An Oracle Card Reflection: Expanding into More
Reflecting on June's Unfolding Wisdom and an invitation to join me for July
Dear fellow journeyer,
today’s post is a little bit different as I’ve divided it into subsections:
Setting the Scene
My Oracle Reflection
Embodying Expansion
July’s Oracle Cards
Setting the Scene: Why Oracle Cards
To say I regularly use or " pull” Oracle or Tarot cards would be inaccurate.
I have only one deck, a deck of Oracle cards which took me forever (OK, I’m exaggerating… but it did take me a really long time) to choose and settle upon.
I am though, the kind of person who (in the main) follows my inner prompts and leadings and lately, I’ve been feeling a call to the cards probably the fifth time since I bought them last summer so, as you can see, I don’t use them often.
Yet, I’ve noticed something and for those of you who use cards more regularly, I would love to know if this is your experience also…
because without fail going through the process shifts and changes something inside of me.
I didn’t expect that, I probably thought it would be a lot like reading your fortune or similar but nope, my experience has been quite different.
I definitely believe they are something pretty special but I didn’t always feel that way. Getting to a place where I feel comfortable sitting with and pulling cards has been a strange journey. Initially, I felt extremely sceptical about the whole thing, not wanting to fall prey to yet another superstitious, supernatural or self-delusional trap after being enslaved to Christian indoctrination for so long but I couldn’t shake the mounting urge rising within me to reconnect with the parts of me Christianity had told me were not OK.
My African ancestral and yes pagan roots.
The medicine/wise woman, tree-hugging earth mama in me
The witchy, wild and free-spirited, boho goddess that lay below the surface
And finally, I found this beautiful set of cards by Abiola Abrams and something inside of me let out a deep sigh, like my soul had been waiting for this for the longest time.
I adore these cards.
I think what I love the best is that each card introduces you to a powerful African or Black female deity, wise woman or spiritual leader and the illustrations are so richly detailed, bold, colourful and evoke an out-of-this-world energy that can’t help but penetrate deep within me.
Whenever I go through the process of selecting my cards, I really do feel like my ancestral and universal spirits are gathering with me, guiding me and supporting me. And maybe it’s because I don’t go through this process often, it provides plenty of time in between to sit with the wisdom, letting it sink in and do the deep work.
So now, I’m feeling ready to pull another trio of cards but I also know that there is one final step needed before I do, which is where this post comes in.
Completing the cycle.
My Oracle Reflection
At the beginning of June, I pulled three cards:
Resistance
Alchemy
Seasons
I sat and journalled through the deep disequilibrium that had been haunting me allowing myself to reconnect with the wisdom in my body. I saw and sensed a wild animal trapped in a cage, longing to be free yet fearing her own power and wildness.
She was me.
As she prowled around the walls that encaged her, bubbling up from beneath the surface were feelings of anger and frustration held at bay, directed both outwards and inwards at being stuck and imprisoned and at the inequities and unfairness of life.
But the more I allowed her out, the more that energy began to shift transmuting itself into a beautiful, powerful golden truth that warmed and illuminated me.
I HAVE THE POWER TO AMPLIFY AND EXPAND MY WORLD
There have been many, many times where I have allowed others to define me and in doing so shrink who I am and contract my world, religion was probably the biggest to date, a noose that I didn’t realise I was wearing until it had already done enough damage to make itself seen and felt. I couldn’t shake it loose, it was a shadow that followed me and darkened everything I desired with fear.
“You’re too New Agey” they would say and I would find ways to temper myself.
“Oh no, that’s panentheism” and I would force myself to deny the truth of my soul’s voice.
Words and labels that I allowed to define my world and create walls that marked the boundaries of where I could and couldn’t tread.
The truth is that I’ve been doing this expansion work for a while now, but my biggest breakthrough has been when I allowed myself to question and deconstruct my faith and beliefs. It was as if doing so created a door in the walls of my cage, a way out into what lay beyond. Maybe it always existed, it probably did, I just never allowed myself to see it, what would be the point when I was too afraid to give myself permission to walk through it?
But even though I had come so far, something was still holding me back. I was like the elephant who refused to escape even when it was no longer bound, I could now clearly see even without the cage, I was still living like it was there.
That was a seismic internal shift.
I could say that my word for last month has been Expansion, but as I’ve found to be the case with “theme” words is that nothing magical drops from the sky. Nothing suddenly happens to you, instead, the shift happens moment by moment with every thought, feeling, action and reaction inside you.
Choices made to choose from a place of even greater and deeper soul-led intentionality over and over again towards my highest and truest expression.
This is Expansion.
Freedom.
What would happen if I embraced more and more of my I-Amness?
My African ancestral and yes pagan roots?
The medicine/wise woman and tree-hugging earth mama within me?
The witchy, wild and free-spirited, boho goddess?
The woman who wasn’t afraid of her own sexuality and sensuality, her own beauty?
Who didn’t apologise or shrink back because it/she didn’t fit?
Embodying Expansion
It’s been about a month since I first pulled those cards and I can already see the fruit of it.
For one, I’ve changed the name of this publication from Unfolding Beyond Deconstruction to Living from Soul.
I’ve extended past the first, it now feels limiting whilst the latter feels expansive and energetically aligned with who I am now.
I don’t want to write about just deconstruction or even deconditioning, I want to write about the journey towards MORE Life, not the glitz and glamour Instagrammable reconstructions of what life must look like to prove that you are living life well - nope!
But how we create a fully lived, human-embodied experience of life on this earthly sojourn by embracing more and more our authentic self-expression and re-remembering what it means to live life from Soul, even the painful and darkest aspects of it.
I also know a lot of people search “deconstruction” and might subscribe to this publication based on that single word. To me, this is a frighteningly claustrophobic thought because it feels like I carry the expectations of writing about something and being something that I don’t want to be. I am unwilling to allow myself to be trapped yet again by other people’s expectations, wants or needs.
It is not easy to expand, especially when it means going against an ingrained pattern that has kept you feeling safe for most of your life. This is why I am truly grateful for the physical and spirit guides who remind me of my power to choose even when it feels like the hardest and scariest thing I can do is choose my highest and truest expression.
Expansion is courageous work not for everyone and that’s OK. Just like those who have done the same for me, I want to be and give to those who read this publication and listen to my podcast, someone who reminds you of your own innate power and responsibility towards choosing your highest.
The only responsibility that we each truly have is to this life. Whether you believe in reincarnation or not is irrelevant, the very fact you are here now is a gift, and with it a call to be responsible with and for this life you have.
To live life like you know it was given to you as a sacred offering of the highest order means you also know the importance of choosing you, all of you even the bits that other people don’t get, including the messy, ugly, wounded, confused, socially unacceptable aspects of ourselves that we may not even understand or like.
Yep.
I once read that if we are going to live like that, to live life truly well without letting fear or Ego continually hold us back, we must live as if we will die tomorrow.
Have you ever noticed that most people on their deathbed have no time to hold onto egotism, grudges or fear? When their last moments of life are slipping away everything, even time becomes a gift. They can’t afford to wait for one, some or that day to come, all that remains is now. At the liminal doorway between life and death lies only the rawness and freedom of truth and honesty.
So that’s why I’m here, and it’s why I’m continually shaking myself loose of everything that might want to contract or pull me back - another layer peeled back.
As for this publication, you’ll probably notice another energetic shift in my writing not just in how I’m writing but also in what I’m writing about.
Plus, I am changing my offerings and also making more use of the paid subscriber option here. I’ve ummed and ahhed about this a lot but, as money is a wound that I know needs healing it’s very important for me to charge something for this space.
I’ve decided that the majority of posts excluding the podcast episodes will have a portion of content reserved for paid subscribers only, some will be more, some less I’ll know at the time of writing. Take this post, whilst the vast majority of this post is visible to everyone, the final portion which is an invitation to join me in this month’s card pull is reserved for paid subscribers.
Whatever you choose, know that I appreciate and have appreciated you being on the other side of my words.
Until next time,
Live life from your Soul.
Florence O.
July’s Oracle Cards
I’m really excited to share this next trio of cards with you (pulled on Thursday 13th).
Step 1
First I will simply share the words associated with each card, my process is to give as little info as possible in the first instance to give your soul/body room to allow what it wants to say to arise to the surface.
I invite you to have a pen and journal at hand to allow room and space for what wants to come forth to land.
Here we go, in the order that I pulled the cards…
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