Hello hello! I'm here again with my special series, "dear misterwitchboy," where I do a free, public tarot reading for one lucky newsletter subscriber! Thank you, Anonymous Querent, for sharing such vulnerability with us in your question. And I hope that the reading speaks to everyone else as well. It certainly came with lessons I should really remember in my own life.
If you aren't yet subscribed, all you have to do is fill out that popup that shows up on my website! In the welcome email, you'll find out how to submit your own question to be in the next "dear misterwitchboy!"
Read on for a quick outline of the episode. I hope this offering encourages all of you. Things are changing in the stars and in us.
From me and my cards,
Aaron
Question:
Dear MisterWitchBoy, I am at the cusp of some exciting opportunities. I have a stable, full-time job. However, I’ve been daydreaming about some different “side gigs” that would let me use creative outlets to make some extra income. I’m exploring a couple of ideas, and I think I could make them come to fruition with sufficient planning and work. Historically, I’ve suffered from imposter syndrome, and I usually don’t regard myself and my abilities in the same positive light that others do. I’ve been doing a lot of personal work in order to overcome negative thoughts patterns, but I fear that the old ways of thinking might hinder my ability to make my plans happen. I would love to hear what you and your cards have to say about pursuing new ideas and trusting in my ability to manifest them. Thanks :)
Four of Chalices:
Becoming aware of the emotional state you get into when you start to think of these new "side gigs." What makes you draw into yourself? How can you hold yourself gently when that happens?
Knight of Chalices:
How can you become friends with those more turbulent emotions that come up? Such personal work is going to bring up personal hangups and insecurities. They're not the enemy. They're you.
Temperance:
None of this emotional work needs to be finished or perfect before you are able to start the work. This Sagittarius is optimistic and reminds you of your ability to enact change in your life.
Four of Pentacles:
Contraction is normal when change is afoot. Feeling into some flexibility could be the first, easy thing you do. You have changed old habits and thoughts before. You will again.
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Dear MisterWitchBoy, I am at the cusp of some exciting opportunities. I have a stable, full-time job. However, I’ve been daydreaming about some different “side gigs” that would let me use creative outlets to make some extra income. I’m exploring a couple of ideas, and I think I could make them come to fruition with sufficient planning and work. Historically, I’ve suffered from imposter syndrome, and I usually don’t regard myself and my abilities in the same positive light that others do. I’ve been doing a lot of personal work in order to overcome negative thoughts patterns, but I fear that the old ways of thinking might hinder my ability to make my plans happen. I would love to hear what you and your cards have to say about pursuing new ideas and trusting in my ability to manifest them. Thanks :)
Hello hello! I’m Aaron aka misterwitchboy and this is “dear misterwitchboy!” This is a series, once a month, where I pull cards for a very special newsletter subscriber. If you want to be in the next “dear misterwitchboy” sign up for my newsletter. And in the little welcome email that you get back, there’ll be a form where you can submit your question! Hopefully this makes my services more accessible and more available for people like you.
Alright friend. Thank you so much for sending in a question. So we’re going to start with these first three cards. We started with the Four of Chalices in the past, the Knight of Chalices in the present, and lastly Temperance.
This Four of Chalices is actually an invitation to feel into your feelings about starting things new. What is the emotional life that happens when you start to imagine these new paths that you want to go on? This card is an indication or an invitation to think of how you sort of draw away from them. It’s not a very, “Let’s go! I see the goal and I’m going to go after it. I’m going to run.” This is like a drawing back and a retreat into yourself. Whether that’s for protection because these new things are scary and you don’t know what’s going to happen. Maybe it’s just like a sensory thing and it’s just like, “Ugh, this is just too much. There’s just an overload of things.” And you get overwhelmed by feelings of doubt, of not enoughness. In a lot of my tarot business work, there has been so much that has come up for me that is really just like me stuff, like my inner workings and hangups and insecurities and things like that that show up when you then think of yourself as a business, or you think of putting yourself out there like that. And it is a lot, and for me this is a very real feeling of like drawing away from that where it’s like, “If I do this it’s going to put myself out there. I’m putting myself out there. And I don’t know what’s going to happen.” So all of the weird feelings that I have about myself as Aaron, as misterwitchboy, are going to come out when I start to write things, or put my face on a video. And especially with creative side outlets. I’m sure it must be a different story when you’re putting numbers into a graph and then that’s it or programming something. It might feel less personal. I don’t know. I don’t really do those things. But with something creative, it is a part of you. You are making something. You are birthing something and your baby’s going to go out there. And so it is very personal. So this card is just validating all of those feelings that you have and have had in the past about moving forward with these new, exciting creative outlets. You’re not going crazy that it is deeper and more complex than just do the thing, just see the result. There are emotions and an inner world that is going to come to light when you start to do all of this. And as I’m reading your question again, this makes me think of those feelings of “not regarding yourself and your abilities in the same positive light that others do.” Feeling like you’re an outsider or feeling like, “Ugh, that’s not me. That’s not me.” Ugh, I know the feeling well.
And so that brings us to the Knight of Chalices and these emotions—or not even emotions, but just the watery changeability of these feelings. That sort of quality where it’s like, “Today I feel this way. Tomorrow I might feel better. And I’m waiting for the right time. And it’s just the mood of things is not right because I don’t feel like myself and I’m sort of just like down on myself and so how could I possibly do it when I feel down on myself.” That’s this. This is the card for Scorpio… This is a figure that is learning and has learned how to harness the energy of those emotions and those tides and changes and ride them in a way that they are not controlled by those emotions. There’s like a depth and a solitude that is in this card and in the sign of Scorpio that is like, “Nobody understands this. It’s so deep and so a part of me and so inside of me that I have to go this alone.” It’s interesting because both of these figures are looking backwards and it almost looks to me like that Knight is coming back for this figure saying, “Hey, I know that you feel this way. I know that you feel left out, that you feel outside of things, that you feel down, that you feel like you need to contain yourself just by yourself. I’m here to bring you out a little. I’m here to show you the way that you can work with those feelings.” In a lot of decks, Knights are riding on horses and so if you think about the taming of those emotions and the way that I like to think that you tame animals I guess in zoos and things like that are becoming friends with them. Not like a mean relationship. You want to befriend that animal and learn what it likes and learn its tendencies and learn when it likes to show up and learn when it is able to stay away and stay down and stay docile. That I think is your work for right now—to get to know and develop a relationship with all of those things that keep coming up. Talk to it. Talk to that impostor syndrome. Talk to all of those thoughts and all of those feelings and say hey. Non-judgmentally. “Hey, why are you here? What are you feeling? What do you need right now?” With a little like food…I don’t know what that analogy would be but like you know. I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here to work with you and learn what you need and then we can figure out this thing together. So thinking of those old ways of thinking not as the enemy. That’s a part of you. That’s a part of you that you have the opportunity to get to know right now and to befriend.
And that brings us to Temperance, the one major card here. Temperance is Sagittarius. It is a reminder that all of that inner work that you feel like you need to do doesn’t need to be finished before you can start putting yourself out there. It is not a case of first I need to be perfect—first I need to be in control of—I need to have mastered—I need to be the Knightest of Knights with my chalices. I need to be totally out of here and never do this ever again and then I can do the thing. No, it may always—again if you’re befriending this—they may always—those thoughts—may always be there. And they just might not cut or keep you down as long as they used to. All of these cards are going back again, but this figure is sort of stationary actually. It’s maybe…they’re looking maybe forward, but this water is coming up and they’re just there in the present now. And so it’s going to be a practice in waking up and thinking, “Okay this is what I’m working with now. These are the feelings that I’m working with now and this is the work that I have to do. That feels like these two things. And it’s like, okay this is what it is and I get to choose what I want to do with that. This is stumping me a little and maybe because it’s such a huge idea. And so I want to pull another card.
So the Four of Pentacles. This card actually before I started filming I was shuffling the deck to get it ready and that one popped out. So it wants to come and say something. It’s interesting that we start with the Four of Chalices and end with the Four of Pentacles. So we start with this contraction of water, a watery contraction of maybe trying to sit in those feelings and just stay there. And then it has somehow transformed into a earthly contraction, a earthly stuckiness or steadiness even, where you don’t want anything to change and you want everything to stay the same and you want to make sure that you have all of your hands on all of your resources and everything so that you make sure that you have them. And that feels like what may be in the way of this work. It makes me think--another thing about this Temperance, about it being the card for Sagittarius, the archer, of pulling that arrow, being where you are, knowing that you’re looking at a target and sort of being there as well, and then being the arrow in the middle and the connection of all of those things. Yes, I am here and maybe you are in this place or in this place where you’re like stuck and you feel that contraction. Just the knowing that you have before moved from contraction to whatever the opposite of contraction is…extension. From being still to moving. That is a possible thing. Sagittarius feels like a lot of just all of the possibilities and look at all of the places we can go and all of the things that we can do. Let’s go! That action. And that practice of making things that seem immovable just wiggle just a little bit. There’s a lot of water here and then we end with earth. And then there’s this fire. The water and earth to me feel like mud. They feel like clay. They feel malleable and that changes things when they come together. And maybe that Temperance and that fire energy, that Sagittarius of like, “Oh, look at this journey that we can go on and look at all the different parts of it and just because I’m at the beginning doesn’t mean that I can’t ever go forward.” That fire and that heat and that energy being like the work that you put into shaping something. Heat not to keep things stuck and to solidify them, but to make them work and be malleable. You can’t have like cold earth and cold mud. That would just actually make it…dry. That would just actually make it super solid. But you need some heat. You need it to be malleable. You need to know that just because things are a certain way now doesn’t mean that they cannot change. And so with these negative thought patterns and old ways of thinking—you have since then made new ways of thinking as well. And so just remember when you feel stuck, not any pressure to get to where you are going already, but to remember that…okay let me just remember flexibility, remember how I have been able to harness some energy before to make changes. Sagittarius is a mutable sign and so it ends fall and brings us into the next season. It’s about moving on to the next thing. And so that is great energy for you to be like, “Ooh, okay lets move on to the next thing because I have this full time job and now I want to try these new creative outlets.
Alright I hope that that was helpful to you friend. I hope that that reminded you of your ability to enact change and to make things happen. And I hope it also reminded you to be kind and gentle to yourself in that process. Alright, thank you again for joining me on “dear misterwitchboy.” I will see ya’ll again soon! Bye!