Part two of my episode with the incredible AJA BARBER. Aja was kind enough to let me read her tarot cards for this recording, and we get a beautiful insight into who she is beyond her sustainability work. A reminder that the spread featured here was designed by me and is called BESTIE.
B: Bones - how the person being read structures their approach to living and humanity
E: Essence - the spirit that governs them
S: STRENGTH - the things that inform their inner strength
T: THROAT - how they speak their truth
I: IMAGINATION - the dream they secretly hold
E: ELEVATION - how they can make it happen
Although I love this particular reading, it ended up being too long really for podcast format. Moving forward, my plan is to release two episodes a week. The first will be a straight interview with my guest, released on a Wednesday. The second, released on a Saturday, will be a shorter tarot reading recorded at the end of our conversation. It'll be shorter by about a third than this episode, and really a way for listeners to get a deeper insight into someone without necessarily having to know (or even care about!) tarot.
For this Saturday's episode, I'm going to upload a brief overview of tarot for beginners - and why I think it's a perfect medium for conducting interviews and exploring a person's interior.
****
Follow Aja Barber on Instagram at @ajabarber
Buy CONSUMED here: Booktopia
If you're enjoying Untethered, please consider rating and reviewing the show and becoming a subscriber!
You can follow Clementine here, and support her work and the podcast:
Instagram: www.instagram.com/clementine_ford
Substack: www.substack.com/@clementinef
Part two of my episode with the incredible AJA BARBER. Aja was kind enough to let me read her tarot cards for this recording, and we get a beautiful insight into who she is beyond her sustainability work. A reminder that the spread featured here was designed by me and is called BESTIE.
B: Bones - how the person being read structures their approach to living and humanity
E: Essence - the spirit that governs them
S: STRENGTH - the things that inform their inner strength
T: THROAT - how they speak their truth
I: IMAGINATION - the dream they secretly hold
E: ELEVATION - how they can make it happen
Although I love this particular reading, it ended up being too long really for podcast format. Moving forward, my plan is to release two episodes a week. The first will be a straight interview with my guest, released on a Wednesday. The second, released on a Saturday, will be a shorter tarot reading recorded at the end of our conversation. It'll be shorter by about a third than this episode, and really a way for listeners to get a deeper insight into someone without necessarily having to know (or even care about!) tarot.
For this Saturday's episode, I'm going to upload a brief overview of tarot for beginners - and why I think it's a perfect medium for conducting interviews and exploring a person's interior.
****
Follow Aja Barber on Instagram at @ajabarber
Buy CONSUMED here: Booktopia
If you're enjoying Untethered, please consider rating and reviewing the show and becoming a subscriber!
You can follow Clementine here, and support her work and the podcast:
Instagram: www.instagram.com/clementine_ford
Substack: www.substack.com/@clementinef
Hello everyone and welcome to part two of my interview with Aja Barber for the Untethered Podcast. I am your host, clementine Ford. I uploaded a shorter interview with Aja earlier this week, and this one today is a much longer tarot reading. Now listen, I know that's going to be maybe a little bit too weird for some people, and that's fine. That's fine. You don't have to love everything I do. I love tarot, though, and I find that it's an excellent tool for discovery, for reflection and for really going deep on someone.
Speaker 1:This episode is a little bit experimental, but you know it's important to try things out and to see what works and what doesn't. But you know it's important to try things out and to see what works and what doesn't. As always, I am curious about your feedback. You can email me on clementineford at gmailcom. If you're enjoying the podcast, please remember to rate and review it. It's really, really important to help podcasts get out to other people. Subscribe so you never miss an episode, and if you'd like to further support me to make things like this, then you can go to my Substack, which is wwwsubstackcom. Forward slash at Clementine F. That link is in the liner notes of this episode as well, and you can become a paid subscriber so that I can continue to create the kind of work that hopefully you love.
Speaker 1:I'm going to begin this episode with a short clip from part one of my interview with Aja, which just outlines what this tarot spread is covering today. Again, even if you're not familiar with tarot, that's fine. You don't need to know tarot to get something out of this conversation because, through the medium of these cards, aja and I go really deep into who she is as a person, beyond her work as a sustainability educator and writer and activist, and we look at you know the deep emotional kind of spectrum of things. Aja is, of course, the author of the book Consumed, which is a comprehensive, confronting and extremely challenging book about the fast fashion industry and the responsibility we all have to slow ourselves right down and the extraordinary harm done by the fast fashion industry. You can order that book at the link as well. In these liner notes Don't buy from Amazon. It's not good. All right, I am recording this on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. Wherever you are, know whose land you're on. Let's get untethered with Aja Baba.
Speaker 1:Thank you so you are joining me for this, uh, you know, this initiation of this new beginning of a project that I want to work on, which is talking to people that I love and doing tarot readings for them so that people can learn more about them, but in a different kind of way. I have this tarot spread that I've designed. I'm going to just pass you the cards now to shuffle them. I've got this tarot spread that I've designed, called BESTI, and, for the benefit of the listeners it stands for the B is the bones of who you are. The E is the essence of who you are. The S is the strength that you have, you know come to in your life. The T is the throat, how you speak, your truth. I is the imaginings that you have. What is the dream that you maybe are not even willing to admit to yourself? And E is the elevation of how you can make it happen.
Speaker 1:I'm so pleased to have you here for this first episode because I love you and it's just so wonderful to meet you. Finally, because we've been friends for so long online and you know there are those people who you meet and you just instantly kind of have good crack with. I feel like. Getting to know you in this way, especially using a medium that is so special to me, is a real gift, so thank you honestly, I'm so happy to be here and I the funniest thing is um, as I mentioned before, I don't like flying I I never thought that I would actually ever come to Australia because that's how much I don't like flying.
Speaker 3:And when you um mentioned the festival to me, I said yes, because I really like you.
Speaker 2:That makes me feel good, you know, when you have a friend and you're just like I really like her.
Speaker 3:Okay, I'm gonna say yes, and then I'll think about later how on earth I'm gonna get on a plane for that one, then I'll freak out about then I'll freak out, say yes, figure it out later.
Speaker 3:It was one of those moments where I was like, of course I would come and then, of course, later on I was like, wait, what did I? And then the email came through and I thought, oh god, I did say yes to this. It was one of those sheer moments of okay, well, you said yes because you really like Clem.
Speaker 1:Well, that makes me feel so great and I'm going to make sure that the Opera House knows that you should. So Aja came over for the All About Women Festival which we had on the weekend, and she spoke so amazingly about you know your work, which is sustainability, and I didn't. We started we're friends now we started talking immediately at the start of this, so I didn't quite get to the point where you have written this incredible book called Consumed Slowing Down, fast Fashion, which I've spoken to you before, actually on a podcast, when I used to do the Big Sister Hotline. You were on it.
Speaker 1:But you all must go out and get it, read it and share it with people as well, because one of the problems and I know I'm so guilty of this as well one of the problems that we have, and it's so exacerbated by social media, which you and I talk about all the time this problem of social media is this sense of productive activism whilst actually doing nothing. You know well, I'll get the book but I won't read the book. Yeah, or I'll get the book and I'll read the book and I'll feel horrified by the book, but I won't put any of the lessons in the book into practice.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, when you're reading books, you know what you're not doing. Buying clothes you don't need, that is one thing for sure. There were so many moments right In my journey for lack of a better word where I realized that doing other things kept me from wanting to go to my favorite places and buy things that cost less money than you know a latte, sometimes, um, and so, in order to like really sort of move myself away from a lot of consumerist systems, I had to think deeply about what I enjoyed and I had to engage in things that I actually enjoyed, and so, for me, the more I read, the less I want to go out and buy things. Maybe books, I love buying books, I won't lie about that. But like buying clothing, I won't lie about that. But like buying clothing, I don't need no, but reading, doing ballet, doing yoga, doing the things that I enjoy that make me feel good.
Speaker 1:That definitely gets me, um, to a place where consumerism sort of doesn't have the same sort of hold and pull on me one of the things that you said in your session on the weekend with Jan Fran, who was also an incredible proponent of recycling.
Speaker 3:She looked amazing. Her pink vintage dress was so cool yeah yeah, she's just super cool around, I think.
Speaker 1:But one of the things that you said is that people don't want a new item of clothing. What they probably want is a hug. Want a new item of clothing, what they probably want is a hug. And that's definitely true for me, like I said to you yesterday that I really haven't bought a lot lately because I've been going through this huge sort of emotional and spiritual shift anyway and really really trying to downsize in so many areas of my life not just consumption, but also caring about stuff that doesn't matter yeah, like I don't give a shit about the industry anymore.
Speaker 1:Yes, well, that kind of like aspiration for success.
Speaker 3:Like you, I still want to have a comfortable life, but I don't this idea of like being famous or being like well-known yeah so not interesting to me yeah, I want to have a nice life so that anytime a friend is feeling down I can just say come over and I'll cook for you, and I don't have to worry about like, oh God, I've got so many deadlines, I can't take this time and comfort a friend.
Speaker 1:Or I've got to go to this event, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:So hang out with people I hate.
Speaker 3:Yes, exactly, I want to have a nice life so that I can be good in my communities. Yeah, I want to have a nice life so I can take care of my loved ones like, um, my sisters and my niece and nephew came over a few years ago and we took a little mini weekend to France and I was able to pay for everyone. It was so nice to do that like come on, everyone, let's.
Speaker 3:Let's go to France for a little bit. You know, this is a magic spell. This is the type of nice life I want. A nice life for me is not an endless and ever revolving wardrobe, which it used to be, because that's what our society is telling us we should thrive for, and that just isn't it.
Speaker 1:It just it isn't well, that's a really good segue into doing this bestie spread, so that we can get to know you even better. And I know what this first card is going to be, because I actually somehow misplaced it from my original deck. I used the Modern Witch deck by Lisa Stowe, which is a great one. It's a basic interpretation of the Rider-Waite-Smith, but because the Rider-Waite-Smith was, you know, it's very medieval in nature, so it's very gendered and very like white and lots of swords and kings and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:So this is, you know, it's a much more diverse deck, but also everyone in it is basically a woman or a non-binary person. There's no like cis men in it. Yeah, which I really love, but I had to replace this card because I lost it and the deck that I bought.
Speaker 3:I can tell there's a slight color difference, a little bit yeah.
Speaker 1:But I love that this is the card that is coming up for bones because the bones of you, the structure of you, is the card that is coming up for bones because the bones of you, the structure of you, like how you basically like, materially create the container for who you are and what the container for who, for how you pour, who you pour your spirit into, is the queen of cups, and I'm just going to turn that around so that you see it. The queen of cups is the queens are all intuitive caretakers of the suit, basically. So they all represent the element of water, um, and the cups as a suit represents water as well. It's emotion, it's love, it's relationships, it's all of that kind of like the, the watery signs. So I'm a cancerian, so it's cancer, scorpio pisces. The queen of cups is a highly intuitive person and you know she's pictured here on her throne on the edge of the sea. She's wearing this beautiful kind of like mermaid, mermaid, greeny blue, which and you would love to wear greeny blues.
Speaker 1:The Queen of Cups, her job as the caretaker, the emotional caretaker of the Cups suit, is to make sure that everyone is looked after around her emotionally, which you know just describing this taking your family away, and I know that about you. Like, your care precedes you, your care for people. There's no sense of um, there's no kind of like nefarious underhanded motivation with you. You don't do the work that you do because you're thinking well, this will make me really famous, this will get me a great platform, and I think that that's really powerful, that that has come up in the bones in this spread, that the actual structure that you find important, the thing materially that holds your spirit in the world, is this incredible devotion to community and care and intuitively understanding what the people around you need, and not sacrificing your own needs, but and not not so much like when I say maternal, not so much like being everyone's mother- I definitely feel like that on Instagram sometimes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like when there's some you know bad, bad things going on, I do feel like I'm the one that's like get a grip everyone. What is it? What do you think you're doing? Like I've had to pull people aside before.
Speaker 1:This is a really good interpretation as well of the Queen of Cups, because she wouldn't. She's not indulgent. You know, that's not like soothing everyone all the time, like there is a, an understanding of what the whole needs, what the collective needs, and taking care of people's emotions while you do it. You know, not being the queen of swords, for example, as like an air representative, as the swords is, mental state can be a little bit more shrewd and be a little bit less emotionally Well, obviously less emotionally connected to people.
Speaker 3:So my readership knows as well that, like if I catch you behaving badly on someone else's page and you follow me, I will definitely pull you in yeah, like if, like, it's okay to be wrong, but I'm going to correct you, especially if you want to be in community with me. Um, and I think people say, like the people that follow your workers. So I've had a lot of people say your community is really, really strong and I think there is um accountability there. Yeah, sure.
Speaker 1:So I should also have said this at the at the beginning. I'm not psychic, so when I look at the cards I can't go and that, oh gosh, I'm seeing that this thing happened to you when you were five and then this is going to happen next week. You know, most people who read tarot are not psychic in the sense that people understand, so there's no sort of like purpose in trying to catch someone out. I believe that the cards fall exactly as they're meant to, and I believe that with practice you tune into your own sort of intuitive understanding of things and you can weave the story together I get messages sometimes but I can't make sense of them until later.
Speaker 3:Then all of a sudden it becomes very, very, very clear why that message was sent. Sometimes it does make I'm like okay, I see what's happening here. And I do think when people say like you know, how do you, how did you build a platform, how did this happen? I think a little bit of that intuitive nature has always played into what I'm doing yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3:I think I've always. I've instinct it's a bit of instinct and I've always been able to sort of like have a bird's-eye view of certain things, right. So, systems, for instance I can see that this system is leading us down a bad path and I can't describe it. And it isn't just systems, it's also geographic locations. My dad has this. We can be somewhere completely new in the world and we just know how to get where we're going. Um, the other day we were out and you were like I'll drop you back off, and I was like no, just put me on the tram. I didn't have wi-fi, I didn't have signal, I didn't have anything, but I was like I'll figure it out, it'll be okay, because I have this thing where I can sort of zoom out and get a bird's eye view of not just my location, but a system, for instance, and
Speaker 3:it took me a long time to realize not everyone has that. Like my mom has no sense of direction, she can't find her way out of a cardboard box and I was just like what do you mean? Like it took me a long time to realize that that intuition, that vision, isn't something that everybody has. But now I kind of see it as like a bit of a special skill and I think it does play into what I talk about on the internet and how I can definitely see a clear direction of people's intentions and motives and systems and whatnot. And I I used to think that everybody had that.
Speaker 1:I feel similarly and my you know, my son's dad calls that using the force, using the force to get home um.
Speaker 3:Steve calls me a homing pigeon.
Speaker 1:I've always had a good intuition and at times in my life, like after my mum died, it really kind of broke open you know I.
Speaker 1:I had some very curious things happen Going back to the Tower of your Bones, this Queens of Cup, her signifier is intuition. She's the intuitive, she's the water of water, mother of the water of water. So everything that you feel about that bird's eye view, the clairvoyance that you have, the clairsentience, this just knowing you have this great instinct for people as well, you can expand on that and you can make that the bones of you, you can make even stronger because that's your superpower.
Speaker 3:I really want people to tap into this so deeply because I think that we all do have it and I remember when this is going to sound really ridiculous, but, like when GPS became a thing, I was like stop using it. Everyone you're tuning, you're turning off that energy, that allows you to find your way home and I remember thinking you sound.
Speaker 3:You sound ridiculous. People are like what are you talking about? It's just a bat. But I'm like no, you have to be able to find your way home, sometimes on your own, without the help of that, but yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean there's something really, you know, metaphorical in that too. It's like when people say don't use the calculator all the time because you need to know how to add up the numbers, how to do some sums in your head.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I know math, but it's true.
Speaker 1:But I think it's also using those parts of our brain. If we rely, if we outsource every part of our brain, no wonder so many people can't listen to their intuition.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, totally. So, yeah, no, I've always been intuitive and I think that we do all have a certain level of intuition. But I worry that I don't want to be like technology is ruining it. But it isn't just technology. It's a lack of connection. Technology, it's a lack of connection. It's a lack of connection to nature. It's a lack of connection to make who makes our clothing. It's a lack of connection to each other. We're saying, oh, we're more connected than ever through these screens, but in actuality, is that true or are we more?
Speaker 1:lonely than ever your bones, is to lead your work through the world in this emotionally intuitive way, not driven for self gain but driven for the, you know, for the benefit of the whole. I think there's also a reason why this world card popped out three times, because it's like you're the signifier is the world you're, you're creating this whole new world for people, or at least striving to it. So your essence I'm going to move on to the next card in the spread your essence is more cups, the six of cups, again like oh, this is a little kid, yeah, so so the of Cups is depicted by an adult version In the Rider-Waite-Smith.
Speaker 1:There's sort of a weird kind of optical illusion that happens between the quote-unquote adult and the child, in that the child's body has the adult's head and the adult's body has the child's head.
Speaker 3:But in this version in Lisa Stirls, Is that little me talking to little, me talking to little?
Speaker 1:me if that's your instinct telling you my niece, when you look at that card, it's important to think what do you feel about it? But when I look at that card as your reader, the six of cups is a is a card of exchange. It's, but it's an exchange of, of a carer giving and helping someone who needs help. Um, so I would often look at this card and think that if it's an exchange of a carer, giving and helping someone who needs help.
Speaker 1:So I would often look at this card and think that if it's relating to an individual person, just in themselves, there's a sense that maybe they need to honor and nurture their inner child or they need to learn to ask for help, which is not necessarily what I'm feeling from the essence of you here as an essence card. What your spiritual essence, encased in this kind of Queen of Cups bones, is a desire to nurture and care and help people and help the world, but also to honor the little version inside of you that maybe, as when you were growing up, you didn't feel was necessarily taken care of, that you didn't feel was necessarily, whether or not directly by your parents, but also by the world around you, by the adults around you. So part of your essence and your spirit now in terms of helping other people, is this honoring of you as a child and honoring what you yourself didn't get and what you weren't respected to have. That's so much a part of your praxis.
Speaker 3:And it really is, and it ties so much back into the work that I do. Because when I talk about fast fashion and it's so funny because this person here reminds me of me in my 20s actually, when I was really coming off the fast fashion boat so much of that initial obsession with buying too many things came from having a childhood where I never had the right clothing and that got me made fun of, and the truth is, I don't think that the people I went to school with would have been that nice to me if I had had the right is.
Speaker 3:I don't think that the people I went to school with would have been that nice to me if I had had the right clothing. I was one of very few black kids in a predominantly white area lower middle class in a very wealthy area but I thought that maybe if I just had a few outfits from the gap and the limited, that maybe they would be nicer to me, and I think that really I was off to the races for a lifetime of consumers and, based on that very those experiences shape us. They do, and whenever I talk about growing up and being made fun of for my clothing and how that plays a part and how I consume things today, I get hundreds of messages, so I know I'm not the only one and I think that that's a very common thing in our society and something that we have to fix because it's hurting us.
Speaker 1:The six in the tarot as well, is in the major arcana. The six is the lover's card, and people sometimes think, oh, the lover's, that just, you know, that's just about relationships or it's about physical love or whatever. But the lover's card is depicted by two human bodies, um, standing before an angel. So there's a question in the six about, you know, this sort of moving on to the next stage of spiritual understanding and bringing unity and balance into our life, but also, I think, a sort of a reverence for um, the systems that can help us and the systems that we can take down, that oppress other people and that's a really beautiful.
Speaker 1:You know to bring that in for your essence, to have you really receive the six of cups. I feel like, specifically, the thing with tarot is you can learn the individual meanings of the cards, but part of the intuitive storytelling aspect is how does it relate to you as the person? What am I picking up and feeling when I look at that? And I think, specifically for you, that card, as the card of you know, balance, balance and giving, and the cup that you know, know the adult version is handing to the little girl and that is a little child is not just filled with water but there's sparkles in it. Yeah, so there's something like beautiful and magical that's. It's a potion, yeah potion.
Speaker 1:So, in a way, for your specific situation, I would say that your essence as well is this is that you approach life spiritually with the idea of what magic can I give to other people, what potion, what spell can I provide them with that will distract them from the goals and the glitz that they've kind of been, yeah, been made to feel, yeah is worthwhile, and maybe all they need is a hug, yeah, or maybe what they need is this sort of sense of maybe what they need is the um, whatever magic has been depleted from within them, been taken from them by the systems that we live in. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Maybe they need that to be restored. So your role maybe community, even in an online space where everybody is selling something to them at every um avenue, but maybe they're not being challenged in a way, you know the way that those two cards work together the queen of cups with the six of cups and your, your spiritual, like soul, soul purpose, soul s-o-u-l purpose in this life is to better, to leave things, better than you found them that is always what I say.
Speaker 3:I always say that the only purpose of being on this planet and I have heard that we've all picked this time period to be here, I'm like, but the planet is burning is to leave things better than how you found them, and that is that's it. Early into my married life, ste said I was having a nightmare and I screamed to no one at all and if he hadn't heard it, people would start. I was making it up. Remember my name, you rich bastard?
Speaker 3:it's like I had to wake you then because I really wanted to know what was going on but, um, at the end of the day, I um, I want to leave this world better where does your strength come from, then?
Speaker 1:the strength to do this work, particularly because it's not easy to challenge systems and it's not easy to go up against individuals and also just the demoralization of. Again, you're like you can tell people to buy the book and they can read it even, but how do you change that sort of weight of basically like um, depressing the glacial pace of change? Where does your strength come from? Well, interestingly, you've picked the strength card for that. So in the strength section of this spread that I've designed, the strength card has appeared. The strength card, which we described before us, is beautiful and I love as well that two, that two of the cards that you have so far feature black women.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because I think that the deck is specifically speaking to you it's funny what you were saying about um, you a little bit afraid of the lion, but also recognizing. So I've got cats and people don't know this, but I've actually been afraid of cats my whole life. But Stephen loves cats and I knew that he would never do it on his own and my cats have become such a sense of joy they really have. Still a little bit I'm not afraid of Juno. Olive has a mind of her own and her favorite thing to do is to. She likes to jump on our shoulders Like she likes to ride on your shoulder, but she's also she'll hang out at the top of the stairs sometimes and get on your shoulders and now I'm used to it.
Speaker 1:But at first I was like, and then now I'm just sort of like okay, I just don't like it when she does it when I'm wearing a t-shirt well this connection that you have with the feline, then is it's interesting that your birth year, like your, your number as a person in the world, is the eight, the um minus the ten, the wheel of fortune, which also reduces to the magician, the number one. So it's kind of like destiny is in your hands.
Speaker 1:That's my birth year, but yours is the eight. So you've been born and imbued in this life with the infinite. The infinity symbol, for a start, but also Just pause for a minute while Steve's here.
Speaker 1:I feel like this. That spot for the card is specifically strength. Where does your strength come from? So it's interesting that your strength comes from strength. Your strength comes from the mission that you were born with in this world. Your strength comes from knowing. I think, going back to this idea, that you do have clairsentience and clairvoyance On some level. Spiritually, you have always known what your purpose is meant to be. So there is a strength that kind of imbues you, that in a way, when we know, when we know we're doing what we're meant to be doing as hard as it is, you also kind of understand it's predestined so there's a, there's a way to be, there's a way to find strength within that, because you think I'm not doing anything other than exactly what I'm supposed to be doing in this life, and there's things I mean.
Speaker 1:some of this I know because we've spoken personally and privately and you've also said some of these things out loud, sorry publicly, but there is the strength as well of growing up feeling on the outer you know feeling marginalized feeling bullied, feeling you've already in so many ways you don't have friends.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in or in so many ways, you've spent your whole life walking alongside your own fears and walking alongside your own sense of feeling like you're not good enough, like you're not cool enough, like you're not good enough, like you're not cool enough, like you're not popular enough, like you're not wearing enough of the right clothes, etc. So you've already kind of reckoned with all of that fear, and even though you might, you know, still be afraid of flying or whatever it is, you are also empowered by the fact that the lion within you always walks alongside you and you know that being afraid of some of what the lion represents is not, it's not a sign that the lion is going to attack you, it's. There's this beautiful balance that's come from and this infinity, kind of like figure eight movement, the beginning, the end, the beginning, the end where you, on some deep level, know that everything's going to be okay do you ever think of like you know you are a person in the public eye just like me.
Speaker 3:Do you ever think sometimes being in the public eye is almost like that lion as?
Speaker 3:well, I feel like my community is a wonder and the people that support my work are incredibly protective of me and my work. But at the same time we also know the downside of social media can be that it becomes a lion that haunts you in this way and I always feel like I'm walking a very, very careful line. But at the same time I like to hope that the people that gravitate towards the work that I do are kindreds of mine. But with social media you just never really. The direction that things can take can be quite like harrowing in this weird way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I definitely feel like that and I think that there is. You know it's been. There have been times in the last 15 years of public life, particularly as social media becomes more and more present and also vicious. Yes, and I've participated in that too. I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I haven't. You know, it's a compulsion yes we're all kind of invited to exercise our superiority online, yeah, and I'm really trying. That's a compulsion. Yes, we're all kind of invited to exercise our superiority online, yeah, and.
Speaker 3:I'm really trying. That's a really good way of putting it.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm really trying hard to take a breath, you know, and also in my life in general. I'm 42, I'm going to be 43 soon. I don't have the energy for this sort of very dogmatic kind of activism anymore and I and I really do admire it a lot when I see it in particular people, and when I was in my 20s I was so like my way or the highway, you know, and there is a power in that, there's that we need those people sometimes to like take, take the horse by the bit and, yes, you know, bolt it, um, but I just feel like, for me personally, I don't want to do that anymore and I also think that it's it has to be balanced by this, you know, the six of cup energy of like maternal care and giving people kindness and giving people understanding and giving people grace.
Speaker 3:I think the people that are in my community see that. I think the people that are on the outskirts do not.
Speaker 3:And I think that there's a type of person that really wants to connect with you, and if they want to connect, they give you the most, they give you the most generous definition of how they see you, right. But I think that there are a lot of people that can be quite uncharitable, and what they make of you what it is that you want to do, and that's why the internet can be very much like a lion well, I just also had this strong feeling as well, that it's like tingling in the back of my head actually, that the strength in you, too, is it's.
Speaker 1:It's it's like an ancestral thing as well, that there is like this long line of women that you, you have been sort of molded by and, in a way, like they all walk with you, alongside you and the lion. You can't necessarily see them, but they're a reminder that the lion is um.
Speaker 1:What we fear can sometimes hurt us very badly you know, and obviously with your ancestral history as well, there's going to be an enormous amount of trauma and pain in that and violence and hurt, and all of that survival has passed down to you Like yes, we inherit intergenerational trauma, but I also believe really strongly that we inherit intergenerational bravery and strength.
Speaker 3:You know, it's not just the ancestors that I feel walk with me regularly. I also feel every animal I've ever loved Like. I have this very strong visual of myself as an old lady in my 80s and behind me is a trail of ghost animals that like, continue to like embody, and I feel like every animal that you deeply connect with on this planet is there to guide you in some way.
Speaker 1:I actually get a very strong feeling, looking at you as well, of an otter really yeah, they're so cute they are really cute and, um, I don't know really all that much about them except for they're cute, but I they can be horrendous as well. Yeah, well, I mean, look, sometimes you need to be horrendous I'm gonna go away after this and look up otters and see if there's. I mean, it could just maybe, I'm just maybe, I just thought I'm an otter and it's got nothing to do with you at all, but like there is something as well about the.
Speaker 1:You know otters. Otters, mums really take care of their babies and otters fall asleep holding hands. And there's something about you that is this energy that you have where I think you're in your heart and you feel like the world would be a better place if this could be implemented. But also in your heart, you don't believe that anyone deserves to fall asleep feeling alone.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, yes, honestly, I'm at this point where I consider myself, you know, wealthy by standards of my own people, which I come from a long line of poverty, but I feel quite wealthy. Absolutely for no moment. Do not believe that it is not possible on our planet. I never want to have millions and millions of dollars in the bank while people starve. I wouldn't be able to live with myself. I just that's a horrendous way to be, and I know that money is fluctuating and fluent and it's, you know, like some of it almost seems like it's fake in this weird way um, it is fake.
Speaker 1:It's like a weird system to be like. Here's a piece of paper but on paper you are this, but in actuality.
Speaker 3:If you really you know need it to have access to this, you can actually have it. It's quite weird, isn't it?
Speaker 1:it's so weird and I feel like you know it's. It might sound self-aggrandizing to people, but I look, I could never be super, super wealthy because I get money and I give it away, you know like I don't want to give it all away, like I take care of me and my kid you know and I want to have like.
Speaker 3:I'm not like, I'm not Franciscan, you know. You know, um, that that would be nice, but that is all I want. I do not. I'm so lucky that I get to travel now. I'm so lucky that, but ultimately to me, the wealthiest I ever want to be is the type of person that can pick up every bill when I'm with my friends.
Speaker 1:Well, I want to go fantastic, yeah and I love that feeling like it's on me you know, I'm and you don't have to, you don't have to repay it, you don't have to to even mention it, it's just, I took care of it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, if you have things.
Speaker 1:If you have fortune, what is the point of having it If you don't share it? I want to go back quickly to that six of cups as well that it's not just spiritual, like your essence is not just sharing spiritual care and wealth and kindness. That is actually like a depiction of what I have I will give to those with lesser, you know, and that's like a core part of your spiritual essence and I think that that comes from this. Strength is that you know the woman in the strength card is wearing a sheet wrapped up with flowers and she has everything she needs.
Speaker 3:That's exactly it, and I've always thought it's so weird, right, but people platforms once we are paid for our work, we get so much for free. It's a weird concept, particularly when you're like questioning, like consumerism is your platform. Yeah, I still get a lot of free stuff and I'm grateful for it. Don't get me wrong. I get to try some amazing products and whatnot. But I am the person where, if I see someone that I follow, someone in my community talking about a product, right, and they're like, oh, I'd really like to try this, and then I'm like, oh, I've got three of those. I'll just message them and be like, hey, I'll send you. Just send me your address. That's the type of person I want to be. That is always, I think, are things. They're they're meant to come and go right one of my friends visited from Ghana.
Speaker 3:Um, he works in the clothing trade there and, uh, he was as usual. When you, when you make a big trip, you bought a lot of stuff for his kids and his partner and you realize, oh crap, I need bag. And that's a nightmare when you're traveling, because it's just time that you have to spend looking for a bag, which is annoying. So you just give them a bag.
Speaker 3:So you just give them a bag, because that's what I had to do when I went to Japan. I bought a bag because the secondhand clothing market there is, mwah and Steve and I bought so much nice secondhand clothing that we ended up having to buy a bag to bring it back and I had never used that bag since. So my friend is sitting there going oh, tomorrow I'm going to go shopping for a bag. Where do I even go shopping for a bag?
Speaker 2:And I said no, you don't here you are Take this back to Ghana.
Speaker 1:But it's kind of like, even if you didn't have another bag, you'd just be like take this bag.
Speaker 3:Exactly. You just be like take this bag exactly. You know, if it makes your life easier, I can go and get a bag next time I need one. And I look at all of my possessions from that point. Right like we got a sleeper sofa when we moved and so many people slept on it and it was a little bit more pricier than I would normally spend on something like that. Um, but I think it's very comfy. X amount of people have slept on it If.
Speaker 3:I can get, you know, a thousand nights sleep out of that. Then it ends up being a pound of sleep, which to me, I think that's a very good deal to be able to give people that.
Speaker 1:You have reframed my understanding of worth, like I've never really cared all that much about possessions in. I mean I accumulate a lot because I you know, need to figure out a different way to up my dope, but I I don't really sort of. I think that there's something really sad. In some ways it's liberating but also sad that like nothing I have, I care so much about that I wouldn't care if I lost it, and that's great because it means you're not like stuck to it yeah.
Speaker 1:But it also means that I have a lot of stuff that I don't need. You know the things that. I care about is if I lose. Don't need, yeah, you know the things that I care about is if I lose. Once I lost when I was like 24 years old. I got really drunk one night and I left my bag underneath the pub table and, for some bizarre reason, this bag, little bag well, it just seemed to have a lot of fucking shit in it that I I kind of didn't want to lose yeah and one of those things, the most important thing that it had like it had my camera, it had my phone.
Speaker 1:It had, like you know, this was d most important thing that it had like it had my camera, it had my phone. It had, like you know, this was DVD box set. It had the whole DVD box set of Buffy in it and I was like I lost that and it didn't belong to me. So that sucked, but the only thing that mattered to me that I lost was a small little packet of photographs that I had from when I was a baby. Oh yeah, that shit matters, that shit really matters from when I was a baby. Oh yeah, that shit matters.
Speaker 3:You know, because it's not like that's pre-digital, like I don't have like copies of that now. You can't just call that up, yeah.
Speaker 1:I would say, in terms of possessions now, literally nothing matters to me, except for anything sentimental that can't be replaced. And even then I'm trying to get to the point where, like, I lost one of my mom's earrings recently. It was, um, she had these beautiful pearl earrings and she left them to me and I was wearing them. I never wore them Cause I was like I don't want to lose one, yeah, and then I wore one and it must've got like snagged my jumper and it fell off and I just had to kind of go. You know what? It's just a fucking earring. It's fine. It's fine like it doesn't. Losing the earring doesn't mean that she's lost in my heart. Yeah, it's not great, but like it's okay. You know the things that when I die, I know the things that are going to matter to me, uh, the memories that I have. I know it sounds cliche, but like I'm not going to be like wow, like isn't it great that I had that really nice set of sheets?
Speaker 1:yeah, you know, I love that dress. I wore twice but I do think of things right, like a set of sheets about.
Speaker 3:Like the experience. Right, because there is. If you like a good night's sleep, why not just bring for a really nice? Pair of fair trade sheets right, really good quality cotton. It's about the experience for and you can have a really lovely experience using something that is beautiful. So for me.
Speaker 3:my approach to my home, to my wardrobe, is buy the best that you can possibly afford. Don't be cheap just for the sake of being cheap, which is something that our society prized. It's like I got a deal on this. Great, but do they feel like? Are they scratchy, scratchy, uncomfortable sheets then? Was it a good deal if you're not getting the best possible sleep?
Speaker 1:but this is the terry pratchett school of.
Speaker 3:Yes, you know the the economic theory of boots, which is why it drives me absolutely up the wall when people use it to justify purchasing things yeah, she n, because the reason she and as a company is successful is because it requires a lot of people spending a lot of money buying a lot of things they don't need. That is their business model.
Speaker 3:So when people compare it to Vimes and his boot theory, they're getting it completely and utterly wrong, which is also funny because my literary agent represents the estate of Terry Pratchett and when I told him that people were doing this, the color drained out of his face. Harry Pratchett, and when I told him that people were doing this, the color drained out of his face. So they're getting it completely wrong. Because Vines wanted one nice pair of boots, vines would have bought the best boots he could possibly afford and have had them for 20 years. Vines did not want to go on a Sheehan shopping spree. He was in that position because he absolutely couldn't afford better. But there are so many of us that absolutely can't afford better and we're picking the she-in Because we want more. Because we want more yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:And that's where people get it wrong. Yeah T throat, how do you express your truth? Well, this one is another queen, which is interesting the queen of wands. The queen of wands.
Speaker 3:So again like interesting.
Speaker 1:The queen of wands, the queen of wands. So again, like my black cat, yeah the black cat is featured in there and there's a sunflower as well.
Speaker 1:So the queen the wands is the suit of fire and action. You know, movement, it's, it's like um, you know leo, uh, aries, and what's the other fire? Well, the other fiery one, the queen of wands, is like, you know, when you go into a room and there's a person in there and it's just like. It's like when they talk to you, the sun is shining on you, and when they don't talk to you, when they're ignoring you, it's like the sun has gone away. Yeah, so the queen of wands has this incredible power. She's the center of any kind of social situation, she's the party planner, she's the one who's. You want to go to the queen of wands as parties? Yeah, queen of cups, she's great if you want to like, go to be listened to and and, and you know, understood and have some intuition sent your way. But, but, the Queen of Wands is where you want to go, she commands the room.
Speaker 1:The Queen of Wands commands the room and she's very vibrant and you know she makes things happen. So, in terms of how you express your truth as the Queen of Wands, I love that you've gotten two queens as well as the Queen of Wandsands.
Speaker 1:You are forthright, you're uncompromising in lots of ways, but incredibly charming, which is very true of you, very true of you, and you sort of like, you make the truth fun and I think that that's a really key part of the queen of wands is that she, she creates a party around it.
Speaker 1:So you make the truth by creating a community, which is, of course, what you've done with your patrons and you. You're an incredible community builder and you know my friend Karen she talks about you know, be a builder, not a wrecker, and you're a builder and lots of people, especially in the online space, are wreckers, but the queen of wands is, if she chooses to be, because obviously, like the shadow side of these cards can be like the negatives, yeah, but the Queen of Wands, in her, in her sort of peak, is a builder. And you speak your truth not by making people feel bad, not by making people feel you know like they can't do it, and not by getting angry at them and saying you're a fucking piece of shit. Look at you in that fucking Sheehan, skirt you and not by getting angry at them and saying you're a fucking piece of shit.
Speaker 1:Look at you in that fucking Shein skirt. You fucking cunt. I hate you. Instead, you're like hey guys, let's think about how we can have a better world together.
Speaker 3:Let's think about how we can grow sunflowers together. Let's think about the fact that that Shein skirt that you bought is based off of a Prada skirt that's currently sitting on eBay for only a little bit more than your entire Shein order. You can actually just have the Prada skirt, particularly if you're standard size. You can have that. You can have it for $50. You can have it for $40. I got a Prada dress recently and I am plus size and the size 14 for a hundred dollars. I used to spend that much at H&M on one visit you 15 years ago.
Speaker 3:So, like I, want people to be realistic and honest with themselves. Do you want nice things or do you want a world drowning in crap? And does it have to be unfun if you stop buying recklessly?
Speaker 1:no actually, I would argue, it's so much more fun and your wardrobe gets so much better well, and that's, you know, that's a key word here fun, the way that you build community and and that's, you know, that's a key word here fun the way that you build community and the way that you speak about the issues that you care about, is to make people realize how fun it can be to, you know, find a really great vintage item to join the party of saving the world. You know, there's like the fact that she's the queen of fire and you, with your truth, by channeling her, you present people with this option. Would you like to set the world on fire by making it a better place, by making it a more colorful place, by making it a more circular place, by, by, by the fire, being the fire of our connection and the fire of our community? Or would you literally like to set the world on fire so that we all fucking die and perish and it's not good for your children.
Speaker 3:This is the thing. I don't know if I'm going to have children, but I just think are people not realizing what will happen if we keep with these systems? Or people not realizing that the the childhood that we have will be largely unavailable to your children's children? You know, and that's, that's really all I want people to understand.
Speaker 1:There's a really nice evolution here with these cards as well. So we've started with the queen of cups and then the six of cups and the queen's very like heavily bluey green. You know that's like watery emotions. Moving through the six, there's a yellow house in the background. Yellow is joy and action. And then we've got the strength card, obviously, which is very like heavily yellowy orange, and then the queen of wands has all the same elements of the strength, but like hyper you know, hyper saturated.
Speaker 1:So I like this idea as well, that as we move through this bestie spread and we figure out more of who you are, you, you become more clear in the minds of people. Which is a nice signifier about you is that maybe when people meet you, they're not sure what to expect the first time they meet you. Maybe they do expect. Well, she's a sustainability activist, she's all activists are really angry. She's going to get really mad at me and she's going to.
Speaker 3:I've got to be like really careful around her, like I've to be intuitively, like softly, softly, softly, whereas actually the more people get to know you, the more they like she just really fucking loves the world and all the people in it really care about everyone and I always tell people look, if you got to get your underpants from a place that we all know isn't the most ethical, what am I going to do? Am I going to show up and slap your wallet out of your hand? Am I going to yell at you?
Speaker 2:You know? No, I'm not. You should do that just as a joke. Just show up and be like no, put it down.
Speaker 3:You know, but like, at the end of the day, we've all had to buy underpants from someone who wasn't like the most ethical. You know, we grew up in the I grew up in the time period of Victoria's Secret and they suck, don't. Don't. You know, we'll never pretend like I've never owned a product from them. Um, but I think that ultimately, I'm asking people to self-interrogate and that makes people deeply uncomfortable sometimes, but I'm not angry.
Speaker 1:People love to say you are, but I'm not no, and that's you can't control how other people think of you anyway, like you just have to let that go before we move on to the imagination. The second to last card. I just want to link these two queens because it's really important that they've appeared in your spread, particularly with the strength there as well. Um, the strength, by the way, is the major arcana indicates a huge, like lifelong, influence over your life. So the strength, the strength of your strength, is like strength to the power of strength. But these bookended queens, if the bones of you is this intuition, this care and this love, it doesn't extend necessarily to like being so maternal that you let people off the hook, and I love that balance between these two water and fire, that, yes, you will care, but also you'll be real with them. You're not going to let them get away with shit because they're trying to slip one past you and you're, you care about them so much, in fact, that you will fucking tell them the truth about shit. Yeah, imagination what is it that you imagine for yourself that you maybe don't even allow yourself to dream, to admit to yourself to dreaming?
Speaker 1:Now, this is an interesting card. This is the three of swords, and you'll see from looking at it that it's kind of like depressing to look at. Straight up, there's a heart, pierced heart. Pierced heart with three swords, with rain in the background and sort of tar-like substance coming out of it. I think actually, what this signifies for you is your dream is to there is like a, there's an emotional wound inside you that comes from you know some of the stuff that we've talked about, this idea of being like. You know, feeling like you weren't lovable enough when you were a kid. Yes, lots of people feel that way, but for you it was particularly profound and made more profound by certain things. There was no one that you really this is me just being intuitive now, or like trying to like tap in to me. What I'm feeling is that there was no one that you felt really like you could trust to go to when you were little yes your parents and your family love you, but you never really felt like they were.
Speaker 1:in some ways, this strength, this lion, has become more reliable to you than the systems and the people that you were around. Yes, so your dream actually for yourself you've built this incredible life. It's very. You'll notice as well that this card is very bereft of color, except for the heart, and even the heart is not like a blazing bright red. So your dream for yourself that you don't even want to admit is that there is a vulnerability inside you that needs to be healed, that needs to be apologized to, that on some level, you worry that if people get to know the real you, then they won't. If people get to know the real you, then they won't. Like it's the the sort of even though we we hate this kind of like influence a glitz and glamour kind of shit.
Speaker 1:There is a deep part of you that feels like without all of that they wouldn't want to be my friend.
Speaker 3:I'm always like when do I go back to not being invited to parties? You know, when do I? When do I go back to like sitting at a lunch table by myself? I always feel like that. That past is going to come back at some point and it has in various iterations. I mean, I, I think I was telling you about like certain Facebook spaces and how early in, before I even really had a career, there was a moment where I felt very ostracized and I was like, oh, this whole feeling never goes away, does it? You know?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean in some ways like let's look at that six of cups again To a degree like you're always in your life going to feel sometimes like that little kid that needs to have someone bigger than her, more powerful than her.
Speaker 3:Be like here's a magic potion.
Speaker 1:Be like I see you. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I see what you need. Here's your magic potion that will make you feel strong and I love you unconditionally. Yeah, I think that your dream here in this imagination is not so much even I mean partly. It's like wanting to have some kind of closure on that in the past, even though a logical side of you has accepted that you were not going to get that closure. Yeah, so the dream then becomes how can I love myself enough to make up for all of that love that other people couldn't give me, that I needed? How can I let that go? And how can I be the one who, how can I be my six of cups that's giving me the love that I, that I deserve?
Speaker 1:You don't want to kind of like delve too much into that, necessarily, because it's very painful to think about. It's like literally three swords sticking through your heart that if you take the swords out, you're going to bleed some more. So, in a way, sometimes you feel like the swords are still in there, because at least when they're in there, you know where the swords are Exactly. You don't know what will happen if you take the swords out.
Speaker 3:There's been certain people that have definitely tested my trust as well in the social media space, because when I first started, I was like the giving tree Like you want that, I'll give it to you. You want resources, you want the thing I've worked really hard for. Let me help you make it happen. And realizing that, unfortunately, because social media spaces are so deeply motivated by capitalism, um, there are very few people that are moving with the same energy. They exist, you exist, they exist, but it's not everyone. And.
Speaker 3:I had to learn that the hard way. And I always say that, like I reference 1984 a lot in Animal Farm because they're brilliant books, but I always say in 1984 I'm the horse. Um, the horse is the character that ends up being sent to the glue factory or wait, no, not 1984, sorry.
Speaker 3:Animal Farm and Animal Farm. I'm the horse boxer. And boxer ends up getting sent to a glue factory because boxer is so busy towing the party line that he's not paying attention to what's actually really happening. He believes so strongly and it's his motto is that I will do it, I will do it. He believes so strongly and like what's being told that he's not looking around and realizing that there's bad faith players around him and I kind of felt like that on social media, like everybody, was like feminism, let's lift each other up.
Speaker 3:And I think, if it's confusing to someone like me who's on the inside, I cannot imagine how it is for people who are following different people and expecting things of them and whatnot, and then feeling completely disappointed when the person says that like oh, I'm an environmentalist and I run an organization, but also let me just do an ad for a fast fashion company that has stolen wages from garment workers. It's whiplash, it really is. And if people who are on social media following people feel confused and perplexed by it, don't worry, you're not alone. We all do.
Speaker 1:We all do and we all feel like I think, when you care about the world as you do and as I do, there are some people who only care about themselves only care about themselves.
Speaker 3:And unfortunately, social media does give them a cover, because you can use a catchy slogan, you can get in on international women's day. You can do a lot while never really showing your true intentions, which is that you only really care about yourself you're using political messaging to advance yourself in a way that advances you and no one else.
Speaker 1:Um, before I turn over the last card, the last thing I'll just say about that three of swords is to advance yourself in a way that advances you and no one else. Before I turn over the last card, the last thing I'll just say about that three of swords is that there is that personal side for you that your dream is to overcome this wound, these three wounds that maybe you say the family, the origin, the like, the external culture, whatever it is you know, or just three swords in your heart to overcome that. But also, on a kind of like macro work level, one of your dreams is you are deeply wounded by the work that you do, because you're wounded by seeing suffering in the world and which it's harming people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so you have this dream that like if the heart in that picture is the world, what you would like to see is the swords kind of pulled out of the world. You would like to see you, would like to see us evolve.
Speaker 3:Yes, I want to see us tear down the current systems and build new ones that are better and work for more people. That's what I want.
Speaker 1:So the elevation this was my card of the day, actually, which was nice because this is the first time I've done a podcast like this um, the full new journey, the elevation, how can you make this dream happen? It's, it's this sort of um well for you, in terms of a personal, the personal wounds that you've had, how can you realize the dream of like getting over this sort of like internal childhood wounding and this fear of unlovability? Is to literally like restart, like channel the energy of the fool. The fool is not a fool, the fool is the. Is the card that kind of?
Speaker 1:You know, it's the zero, but the zero is also the dot, it's it's like the world, it's it's possibility. The fool can be placed at any point in the tarot and it's not in a numerical order, it's just the full energy is. Imagine, if you know I said earlier that, like we are a body and spirit Imagine if you were in the spiritual plane and you were like I think I'm going to go and have a go with that like human thing like would not be.
Speaker 3:We think we do do yeah we're like, let's give it a try.
Speaker 1:I think so I could happen and you arrive on the planets on fire and you're like maybe also you've done it a number of times maybe. Maybe we don't have a linear timeline.
Speaker 3:Maybe after this one we go back and we're gonna experience 1400 or something you know so I think my soul is actually um, I think that my soul is getting towards the end of its coming back to earth journey. I've always felt this strongly that like that'll that'll account for the strength, yeah, that maybe like I, because I I feel that I've been here many, many times before.
Speaker 1:It's interesting that the world did pop out three times demanding to be seen when I was initially shuffling, which would sort of back up what you're saying. That you are coming, the world is the completion. It's the completion of everything that we need to learn.
Speaker 3:I feel like my soul is. I feel like it's an old soul. I get feelings about old souls and new souls and whatnot. Like my two cats, olive is a new soul, juno is an old soul, um, and I feel like my soul is a little bit older. What do you think I?
Speaker 1:am Old soul. You think so? Yeah, totally, I think I've been a, a yearning soul.
Speaker 3:Yeah, a wounded soul.
Speaker 1:I think that I have feelings to fix and you have things to. Yeah, I feel like I keep playing out the karmic wound of feeling let down by the people I love and I need.
Speaker 1:I think that this is my life where I figure that stuff out. Yeah, you know I'm coming to like a lot of understanding about you know, I keep pulling the ten of swords, which is a figure with 10 swords in their back, and for a long time I was like, why am I pulling this 10 of swords? It's telling me to end something. It's telling me to end like this, you know this job thing, or like an end. And then the other day I was journaling about it and I realized, oh, that, because the 10 of swords appeared in a spread that I was doing on like, what am I leaving behind? And also, are the, what are the blocks that I need to let go of?
Speaker 1:And I suddenly realized the 10 of swords and all the swords in my back are all the feelings that I have of not being enough, of like tell the, the stories I tell myself that the, the beliefs that I have about being unlovable, about being, you know, too much for people like, about always being let down. I just got to let it go. You know you can't control how other people see you and respond to you. You know all you can do is love yourself.
Speaker 3:You can and, um, I think Steve's been really good about that because he's he's very grounded and that's something that he always says you can't control other people you and I, I think his, his, um, that's what I've been looking for. He's very pragmatic and I think that that's been quite good for me where I'm more free-spirited, and I think that's quite good for him. So I think we're very good in balance in a lot of ways this fool.
Speaker 1:Just finishing on this note, the fool is a you know so say. The fool is like I'm gonna go and experience humanity for, like, the first time. I have no idea what a body feels like. All I know is that in the spiritual plane I am energy and I fly around and the fool is kind of dropped on a clifftop. There's a little dog next to her. That the dog is is sort of like the innocent companion, and the sun is shining and there's a city in the background signifying possibility, and she is about to walk off like head up head up in the sky this is amazing going right off the cliff she's about to walk off a cliff because she doesn't know that humans can't fly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she doesn't know what the rules of this world are. She's like body, what the hell? But also we as the viewer, we can't see what she's viewing. We can't see whether or not actually that's not a cliff, it's just a little jutting out ravine, yeah. Or if there's like another little cliff there that she's just going to step over, this idea that the fool maybe actually knows something we don't know, you know the fool comes into this world and comes into its new opportunities with nothing but optimism for what could happen.
Speaker 3:So, in terms of like, elevating funny because my older sister used to call me pollyanna when I was little. She was like oh, I hated you Cause you were so like Pollyanna ish. Like. Whoa, very positive, very like what's the worst that can happen, let's do it.
Speaker 1:But I think that that naivety also guides me in my work, and I think naivety is a really powerful thing to have like, because naivety means that you think anything is possible and it means that you're not going to be swayed by I mean, one of the things that I really struggle so much within people is pessimism and a lack of trying you know, I just think you know what. What's the fucking worst that can happen is it doesn't work.
Speaker 3:That's the worst that could happen. It's easier to fall into that, though, because then you're not liable to make any actual change yes, and you're also not.
Speaker 1:You don't have to be embarrassed or let down, yeah. So for you to to, firstly, on an emotional level, to elevate, to realize your dream of, like, letting go of these past wounds, you have to rethink how you see them. You have to, you have to set out again on the earth, you have to channel the naivety and the optimism of the fool and go. You know, really, really believe I can't actually control how people see me and I can't change the past, but what I can do is decide today that I'm going to walk forward in all of my glory and if people don't love me for that, that's fine, it's okay and then, on a macro level, with the work that you're doing, it's to realize that dream is that, firstly, you are thinking of a new way of doing things, but you're also asking other people to be foolish. In the tarot sense. You're asking other people to like what if we could just imagine a different way of being? You think you can't stop buying fast fashion. What if you just tried?
Speaker 3:what if you just stopped?
Speaker 1:what if you just set out for six months?
Speaker 3:there is no rule that says you can never intermoligan and go to all your favorite stores. There's. There is no one to say that. So why is it so scary to envision this idea where maybe you just don't for a little bit and see how you feel? Could it be it's scary because you might like it? Could it be it's scary because all of the messaging that's been sent to us by these consumers capitalist systems maybe aren't actually good for us?
Speaker 3:and we lean into it, because so much of our culture is oh, this is how you become a good person, this is how you're an upstanding member of society by working at jobs. You hate making very little money, not having enough to actually afford nice things like housing and education things that I would argue are human rights but like look, look, you can buy a dress.
Speaker 1:The last thing I do when I finish a reading is I look at the bottom card for a secret message or a shadow message. Very funnily, after just describing it to you, your bottom card is the 10 of swords, and the 10 of swords in this depiction has this she's got her phone.
Speaker 1:She's got her phone out, and I think that the message for you here, the specific message, is it's not this sort of oh my God, this terrible ending is coming for you, aja, oh, watch out. It's actually that so much of what is kind of like guiding your work now as well, and the message that you want to translate to people is this shit, this being transfixed by your phone. Yeah, it's hurting you. It's hurting you are like, every time we we look to our phones and look to other people's like curated life, to figure out what's wrong with our own lives or how we can like be happier, we're sticking another sword in our back that we need to like put the phone down and focus on this, the fact that the sun is rising and start a new day, like that's the full, like the end. The 10 is the end and the full is the beginning.
Speaker 3:You know, the fact that she's got a phone in her hand is actually quite like funny.
Speaker 1:I just want to shuffle once more and ask for a message from your higher self, and then we will wrap up, because we've been going for over an hour and a half.
Speaker 3:This is going to be an interesting edit. It's going to be an annoying edit for you. Try and get it down to an hour and just do some bonus content, all right.
Speaker 1:Message from Aja's higher self. What is one thing that Aja's higher self would like to remind her of or for her to know? Here we go. Very good, card the high priestess. The high priestess is the card of intuition, so this backs up these two queens, the high priestess wearing purple purple is the color of the third eye. She sits between these two columns light and the balance of the unity of the world, and she's in front of this veil with pomegranates on it, which is like the seed of life. The veil between her and the veil is all of the mysteries of the universe and she is the keeper of them. So your higher self is telling you you have incredible intuition, exactly as you've said, you have this like bird's eye view, this clairvoyance, this instinct. Don't shy away from it, which you don't, but actually like, lean even more into it. Listen to your inner voice, because your inner voice knows exactly what is going on and you, whatever your gut instinct tells you is always the correct answer you know why I don't lean into it?
Speaker 3:because too many times people have told me that I was mean. If you meet someone in your immediate instinct and I have a feeling you have, this too is I don't like it, I don't like it, I don't like the energy, it's off, it's bad. So I would share this in my 20s. I'd be like I don't that and the response often got me ostracized.
Speaker 3:It's almost like being a witch, like she's a witch you know how dare she, we were truth teller how dare she People don't like truth tellers Say that about that person and then later on that person steals money from everyone in the group and no one ever comes back to you and says oh actually, sorry, we ostracized you and that was a bad decision. And that happened so many times that I stopped listening to that intuition. Certain people in internet spaces, um, that I told you about. My immediate gut reaction was I don't like this person, I don't the energy, I don't like how they're coming across. I feel very weird and what I often do is I tell myself oh, that's just you, oh, you're just being weird, you know? Like why are you? So I actually sort of talk myself out of my intuition because of the ways in which the greater world has often responded to my intuition, and that would be a huge goal of mine is to no longer talk myself out of the intuition.
Speaker 1:Well, your higher self is sending you the message that the intuition is there and it's time for you to retake your seat at, you know, in front of the veil. Yeah, you don't necessarily have to share what you hear or what you feel or what you know. You know, with the maturity that you have now, 20 years later, yeah, you can be a more astute high priestess yeah and you can use it to help the people who you know will receive that message yes but you know, keep your counsel, be wise.
Speaker 1:Be wise like I feel like that in in your 20s the rawness of the of what you knew to be true, without any kind of um maturity, without any time to like nurture it has see, we're just going to be like two more minutes, okay, but you can come in.
Speaker 3:Are you hot? Have you been hanging? Out.
Speaker 1:We're almost done, okay, cool this so the intuition you had in your 20s raw, unformed. You knew it was there, but you.
Speaker 3:Maybe I was a little bit clumsy sometimes. Yeah, I went about like Well, maybe not even that.
Speaker 1:Maybe you just didn't, maybe you were just too naive, you were just too young in your you know? You weren't. You hadn't yet become like the wizened old witch.
Speaker 3:There'd be times where I would definitely be like that person's a dick and maybe I just don't need to say that Maybe I just need to not be not really digging it.
Speaker 1:You are being called now to step into that power again and to be reminded of the incredible magic of your instinct as well, and it's also, I think, in doing that, everything that you feel about yourself, or all of these wounds that kind of appear in this three of swords, you'll actually find a lot of healing for them within that space, because it not only gives you intuition about other people, but it gives you intuition about yourself.
Speaker 1:It gives you that bird's eye view of your whole life and everything that has happened, in a way that you can achieve some kind of distance from it, but also where, in understanding, you find that weird compassion, yeah, for people that we're all just we're all just fools have been dropped on the cliff trying to figure out how to make our way through and some of us have had a few more turns than others yeah, and the people that have not had as many turns as you don't know how to be, as if we think of, like the, the number of times that we might spend in the human life as a way of figuring out how to get back to our original selves.
Speaker 1:You know, then, the more times we do it, the more we remember who we are and where we've come from, and you might be at this point where you are like well, I have done this a few times and I maybe, by tapping into that intuition and finding that compassion, you'd be like I don't have to forgive them, I don't have to love them, I don't have to let them back into my life, but I can kind of maybe see that maybe 10 or a thousand lives before this one.
Speaker 1:Maybe I made some of those mistakes too yeah and, in a way, that kind of is also very healing, because it means that then it's not you, it's just the mistakes of humanity, yes, the childishness that we kind of all come into this world with. Yes, so, aja Baba, that is your bestie reading. It's a very good one. It's like amazing cards in there, and how do you feel?
Speaker 3:cards in there and, uh, how do you feel? I feel I feel like I have a stronger direction than I had before and, um, I feel like I will apply this this year and how I move spaces and how I choose to be, so I feel really like, quite like emotional, but also really like guided and happy.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm so glad.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I feel really good.
Speaker 1:Thank you, and thank you so much for letting me read for you and thank you for letting me record it too. It's a really vulnerable experience and I really appreciate it. I think that everything that has come up today, particularly in your cards, has really, like, reaffirmed my faith in the tarot, for a start, but also completely outlined exactly who you are, which is this ultimately? This wonderfully giving, emotionally guided person who cares so much for the world and who just wants it to be better and wants it to survive, and and in doing that work, you will say sometimes the hard things that people need to hear and sometimes you get pelted with tomatoes and sometimes you get given hugs exactly this depends on the day exactly.
Speaker 3:I love these cards. They're, they're beautiful and, um, yeah, I'm gonna remember and think about them throughout the year as I move through the spaces on this journey that, wherever the soul is going, I love you.
Speaker 1:I love you too you've been listening to untethered with me, your host, clementine ford. Thank you so much everyone who has been listening to all episodes, but particularly for coming along on this experimental little ride with me today. I hope hope you enjoyed it. As I said, you can email me your feedback. You can also contact me on Instagram. I'm at Clementine underscore Ford. I hope that you found this conversation illuminating and that you learned a lot more about Aja Barber. You can buy her book at the line of notes in this episode. It is consumed, slowing down fast fashion, and it's really an essential read. We will be back next week with a brand new guest who will let us know a whole new way to get untethered.