Centered Q&A Episodes 37 & 38

Ugh, I forgot to post my November Earth Medicine + Tarot reading. For the month of November, we are working with the Eight of Swords, Salmon medicine, Thyme and the Crystals: Labradorite, Larimar + Sunstone. We deal with Mars Retrograde and a Lunar Eclipse…holy crap!

Episode 38 answers some questions from our listeners Tarot, Stage Cards, Moon phase work + Retrogrades. Here they are:

  1. Suzanne asked, “Is there a card/s that is always a little difficult to interpret when it comes up in a reading? Conversely is there one or multiple that are easier? 🔮😻”

  2. Tan Hm asked, “Stage cards confuse me! And it would be amazing if you could talk about how to integrate after shadow work.”

  3. Danielle asked, “Phases- from the moon phases and the spiritual meanings, to the spiritual phases (waves) most of us experience in life…. Planet retrogrades and the different impacts depending on the sign if occurs in.”

  4. Suzanne asked, “I know this info is probably somewhere but can you talk a little bit about what "retrograde" means. You can always send a question to angie@themoonandstone.com for me to cover in an upcoming episode or record one on my anchor page at https://anchor.fm/angie-yingst/message


all about me, again.

Today’s episode is a little bit different. I am answering some person questions asked by my listeners and followers. Most of them are about my life as a healer and teacher. Listen, I love answering questions about my research and work and where I get to go down rabbit holes, but the personal ones can be different and difficult. Not difficult, but just putting yourself out there can feel vulnerable.

So, here I am answering some questions, and I would love to have a regular monthly episode answering questions from you. If you want to ask me some research questions or questions about healing just know that 1. Or a love doing research, 2 or b. am dedicated to teaching and furthering people’s spiritual journey 3. Or c. I strive to be mindful that not everyone knows all these words and phrases and concepts that me and my other spiritual woo woo people take for granted. If you have an question, you can send it to me at angie@themoonandstone or goto my anchor.fm Centered portal and you can record a question for a future episode. Thanks and I hope you enjoy this episode of Centered.

understanding the medicine, even when it is disturbing

Friends, this is an essay I wrote a few years ago on my newsletter. I thought I would revisit it on my podcast and blog today as it ties in with the Deer Medicine of this month’s Guided Shamanic Journey. If you are interested in receiving my readings at the Full Moon and/or New Moon, which are collectively pulled, but surprisingly personal, or if you are interested in received an audio guided shamanic journey with an animal each month, which goes in depth with the medicine of the animal, then has a 15-30 minute guided shamanic journey, I can read more in-depth about it under the membership section of my website: MEMBERSHIPS. Several of my journeys are available on my website, and I am working on getting them all up there with three years of guided shamanic journeys for my memberships, which have so many amazing journey including frog, horse, butterfly, bee, beetle, whale, vulture, panther, great blue heron, fox, cougar and more.

On the way to one of my mentoring circle, one of my students hit a deer. She was devastated. The deer most certainly will die, or already had died. She asked me, “What does this mean?” As a circle keeper and an earth medicine walker, I found myself stumbling over my words. Why does this happen to us who walk an earth medicine path? Others chimed in with their thoughts—the deer knew you could hold space for its transition; it was destined to die; better you than someone else.

A few years ago, after a circle, I was driving home. I live in the boonies, as we say, out in the sticks, where I worry about hitting deer. Pennsylvania ranks as the second most deer collisions in the country. So, I drive slowly, cautiously through the fields, and frequently stop for all kinds of wildlife. But I was still in the city, headed home, and bam, a deer ran into my car. It hit my front quarter panel. I pulled over and the deer laid on the side of the road, panting, clearly injured. I called the police and sent Reiki. I envisioned the Reiki energy repairing the deer’s legs and head, and strengthening it. I did this Reiki for almost 15 minutes, and the deer stood up, steady and whole, then ran right out into the street to get demolished and killed by a massive truck.

The truck tore the deer apart. I shook and cried as well.

What does this mean? Is it still medicine for us if we see our medicine dead on the side of the road? And how do we interpret it?

As I meditated on the death of the deer, I could see this interplay between the deer’s medicine and the encroachment of humanity. The medicine of deer resides in its deep vulnerability. When deer interact with humanness and urban environments, we begin to see just how vulnerable these magnificent creatures are. Humans have disrupted the balance of the predator and the prey. Our ancestors decimated the predators—wolves, mountain lion population, the bears—who would have hunted the sick and weak, keeping populations down. Massive deforestation also affects deer populations. Whitetail deer flourish in edge environments, right where the forest meets the suburbs. Streets and cars encroach on the delicate ecosystems. And hunting is down around the country with the ease of shopping for meat in the supermarket.

So, deer medicine is not only a medicine about the individual deer’s vulnerability to predators but the species. Deer, particularly those with antlers, have a strong connection to Spirit. Their antlers are said to reach high to our guides and angels as antennae for messages. Deer connects with the subtle energy system and has heightened senses from hearing to vision to smell. They are always sensing the disruption in the force.

I could not help thinking as my student told me about the deer and her accident that this was part of the critical message for her. Knowing that she is going through a beautiful spiritual opening, deer medicine can come in this way to remind us of our vulnerability during our spiritual opening. When we experience all this light and love that begins to channel through us from Spirit, we live in a bubble of good vibes. When I started opening, I just was always blissed out and only able to tolerate other lightworkers. When we take all this gentle light and vulnerability into the real world, our first encounters with the sickness of our society, the toxicity and negativity of people, the harshness of the news and the suffering of others, we experience this world just like the deer, hit out of nowhere by real life. This modern world is cruel to the vulnerable. Deer medicine embodies vulnerability, quiet, and gentleness. Nothing is more profoundly indicative of the imbalance then when nature interacts with urban life. Where we see how pollution hurts wildlife, or cars kill deer.

This grounded, counter energy to very high vibrational work is part of the medicine lightworkers need to carry as much as the light message of our power animals. When you open in profound ways, you are, of course, more susceptible to those deep wells of grief and compassion. But it goes deeper. There is nothing natural about carrying vulnerability or being an empath in a narcissistic world. We also have to experience and learn about the shadow medicine of our animals. Shamanic work is not always easy or light or fun. It is mostly about challenging ourselves to go beyond the surface, to experience the more profound message, to become stewards of the Earth, spokespeople for the Mother. When all of this starts, we want to live in that amazing Other World of Spirit. When we practice earth medicine, we become intrinsically tied to Mother Earth and Grandmother Moon, and their incredible cycles. Life and death, happiness and grief, masculine and feminine—this delicate balance becomes second sight to us We can see it without trying. Impermanence and suffering of life and of the human condition is part of our medicine and the spiritual experience. We must hold space for both light and darkness, birth and death. As we begin our opening, this can be a harsh reality.

If this happens to you, or you are driving and notice an animal sacred to you, dead on the side of the road, my suggestion is to begin asking what is the medicine for you—both in the animal’s living experience (how does it live, love, eat, hunt, raise its young, etc), then as your medicine interacts with the brutality of this world.

If you are able and feel up to it, take the hair or an item from the animal that was killed (always remembering that if it stinks, it will always stink. If it has bugs, your house will have bugs, so only newly killed animals can be harvested, but that is another post) and use it in ceremony. As medicine keepers, we need to honor the medicine and the allies and giving them a good death is part of this process. You can use that medicine you harvested on your altar or in a medicine bundle.

One thing I know is that none of us aim for the deer or squirrel or bird, so release guilt. Guilt is the illusion of control (if I did something different, it would have changed the outcome). Just be with the profound grief. That is enough suffering. Create a ritual of honoring the medicine of the deer. Sit in the discomfort of your humanness and the ways in which we can mitigate the harshness of our living on the earth. Allow the tears their flow. Fall into ritual and ceremony.

Remember anything, all of our human experience, can become our medicine. To ignore the death, suffering, and violence inherent in our animal medicine is to ignore the full power of its medicine. May you walk gently on the Earth, friends.

Episode 12: Tarot's Card of the Year for 2020 with Kyra Paules

I love me a good conversation with Kyra. It was so fun to talk about the Card of the Year (Emperor) for 2020 and the Card for 2021 (Hierophant). So we talk Tarot and the energy of the past two years and how we see archetype and tarot work play out on a larger scale with this work.

Episodes 10 + 11: Essay about Grief, Suffering + Screaming

I took a little turn on my podcast as we were entering the holiday season to just riff on some ideas I have shared before, but seem relevant every year which is grief and suffering and how deeply important they are to just be in when we feel them. I just spent two episodes talking about all of this. If you want to hear some thoughts about why spiritual bypassing sucks, here ya go!


Episode 9: Introverts & Spirituality with Alison Truitt

Today’s episode features my friend Alison Truitt. I met Alison a few years ago in a Tarot class I was teaching where Ali was the only student. We went deep really quickly, as tarot forces you to do. We share many of the same practices and rituals and especially our way of being in the world, because we are both Introverts. That might be surprising to some of you, especially because I am so public with my work. But I think the defining aspect of being an introvert is where you draw your energy—alone or with others. Alison and I decided to explore this topic today, talking about being an introvert, a highly sensitive person or an empath and our spiritual journey. I really wanted to have a conversation about this topic, because those of us in the spiritual realms often talk about the power of community and circles, but this is not everyone’s comfort zone. Many of us introverts are solitary practitioners and practice our own religious or spiritual practices that are separate from organized religions. So, I wanted to ask Alison: What is circle like as an introvert? What is your practice like? We also explored the tarot archetype of the Hermit, the introvert’s guide in a spiritual world. So, Alison was born and raised in the ridges and foothills of the Appalachians of Pennsylvania. As she describes in the podcast, she finds immeasurable solace in and inspiration from Mother Earth. She believes that Nature’s happenings are a reflection of one’s own rhythms. Alison is also guided by the cycles of the seasons and the moon and is strongly connected to both her Celtic heritage and the Divine Feminine. She seeks to honor all that has shaped her path as she looks inward to reclaim her soul's purpose for this lifetime and outward to manifest beauty and share it with others. Alison writes at her blog the Hermit’s Handicrafts at wordpress (I’ll put the link in the show notes) and she sells beautiful jewelry, malas and artwork around the journey of pregnancy, motherhood and beyond at her Etsy shop the Hermit’s handicrafts. Hope you enjoy this episode of Centered.

https://thehermitshandicrafts.wordpress.com/

https://www.etsy.com/shop/HermitHandicrafts

Episode 6: The Dead Baby Club with Jess Southwood

Today’s conversation is with one of my closest friends Jess Southwood. Unlike my other guests who work in the realm of spirituality, Jess is a Business consultant and facilitator, with a particular focus on leadership development, team dynamics and creativity in business. But honestly, I didn’t invite her to talk to me about her work, though it is fascinating and has taken her all over the world. I didn’t invite Jess to talk because she loves yoga and writing and poetry. I invited Jess here because we share something in common—we re both bereaved mothers. We “met” in 2009, after our second daughters were stillborn. And through our grief, we both sought community on the internet and through starting our own blogs about grief and mothering. We were both writerly and creative and irreverent and formed an immediate and all-encompassing bond. I wrote at a blog called Still life with Circles, and she wrote at a blog called afteriris and then we both were invited to write for the Literary Hub Glow in the Woods, founded by Kate Inglis as a place to write more literarily about what Kate titled babyloss. I later became the editor for a few years. We spent time in person together, and have maintained our friendship for the last 11 years, growing together and experiencing more of us. I wanted to talk to Jess about sisterhood, spiritual bonding, emotional intimacy, grieving publicly, and you know, dead babies. We say that quite a bit in this episode. We talk about it bluntly, like you find in the community of grieving women on the internet. There is a whole community. Most people who have never lost a child have no idea there is a corner of the internet where women talk about the death of their baby—over and over again. We write stories and exchange emails and have an entire community of bereaved mothers and fathers. Jess is an extraordinary woman. I feel so blessed to have her as one of my best friends. As you can hear from our conversation, she is deeply thoughtful, funny, intelligent, self-aware and interesting. Jess’ s first collection of poetry can be found at littlelosses.com. She has a Masters degree in Shakespeare Studies from the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon. She lives in Birmingham, UK, with her husband, three children, two cats, one dog, and too many books. I hoe you enjoy my conversation with Jess Southwood.

My grief blog: http://stilllifewithcircles.blogspot.com

Jess’s first poetry collection: https://littlelosses.com/

Glow in the Woods: http://www.glowinthewoods.com/

We mentioned a few things in this podcast including the Right Where I Am Project.

First year: http://stilllifewithcircles.blogspot.com/p/right-where-i-am-project.html

The last year I did this: http://stilllifewithcircles.blogspot.com/2014/07/right-where-i-am-five-years-and-almost.html

Kate Inglis who coined the term Babyloss’s writing: http://www.kateinglis.com/

Kara Chipoletti Jones https://linktr.ee/griefandcreativity

Niobe and Dead Baby Jokes: her blog

Niobe’s GITW posts: http://www.glowinthewoods.com/blog/tag/Niobe

Angie’s GITW posts: http://www.glowinthewoods.com/blog/tag/Angie

Jess’s GITW posts: http://www.glowinthewoods.com/blog/tag/Jess

Episode 5: Coming Out of the Broom Closet with Kristin Gallagher

Eclectic Pagan Witch Kristin Gallagher and I sat down for a little talk about coming out of the closet—the broom closet, that is, and being a public witch. It is something we have privately talked about for years—sharing our experiences with being public and sharing our personal spirituality. I absolutely love Kristin and her energy. She has gotten super popular on TikTok, sharing her witchy content and Witchy Mamma lifestyle.

You can find Kristin on TikTok at @onewitchymamma  or on Instagram at witchy.mamma – Instagram and coming soon (no videos up yet) WitchyMamma – Youtube. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Kristin Gallagher. Hope you enjoy my conversation with Kristin!