Laura, because the thing about tarot, you know, and it has this system and there are all these I know we'll probably get into it a bit later, but there are all these myths about tarot that it's tied to Kabbalah or ancient Egypt and blah, blah.
• 12:01
  It's not.
• 12:02
  It's a bunch of old friggin white French dudes centuries ago who took these cards with these pictures and assigned these esoteric meanings to them and made them into these sort of like occult party trick things.
• 12:14
  So Carl Jung, the famous psychoanalyst, was cuckoo for tarot.
• 12:19
  He love tarot.
• 12:20
  And it's because tarot, all of these images are representative of the the.
• 12:26
  They represent archetypes, okay?
• 12:28
  And these archetypes are how we exist in the world.
• 12:32
  It is how we tell the story of humanity, and they represent the ways that we are all plugged into the collective unconscious.
• 12:38
  Like, I guess he's talking about it.
• 12:40
  And that is why when I half the time when I postcard of the day, I've been doing it for years.
• 12:45
  Little tarot scope for everyone on Instagram Live or Instagram Reels.
• 12:49
  And when I when I post that card, half the time I'm thinking, why am I posting this?
• 12:53
  It's obviously just my message.
• 12:54
  Like no one else is going to want this.
• 12:56
  And I get notes all day long.
• 12:58
  Comments, DMs, whatever from people.
• 13:00
  Oh my god, how did you know that's my message, blah blah blah.
• 13:02
  And that's because the messages of these cards are randomly specific and specifically random.
• 13:08
  So I'm going to tell you a story about the death card and transformational change.
• 13:12
  You obviously, because of the work that you do and the experience that you've had, you took it on multiple levels.
• 13:17
  It was like, of course, my world, my work is is is marinating in death.
• 13:22
  So and the message that was across from it, who was very affirming of that, like, yes, you are on the path doing this work.
• 13:28
  And also the, you know, transformational change is coming, blah, blah, blah.
• 13:34
  And then someone else is watching on Instagram and they're thinking, oh God, it's because I know I'm going to be having a conversation with my boyfriend about, I'm done with this, you know?
• 13:44
  And so, you know, you can look at it, it meets you at the moment you're at.
• 13:48
  And I always say, even though I do a card every I do it every weekday morning because mama needs her weekends.
• 13:52
  But the weekday mornings you might you may only see Wednesday's reading on Sunday.
• 13:58
  And that's okay, because it found you when you needed it to find you and take what works and leave the rest.
• 14:05
  You know, some people will hear a message in the morning and be like, I don't know what she's talking about, but then by the end of the day, they're like, oh my God, that's what that Page of Swords was about.
• 14:12
  Oh, I wish I'd shut my mouth like she told me to.
• 14:14
  You know, tarot can give you really practical advice, like double, you know, double check your work, cross your TS, aren't your eyes.
• 14:21
  You might screw something up.
• 14:22
  It's not saying something bad will happen.
• 14:24
  She's saying something bad. Could happen if you're not paying attention.
• 14:26
  Like those kinds of practical things.
• 14:28
  Practical things, but also really deep things.
• 14:30
  Like what kind of garbage are you holding on to?
• 14:33
  What burdens are you carrying that are not yours to bear?
• 14:37
  You need to do some thinking about that and maybe do some rituals to like get rid of it, you know, so it can be surface or deep.
• 14:43
  Deep.
• 14:44
  So should we do one for everyone listening right now?
• 14:48
  Yeah. We should. Yes.
• 14:49
  So you're going to hear me knock.
• 14:51
  I always knock my deck. Now I'm shuffling.
• 14:52
  You can, I always knock the deck because it sort of clears the energetic Jack from the last reading.
• 14:58
  It just is a little palate cleanser.
• 15:00
  I like that.
• 15:01
  And then I'm just going to cut the deck because I like to cut it.
• 15:07
  All right.
• 15:08
  So I am going to just ask what the collective needs to know right now.
• 15:11
  Yeah.
• 15:12
  Let's see. Great.
• 15:12
  What do we all need to know right now?
• 15:15
  I always close my eyes.
• 15:15
  I don't know why.
• 15:16
  Oh, my God, this is so funny.
• 15:19
  I don't know if I was being psychic.
• 15:20
  Maybe, the card I pulled was the message.
• 15:22
  I was just talking about paying attention.
• 15:24
  So. Also.
• 15:26
  Oh, gooses.
• 15:26
  When something like that happens, it's kind of like, no, y'all really need to pay attention to this.
• 15:31
  Oh my gosh, tell us this.
• 15:33
  It's just like when a card of the day shows up in a reading that same day.
• 15:36
  It's like that, that card's message has a little extra juice, and the death card was the card of the day.
• 15:41
  The day reading.
• 15:42
  Yep, show us.
• 15:43
  So we have this five of coins and the five of coins.
• 15:46
  It's these two guys barefoot in the snow, you know, and they're passing by this window, and there's money and warmth and love and all this good stuff inside.
• 15:54
  And they're missing out. And it's because.
• 15:56
  And so the tarot 101, here's how also we'll talk about how you develop your own dialog with with your cards over time.
• 16:03
  I've had this deck for 35 years.
• 16:05
  So some of my meanings, they're all rooted in the, you know, the ancient tarot meaning, but often they just off road in a new direction.
• 16:12
  And so I'll sometimes give people both interpretations.
• 16:16
  I'll say, here's the tarot 101, but I always go deeper or in another direction.
• 16:21
  And that's just something that I gained through time and experience.
• 16:24
  So the five of coins on the surface is like, yo, pay attention, sign your contracts.
• 16:28
  but but look at them 15 times before you do it, you know?
• 16:31
  And for me, even though it's a coin card, the tarot 101 is saying poverty lack scarcity.
• 16:39
  It can be a really scary looking card.
• 16:41
  But for me, it goes upstream from that.
• 16:43
  It's saying, yo, pay attention so that you don't find yourself in a place of lack so that you don't find that you've screwed something up.
• 16:49
  So don't get OCD about it.
• 16:51
  We don't want to go on the other like too far in the other way, but you want to just make sure that you are, you know, before you sign something or verbally agree to something, know what you're getting into because something could come back and bite in the ass.
• 17:02
  It's not saying that something bad will happen.
• 17:04
  Something bad could happen.
• 17:04
  If you're just going, yeah, sure. Okay.
• 17:06
  No problem.
• 17:07
  And then they come back and go, Laura, is that your signature?
• 17:09
  And you're like, oh crap.
• 17:10
  So it could be someone sending out 50 resumes, realizing they spelled resume wrong, right?
• 17:17
  Or it could be health related.
• 17:17
  Nothing to do with money.
• 17:19
  Like get that mole checked.
• 17:19
  That looks weird.
• 17:21
  Or it could be don't say you'll help that guy move.
• 17:24
  Not knowing if it's a fifth floor walk up with a water bed.
• 17:27
  you know, whatever it is, just be really thorough and conscientious.
• 17:30
  Don't let stuff slip through the cracks.
• 17:32
  And if someone's trying to get you to sign on to something or agree to something and you're not quite getting it, that's not on you.
• 17:39
  The onus is on that person to explain it to you so you get it.
• 17:42
  So like, I don't get it, do better or get someone on your behalf to advocate for you who gets it like a realtor, a financial planner, a lawyer, that kind of thing.
• 17:50
  So just thorough, not OCD.
• 17:53
  Get on top of your business, I love it, I love it.
• 17:57
  Okay, I hope that we all heard that it's and that's a good practical message.
• 18:02
  Right.
• 18:02
  And then sometimes the message is like love yourself more like give yourself a hug.
• 18:06
  Yeah, right.
• 18:07
  It's sort of it meets you where you're at.
• 18:09
  Right. Well, it's really interesting for me.
• 18:11
  I'm like, I can't share why it is right now.
• 18:14
  But that's a really interesting thing that I got an email that I opened to right before we talked. So, funny how that works.
• 18:22
  It is funny how that works. I love it.
• 18:25
  You mentioned this very briefly, and I didn't know.
• 18:26
  That's like, a bunch of French guys made up tarot, I didn't know. Yes.
• 18:30
  So my book that's coming out called Big Deck Energy The Life Changing Wisdom of Tarot, coming out in June, available for preorder.
• 18:36
  But it goes into all areas of tarot.
• 18:39
  How to choose a deck, how to start working with your deck, the meaning of every card.
• 18:41
  Not just the tarot 101, but my interpretation that's been developed over decades.
• 18:46
  And there's a whole chapter called tarot Before TikTok, which is the the history of these cards.
• 18:52
  And there's all this mystery shrouding tarot to it, and that's part of what makes it seem so, like spooky and maybe wicked.
• 18:59
  And it is all promo.
• 19:02
  It is all advertising, because we had these old French white dudes who were trying to make a buck, who were taking these cards with these pictures that had, I mean, and there are all these things too, about like, oh, that came from the Roma, from the gypsies and all these like, gross sulfur perpetuating not great stereotypes and stuff.
• 19:22
  And it's all B.S.
• 19:24
  what is true is that there were these cards with these pictures that these really good sales people assigned these sort of esoteric meanings to, and started using them in, in occult type settings.
• 19:37
  And like, I'm going to tell your fortune and we're going to do that.
• 19:40
  and it was very fortune teller and that was sort of like 1700s.
• 19:44
  And then in the early 1900s, the writers, the writer Waite Smith deck was developed.
• 19:50
  And that's the sort of OG tarot deck that everyone kind of recognizes.
• 19:53
  And that's the deck that I use.
• 19:55
  Although my cards are so old, they're very faded pictures.
• 19:58
  You can't even see what the pictures are in some of them, but that's sort of where a lot of the modern decks stemmed from that original design.
• 20:05
  And this, this artist, Pamela Coleman Smith, who gets she got no money for it at the time. She got no recognition.
• 20:11
  People didn't even call it the Rider-waite Smith deck until recently.
• 20:16
  And the the decks that we use are rooted in that.
• 20:20
  And and so they also assigned all of this, you know, Kabbalah and oh, they were found in the ancient tombs of Egypt.
• 20:28
  No, no. Sorry, babes.
• 20:30
  I mean, I get into it very deeply in the, in the book because it is fascinating.
• 20:36
  but it also just goes to show, I mean, I rag on these guys all the time for, for all of the nonsense they were shoving in them.
• 20:41
  But here's the thing.
• 20:42
  One of these cards, the Page of Cups, I call it the Brené Brown card because I tell people to watch Brené Brown's Call to courage, because it's all about the power of vulnerability.
• 20:51
  And she shows you how vulnerability is your superpower.
• 20:53
  And there's a card I called the Glennon Doyle Card.
• 20:56
  So I'm kind of doing what these guys are doing.
• 20:59
  You know, I am using it to assign certain meanings.
• 21:03
  I'm doing it more to help people with their healing and their evolution, you know, and to try and enlighten and inspire them.
• 21:11
  But it's using it in a way that is modern and applicable and accessible for people today.
• 21:16
  And that's kind of what they were doing at the time, although they were sort of snake oil salesmen to, oh my gosh, that's all so interesting.
• 21:22
  So you so you just talked about one of your books, but you got a two book deal with Harpercollins.
• 21:30
  Yeah.
• 21:30
  And you manifested this and the other your other book is Burn Your Shit, which is about rituals.
• 21:38
  And, you know, I'm making some assumptions here, but did you did you manifest the book deal by doing some of these rituals?
• 21:46
  And can you let us in on the secret, on the magic?
• 21:50
  Absolutely. And that's why that's why I wrote the book.
• 21:52
  I want everyone to have these secrets, you know, because anyone can do this.
• 21:55
  Rituals.
• 21:56
  Our our humanity is rooted in rituals.
• 21:59
  We've been doing rituals since we were, you know, drawing on caves and dancing around fires or doing the wave at a hockey game or singing a national anthem.
• 22:08
  Having a book club like these are all rituals, and they're essential to enhancing our productivity, our connection to our self, the divine, other people.
• 22:17
  The main one, the main two that I do are manifesting and burning shit.
• 22:21
  And I always say in my readings, you have to pull the weeds so you can plant the seeds.
• 22:25
  And pulling the weeds is about releasing and letting go of what no longer serves you.
• 22:30
  And if you do it around a full moon because the full moon is when the moon reaches the apex of its energy and then releases, right?
• 22:39
  If you do that ritual under a full moon, it just gives everything a little extra juice.
• 22:43
  It's a little lunar boost.
• 22:46
  You could do it on a random Tuesday morning.
• 22:47
  You're still going to feel great writing down what you're no longer wanting to hold lighting and on fire and then saying, and so it is.
• 22:54
  And then bye bye to put ritual to something, to put it, to put a tangible action towards an intention is where you find magic.
• 23:01
  So that's pulling the weeds.
• 23:03
  Planting the seeds is manifesting.
• 23:05
  You do that under a new moon, which is today, and today.
• 23:08
  It's what we're shooting it.
• 23:09
  But I don't know what this will air, but still.
• 23:11
  But still relevant information. It's going to happen to wealth, right?
• 23:14
  I was just going to say this is just a hang onto this until the next new moon because, but for you today, Laura, you write your intentions down.
• 23:21
  What?
• 23:21
  You're ready to call into your life, and then it's not just a bunch of ding dongs in front of their vision board.
• 23:26
  Like, when's it happening? Like, that's not manifesting.
• 23:29
  It's about being clear and focused on whatever your goal or your intention is.
• 23:32
  And do a vision board if you want, or journal or daydream, but follow up your intention with some inspired action baby steps to get going in that direction and then forget the path.
• 23:41
  And don't worry about when or how.
• 23:43
  Focus on what and why. Look at the, the shifts that need to happen internally and externally to help you get from where you are to where you want to be.
• 23:53
  And then if you want to give it a little bit where I'm not done yet, then you want to give it a little, a little extra magic, then you fold up that list, put it under your pillow, sleep on it, and then the next time you do the wash, you don't burn it or throw it out.
• 24:04
  You hang on to it and you might pop it in there to keep cooking or put it in a nightstand or on an altar.
• 24:10
  But you hang on to this stuff.
• 24:11
  And that is how I manifested not only my husband, but also my divorce.
• 24:16
  Thank you very much.
• 24:17
  And it is how I manifested this two book deal.
• 24:20
  So let me tell you about that secret.
• 24:22
  So I had this little tarot workshop I recorded on zoom many years ago, like a decade ago.
• 24:28
  I was using zoom way before Covid.
• 24:29
  When Covid came, I was like, oh, I am primed for this.
• 24:31
  I know my zoom in.
• 24:32
  And so I had this little workshop that I was selling on my website, and I created a little PDF of the card meanings to sell with the with the workshop.
• 24:41
  And then I started thinking, well, I'm just going to show people how each cards message can be shown in a real life application.
• 24:48
  So like a little story from my life about here's how the magician worked in my life, or here's how this card worked in my life.
• 24:54
  And so each card started having a story associated with it, and then it expanded and expanded.
• 24:59
  And I had all these friends doing self-publishing.
• 25:01
  And I have a writing background.
• 25:03
  I've written in corporate communications, been a freelance writer for years.
• 25:07
  So I thought, well, I can write a book.
• 25:09
  You know, I write for a living, so maybe I'll make it like a maybe I'll try get an agent and maybe or maybe I'll self-publish.
• 25:15
  And, you know, and it started to just progress my dreams just got bigger and bigger as I got more sort of confident in the idea of it.
• 25:21
  And it got to the point of, well, maybe I'll try and get an agent.
• 25:23
  So I'm sitting there doing the visualizing of opening the book from the publisher and seeing my book there.
• 25:29
  I didn't know what it was called or what it was about, but it was just like, oh my God, there's my book.
• 25:33
  And I would visualize one thing that I did taking a tangible action is I wrote out my acknowledgments for the book before the book was done.
• 25:42
  I'd like to thank my agent TBD for all your love and support.
• 25:47
  Like it was like writing an Oscar speech.
• 25:48
  Yeah, in acting class.
• 25:50
  You know, I love that, I love that, yeah. Yes.
• 25:52
  That's so good.
• 25:53
  That's some manifesting.
• 25:54
  You've got your intention, you're holding that. You're taking inspired action.
• 25:57
  I'm not waiting for someone to knock on my door.
• 25:59
  I did a ton of research on on which agents were working in my genre.
• 26:04
  I paid to have editors and agents critique my query letter, which is sort of your pitch letter to be considered to be represented by an agent.
• 26:11
  Cause I started thinking, why not me?
• 26:11
  Why not me getting an agent?
• 26:14
  And then I started thinking, well, how about I get an agent who gets me a big five publishing deal?
• 26:21
  Why not?
• 26:22
  You know, I went from that place of, like, why not me?
• 26:25
  To why not me?
• 26:26
  Why not me? You know?
• 26:27
  And that's where a lot of us have to shift.
• 26:29
  And that's where rituals and tarot and things like that can help.
• 26:32
  And so I ended up getting an agent, and she got me a meeting with a few publishers, one of which was Harpercollins and Dream Write and Harper Collins.
• 26:41
  Two days before, we had a meeting about this tarot book that I wrote.
• 26:46
  Because you have to with a with a nonfiction book, you have to create this big proposal document that talks about your marketing and your and your target markets.
• 26:55
  And you have to do this really thorough analysis of your book and how you're going to promote it and everything.
• 26:59
  So I had written all about this burn your shit full moon fire ritual that I do on Instagram Live every month.
• 27:05
  And people, when I first started it, it was me and three friends on an Instagram Live during Covid because I'd been leading moon rituals forever.
• 27:12
  But during Covid it, we were locked up raw here in Canada.
• 27:15
  So I had to be like, I was just on Instagram Live, just connecting with people.
• 27:20
  And now people joined from Kenya, Kuwait, Panama, Italy, Austria, all over the world to have this collective coven moment.
• 27:26
  And it is so powerful and people send me stuff to burn on their behalf, or they do it alongside me or they watch passively.
• 27:33
  Someone from Denmark sends me something to burn.
• 27:35
  I'm reading it aloud. I'm feeling it like I wrote it.
• 27:38
  You're watching where you are, like, oh my God, this tracks.
• 27:40
  It's as much our release as it is Denmark's.
• 27:42
  So it's this big.
• 27:43
  It's a big selling point for my book that I do this and The Full Moon had been a few days before this Harpercollins meeting.
• 27:51
  So we get on the call and they're like, hey, yeah.
• 27:53
  So tarot? Sure. Yeah.
• 27:53
  Everyone's doing tarot.
• 27:55
  Tell us about these rituals.
• 27:56
  You do like, what's up with this burn your shit thing? And I was like, oh, rituals.
• 28:00
  And I told them all about it.
• 28:01
  And I also said, well, that's actually book two.
• 28:03
  The idea is all about rituals, because a friend had told me, go into this meeting with an idea for book two.
• 28:09
  Nobody wants to think you're one, a one trick pony, right? Yes.
• 28:13
  So I was prepared doing the work inspired action, right? Wow.
• 28:17
  And then they came away saying, we actually want you to write the tarot book or not the book.
• 28:23
  Sorry. We actually want you to write a ritual book.
• 28:25
  And my agent was like, great, you want a ritual book, you're going to buy the tarot book.
• 28:30
  And I got a two book deal with Harpercollins.
• 28:31
  So the ritual book, then I had to write the book.
• 28:34
  I wrote it in six months. They gave me 18.
• 28:36
  I wrote it in six because I was motivated. Yes.
• 28:38
  And that actually came out first.
• 28:40
  So the second book came out first, and then I had to rewrite about two thirds of the tarot book to make it align with Burn Your Shit.
• 28:46
  So all the stories for each card, they're gone.
• 28:48
  I've got a few stories in there, but it's it's much more comprehensive and all encompassing, and you do not need to even have a tarot deck to to benefit from this book, because you can open a page randomly to a card and that's your message, which is really wild.
• 29:03
  So then, so then I actually had that moment of opening and I filmed it and put it on Instagram because obviously content.
• 29:10
  Right? Yes.
• 29:11
  Opening that box and there is my beautiful Burn Your Shit book.
• 29:16
  I was like, this is what I visualized.
• 29:19
  Wow, that is powerful.
• 29:23
  That is so cool. Congrats.
• 29:25
  Thank you. Incredible.
• 29:27
  So when does it come out?
• 29:29
  Well, burn your shit's already out.
• 29:30
  And then.
• 29:31
  And it was an instant bestseller.
• 29:32
  Like it was two top ten lists.
• 29:35
  on the Globe and Mail bestseller list, which is kind of like Canada's New York times and Big Deck Energy is coming out June 24th.
• 29:42
  That's the tarot book. It's available for preorder.
• 29:45
  And then I've got a third book that I'm percolating, and I'm looking at a deck as well.
• 29:51
  As you should.
• 29:51
  So I was going to ask you about that because you have used the same deck for 35 years.
• 29:57
  So do you just do you ever get any new decks or do you ever do different decks?
• 30:03
  No, I get I get gifted oracle decks.
• 30:05
  And there's a beautiful, indigenous healer medicine woman named Asha Frost.
• 30:12
  And she has a beautiful deck about about animal wisdom and and things like that.
• 30:16
  Sacred animals.
• 30:17
  And so I love getting oracle decks like that.
• 30:20
  I don't use them as, as I'm not as devoted to them as I am to my my tarot deck.
• 30:26
  I've every reading I've ever, ever done is in this deck from day one.
• 30:30
  So this deck, that's why it's so worn.
• 30:32
  That's why it's people touch it and they're like, oh my God, you can feel it, you know, because it's been around the block and I have for many years, like over a decade, really wanted to create my own deck that portrays my interpretation of these cards, because these cards are very binary.
• 30:50
  They're very white.
• 30:52
  They're very, patriarchal.
• 30:54
  And I want something that I want people to be able to see themselves in these stories of these cards.
• 30:59
  And so I've been carrying around this, you know, 100 page creative brief for ten years.
• 31:04
  And I'm at the point now where I think where we found the right.
• 31:08
  Are you going to call Brené Brown and see if it could be her picture on a card?
• 31:11
  Because that would also be so fun.
• 31:14
  I do have I do have cards that are that are inspired by people I know. Yeah.
• 31:20
  Oh man, that's so, so so awesome.
• 31:22
  Okay, so we talked we talked about, you know, some specific rituals we can do.
• 31:26
  And I want to, go back for a second because I want to talk about if we do have a tarot deck, like what what rituals are we doing?
• 31:33
  Are we doing a poll every day?
• 31:33
  Are we asking a question?
• 31:35
  Does it work the same way as an oracle deck?
• 31:37
  Like can we not?
• 31:37
  Can we read our own tarot deck?
• 31:40
  I guess we can get your book and learn how to read it.
• 31:42
  yeah, but what can we do with a tarot deck if we're not 100% sure?
• 31:46
  We are confident that we can read it. Yes.
• 31:49
  I mean, when you first get a tarot deck, you won't be able to read it because it's 78 cards.
• 31:54
  And what I always reassure people with, when I teach tarot talk about terror, is that if you ask me what the Nine of Swords is, I have no clue.
• 32:04
  My 35 year old deck. I don't know what.
• 32:06
  Which one's the Nine of Swords?
• 32:07
  I don't know, but you show me the Nine of Swords.
• 32:10
  I'm talking about the Nine of Swords for hours, you know, so it's.
• 32:13
  You don't have to worry about memorizing so it can be intimidating and overwhelming.
• 32:16
  You just need to learn the stories that are often told through the imagery.
• 32:21
  And that's why I want imagery that's more modern.
• 32:23
  But for this, yes, or any deck that you get, I encourage people.
• 32:28
  There's a whole chapter in the book called Tarot Tinder, which is like getting to know your deck, and I just encourage people to just pull a card every day like I do.
• 32:35
  And here's the key.
• 32:36
  When you pull that card, don't go right to the little booklet that comes with the deck. Don't go right to Google.
• 32:41
  Don't go right to my book.
• 32:43
  Look at that card. Sit with that card.
• 32:45
  See how it makes you feel.
• 32:47
  You know is it does it elicit a feeling of happiness or fear or tenderness or excitement?
• 32:53
  Like how what feelings are coming up?
• 32:55
  What are your thinking?
• 32:56
  What are you thinking about the colors or any kind of symbolism or the number or the word that's on it?
• 33:00
  If it's one of the major arcana, you know, look at those cards and really just sort of sit with it for a second, maybe journal about it a little bit and then put that card down and then go and, you know, look in the Google or the little book or whatever and be like, oh, okay, interesting.
• 33:16
  And then go live your life, go do your day.
• 33:18
  And then at the end of the day, come back and revisit that card and what you wrote and what's in the book and whatever, and see how that card's message turned up in your day.
• 33:28
  Very promising.
• 33:30
  That's how you get to like, you're dating your card, you know, not dating like aging it.
• 33:33
  You are getting to know it.
• 33:35
  You are learning about each other and and how these very broad messages, sometimes very intricate messages, can show up in your day in such interesting ways.
• 33:45
  And people always write off the the Minor Arcana, the like Ten of Swords or those, you know, the, the, the cups and the ones and whatnot.
• 33:52
  They're not as like sexy or momentous as the Major Arcana, and I call bullshit on that.
• 33:56
  For me, a lot of the Minor Arcana cards have way bigger messages than something like The Emperor, which for me is a total snooze as a card, you know?
• 34:05
  So you that's how you get to develop your own dialog with your deck.
• 34:09
  Well, I love when we did our reading the other day.
• 34:11
  I love that you kept saying to me, look at that expression like there's swords and there's, you know, cups and there's other things to look at.
• 34:18
  But like the expression on, on the person's face, I thought that was an interesting.
• 34:22
  Yeah.
• 34:23
  Or how their body is position. Yes.
• 34:25
  You know, all sorts of stuff. Yeah, I love it.
• 34:27
  You talk a little bit about science in your rituals.
• 34:30
  I know we talked about a little bit about a manifestation like talk to me about like what's the science behind a ritual and why it works.
• 34:36
  Well, the thing that separates a ritual from a routine or a habit is intention.
• 34:42
  Like a ritual is is a routine that is infused with loving intention.
• 34:48
  so your skin care that you do in the morning or at night can absolutely be a ritual.
• 34:53
  It is a moment like a goose's.
• 34:55
  It is a moment of being present with yourself.
• 34:57
  It is a moment of carving out self-care and self devotion and nurturing of self.
• 35:03
  That's so powerful, right?
• 35:05
  I love and it's because you are saying to the universe, just like I am worth this moment.
• 35:10
  I deserve this moment, not because I've earned it, just because I am, you know?
• 35:14
  So there are things like that that that really help you connect to yourself.
• 35:17
  A ritual often brings you to a place of presence and being in the now rather than, you know, marinating in the past, focusing on regrets, living in the future.
• 35:27
  That hasn't occurred yet because that's just, you know, anxiety and just being who.
• 35:32
  So rituals are really there is science behind how they can help you with anxiety.
• 35:37
  They can help you with performance in sports or your job.
• 35:41
  They can connect to community.
• 35:45
  it's because often you're because of that need for presence within a ritual, whether you're making a cup of coffee or drawing a bath and not just trying to distract yourself to just like, oh God, just get me through the day, you know, you're taking those moments of just like, being grounded and it usually doesn't involve your phone.
• 36:03
  It doesn't involve the TV. Right.
• 36:05
  And and so what you're doing in those moments, even just five breaths, I always tell people, here's something everyone can do.
• 36:12
  You start and end your day with five breaths, five in the morning, five at night.
• 36:16
  Game changer.
• 36:17
  You breathe in through your nose.
• 36:18
  You exhale out your mouth.
• 36:20
  You fill your belly. You don't.
• 36:21
  You don't fill your chest and feel your shoulders rise up to your ears.
• 36:24
  Right.
• 36:24
  Deep belly, diaphragmatic breath.
• 36:26
  And you breathe in for the count of five.
• 36:29
  Hold for the count of five.
• 36:30
  Exhale for the count of eight.
• 36:32
  In for five.
• 36:33
  Hold for five, out for eight, five in the morning, five at night.
• 36:36
  Can't be while you're brushing your teeth or making a coffee, you're like lying in bed or you're sitting down like you're just.
• 36:41
  You're focused in that moment. Okay?
• 36:44
  When you exhale longer than you inhale, you are automatically activating your parasympathetic nervous system.
• 36:51
  You cannot help but move from a place of fight, flight, freeze to a place of rest, digest, create, strategize.
• 37:01
  So you are turning off that dinosaur lizard part of your brain that's freaking out, and you are turning on the part of your brain that is able to.
• 37:10
  It doesn't mean that your circumstances around you have changed.
• 37:13
  It's your reaction to them has changed.
• 37:16
  So you don't have to go to an ashram for a month in a silent retreat.
• 37:20
  I mean, if you want to fill your boots, but if you do fibrous in the morning, at night, or maybe every time you pee, or to have a glass of water, that is something that will just help to regulate you.
• 37:30
  And that is a ritual because you're doing it intentionally, and you're doing it from a place of wanting to feel good or feel better, or optimize your life in some way.
• 37:40
  And there is science to back that up.
• 37:42
  There is science to back up how smudging works.
• 37:44
  And I mean the science.
• 37:45
  Everyone is always like, oh my God, you smudge it.
• 37:47
  It sanitizes the air.
• 37:48
  And and I had to dig deep because Harpercollins isn't messing around.
• 37:51
  They're like, we need we need those studies cited, please.
• 37:56
  You know.
• 37:56
  And so I've got, you know, this ten page document that's just the cited research that is referred to in the book.
• 38:03
  When you burn certain, aromatics, it can have a like a sanitizing effect in the air.
• 38:10
  So, you know, there are there are a lot of these ancient traditions, rituals that, you know, and then you see the yoga lady whipping around the Santo or the or the sage in the studio.
• 38:21
  I mean, sometimes it's been appropriate, and we always want to be respectful of the cultures that we are borrowing from.
• 38:27
  But this shit works.
• 38:30
  Wow, that is powerful.
• 38:32
  Even just like the breathe, the breathing is powerful.
• 38:34
  I just I love that so much.
• 38:35
  It's something we can all do.
• 38:37
  Just in case people don't know what smudging is.
• 38:39
  We are. We're lighting. It's usually sage.
• 38:42
  You're usually lighting sage.
• 38:42
  You can also light incense.
• 38:45
  You can light palo santo which is a wood.
• 38:47
  But like if you're getting these things I oh, and I get into this in the book because I have an indigenous background.
• 38:52
  my mother, you know, through my mother's side, we come from the Peguis, First Nations in Canada, and it's a derivative of Ojibwe and Cree, and I am it's very important to me that people respect the lineage of whatever modality they're using.
• 39:12
  So when you're doing something like, say, smudging, you often use dried sage, and it's not sage you use to cook a chicken.
• 39:18
  It's like a special like it's a it's meant for for smudging.
• 39:22
  Try and buy it from a, locally sourced provider or an indigenous business person.
• 39:28
  You know, Palo Santo.
• 39:29
  They often take plywood and inject it with, with, with a fragrance that makes it smell a certain way.
• 39:35
  Palo santo wood has to fall naturally from the tree and be collected from the floor of the forest in the Amazon.
• 39:43
  And that's the palo santo that we burn.
• 39:45
  So, like, I work with this monastery in upstate New York that works with an indigenous community.
• 39:50
  And we that's how I source my stuff.
• 39:52
  So like, take the time to do that again.
• 39:54
  That just enhances your ritual.
• 39:57
  Also, I tell people don't I don't want there to be any barrier to entry for any of this stuff.
• 40:02
  So if you have a big fancy cauldron and you're out there burning your shit in the woods with a bunch of witches, amazing.
• 40:07
  If you're on your balcony with a frying pan and a post-it note and a big lighter.
• 40:12
  Fabulous. Equally as impactful.
• 40:16
  this is really funny because I'm glad that you just brought that up.
• 40:19
  A couple episodes ago, I had, a woman on who was talking about a sinful man, which was she did talk about burning stuff and letting it go.
• 40:27
  So, you know, full moon comes and I am in my bathroom burning a piece of paper, and I'm like, oh shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.
• 40:37
  Because, like, I'm burning my shit.
• 40:38
  But also it's like falling on the floor and I, like, burned my toe.
• 40:41
  And I was like, oh my God, big fire hazard.
• 40:44
  Like, do I need to go outside?
• 40:45
  Like, nobody talks about how you're holding all of these big intentions and also like trying not to burn your house down, like, yes, I yes, you have to be.
• 40:55
  You have to be.
• 40:56
  Yes, there has to be some, some, some good safety precautions.
• 41:01
  So in the book and burn your shit, I mean, I go, there's a whole chapter on burn Your shit and there's a whole chapter on manifest.
• 41:06
  There's and there's a whole chapter on getting clear on your gear, you know, let your frying pan be your cauldron and smudging 101 and how you can also smudge with sound.
• 41:15
  You know, I have a tuning fork that I hit with the crystal sound there.
• 41:18
  And again to the science.
• 41:20
  There's sound waves that are working with that kind.
• 41:22
  Yeah, we can get into sacred geometry about merkaba and all sorts of shit.
• 41:26
  But you can also talk about there are rituals for grief.
• 41:30
  my dear friend, our dear friends, dog died this week.
• 41:33
  Oh, no.
• 41:34
  And needing to rituals are the bridge between that that help us through our grief.
• 41:41
  Yeah.
• 41:42
  You know, they are rituals are are the bridge to healing.
• 41:47
  So what would you have her do?
• 41:49
  So she was already doing this intuitively because she is a wise, which I'm kind of talking about.
• 41:52
  Oh my God. Like.
• 41:54
  And the book has rituals not only for people when they're after they pass, but also when they are dying.
• 42:00
  There are rituals to do, beautiful rituals to do for people when they're like actively in palliative care, when they are preparing to pass.
• 42:06
  That can be so healing and comforting to not only the people who are actively dying, but the people who love them, who are around them. Right?
• 42:16
  And so for when a pet dies, you can create an altar with a candle, with an altar cloth.
• 42:21
  Or you could have, you know, a little space dedicated with a collar or a favorite stuffed toy, a picture, a little piece of, you know, their favorite like chew toy or whatever, and just have these, these sacred spaces that you can go and connect with the energy of that person, slash animal, whatever.
• 42:38
  And you can have some sort of a ritual to say goodbye to that, that person or animal, you know, I suggested to her that with her family and any friends that wanted to join, they sit in a circle and they open up the circle saying, you know, we're here to honor fluffy, let's say, and and all of the joy fluffy brought into our lives.
• 42:59
  And then you have, you know, a caller, a chew toy, and you just pass it around the circle.
• 43:03
  And every person who who is holding it, if they choose to, can talk about their favorite memory of that person or animal.
• 43:10
  I mean, in this case, we're talking about a pet of that animal, right?
• 43:13
  And and just how that animal impacted their lives.
• 43:16
  And, and those rituals are essential.
• 43:19
  There is a reason that we have been doing funeral and birth and marriage and, you know, death rituals since the beginning of time.
• 43:27
  We rely on them.
• 43:28
  And the reason, you know, that we need them is because during Covid, you had a bunch of people out on their balconies, clanging pots and pans to thank their medical providers.
• 43:38
  And that is because we did.
• 43:39
  We were we lost all of our rituals overnight.
• 43:42
  And so we created new ones because we can't survive without them.
• 43:45
  And there are rituals around divorce.
• 43:48
  There are rituals around menopause.
• 43:49
  They're original rituals for to mark a rite of passage for someone entering puberty.
• 43:54
  But we are so good at doing rituals for, you know, yay! You graduated! Yay! It's your birthday! Yay! Our team won the gold medal.
• 44:01
  We suck at rituals for divorce, menopause, and death.
• 44:05
  Like people go to one three hour service and then they're done with grief.
• 44:10
  No, you know, make a ritual, make an altar in your home.
• 44:13
  Whether it's for a certain moment of time or it is, an ancestral altar that never leaves and light a candle.
• 44:20
  And when you light a candle at that altar, that is your time to grieve the loss of that person and the love of that person.
• 44:28
  It allows you to commune with the essence of that person.
• 44:32
  it connects you in a way that can be even deeper than the connection you had when they were on this living plane.
• 44:39
  Wow, I love all that so much.
• 44:41
  I was getting full body chills the whole time you were talking.
• 44:45
  that was so good.
• 44:45
  Thank you for sharing all that.
• 44:47
  I feel like that's so helpful for people because there's so much grief.
• 44:51
  And I know grief is another form of love, but it's just it's just it hits you.
• 44:56
  It hits you at times.
• 44:58
  You don't expect it.
• 44:59
  And and it sucks. It's course.
• 45:02
  No one would choose to be in grief, but something like this can be so supportive and so helpful for people when they are feeling that and allow them that you know that energy of also connection and love instead of just the pain and the loss and not knowing what to do with that, not knowing what to do with that energy.
• 45:24
  So and even if I can just say we just I feel compelled to say this.
• 45:28
  So I think someone who's listening might need to hear it.
• 45:31
  Let's say you have someone who's in palliative care, in hospice or something.
• 45:35
  You can gather people who love that person around that hospital bed and do the thing like you would do with the pet.
• 45:43
  After they've had passes like you, you take turns.
• 45:45
  Whether that person is conscious or not, just take turns going around and each person saying how much that the person who's actively passing means to them, and the impact that that person has had on their lives, let it be a living funeral.
• 46:02
  it can make the process of grief less like you were saying, traumatic and blunt, and you just knocked off your ass.
• 46:10
  Even when you know someone's going to pass, you just don't know until it happens how it's going to hit you.
• 46:15
  so put these rituals in place to help you feel not alone, to help you connect to a source greater than yourself and help you connect to that person.
• 46:24
  Oh, I love that so much.
• 46:25
  I love that so much.
• 46:27
  wow. Okay, such good info.
• 46:32
  Lori, this is incredible.
• 46:34
  You do this every day.
• 46:35
  I know, it's so fun. It's so.
• 46:35
  But it's so fun.
• 46:37
  Okay, I want to get into in your bio, you talk about how you were trained by a crystal ball, which crystal ball totin broom spell cast in which.
• 46:52
  Tell us more.
• 46:53
  I need to know more about this. Yeah.
• 46:55
  So I grew up in Calgary in the 80s.
• 46:57
  I'm 54, so it was like it was like mid 80, mid to late 80s and and she was so this was pre-internet, like there were no yellow pages even for psychics or anything.
• 47:07
  You just had to know someone who knew someone.
• 47:09
  And it's Calgary, like it was a pretty small town in Canada and everyone knew Erica.
• 47:15
  Erica was she looked like remember Elvira with the crazy black hair and the boobs?
• 47:19
  She looked like Elvira, but like, eat like little petite and peroxide white hair.
• 47:23
  Oh my God.
• 47:24
  She had red velvet wallpaper.
• 47:26
  She had, like 15 brooms.
• 47:26
  She had all this stuff.
• 47:28
  And I don't even remember how I first learned about Erica.
• 47:31
  But I was immediately obsessed and was immediately, you know, she did the palm.
• 47:35
  She she had 50 crystal balls.
• 47:36
  She did, the tea leaves. She did it all.
• 47:39
  But when she brought the cards out, I was like, tell me more.
• 47:42
  What are those?
• 47:42
  Let me. You know, like, it was like a love at first sight thing with the cards.
• 47:45
  But everything she did was cool as hell.
• 47:48
  And when I was in university, I did this whole, paper for a women's studies thing about witchcraft through the ages and blah, blah, blah.
• 47:55
  And because she's a practicing pagan, like she's a Wiccan.
• 47:59
  I interviewed her for this paper, and that's when we really got to know each other.
• 48:02
  And she really started to, mentor me in the cards like I'd been learning from her.
• 48:07
  I was always asking questions, so she was just like, can you just let me talk, please?
• 48:10
  Like this. Let me do this for you.
• 48:11
  I was like, but, but tell me more about that.
• 48:13
  And I'd go home and like, you know, take my notes and stuff.
• 48:15
  And when I was able to really deeply interview and we became more like friends, that's when things went next level.
• 48:19
  And she became my mentor.
• 48:22
  And the, the spread that I use, which is 12 cards in a circle, kind of like a clock.
• 48:26
  It's based on a spread that she developed.
• 48:28
  So you'll never get a reading like that from anyone else.
• 48:32
  And she gave me that spread.
• 48:34
  She taught me that spread and gave me that spread to use.
• 48:35
  And it has evolved over 30 years into what I use today or 35 years, into what I use today.
• 48:41
  So again, it's a reading unlike any other.
• 48:45
  And I read these cards in pairs across from one another in the circle, you know, and we go around and they work in these different permutations.
• 48:51
  So being taught by her was really cool because it was.
• 48:55
  So I look at it now, especially like in the TikTok of it all.
• 48:58
  And it was this very old school like oral traditions passing down.
• 49:03
  It was very indigenous in a way, but just like witchy as hell.
• 49:07
  Oh my gosh.
• 49:07
  Well, she like, see things in the crystal balls.
• 49:09
  I feel like the crystal ball is such a stereotypical witch.
• 49:13
  New psychic.
• 49:15
  So, like, what was she doing with the crystal balls?
• 49:17
  Well, it's so funny because now I have. Wait, where are they?
• 49:20
  I have, like, a bunch of crystal balls like that.
• 49:22
  They're just like crystal spheres is what I would call it now.
• 49:25
  But she had these big ass crystals and they're really just a focus point.
• 49:30
  So she would just use them as like a staring point.
• 49:32
  And then she would describe it as like little film strips in her head, and she would have to sort of grab the film strip to get the right thing.
• 49:39
  But she was really funny, and she was really joyful and never scary, and she would and and just didn't take herself seriously, but took what she did seriously.
• 49:52
  And that, for me, was just such a beautiful way to learn, because it's something that I aspire to in my work still is to be like, what would Erica do you doing that you're doing it.
• 50:02
  That's exactly like that describes you. Yeah.
• 50:04
  Wow, that's so cool, I love it.
• 50:07
  I my mom had a crystal ball.
• 50:08
  I wonder where that is, because she keeps everything, so I like I feel like it's got to be somewhere in her house.
• 50:13
  I need to dig that up.
• 50:14
  I need to dig that up.
• 50:15
  That needs to move to my house.
• 50:18
  but I'm so glad we talked about this.
• 50:19
  Now I remember it.
• 50:19
  All right.
• 50:20
  So, Lori, the question that I've been asking everyone on this podcast, what do you think happens when we die?
• 50:26
  We talked a lot about the death card.
• 50:28
  I know that doesn't mean death necessarily. Right.
• 50:30
  But what happens when we die?
• 50:32
  What do you think?
• 50:33
  I think I used to explain it.
• 50:35
  This is how I explained it to my kids when they were little.
• 50:37
  As I said, I imagine the universe is being like a big ocean of iced tea.
• 50:41
  And when someone dies, it's just like another spoonful of sugar being added to this ocean of iced tea.
• 50:47
  Expanding on that a little bit, what I think is that we are all energy.
• 50:52
  Everything is energy.
• 50:54
  And that's why crystals can impact us and we impact each others because we are constantly recalibrating.
• 50:59
  Our energy is very malleable.
• 51:01
  And I think that in human form we are just a really dense, solid concentration of energy.
• 51:08
  And when we die and it's our soul taking on the form of a body with this dense energy, and then when we die, the dense body is left is kind of a husk that then rots and decays.
• 51:20
  Right. And then the soul just gets back.
• 51:22
  It just, it just becomes its original form and then gets ready to get condensed into a, a dense, robust physical form.
• 51:31
  Once again, that's really how I sort of feel it.
• 51:36
  And like see it.
• 51:38
  I am not afraid of death at all.
• 51:40
  I think this is the hard part.
• 51:42
  Like, I think life is is the tricky part.
• 51:44
  Death is like the treat. It's the reward.
• 51:47
  Wow, what an incredible perspective.
• 51:50
  I love that so much.
• 51:52
  We are just sugar in some iced tea in the world.
• 51:56
  I love it, Laurie. It's so good.
• 51:59
  Thank you so much for sharing all of your deep knowledge.
• 52:02
  It's going to help everyone. So thank you.
• 52:04
  And if anyone wants a reading, I do the one on one readings too so you can check out my website just Tara laurie.com on Instagram.
• 52:10
  I'm just at Taro Dot Laurie Burner Shed on Instagram Live I love it! Thank you so much for coming on.
• 52:16
  It's my pleasure.
• 52:21
  How did that card land for you?
• 52:22
  And how about manifesting that two book deal?
• 52:25
  I love how Laurie wrote her acknowledgments to embody that manifestation and visualize the book opening.
• 52:30
  Oh so, so good.
• 52:32
  Will you be trying any of the rituals?
• 52:34
  Let me know.
• 52:35
  You can DM me on Instagram at the Wheeler Park and when you join the community at the Will report podcast.com, you'll get a free download of the reports.
• 52:45
  Favorite Spiritual things, books, decks, podcast Bay follows practices, crystals and all the things I come back to again and again.
• 52:53
  Thank you for liking, writing, sharing and loving on this little slice of magic.
• 52:58
  So so grateful you're here by.